Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, here in the room or online, and a warm welcome from Rolf Brändli and from myself. To start our presentation of the financial year 2022 results, I'd like us to look at the picture that we have in front of us with three Burckhardt employees in front of a large process gas compressor, which today is actually on its way to the U.S., and will be a key component of 30 tons per day hydrogen liquefaction plants. Together with the other 11 compressors, which were part of that order, this is one of the driver of our strong order intake, together with applications related to solar panels, to LNG, and also, thanks to a very strong service business.
Today with Rolf Brändli, we will present you with the financial year 2022 results, give you an outlook for 2023, in the context of the Capital Markets Day or the Mid-Range Plan 2027. Let me start with the key highlights and market developments. To sum it up, we have focused on and delivered on our priorities for 2022. Despite the challenging macroeconomic situations, we have delivered a record order intake, sales, and EBIT in both divisions and at group level. With this, we successfully delivered on our target for Mid-Range Plan 2022. Thanks to the strong balance sheet, we are in a position to propose to our shareholders an dividend of CHF 12, which is an increase of 60% compared to last year.
Not only the volume matters, the quality is also important to us, and we've been really able to grow in our priority markets, which led a mix with 40% of our orders supporting the energy transition, up from 16% last year. You've seen that during the year, we've communicated our new Mid-Range Plan with new targets and a clear new commitment and roadmap to sustainability. Overall, very intensive, a very successful year in the end, now we'll go more into the details. Starting right away into the figures, starting with order intake. Another, and this is the second time that we say that, another exceptional year with almost 30% growth coming on top of the 44% of last year. Overall, almost a doubling within two years, mostly driven by the systems division.
Revenue up 27.5%, also driven more by the systems division, but the service division also had a very strong year with +22%, which is exceptional and we'll come to the reasons for that. With the increase of EBIT margin in both divisions, it led to an increase of the overall EBIT margin to 11.4% despite the hits that we had for the Russian projects. With this, we reached a new record EBIT of CHF 95 million. Net income, earnings per share, also grew over proportionally at almost 39%, which led us to have a profit per share of CHF 20.64.
Here, I'd like to highlight the strong value creation with the RONOA, which had a big jump from 19.7% - 25.7%, which you should compare to our WACC to have an order of magnitude of value creation. A couple of things here. Number one, in systems, we've been able to grow mostly within existing facilities, so ramping up the facilities without big investments. Number two, we had again important down payments from customers, which have helped on the operating assets. Overall, you'll see the balance sheet, which is pretty strong, which enable us to offer CHF 12 or to propose CHF 12 per share, which brings us closer to the midpoint of the payouts range, which we have as a target, which is 50%-70%.
If you look at these figures and compare them to our targets, the guidance and the Mid-Range Plan, very clearly, we've overachieved the targets at all levels. Compared to the Mid-Range Plan 2022, we've achieved or overachieved the figures. Clearly overachieved on the volume side. We had a target of 700, we have 830. Also, on the higher band of the EBIT range. The EBIT margin is rather on the lower end, in the range, but rather in the lower end. Here, when you compare, keep in mind two factors. Number one, the Russian one-off hit, it's about 0.8 percentage points. Keep in mind the conscious decision we've made to increase our R&D as percentage of sales, because we could see these new applications coming.
It's another 0.8 percentage points compared to the assumptions we had in 2017. Overall, I would say achieved. Now, you know, the numbers on the right are not new. These are the MRP numbers that we communicated in November 2022. We're going for CHF 1.1 billion sales, 12%-15% return on sales, which, by the way, gives an implied range of CHF 132 million-165 million for EBIT for 2027. Here, if you remember, we said during the Capital Markets Day, we want to double EBIT compared to 2021.
Obviously, we all have a new reference, which is 2022, and here this is still an increase towards the midpoint of 56% of EBIT until 2027, which still gives a lot of work to do and for sure, some additional value creation to be added. If I look at the context in which we have realized these figures, I would say we've been very resilient. These four challenges are the ones that I presented to you one year ago, and here you see the update. Energy costs, energy security was clearly a topic. We've been preparing for that, especially during the winter. That was not necessary, but we'll keep ready for next year. By the way, as a percentage of our cost, this is a very neglectable part.
The biggest challenge was, and actually remains, the supply chain and material prices, the logistics. Here, we've been able to, we've been hit on a few projects for sure, but overall, we've been able to manage that. The team has done a fantastic job to find always solutions when a part was missing, so that we could deliver the figures. Especially towards the end of the year, we've seen some improvements, and that enabled us to deliver more projects than we initially anticipated, which explains the higher sales volume, which we communicated one month ago. That remains certainly a topic for the coming year, and we continue to find solutions to expand our supply chain, especially in Europe. We moved, for instance, from foundries in Germany, due to energy cost, energy availability, to more south suppliers.
The war in Ukraine, here, we, you know, we stopped taking new orders in mid-March. We delivered within our contractual obligations and within the sanctions until early July. Then we stopped everything. Then we have a hit, which is actually lower than what we expected. These are mostly provisions for bad debt in this number, and so far, we've not been hit as high as expected. Moving to the markets, which actually is the same, are fully in line with what we said in November. We've just reorganized the order so that you see first our two pillar markets today.
comes hydrogen mobility and energy, which we said we want to make it a pillar, which for us, is a market above CHF 100 million. We are almost there. industrial gas with the same order of magnitude, and then the last two are really very small for us this year. If I look at petrochemical, further, very strong markets on high pressure. These are the Hypers, driven by EVA production, driven by solar panel demands. Low pressure, driven by GDP, basically, There we had some stable markets. When I go to LNG, we have three different applications, as we explained. First, that was an exceptional one, we had exceptional orders for LNG tankers or for compressors on LNG tankers.
Now that the yards are pretty much full, we expect that this part will go down quite a lot next year. We still had orders for LNG fuel ships. However, a bit less than the previous year, because LNG becoming very expensive, it's less interesting to drive ships with LNG. LPG tankers, as expected, were down, which will have an impact on our product mix next year. We'll come back to that. Hydrogen, mobility, and energy, again, the three applications which we communicated before. First, hydrogen liquefaction plants, very strong markets. This was the picture that we saw before. We had a very strong order for Plug Power, for instance. We have the small fuel stations. There, we continue with our diaphragm compressors.
We have disagreements with HRS, for instance, in France, we sold other compressors especially in Europe. Finally, this future market for us, this high pressure, high capacity, non-lubricated compressors, where we have a unique solution, this will be used for trailer filling facility for heavy duty truck fuel stations, for trains, for buses, all these high volume applications. There, a few customers, like Shell, who is our partner, have bought one or two of these compressors. They are now receiving them, testing them. If they're happy with the results, if the demand is confirmed, they expect to roll them out in 2024, 2025. We are still in the proofing phase, we are very well positioned when it comes. Industrial gas, same story as last year.
Polysilicon in China, local for local, was very strong. Again, the last two segments were very small last year for us. Partially, because they were not that strong on the market side, partially because we were so occupied with our priority segments that we dedicated less attention. Now, if I look internally, we've continued to strengthen our platform on the people side. You've seen the two new executive management team members. We have hired also 9% or more than that with the turnover, but we have increased the workforce by 9%, which, if you compare to the increase of sales of 27.5%, that shows the operational leverage that we have here.
You have seen or heard about our new long-term incentive plan for senior management, fully in line with the new Mid-Range Plan targets, with this time, one component on sustainability, and also an alignment of the interest of the management with the shareholder, in the sense that the share price is also benefiting the management as well, which was not the case before. Digitalization, we continue both for new services and internally. You see here a few examples, some exploration of new things like industrial metaverse, successful pilots for artificial intelligence-based predictive maintenance on ships. Because we have this situation on ships that they have a critical compressor, but they don't have the maintenance crew, so they're very keen on trying new solutions.
This is one that we have done on the pilot, which we expect to come as a product during this financial year. Corporate responsibility certainly remains a key area of focus for us. The KPI I'm the most happy about is the first one. Our accident rate has been decreasing a lot, which is really a challenge when you think about all the factories ramping up, training new people and being quite full. Also, very good progress on usage of free renewable electricity of 57%. Overall, you heard our sustainability targets and our commitments to become operational and net zero for Scope one and two until 2035. I'll come back to it at a later stage.
These efforts, these activities on sustainability are becoming are noticed by rating agencies. You see here a significant improvement of our ratings from 2020 to 2022. We are now in the first half of our benchmark. The benchmark are defined by the agency themselves, or even in the top 10% for Sustainalytics. It's not a goal per se for us to achieve these ratings, but it certainly shows that we are doing the right things, and it will probably continue to increase or to improve as we go forward with our roadmap. I will dig deeper into the two divisions with financial and strategic operational review. First, starting with the systems division, which had a very strong year.
Starting with order intake, after the 60% increase of last year, the systems division add almost 40% again on top. Here, we discussed it before, yes, there are some big elephants in there. This is why this is the second exceptional year. We cannot assume that it will continue at that level in the coming year. There were a large number of large projects. Our hit rate on this project was exceptionally high, which explained this increase. Again, this is solar panel driven, these Hyper Compressors. These are LNG tankers applications. These are special projects like the one I mentioned before for Plug Power, which we can't expect are coming year after year. Overall, the direction is good. Sales, that was, I think one of the tests.
Are we ramping up sales? Are the factories able to do it? The systems division has shown that they could grow the sales by more than 30%, especially in the existing factories, which was nice to see. Gross profits up over proportionally. Here, capacity utilization has improved with the factor and also a temporary positive product mix, which will not repeat next year. If you add some leverage on SG&A, which we mentioned before as one of the factor to improve our profitability moving forward, EBIT increased over proportionally by 43.5%, bringing the division to a new record of CHF 30.3 million, and also increasing the EBIT margin. That number includes this CHF 7 million, which 100% hits the systems division.
Now, if I look at the strategic developments, you may recognize this slide. The left two columns were presented in the Capital Markets Day in 2020. I'm just updating what we have done, and that's the last column on each of the three directions, just to close the Mid-Range Plan. We wanted to reduce the cyclicality of our business by adding new segments, and they were listed under strategic initiatives. Here, very good progress on LNG-fuelled ships. Last year, I mentioned that we had about 60 compressors sold. We had another 40+ here on top of it. Again, 100 compressors for polysilicon applications from SYCC and major orders for hydrogen. Here, we're really. These three applications, we didn't have them back in 2020, or just as a pilot.
Differentiating capabilities, we continue to invest. You've seen the increase of R&D by more than CHF 4 million. We have these new applications for sure, where we invest. This year, we also invested again in our legacy products, Laby compressors, Hyper Compressors, to make them stronger and enable them to cover a larger part of the market, so that we keep a differentiation edge. Operational excellence, I would mention mostly this ramp-up of capabilities, of suppliers, of people, a couple of machines, a couple of extensions, to deliver this 27.5%, or actually more than the 30%+ growth on the systems division. Moving to the services division. Here, also a very good year. Starting with order intake, almost 10% increase after the exceptional, almost 20% last year.
Sales is, I think, the figure which is the most interesting to comment. 22% sales for sales. There are a few exceptional factors which will have an impact on the growth of next year, which we certainly don't expect at that level. First, there was still some pent-up demand from COVID, which was in the order intake of last year, which we delivered in sales, and it continued a bit in the first part of the year. That should not continue next year. There were a number of customers anticipating spare part orders.
On the one hand, because they wanted to make sure that they get them in case the supply chain, get worse, and also they wanted to be sure they get them at the price, at a given price, because we've been increasing prices regularly during the year, and they could block the price by ordering. That should also not repeat next year. Revamp projects, there, we had a number of large projects, especially on non-Burckhardt machines, which accounted for the growth. Again, this was some big elephants for the service business. We had very good orders and deliveries for PROGNOST, our digital products, monitoring products, protection products, which is partially due to a special competitive situation, which may not continue too long.
Gross profit, some of, shows that we've passed on material prices and a bit more. Gross profit margin has increased. If you add SG&A leverage, then we come with this improvement of 1.1 percentage points of return on sales for the services division to a new record of CHF 75 million EBIT. Short notice on Arkos. This is the last time we will report it, because now we've completely merged the Arkos organization with our Burckhardt Compression, U.S. There, we had a good growth, a strong growth, and we've reached a middle single digit profitability. If I look at the strategic directions and the progress in 2022, also very good progress for our, what we call the white spots. Thailand was one.
Now we have purchased the, basically, the assets, a workshop, the machines, of our agents, to have now a presence in Thailand. We have new partners in Mexico. We've integrated Arkos and Mark van Schaick in their respective local service organizations. In terms of service solutions, we continued with our long-term service agreements, especially in the marine side, and more and more combined with digital solutions. We, on the other compressor brands, there, we had actually the highest growth rates, compared to Burckhardt. That was really more on the OBC. We've increased the share of OBC from about 25% last year to about 30% in 2022. Very strong growth here.
Here, that was supported by new agreements with third-party component suppliers, which enable us to deliver spare parts for non-Burckhardt compressors. For instance, as part of a repair or of a revamp, we can get some spare parts from these third party partners. With this, closes my first part. I think it also nicely closes the Mid-Range Plan. You've seen on the strategic side, the achievements. You've seen on the financial side. We've achieved what we wanted to achieve for 2022, and now I will leave the words to Rolf Brändli, who will go deeper into the financials.
Thank you very much, Fabrice, and welcome to our annual result conference, also from my side. This brings us to the financial part of our presentation, starting with order intake. For a second year in a row, we have now closed the fiscal year with exceptional order intake and crossing even the CHF 1 billion mark, as we have announced that earlier in December for the first time in the company's history. That's following an increase of 30%, or even slightly higher, if you exclude the currency effects and the acquisition effects. The main driver for this growth was clearly the Systems division, with orders up 40% compared to last year, or 44% at constant currency. The exceptionally high order intake was mainly driven by larger orders from three types of applications.
Fabrice mentioned it earlier, LDPE, EVA, and polysilicon applications, strongly driven by the solar panel production, and there, mainly in China. The LNG-related applications on ships, with orders, very large orders, scheduled for delivery over the next two years, as some of them even lower. Last but not least, increasing market activity in hydrogen for mobility and energy, and there, it's mainly in the U.S., so we also have there a certain allocation, geographically speaking. The services division reported an increase in order intake of about 10% to CHF 357 million, with growth in all geographic regions, mainly driven by spare parts, field service, and an increase in demand for engineering and revamp solutions. This very strong order intake has left us also with a very nice backlog and very good visibility, especially in terms of systems business for the coming year.
Looking at sales for the fiscal year 2022, we had seen a growth of 27.5% to CHF 830 million. That was clearly more than we had expected at the beginning of the fiscal year, when we have guided for CHF 720 million-CHF 760 million. We announced that earlier that this has to do with the measures to proactively expedite supply chain, combined with a certain stabilization also on the logistics side. That enabled us to deliver very large projects in the final weeks of the fiscal year, some of them even slightly ahead of the expected schedule. Net of currency translation effects and acquisitions, the year-over-year increase was close to 30%, with 27.5%. The systems division contributed to the sales growth with 31%.
That's clearly on the back of the exceptionally high order volume over the past two years. Also in the services division, we have seen a growth of 22%, which is indeed exceptional compared to the last year, and that was mainly driven the catch-up effect from the COVID, as mentioned, anticipated spare parts procurement due to the still existing challenges or doubts around in the logistic chains. Furthermore, we had also a few very large and nice revamp projects. Those projects can also have a price tag of a CHF single medium digit million, sometimes even higher. This is not given that we have several of those projects in one single fiscal year. Last but not least, we also had a very nice order flow in the forecast digital product line side.
How does this add up in the group's income statement? Total gross margin was up by 0.2 percentage point despite the higher share of the systems division business amounting to 59%, sorry. 59% of total sales in 2022, that compares with 57% a year ago. Further contributors to this nice margin was the improvement or the better temporary positive product mix in the systems division, as well as the overall high capacity load worldwide in all our factories. On the SG&A side, we could further increase our operational leverage. We closed SG&A at 14.1% of sales, and that compares to 16.4% a year ago for the whole group. In research and development, we have invested CHF 4 million more than in the prior year.
That was with higher spendings to further enhance innovative solutions for marine and also for the HME business, for the HME market, as well as for the development of digital solutions. The other operating income had seen a heavy decrease of CHF 14.7 million. That's mainly to the earlier mentioned CHF 7.1 million, one-off cost in the context with the Russian projects, but we also had some negative FX effects on the balance sheet, on balance sheet positions throughout the group. Total EBIT with that has reached CHF 95.0 million, yielding an EBIT margin of 11.4%, 60 basis points above the prior year. Financial expenses were slightly below fiscally at CHF 21 million. That's thanks to the higher interest rates and some cash deposited in several of our subsidiaries.
The tax rate closed at 23.2%, which is the same level actually as in the previous year. That includes also some withholding tax on dividend payments that we took out of China. This all has led to an overproportionate growth of 39% in net income and earnings per share. In absolute terms, earnings per share is exceeding the prior year by almost CHF 6 per share. Let's have a look at a few selected positions of our balance sheet as per year-end closing date. Both property, plant, and equipment and trade receivables have slightly decreased compared to the last year. Worth to be mentioned is certainly that the reduction of overdue accounts receivables has taken place.
By March 2023, 18.18% of our total accounts receivables has been overdue more than 90 days. That compares to 25% a year ago. This includes especially also improvements in China. As for the end of March 2023, we had more than CHF 60 million more advanced payments from customers compared to our work in progress and advanced payments that we provide to our suppliers. That is despite the fact that we are netting the advanced payments with work in progress, but that has inflated and also our balance sheet to a certain degree, but it's a positive inflation, I would say, because we have the cash in our hands. The equity ratio remains solid at 27.8%, but still below our ambition level of 30%.
The main reason for the lower equity ratio is the strong and partially insulated balance sheet, as just mentioned, with a high volume of advanced payments. We also have a bond of CHF 100 million with the term until September 2024, that we could not lower, despite the fact that we had a lot of cash on the balance sheet. Our net debt position significantly improved with that by almost CHF 50 million to CHF 7.1 million net debt, for reasons I will explain just on the next slide here. Let me comment a few points on the summarized cash flow statement of the group.
Cash flow from operating activities was with CHF 110.6 million, CHF 24 million below the prior year, which at that time included a significant positive swing in advanced payments. We had this already last year, coming from a close to zero to a very high level, that's in comparison with the prior year. On investing activities for 2022, main positions included there are CHF 20.5 million CapEx investments, and we've also sold a facility, a service facility in the U.S., in Homer, which generated CHF 4.2 million cash in on that line. In the last year's position, if you compare it with 2021, we had to cash out for the acquisition of Mark van Schaick, close to CHF 12 million.
On the financing activities, we were at a similar level as in 2021. That is including the higher dividend we paid in fiscally 2022 of CHF 7.50 compared to CHF 6.50 in the year before. The higher currency translation differences are related to translation effects of cash positions in several subsidiaries outside Switzerland, mainly China, but also Korea, where the exchange rate was not in favor. That has generated those translation differences. The overall borrowings decreased by CHF 22 million to those CHF 7.1 million net debt position I just mentioned before. As I mentioned as well, we still have this bond on the balance sheet. Last but not least, I would like to have a look with you at these two graphs. To the left, we see the RONOA development.
That there was a constant increase of RONOA up to CHF 25.7 million as per the end of fiscal year 2022. Besides the strong EBIT, this RONOA is also the result of a disciplined and RONOA-driven CapEx approach, clear and strict criteria for potential M&A opportunities, as well as a strict networking capital management. On the right side, on the right graph, you see a track record in terms of earnings per share and dividend payments. With a dividend of CHF 12 per share that we will propose to the AGM, we will reach close to the midpoint of this 50%-70% guidance, 58.7%. Worth to be mentioned is also that compression, the group has paid dividend every single year since the IPO.
If you would accumulate that, you arrive at about CHF 110 per share, not yet including those CHF 12 suggested to the AGM this year. With this, I would like to hand back to Fabrice. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you very much, Rolf. Now let's go into what you all are, I'm sure, eager to hear, the outlook for 2023 in the context of the Mid-Range Plan 2027. I'll take reference to this Mid-Range Plan to explain this. First, you've seen that slide at the Capital Markets Day, which this is the explaining where we stand in our development as a company. Since the MBO in 2022, we've been through four different phases, and with different focus in terms of strategy, in terms of operation. The last one was about strengthening the platform. This is the phase we just finished two months ago. We created the two divisions, stronger processes on a global basis.
Now, with the strong momentum from the result of 2022, we are really excited to start the new phase, transforming for a sustainable energy future. If I look at the market developments, again, a slide that you've seen at the Capital Markets Day with no change, we confirm what we said at that time. Just to take reference to this, we said at that time already, that after the end of 2022, we expect a slowdown of orders after this very strong growth, and we expect it to come back in 2024, 2025 a bit later. If I look at the components of this growth, there are these four colors. We see our traditional markets in gray, developing more or less flat, because on the one hand, they grow with GDP, typically.
On the other hand, they are replaced step by step by newer applications. These newer applications are the orange and border colors. The orange one are the ones where we are already very strong today, solar panels related applications, LNG applications, hydrogen liquefaction plants, for instance. There, we want to keep our strong market share, and the border one is the place where we want to increase our market share. These are typically these new hydrogen-related applications, like these trailer filling applications, green ammonia, sustainable aviation fuels, that should all come in this border area, and that's where we develop the new solutions. On top, you remember that there is the blue part, which we did not take into account in our planning.
This is an upside that may come if the transition towards sustainable energies is accelerating, and we'll come back to you when we see it, which is not yet the case. If I look at 2023, more specifically, I also take reference on the right to a slide that we've shown at the Capital Markets Day. We said there will be two phases in our Mid-Range Plan. The first one is about delivering the systems backlog, growing services, and continue to strengthen the platform. If related to that, the priorities for 2023 at group level, continuing to develop our people, continuing to recruit, to roll out our new values and behaviors, develop our growth mindset, which is quite new, growing so fast for us.
We have to get used to it and get comfortable with it, that's part of the cultural development. Then progressing on our sustainability roadmap, we have actually combined our capabilities for digital solutions. We had several departments working on it. Now we've combined them, we want to focus on that. On the systems division, very clear, ramping up the capacities, the suppliers to deliver the backlog. Continuing to grow in hydrogen mobility and energy, things that we do always in the systems division, continuing to work on the product cost, on procurement, value engineering, all these good things, which actually never stop. Services, here, we have to think about the impact of the growth of systems on the services division. All these compressors are now hitting the ground.
They need to be commissioned, installed, and then they go into maintenance, and the service division has for this to ramp up, especially the field service capabilities. We need to hire field service people who will take care of these compressors to install them, and then who will take care of the maintenance later on. That's certainly an operational priority for the service division. We'll continue with our service agreements, long-term service agreements, and digital services, especially in the marine area, just like we've done last year. We'll continue the rollout of the new ERP, which enables us to roll out all the good global processes which we've defined in the previous MRP, now are being rolled out as part of this ERP. Moving to what we'll do specifically in sustainability.
Here, again, the left part, you've seen that before at the Capital Markets Day. These are our targets for 2027. One target for each of our eight materiality topics. Here, if I look at 2022, we've been able to keep our two compliance KPI at zero, and we've made already very good progress on four of the KPIs. Renewable electricity, I mentioned the increase before. Revamp and upgrades, I mentioned we've been growing by 59% in 2022. I mentioned as well that we've reached actually this 40% order intake supporting energy transition, mentioning as well that there are some big elephants in there, and we may not be able to keep that level in next year, but we will get back there in 2027.
I also mentioned the accident rate with 0.6% was already at the target for 2027. I also mentioned it's a challenge to keep it at that level. Moving after the roadmap is pretty clear until 2027 with all these targets, and there are activities behind that in the various factories. Moving to the commitment for net zero in 2035, there is also activities planned or at least a roadmap, how we will run down the greenhouse gas emissions in the different factories. You see here the five, let's say, moving parts that we have in there compared to the base of 2021.
First, starting from 2021, we almost double the business size, and we have to decouple this growth of the business with the growth of the greenhouse gas emissions. Here, this is with avoidance, savings, that we first have to keep that level. Then if I look more specifically at the type of levers, the biggest one is renewable electricity, and this is why we focus on it already in the first phase of the Mid-Range Plan by going to 75%. We aim to reach 100% or, as far as possible, given the local conditions. We have the dark gray parts, which are the Scope one emissions. Here, it's about especially, trucks for our field service representatives.
We have to work on replacements of these trucks, as far as possible, maybe hydrogen trucks or electric trucks, as far as possible and practicable. District heating is also a topic for us, which in the end, we may not be able to completely eliminate. For instance, in China, we cannot control where is the heating coming from, and this is why we have a block in the end that we assume will remain and that we will compensate with carbon removals. This is overall the roadmap, and now I'm finishing with the financial guidance, which I assume you are eager to understand.
Based on the timings, the timing of the project in the systems division, on one hand, based on some assumptions for the growth for the services division, we expect to reach sales of CHF 950 million to CHF 1 billion and an EBIT margin at a similar level of 2022. Here are some comments because there are several moving parts in the EBIT margin. On the positive side, we don't expect a hit from Russia anymore. We also expect some leverage on our SG&A. On the negative side, in our mix between the two divisions, we expect much more systems, which contributes in terms of absolute EBIT, but has a diluting effect on the margin.
Within the systems division, as I mentioned before, we expect the mix, the product mix, to be not as favorable as in 2022, so the gross margin of the systems division to go down a notch. That brings us to this similar level for 2022. We also expect, even given the timing of the projects, a stronger H2 than H1. With this guidance, actually, that puts us well on track to towards our goals for 2027, which we are reminded here on the right. Again, on the EBIT range, if I take the middle point, we still talk about a 56% increase that we still need to achieve. Again, a lot of activities are still to be done, and a lot of additional value to be created.
On the RONOA, we are very well on track here. We already get 25%, and we'll aim to stay at that level, or if we go follow back, then to come back to the level. Dividend payout ratio, we said 50%-70%. We move closer to the midpoint, and we'll see how it develops here. I think with this, that closes the presentation of our results.