Good morning, welcome to the Q4 2022 earnings conference call. All participants have been listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star and one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star and two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Erik Stenfors, CEO, and Lars Åkerblom, CFO. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I wish you a warm welcome to this presentation of HANZA's year-end report 2022 report that shows all-time high, both on the top line and the bottom line of the P&L. I'm Erik Stenfors, the CEO of HANZA, and I'll make this presentation together with my colleague, Lars Åkerblom, our CFO. Let's have a look at the agenda, and then we turn to page two. First, it will be our pleasure to walk you through the highlights of the last year. Lars will give you the financial side of the year. Next, we will share our view of the future, and we will end, as always, with a Q&A session. We turn to page three. We are experiencing high growth, and it's due to a number of reasons.
First of all, we have a very solid customer base, and then they are increasing the order volumes and also awarding us new contracts. Secondly, we get new customers constantly. We have published some of them in 2022. We'll most likely publish more in 2023. On top of that, we have a very favorable macro trend. We see this backsourcing, that volumes are coming back from Asia to Europe, which really fits our concept. Now, high growth also calls for a rapid expansion of the capacity. Here we see some of the things of our concept. First of all, we have a decentralized organization. That means that we can execute different expansion programs in parallel. Secondly, due to our cluster concept, it's possible for us to expand our facilities in modules.
Areas where we already have the infrastructure in place, we can add a new facility and add some new colleagues and equipment in a very cost-efficient way. That's what we have been doing in 2022. It explains a lot of the activities. We opened a new assembly hall in Tartu. We opened the new facilities in Poland, Czech Republic, China. In total, we expanded our facilities with about 20,000 sq m. That's really important in order to handle the growth. Other expansion in the last year, we are not only unique by offering this complete manufacturing solution concept, we also have a service side, which is quite important. We are offering to streamline our customers' supply chain. We have an advisory part, and we also have a product development part.
In the middle of last year, we acquired a company, Budelmann Elektronik, a product development company, and that added to our existing R&D part. Now we have 30 engineers, and that also marks the start on this very important area to expand that. If you have some time, please visit our homepage. We have now renamed this to HANZA Tech Solutions, and it will be a very important part of our future. HANZA is about manufacturing and services. By the end of last year, we made a directly share issue. Lars will give you the details. Just the overall perspective, we did this partly because it gave us a flying start to HANZA 2025, which is our new strategy. We were able to make investments of SEK 100 million by the end of last year.
Partially also, we like to have an owner base which is corresponding to our geographically to our customer base. We were happy to see that the major part of this share issue was subscribed by investors in Germany. We also got investors from Finland and Norway. That was really important. On top of that, we have Gerald Engström, our main owner, also was part of this share issue after approval on an extra general meeting. We believe it's great to see then how we are able to attract long-term and professional owners. A short summary of the last year, then we turn to page number four. 2022 was also a milestone. HANZA has had probably one of the most solid growth histories since we are turning 15 in August this year.
Since we started the company, we have had a stunning annual growth of 19%. We are convinced that this is due to how we have built HANZA in clear steps with defined goals, the long-term perspective. If you look down to the left, back in history to 2018 when we launched the year-end report for 2017, we then announced a number of operational goals, and we also put some new financial goals. In 2022, we concluded that we have reached all the operational goals and we have also actually exceeded the financial goals, and it's time for the next step, HANZA 2025. Now we can grow HANZA in three directions. We can grow by technologies. That's what we did between 2014 and 2017. We can grow by geography, and that's what we did then, between 2018 and 2022.
We added a new cluster in Germany. We can also grow through capacity. We see now it's clear that we have this strong position, and it's possible for us to get huge new orders. Therefore, the board of directors decided that the next step will be about capacity. Now we have launched HANZA 2025, and we will grow with capacity. Of course, we have set new financial goals for this journey. Now I'd like to pass you over to my colleague, Lars, who will talk more about this and also page number five.
Thank you, Erik. As you said, page number five, in connection with the Q3 report, the board decided on new financial targets. On the page, you see the previous targets and the updated targets, and to the right the change. The new financial target for sales is to reach SEK 5 billion in 2025, and that is an increase from the previous target. The profitability is as well increased, which shall reach minimum 8% EBITA, compared to EBIT of 6% in the previous financial goals. The capital structure, we have 30% of equity to asset ratio, and that is unchanged.
We also added a debt ratio where we should have the net debt towards the EBITDA of a maximum 2.5x . The dividend policy is unchanged, of approximately 30% of the profit after tax, in dividends. I will come back to where we are in Q4 regarding the debt ratio and the dividends. We can move to page six and the Q4 that we released today. As Erik mentioned, we are proud that we, for the first time, reached SEK 1 billion in one quarter. That is due to really high organic growth of 29% in Q4. If we compare that to what we had in Q3, it was 26%.
We see that the organic growth is increasing. And we also reached the highest profit, operating profit, in the quarter so far, of 33%, which led also to the highest EPS in the quarter so far of SEK 1.1 per share. We see really strong organic growth in both markets, Main Markets and Other Markets. In Main Markets, we have 38% organic growth, and that is compared to Q3 of 20%. We have increased the sales in Main Markets. We still see the most mature and original cluster in Sweden is about 10% in operating market. Other Markets has increased by 40% organically.
Here we see the main driver of the increased profitability of the group is that the main Other Markets has increased the profitability three times to reach 24%. That's SEK 4 million in EBITA. When we compare the figures to last year, we had a one-time income last year from an insurance of SEK 6 million. The figures that are compared in the main market is adjusted to that. Even with this high sales and the high profitability, we still are lacking some components, and we have this shortage in components. Without that, we could have reached even higher sales and higher profitability.
We also have some costs that we are not fully forwarding to the customers, both material, but also electricity, and that has an impact on the margin. We can go to page seven and looking into the full year. In general speaking, we can say that the combination of the increased profitability, a strong cash flow, and the new share issue has led HANZA to a new level, a much higher and stronger financial position compared to previous. The sales has increased a lot, actually over SEK 1 billion compared to last year, and we reached SEK 3.5 billion compared to SEK 2.5 billion a year ago. We have a really strong organic growth.
Again, the organic growth is actually increasing during the year. We have an all-time high profit that reached SEK 112 million compared to SEK 143 miilion in 2021. With a normal situation on the material shortage, we could have reached even higher sales and earnings. We move to page eight. Looking at the KPI, as I promised, we can see that we have decreased the net debt quite a lot. The relation between net debt and EBITDA is below two on 1.9 compared to almost three a year ago. That is not only due to the share issue, but also the fact that we have a positive cash flow.
We have had a positive cash flow all the quarters in 2022, despite the fact that we are growing a lot and also the need of increased inventory due to material shortage. That is really good. We also see that we've been able to pass on the profitability on the sales, increase sales down to the last row. The earnings per share has increased a lot in the year of SEK 3.35. The board of directors also proposed an increased dividend. In last year it was SEK 0.50, half a crown, and now it's SEK 0.75 per share that they proposed for the annual general meeting. We can move to page nine.
The share issue that Erik mentioned, it was in total three and half million shares. We brought in SEK 147 million before transaction costs, and the transaction costs were on 3%. It was, as Erik said, the main takers on the, in the share issue was institutional owners, mainly in Germany, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Our main shareholder, Gerald Engström, also attended with 250 shares. For him to participate, we needed to have an extraordinary general meeting approving this share issue. The reason for this was to build on the shareholder base, but also to give us the possibility to start up the expansion plans.
We have already started to increase our capacity in Sweden, Estonia, and Central Europe. In the end of last year, we started up the machinery investments of approximately SEK 100 million . We were able to buy a building in Tartu that we previously were leasing. By that, I'll leave back to you, Erik, and the outlook.
Thank you, Lars. I'd like to conclude with a look at the future on page 10. HANZA is in a very favorable position right now. We have the order books at all-time high. We have a solid customer base, which is not really connected to the consumer market, which makes us feel that we will be have increased volumes even if there is a downturn in the economy. We have customers from the energy sector, mining companies, security products, reverse vending machines, which are more connected with government decisions. On top of that, we receive new contracts and have this positive macro trend, this backsourcing, where we see the new volumes coming from Asia. It takes two to tango, and sales is not everything we need also to have capacity.
Therefore, I'm so glad that we could have this flying start, HANZA 2025, with the investment that Lars mentioned, the SEK 100 million that we started already by the end of last year. It can also be possible acquisitions. As I said earlier, this phase is about capacity, and we are clear that we will only buy companies if it adds something to our customer base. We should be able to look our customers in the face and say, "We bought this company and this is good news for you." In this situation could be capacity acquisitions. We will also. I also like to highlight again that we are expanding also our service side, which is a really good aid for our customers. It helps them to grow. If our customers grow, we will also grow.
We actually lift the lid on the next milestone already when we launched HANZA 2025. While we were stating that this step is about the capacity expansion. We also said that next step will likely be geographical expansion. That's something we are preparing also in parallel to be ready in 2025. No, I cannot give you any hints on what it will be. In summary, we can conclude that HANZA will have another successful year, 2023. By that, I think we will end this presentation, and we are now very happy to take on any questions, and we can move to page number 11.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Anders Roslund from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Impressive result. I have just two questions. First, the growth scenario for this year. The fourth quarter has been relatively strong for many industrials, but we expect that growth will taper off this year due to very tough comparison periods. What will be left then for you, the structural growth above market growth? Do you have an idea of this, 30%, almost 30%? What is sort of underlying market growth, and what is your own structural growth?
Good morning.
That's my first.
Okay. Should you both?
No, no, that's... I take one question at a time. Yes.
Okay. Thank you, Anders. Example speaking, I can say that you can do a bit of a calculation and say that if we are confident that we will be on our sales goal in 2025, so SEK 5 billion, then it will be a growth of between 12%-13% per year to reach that. It means also that we feel confident that we will continue to grow. We have not seen the downside. Again, I think that's also partly that we are not related to the areas which are a bit milder now. How it comes to compare to the previous figures, I can only talk in absolute numbers, and the goal is still to reach SEK 5 billion in 2025, and that we will do.
If that's an answer to your question.
Yeah, no, that's excellent. If we go to the margin development, you've had some problems in Germany, ramping up production. How are you in that regard?
I will not say we had problem. Au contraire, we were quite successful. We acquired a company one year ago for capacity reasons, a company that was hurt by the pandemic. We had a one year plan to restructure this into our cluster. It's been very successful. We said that we will turn that company from losses to profit during that year. We also said that we accomplished that. From Q4, we are on plus, and we expect that to continue. Our margin is a function on how mature our clusters are, how much we have been working with them. The first cluster was in Sweden. That's the one we talk about double-digit margin. Then it goes all the scale. Every cluster is moving upwards in margin.
I think we're successful on all clusters, and that's also why we can state we'll reach 8% in two years.
Thank you. I would like just to see on the capacity issue, will you have any restraints of reaching the 12%-13% per year, or is that within your expectations when it comes to capacity?
Yeah, that's the important thing. We always talk about sales. I think we're quite confident about that. We should talk about capacity. That's why it was so important to have this flying start of our strategy, because we need to have some spare capacity in order to bring in new customers. By this share issue and our already strong performance with a positive cash flow, we had possibility to really grow capacity in early stage, let's say. I think that we are well in time. I think even that we will be able to increase the capacity more quickly than we expected from the beginning. I don't see any constraint on the capacity side.
Not even if you short term will have a capacity demand or sales increases in the same ratios that you just almost 30%. If you continue with that for a couple of quarters, would that be possible?
Yes. This is the beauty with, one of the beauties with our cluster concept that we can add modules. We have all the structure, infrastructure ready. We have the management. We have everything. We add the module, some more space, some more colleagues, some more machines, and that increases capacity quite a lot, even though it can be done in a short period of time. I think it's also worth mentioning that we were able to grow with SEK 1 billion in 2022, and we increased number of colleagues with just about 100 people. It's also about optimization and robotization, and that's also something we're working hard on and also helping us to increase capacity.
Yes. Then the final question regarding future geographies, have you any plans to move out to new market segments in your HANZA 2025 scenario?
I will give you a very, very precise answer. No comments.
Okay. I tried at least. Yeah, that's all questions for my part.
Thank you, Anders.
The next question comes from Niklas Elmhammer from Carlsquare. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. impressive growth. Is it possible to give, us an indication of the effects of increased material and energy costs on organic growth? Also, do you expect to see, continued high effects from this inflation on sales and cash flow in the near term?
I believe that's Lars.
Yes, it's not a major part of the only increase at all. It's a few percentage that is the increased material and the forwarding of cost for electricity. Also we're starting now to be comparing periods back that also had increased costs for material, maybe not energy so much, but a few percentage of the growth.
Okay. Thank you. Some questions on the expansion initiatives, if I may. You of course done a lot of expansion already. At the same time, there have been some redundancy in Germany, I believe. How would you stand in terms of people capacity? Do you plan to continue to hire in the near term?
Yeah, we are hiring, and I think that we also have had some success becoming a larger company. For us, it's important also to attract young people, and we know that they would like to have a possibility to do international career and have opportunities to travel and might have a picture of the industry as something that is old and noisy. Thanks to the size and thanks to the also look at our facilities, we have been really successful in recruiting people. We are also having these programs that they can travel between the sites. We had a good sales manager in Estonia, which were promoted then to cluster president in China, took his family, moved there.
I think that it was much more difficult in the beginning of HANZA's history when we were not a known company, and we had to fight to get people in. Now it's a bit opposite, that people are looking for opportunities in HANZA.
Do you see a similar pace of hiring in the near term or?
We always balancing between people and optimization. We see also that we have the salary issue, that there's a salary discussion for the first time in many years. We have to see how that is ending. That is also affecting how much we will work with optimization with different clusters. In total, thanks to our expansion model, and that's why I brought up number of people versus the sales increase, we are able to bring up capacity quickly with new equipment, but not so many people due to the cluster structure. That's really important.
Okay. Also on the, on the topic of expansion, you raised some capital last year to increase capacity. You're announcing now also some plans, take SEK 100 million in machine investment. Could you elaborate a little bit on these steps? Should we expect CapEx to be at these levels going forward?
Would you take that question, Lars?
Yes, I can take it. It is true that we have a need of investment in order to meet the expansion. We have invested in the new sheet metal factory or the sheet metal factory that we previously were leasing. It doesn't have a major impact on the balance sheet, but we also need to invest in machines. If you compare it to the organic growth and the growth, it's not like we are increasing the CapEx as a percentage of the sales and the profitability.
We are also, as Erik mentioned, we are moving part of the cost in the P&L from personnel into depreciation, but it will not, given the size of the company, it will not have a major impact on the KPIs, or CapEx over the in the future, as I see it.
This, SEK 100 million investment, where are you investing or planning to invest?
We are investing in all our clusters and trying to follow our customers, but I don't think we have given the specifics of that . It's in all clusters.
Okay. Just maybe one final question here on the one leg of your 2025 strategy is to expand the product development and advisory services. Should we expect this to become significantly larger in terms of staff and revenue?
I think what you could see is that we will bring in some customers through that channel. If we could help a customer to reshape the supply chain, that might just end up with a lot of manufacturing in HANZA and still a very, very good deal for the customer. We don't expect it to be a lot of people working on this. We have a few people working on this, but the outcome can be quite substantial, where we really lower the cost for our customer, at the same time, getting a quick growth in HANZA.
Okay, great. Thank you. That's all for me.
Thank you.
Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question comes from Fredrik Nilsson from Redeye. Please go ahead.
Hi. I want to start with the strong growth in the quarter. Could you give us some approximate number regarding the split between pricing effect and volumes?
I think, again, Lars, maybe you're the one to answer this.
Yeah. The main part, the majority is the sort of real organic growth on volumes. The material side and the fact that we are forwarding some costs is only 1%-3% of the growth.
Okay. I suppose that there are maybe at least some price effect that is not related to forwarded material and energy costs, I mean, for machinery and maybe some salary inflation and so on. Is there such an effect as well?
I mean, you have a cost increase in inflation every time. That those figures we haven't announced or given out. I would say that even being that in the majority is volumes. The other part is a smaller part.
Okay. and the I want to stick to the material energy, pass through of costs. Could you give us some approximation about the effects on the EBIT margin?
Not in figures, saying that it affected with a certain points of percent. It has an effect. When you compare the margins between the quarters, it has an effect, and in that sense that the margin has been decreased in Q4 compared to a year ago due to those price effects and the fact that we are forwarding material and energy. We don't, we haven't given out any exact figures.
Okay. You see a strong demand going forward. I mean, could you tell us a little bit about in your view, I mean, how much is due to a strong demand in general terms, and how much is new to backsourcing and manufacturing moving to your factories rather than the whole market expanding, if you see what I mean?
I can say that, again, we haven't, like a politician, I'm not giving you the numbers. A big portion is, of course, our strong customer base, where we have customers increasing the volumes, almost all of them. On top of that, we have the new customers coming in, which have quite rapidly. That is, in turn, a function of the backsourcing. When the customer decided that they would like their manufacturing in Sweden, then they transfer, and then it is a rather quick growth compared to if you have a new customer, you do prototypes, pre-series, and then you up the volumes. Here it's more transfer, so it's quicker. Unfortunately, no stat there, but the combination is what makes our strong growth.
Okay. Could you tell us something about the component shortage? I mean, how much approximately are we talking about, and what kind of components are there still a shortage of? In my view, it seems to be easing up a bit, at least.
Yeah, that's an interesting question, Fredrik. We are over the hill, I would say. We are going down, but still on a high level. We see also that this is some areas of components still for some customers it's really hard to find, where it's a much better situation in other areas. I wouldn't say it's a general improvement, but it's more specific improvements for some customer areas. Our belief it will be better this year. Of course, that will also have a positive impact on the cash flow.
Okay, that's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you.
This concludes the question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to the management for any closing remarks.
Okay, thank you so much for listening to this conference call. I hope you will continue to follow us, and then we have a chance to meet at the next report. Thank you so much, and bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.