Good day. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Hexagon's Year-end 2022 Report Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to CEO Paolo Guglielmini. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you for joining us this morning for this year-end report, 2022. We're gonna start the presentation from slide four with an overview of our Q4 results. We have recorded sales increased by 15% as a result of strong organic growth of 8 percentage points, with strong pent-up demand in the very last weeks of the quarter, particularly from Manufacturing Intelligence and Geosystems. We have had good momentum across all the regions, with all regions and divisions participating to the organic growth. We have supported the reported results through 2 percentage points of structure and 5 percentage points from currency, up to EUR 1.4 billion. As I said, Manufacturing Intelligence has experienced 13% organic growth, and autonomy and positioning portfolio contributed to 15 percentage points of organic growth year-on-year.
We have had a small impact from the supply of electronic components in the quarter. This is a problem that is on its way to being resolved. In terms of missed shipments, we probably experienced only 1 percentage point of impact from the issue, and we have caught up with deliveries of missing components from previous quarters. The backlog contributed close to 2 percentage points to growth in the quarter. Of course, these shortages are still affecting us in terms of working capital, as we're gonna see in 1 of the following slides.
In terms of financials, we have posted adjusted operating earnings of EUR 480 million, an increase of 12 percentage points year-on-year, driven by strong gross margin of 66.2% and an adjusted operating margin of 29.8% against 30.7 last year with a negative impact from currency. We move on to slide five, this is a snapshot of our top and bottom line development over the last years. This is a seasonality pattern that has faded, I would say, more recently as a result of changes in demand through COVID, but also a growing recurring revenue base. We move on to slide six, another snapshot of our performance in Q4 2022. Adjusted operating margin of EUR 480 million, as said, represent 12 percentage points of growth.
The margin percentage was down year-on-year, I would say affected by negative effects on the action of roughly EUR 20 million. Of course, that's the net P&L impact of revaluing balance sheet items for effects missed in the quarter. Without that effect, we would have seen incremental margin on prior year. If you move to slide seven with a summary of our performance for the full year, 2022. We have posted operating net sales of EUR 5.2 billion or 8% organic increase, and 20% adjusted operating margin growth year-on-year. Growth of 15 percentage points year-on-year in terms of EPS, up to EUR 0.45. Moving on to slide number eight, our cash flow results.
As a consequence of such a spike in demand in the last weeks, we have delivered cash conversion of 61%, which is slightly lower than our recent run rate and our target levels between 80% and 90%. This was really primarily driven by the increasing working capital to fund and support the growth in the last part of the quarter, therefore a growth in receivables and inventory. I was alluding earlier to a resolution relative to the shortages in electronic components. We still carry abnormally high related inventory levels in the form of work-in-progress goods and safety stocks of these components. We believe these impacts are very time specific and will normalize over the course of the next months.
Of course, in slide nine, you see how this impacts as well our working capital as a percentage of sales ratio, as we move on to falling back into the trend line throughout H one. I will now introduce you to Ben Maslen , our head of investor relations and chief strategy officer, for an update about market and divisions.
Thank you, Paolo. Morning, everybody. If we go to slide 11, you can see the usual slide showing the geographical split of the business. Not too much to report here. The relative increase of North America increased during the quarter compared to Q4 last year based on good growth and favorable currency. Against that, China was slightly smaller weighting this quarter due to a flatter growth development during the quarter. If we go to slide 12, you can see the analysis of organic growth by region. Positives in Q4 that no region declined during the quarter. The strongest regions in terms of organic growth were Western Europe, Asia, excluding China and South America.
If we go to slide 13, you can see the usual split between the geographic regions and the key demand segments. As usual, we won't go through this in detail because we discuss it on the following slides. That is for your reference only. On slide 14, we have the EMEA market trends for the quarter. A very good growth development in Western Europe, 13% organic growth. Good growth in discrete industries, automotive, aerospace and defense, but also very good demand for public safety and construction and infrastructure solutions. Outside Western Europe, we saw obviously a sharper decline in Russia as we have in previous quarters, reflecting the impact of the sanctions and the actions we took earlier in the year to freeze business operations.
For EMEA ex, Russia and Western Europe, the demand environment remains very good, double-digit organic growth. If you go to slide 15, we can see the demand trends in the Americas. North America recorded 6% organic growth. Again, a very good development in discrete markets. Good growth in aerospace and automotive industries. Slightly slower development in infrastructure and construction, reflecting tougher comparatives from last year. We did see some weakness in the defense segment where we see some geospatial service contracts coming to an end and rolling off. In South America, very good growth, double-digit, driven by strong development in both mining and power and energy. If you go to slide 16, we have the Asia market trends.
As I said, China recorded 0% organic growth for the quarter. Still a very good development in automotive and aerospace. On the other side, a weaker development in infrastructure and construction, reflecting softness in those underlying markets and also some disruption in those segments from COVID-19 related restrictions during the quarter. Elsewhere in Asia, strong growth in Japan and India, driven by both surveying and the manufacturing solution suite. In terms of the reporting segments, if we go to slide 18, Geospatial Enterprise Solutions had organic growth of 5%. In terms of the subdivisions, Geosystems delivered 4% organic growth, where we saw good demand in mining and infrastructure and construction. The weak development in China drove that growth figure down.
In Safety, Infrastructure & Geospatial, we had 3% organic growth. Continued good momentum in the core public safety business, but as I said, hampered by weakness in some geospatial defense projects. Autonomy and positioning delivered a very strong 15% organic growth right across the board. Good demand in aerospace and defense and also agriculture. In terms of the EBIT margin, reported an operating margin of 31.5%. That's slightly up on last year, positively impacted by volume growth and product mix. As Paolo said, negatively impacted by FX transaction effects during the quarter. Slide 19 for Industrial Enterprise Solutions, organic growth of 12%.
Very impressive performance by MI, 13% organic growth, driven by strong development across all geographies, all regions, and also the software portfolio. ALI delivered 8% organic growth, driven by strong growth in both the core design segments, and also the enterprise asset management software business. Here, the margin of 28.8% was down compared to last year when we reported 31.9%. This has also been impacted by the drag of currency transaction effects during the quarter, but also a step up in some investments we're making in new products like the Nexus platform, and then a normalization of sales and marketing costs seen from a very low level post-COVID. We can come on to discuss that later.
In terms of slide 20, this shows the gross margin over a long term trend. That trend continues upward. Benefiting the quarter from the normal long term drivers, new product introductions, the incoming acquisitions that we've done, but also helped by last year's price increases, which are continuing to compensate for input cost inflation. If you go to slide 21, we can see the trend in the operating margin. As discussed by Paolo, the better gross margin didn't drop through into the operating margin, mainly due to the short term currency transaction effects, but also some of the investments that we're doing in IES. With that, Paolo, I'll hand back to you.
Thank you, Ben. We move on to slide 23, we start to comment on some of the highlights in terms of business development activities and investments. We have announced a couple of weeks ago the acquisition of Qognify. Qognify, the quarter in New York City is a software house, a little more than EUR 50 million in revenues with a strong recurring revenue base, about to initiate the move to SaaS. Qognify is a provider of physical security and enterprise incident management software, which basically means Qognify is a great stack to onboard video feeds, combine them with real-time analytics, and really help organizations minimize the impact of security, safety, operational incidents.
We've had a collaboration with Qognify through our SIG organization for the last several months with cross-selling that is already in motion, and we see this as a very interesting opportunity across industries. Moving on to slide 24. We also acquired LocLab. LocLab is a software team based out of Darmstadt in Germany. The organization already now is commercially active with some of the largest transportation, construction, and design consulting companies. In particular, we think LocLab has developed proprietary technologies, modeling processes that are supported by AI for object recognition, has developed a great library of 3D digital content that we think is an exceptional fit for several of our own solutions across industries, starting with HxDR. LocLab will operate as part of the Geosystems division.
If we move on to slide 25, we have announced a key partnership with the ZF Group out of Germany that will advance the integration of Hexagon's software positioning engines and GNSS correction services into ZF's mass production ADAS and autonomous driving systems. As we know, there's still heavy investment when it comes to advanced driver assistance systems. ZF is a leader in this sector, we are going to integrate TerraStar correction services from our autonomous and positioning division to improve accuracy and positioning reliability of the ZF systems. This, of course, is a very interesting commercial opportunity for us. In slide 26, as you know, we have announced an investment in Divergent 3D. We're gonna invest $100 million in the business. Divergent is a pioneer of green manufacturing technologies, a highly innovative company.
This is a minority investment that is, I would say, absolutely in line with our, with our ambition towards autonomous and sustainable manufacturing. Divergent has developed three technologies that are proprietary. They have created what they call the DAPS system, meaning the Divergent Adaptive Production System, that is composed of three main components. They have developed an AI-optimized generative design software. A piece of software that is highly integrated, that receives in output boundary conditions, geometries for a specific component they want to manufacture and creates an optimized geometry that is ready to be 3D printed. Secondly, Divergent has proprietary additive manufacturing technologies that really take the accuracy and throughput level of commercially available components and step them up to improve the economies of scale of those components without compromising on quality.
Thirdly, Divergent has created an automated assembly cell, absolutely lights out for the robotic assembly of these components. We think that this is a platform that can be applied across industries. Its first application is in automotive. Of course, it has a lot of potential across discrete manufacturing. You can think what the benefits are in terms of reducing time to market, moving from standard tooling and casting, type investments and delays on to creating, immediately available 3D-printed geometries. Of course, this will also help OEMs drastically reduce material usage, scrap rates, and reduce the weight of printed components, which is absolutely critical in terms of driving range for e-mobility, for energy consumption. OEMs in automotive, as we know, are cursed with very high demands in terms of CapEx requirements.
We believe that Divergent has created a concept that is extremely asset light in terms of assembling these components. What does this investment mean to us? This is a technology in an adoption phase. Automotive OEMs that we have been in contact with are approaching Divergent to test implementing some of those components into their upcoming new vehicle programs, of course, starting with the premium automotive sector. We've been working with Divergent for the last couple of years. We have already embedded some of our technologies in our stack, and we want to see them grow as the company will develop. Of course, we have opportunities for technology development, and we're gonna be able to introduce our own customers to the DAPS system going further. If we move on to slide number 27, an update about the enterprise asset management business.
From an integration perspective, we see things developing very positively. The carve-out has been executed, has been completed. Also, we see growing business not only on a standalone basis for EAM, that is of course a very competitive tool in that market. In this instance, we see EAM being adopted by a large cereal producer in the U.S. One of the opportunities that come from EAM is really to allow the business to diversify its industrial and vertical footprint further. As well as, Ben pointed out, we are investing from an R&D perspective in EAM to be able to pull off the synergies that have been announced at the time of the acquisition and make this horizontal platform a good vertical tool throughout Hexagon.
Still within ALI, in Q4, we have had good business development progress across industries. I mean, as you know, I would say core energy-related, natural resources-related applications will account for in between 25% and 30% of the ALI group. We see incrementally progress across other applications. The first example of j5 being adopted by a large US-based company to realize their goal of manufacturing bigger battery cells is a testament to that, as well as the adoption of our OT cyber stack, called PAD, from a global manufacturer of synthetic rubbers, polymers, latex, and specialty chemical materials. The third commercial win referred to in this slide is with a leading EPC. I would say a net positive in our diversification strategy is the trend from a lot of these EPCs to go and diversify themselves.
When they do, of course, they proliferate usage of our own tools. We move from ALI to our Geosystems applications, slide 29, we refer to the BLK2FLY having been named one of Time Magazine's best inventions for 2022. BLK has been recognized for its productivity and innovative design and performance. This is the world's first fully integrated autonomous flying laser scanner. It's part of the BLK suite of autonomous reality capture sensors that is growing nicely, creating new opportunities for Geosystems. We think that there's incremental potential for these applications, and we are working with our partners to develop the right commercial distribution channel for it. Slide 30, we have had a significant win in Q4 from China with BYD.
We have a very strong collaboration with this customer as well as many of the other key accounts in China that probably represent roughly 50% of our Manufacturing Intelligence business in the region across areas of very active investment, whether that's e-mobility or green transition or electronics. BYD is based down in Guangdong. This is an area in which we are increasingly investing. I'm gonna visit them as well as some of our key accounts past Chinese New Year, and we expect to see a good level of traction across the portfolio as the reopening takes place. Still within the portfolio of Manufacturing Intelligence, we see continued momentum from ETQ, the enterprise quality management system that we have acquired earlier in 2022.
In particular, we see very strong SaaS growth from ETQ, north of 30%-40%. Margin expansion that is working as per the original plan. I would say also from a cross-selling perspective, we are now commercially active in all regions, while ETQ was predominantly a US-based business, and we see good level of adoptions for the SaaS business model that ETQ is developing across these regions. I would say incrementally, we are investing from a development and partnership perspective to build a very effective consumption model in ETQ as well as in EAM and the other parts of the business in which we are increasingly focusing on developing SaaS models. In slide 32, I would say a nod to the commercial traction of the OnCall computer-aided dispatching system that has been released a couple of years back.
That is, we consider best in class and is having a good level of commercial success. In this case, we work with the Portuguese Ministry of Internal Administration. One of the reasons why OnCall is performing well in the market is when we meet these types of customers that want to really go and execute on big data type strategy with millions of calls and events to be managed. With slide 33, this is the strengthening of a partnership with NV5 Global, a provider of compliance technology and engineering consulting solution. They have invested in our bathymetric and topographic lidar systems and technologies in the context of the Florida Seafloor Mapping Initiative for the purpose of supporting marine navigation safety, nautical charting and environmental monitoring. Similar applications to the one that we have represented in slide 34.
This is something we already announced a couple of months back within Q4. Our R-evolution, as you know, is the sustainable innovation and green-tech investment sub-subsidiary of Hexagon will supply intelligent mapping services of the Bahamas seabed. These services will enable the island nation to protect and restore and activate its blue carbon ecosystems to invest in climate resilience and biodiversity initiatives. Just for your information, why are we doing this? Why this matters. Over 80% of the global carbon cycle is circulated through the oceans with blue carbon that is really emerging as a key nature-based solution to fighting climate change. Blue carbon ecosystems capture greenhouse gases approximately 35 times faster than tropical rainforests. They can store 10-15 times as much carbon as their terrestrial counterparts.
How do we make ourselves kind of useful and unique in these applications? We combine our airborne bathymetric lidar technologies with adopt proprietary analytics that have been developed by our innovation hub to go and provide a very accurate, reliable, scalable solution to track year-on-year changes, and really detect the health state of the seagrass ecosystem. We think that this is not only gonna represent a large multi-year contract for us with the Bahamas, but we think there's gonna be opportunities in other regions and other ecosystems. I would say more in general that ESG is a, is a true area of focus for us.
We strive to become increasingly innovative in terms of the solutions in our portfolio, the solutions that we can go and develop with these third parties, as well as focusing on our own footprint and ESG disclosures going forward. If we move on to slide 36, an update on the dividend payment. The Board of Directors proposes a dividend of EUR 0.12 per share for fiscal year 2022, which means an increase of 9 percentage points. Of course, the dividend will be paid out to shareholders in both euros and Swedish crowns. Just to conclude on our Q4 report, an update in slide 38 concerning the isolated email event that we have disclosed yesterday.
We have chosen to release the Q4 summary and change the release date of our full year and report as a prudent measure, after discovering unauthorized access to 1 email account containing information related to our financial performance. This was an isolated event caused by a human error by a current employee acting in good faith. No other accounts were compromised. No specific files were targeted. We didn't have operational or financial repercussions. We had a quick and effective investigation that was carried out. We have taken immediate action to mitigate the situation. I would say the notifications and disclosures were made in accordance with MAR. We are, of course, continuously reviewing and strengthening our cybersecurity measures, processes and tools, including training on a variety of security topics. Thank you very much.
We can move forward to the Q&A portion of the call.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press again star one and one. We are now taking the first question. The first question from Daniel Djurberg from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, gentlemen, and thank you for taking my question. I would like to start in China. You had a flat quarter here, with strength in autumn aerospace. My question is really, with the BYD in wind and mine here, how should we look at China from your perspective back into 2023? We saw a decline in surveying power and energy and mining, I think, in the quarter, but that was growing in Q3 but not in Q4. Any comments on China in the 2023 timeframe would be great. Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you for your question. I mean, I would say, as you know, in China we have the majority of our activities within discrete manufacturing with an organization that has performed very well throughout 2022 despite the lockdowns. This is an organization that has, I would say, a lot of critical mass that has localized over the course of the last 20 years. With a portfolio that is very, I would say, tailored to the needs of the local market. We have our second largest field of activity within infrastructure and construction in a moment in which that specific market is depressed in terms of sort of CapEx.
What we expect going forward is that if there's gonna be a sort of a pickup in demand in terms of manufacturing, we're going to participate for sure, despite the fact that portion of the business was already performing on a good level in 2022. In terms of infrastructure and construction, we would expect over time for that market to sort of stabilize and demand to improve. Although, I would say the extent and the timing of it is something that we don't control, but we'll be ready for.
Okay. May I also ask you on reshoring, that has been positive for you in IES, in Vietnam, Philippines, et cetera? What's your view on this trend on reshoring? Should we expect an acceleration or stabilization at least? Of course, yes, I saw here in your chart that it was you're growing nicely in Asia, outside China, within the electronics and manufacturing space.
You know, I would say we, those reshoring activities are of course dependent on the CapEx cycle and the type of investments that specifically those consumer electronic companies go through. I would say that we are well positioned that, I have not seen, I would say a shared shift within those electronic components manufacturers in the move of some of those investments from China to outside China. Our organizations that work together well to make sure that we support the local teams and that we are equally as, say, commercially, prevalent there. I would say probably that's also the part of the business that is toughest to forecast from our perspective.
Okay. Thank you and good luck here in Q1.
Thank you.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking the next question. The next question from Alexander Virgo from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Very much. Good morning, Paolo, Ben. Nice to talk to you. I wondered if I could talk firstly to IES. I think your organic growth is accelerating but margins are declining, which is odd given it's the strongest quarter of the year as you've referred to. Could you just talk a little bit about the moving parts in there? I'm thinking particularly about investments. Investment, are we at a new level now? I guess with respect to ALI and ETQ. The second question was a little bit of a follow on from that, which is the free cash conversion in the quarter you've alluded to was lower than you would've expected. Working capital clearly a big part of that, but also investments again as well.
I guess if you could talk to whether or not we're seeing a new level on investments there that we should be factoring into our forecasts. We think about cash conversion for 2023 and beyond, and how quickly you would expect those working capital issues to dissipate and unwind. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you, Alexander. Couple of comments concerning IES, then Ben will help us out on the conversion. I would say that there's two phenomenons. We've talked about FX that is playing a role there. In terms of the investment we have, probably in that part of the business, two specific areas of focus. The first one is we wanna make sure that EAM is ready for the cross-selling activities across industries. Clearly we are developing to make sure that that happens. EAM is extremely competitive. We wanna make it big data ready. We wanna make sure that we can develop APM capabilities to go and be competitive in industries, in green industries, just to mention one, and help ALI with its diversification sort of strategy.
We have talked at the time of the acquisition of developing capabilities in Manufacturing, developing capabilities in construction, make sure we have a good vertical applications development for EAM. That of course requires certain level of investment from our side. We don't think that that's gonna be anything outsized and probably that's something already that is in the cost structure. The second element in that part of the business that might have an impact, I mean, we have announced Nexus for Manufacturing Intelligence already at Hexagon LIVE in 2022. 2023 is the year in which Nexus comes alive sort of commercially for Manufacturing Intelligence, and that's super important.
That needs to become a platform for not only cross-selling across the software portfolio for discrete manufacturing, but also needs to become the enabler for, let's say, the cloudification of the software offering there. From that perspective, I think the investment level in ETQ is already at a good level. I think predominantly in ETQ, we're gonna see commercial investment ways to go and build market reach because we feel that we have with ETQ something that is very unique and clearly best in class in from that perspective.
Yeah. I think, Alex, on EAM, I mean, if you remember when we bought this business, it was a carve-out, we got the business without the usual back office that you would have pre-sale, service support, things like that. We had to add cost over the year to stand the business up to make it a self-contained entity, effectively. That's done now in Q4. I think we're at the run rate. We've done that investment, and as Paolo said, it's set up to grow. On the cash flow side, you know, as we said, there was a very strong sales development hockey stick, if you like, into the end of the year, and that's normally the case, but it was probably stronger than normal this year.
We had a very strong last two weeks of the year. That then leads to a big pickup in receivables that we would expect to reverse and come back in during Q1 and some in Q2. I think that's purely a timing difference. We have added some buffer stocks to make sure we're secure in terms of components. There are still some lingering products where we have component supply issues, so we have products sitting in width. As we said, it's not something that's big enough to call out. I think we're probably at a relatively normal level for that, too. In terms of the investments, tangible assets stepped up. There were a few smaller property transactions that we did during the quarter.
On the intangible side, this goes hand in hand with the investments that Paolo has talked about. Some of these products, you know, under IFRS, we capitalize now ahead of their full release next year, when that will run back through the P&L. In line with the investments that Paolo mentioned.
Okay. Thank you, Ben. I guess we should be... just to clarify then, we should be thinking about margins progression through 2023 as relatively flattish before we see the benefit of the growth coming through towards the back end of the year, helping the margins come back up towards the back end of the year. Is that, is that a fair characterization of it?
I think the investment's done, and we're at the run rate we need to be. I think if you look at MI and ALI from this point, you'd see the normal seasonality through the year. You know, slightly softer margins in Q1, and then it will ramp up through Q2 and Q4 being the strongest quarters. There's no step-up in investment that needs to be done from here as a percentage of sales. I think we're at the right run rate. It's revenues that will drive the cost from here.
Okay. That's fair. I'll get back in line. Thank you.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking the next question. The next question from Adam Wood from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning, and thanks for taking the question. Maybe just first of all, could I dig in on the comments around the spike in the fourth quarter? Could you maybe just give us a little bit more detail around where you saw that, whether it was geographic or industry and what was unusual? Maybe specifically digging in on China, was there more of a spike there as well at the end of Q4 as we started to see the reopening? If you could help us a little bit with, you know, what you've seen through the end of Q4 and into January there and if that's made already a difference to what you're seeing on the business in that side of things. Maybe secondly, new products have been important on the hardware side.
It feels as if the phasing of that has been, you know, pretty mixed up between COVID and supply chain shortages. Could you maybe just help us with timings of expected launches this year and the benefit to help us model on that side? Thank you.
Yeah. Adam, in terms of the spike towards the later end of the quarter, I would say that came predominantly from Europe and U.S. A little bit less, I would say from China, where demand has been fairly steady during the quarter and has concerned predominantly Manufacturing Intelligence and the Geosystems sort of division. We think that in terms of new products contribution, I would say, in Geosystems, we've had very good traction with reality capture, so products, that's a, I would say part of the portfolio that is getting good traction, that has been constrained by shortages throughout the year. As some of those shortages start to alleviate, we also see that there's good demand there. I also think in terms of the BLK product range, highly innovative, a different type of workflow.
I think probably it took a little bit longer for our channel to kind of master position and make sure that they can go out and sell at scale, but I think we are at that inflection point. In the Manufacturing Intelligence portfolio, what we have noticed is that, as you know very well, for instance, in aerospace OEMs within Europe and U.S., we have had a fairly muted level of CapEx spend over the last couple of years. We see that, for instance, tracking devices have had a very strong 2022 on the back end of stronger demand there.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking the next question from the line of Erik Golrang from SEB. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. I have a couple of follow-ups, particularly on discussion on margin and cash flow production ahead here. Basically, comment on expect normal seasonality in terms of margin development through this year. But if we think of it from a year-on-year perspective, we've had quite a bit more fluctuations the last few quarters than what was in the past. Do you also expect an improvement for the full year, or as the question was framed, more of a flattish total year versus 22? Then on the cash side, with some receivables coming back here in Q1, Q2, will you be back in the 80%-90% target range for the full year? Then the third question is a follow-up on the... You talked about the APM capability there for AM.
When do you think you will be there and competitive in APM? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you very much. If I get the extent of your question, we have three points really. It is about margin for 2023. It is about cash development, and it's about APM sort of capabilities.
Yes.
I can try the first one. Starting with margin. Look, there's of course a lot of moving parts. What we see as being a net positive that is going to be sustainable is the growth in gross margin, because I think that happened not on the back end of a unique distribution in terms of portfolio or mix, but I think that's simply driven by pricing. It's driven by software portfolios growing, et cetera. We think that's going to be sustainable. For the rest, I mean, we are as usual, sort of, committed to gradual margin expansion. We'll see how that is going to pan out throughout 2023. Any comments, Ben, regarding cash development?
No, I mean, what I would add on the margin, Erik, is, you know, Q4 had the FX transaction effect of EUR 20 million, right? Which is a sequential effect. It comes from revaluing balance sheet items we had at the end of Q3 to Q4 or when the cash was actually received. If currencies don't change going forward, then that transaction effect will drop out and you would see the benefit in terms of the year-on-year margin improvement. I think that's something to bear in mind as well. There was a big move in the US dollar during Q4. We don't know what happened with currency going forward, but, you know, hopefully it won't move that much every quarter.
In terms of the cash side of things, I mean, I think if we have a, a more normal year, with this starting point, then yeah, we would expect the working capital to flow back in, and the cash conversion in a more normal range. As I said in my earlier comments, it was just a timing difference reflecting a very strong end to the fourth quarter. On the APM side of things, I mean, when we bought the AM, you know, it already had APM capabilities, you know, in terms of extracting information from the different assets and using that for predictive maintenance and so forth. That's a moving piece.
It's obviously something that you can expand, as you pull more data out of the different asset classes, you need to do more investment and expand that capability. As Paolo said, you need to tailor it to specific verticals. The APM characteristics that you would have in a discrete manufacturing plant where you're pulling information out off the factory floor is very different to pulling information out of wind turbines to railways, et cetera. EAM is a very good horizontal platform across a lot of different end markets. We need to invest in to kind of verticalize the solutions and make the most of APM in different markets. Yeah, I think it's something that will also help us pull out our synergies that we committed to when we announced the deal.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking the next question. The next question from Nay Soe Naing from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning, both. Thank you for taking my questions. I've got two, if I may. One on, again China, and then one on the MI segment. Starting with the performance in China. To me it seems like a tale of two stories, you know. Performance in the manufacturing MI segment, did quite well, whereas in the Geosystems side or the GES segment, performance poor. Just wanted to understand, what's the difference between the performance between GES and IES, particularly in China? Are there any operational good performance that you could replicate from MI into Geosystems?
Yeah. What I would say, I mean, the dichotomy that you're talking about, I think is exactly what happened. I mean, there are very different levels of demand, I would say, in between discrete manufacturing and the construction and infrastructure sector. The most evident difference between the two is the fact that we have again economies of scale from the manufacturing side. I mean, if you have an organization that is as large as the one we have in China, in MI, even when you have dynamics like lockdown that prevent people from traveling from region to region, you are way more capable to react.
Of course, you know that COVID itself had a different way of hitting manufacturing sector with relatively new investments, autonomous factory, rather than construction sites, in which you have much more of a high touch sort of dynamic. COVID, from that perspective in 2022, was very impactful. In terms of best practices to travel between the two divisions, we're working on it. We think we can do more, both on the devices side and on the software side for those verticals to localize further our footprint in China. Make sure those solutions reflect the way in which people work in China, that we redesign those workflows in a way that speaks to the users locally, and make sure that we can support the distribution partners very proactively, very quickly from China.
That's really helpful. Thank you very much. Sorry, I was gonna ask the next question is on the MI performance. Obviously, it continued to be very robust, very strong as well. If you could maybe put in the context of, you know, what's driving that strong performance, particularly in light of the worsening macro indicators we're seeing in manufacturing?
I mean, I would say in within the Manufacturing Intelligence division, as I said, we have had good demand on the comeback from both automotive and aerospace. We have a certain portion of our business that is driven by OEM CapEx and investment. As you know, we don't tend to tie that much with production volumes, but more with digitalization efforts, new program introductions, et cetera. I would say that part of that demand was probably a little bit muted in prior years, and that's something that was nice to see in terms of being able to leverage from our side. I thought the demand was balanced in between devices and data capture as well as software.
When we looked through the portfolios, we saw that, production software, design and engineering, and all the quality stack were growing pretty much along the lines of the devices business. From that perspective, there wasn't a specific imbalance in the portfolio.
Maybe we could add, you know, MI has been very good at taking the core technologies that it has and applying it to new verticals. Electronics, wind turbines, you know, simulating the gearboxes, measuring the blades, things like that. You know, there's obviously a lot of new automotive customers around electric vehicles and so forth. You know, MI is probably, to use the term, its TAM of addressable solutions for its products has grown. I think that's helped it as well.
Amazing. Thank you very much, both, and good luck for 2023.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking the next question. The next question from Alexander Virgo from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks very much, and thanks for having me back on. I had a couple of follow-ups. One sort of housekeeping, really, I'm just trying to understand the FX movements here, and primarily the transaction wind. Can you just explain where those have come from? We can understand how to model that going forward. The second question, slightly bigger picture question for you, Paolo, on SaaS. The investments you've made in your software businesses, I think are understandable. I'm just trying to understand as you take the helm, what your approach and strategy may be, and with respect to a more proactive approach on transition in terms of business model there.
Given I think it's a pretty prevalent proactive strategy across the industrial software space now. It seems that you've taken a pretty, a much more organic approach to it in the past. I wonder if you believe that now needs to change. Thank you.
Yeah. Maybe I'll take the currency one. Quarter by quarter, it is complicated, Alex, to predict it. You know, as you know, there are two FX effects. One is translation, where effectively you're translating last year's revenues and EBIT to current exchange rates, which is, you know, relatively easy to model. The transaction piece is more sequential. If we book a sale, for example, in Q3, and we put the receivable on the balance sheet based on the exchange rates we had at Q3, if we then receive the money during the quarter and currencies have moved, then you have to take that adjustment through the P&L. If we hadn't seen any currency moves at all between Q3 and Q4, largely you would not have had that -EUR 20 million, right?
Obviously we did, because there was a strong move in the dollar, but the balance sheet at the end of Q4 had been marked to market in terms of the current exchange rate. If they didn't move again, you wouldn't get that transaction effect, basically. The translation piece I think is relatively easy to predict. Transact is, you know, inter-quarter moves on currency, which is obviously tougher. The main move was obviously US dollar/EUR, that was below parity at the end of Q3 and moved 8, 9% during the quarter. It was a big move. I mean, if you look at it in terms of your model in the bridge, the other way of doing it is we added EUR 60 million of revenues.
In Q4 year-over-year from currency, that's the 5% FX move, really didn't add anything at EBIT. That's dilutive to your overall margin. I hope that helps.
Got it. Thank you, Ben.
Alex, I would say from a SaaS perspective, right? As you know, we work across a variety of industry verticals, and we have dynamics that are relatively different, not only in terms of how our software gets consumed, but also in terms of the readiness of these users to move on to SaaS. When you look at the ALI division, clearly we have a SaaS first kind of strategy, and we have a transition onto SaaS that is already happening. This is a business that has a good recurring revenue stream from on-prem subscriptions and maintenance contracts that we are transitioning on to SaaS. Of course, we have best-in-class technologies with EAM that we're proliferating and pushing.
That's a business that has very little new, paid-up business that is left. If you look at ALI already today, we have an impact, a negative impact in terms of revenue driven by the move to SaaS. In terms of manufacturing, as you know, we have basically three classes of software capabilities there. Software that we sell in combination with the device, software that is standalone and it's sold through shop floor engineering environment that might be slightly more difficult in terms of a conversion to SaaS, and then software that is sold to design R&D departments or at the enterprise level, like in the case of ETQ. Those are, I would say, the portfolios that we are targeting the most and the fastest through Nexus in terms of a transition.
When it comes to AEC, so the Geosystems portfolio more at large, what I would say is that there too, we have a SaaS-first strategy in between homegrown development and acquisitions within AEC that we're gonna double down on. We have software revenues coming from on-device type applications that again, might have slightly different dynamics. Clearly, we are increasingly focused on it, and there's technical readiness, I would say, across the divisions now for this dynamic to continue, and if anything, to accelerate.
Okay. Thank you very much, Paolo.
Thank you. Thanks so much.
Thank you for your question. There are no further questions at the moment.
Great. Thank you very much for attending then. We're gonna speak again in three months.
That conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.