Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us in London today for our 2022 full year results. Before we start, I want to highlight 3 key points. First, RHI Magnesita's margins are resilient throughout the cycle, and in 2022, we have demonstrated this again. In the refractory business, we can pass on higher costs to our customers if the cost increases that are due to the higher costs apply across the whole industry. For our customers, refractories are essential. They cannot operate without refractories and without security of having those, and therefore, security of supply is paramount. I come back to this quite important point just in a minute.
We needed to increase prices by EUR 600 million in 2022 compared to the average prices in 2021 just to offset the cost increases that we had occurred in raw materials, in energies, and in freight. We did it. Second comment, we are making good progress on our M&A strategy. The strategy to consolidate the refractory industry, especially in those regions in which we have been underrepresented previously. In 2022, we completed our signed acquisitions in each one of the key geographies, India, China, and Turkey. Furthermore, we invested into a very strategic recycling business in Europe, Mireco.
This will help us to reduce our CO₂ footprint, but it will also help us to decarbonize the entire refractory industry. Third remark, we used our balance sheet to serve our customers in 2022. We will continue to do this in the future.
In 2022, as I mentioned, we had to significantly increase prices, and while we did this, we also gained market share. Why? Because we invested significant amount of money in increasing our inventories, and therefore, we could deliver whenever our customers needed material. Supply chain disruptions that we all experienced in 2021 were overcome and are now managed. This also has changed the way we look at working capital and the way we look at our overall gearing level. We give you the details of this later. Now let's go into the numbers. With the sales volumes in line with 2021, revenues were EUR 766 million higher. This came from price increases, fully offsetting higher costs, as I mentioned before. We increased margins even slightly to 11.6%.
In the fourth quarter, volumes were already quite subdued in most markets, indicating what we see now, a weak first half in 2023. We remain absolutely focused, ladies and gentlemen, on health and safety in the workplace. Our Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate was at 0.2 per 200,000 hours. This is better than most industrial companies, but it's still not zero, so really too high. We have launched new awareness and training programs to reduce finger and hand injuries because they make up a big part of what we incur inside our own company, but also with many of our contractors that we have on our own sites and on the sites of our customers. Let's go to the financial highlights. Revenue, EBITA margin, EPS all increased.
Working capital intensity also increased, driven by our conscientious decision to increase supply chain inventories globally to improve customer service. Solid EBITDA performance for the year maintained gearing levels at the expected levels. Driven by cost-induced price increases, steel revenues increased by 30%, even though our shipment volumes were 1% lower, mostly because of the second half. Our volumes overall clearly outperformed world steel production numbers, which were at 7% outside of China. We assume a 2023 contraction of volumes of up to 5% due to weaker demand. We outperformed in every region with significant price increases everywhere. India, ladies and gentlemen, is where the growth will be for the foreseeable future, driven, of course, by the transformational growth of the continent. This development will be refractory intensive, this development in India.
Steel, cement, metals, glass are going to be the foundation of the India growth story, very much driven by infrastructure. We are pleased to have completed the acquisitions there that will now receive additional investments in order to support the growth of our customer into the future. In the industrial segment, we also experienced about 30% revenue growth with stable margins here. In our industrial projects business, we caught up on delays from 2021 and showed over-proportional growth. Lower cement volumes year-on-year already indicated signals of a downturn from the construction industry. We expect softer volumes in industrial overall also in 2023. We learned in the past three years to respond faster to volatility in the markets. We moved really quickly to install equipment that allowed us to diversify our energy sources in Europe.
We added inventory levels in most of our direct geographies to respond quickly to supply chain challenges, including local strikes that we now see more and more. We keep adding local manufacturing capabilities to act even faster to changing customer needs. We made progress acquiring some excellent businesses and adding them to the RHI Magnesita family. We have made two acquisitions in China, two in India, and one each in Türkiye and in Europe.
There will be around EUR 200 million of cash outflow from these acquisitions that will still close in 2023, which are Dalmia, Hi-Tech, and New Yimei in China. Overall, these acquisitions are expected to add EUR 25-30 million of EBITDA this year. We have a well alive pipeline of similar bolt-on opportunities to come in the next quarters or years, depending on how fast we can agree, of course.
Let me talk about those a little bit. The first thing to say about Türkiye is that all of our employees in this country are safe from harm, and they are out of danger from the recent terrible earthquakes in this country. RHI Magnesita has made a donation of EUR 80,000 to several international and also some local channels to give immediate aid to those affected, and we will do more as more help will be needed over the course of the next quarters and years. Our operations in Türkiye are not impacted due to their location. They're not close to the epicenter, but there is severe disruption in the south where many of our customers are located. During the year, last year, we completed the acquisition of SÖRMAŞ.
SÖRMAŞ is one of the leading refractory companies in Türkiye, and particularly well established in the industrial market where we have been weak. As RHI M was mostly active in raw materials in the Turkish market, we are now a fully integrated refractory player with the ability to serve our customers in Türkiye much better than before and export less of the raw materials and use them in the country. In Europe, we invested to build a new secondary raw material business named Mireco. This has enabled RHI Magnesita to achieve our 10% recycling target three years ahead of the original objective. More importantly, though, Mireco will supply secondary raw materials to the entire refractory industry and attempt to recycle all of our customers' waste by building a truly circularity business model.
There's still some ways to go because it requires a lot of changes in our own product design, but also with our customers. In India, we had already built a market-leading presence through the combination of RHI's India sales network, RHI Clasil, and Orient Refractories into RHI Magnesita India, the listed company that we had. We've done this in 2021. With two acquisitions now completed in January 2023, we have extended this platform into the industrial segments through Dalmia and into the flow control segment through Hi-Tech. Both of these acquisitions are operating at below plant capacity with the opportunity to increase production there by around 50% with relatively limited additional CapEx. This will now give us the space that we need to grow together with our customers seamlessly over the next few years.
In China, the new alumina-based refractory brick plant in Chongqing is due to start operations in the second half of 2023. In January of 2023, we reached agreement on the acquisition of Jinan New Yimei. This expands our presence in the key flow control segment of slide gates, nozzles, and control systems, in which we were not present in China until now. The facility we bought is a super modern, totally automated and robotized facility. That was constructed in 2022. Just completed. We have reassessed our gearing targets during the course of this year due to two main drivers. First, our customers' very positive reaction to a more performing supply chain based on structurally higher inventory level. Our design.
Our desire to continue to participate in the industry's consolidation by making acquisitions is the second reason why we reassessed the gearing level. Our margins remained relatively stable throughout even severe downturns. Our business is much less volatile than the business of our customers, and therefore we see relatively low level of risk with a higher gearing level. After careful consideration, therefore, in our board, we have decided to increase our leverage target range to 1.0-2.0 on a normal basis, and with the flexibility to exceed even 2.5x if we have attractive acquisitions to deliver for a period of time. With this, I will hand over to Ian, and he will lead us through the numbers. Ian?
As Stefan has highlighted, the business delivered a strong performance in 2022. We successfully demonstrated the benefits of prioritizing the seamless supply of our customers. This focus is reflected in the strong revenue growth, which drove a 37% increase in EBITA to EUR 384 million. Below the EBITA line, EPS growth was more limited at 7% year-on-year. This given mark-to-market currency movements of EUR 23 million, an increase in net interest expense to EUR 21 million, and a higher effective tax rate of 25%, which was at the top end of our guidance range. We are recommending to shareholders an increase in the final dividend to EUR 1.10 per share, a full year payout of EUR 1.60 per share, in line with our maximum 3 times dividend policy.
Revenue increased 30% to EUR 3.3 billion, with each of steel and industrial up 30%. The revenue bridge clearly shows the positive impact of our price increases, which amounted to EUR 600 million, roughly evenly split between the first half and the second half. We also had a currency benefit of EUR 177 million. This comes from the strength of the US dollar, the Indian rupee, and the Brazilian real. We delivered EUR 68 million of revenue increases from our strategic initiatives to grow our business in solutions in India, in China, and in flow control. This was offset by a EUR 79 million volume reduction in the base business. EBITA increased to EUR 384 million, with the second half being slightly stronger than the first half.
Changes in sales volumes and currency benefits were relatively small compared to the large increase in our cost base of EUR 542 million and the EUR 600 million increase in prices that we were able to realize. The largest cost increases came from purchased raw materials, energy, and people, both in our plant and in our SG&A. Fixed cost absorption was also lower given that production was down 14% year-on-year as we focused on aligning finished goods inventory with demand. Our strategic sales initiative and the production optimization plan together contributed an incremental EUR 24 million to EBITA on top of the savings delivered in previous years. The EBITA margin increased to 11.6%, up 60 basis points year-on-year, with a much improved refractory margin of 9.1%.
The contribution from our mining assets compressed to 2.5%, representing EUR 81 million of EBITA. The margin reduction was due to a combination of lower market prices for the raw materials that we produce, which is the basis for our calculation, and higher production costs at our raw material sites. This lower backward integration margin is not expected to be permanent, the trend continues into 2023 as raw material prices have softened further with weaker demand and lower freight rates. We experienced unprecedented cost inflation in 2022, with the cost of goods sold up 22% year-on-year in constant currency terms. Our input cost inflation was 18%, with the cost of energy up over 40% and purchased raw material up 20% year-on-year. As guided, cost inflation did slow in the second half.
It's good news for COGS that the cost of our key inputs, sea freight, energy, and raw materials, are coming down from their highs. However, this will lead to lower pricing for refractories this year as competitors will be able to accept lower prices. This will put pressure on us if we want to retain the market shares that we've gained, and this is why we're guiding to some price reductions impacting our revenues in 2023. This on top of the decline in refractory sales volumes of up to 5%. Moving to working capital and starting with the chart on the bottom left. Last year, working capital increased by EUR 240 million to EUR 918 million with a 25.4% intensity. The increase is largely explained by inventory and by accounts payable.
If you look at the chart in the top right, you can see that last year inventory increased EUR 72 million to EUR 1.048 billion. Part of this is explained by currency and by consolidating new M&A. The big moves though were in volumes and in costs. From a volume perspective, we made good progress in the second half of 2022, reducing inventory volumes with our volumes down 23% during the course of the year. Finished goods are now at target coverage ratios based on forecast demand. Raw materials are still slightly above our target ratios with the potential to reduce further this year. The volume reduction was offset by the sharp increase in the cost of inventory, particularly in the first half.
You can also see that accounts payable reduced to EUR 507 million, given low raw material procurement in the second half of 2022 to reduce inventory levels. As Stefan mentioned, we have seen real benefits from carrying higher levels of inventory in the past year as we've been able to stand out as a reliable supplier for our customers. As a board, we believe it is right to carry higher levels of working capital than targeted pre-COVID to prioritize security of supply to our customers. During 2023, working capital will remain around its current level of 25%. Turning to gearing and to liquidity. Pre-M&A, the group moved into a deleveraging phase in the second half of 2022.
After being EUR 75 million operating cash flow negative in the first half of the year, given the working capital build, the business generated EUR 230 million of operating cash flow in the second half. We finished the year with net debt of EUR 1.168 billion and leverage of 2.3 times. There was some underspend on CapEx which should be factored in around EUR 20 million, which moves into 2023. We continue to retain robust liquidity with EUR 1.1 billion of cash and committed but undrawn facilities. We have a long dated debt maturity profile and three-quarters of our interest rates are fixed, giving us a weighted average cost of debt currently of 190 basis points.
This is a strong position to be in as base rates are rising and the cost of debt on newly refinanced facilities increases. You would have seen that we recently requested approval from the shareholders of RHIM India, our listed Indian subsidiary, to issue new shares for a potential equity raise of up to EUR 170 million. The group intends to retain its majority shareholding in RHIM India and possibly participate in the equity raise. This is simply a request for authority at this point, and there should be no expectation that any equity raise will proceed or what the size might be. Moving to CapEx. We spent EUR 156 million on CapEx in 2022.
This is down on our guidance of EUR 200 million, largely as EUR 20 million of project CapEx was delayed into this year, and we suspended the second phase of the Contagem project in Brazil. In 2023, we expect to spend EUR 200 million. This is the EUR 160 million we previously guided, which includes EUR 85 million of maintenance CapEx. In addition, we have the EUR 20 million of carryover from last year and EUR 20 million of CapEx on the announced M&A. Moving to guidance, finally. We've sought to provide more granularity on the guidance for this year since there are a few moving pieces. Our base case is not for a major downturn, but a certain amount of softening is built in and already visible in our order books.
We are working on the assumption of our sales volumes being down by up to 5% with softer refractory pricing year-over-year. Overall, our EBITA expectations for the base business, pre the announced M&A, is broadly in line with where analyst consensus is at EUR 325 million of EBITA. In addition to that, we expect the announced M&A to deliver an incremental EUR 25 million-EUR 30 million of EBITDA with EUR 10 million of depreciation, so net EBITA contribution of EUR 15 million-EUR 20 million. This gives us EBITA for 2023 of approximately EUR 340 million. We are also guiding to a EBITDA margin of 10%. This is down year-over-year, in particular, due to the lower backward integration margin. Analyst consensus had a higher margin, but we get to broadly the same figure via higher revenues. Thank you.
Now, I hand you back to Stefan.
Let's talk sustainability. Our sustainability performance continues to improve with an acceleration in our recycling rate. Recycling is the fastest lever that we can pull to reduce CO₂ emissions. The external sustainability ratings of RHI Magnesita by independent analysts recognize this progress and also recognize our commitment. In 2022, we saw our lowest recorded CO₂ emissions since we began to track them in 2018. At 4.2 million tons compared to the 5.4 million tons in the baseline year. With an 8% reduction in emissions intensity, we are way on our way towards the target of a 15% reduction by 2025. We are still, however, far away from being satisfied. We need to reassess fuel switches towards natural gas in light of less available natural gas in Europe, this is a counter problem.
Customer perceptions of recycling in Europe are changing gradually. One by one, we can convince them of the real sustainability benefits. Other regions still need to follow. We have much more to do, of course. Leading the reduction of CO₂ emissions in our industry is RHI Magnesita's role as the market leader. In the long term, only zero emissions are the acceptable objective. We have identified the reduction of 1 million tons by 2035, or another 20%-25% of the 2022 emissions. These reductions are possible with available technologies, and they should be affordable under the expected economic conditions to come. The main measures are further increase of the recycling rate, energy efficiency measures, and fuel switches to lower CO₂ emitting energy sources. Beyond that, CO₂ reduction requires new technologies that are not yet available today.
Mostly focused on eliminating the process emissions. They require a cost-competitive source of hydrogen to replace emissions from fossil fuels. Those are the two big things that we need to do after 2035. We have hydrogen-burning pilot projects ongoing to ensure that we can use this fuel as soon as becomes available. We have investments into new CCUS, Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage technologies ongoing. The recently published alliance with MCi Carbon from Australia as the most recent and the most exciting technology venture that we're engaged in at the moment. A total decarbonization would also entail the decarbonization of our external raw material suppliers, especially the magnesite, dolomite, and fused alumina-based raw material producers in China. We are engaged with several of them.
What we learn and what we develop, we will make available to all refractory companies and to all refractory raw material suppliers alike in order to really decarbonize this entire industry. Strategic initiatives.
Outside of Brazil, the production optimization plan is now substantially complete. We have had delays at Brumado in the installation and commissioning of the new rotary kiln. The project will only start up in late 2023. We decided to keep operating the Mainzlar plant in Germany, which had been earmarked for closure originally. Taken together, this means that we will only add around EUR 90 million from cost initiatives into the 2023 P&L. The sales strategies are tracking towards EUR 40 million EBITDA at the moment as a contribution in 2023. As you can see, we are positioned, we are posting good gains in India and in the solution contracts.
India will grow even faster in 2023 than it did in 2022 due to the integration of the M&As. We are expecting, as Ian has mentioned, up to 5% lower sales volumes in 2023 compared to 2022 due to the downturn that we are experiencing right now, mainly because of a globally weak construction market outside of India since the fourth quarter of 2022. Refractory pricing will also be lower in 2023. Our earnings expectations are in line with analyst consensus. The impact of lower volumes and pricing will be a reduced EBITA margin to around 10%. The impact of lower EBITDA in 2023 and increased spending on M&A will result in a net debt to EBITDA level of 2.3x or above, depending on M&A and EBITDA development.
Whilst 2023 is expected to be slower, our longer term strategy, however, remains in place. We will continue to pursue value-creating acquisitions. We will operationally continue to improve our customer delivery capabilities. Our ability to supply the full range of products, services, and technology is unmatched in the industry by any competitor. We will continue to improve their own operations also. Thank you for listening. Looking forward to your questions. Mark, you want to start?
Okay. Doing lights or are?
Yeah, lights.
Okay. Thank you. Mark Davies-Jones from Stifel. 2, if I may. Firstly, on the volume outlook, I think we've talked in the past about some destocking amongst your steel customers exacerbating those trends. Where are we in that process, do you think? Is there any scope for the second half being a bit better than the first half this year as that process works through? I'll ask that one first.
Yes, there is. W e always talk about our order book. We have something like a 6-month visibility. What has happened since October is the order book is a little bit lower than in the 6 months before, but it's moving month by month. We don't see yet an increase of volumes. All the discussions we have with our customers tell us that eventually there should be an uptake, mostly in North America and a little bit in Europe also.
Thank you. The strategic change in approach, structurally higher working capital, structurally higher debt. What's the risk that that's a sort of permanent solution to a temporary situation? I think earlier you were suggesting that as the exceptional pressures on supply chain, logistics, and all the rest of it normalize, you could get back to something lower again, but you seem to have changed. I see the advantage of taking market share, but, surely some things will get easier again.
Yeah. This is a structural permanent increase of working capital levels. You have to look at the working capital reach, not so much at the absolute level, because of course, that fluctuates very much with cost. It is permanent for the time being . Let's say for the next three years or so. Therefore, we change the structural guidance of the gearing because of course, it's a step up, and cash flow generation will come from there. We think it's very worthwhile to have a completely secure supply chain for our customers. We don't expect supply chain challenges to go away anytime soon. We still have container shipping reliability at way below 50%.
You have new alliances, being discussed in container shipping, but you have also trade block disputes, going on. I think we have to expect things that we don't know yet. Therefore, we went for a we decided that this is a structural change. Could we one day improve this? Maybe.
Thank you.
Hi. Good morning. It's Jonathan from Barclays. Just a couple of questions as well, please. Firstly, just maybe one for Ian. If you could just sort of bridge the margin from 11.6% in 2022 to 10% in 2023. What are essentially the big sort of moving deltas within that sort of margin decrease, please?
Thank you. We had 11.6% EBITA margin in 2022. We're forecasting around 10% this year. Three components. The first 0.8% is around the lower backward integration margin. In the second half of last year, we were looking at a margin of 1.7%. We expect that to continue in 2023. The second is that we have some EBITA margin dilution coming through from the M&A. Whilst M&A, like the acquisition of Hi-Tech Chemicals, is significantly earnings accretive, Mireco joint venture, Dalmia, Jinan New Yimei, in the near term, will be slightly dilutive before the synergies then support margin accretion going forward. That's a negative 0.2%.
The third piece is -0.5 around lower refractory pricing, driving margin dilution, particularly around the lower costs for energy and raw materials. Our European production footprint, costs are gonna be higher on a relative basis because of higher energy costs. That gives us a bit of a competitive disadvantage against import material into the European market, but also against some of the domestic production in markets that we compete in.
It's very clear. Thank you. The second one is, could you just talk a little bit about how we should think about the cash conversion level in 2023. Obviously, 2022 is quite depressed. Are we gonna see a sort of a step up in that sort of operating cash conversion from you?
Yes, certainly so. We would expect a meaningful improvement in our cash conversion this year. We've provided the key building blocks, so we expect our CapEx to be around EUR 200 million. We would not anticipate a meaningful increase in working capital with lower levels of activity, so that was the core reason why in the first half of last year, our cash conversion was weaker. We would be expecting through the course of this year for cash conversion to improve quite nicely.
Behind you.
Hey, Vanessa Beroud from Jefferies. Just wondering about the cost savings, the lower ones. Do you expect the full EUR 110 next year now that you're doing the CapEx next year? Or is it still a little bit lower structurally?
Next year, you're talking 2024?
2024, yeah.
We will get close to this.
Now that the Germany plant isn't closed, it's a little bit lower.
No. I think that we're comfortable that we will do the EUR 85 million during the course of this year. We expect there will be some modest further increases coming through in 2024, but we have made a decision to not close the Mainzlar plant, and unlocking the benefits around contagion really would depend on that project progressing. I wouldn't take a meaningful further increase in the EUR 85 million for next year.
When you say softer pricing, could you please go into that a little bit? Is it kind of 5% down on volumes, 5% down on pricing, or?
What we are seeing is lower costs for purchased raw materials, for energy, and for sea freight. Our expectation is that we're gonna need to respond to competitors pushing down prices. That will happen starting in the East, and we're already seeing that coming through in China, moving to the West. At this point, you can see from our guidance, we're looking at very low single digit reductions, impacting our margins. That's our expectation.
That's the pull-through, right? This is the pricing we have to give beyond even cost decreases.
Right.
That's why we have a margin squeeze.
It's Harry Philips from Berenberg. Just thinking about the M&A pipeline and saying it's looking quite full. Just 1, I suppose the areas you're thinking of, I'm guessing more emerging market type thoughts, and 2, product-wise. 3, where do you see the competition coming from, in terms of seeking those particular assets, please?
There hasn't been much of a competitive action on consolidation, at least not to the same extent that we have pursued this yet. Vesuvius has made acquisitions every year, they're moving in the same directions. There is a new player now in the market, which is an American private equity that has bought the French refractory business from Imerys, and that has bought HarbisonWalker International one of the big players in North America. I think we should reasonably expect that they will continue to look for opportunities also and build a large refractory player. The consolidation from our perspective, is accelerating. What are we looking at?
We're going to continue to look in Asia because there are many countries in which we're not yet present, including China. In India, probably we have now for the next couple of years done most of the things that we can do. We're going to look in the industrial market where more and more we learn that we're not as strong as we maybe thought some years ago that we are. There's more opportunities here than we thought. Product-wise, we're looking at the non-basic refractories, alumina-based, silica-based refractories.
Thanks. Morning. Dominic Convey from Numis. I just wonder, Ian, whether you could give us a little bit more color on how you see the margin story and obviously the balance sheet evolving through 2023. 'Cause it feels obviously that you're anticipating a steady improvement second half on first half for margins, but there could well be a bit of a pinch point on the balance sheet, perhaps at the 30th of June, what that might look like.
Dom, from a margin perspective, I think our base case expectation is that we're gonna look at a backward integration margin of around 1.7%. Could that improve during the second half of the year? That will very much depend on two things. One is how freight rates evolve, and secondly, how the base prices of our produced raw materials perform. We would anticipate that as production increases, potentially in the second half of the year, that we'll get slightly better backward slightly better fixed cost absorption, and that will then support some modest growth in our refractory margin weighted towards the second half of the year. As I say, on average, we're looking at 10%.
In terms of our gearing, our expectation is that we will hit peak leverage, excluding any further M&A at the middle of this year with the underlying cash generation of the business, supported by working capital, reducing during the second half of this year. Clearly, it's going to be important when we present all of our leverage numbers that we look at the last 12 months for these, for these assets. So when you have acquisitions like Jinan New Emei, which are purchased halfway through a year, we will need to pro forma those for a full 12-month impact.
Mark Fielding from RBC. In terms of the industrial bit, could you just talk a little bit more about what you're seeing from a demand side? I suppose I'm thinking in the past, you said you've had about a 12-month order backlog in the glass side of things, and just how that's evolving. Even on cement, you said there was some more risks around the end of this year than last year because of the timing of closures and things.
Okay. Let's split between cement and the industrial projects. On the industrial projects, we've had a quite strong 2022 because of this backlog, and we're still looking at a very solid 2023 also because there are still projects under execution as part of this longer-term CapEx cycles in all the different industries, glass, non-ferrous metals, other areas, chemicals. On the cement side, the situation is quite different. With the reduction of the construction demand, pretty much all over the world except India since October, September, October, the cement demand has really started to lever off. We see a weaker cement season 2022, 2023 than we would have anticipated six months ago. That construction weakness, originally we were anticipating in Europe but not in other regions, that is pretty universal now. Therefore, the cement business, 2023, will be weaker.
Our kilns are running longer and, the repairs simply are skipped.
Just a separate question. Just a little bit more around the pricing side of things and evolution there 'cause, I mean, there's sort of been a general thought in the past that as raw mats go down, for example, and some of the surcharges and things roll off, there'll be a bit of a lag on that. So potentially as a net win-win input costs and things go down for a short period. Obviously, you're pointing downwards. Is it just that people are moving faster because of the softer demand environment or?
This is what we expect. Yeah, exactly. We have the raw material costs, shipping costs, energy costs all coming down at the same time. At the same time, we hit soft demand pretty much everywhere. We expect this overzealous passing it through.
Okay.
It's Jonathan from Barclays. Just one quick follow-up. Just on terms of the net debt EBITDA guidance at 2.5 times, like you say, you'll push it higher than that for the right deal. How far would you happily push that net debt EBITDA? If it was a reasonably sized or quite a large size deal, could it be solely or would it be solely funded by equity, or would you look at other possibilities to fund the right?
Our business, as recently as the middle of last year's operated at leverage at 2.7 times. As a board, we were comfortable operating at that level given the resilience of our underlying cash flow and given the structure of our debt. 2.7, 2.8, I think, is probably as far as we'd recently want to go for compelling M&A. Clearly, if we were going to wanna do M&A that would stretch the balance sheet further, we would need to look at how we would fund that.
Any questions? We have a webcast.
Any questions in the-?
Any questions in the webcast?
Everybody's here.
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Doesn't seem to be any questions on our webcast either. Thank you very much for coming this morning. Happy to continue the discussion, over a cup of coffee before you leave and then during the course of the next weeks. Goodbye. Thank you.
Thank you.