Greetings to you all, and welcome to the presentation of ABB's Q4 results. I am Ann-Sofie Nordh, Head of Investor Relations, and next to me here I have our CEO, Björn Rosengren, and our CFO, Timo Ihamuotila. Like always, they will take you through the presentation, after which we open up for Q&As. Before we begin, I would just like to draw your attention to the information regarding the safe harbor notices and our use of non-GAAP measures on Slide two of the ABB presentation. This conference call will include forward-looking statements, and these statements are based on the company's current expectations and certain assumptions and are therefore subject to certain risks and uncertainties. With that, I will hand you over to Björn and Timo for you guys to talk through the slides. Please, Björn.
Thank you, Ann, and warm welcome from me as well. Before we go into details of Q4, let's take a look at the full-year. It was a good year for us when we made progress in virtually all aspects. Financially, we increased the Operational EBITDA by 37% excluding FX, and we improved the margins by 320 basis points to 14.2%, which puts us on a level we haven't seen in recent history. This improvement was supported by high volumes, strong pricing execution, and operational efficiency. We saw strong demand across most customer segments and regions.
After a strong first half of the year, we experienced during the second half increased headwinds from raw materials, supply chain disruptions, and cost inflations, but our business had managed to successfully offset these negative impacts, and we delivered a strong year and a clear path towards our 2023 targets. I'm even more happy about the cash flow, which increased by 78% to $3.3 billion, strengthening our balance sheet to a net cash position. This is an excellent achievement. Besides good financial performance, we continued to execute our portfolio refinement in line with our purpose. For example, we sold the Mechanical Power Transmission business for $2.9 billion, or more than 22x EBITDA. This may be the highest price ever paid on Mechanical business. This year, we also kicked off the systematic development of our 2030 sustainability agenda.
With an updated governance and leveraging our performance management process, we are already driving progress across all strategic pillars. The improving financial performance enable us to propose a dividend of CHF 0.82. This is up 2 cents from last year. Our balance sheet is strong, and this dividend proposal still allows for financial headrooms to grow through acquisitions. We will also continue with our share buybacks, also in excess of the PG Capital return program. Now let's shift focus from the full-year and look at the Q4 on Slide four. In Q4, we saw high level of customer activity in virtually all segments. Demand increased for our product businesses as well as our project and service. Orders increased by 21%, and this despite that we booked a lower level of large orders compared to last year.
As you see in the chart, the absolute level of $8.3 billion is the highest quarter since Q4 2019. Comparable revenues increased by 8%, a bit stronger than we initially expected as we managed to deliver some projects late in the quarter. That said, we could have delivered more if it had not been for the supply chain disruptions. This includes component shortages as well as strained logistics and tightening labor markets. In total, book-to-bill was 109%, resulting in an order backlog as high as $16.6 billion, up by 21% year-over-year. Now let's take a quick look at the different regions on Slide 5. Excluding the impact from large orders, we saw a strong double-digit growth in all three regions. In Americas, the important U.S. market increased by 46%, supported by all business areas.
In Europe, most of the top ten markets improved by strong double-digit growth rates. Growth in Italy was impacted by the high comparables from last year when a large order in Process Automation was booked. At AMEA, regions declined overall by 2%. This drop is again related to large orders received last year. Generally speaking, we saw positive development in several important countries, including order growth of 14% in China. Let's turn to Slide six and our earnings outcome. We achieved a 20% increase in operational EBITDA, and we improved the margins by 160 basis points to 13.1%. The strongest Q4 margin reported since at least 2017. Excluding the higher special charges last year, the margin improved by 80 basis points. This was driven by good step up in PA and RA.
Electrification maintained its gross margin, but the Operational EBITDA margin declined due to mainly higher sales cost. The margin decline in Motion was mainly due to the divestment of the high margin business Dodge. With that, I hand over to Timo to take us through the numbers in more details. Timo.
Thank you, Björn, and greetings to everyone also from my side. As usual, let's start by taking a closer look at Electrification, which continued to see strong demand across virtually all customer segments. Momentum was particularly strong in E-mobility business, where orders were up over 150%. Also areas like food and beverage, buildings, and renewables were clearly strong. In total, comparable orders increased by 20% to $3.6 billion, which actually is one of the highest levels on record for Electrification. Looking at the different geographies, we saw strong double-digit growth in both Americas and Europe, while AMEA declined slightly, including a mid-single- digit decline in China on relatively high comparable from last year. Comparable revenues improved by 4%, and this was mainly on the back of a strong pricing execution.
Volumes, on the other hand, continued to be hampered by supply chain disruptions, including some component shortages and also a tighter labor market. Consequently, Electrification enters 2022 with a record high order backlog of $5.5 billion to execute. That said, we foresee the supply chain challenges to persist at least in the near term. Taking a step back and looking through the COVID turbulence of 2020, comparable orders and revenues are now up 16% and 8% respectively compared with Q4 2019. A strong performance by EL in this period, clearly above its historic growth trajectory. In the quarter, Electrification faced significantly higher raw material costs compared with last year when favorable hedges were still in play.
We were able to offset the higher input costs with strong pricing execution, but cost inflation due to the tight supply chain and higher sales costs resulted in an overall decline of 80 basis points in the Operational EBITDA margin. Looking ahead into the first quarter, we expect a higher comparable revenue growth and margin to remain broadly similar compared with Q4. Let's move on to Motion on slide eight. First of all, I just want to remind you about us closing the divestment of Mechanical Power Transmission division or Dodge, as we call it, on November 1st. This of course means that charges and numbers for Motion include only one month of contribution from Dodge, which we sold for $2.9 billion in cash. The non-operational gain of $2.2 billion is included in income from operations.
The comparable order growth, which adjusts for structural impacts like the divestment, increased by 29% and reflected strong demand across the customer segments and regions. Orders grew double-digit in both the short and long cycle product businesses, and service was up by 11%. As a headline number, the 70 basis points decline in Operational EBITDA margin is surprising, given that comparable revenues were up 9%. The majority of the margin decline, meaning about 50 basis points, was actually due to the divestment of Dodge, which had an above average profitability. The additional slight margin pressure was due to both divisional mix as well as increased raw material and freight costs, which offset the positive impacts from higher revenues and efficiency measures.
For the first quarter, we expect similar comparable revenue growth and the margin to remain broadly stable or slightly increase compared with Q4. Turning to Slide nine and Process Automation, where demand continued to recover across the process-related industries, including oil and gas and cruise, while the power generation segment remained stable. It's worth pointing out that the flat headline order growth was impacted by a high comparable from last year. Excluding large orders, meaning orders of more than $15 million in size, there was a significant double-digit improvement. Revenues increased by 19% year-on-year, with support from all divisions reflecting successful execution of the order backlog and a double-digit growth rate in services.
Component shortages have been manageable so far for PA, but may intensify a bit near term, whereby adding uncertainty to timing of converting orders to revenues. It was excellent to see the margin recovery in Process Automation as the Operational EBITDA margin improved from 6.8% to 13.7%, with approximately 270 basis points of this improvement coming from the absence of last year's project charges. The profitability improvement was driven by higher volumes and benefits from earlier taken cost measures, however slightly offset by mix due to a higher share of systems business. All PA divisions are making good progress and had over 11% Operational EBITDA margins during the quarter. As part of the process to exit the turbocharging business, Daniela Wüest has been appointed as new divisional president as of first of March.
We aim to make the final decision on the way forward towards the end of the first quarter, although a spin-off at the moment looks like the most likely option. In Q1, we expect comparable revenue growth to be lower than what we saw in Q4. This will most likely also weigh on the sequential margin development. On slide 10, we turn to Robotics & Discrete Automation, which had another quarter with high order intake, resulting in a year-on-year growth of 59%. Strength was broad-based across customer segments with continued stellar growth in general industry, which should support profitability going forward as the backlog is executed. For the full-year of 2021, order intake in the general industry segment has been almost as high as the combined orders of the auto OEMs and auto tier one segments.
Another good example of how we are expanding in new attractive robotics areas is our strategic partnership with the startup Sevensense that we entered into in Q4. This will enhance our new autonomous mobile robotics offering with artificial intelligence and 3D vision mapping technology, a very exciting field going forward. Despite the strong order intake, revenues remained broadly stable year-on-year as component shortages slowed the pace of customer deliveries in both divisions. The supply constraints in RA are primarily relating to semiconductor shortages, and you can clearly see the impact on our ability to convert orders into revenues when looking at the left and the middle on this slide. Orders have outpaced revenues over the last three quarters, resulting in a record high order backlog of $1.9 billion at the end of the year.
We remain confident about the quality of our order backlog and revenue growth will improve once the supply chain imbalances ease. RA's Operational EBITDA margin increased by 80 basis points year-over-year to 8.1% despite the lack of revenue growth. While the business area faced adverse impacts from increased freight and input costs, this was more than offset by the positive impacts from improved efficiency as well as favorable mix due to a lower share of automotive systems sales compared with last year. Looking into Q1, we expect comparable revenue decline to be similar to what we saw in Q4, but we anticipate a slight sequential margin improvement. Moving on to slide 11, showing the group revenues and Operational EBITDA bridge.
As you can see, the comparable earnings improvement benefited from our positive organic development, as well as the absence of last year's charge related to the Kusile project. The operational improvement was driven by the positive impact from higher volumes, positive price development, and increased efficiencies, which more than offset the adverse effects from cost inflation. The reduction of losses incurred in non-core business helped margin by 30 basis points, while acquisitions and divestments were slightly diluting on a group level, mainly due to the negative impact from the Dodge divestment. Let's look at the cash flow on slide 12.
I know Björn highlighted it earlier, but I want to also mention that I am really, really pleased about the overall cash delivery for the year as we achieved cash flow from operating activities of $3.3 billion, which is up 78% from the prior year. Volatility between quarters declined, a result of high focus on net working capital management, and it was great to see that even with 8% revenue growth, free cash flow conversion to net income was 108%. Looking at Q4 in isolation, cash flow from operating activities amounted to $1 billion, supported by improved operational performance, but with a bit less contribution from the reduction in trade working capital compared to last year.
In Q4, cash flow also reflects approximately $300 million of cash paid for income taxes related to the Dodge transaction, while we had approximately $200 million impact due to the Kusile settlement and pension plan transfers in the same quarter last year. Overall, a good year for cash flow from operating activities in continuing operations, and I expect a continued good performance broadly at a similar level also in 2022. Let's finish off by taking a look at our return on capital employed, where we also showed strong progress in 2021. As you see on slide 13, ROCE improved to 14.9%, just shy of our target of 15%-20%. The improvement was driven by both the higher operational EBITDA in combination with lower adjusted group effective tax rate.
In fact, if you already now would exclude the negative impact on our capital employed related to our 19.9% ownership in Hitachi Energy, we would already be comfortably in our target range. The Hitachi impact is only transitory in nature and will reverse after a sale of this investment. Clearly improved return on capital employed is a good indicator that we are really improving ABB's long-term performance. With that, let me hand back to Björn for some finishing slides.
Thank you, Timo. On the next slide, we take a quick look at the expectations for Q1. We expect the current high level of underlying market activity to remain sequentially stable. That said, there is some added near-term uncertainty in relation to revenues due to the supply chain disruptions, which we expect to persist near term. In this environment, we expect the margin to remain broadly stable or slightly improved quarter-over-quarter. Now, let's finish this session by summarizing our focus areas for 2022. From what we see at this early stage, we expect a positive market momentum in 2022, and so far, we have seen a solid start of the year. To support our long-term growth targets, it is time to ramp up the pace when it comes to acquisition.
In line with ambitions, I was pleased to see the E-mobility business increase their ownership in InCharge Energy to strengthen their position on the U.S. EV charging market. As I said before, our ambition is to make at least five acquisition per year. We will continue to drive the performance culture in all our businesses. This year, I expect a steady margin improvement towards the 2023 target of at least 15%. As we achieve this, we will continue our journey to deliver even more profitable growth. We will continue our ongoing alignment on the business portfolio. In addition, we have the Turbocharging business. Although we have not yet made the final decision, a spin-off is looking likely. We will make a final decision by the end of Q1.
We aim to have both the E-mobility and the Turbocharging processes completed during the first half of this year. It will be an exciting year, and I look forward to it with confidence. With that, I'll let Ann-Sofie Nordh take over to guide us through the Q&A. Ann-Sofie Nordh?
Yes, thank you, Björn. Let's now open up for Q&A. For those of you who have dialed in on the phone, I just wanted to remind you to please press star 41 to register to ask a question. Just to secure the sound quality, please do remember to mute the webcast as should you have it on at the same time as your line is open for questions. For those of you who want to put through questions through using the online tool in the webcast, there should be a field in the bottom right corner of the screen where you can type your question, and I will then put it through from here.
I can see that we already now have a lot of questions coming through. As usual, please limit yourselves to two questions, and we'll do our best to get through as many of the questions as possible. We start with a question from the conference call, and I believe we should have Ben Uglow from Morgan Stanley on the line. Ben, are you with us?
I am. Good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for taking the question. I hope everyone is well. So two kind of areas. One is just, let's call it, the operating leverage within Electrification and Motion. In terms of the margin change, and you know, I don't want to get too granular on bridges, but we're sort of down about 80 basis points on higher revenues in Electrification and on Motion, you know, 20 basis points underlying on higher revenues. In terms of what's driving that effect, and I realize this is very, very difficult, but Timo, can you quantify how much of this is simply price cost, right?
How much of this is due to raw materials and not being able to get the price up, fast enough?
Yes.
How much of it could be due to other factors, whether it's supply chain, wages, or kind of more normal costs coming back? Is this sort of over 50% price cost? Can you sort of just give us an idea of what are the main drivers in that margin bridge?
Thank you, Ben, for the question. I think I just start, and then I will maybe go to do some number crunching just in a minute. You know, first I say that, pricing, this is really one of my favorite subjects, and both of these business areas, Motion as well as Electrification, are really doing an amazing job on this side. Just to give you a little bit first. Because it's a little bit different topic when it comes to these two business areas. Starting out with Motion. I think Motion has done an excellent job in compensating some of those. Of course, we know increases that has come, everything from wages to component prices and also semiconductors, of course.
The biggest difference here in the margin actually comes from the investment of the Dodge that has an impact. There is a little bit also, as you know, when it comes to Motion, they have two different areas. It's the electric motors, and it is the drives business. Electric motors are as a lower margin, so it's a little bit of a mix issue there. The electric motors grew a little bit more than the drives business did at this moment, which has some effect. I think they managed from pricing actually to compensate the increases in inflation. On Electrification, it's a little bit a different story because as you know, Electrification actually consists of two businesses. You have the fast-moving business like Smart Power, Smart Buildings, Installation Products.
All of them have done an excellent job to quickly compensate for the prices. We have the Distribution Solutions, which is more the big project switchgear. Many of these orders were actually taken over a year ago and have been executed during the year. Many of them are both for utilities as maybe for a lot of process industries and the largest industries. Here the pricing is of course set at an early stage. During the year we've seen quite a dramatic increase in component logistics and all of this, and that has affected the margin here.
I think now when we are more used to this, inflation by the economy of the part, I think also, the Distribution Solutions are now being more active in adjusting, the pricing in line with the other businesses. It's a little bit of a mixed story. If you go to number crunching, maybe you can give a little bit more.
Sure. Happy to.
-flavor.
Thanks, Ben, for the question. Maybe easiest is to look at this sequentially because of course the inflationary pressure has been coming in sequentially. We actually had better pricing than Q3, so if you put it to numbers, we got over $200 million on price, and that well covered the cost from input cost in commodities and raw materials and that kind of stuff. Then we had additional costs coming from, for example, logistics and these kind of things in gross margin that was maybe in the area of $30 million. Then we actually every year have a bit higher fixed cost in Q4, which we also had now as well. There was in Electrification, for example, a bit more sales cost. I mean, we have a really good year on top line and that kind of stuff.
That I would put in the situation of normal. I don't think there is any particular drama here. I think we have been able to do pricing well, and as Björn said, we have some businesses where it comes in with a bit of a lag, but we look that we will have a good ability to price in going into 2022 as well.
Understood that. That's really helpful color. Thank you. One quick follow-up, Timo, just on working capital, in terms of the moving parts, was there anything that stood out that it's always variable in the fourth quarter, but in your mind, was there anything that stood out that was significant in that movement this time?
Yeah. Thanks for pointing that out. This is of course not exactly a normal quarter. I mean, first of all, I want to say that we did a really, really good job in working capital. Overall, our working capital to revenue ratio was 8.1%, so I haven't seen it that low. Then if you look at the components, we actually got about $100 million in receivables, and our overdues are lowest ever, pretty much. Really, really good performance on the team on managing that. We got also about $200 million on payables. Then when you look at inventory, and this is now delta compared to last year, because last year our inventory really decreased significantly at the end of the quarter. We didn't have a similar impact, and the delta impact on inventory is about $500.
Again, as we have discussed, we have a solid backlog, and we expect that inventory will be consumed when we execute the backlog.
Understood. Very helpful. Thank you very much. I'll pass it on. Have a good day.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Thanks, Ben. On the topic of backlog, we have a couple of questions here coming through from Daniela at Goldman Sachs through the online tool. I start with one aimed at you, perhaps you, Timo. It says, how much of the order backlog do you expect delivered in 2022? And also your expectations for organic revenues in this year.
Yeah. Let's start with the backlog. Actually, this is in our report. It's a little bit hidden there about what we would expect to deliver, provided we get the supply, of course, 75% of the backlog during 2022. That's basically the number. Of course, you know, long cycle, short cycle will depend this year a little bit on the supply situation, which is maybe a good bridge to the revenue number. Anssi, do you wanna jump in there, Björn, or you want me to?
No, I can say on the revenue side, it is of course dependent on what we can see, maybe some small challenges in the beginning of the year, but it should ease up. What we do expect, of course, for the year to be somewhat higher than our over cycle target during this year, of course. We need to execute on a huge-
Mm.
Orders on hand, and that will be the focus during this year.
Yeah. I would just complement that answer by saying that if we get the supply both for the short cycle and executing the backlog, it could be a good revenue year.
To follow up from Daniela here on this topic, on the order intake, how much of the recent strong orders could potentially be due to double booking? Björn, do you wanna?
I can mention that, of course, when your deliveries are a little bit down and you're not actually delivering in line with the expectations in the market, which has been during the last quarter and maybe also during third quarter, there might be some booking. I'm sure there are customers who are putting in orders to secure deliveries for the future. That, I'm sure. I think the good most important is that we see a steady strong orders actually in all our three regions, and we see this order continue actually in the beginning of this year. We haven't seen any, actually, cancellation of any bookings, which gives us confidence that the quality of the orders are also good.
Very good. Just to finish off here, a question on the EV, the E-mobility business. Daniela says, "We have seen strong decreases in the multiples that the market has been willing to pay for EV charging businesses in recent weeks. If this persist, would you consider delaying the EV listing, or is the timeline fully firmed up?
I mean, that could, of course, happen if the world goes kaput. As it looks like today, we feel very comfortable about the agenda that we have today. The business is doing great. I think we had last year 150% growth, which, if you're looking at the last five years, it's actually CAGR of 60%. I don't think you see many businesses like that. I think it's even making profit and it's a great business and I think our advisors saying that their viewpoint is that it will be a great interest for this. I also urge you, if you haven't booked up next week, you can actually find a link on our website.
We will have an in-depth going through that business with the management and talk about the strategy and the future for that. I think it will be interesting and I hope you have a chance to look in.
Very good. We take another question from the conference call from Alex at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Alex, your line should be open.
Yes, hopefully it is. Good morning to you all. Nice to see you and hopefully that can be physically again soon. Thanks for taking the question. A couple if I may. The first, I wondered if Timo, you might provide us with some quantification as to what you feel you've missed in revenue terms in Q4 as a function of supply chain constraints, assuming that that will be of similar sort of magnitude in Q1 by the comments that you've made so far. The follow-up was just on the comment you made there at the end about ROCE and the Hitachi investment. Am I right in thinking that's a three-year lockup?
Presumably that's sometime middle of next year. If you could just clarify that?
Mm
that would be very helpful. Thank you.
Yeah. I'll start with the latter because you are correct. The put option works in a way that we have a put after three years, so it's mid-2023 when we can execute the put, and that's how that works. Yes, that's correct. On the revenue, maybe I'll use an example from Robotics & Discrete Automation where the impact is the largest. You saw we had kind of like 60% order growth and flat revenue. Orders in that business have been now on $1.1 billion type of area, and the revenue has been sort of $800 million type of area.
You know, not all of that, of course, could have come into the quarter, but that business could easily be closer to a $1 billion type of a business in a quarter, and that, of course, would have a significant accretion on the margin. That's the biggest. Then sort of you can assess between the orders and revenue on some of the other businesses. I think the impact has been probably smallest in PA and then, you know, somewhere in between in Motion and Electrification.
Maybe I just comment also that the order book is up 21% compared to last year, which is of course, you have seen a book-to-bill ratio above one the last four quarters. You can imagine if we could deliver everything.
Very good. Are you finished there, Alex, or do you have other questions?
Oh, sorry, yeah. No, I'll start with my two. Thank you very much.
Thank you for that. Appreciate it. With that, we move to Andreas Willi. I think, I hope your line is open.
Yeah. Thank you, Ann-Sofie Nordh. Good morning, everybody. My first question is on the supply chain. What is your view on the reasons why ABB seems to be more impacted than most peers on a like-for-like basis in terms of the constraints you're facing? And what changes can you do, or are you doing to improve the resilience going forward? Obviously you haven't quite seen the results from your peers yet, but in Q3 that was already visible to some degree. That's my first question.
Yeah, maybe I can take that on. Maybe you know more than we know. I think if you look at the ABB portfolio, you know, it has a lot of semiconductors included, both in the Electrification business, in the Robotics & Discrete Automation, and also in the Motion. I think we have similar problems as everyone else. We're trying to get our share. All our businesses are working hard. When it comes to semiconductors, because I think that's the overall biggest impact for us, I think it's clear we've gone together. We have our team where we're coordinating all our activities with the suppliers. We are redesigning products, you know, to get other type of more available semiconductors in, and I think they've done a quite good job.
Maybe you remember when we went into the quarter, we said we would have a 4% growth, and we managed to get 8%, and I think that's full credit to the businesses that they really got themselves through this. 8% is actually better than we expected. This will continue at least in the beginning of the year, and then we will see it slowly go away, and we are pretty optimistic about the second half of the year when it comes to supply. Last quarter, there was not only semiconductors, there was material, plastic, steel and all this and shipment. You know, the whole logistics chain was difficult. There are many factors. Many of these have been solved, and we have seen an improvement actually during the quarter.
October was the worst actual month, and then we saw improvement in November and improvement in December, and I think that's been very good. Today it's very much focused on semiconductors. The other things, I think the businesses have managed well during the period.
Thank you. My follow-up is on China construction. I think you mentioned some weakness there. Could you maybe elaborate on this, what you're seeing in the market, residential versus non-residential and the outlook there for 2022?
Yeah. If you look at China overall, we saw 14% growth, and we should know that it's a very high comparable overall. I think that is a strong achievement. It's clear that it's a residential part which has taken the softest during the period, and you're seeing a stronger on the industrial side. That will probably continue going into this year. We should also know that the levels in China are at a very high level at the moment. We have the whole COVID situation where China has a zero-COVID, as we all know, which means that any kind of breakout they are very aggressive in closing down factories and things. There might be disruptions on that side. Maybe a little bit too early. We haven't seen it yet.
We've been able to run our operations, and I think we have good development in China. This is of course a potential risk for any company who has a big businesses in China.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Andreas. Just to follow up on the expectations and earlier comment on the revenue growth for 2022 here. Timo, I believe it was you who answered it. When you say 2022 above through cycle target, do you refer to the 5% or the. Was it you? Sorry. Or just the organic-
I think we would have the same answer.
I hope so.
I hope so. No, I mean, Timo, you can go ahead and answer. That's fine.
No, I think we are referring to above the 3%-5% organic growth, because we're really talking about organic growth here on that answer. Yeah.
I mean, it would be a lot of focus on executing order book also, you know, to get access growth going forward, so.
Very good. We'll take the next question from the conference call. Joe, are you on the line?
Hi, everyone. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can. Hi, Joe.
Hi. I know you expect to clear some of the backlog over the year, but would you expect book-to-bill to remain over 1 throughout the year?
Ooh.
I mean, that's a difficult question. To be honest, I think we have discussed orders expectations also, you know, with the board going forward. I think this is probably one of the most difficult areas today to see where things are going. I mean, we've seen a very strong start of this year. Is that gonna continue during the years, or will it weaken off? I think it's. I wouldn't actually speculate in this. We will be able to handle both of these. The good stuff is that when you have a lot of orders on hand, you get a little bit more time to adjust yourself if things will be softer.
Now we go full speed in all our operations, and it's about delivery, and we have plenty to deliver going forward.
Hey, fair enough. I know that's a tough one to answer.
Yeah, difficult.
in terms of capital deployment, you know, you mentioned you'd like to do five deals a year. You're obviously sitting in a position with, like, a severely under-levered balance sheet once you get the cash in, particularly after Turbo and when you look at all this. If you, when do you have to evaluate a, like, significantly higher buyback activity? Like, at what point in the year do you have to kind of make a determination on something like that, when it's appropriate?
Yeah, I mean, Timo can talk a little bit of our cash position and what we're expecting to do during the year.
Yeah.
Maybe I can add something later.
Thanks for the question. If you look at our overall capital allocation principles, we are actually quite pleased where we are. You know, we have a really strong backlog as we have discussed. We are investing behind the organic growth. I mean, the board is proposing an increase in the dividend. As discussed, we are looking to execute five or so deals in M&A, so we are putting capital in use there as well. Of course, we want to do smart deals. I mean, it's not like, you know, the tap is off and we do whatever. We will continue exactly the same rigor on assessing the deals. We also said in our release that we expect to continue the buybacks during 2022 also in excess of the Power Grids's capital return.
Now, the board will then make an assessment on this one going into the AGM. We, of course, with this wanted to signal that we are looking to continue the buyback program also after the Power Grids's money has been fully returned to shareholders.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thanks, Joe. We move on. Martin Wilkie, I think and hope your line is open. Can you hear us?
Yes, I can. Thank you. Good morning. It's Martin from Citi. Just the first question, just coming back to some of the constraints and shortages. I think you referred to you can redesign or change components and so forth in products. Presumably also some of your component suppliers are adding capacity. Can you give us any sort of examples as to when some of these shortages and bottlenecks might clear because of some of your own actions or actions by your suppliers? I guess we're all hoping that the world generally opens up in the second half.
Mm.
I'm guessing there's some specific things that you've done that helps immediately over the next couple of quarters.
I think first, we buy a huge amount of semiconductors to ABB. In certain application, I think that we've been very successful in the drives business to do some of that redesign, but also in other kind of businesses. It varies a lot depending on how big the series are, how much you are selling of the product. When you go into more, if you put into the switchgear, which is more related to large projects, there are far fewer numbers of certain semiconductors going in, and some of them in process industries have been evaluated during a two- or three-year period, you know, to get acceptance. So there it's a little bit more difficult. So it varies a lot.
You know, I don't think this is any bigger issue for us than anyone else. You know, we've been dealing with it now for three months, for a quarter or even longer than that, and we will continue to deal with it. I feel that we're slowly moving in the right direction. As I said, as time goes on, we will be less dependent. I think our deliveries are of course, you know, our revenues will be depending on, especially in the beginning of the year, how much of this order book we can get out.
Sec-
Great. That's helpful. Thank you very much.
Thanks.
Thanks, Martin. We'll take another question from the online option here from Gael de-Bray at Deutsche Bank. Can we add some flavor on what we see in the oil and gas market, and in the different areas there?
Yeah, I mean, maybe you have seen that the process industries has had a good development during the quarter. We've seen good both when it comes to actually the revenues, but also orders. Maybe the orders doesn't look that impressive, but we had huge orders in the Q4 the year before in the LNG market. The comparables are quite good. We see increased activities in all the businesses that we have there, also in the oil and gas business, especially related to gas and chemicals, I would say. We're quite optimistic. You know, we've seen the development of the oil price. Oil and gas prices has gone up dramatically, which of course increases the appetite for investments in that region.
Service business, which is, if you look at PA, Process Automation, there is 50% or approximately 50% of the revenues there. We've seen very, very strong growth in service there. I think it was up 21%, so very strong service improvement, which is good, also supports the margin forward. It gives a little bit an indication of what are the activities in this sector.
Very good. We take the next question coming from the conference call, and we have Philip Buller from Berenberg. Can you hear us?
Great. Thank you.
Very good.
Yes, I can hear you. Yeah. I was hoping just to probe a little more on the growth outlook for 2022, please. Obviously, we don't have a specific guide. I hear the comments of, you know, above 3%-5%, which, you know, suggests that the consensus may be a shade too high. I was wondering if you could comment on how much of the growth you are expecting in 2022 is actually gonna be coming from price as opposed to volume. Is it all price, or is there a good level of volume? And obviously I'm asking because volume helps much more from a fixed cost absorption standpoint, more than passing on price. I have a second question. I'll-
Yeah. I can start with that. I mean, it's quite clear that we expect to have a good growth in revenues during this year. I think you can imagine that. We see a strong market, but we also big orders on hand, and we're going to execute that. What we are saying that, of course, we do expect that we will exceed this over a cycle targets that we presented during the Capital Markets Day. I can only say that. I said how much more is probably related to some of the supplies and our possibility to execute this huge order book that we have.
Sure. I was more curious as to how much volume is gonna be coming through within the number this year rather than the overall. If you can't comment on that's fine.
I-
My second-
Yeah, that's fine.
My second question was on a slightly different topic. It's in relation to the e-mobility business and perhaps this is front running what's gonna be discussed on the website, I think you said next week. You have this very nice investor day on the topic of sustainable transport at the second half of last year and the importance of it for the whole of ABB. Obviously, e-mobility is a big part of that puzzle, but it's something that you're spinning out which makes a lot of sense from a multiple standpoint.
I was wondering if you could comment on any of the demerits to e-mobility being separately run and listed and what you're putting in place to ensure that the wider ABB will still benefit from all those, you know, synergies, I guess, that may otherwise not be there.
First, I think it's very important that the IPO that we are doing is only a part of that. We say at least 20%. The whole E-mobility development will be consolidated into ABB. We will, of course, also use the brand ABB because it's a good way because it's very exposed all around the world outside. We think it's a good, and I think ABB is well known for Electrification, so it fits very well. I think the reason why we do it is that as you've seen our orders grew last year 150%, and we have the CAGR, the last five-year was 60, which means it's a little bit a different kind of business than rest of ABB.
Which means that we believe that the demand in the market need to be met, and it's run a little bit more like a start-up business than it is a mature business like rest of ABB. What we do, we have a new board in place, we have a new chairman, which is actually coming from this kind of tech industry. We will have a special board and they will drive very strong focus, as you have to do of any company that are starting up. What's unique with our business is that even though we are the biggest and growing among the fastest in the market, we are still profitable, which makes the business even more interesting in these times now for the IPO.
Yeah.
Can I, Björn, make just-
Yeah, please.
A quick comment on the synergies as well? You mentioned the brand, but we are also very carefully considering kind of like the independence of the company. Of course, they need to be able to invest behind their own business, but we are also offering them a platform in a smaller country sales. They can use EL sales as a channel. Big countries, own channel, smaller countries, up to them. Of course, this happens on sort of arm's length pricing and all that, but that's another area where we're really enabling them to grow fast at the same time. We hopefully really get the best of both worlds on the independence, but also getting the synergies.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks, Phil.
Thanks, Phil. We take another question from the conference call, Guillermo from UBS. Please.
Good morning. Good morning, Ann-Sofie.
Morning.
Good morning, Björn and Timo.
Morning
Thanks for taking my question. Your plans, it goes basically two questions. One is on Electrification, and the other one is on Robotics & Discrete Automation. The first question on Electrification, your plan in Xiamen, in the Fujian Province, I think it was impacted in the third quarter by lockdowns related to COVID, and I was wondering whether during the fourth quarter, you also had some kind of impact on that plant in particular, and if so, when do you expect it to be fully operational? I stop there and then ask the second question. Thank you.
Yeah, I think when it comes, I talked a little bit at the beginning of that Electrification. Yes, it was a challenge in going into Q3 in North America and, you know, with the labor market, big volumes, component shortage and all that. Also on the inflation of commodities and components and so on. But I think they did a great job in actually working with the pricing. I think they are within ABB, probably the most sophisticated machine when it comes to working with pricing. There are, though, two different areas, and I think the more the component business, you know, the Smart Power and the Smart Buildings and Installation Products, that is moving on quite strong and delivering what it should be doing.
The challenge is more related to the switchgear, the bigger projects where we have longer lead times into. I think that is now being addressed, and we are working with the pricing side also to compensate some of those huge cost increases that have come. We feel pretty comfortable that we should see a good development of Electrification going into this year, also on margin.
Okay, but any lockdown impact in Q4 versus Q3 or just fully operational as you said?
No, we didn't have any lockdowns. I think everything went good during this period.
Thank you. The second question is on Robotics & Discrete Automation. I wanted to ask maybe for an update on the new plant in Shanghai. When do you expect it to be fully operational again?
Mm
... any particular cost or revenue dynamics that we should be aware of going into 2022? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. It's clear that the Robotics and Discrete Automation is the two businesses who has been mostly impacted of the shortages of semiconductors. You can see that that we are on the revenues not really getting out. You saw order growth of 60% and flat revenues. That's pretty dramatic. Then you, of course, see all the cost inflation there. That was effect. That is a strong focus during the year, and we are, of course, expecting significant improve both when it comes to volumes deliveries as well as margin. You know very clear that I have said from the beginning, this is business that should be about 15%, and we should see a good step in the right direction during this year.
I believe, correct me if I'm wrong here.
Thank you.
Also, I believe you also wanted to know about the new plant.
Yeah, sorry.
Sorry.
Maybe you wanna-
Yeah
talk about it.
I don't have anything new on the timeline of opening the plant.
I think this year we will actually.
Yeah
Inaugurate the plant. They have been working very hard during the last years here now, and it's getting ready. We're really looking forward to this new facility because the growth in China is actually where we are growing fastest today in the world. It's important that we can meet that both with the right quality technology, and growth capabilities there. We're excited about it. Hopefully
Mm.
Hopefully, we will see China open up a little bit more, so also some of us can
Yeah
to go there.
Can I just mention something just that there is no misunderstanding? I mentioned this, you know, getting closer to the $1 billion quarterly revenue. We have capacity to get there, and this is really for longer- term. Just to be clear, we have been on fairly low level revenue levels. This is not like we need a huge infra to get to those levels where we can execute very, really nice margin in Robotics and Discrete, and then we can build on from there.
I mean, the whole production is built on assembly.
Mm.
I think you need to have the components, and you put them together. If we have the components, we can also deliver.
Thank you. Maybe if I may actually follow up a little bit on the plans. I was also looking for any front loading of cost, maybe on the opening, on the ramp-up of production, if you have any guidance at this point, or, you know, whether we're gonna see any operating leverage hit on the back of basically a new plant opening before you get actually to that ramp-up in revenues, right?
No, I think that should not have any effects on the cost structure.
Yeah, not the major driver.
No, not really, I think. I think it's important to see that the gross margin of all our businesses have improved very good during this year, which shows that we're keeping the cost under control, and we managed actually to price and have a good margin on most of our businesses.
Thank you.
Thank you. We are up to the hour, so we say thank you very much for joining us today. Again, just a quick reminder, as Björn mentioned before, if you have the time to tune in to the mobility session on the afternoon of the tenth, please do so. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.