Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome from Rolf Brändli and myself here in the room or online. To start the presentation of our annual results this morning, let's have a look at the picture in front of us. This is one of our employees taking measurements on one of our equipments to identify potentials for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and for increasing the reliability of the compressors. This is part of BC Activate, the new service that we have launched this year, and which will provide additional growth opportunities for the Services Division. Today, Rolf and I will give you a summary of the financial year 2023, and an outlook into 2024 and 2027 in the context of our Mid-Range Plan. Let me start with the key highlights and markets developments.
To sum it up first, we delivered on our short-term priorities, and we made concrete progress on our Mid-Range Plan . Despite micro challenges, we achieved record financials in both divisions and at group level. And with this, we have clearly achieved our guidance, and we are in a position to propose an increase of our dividends to CHF 15.5 per share. Important is also our progress in the implementation of our strategy. We have about 20 initiatives running every day in parallel to the business, and with this, we made quite some progress. For instance, on the sustainability side, we could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions intensity by 12% during the year.
Finally, on the market side, the most striking trend is the emergence, the development of new applications related to the energy transition in all our market segments. And that puts us on track to reach our 40% of order intake in 2027 related to the energy transition. And that also leads us to increase our sales guidance for financial year 2027 by CHF 100 million to CHF 1.2 billion. So overall, a very, I would say, intense and very successful year, which provides strong momentum for the coming year and the rest of the Mid-Range Plan . Now going to the financials for the few highlights. Looking at order intake, you remember 2022 was quite an exceptional year, and we expected about 20%-30% reduction of order intake this year. It did not happen like this.
We only had 6% reduction in local currencies, and this is linked to a stronger than expected market related to solar panels, and also to these new applications related to the energy transition. By delivering our backlog, we could increase sales by 26% in local currencies and 18% in Swiss francs. Further improvements in the EBIT margin in both divisions led to an improvement of the group margin to 12.4%, despite the diluting effect of the increasing share of Systems in the sales mix. And this enabled us, for the first time in the history of the company, to deliver an EBIT above CHF 100 million at CHF 121.4 million.
Accordingly, net income and earnings per share grew by 29%, and combined with a strong balance sheet, our board is in a position to propose an increase as well of our dividends by 29%. The strong order intake also leads us to provide a sales guidance for 2024, further focus on growth. I'll come back to it at a later time. Stepping back now and looking at the financials in the last five years, we see quite strong annual growth rates. Our top line has been growing 10%-11% per year, actually 13% per year in local currencies. With some leverage of the structure efficiency increase, we were only, or we only increased our FTEs by 7% per year.
In addition to that, strong load in our factories, progress on cost reductions, progress on pricing, enabled us to increase the EBIT by 22% per year, and the earnings per share by 27% per year. Also to be noted, not on this chart, we've increased our R&D spending during that time by 25% per year. So we really moved into more innovation, more applications, and that has been driving the top line. And we have to note that, we achieved these figures, despite Brexit, COVID, supply chain issues, Russian sanctions, this year, cool down of the Chinese economy. And this showcases the resilience of our business model, which is based on a broad product range, a strong global presence, our positioning in growing infrastructure markets, driven by mega trends.
Also, it reflects the flexibility of our organization, focusing on where the market is every year and with a very strong performance culture. And finally, it also reflects our integrated business model, where when we sell a new compressor, it provides service during 20-50 years for the Services Division. Now, to evaluate what may come at us in the next five years, let's look at the markets. And you see from the arrows on the left, markets have been very dynamic, with different trends between segments. Two markets going up, two going down, two stable. And actually, to better understand our markets by looking at three categories of applications, and we've presented that for the first time. I think it's relevant for understanding what's happening. First, conventional applications. This is our traditional business.
Then we have transitional applications. They are, from a sustainability perspective, clearly better than the conventional ones, but they are not fully sustainable. And finally, the new energy applications, and this one are sustainable, either because they enable the transition to sustainable energy, like solar panel applications, or because they provide energy based on renewable sources. And the key trend during the past year has been the accelerated development on the right of these new energy applications. And this is what supports us to increase our guidance in 2027, and you see on the right, in the column, where we expect this additional CHF 100 million to come from which segments.
Now, if I go horizontally through the segments, petrochemical segments, here, the demand for hyper compressors, despite expectations for a strong slowdown, did not really slow down. We had, again, a new record of 8 hyper lines sold during the year. And actually, the oversupply exists in this EVA market today. But what happens, or the way we understand what happens, is that on the one hand, the expectations for the solar panel market in five-10 years has been increased in the past month or year, and China, despite overcapacity, is continuing to invest to defend their midterm and long-term market share. Now, if I look at the . . . Because I know you will ask, if I look at our pipeline of projects for the coming year, it's not as high as last year, but it's still okay for this year.
Now, going to gas transportation and storage. Here, as we said one year ago, market for LNG tankers with high pressure went down a lot, as expected, because all the shipyards are anyway full. What we can see in this market, which is new, is green ammonia transportation. Green ammonia seems to be the best way to transport green hydrogen from distant places like Middle East to Europe. And transport of green ammonia happens in ships, and these ships happen to be very similar to LPG ships, on which we have a very strong market share. By the way, LPG, as I mentioned at the half-year call, is a market which has been going back, again, with a peak of a few months, as we did not fully expect during the year.
Now, looking at Hydrogen Mobility and Energy, in financial year 2023, we had, as expected, a growth, but not as high as in previous year, about 20%. And here, when I look into the applications, we see more or less mobility for cars, hydrogen for car mobility, but we see more hydrogen for decarbonization of the industry. And the green ammonia is part of moving hydrogen to for the industry. I'll show some examples later on. Now, industrial gas, and by the way, you will ask, the top three segments represent about 80% of our order intake. So moving to the smaller segments, industrial gas, as expected, went down quite a bit because it was based on a record for polysilicon orders in the previous year, linked to solar panels.
Refinery was quite stable, although here, also interesting to see the developments of biofuels applications. I'll show an example, and also linked to sustainable aviation fuels. Gas gathering and processing, here we could see quite some growth linked to biogas. We won, especially in India, orders for more than 80 compressors, small compressors, for biogas applications. So really growing trend. And you see on the right, in this new energy applications, all the applications in bold are the ones for which we have won orders during the year. And I'll show now a couple of examples. You see here four examples of projects which were on the right column from the previous slide. The one on the left is, for us, a very nice success.
That's the largest order in the history of the company, more than CHF 100 million in one order. And by the way, that's also why we don't give guidance on order intake. We have really some big projects sometimes coming. Four EVA lines, for production of, EVA, which then goes as encapsulant for solar panels in China, and, that means four booster primary, followed by four hyper compressors. Second one, is a very nice one. In the second part of the year, we won 11 compressors for, one of the first green ammonia import terminals in Europe. And here, this is how it goes. Hydrogen, produced in Saudi with solar panels, is combined in Saudi with nitrogen to produce ammonia. Ammonia is then transported in ships, or will be transported in ships to Europe.
When it arrives in Europe, it is cracked back into hydrogen. And our compressors are used in this cracking process to optimize the yield, to get as much hydrogen as possible. The third one, I mentioned it in the half year call, one of the largest electrolyzer project in Europe. Here, our compressors are used to take the hydrogen produced by the electrolyzers, send it into a pipeline, and then it goes into a nearby refinery to partially decarbonize the fuel which is produced there. The last one is an interesting one as well. This mega trend of sustainable aviation fuel. Europe has defined that until 2025, at least 2% of the kerosene used in Europe should be based on sustainable aviation fuel, and then 6% in 2030.... And how do we do this?
Today, it's mostly based on biofuels. It used to be mostly on the cereals, et cetera, now it's more based on the waste, organic waste. For this, you need to adapt existing refineries, or you need to build new refineries. In the future, we can see coming would be e-fuels, synthetic fuels, based on a green hydrogen. In any case, all these need new compressors, and this is one example here. That was for the Systems Division, but the energy transition is also providing opportunities for us in the Services Division. I mentioned already our, the launch of our BC Activate in the half year call. I just want to give you here an update on where we stand.
If you remember, this is a standard service product, which is based on three steps. On the first step, we go to a customer installation with various measurement equipment. We take measurements, we collect data from the customer. Then we go back to the office, we make simulations, we analyze, we compare to best-in-class installations, and we calculate the potential for improvements on these installations. And finally, we give a proposal to the customer on how to realize this potential, and we implement these changes hopefully. Now, these changes, they usually happen along four dimensions, which you see here horizontally. First, we look at the compressor itself. Is it still fit for purpose after 20 or 30 years in operation? Can the reliability of the compressor be increased?
How can the energy consumption or the oil, oil consumption of the compressor be reduced? And finally, how can the greenhouse gas emissions of the compressor be reduced? And we provide recommendations on each of them. And in the middle, this example, BC, are the typical components or services that are required to improve each of the levels. On the right, you see some of the impacts that we have achieved already. And when you look at this improvement of reliability, for instance, or energy consumption, they are quite significant for customers, and they often provide them with quick payback, meaning they, they are interested to do the changes with our Services Division to get these improvements ongoing.
You see here on the right, where we stand after six months, we have analyzed more than 50 compressors on 27 customer sites from Italy to Norway, South Africa, Thailand, everywhere in the world. And with this, we've identified for our customers potential reductions of 3,700 tons of CO2 per year, and it generated opportunities for our Services Division by almost CHF 4 million. So looking at this first start, looking at the good response globally, we can, as expected, see that BC Activate will become one of the growth drivers for the Services Division. And especially, it will help us reach one of our sustainability goal, which is to double the revenues from revamp and upgrade.
Now, after this highlight, I would like to step back a bit and look again at our Mid-Range Plan and where do we stand after the first year in the implementation of our five-year plan. As a reminder from our Capital Markets Day, you know this slide. We have a strategy based on four pillars: strengthening the core business, operational excellence, transforming and building new growth avenues, and enhancing business foundations. During the first year, we have made progress on all of the levels. We have, as I said, 20 initiatives. Some of them actually are finished, others are still work in progress, some will be launched in the coming years. I just want to highlight a few developments here, the ones where we have made most progress.
In the pillar operational excellence, the leveraging of the footprint, factory footprint of the SG&A was one of the key highlights of the year. And, you will see, from Rolf's presentation, some figures on the SG&A as percentage of sales, or the raw number, comes from this level. Now, the pillar, transforming and building new growth avenues, here we have now, quite complete offering for hydrogen, mobility, and energy, combined Systems and services. And this is answering the needs of new customers who do not intend to make the maintenance of their compressors by themselves, so they need, in advance, to know exactly what will be the service product later on, how we will do it, how often, how much it will cost. And this is something which typically before, in other segments, happens three years apart.
Now, in the Hydrogen Mobility and Energy segment, that's different. They want to know right away, and we have an offering for this. In the pillar business foundations, we are almost finished with the rollout of our new purpose, values, and behaviors. And here we were, really happy to see the very strong participation, amazing participation rate of our employees to our latest employee engagement survey, with 93% participation rate globally. The results were also good. And the last one I'd like to mention is the sustainability of our operations and the supply chain. You will see the progress actually later on. Now, I'll go into the two divisions to provide more details in the next two slides. So you see here again, the four levels horizontally. You already know the columns in the middle, presented at the Capital Markets Day .
I'm just highlighting some progress on the right for financial year 2023. In the Systems Division , I'd like to highlight the launch of a new diaphragm compressor package for Europe, which supports our exports out of China. I'd like to mention in the operational excellence, which is also strengthening the core business, the multitude of actions, improvements actions everywhere in all factories, and they enable us to increase the sales in local currencies in the Systems Division by 40%. 40% increase of sales without real big capital increase or capacity increase. It was a lot of small improvements, debottlenecking CapEx done during the year.
Although here, I have to say, slowly but surely, we come close to the end of this optimization of the existing footprint, and as expected in the Mid-Range Plan , we will need to add some capacity in the next 24 months to make the next level of growth. On the growth side, I already mentioned the developments on the new emerging applications. And finally, at the company level, at the bottom, I'd like to highlight the fact that we have really strengthened our capability to manage our data. Sounds a bit dull, but it's really important for us, managing our data across divisions globally, to be able to improve our processes further and also to provide new services, digital services to our customers.
Now moving to the Services Division, I would like to highlight the further progress on customer satisfaction. We have received feedback from more than 1,200 customers this year from 77 countries, and the average level of satisfaction has been increased again to 92%, and this is central for us. On the operational side, operational excellence side, I'd like to mention the localization of the productions of rings and valves in China, which enables us to better serve the Chinese customer. With the installed number of compressors in the country, we can better respond in terms of speed and cost, and also provides us another facility to export to the rest of the world. To build new growth avenues, I already mentioned BC Activate .
I would like also to mention the launch of new offerings for dry docks. Dry docks is when every three to five years, a ship is brought onshore, and everything is really maintained very carefully. And here we have a new offering to make sure that the compressor is maintained and serviced in time as short as possible so that the ship can go back on the sea. Yes, in summary, I can say we are, we're on track for the implementation of the Mid-Range Plan for both divisions. And now, to conclude this part, I would like to look at sustainability and our progress there. You know a part of this slide as well. You recognize our eight material topics, the KPIs and the targets which we have defined for 2027. Now we report the progress in 2023.
And basically, we are on track with all KPIs. I would like to highlight three of them. First, our climate KPI. Here, despite a 26% increase in sales in local currency, we could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 5%. For our KPI, which actually excludes the foundry, that means a reduction of our greenhouse gas emissions by 9%. Then when you look at it, it looks like no progress, 0%, because actually we, we increased last year, now we decreased again by 9%. And now, what is new as well, we've done this year, we have a bottom-up roadmap from all legal entities, and with this roadmap, we see that we are on track to reach -50%, in 2027.
Here, one of the main lever is the second KPI, moving to renewable electricity. Here, we made already good progress from 23% in 2021 to now 34%. We're continuing this year with big solar panel projects in China and as well in here in Switzerland. Now, the one and the final one I'd like to mention is the application purpose and the fact that we want to reach 40% of our order intake linked to the energy transition, because this links very much back to what I said before on the markets. Here, we have made progress from 16%- 33% in 2023, so we are on track to reach the 40%.
If you look at year-over-year, last year, we were actually higher, but we had the strong decrease of LNG tankers, I mentioned it before, which is, an application which is on, was in the middle before, meaning a transitional application. What we see, where we see the strongest rise, coming back to the slide before, is in these new energy applications, which have been growing from 8% in 2021 to 2026. That gives you some quantification of what I said before in the new emerging slide, market slide. Now, with this, I mean, we are on track to reach the target for 2027, and in the first year of our Mid-Range Plan , I think we have a good start. I'm now handing over to Rolf Brändli, who will give us more details about the financials. Rolf?
Thank you very much, Fabrice, and welcome to our annual results conference also from my side. I will now guide you through the financial section of our presentation, starting with a view on the macroeconomic challenges, the global challenges, and our mitigation actions taken to achieve our performance in the past year. The impact from inflation has seen a decrease in relevance, with raw material prices getting more stable. Costs are still passed on through customers, and we also have ongoing efforts in cost savings and operational excellence. What did have a significant impact was the headwinds we got from the currency translation effects, mainly in renminbi, the euro, but also the US dollar. Overall hit on our sales accounted for 7.7 percentage points. Energy security was not a major issue in 2023.
The direct energy costs, they have continued to fall and continue also to account for only a small part of our total costs. That's less than 1% of our cost of goods sold. The pressure on supply chain has eased, supported by a broader and more local supplier base. Logistics, on the other hand, remains tense globally, but with a limited impact so far. What we did ramp up was our internal logistics to support also the strong growth. In view of geopolitical challenges, I would like to shed a bit more light on three regions or topics. First, China. China was overall stable despite the overall market growth slowing down. We continued to see a strong demand for our products, also in 2023, in several applications, mainly in areas for sustainable energy, as we have just seen from Fabrice.
Following the one-off provisions last year, the war in Ukraine had no further negative financial impact on our results. All projects continue, stopped, or frozen, and in the Middle East, there has been a very limited impact so far from the conflict we have seen there. We continue to watch closely to monitor these topics to ensure that we stay aware of any changes happening here. The strong order intake and the high level of sales has already been commented by Fabrice. Let's now have a look at the other main lines of our income statement in fiscal year 2023. Starting with total gross profit, was up 7.2%, yielding a gross margin of 26.7%.
That's 2.8 percentage points below last year, due to the higher share of the Systems business and a less favorable product mix compared to the prior year. I will show you in a minute how this breaks down into the divisions. With 12.2% of sales compared to 14.1% a year ago, we could further increase our operational leverage on selling and general admin expenses by almost 2 percentage points. Research and development, on the other hand, we have increased CHF 2.7 million compared to the last year, which is well within the bandwidth of 2.5%-3% that we announced in our last Capital Markets Day . The higher spending is dedicated to further enhance innovative solutions for Marine, HME markets, as well as digital solutions.
Other operating income amounted to 5.4% on a net base, mainly from real estate income and the reversal of provisions from the recovery of bad debts. This is a significant improvement compared to the last year. Remember, at that time, we were affected by one-off provisions in the context with the exit from the Russian market. Total EBIT has reached a record level, CHF 121.4 million, yielding an EBIT margin of 12.4%. That's one percentage point more compared to the prior year. Slightly lower financial expenses and tax expenses at a tax rate of 23.7%, similar to last year, have led to a net income of CHF 90.1 million, representing an increase of 28.7%. The resulting earnings per share was CHF 26.23 , almost CHF 6 more than the year before.
Let's have a look at the divisional results, starting with the Systems Division . Order intake stood at CHF 780.2 million. Yet again, a high level, although below the exceptionally high volume of the prior year, representing a decrease of 14.4%, and this is including 4.6 percentage points negative currency translation effects. While the LNG market has normalized from peak levels, we saw a strong demand for hyper compressors, renewed demand for LPGM, and important to mention, new applications related to the energy transition that we have seen before developing in all market segments, as we have just seen. Sales increased substantially by 31.3%, or almost 40% net of currency translation effects to CHF 642.8 million on the back of the strong order intake over the past two years.
Gross profit was up 12.5%, generating a gross margin of 17%, 2.8 percentage points below last year. The less favorable product mix compared to last year was only partially compensated by the higher capacity utilization that we had in our manufacturing. And besides the robust project execution, with no deviations worth to be mentioned. The operating profit of the Systems Division increased substantially by 57% to CHF 47.6 million, sorry, yielding an EBIT margin of 7.4%. What contributed to the high profitability was the operational leverage on the SG&A side, and also the fact, of course, that last year was burdened with these one-off provisions from the exit from the Russian market. How does it look like on the Services Division?
In a market characterized by regional disparities, reflecting also the local economies, the service division achieved an order intake of CHF 344.6 million, corrected for exchange rate translation effects. This represents a growth of 2.9%, following an above average increase of 9.7% that we have seen in the last year. Looking at the regions, the Asia Pacific market remains strong, which is also the region notably with the most newly installed Systems, while the European market decreased due to economic and political uncertainty, especially in Germany. Strong growth was reported in the marine market, as well as in digital products and services worldwide. The Middle East region was only marginally impacted by the ongoing conflict in this area, so nothing special worth to be mentioned there.
Sales was at CHF 339 million, marginally below the previous year. It's minus 0.2%, following this exceptional growth of 22.3% in the year before, and also here, at sales level, the FX had a substantial negative impact. Net of foreign exchange translation effect, sales would be up by 6.3%. Then the gross profit increased by 3.7% to CHF 153.7 million, resulting in a 1.7 percentage points improvement in gross margin to 45.3%, mainly because of the higher share of spare parts within that sales mix. The high gross margin and the positive development in other operating income led to an increase in the operating margin by 2.5 percentage points to 24.6%.
Next, I would like to comment on our summarized cash flow statement. Cash flow from operating activities was significantly below the prior year due to the higher net working capital as per balance sheet date, driven by the steep increase in trade accounts receivable. Even our business model on the System s side, especially with advanced payments and potential accumulation of invoiced, projects, it happens that we have to deal with larger temporary swings in the net cash or the net operating, net working capital. That could be intra-year or as it has been the case here as of the year-end balance sheet date. With the strong growth, we also had to increase the delivery times of our projects, and so that means projects stay for a longer time on our balance sheet.
Cash flow from investing activities amounted to CHF -25.3 million, and is mainly related to maintenance and the bottleneck in CapEx in our existing factories, as well as some investments into the IT. So far, we have not added any growth CapEx in 2023, but we will have to do so down the road in the MRP. As we announced during the Mid-Range Plan , the Capital Markets Day , when we presented that, that we count with about CHF 30 million each for investments into factory expansions on the one side, and on the other side for IT digitalization. Now, with this additional growth that we see down the road, it would be prudent to assume that we might further increase that outlook by another CHF 10 million-20 million, depending on where this market will develop.
Cash flow from financing activities was more balanced compared to the year before, with an increase of financial liabilities to finance growth on the one hand, and also the high dividend payments that we did of CHF 40.4 million in 2023. Currency translation effects, mainly related to the cash positions, in China and some other locations outside Switzerland. With this, the overall net debt rose to 62.3%, and that is including our bonds of CHF 100 million, with a term until September 2024. Now, our balance sheet continues to be strong and resilient.
Property, plant, and equipment remain stable, priority level, while both inventories and trade receivables went up significantly compared to the year-ago closing date, which reflects the further ramp-up in work in progress, as well as the high wave of invoicing that we have seen towards the end of the fiscal year. The ratio of long-term overdue receivables, meaning more than 90 days overdue, has improved to 11.7%. That compares to 18.1 the year before, and is, by the way, the, the lowest, the lowest level in absolute terms also over the last couple of years. Overall, the payment morale is stable in China, I would say, but with some customers also in Europe and in the US, paying later than usual.
But also here, we have a worldwide, we have also a strong leverage to get paid since customers, as soon as the compressor is up and running, are depending on spare parts and/or services from us. That's usually when we get paid, also for the overdues. Worth to be mentioned is that the allowance for bad debt has decreased by CHF 6.5 million to roughly CHF 18 million, and that is still including also the provisions or the receivables related to projects in Russia, which are on hold. Balance sheet total closed at CHF 1.1 billion, a growth of 13% compared to the prior year, and the resulting equity ratio marginally increased to 28.0%, despite the negative effects on investments in subsidiaries and also the higher dividend paid in 2023.
Last but not least, I would like to share with you two graphs to show you the long-term development of RONOA, earnings per share, and also the development of dividends and payout ratio. To the left, you see the continuous increase in RONOA, up to 30.1% as per year-end 2023. On top of the strong EBIT contribution, this RONOA is also the result of a disciplined and RONOA-driven CapEx approach. Worth to be mentioned is that the 12-month average RONOA was still benefiting from a higher positive balance of advanced payments versus work in progress compared to the snapshot view as per the year-end. Then on the right-hand graph, you see the track records in earnings per share and dividend payments... Also going up with a dividend payment of CHF 15.5 per share, as proposed to the upcoming AGM for approval.
Resulting payout ratio with that would be at 58%, which is well in the middle of this 50%-70% guidance that we have given out. Then worth to be mentioned, we paid every single year since the IPO, a dividend without interruption, and you might have noted also that Burckhardt has been admitted to the SPI Select Dividend 20 Index again. We have been there once for a couple of years as of March 18, 2024. With that, I hand back the words to Fabrice, who will now show you the outlook for 2024. Thank you.
Thank you, Rolf. Now moving to the outlook for 2024 and 2027. Before we enter the outlook, I'd like to look back at the last 10 years and the development of our top line. We see the strong increase of order intake in the past three years, which translates into sales, between three months and 12 months in the Services Division, and between one year and three years in the Systems Division . From these developments, we expect sales in 2024 above the CHF 1 billion mark, CHF 1 billion-CHF 1.1 billion, and with the additional market impulses, which I described before, we expect sales in 2027, at CHF 1.2 billion, and we see the increase here visually, from this guidance, to CHF 1.2 billion.
Now, let's look a bit more on this, in this increase of guidance of sales for 2027, because there is a bit more to it than just the number. What you see on the slide, which you have also basically seen Capital Markets Day for the financial indicators for the MRP 2027 target. And you see also where we stand today, the actuals for 2023. What is new is the update for the right column. In the right column, we've put in bold characters the figures which are changing, and as you see, there is more, there is a few things changing. Because we also increased the EBIT margin target or guidance for the two divisions by one percentage point. However, leaving the overall EBIT margin for the group at the same level.
So let's see how the math work. The 100 million increase comes exclusively from the Systems Division , from CHF 620 million- CHF 720 million. This has a certain diluting effect on the overall group margin. However, when you look at where we stand today in terms of EBIT margin, we are already in the range of 27%, and with the additional leverage from the growth, we feel comfortable increasing the guidance for both divisions by one percentage point. And with that, we compensate diluting effect from more Systems, and the calculation brings the same overall EBIT margin for the group. Now, if you think in absolute terms, because if you remember, we wanted to double our EBIT from CHF 70 million in 2021 to CHF 140 million in 2027. That was the theme of the Capital Markets Day.
Now, we are already today at CHF 121 million, and if you look at the midpoint of the new range, it will be CHF 162 million. So basically, we increased by about CHF 20 million, the mid-range point, of in absolute terms for the EBIT. Now, finally coming to the guidance for 2024, and based on the timing of the project deliveries in the Systems Division , based on some assumptions for growth for the Services Division, we expect sales between CHF 1 billion and CHF 1.1 billion. For the EBIT margin, here again, we expect some dilution effect from the increased share of Systems in our sales mix, but we expect to compensate this with additional leverage so that we can keep the EBIT margin for the group at the same level at, as financial year 2023.
In terms of balance between the year, just like last year, looking at the timing of the project deliveries that we have in the backlog, we expect clearly a stronger, stronger, second half than the first half. With this guidance, we are on track to reach the 2027 guidance and reach basically the targets of our Mid-Range Plan . This closes our presentation. Thank you for your attention and open now the question, the floor for questions together with Rolf. Thanks.