Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the presentation to our annual results here this morning, either here in Winterthur, thank you for coming, or online. Hopefully you hear us and see us well. To start with, let's have shortly a look at this picture. It has been taken by one of our employees before embarking this ship for a service intervention. In this ship, there is enough energy for 35,000 people during 1 year, and the ship can carry this energy anywhere in the world. This is why we selected this picture, because it represents the transition towards cleaner and more secure energy sources. This is really happening now, and really Burckhardt is part of it. We already see it happening in 3 ways in our company.
First, you see it in our order intake for financial year 2021, and I'll come back to it. Second, internally, we can really see this new perspective that we give to employees and also for myself. I mean, gives a new mission, a new vision, where do we want to go as a company. That creates a lot of positive energy. Third, it gives us real confidence for our future growth for our next mid-range plan. Today we'll share in this presentation our results financial year 2021, also how they relate to this picture. We'll explain about 2022, what we plan for there, and how we plan to deliver our targets for the mid-range plan.
Let me start first with an introduction, talking about the foundations of the company, talking about our future priorities. As this is the first time that we interact since I took over the position in April, let me say a few words about me. You see here a few milestones of my career. What I'd like to summarize and what's the most important for me, the 5 years at Boston Consulting Group to build up strategic capabilities and then the last 18 years in the industry to implement strategies and deal with day-to-day challenges. Coming to more important, our company and the strong foundations. There are really a number of them. I'd like to highlight 3. First, for me, the most important, these are really our people, our culture. We really have a fantastic pragmatic culture.
People are extremely engaged, and we could see that again in the new employee engagement survey, which we've done this year, which showed further improvement. The second one I'd like to highlight is the integrated business model of systems and services. If you think about the order intake of last year, all these compressors that we have sold, we will install them in the next couple of years, but in 2050, they will still be running for most of them. They will still be needing spare parts and services. T his is why we really have to see that in the long term and look at both divisions together. The last 1 I'd like to highlight here, and that has something to do with the picture, we're really well positioned to benefit from the energy transition.
We have products, we have technologies where we can differentiate ourselves, and we have a global footprint, including in China, where a lot is happening. Moving on to the future priorities, I also would like to highlight 3 of them. First, again, our people. We are growing strongly with our order intake, so we need to attract people, we need to retain the good people we have, and we will continue to work on our branding as employer. The second one I'd like to highlight is the fact that we want to continue to expand and to invest in new applications. Here, hydrogen mobility and energy is really 1 key application where we do invest, what you also see, by the way, in our R&D figures for this year. The last one, the last bullet, but not least, sustainability.
Sustainability has always been actually in the DNA of the company in 170 years of history. I think we always took care well of our people, of the environment, et cetera. Really in the last 18 months, it has taken a new dimension and really accelerated and we formalized the way we go about sustainability. I'll come back to it a bit later. In the next, let's say half hour or so, I'll go first through the key highlights, also some challenges, talk about the market developments, then dig deeper into divisions for an operational review before handing over to Rolf for digging deeper in the figures. I'll come back in the end for a strategic update and the outlook. Starting with the highlights. Let's look at a few figures. Financial highlights.
I think we had a very good year, 2021. We had really an exceptional order intake. It's for me the highlight of the year, and it really gives us confidence that we are on track in terms of strategy and gives us a very good backlog to deliver in the next couple of years. Group sales, as expected, were stable. EBIT could be increased by almost 16%, and that brings us back to a double-digit profitability of 10.8%. As you see, net income by 6.8%, earnings per share almost 14%. That led to the proposal of the board for our next general assembly of an increase of the dividends to CHF 7.5, which is an increase of 15%.
Here, I'd like to take the opportunity to say a big thank you to, again, our employees and all our partners which made that happen in a context which was quite challenging at some point with supply chain, with raw material increases, with the war in Ukraine. Here, a very big thank you to everyone who contributed to this. Now if you look at not only the figures, but they also contributed to progress on the strategic side. Here are a few milestones, a few highlights, which I'd like to mention. First, on digital services. For us, digitalization is an important part to deliver services to customers, especially in an efficient way.
Last year, we've developed together with Microsoft, I mean, we are a development partner for Microsoft, these UP! Remote solutions, which enables customer with a tablet, with a HoloLens, with a headset, to really bring the Burckhardt expert really in the machine. I've already seen it working. You bring it in the machine, it shows what's happening, the experts can tell him what to do. That was very helpful, especially in the COVID time, because then we don't need to travel so much. Second one, very important for our service division, the acquisition from Mark van Schaick BV gives us some new capabilities for very complex repairs. Zones, we've launched a brand-new product, a breakthrough product, for the ramp-up of the infrastructure of hydrogen.
We've won the project for the largest liquefaction plant in the world, which is now being built in Korea. In the end, this momentum led us, maybe you've noticed, to take hydrogen mobility and energy as a separate segment, which it was not until last year, because it's really becoming relevant. Last highlight on the LNG side. For the ones who were at the Capital Market Day, you may remember we mentioned the launch of smaller compressors for typically LNG merchant ships, which now use LNG as a fuel instead of oil because it's much cleaner. We've sold 60 of these smaller compressors in the last year, which shows that these compressors really were well accepted by the market.
Second last highlight here, the 1.5 million hours of operations is relevant for us because it shows the reliability of this larger compressor. Here we talk about the large compressors for the LNG carriers, which you may remember on the rather negative side a few years ago. Now they're really working and we have a lot of experience here. One of the highlights I'd like to mention as well. Hopefully, the next slide is coming. Yes. Thank you. Sustainability, I mentioned it was one of the priorities, and we're really working on embedding sustainability in our strategy into our operations, and we really accelerated our journey here. We have defined, like, what everything we do in the company, quite a pragmatic but also impactful framework, strategic framework, which is fully aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
We have made clear progress on our 8 materiality topics, and they are allocated to top managers in the company. We have, for the first time, collected global KPIs on a number of sustainability topics, and you see that these KPIs in the sustainability report. Something really interesting, which is also in the report, we've analyzed the carbon footprint of 4 of our typical compressors, and you'll see that in the report. The conclusion is amazing. We see that more than 99% of the carbon emissions of a compressor doesn't happen in our factories. It happens at our customers during the lifetime of our compressors because they are driven by electric engine, which have quite some power.
While we'll of course work on Scope 1 and Scope 2 to reduce the emissions with solar energy, for instance, we've moved to completely renewable energies here in Switzerland, that we will continue. We have to focus on what happens with our compressors at customers. Gives us some business opportunities as well to help customers reduce emissions on the install base with revamps, upgrades, and all these topics. That will become relevant for the strategy. Finally, we've established a clear governance from the board where now we have a strategy and sustainability committee to the management team to the groups working globally on all these topics. You'll find a lot more in our sustainability report, which is about 35 pages published this morning. Now, we also had challenges, and we are not the only 1.
The achievements of this year have to be seen also in this context. We had several corona-related travel restrictions and lockdowns, especially in China, which we could mitigate thanks to our outstanding commitment for employees. I mean, they've done things we never asked them, we never thought were possible, just to serve customers, making sure that we deliver what we had to deliver. Again, a big thank you to them. Our digital workplace is also working, and I mentioned the UP! Remote was 1 way to go around these limitations. Supply chain, global logistics, material prices were also clearly disrupted. Here, our global supply chain, I mean, it could really benefit from the footprints.
The people in different places in the world, when they were missing something for a project, they were in constant exchange in finding ways to buy what we needed for our projects. I think the big advantage we have, maybe to compare to some other industries, we have projects which are where we need for 1 project a few components. We don't need 1,000, 2,000 things. We need 1 component, and we always found a way to find it. Finally, we had a disciplined approach to material price increases on the one hand with frame agreements with suppliers. On the other hand by passing on these increases to our customers, which was most of the time possible. Finally, the Ukraine war has been a hit, and we decided mid-March not to take any new orders.
That was at that time, I think the right decision, not only morally, but also because 6 weeks later, end of April, new sanctions came, which prevent us from delivering our backlog after July 10th. That creates the fact that we will not deliver this 2% to 5% of revenues this year. That also creates a potential EBIT impact of CHF 5 million-CHF 7 million to stop these projects, basically, and Rolf will say more about it. Overall, I can say we've been quite resilient in this context. This is really thanks to our employees and the broad footprints, the broad business diversifications. Let's look now at the market developments, which have been really interesting in the past 18 months.
I'd like to start with the big picture, coming back to the picture of the boats and the fact that really we are at the crossroads of major energy trends. First, the energy transition and it has been here since we could feel it accelerating since 18 months, really, and it has an impact. I mean, the want for greener energy has an impact on 4 of our key applications. First, LNG. You've seen that LNG-fueled ship because the fuel is much cleaner. We can see it here. We see it as well for distributed power production. You can use LNG, one of these boats. You bring it to a small power plant in an island in Indonesia, all these things.
When you start having LNG, then you need to bunker it, kind of a fuel station. You need fuel stations for LNG, then it also compresses. That's 1 here. Energy transition, we all know this transitional energy, natural gas, much cleaner than coal, much cleaner than oil, and we see that happening as well. More new and really relevant for us are now hydrogen mobility and energy. This is more for the so-called hard to abate segments, steel production, ammonia production, and for us, even more relevant, heavy-duty transportation. The last one, pretty obvious, solar panels have been growing fast, and we've not communicated so much in the past about it. Solar panels need 2 things, which require compressors.
They need a thin plastic film of EVA, which require our hyper compressors, where we have 80% global market share. They need polysilicon, of course, the core of it. Polysilicon requires also compressors, where we are also leaders with our Shenyang Yuanda subsidiary. That was already happening, but really what's been happening in the past 6 months, again accelerated by the Russian war or the Ukraine war, is the energy security becomes a topic. It also pushes, I mean, LNG in Europe becomes a huge topic because it's, of course, much more comfortable to get LNG from a boat that you can buy from Australia or the U.S. than from the Russian pipeline. Also, to mention solar is also a way to produce energy locally, having independence rather than depending again on the pipeline.
We see this acceleration happening, and this explains a big part of our order intake. Knowing that in our order intake, there are also some special effects, the fact that we had so many large projects happening this year, and we won so many of them. That might not happen every year, but the trend is here and should continue. Now moving to our usual segment view to which we have added hydrogen mobility and energy. The column in the middle, you probably remember that. These are the midterm trends which we communicated at the Capital Market Day. I will rather focus on the right side, highlighting what came in financial year 2021. Some restart of investment in the US for gas gathering and production. We see that as well in the Arkos activity.
I mentioned already the LNG fueled merchant ships, the sense of urgency for LNG terminals in Europe, for instance. We received in the refinery sector a couple of very interesting projects, not large, but interesting for the future for bio-refineries. Then on petrochemical, this is the story about solar panels for the Hyper compressors. The polysilicon application is in industrial gas. That's also here the key trend. Energy mobility, I mentioned the fuel stations. We entered the European market for fuel stations. You may have noticed yesterday some further progress for France. We will provide compressors for the new taxi fleet, hydrogen taxi fleet in Paris with our partner, HRS. That's one of them, plus these liquefaction plants, which were rather large projects. Here to mention, I mean, all segments have been growing significantly.
I have to say our 2 usual pillars, gas transportation and storage, petrochemical, have even gained in importance compared to the rest, relative importance. Now what we see, and this is new, as third comes industrial gas with the polysilicon. Then what comes, at the same level almost, is refinery and hydrogen mobility and energy. Finally, gas gathering and processing remains quite marginal for the systems division. It's more relevant for the services division at Arkos. Now moving to the operational review of the 2 divisions. Here, I'd like to highlight the key figures per division and show how we delivered on the promises given at the Capital Market Day and what we see coming. First, the systems division, which, of course I know a bit better.
We really had an excellent year 2021, starting with this exceptional order intake of more than 60% growth coming from what I mentioned before. First, the recovery of the pandemic, this LDPE, EVA solar panel related orders, and this is where we have these exceptional amounts. CHF 150 million will not happen every year. Really big project happened this year, and we won them. Hydrogen came, and then LNG related applications were part of this exceptional order intake. Despite the decreasing sales, which we knew was coming because of the H1 of 2020 where we received very few orders due to COVID.
Despite the 9% decrease of sales, we could increase a bit by 30% and that led us to a return on sales of 5.7%, which is clearly above the higher band of the mid-range plan range. Some of it is due to more favorable product mix, but this remained an excellent performance and clearly above the mid-range plan, and we can build on these numbers. Now moving to the strategic review. You remember here on the left was presented differently, our 3 strategic directions for the systems division, which we presented at the Capital Market Day, together with the strategic initiatives, which are also not new. Just want to highlight the progress in the last column, or some progress in financial year 2021.
When we talk about new markets to reduce cyclicality, I think the first bullet point was right on, new marine applications. These are where the 60 new compressors for LNG fuel ships were coming. We entered the European market for hydrogen, which was also a topic at the Capital Market Day. This biorefinery orders also come here in this topic. As for building stronger differentiating capabilities, here, I'd like to mention the unique solutions we have developed for larger high pressure compressors for hydrogen. I just want to spend 1 minute on this because that's important. The hydrogen infrastructure in Europe and the U.S. has to be developed by a factor 10, a factor hundred. When you go there, hydrogen always have to be compressed. It will need much larger compressors.
This large compressor has to compress hydrogen for mobility at a quite high pressure. 550 bar is a very high pressure. It has to be compressed without lubricants. Why? Because fuel cells can't have any lubricants in them. That just destroy them. When you think about hydrogen, which is a very small molecule, you want to compress it with high flow, high pressure without lubricant. This is really the high tech of compression technology. Here we have a breakthrough with these compressors, which explains why Shell is working with us. Maybe we'll announce some other partnership in the next few months here. That's really a breakthrough in the market. Then digital solutions.
On the system side, we have cloud connected compressors currently under test at customer, which will enable later on the service division to build digital services. Important, our people, again, we do every 2 years quite an in-depth employee engagement survey. Again, we saw employee engagements rising, employee satisfaction rising. Some of this is presented in the sustainability report. Operational excellence will always remain a key topic for the division. Here also for hydrogen mobility and energy. We talk about larger number of compressors, and we have our first standard compressor, which is for new kind of business model with standard compressors, and we have our first one.
Talking about material price and the ramp-up of production capacity, which we can do within our existing factory footprints, but we need to hire many more people. We need to outsource some activities to absorb the volume in the next couple of years with our existing footprint. Moving now to the services division. Also a strong year starting with the growth of order intake of almost 20%, which is linked to the strong demand for engineering solutions, which was really our strategy. All regions here have contributed. You can see the growth of sales and order intake by 11.6, 11.8%. Slight leverage, bringing EBIT growth of almost 14%, increasing the return on sales to 21% in financial year 2021.
Contributing to these good numbers are also the progress on our acquisitions. Arkos Field Services has made really progress growing and also improving profitability. The acquisition of the JSW compressor activities are completed. That brings us 700 to 1,000 new compressors in the world that we can take care of. Finally, the integration of Mark van Schaick BV, our latest acquisition from last December, is really progressing well, and this is already contributed to these numbers. The performance here is in line with our mid-range plan targets for 2022 on the profitability side. However, not on the sales side that we indicated already at the Capital Market Day. The stretch is quite big to close before the end of the period.
Meaning we'll have a slightly different mix at the end of the mid-range plan. Now moving to the last slide from my presentation, the review of the strategic progress from the service division. Here again, the topics presented at the Capital Market Day. Looking at developing our local business, we have established new setups or new partnerships in Vietnam, in Brunei, in Sweden. We've also launched new service solutions. Here I mentioned the 1.5 million operating hours of our compressors for LNG carriers. Meaning now we really know how these compressors work. We really know what our customers want, and we are able to cost and to offer total care packages, which is new for us and was part of this service solutions. Launch of digital products. I mentioned these UP remote solutions and others are coming.
The acquisition of Mark van Schaick brings us again some additional service capabilities, globally for the marine segment. Finally, in terms of strategic partnerships, we could address a larger share of non-Burckhardt compressors, especially with the partnership with KB Delta, which is specialist globally for valves, for any kinds of compressors. Now we have, with this partner, access to even more compressors. With this, I would like to close this first part of the presentation, and I will hand over to Rolf Brändli, who will tell us more about the financials.
Thank you, Fabrice. Good morning and welcome also from my side to our annual conference 2021. I will now guide you through the financials, starting with slide 18. With an amount close to CHF 980 million, total order intake in 2021 was indeed exceptionally high. As you can also see, especially with the comparison of the last couple of years, net of currency translation acquisition effects, we have received 43% more orders than in the prior year period. This exceptional growth was mainly driven by the systems division, with a + of 59% net of currency translation effects.
As mentioned before by Fabrice, we had a lot of tailwind from the energy transition, especially for LDPE EVA applications, driven by the solar panel production in China, and also the demand for hydrogen application for mobility and energy solutions was growing clearly faster than we had expected. Order intake at the service division rose by close to 20% to CHF 325.5 million, or 18.3% net of currency translation and acquisition effects. Worth to be mentioned is that in the prior year, we still had a long-term service contract over 10 years, close to a double-digit million amount included, which did not happen this year.
As shown on this next slide, total sales for 2021 closed at CHF 650.7 million, which is the upper range of our investor relation guidance that we have given at the beginning of the fiscal year. That's 1.2% below the prior year, respectively 2.6% if we exclude currency translation acquisition effects. Due to the Corona-related lower order intake in the H1 of fiscal year 2020, system sales was with kind of a time lag with a turnover of CHF 373 million, 9.1% below the last year. Towards the end of the fiscal year, we then also had to shift some projects in Russia due to the sanctions that were imposed at that time into 2022.
On the service side, we have increased sales by 12%, respectively 10.9 net of acquisitions. Growth was mainly generated in spare parts, but also field service and engineering revamp and repair. How did the overall profitability develop over the last fiscal year down to the level net income? Despite the lower sales, total gross profit increased by 14.9% to CHF 190.8 million, which resulted in a gross margin of 29.3%. That's 4.1% points above prior year. Main reason for this increase was the more favorable product mix on the one hand, especially in the system side, as well as the higher share of systems business overall, which accounted for 43% of total sales compared to 38% in 2020.
SG&A expenses were at 16.4% of sales and did not include any Corona-related subsidies anymore, as it was the case in the prior year. The selling expenses also carried already some investments into sales activities for hydrogen applications and some other solutions in the marine applications. Total spend in research and development was up by CHF 4.3 million, closing at CHF 19.7 million. That was especially in the context with new and improved marine solutions, the enhancing of compressor solutions for hydrogen, as Fabrice mentioned before, quite complex applications, and the development of digital solutions. In the mid-range plan, by the way, we had foreseen about CHF 10 million-CHF 12 million R&D, and as you can see here, we are investing also into the future. With 19.7, we are clearly above the MRP level.
The higher level of other operating income was the result of some non-recurring effects, and is including also the contribution from the real estate gain that we have from the US company here in Switzerland. The underproportional increase of earnings before taxes is the result of higher financial expenses, which were mainly caused by negative foreign exchange effects on intercompany loans, and they're specific on the euro, where the euro dropped from 1.10 to 1.03. That correction or FX effect then goes into the financial expenses. The tax rate was at 23.2%. That compares to 20.3% in the prior year, and it was driven by the higher share of profit in countries with above average tax rates as well as non-refundable withholding tax. Whenever we withdraw dividends, internal dividends, from our subsidiaries in some countries, there are non-refundable taxes.
The group net income closed 6.8% above the prior year at CHF 50.4 million, and earnings per share attributable to the shareholders of Burckhardt Compression increased by 14% to 14.82 CHF per share. That's also, of course, thanks to the exclusion of the 40% minority stake, which is no longer a shareholder of the group. The board of directors, as you have heard before, is based on these results proposing a dividend of 7.5 CHF per share, which would then be an increase of 14% and represents payout ratio of 50.6%. Let's have a quick look at the balance sheet. Few comments. Balance sheet total increased by 10.5% to CHF 837 million. Property, plant, and equipment remained at prior year level.
There was no major investment there. Both inventories and advance payments from customers, they have increased considerably following this steep increase in order intake that we have seen before. The equity increased by CHF 23.3 million, while the equity ratio as a percentage of the total balance sheet remained stable at 29%, and that is mainly for 2 reasons. Our target level would be at least 30%. We did not reach that in this year. The reasons are, on the one hand, the over-financing of work in progress by customer advance payments, which per se is a positive effect, but it has an inflating effect on the overall balance sheet and thus also impacting the equity ratio. Secondly, the offsetting of goodwill from the acquisition of Mark van Schaick BV. That was an amount of CHF 9.3 million.
Based on Swiss GAAP FER, which is our reporting standard, we have offset that directly against the equity. Trade accounts receivables ended the fiscal year at a similar level as in the year before. Within the overdue ARs, accounts receivables, the focus clearly remains on China, where we still have a very high, but at least a renewing volume, in positions overdue for more than 90 days. About 70% of the overdues over 90 days is related to China. Corona did not help in this respect to be added. The net debt position has improved by CHF 25.6 million to -CHF 56.8 million, and we also have still adequate liquidity to secure the operations with bank lines whenever we would need that.
On the CapEx side, you can see here in 2021, we had an amount of CHF 23 million that we added to our property, plant, and equipment. We are expecting an investment in a similar range, maybe slightly higher of CHF 25 million for the running fiscal year, 2022, and that is similar to the level of depreciation and amortization. Investments are mainly for machinery, equipment, tools, and hardware and software. Last but not least, the net financial position and the cash flow. Total cash generated from operating activities increased marginally to CHF 135 million, which is already or was at a high level the year before. Cash outflow from investing activities, including a payment of CHF 9.4 million for the acquisition of Mark van Schaick BV, our latest acquisition.
Besides regular CapEx investments, that is also added on this position. Prior year, 2020, worth to be mentioned, had a cash out of CHF 21 million under investing activities. That was for the JSW Compressor business, as you remember. The cash outflow from financing activities includes the last installment. That was an amount of CHF 51.5 million for the Shenyang Yuanda acquisition. You might remember in the last fiscal year or the year before, 2020, we closed the transaction, but we had a staggered payment, CHF 51 million, in 2020, and this last installment, CHF 51 million, is now paid in February 2022. With that, the 40% stake is gone.
As you have seen before, on the earnings per share, there's no more minority interest to be mentioned. As per the balance sheet date, total cash closed at CHF 101 million. Borrowings in the amount of CHF 157 million are on the other side, and that includes the CHF 100 million bonds with a term until 2024. An improved net debt position of CHF 56.8 million. With this, I hand back to Fabrice. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you, Rolf. Let us now wrap up first with a strategic update and then moving to the guidance for 2022.
As for strategic updates, you here also may recognize the 5 key strategic messages and takeaways on the left from the capital market day. I will again focus on the right side and the progress made in the past year. Clearly, we benefited from our broad geographical positioning and our broad customer base to mitigate the various effect of COVID and to distribute now the load, the high load between our different factories in the systems division. The benefits of the systems service integrated business model is already seen or is seen in the strong growth of service, almost 20%, and especially in the marine area for the service business, where all these compressors now needs to be serviced.
Also, this integrated business model is important for the development of new services, digital services, because you first need to have a, let's say, a connected compressor on which you can build, digital services. Third point, our order intake composition shows clearly that, we could benefit from new application, the changing energy mix. Again, the 3 keywords, solar panels, LNG, and hydrogen mobility and energy. We are well-positioned to continue to benefit from it. Fourth point, we certainly remain very committed to, reach our mid-range plan targets, and we are on track to reach them. Even if we will have a slightly different, mix than initially, planned between the 2 divisions. In terms of capital, discipline, you've seen the CapEx, which, for 2022, which remains very reasonable.
We see the payback from our acquisitions and our ROA is this year close to 20%. Overall, I would say, we are on track from a strategic perspective, from an operational perspective, and from a financial perspective. Now moving to the priorities for this year, 2022. I mean, for me, there is 1 clear priority. We want to deliver on the mid-range plan targets. That's clear, that's number 1, and everything else comes behind. In parallel, what we are doing currently is defining our new mid-range plan, which we plan to communicate together with our half year results on November 1st.
On the group side, what we also are focusing on is people, attracting, training people, topic sustainability, as mentioned, go further, and you can expect there some concrete commitments from us at the Capital Market Day. We have to work a bit in the background on our IT infrastructure, data management, so that we can later on ramp up our digital services. We have to continue to mitigate all the supply chain issues, these raw material topics, the Russian backlog, et cetera, that will keep us busy in this year. From the systems division perspective, it's rather a continuity with a strong focus on delivering the backlog, which means continuing to mitigate the sanctions, supply chain topics, also further investing and pushing these new solutions, solar panels, LNG, hydrogen mobility.
Like always in the systems division, operational excellence remains a key topic, developing these new standard compressors, for instance, working on the procurements and all these nice operational excellence topics. For the services division, this is also a continuity to focus on continuing with the positive dynamics of the order intake based on the recent acquisitions as well, continuing the progress in growth and profitability at Arkos, and finally, developing this new digital services, this new total care packages and other new services. This just brings us to our guidance for the year. Here, overall, we are aiming at a significant increase of revenue to a range of CHF 720 million-CHF 760 million. As mentioned during the presentation, this range of this growth is coming from 3 factors.
First, the strong conversion of our backlog, especially in the systems division, the continued progress of our services division, including revenues from acquisitions. On the negative side, the fact that 2% to 5% of our revenues, linked to the Russian market will not be delivered. This guidance clearly indicates that we will land ahead of the MRP revenue ambition, which was CHF 700 million. Already, as already mentioned during the Capital Market Day, we'll have a different sales mix between the 2 divisions because systems is growing so fast. In terms of profitability, we expect a significant increase in absolute terms of our EBIT. Actually increase in line with the increase of sales. That means that will yield a similar EBIT margin than in financial year 2021. The stability of this EBIT margin is coming from 3 factors.
First, this Russian impact or potential impact of CHF 5 to 7 million to stop the project that we cannot deliver due to the new sanctions. The fact that we continue to invest in these new applications, in digital products, et cetera. The fact that the current business mix is more geared towards the systems division which has a lower profitability. Overall, that means that our EBIT margin will land in the target range for the mid-range plan, which was 10% to 15%. Regarding our new set of financial ambitions, we will publish them together with the mid-range plan in November, and also together with our new mid-range plan strategic framework.
I hope both of us, Rolf and I, could provide you a good overview about our numbers about the strategic progress, and we are here to answer your questions. We'll answer first the questions from the room and then answer the question which are coming online in the phase II . For questions in the room, please take a microphone so that the people online can also hear the question and the answer, obviously.
Charlie Fehrenbach.
Morning.
It's good. Charly Fehrenbach, AWP. You raised the operating margin last year to a little bit, but it's lower than 6%, still quite low for the systems division. Where do you see a realistic ambition to go there with the margin? The second question, if you allow, how did you start in the first 2 months in the current year compared to the last year? Thank you.
Good. Concerning the systems division, this 5.7% has to be seen versus the target that we had set ourselves 5 years ago. At that time, we were negative, and the target was 0% to 5%. We're clearly above our targets. It's too early to talk about the next target for the next mid-range plan, but it's more than we expected 5 years ago, clearly. Concerning the start of the year, I think these topics of energy transition, energy security are here, and we had a good start of the year in that respect in terms of orders.
Barbara [inaudible] from UBS. Linked to this energy transition, how do you expect the US business to develop? When do you expect a double-digit margin level for Arkos? And also, do you intend to increase, or to broaden your system division business, or to start system division business in the US?
The first question is about? Sorry if I missed the first one.
When we will achieve the double-digit EBIT level at Arkos.
That was the second one. Maybe you can answer this one. Yeah.
Well, for Arkos, indeed, we said, when we acquired this company, we see the potential to arrive at a double-digit EBIT margin. We made progress, as it was mentioned during the presentation with Arkos. We're not yet there, and I would not promise that we get there in 2022, but we can certainly get closer. A medium to upper, let's say, single-digit EBIT margin is possible. The target remains clear. The ambition is to achieve this double-digit EBIT margin, and we will also look into combining the 2 operations that we have in the U.S. I think that goes then also into the second part of the question about the systems business in the U.S.
Yeah, we actually already have an assembly and test facility in the U.S., which has not been very much loaded the past few years. Now we see with the hydrogen mobility and energy, that gives us a new perspective for the U.S. operations. There we see many liquid hydrogen liquefaction plants being built. Currently, we're negotiating some contracts which would really fill this factory for the next 12 to 24 months. Still not warm, but that gives a new, certainly a new perspective. I think you asked about the different segments. That was your first question, how the different segments develop.
No. What do you expect from the US business in the-
The U.S.
In the future. Yeah.
Okay. It's really the, for us, the hydrogen business that gives us new perspective. The refinery business is not so active at the moment. We also have to say overall, we had to give priority to some segments. This is also why the mix is evolving a bit. We have a bit less of refinery, because we had such a demand on petrochemical, solar, all these new topics, that we could not deal with all the other customers, and we had to make some selection, explaining a bit why our refinery is actually not higher than hydrogen almost this year. It was also a matter of setting priorities.
Dominik Feldges from NZZ. I was wondering about these problems with trade receivables you overdue in China you have. I mean, how big is this really a problem for you? Could this become even worse as we go on? I mean, what's happening there? Second question, if you allow. You've mentioned that you will need more people in the future to manage the growth. Where will you add these people, and how many of them? Last question, if you may allow, about this Russian backlog. I mean, can you elaborate a bit on what you are still working there on, about what you have still been able to deliver and what you cannot deliver now? Thank you.
I propose, Rolf, you can answer the question on China credit receivable and Russia, and I answer the question about people.
Okay, let's start with the China one. Currently, we have on the balance sheet about CHF 260 million receivables overall, and out of that 25% is overdue for more than 90 days. Out of that portion, about 70% is based in China or is located in China. It's the local Chinese business. It's not what we export into China, like the Hyper compressor, for example, where we work with LCs, advanced payments and everything. L ocal to local is different in China. Unfortunately, it's going on for years, actually, since we acquired this local company, that we have a high level of these overdue positions. As I mentioned earlier, they are evolving. I mean, we get paid, but then some new positions get overdue.
We have about CHF 15 million bad debt provisions on a permanent level that goes sometimes a bit up, a bit down. There's nothing we are too worried about in individual positions to lose them. It's really the question when you get paid. Corona did not help in that context. China also spent a lot of money with this Corona crisis, and what they tend to do that's clearly visible, they first pay locals and then the international companies. They ultimately pay, but you have to be very patient. Not just being patient, we have a lot of interaction with government. Most of these companies are government-owned, so you have to run behind that money. The other question on the Russian backlog, actually, we invoiced something.
We had a shift of invoicing about CHF 15 to 17 million sales that was actually planned towards the end of the last fiscal year, 2021. That has shift now into April. That's already invoiced and shipped. The remaining part, Fabrice mentioned it, there is a hard-cut deadline, 10th of July, by when also the other increased sanctions get into force. We have to see how to wind down those projects. It's a potential loss, this CHF 5 to 7 million. We made an assessment. Maybe we can still invoice part of it, maybe not. We have not considered anything so far in this guidance, and this CHF 5 to 7 million is out of the guidance.
What's the other figure again? Sorry, the first figure you mentioned, which you could still invoice.
A shift of about CHF 15 million-CHF 17 million.
No, before you had invoiced, you mentioned it, a figure before.
Accounts Receivables.
No, no. With the Russian. What did I?
No, the deadline, 10th of July.
Well, the CHF 17 million were moved from financial year 2021.
Exactly, yeah. How many? 17. 1, 7.
Yeah, yeah. CHF 15 million-CHF 17 million. 17.
15 to 17. Okay, thank you.
Go ahead.
Maybe I answer the last question. Talking about your question about the number of people, indeed, we need to add many people and we add them actually in most of our systems locations because we could spread the load pretty much globally. We talk about maybe 200 to 300 people we need to add this year. They will be first in the largest factories in China and India, in Switzerland, as well. In Korea, we also need to ramp up also in Italy, which is an important center for project management and project engineering for us. If the orders for this hydrogen project in U.S. are confirmed, we also need to ramp up in the U.S.
A bit globally, and that's also where we're happy to have this footprint and being able to move the loads where we have capacity.
Good morning. My name is Serge Rotzer from Credit Suisse. First question is on orders, which is very impressive, to be honest. Now on this CHF 1 billion order intake, what can you tell us about that? How much is coming from pent-up demand, and what is more on the operational structure level of this CHF 1 billion?
Pent-up demand would mean?
From the recovery out of the pandemic, you know.
Aha.
Or also double orders. The part which will disappear soon, let's say it that way.
Interesting. How would I answer this? Last year in the systems division, I think we already had 16% growth, which was part of this pent-up demand. I think if I look at the profile of the orders H1 year, H2 year, the pent-up demand would probably be more in the H1 year, but actually, the H2 year was also very strong, so it seems to be not that much of a topic. I think customers are investing here. I don't see a big. I didn't see a couple of months not such a big effect, I would say. Sorry, and the second part of your question was?
Well, let's switch then directly to page number 10 of your slide deck, you know, where you showed this energy transition security.
Yeah.
Where you have the structural driver like LNG, natural gas, H2, so hydrogen and solar. How much is coming from these businesses in the order book? Can you give us here more flavor?
Yeah. Let me count quickly. We talk about 40-ish%, if I count quickly, of the total company order intake coming from the systems division on these applications. Yeah.
Okay. This is then 2/3 of total and 40% of this 2/3.
No, no. 40% of the total.
Of group.
That's why it's very relevant.
Got it. What should we expect to know going forward on the order intake, you know, from the demand side, from the growth level? Is this CHF 1 billion? How sustainable is this CHF 1 billion? Or do we going back to a level more to CHF 700 million like you had in the past, so between CHF 400 million-CHF 700 million? What is your expectation there, giving pent-up demand will go away, fade away, then you have the normal recurring demand, and then you have the structural demand of these businesses. What is the best case? I know you don't have a crystal ball, and we have to wait Capital Market Day in September, November. A s first feeling.
First, I mean, we don't give guidance on order intake because we have large projects. They come maybe this year or next year. That's why we don't give guidance. What I can say, and what we've highlighted, is that this 40%, let's say this 40%, there is CHF 150 million which are exceptional. I mean, really big projects coming all at the same time, and we were successful. This CHF 150 million, you should not expect them to be here or in a regular year and/or during this year. Maybe that helps in making a quick calculation here, what we could expect.
Okay. The last one to the order. Mr. Brändli always told us that the lead times is about 1 to 5 years up to 2 years. What is the lead times today, and is there a big deviation between the different markets or?
Yes. When you look at especially solar again, these are the Hyper compressor. W ith this exceptional CHF 150 million, these are really long delivery times. We talk about 16 months, 24 months, especially now also longer due to the supply chains. We integrate the tensions in the supply chain in our delivery and our promise to customers, so it tends to get longer and longer. That's why this backlog will be delivered over the next couple of years, and maybe even some of them in 2024. That's a long backlog here, especially on the solar panels. The other ones are, I would say, on average 12 to 16 months, the other applications.
Good morning. Arben Hasanaj from Vontobel. I was wondering on the trends you see in the market. You mentioned this energy transition themes are still strong, but are you seeing any headwinds, you know, that customers are becoming more cautious and also maybe an impact of Chinese lockdowns? Is there anything in your markets that you are seeing?
Yes, indeed. We see some customers and Qatargas. We spoke, I think, a lot about Qatargas, and this is 1 example waiting that the prices go down. They say, "Hey, it cannot be. I will not buy a ship of CHF 200 million now because it's just too expensive. It used to be CHF 180 million, now it's CHF 220 million." Customers, some customers wait and think that we will get a better deal maybe in a couple of years. In the example of Qatargas, what happened is actually that other customers, GasLog and Maran Gas, just stepped in and booked the slots at the yard, so there was no spot anymore for Qatargas. I'm not sure it was the right calculation. W e see that a bit.
Also customers are very busy finishing existing project because of the supply chain topics, and they soon may not have enough capacity to start a lot of new projects. I mean, all the engineers that everyone needs for all these applications, it's not only us, it's also our customers, that might become, in the next 18 months, a limiting factor for starting new projects at customers.
The question on LNG and marine, I mean, what is kind of the situation there? Have you gained market share again or. Yeah, can you elaborate?
Yes. I mean, there are 2 markets. Again, on LNG, there are the small version ships where we clearly gain market share. That's a new market for us. We sold these 60 compressors. Now I think your question was probably more on the carriers, the large compressors. There we see 2 things. First, the fact that the customers are moving back to the high-pressure technology, the ME-GI Technology, moving away from X-DF because the ME-GI technology seems to be more efficient and has much less methane slippages. T here are slippages when you are in these carriers of methane, and the ME-GI technology has much less, and that becomes very important. When a Shell is renting these ships, they don't want to have this methane. T hat's why we see that.
Within this ME-GI, we see that we've gained back the market share. I mean, we have the 1 Japanese competitor. The past 6 months, we have completely gained back our share or even more than that. Also because our compressors, compared to the Japanese version, has absolutely no methane slippages. We have 1 argument on the technology side, which makes us confident that in the next few months, we will win a lot of this market share.
Maybe a final question on hydrogen. You mentioned before that you expect orders in hydrogen to be around 5% to 7%. Can you maybe say, was it rather on the high end now in the end or can you elaborate?
The rest was so strong, that was rather on the low side for hydrogen.
Thank you.
Michael Züger from JMS Invest. I have 1 question. If I were to look for a hair in the soup, over the last couple of years, you were always below the with the gross margin in the service business below your midterm guidance. Now we had this Corona, all the issues with
You know, accessibility of shapes and so on. Is this 45% to 50% gross margin range, is this still achievable with the current setup? Now you were around 42, 40-
3
3-ish over the last 3 years.
I mean, 1 effect is definitely we have an increasing share of what we call OBC, Other Brand Compressor business. That counts for about 30% of the total service business or even more. That has grown substantially. Let's not forget about Arkos. Arkos is still dilutive here. T hat also is carried in this 43% gross margin. To answer your question, the 45% level is certainly something we are aiming for. It's too early now to set a new range for the next mid-range plan. We will certainly do that when we're ready with this for the Capital Market Day. The 45% level is definitely something within reach.
Mm-hmm. Okay. A follow-up question to the guidance. I mean, you say basically EBIT is growing, should be growing in line with the top line, so same margin as this year, and that includes the CHF 5 million-CHF 7 million.
Yes.
Extraordinary, basically, Russian write-offs.
Yes.
Okay. Thank you. Oh, the tax rate. Tax rate is now a bit higher than the usually guided 20%. Is this?
at 23%. Last year, we had 20%. Mid-range plan was actually 25%. It's the mix of the profit generation throughout the countries, the whole footprint that we have. For the next year, I would also assume something around 23%.
Thank you.
Yes. Good morning, everybody. Alessandro Foletti, Octavian. A couple for me as well, if possible. Maybe on the pricing situation, if I hear what other companies are saying, it seems that Q4, calendar Q4, was a situation where output prices were sort of favorable compared to input prices, and that started to revert a little bit in calendar Q1. That would be the first part of your half year and the second part of your half year. Can you comment on how it is with you, the input-output situation?
Maybe because our backlog is longer, we've not noticed this. What we do is that on a monthly basis, we have a raw material internal index which reflects what material we have in compressors, and we adapt our prices on a monthly basis to follow this. Plus, in the last 3 months, we've added clauses in our offers that we can change the price of a compressor when the customer orders, if there are significant change in some parameters. We have protected ourselves on this side. Indeed, we also see that this index tends to go flat, the index for materials for our compressors. We see that, but yeah, actually I can confirm that trend.
Also these very long orders, the CHF 150 million. Should the prices go up again, be it energy or whatever, I understand it's fully speculative, but should that happen, you would be able to protect your gross margin?
Most of it, we have when we do an offer, when we start a project, there are 2 parts. There are the, I mean, the compressor itself, all the metals. There we have for most of it, frame agreements with suppliers. Then for all the auxiliaries, the motor, the cooler, et cetera, there we get offers from suppliers before we start the project, so we protect ourselves. Still can happen that suppliers come and say, "Hey, I can't do it," and then we discuss a bit. We are mostly protected, but still that's really a day-to-day task of all the supply chain people to keep that under control and to manage it. I would say 80% is protected.
There is 20% of the cost, which we really have to manage, on a very active basis.
Right. Do you have an idea how much your prices went up last year?
Yes. For this raw material index went up about 20%, 21, 22% in 1 year, last 12 months.
Do I have to assume you were able to increase the prices by about 20%?
We have an average
It's less because it's only 50% of your sales. Okay.
Exactly.
I got it.
It's more in the range of 10% to 12%, maybe what we've increased.
Is it fair to assume that in your huge backlog that you have now, which will last for many years, the gross margin inside there, I'm talking more on the systems probably, as you-
Yeah.
You might understand, but that gross margin is sort of consistent with the level we are at now and the plans you may have in the future?
That's the intent for sure. We've put some mechanism in place, as I said, with frame agreements. What we've seen, I can just see the example of last year. Last year in the systems division, the margin that we delivered was within 1% point of the margin calculated. It 's really worked last year, all the mitigation actions. Now we have a slightly different backlog. Again, we're really working very heavily on that. That's a big topic. I think we are overall well-protected, but still we have to manage that, and that remains one of the challenges which I mentioned before. The guidance also is taking it into account, this challenge that we're managing.
Right. Maybe another one, if I may. I was surprised to hear that.
You had, at the time you set out your MTP, also midterm planning that you planned for CHF 12 million in R&D, and now you land at CHF 19 million. Why that big discrepancy? Well, in the MRP, we had several developments not included. I mean, the new marine applications is certainly something worth to be mentioned. Digitalization, we have a lot of investments in digital products. That was in a very early stage, back in 2016, 2017, when we developed this mid-range plan. Also the hydrogen opportunities that came up, I would say, not as a surprise. The technology is not new, but the speed it came up was faster than we thought. We had to start about 16 months ago. Was it 16 months ago? Yeah.
We started this strategic project to have a strategic compass and outlook of this hydrogen business and immediately we then developed solutions for that. Indeed, in this hydrogen, that's the main change. If you look at our capital market day presentation from 2018, I think hydrogen was mentioned just in the bullet points talking about mega trends. We thought that something may come, but that was really not planned, certainly not on the R&D side. I mentioned before here we developed also some standard products for hydrogen because these are large numbers. When you develop a standard product, you have much higher upfront costs in R&D because you need to do all the detailed engineering, the preparation of the production, et cetera, in advance.
Which is not the case in our other markets, where we develop the product which is more than a concept, but we've never built it. Then we finalize the engineering on the first customer projects. That's what we did usually. This has usually less R&D costs. Now, again, standard products, we expect higher R&D costs, and then we should expect higher growth margin later on. That's slightly different model. Understood. May I throw you a last one? Your latest announcement, if you forget that of yesterday, was the announcement of the new CEO for the systems division. When I look at his curriculum, he has a huge experience in electricity, but not a lot in compressors. W hy is he the right person for your business? No, I mean, he had with compressors at Alstom, other types of compressors.
If I'm not wrong, he has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, so he's really a mechanical guy, and he really wanted to come back to some more mechanical products. That for me, that's really a perfect fit. He has managed such businesses. He knows our customers. From a personality, fully fits. That's a perfect fit, I would say. Alstom was one of the compressor business, not the greatest business. He went later on to ABB, where he was more on the electrical side. Before that, he was more on the compressor side at Alstom, turbines and compressors at Alstom. Again, he's a mechanical engineer, and he feels himself more a mechanical engineer than an electrical engineer.
Which, that's why he comes back to the roots. Yes. Some more questions over here. I'll take a question coming from online. Maybe some other questions come from the room. The question is: Can you please quantify the extent to which price increases contributed to growth in 2021, and to what extent price growth is in the guidance? On the first part of the question, I think I mentioned 10, 12% is probably the average over all business lines, systems, services, spare parts. That's probably about a 10% impact here. To what extent the price growth is in the guidance? I mean, the past price, it's all in the guidance. I mean, we always do the guidance based on the knowledge of the backlog, which we know.
The service prices have increased, and they will, we assume they remain what they are. I mean, we don't plan any new increases for the guidance. We just assume that things stay like they are in the market, raw material prices, and we continue at that level. The second question is, have all cost increases been hedged or passed on to the market? I mentioned, I mean, we cannot hedge everything. We passed on to the market a large part of it. On the supplier side, we have frame agreements with some suppliers. We have offers for the big-ticket items for every project before we give an offer. Probably we are protected for 80% of what we buy, and then we manage the rest on a day-to-day basis.
Third question is: What is the over the cycle margin potential for the systems division? 10%. Again, we'll come back with numbers in November. What you have to think about always in the margin of the systems division is the integrated systems and service business model. Because every competitor knows that and plays it the same. Meaning, if you're going to win a compressor which will bring a service business for 30 years, you're ready to have a lower growth margin for the new business. That will remain. We continue to work on the operational excellence. I think that 10% is a lot, viewed from today. Next question: Can you please quantify the revenue breakdown?
Meaning how much gas gathering and processing refinery revenues has Burckhardt roughly generated? Here we don't report precisely all the segments. What I said is that there are really the large 2 segments, which are more than, clearly more than 50% of the total revenues. This is gas gathering and processing, as well as petrochemical. Again, coming third, that's industrial segments, industrial gas, and then refinery and hydrogen coming number 4. Gas gathering and processing is marginal. It's really marginal at the moment for the systems division. Next question, how big is Shenyang Yuanda Compressor in terms of revenues? Is Shenyang Yuanda Compressor on the same EBIT margin as the group or as the systems division? Do you want to answer? I'm not sure how much we've communicated about it.
Yes. We do not disclose it individually, but we always said SYCC, Shenyang Yuanda Compressor, they run at an EBIT margin at about 10% +. We had years, exceptional years also with close to 20%, but their run rate is about between 10% and 11% to 12% EBIT margin, so it's at group level definitely. On the systems division side, that's also at about group level, maybe a slight plus what concerns local business, but it's pretty much in line with the group level.
With a larger part of systems division versus service in China as in SYCC compared to the group. Next question: Do you expect a major year-on-year decline in the order intake 2022? Yeah, down CHF 150 million. Again, we don't guide on order intake, but we said that last year there was CHF 150 million, which were really exceptional. It goes in that direction. Next question, starting with the statement, congratulations on the hydrogen progress. It would be appreciated if you could shed some more light on the business potential and financial implication of H2 over the next 3 to 5 years. I think we said since about 3 to 6 months that we see hydrogen mobility becoming a third pillar of our order intake. We have gas gathering, processing, PCI.
We see the potential for hydrogen to become this third pillar. The question is exactly when. Is it in 2 years? Is it in 5 years? In 8 years? That's still difficult to say. We'll probably say more at the Capital Market Day. It's difficult to say because the limiting factor is the availability of green hydrogen / the tolerance for gray or blue hydrogen in the market. That's what we see as a limiting factor. Otherwise, there are investments, there are a lot of funds, a lot of startups ready to invest here. The market will be here, but it takes time to build this infrastructure. If we start to build hydrogen pipelines in Europe, it takes a couple of years. It's just like an LNG terminal in Europe.
You don't get it in 6 months. It needs 18 months, 24 months, and we are linked to that investment cycle, which takes time. Certainly, the ambition and the potential is that it becomes the third pillar of our order intake. What's your target for net debt on EBITDA? This one will be for you, Rolf Brändli.
Right. Well, thank you for this question. Net debt over EBITDA, we're currently at 0.6 as a run rate for fiscal year 2021. Based on the existing contracts and credit lines we have in place with our banks, we could go up to 2.5, certainly not over that.
Thank you. We've exhausted the online questions. I'm coming back to the room, asking if that generated some further thoughts or questions. Yeah, Alessandro.
Can I take this opportunity, then I leave everybody going to the coffee. On your new application for LNG. Obviously, this is not the LNG market as we know, the first one that we started. Can you tell me what type of compressors you're selling there? I don't know if you can tell me how much R&D you had to put into that to develop it, but how sort of innovation-intensive that was and how R&D intensive that was to develop?
Sure. The applications, just like for the large carriers application, there are the 2 technologies, high-pressure ME-GI, and low-pressure X-DF. Here we have one compressor for each. Whereas for the large compressors, for the carriers, we only have the high-pressure technology. For the merchant ships, we have developed 2 different compressors, which are indeed quite R&D intensive, also because these are standard compressors, so we need to invest more. In terms of technology for the high-pressure one, we took an existing compressor, and we made it marine relevant or marine with marine standards. The compressor itself, it existed already in terms of technology. T he change to make it ready for marine applications and all the different functioning points, that was quite some R&D.
The compressor for the low pressure application, this is actually a new generation of Laby. It's working according to our Laby principles, and it could become also a model for other applications on Laby. It integrates many new innovation that we bring to the Laby, which has been developed in the 1930s. There are quite some innovation in this low pressure application.
Thank you. 2 follow-ups on that. On the development of the marine compressor that you made, just to be sure, you took advantage of the experience done with the first
You can be sure we.
Right.
We took the lessons learned from the first one.
Okay.
We took the lessons, yes.
Thank you. The second one on this new Laby. Can you share a little bit what is these great new things that you have implemented?
I mean, it's very technical. The form of the cylinder is completely different. Instead of having a piston which is flat and moves like this in a cylinder which is also flat on both sides, the piston is round. The top of the piston is round, and it goes into a cavity which is also round, and that enables to have a better efficiency for the compressor. That's the main change that we have here.
Okay, thank you. I wanted to ask you a similar question for this, for the Diaphragm Compressor.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, this is also sort of a new product that you have in your portfolio. Can you give me the same type of an answer? Where does it come from? How much sort of development did you have to put in?
Here, the diaphragm is produced by SYCC in China. They've taken some, let's say, some existing known technologies to build this compressor, which has very little innovations compared to other competitors. It's more a me-too product on the diaphragm side. Not much new in there.
The sort of powers and the volume throughputs and so on of these type of compressors?
Oh, that's a technical question.
It's a no.
We talk about around a few hundred kilowatts in terms of power intake. 200 kW to 300 kW would typically be the small compressor for LNG fuel and diaphragm compressors. This compares to. I mean, the, for the solar, the Hyper is we talk about 30 MW. It's a factor 100 compared to a Hyper. It's a factor 10 compared to a good size refinery compressor, et cetera.
I assume the volumes are the same, which is why if you are going seriously with that, you must want to sell thousands of them.
Maybe not thousands, but we need to ramp up the numbers indeed. That's the intention. I mean, for the diaphragm, if we have a me-too product, then we would need to go into the numbers. Now we are testing with the markets in Europe and see what could be the numbers. That's really part of the new mid-range plan.
When I take this answer and I put together with all we have discussed before with respect to what you mentioned with growing in the USA, moving the capacity there where you have them, et cetera, when will be the point where you have to build a new factory somewhere and really expand capacity?
Not in the next couple of years. Next 3 years, we don't need, but it's indeed a key question of the next mid-range plan. If we need to expand our engine factory, if we need something more in Europe, that's part of the reflection, maybe for the second part of the next mid-range plan.
For the Hypers?
For the Hypers, we will continue to build them here.
You will extend the throughput times to 3 to 4 years, you will not-
No.
Build another Hyper factory?
First, what we're doing, and the teams have already made progress, is first shorten the time it takes to produce the Hyper, so that they take less time in the factory so that we can produce more per year. Before we could produce, let's say, 3, 4, 5 per year, but it never happened. Now we're organizing ourselves to produce 7 per year by compressing-
In Winterthur?
In Winterthur. By compressing the time it takes, which makes them also less expensive, of course, more competitive, but also because the market here, the need is here. We now start to work with slots. We tell customers, "Well, we have 1 slot in 18 months. Do you want it? Because somebody else is asking." We start. We really have to work with slots, and we will be full the next couple of years with Hypers.
Thank you.
Yeah. Maybe last financial question. You mentioned that overdue receivables are predominantly in China. My question is, do you get them repaid anyway despite the long periods? How is your recovery or repayment rate in there?
Well, thank you for that question. Yes, indeed, we get paid. I mentioned earlier, we have about between 10 and 15 million bad debt provisions over the whole group. Maybe half of that is dedicated to China, not more than that. We ultimately get paid, but we get paid late.
Probably an add-on question on production capabilities. Did you experience any negative impact of the lockdowns in China so far to Shenyang production? Or do you expect a certain delay of that from the Chinese lockdowns in your first 6 months of your fiscal year, so in autumn? What should we expect here, you know? That probably it will be demanding then the first 6 months in regard to production and revenue recognition.
Yeah. Actually, it started already in end September, October last year. We had significant power cuts in Shenyang. The government was calling us at 8:00 P.M. to tell us if we had electricity the next day, every day, during a few weeks. That had an impact already on some projects which were moved or shifted from financial year 2021 to financial year 2022. We already saw this, and now we have to catch up on this. Later on, that was in March, we had the lockdown in Shenyang, a few weeks. The good thing, it was not as long as in Shanghai. We had a few weeks, and this is where our employees have done things which...
I mean, they've just stayed in the factory during the lockdown and decided to isolate themselves, and a couple of hundred of them to isolate themselves. We didn't have the full capacity, but we didn't suffer too much. You're right, that shifts a few projects from maybe the Q1 to the Q2. We should be able to recover before the end of the H1 year. I don't expect at the moment a shift between H1 year to H2 year due to this. I expect some shift between the Q1 to the Q2 . We catch up.
Yes. Just to understand really correctly, you mentioned these 3 pillars you have for the order intake. Third one obviously now the hydrogen business. The first 2 ones again, if you could just-
Yeah. They are. Just come back to make it clear. Okay. Here. The 2 large pillars which have been even more important this year, gas transportation and storage, where we have all the LNG topics, LNG terminals, et cetera, and the petrochemical and chemical industry, where we have all the Labys for the chemical processes and the Hyper compressor for the LDPE and for the EVA for solar panels. These are the big 2. A gain, today number 3 is here. At some point we expect this one to become 1 of the big 3. That's the expectations.
Obviously the solar panel, that's just a one-off business. That's not going to
It's, it's not-
I mean, we have new producers trying their best like Meyer Burger or even here in Germany or. Obviously the most of it is happening in China and the capacities are now being expanded and that.
That will-
will lead them for a while or
That would reach for a while indeed, but it will not stop. I mean, that will continue, but as high as last year we don't expect to come back every year, that's for sure.
Okay. Thank you.
Very good. No question anymore from the room? No question from the chat? Then we'd like to thank you very much for coming here this morning with such a nice weather. You come to the room here. Thank you online for listening to us. It was a pleasure and I see a lot of interest in your questions. Thank you for this. We'd like to close this session saying as well that Rolf and I and the team, we are available for you for questions today, in the next days, in the next weeks. We want to continue to enhance the way we interact with each other and certainly come up then in November with a new mid-range plan, new financial framework.
Until then, I'm sure we'll discuss about the development in the market. Thank you very much. For the ones in the room, there is a small Aperol which is waiting outside. Thank you.