Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our annual results presentation. To start this presentation, let's have a look at the picture in front of us. This is one of our service technicians in South Korea installing a hypercompressor a few weeks ago. This compressor will generate spare parts and maintenance during about 50 years. Today, we have more than 20 other such hypercompressors in the systems division, either in the production phase or in the installation phase. This will really lift up our service revenues in the coming years. This is what we call our integrated business model. Today, Rolf and I, we give you an update about our fiscal year 2024 and outlook in our fiscal year 2025, of course, in the context of trade tariffs, but also in the context of midterm megatrends that support our business.
Assuming that everyone has read the disclaimer on page two, I will jump to page five. In summary, we delivered a record year at 2024, despite the further normalization of our market in the systems division and the weakening of the European and the Chinese economies. This demonstrates the strength of our model with a global footprint, a large range of applications, and a resilient service business. Now, going to the different highlights, we delivered a record number of compressors, and with this, we reached sales of clearly above CHF 1 billion. That was, since a long time, our star. One day we'll be CHF 1 billion. We reached that CHF 1 billion, almost CHF 1.1 billion. And we also reached, for the first time, net income above CHF 100 million and a record operating cash flow above CHF 200 million.
With this, and the strong balance sheet that we have, it puts the board in a position to propose a dividend increase of 16% to CHF 18. We also did clear progress on our mid-range plan, and we launched new products and services. For instance, I mentioned it in the first half year, we launched compressors for low-pressure LNG tankers or a subsegment of it. We also launched new digital services, which I will present later on. We also made a big step forward towards our net zero ambition 2035 with a very large reduction of our greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, it was really an eventful but also successful year, and we had solid progress towards our mid-range plan. Now, going forward, I mean, we have a strong backlog, and we have, of course, challenges coming with the U.S. tariffs, but also megatrends that support the business.
Again, I will present them later on. Now, moving more precisely in the financials, they show further progress in our top line, our bottom line, and value creation for the sixth year in a row. Before we get into the detail, I would like to mention one change in our accounting policy for the Systems division, which became necessary because we had more and more very large projects in this division in the past few years. Starting in fiscal year 2024, we are applying a percentage of completion method for all projects above CHF 7 million which last more than one year, sorry. With this, it reflects better the activity of the year, and it should provide more stability in our revenue recognition in the future.
The fiscal year 2023 has been restated with POC accounting so that you can see a like-for-like comparison. Full details are in our annual report, and Rolf will say more about that later on. With this in mind, let's have a look at the key financials. Despite a normalizing market, we delivered our second highest order intake, above CHF 1.1 billion, up 2.4% versus the prior year, and above our sales level. We continue to increase our backlog. This growth is mostly linked to marine applications and to hyper orders linked to solar panels. I'll come back to that. Record compressors deliveries in the systems division and also a further growth in the services division enabled us to reach 12.6% growth of sales in Swiss francs and almost 14% in local currencies.
Further improvements in EBIT margin in both divisions led to a 1.2 percentage point improvement in the group margin to 12.9%, despite the diluting effect of the increased share of the Systems division in the overall sales mix. This enabled us to deliver an EBIT of CHF 104.8 million, and for the first time in the history, net income above CHF 100 million with CHF 105.6 million, up 25% versus the prior year, which is restated. We also had a very strong cash flow with almost CHF 213 million, which led to a positive financial position of almost CHF 70 million at the end of the year.
With this increased profitability, but also with the increase of asset productivity, which we will see later on, value creation also went up with a run-off of almost 33%, clearly up compared to last year, and also clearly above our guidance for the mid-range plan, which is 25% plus. Combined with a strong balance sheet, this figure brings the board in a position to offer this CHF 18, which is a 58% payout ratio, fully in line with our policy of 50%-70%, and also at the same level as last year. Moving to the next slide, we see how our continuous improvement of top line and bottom line adds up over six years. The top line has been growing 10%-11% per year in these six years. Actually, in local currencies, it's rather 12%-13%.
With a leverage of the structure, with also efficiency increase, we could do that with only 6% per year FT increase. This, plus the leverage of the SG&A and margin improvement in both divisions, led to an EBIT increase per year of 21% in the six years and even 25% for earnings per share. We did that in the context of COVID, Russian sanctions, supply chain disruptions. This shows how resilient our model is, and it also shows something about the culture, about the performance culture of the company. The markets are moving a lot every year, but we are every year focusing on the pockets that are growing, and we're also building some flexibility in our supply chain and in our operations so that we can react to such unforeseen events, just like we have now with U.S. tariffs. Let's now go into the systems market.
Overall, after the peak that we had in 2022, it started to normalize in 2023, and it went further down in 2024 overall. Here, I will focus my comments on the first three segments, which account for the bulk of our order intake, starting with the petrochemical segment. Here, the demand for hypercompressors in EVA production for solar panels remains strong, especially in China, driven by geopolitics and also the continued expected increase of solar panel growth in the coming years. We sold seven hypercompressors during the year, including one in Saudi Arabia, compared to eight in the previous year, which was a record. The pipeline is still healthy, but as we said last year, in the midterm, we expect that it goes down to four or five per year in the coming years.
The rest of the petrochemical markets, so the low-pressure petrochemical markets, continued at a good pace. It is basically supported by the middle-class growth in Asia, which requires more polymers, for instance. That means that also drives the demand for hyper and the lab de compressors. In this market, we have to say, we mentioned it before, we continue to see the push for localization in China. This is, for us, a certain headwind. We have our local facility there to capture this, but this is a certain headwind. Now, moving to the gas transportation and storage segment, which was the strongest during the year, very lively thanks to these different marine applications. I will go into them one after one. Starting with the demand for LNG tankers, which went up again after the dip that we had in 2023.
This is supported by the expected very strong increase of LNG export terminals, which are coming online in the next two to three years, especially in the U.S. and in Qatar. For these tankers, the increased or the renewed interest for the high-pressure LNG tankers, which is important for us because this is where we have the highest market share, actually has been confirmed in the second part of the year. I mentioned it at the half-year call that there was the new change from one of the engine manufacturers that has focused on high pressure. Now we have all the yards talking to us, understanding the high-pressure technology and potentially some orders in the coming 12 months or 18 months. Moving to LNG-fueled ships like container ships, etc., they remained at a good level.
The main reason I see is that with all the additional LNG export capacity, LNG prices went down, so it is more and more economical to use LNG as a fuel on top of the advantages that it has compared to heavy fuel in terms of CO2 emissions. LPG tanker applications, the next one, which for us has really hit a new record. What we saw in the first half year has continued in the second half year, even if not exactly at the same level. It is driven by the demand for energy growing globally and the need to transport energy from producing locations to transportation locations. We saw also, as I mentioned in the half year, the increase for ammonia tankers.
The driver here is the expectations by ship owners that in the future, ammonia, or especially green ammonia, will be used as a fuel in the marine industry or as a way to transport hydrogen from green hydrogen from the Middle East, for instance, to Europe. All in all, very lively marine markets. Basically, we expect that this market will continue to be very lively in the coming years, driven by energy trade and by sustainable fuel regulations in the marine industry. Now, moving to the third one, hydrogen for mobility and energy. Different story. It has clearly recalibrated after the growth that we had in the past four years. Reasons are various. One is that the green hydrogen costs are clearly higher than people expected when they did their business plans a couple of years ago.
Also because there are delays in the finalization of regulations and subsidies, especially in Europe. Of course, uncertainty created by, in the U.S., of course, the Inflation Reduction Act has been really slowed down. Also in Europe, all the elections of last year were not helpful because it has slowed down everything. That is the short term. Now, if I think about it in the midterm, hydrogen or green hydrogen still has an important role to play in the energy transition as a green molecule. I talked last time about the difference between storing energy in a battery and in a molecule. Molecules can store a lot more energies than batteries. For some applications, batteries just do not work. You cannot do that with electricity. In the midterm, we see a regained interest for large-scale projects.
Actually, in our pipeline, we see that we have fewer projects, but the ones remaining are much more concrete. We expect that the market will come back again, driven by pipeline injections, underground storage, and production of hydrogen derivatives like green ammonia or e-fuels, e-sustainable aviation fuels, etc. In the next few slides, I will highlight a few achievements of the fiscal year, starting with a tremendous increase of our production capacity in Korea. As you know, operational excellence is one of our pillars in the strategy. If you look at the past few years, we have been able to absorb this 10%-11% per year growth of sales, basically within the same factory walls. This is exactly what we have done now in BC Korea. BC Korea is our main facility to deliver these compressors for LNG tankers with high pressure.
You see some of them on the picture. In 2024, they have been delivering the orders that we won in the peak of 2022. Two years later, we had to deliver all these compressors. That is what they have done. To reach the capacity required and to meet orders from the customers, we had to increase capacity by 40%. We changed completely the layout of the factory, changed the logistics, applied lean principle further. With that, we reach these 24 compressors per year in terms of capacity. That also will enable us to absorb the potential next peak if it comes in the coming years. Also, in the same facility, we actually will be able to add one more bay in the same premises. We have more capacity, if necessary, with small additional cost.
Now, moving to the second achievement, which you will recognize, I'm sure. This is the rollout of BC Activate, which we announced last year. In fiscal year 2024, BC Activate was used to analyze more than 100 compressors in 19 countries globally. What is really interesting, that's twice as much as last year. What's also very interesting, almost three quarters of them were OBC compressors, so non-Burckhardt compressors. For us, it's a door into the machines of our competitors to do service. What BC Activate does with a number of special tools, like you see on the picture, it provides a diagnostic of how to improve reliability, energy consumption, CO2 emissions for the complete fleet of our customers. You see here as well some potential increase of savings that we have identified for energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
With this, we provide recommendations for the customers and offers for the customers to improve the situation. When they do these improvements, that creates service business for us. You see a few of these examples, like two hyper upgrades and boosters upgrades in Brazil and Thailand, maintenance and spare parts for LABI that was generated through BC Activate in Singapore and Uzbekistan, for instance. Very good start. Now we're already preparing the next step, the level two of BC Activate, where we use now our digital capabilities, which I will show in a minute, to understand the most complicated cases. We have a portable digital analytical tool that we bring at the customer, analyze the compressors. With this, we can understand the most complicated cases. We start to make our customers familiar with these new digital solutions.
This is the topic of the next highlight. In November last year, I introduced you to our first new digital service, UpInsight, which enables real-time monitoring of compressors through our own data acquisition equipment and our cloud solution. Today, I'd like to introduce you to UpDetect. This is the next-level digital solution. It is using the same cloud platform as UpInsight, but it can be installed on many more compressors because it has its own data acquisition unit. Also, it has one level more of intelligence. Beyond the monitoring of compressors that UpInsight is doing, it can identify potential failures before they happen thanks to artificial intelligence. It provides some automatic message to the customer highlighting the need for service. With this, our customers can minimize the risk of downtime. For me, it was really interesting. This new service combines artificial intelligence, which everyone can do.
I mean, Google can do artificial intelligence on compressors, but it combines that with something which is unique that we have. First, as OEM, we really understand what happens in the compressor. We can help the model to learn much faster due to our knowledge as OEM. The second thing is the basis that we have with Prognost. Since 15 years, we have this company Prognost, which is doing basically monitoring of compressors. We have a customer base. We have some hardware. We can start much quicker in terms of addressing customers and upgrading their Prognost equipment with this new software. Usually, our markets are quite conservative. After we launched this UpDetect in March, we had very strong interest from customers, and we have sold a few of these services.
Now, going forward, we expect that these services will become more and more important because they help customers reduce their maintenance cost, improve reliability. For us, they increase the loyalty with the customer, and they can also generate service. We can tell customers, "You have to do a service very soon." Typically, they will pick up the phone and call us rather than somebody else because we have already understood what can happen. The last example that I have here showcases how our new digital strategy works out. Previously, we had Prognost as a completely separate entity within Burckhardt. We even did not tell customers that it was the same. Now, since 18 months, we have integrated Prognost into our digital teams and sales teams. With that, we can create unique selling propositions and sales synergies.
Here, in this case, a customer in Saudi wanted to monitor a compressor, which was built by GSW, the Japanese OEM. In the past, Prognost would have offered their hardware and software. You see the picture on the left of what Prognost offers. They would have potentially won this project, which would have been a $200,000 project. Now comes Burckhardt into the picture. You probably remember that we acquired the GSW compressor drawings and IP four years ago. With that, we are the best to understand what really happens in that compressor. Also, during the fiscal year 2024, we have opened a new service center in Saudi, which enables us to offer the installation, the commissioning, and then we can provide local support to the customer. With that, we created a unique selling proposition, and we won the project.
If you compare to the business case before, this project was 10 times higher than what we would have won with Prognost only. It was a $2 million project, basically. Here, we see how we create synergies in our solutions by combining Prognost with the rest of the organization. This closes the first part of the highlights. Now, I'd like to step back a bit and look at our progress on the mid-range plan during the fiscal year 2024. You know this slide. I will present it every time. We presented it first at the Capital Market Day in 2022. It presents our four strategic pillars. We have made progress across all the pillars during the year. We have basically around 20 strategic initiatives which are behind these bullet points. We closed some of them during the year. We launched new ones.
You see here with the gray area the progress that we have made during the year. I will highlight a few of them. First, we strengthened our core business in China, also in the solar market with these seven hypercompressors that we have sold. Also, in the marine market with these new solutions developed for the low-pressure LNG tankers. On the service side, our growth on the marine segment has continued and further increased our position in the segment, especially with dry dock capabilities that we have further improved. Operational excellence was also in our focus. You've heard before about BC Korea. We've done that in other factories.
I also mentioned in the half-year call the new project Fit for Growth that we have in Switzerland to do basically something similar in a Swiss factory to absorb the growth within the factory walls so that we do not have to build a new factory in Europe in the coming years to absorb the expected growth. You also see on Rolf's presentation the leverage of the SG&A and how it improved our EBIT margin. Moving to the next box, the launch of the two new digital services, UpInsight and UpDetect, clearly contributes to building new growth avenues. Moving down the business foundations, here we continued with the rollout of our service ERP. We are also fully on track with our sustainability, as you will see in a couple of slides.
Finally, on the people side, I would like to mention the amazing 94% participation rate of our employees to the employee engagement survey. Also, the results of this engagement score have further increased compared to last year. That shows us that we are on the right track with the transformation. Focusing now on the systems division, you have again the four pillars on the left, the initiatives from the Capital Markets Day, and then the progress that we have made in the division in 2024. I will highlight here also a few topics. First, in the first pillar, I would like to highlight the increased coverage in certain regions where we see more potential. Middle East, there is clearly a lot of activity. Europe, with the energy transition, and even the U.S., let it be with old energies or new energies.
On the operational excellence pillar, I mentioned already Fit for Growth. Also, we continue to work on value engineering, which I had as a deep dive last year. We continue to increase the supports that we get out of our support center in India, where we have now more than 200 engineers and administrative people supporting the rest of the world. Finally, about building new growth avenues, we have started to increase the sales force or to build the sales force in regions where we see new potential. Australia is one of them. South America is another one. Turning now to the services division, we also made significant progress on the strategy implementation. For instance, customer satisfaction, we received this year 1,300 responses for customers. That is more than last year. Still, with a very high level of satisfaction.
In terms of developments, I mentioned the new service center in Saudi Arabia already, but we also created a new legal entity in Abu Dhabi, which is important to offer local consent to customers there. On the operational side, I already mentioned in the half-year that we have closed three service centers which were not performing in the U.S. We have also further localized spare parts production in China. We have bought new land in India where we are currently building a new global production center for spare parts. To build new growth avenues, I already mentioned the digital services and BC Activate, which were the main drive during the year. In summary, both divisions are progressing well. We are on track to realize the strategy. I'll come back to it later on.
In the new context of U.S. tariffs, the conclusion is the strategy remains the same. It's still valid. We just have to accelerate some of these aspects, especially operational excellence. I'll come back to that later on. Now, let me update you on sustainability. You know these are eight material topics, the KPIs, the targets that we have set for 2027. Here, basically, we are on track to reach all KPIs. I would like to highlight three of them. First, on climate, we were able to reduce our greenhouse gas emission intensity without the foundry. That's why we have 38% here versus the 40% in the press release, by 38% within one year. With that, we are fully on track to reach the minus 50% in 2027. The main lever to achieve this first KPI is the second KPI, renewable electricity.
Here, we made already a huge progress from the 23% renewable electricity which we had in 2021 to 71% today. We are very close to the target of 75%. We realized this by finalizing solar panel projects in Switzerland, in Korea, and in China. We have a big factory roof to take the sun. Also by buying more renewable electricity on the market. Finally, health and safety, one of our priorities. I mentioned that last time that we continue to work on our global standards for health and safety. Despite the increased load in the factories, we managed to reduce the accident rate to 0.4, which is clearly in line with our targets, which is a maximum of 0.7 for every year until 2027. Overall, good progress here, good progress in the mid-range plan.
Now I would like to hand over to Rolf Brändli, who will tell us more about the financials.
Thank you, Fabrice. Welcome to our annual results conference also from my side. Before starting with the financials, let me make a brief introductory remark. As already mentioned by Fabrice, we have implemented a change in accounting policy in 2024. Why did we do that? Fabrice has already indicated it. We have grown a lot. Our business has grown. With that, also the number of large projects that take a long time. We wanted to have a better allocated value creation process along these projects and also more stability in revenue recognition per se. We decided we set the threshold projects above CHF 7 million in value and with a duration of more than 12 months will be accounted for under the percentage of completion method.
The rest is still under the so-called completed contract method. With this change, we had to also perform a restatement on the 2023 numbers. That resulted in a lower sales by CHF 9 million and on a net income level by CHF 5.6 million. Whenever we compare with prior year figures, you will find along this presentation a footnote which mentions this POC change. It is just the systems division that is affected by that. Now, having said that, let's now take a look at the general overview of our results. The strong order intake and sales was already commented by Fabrice. I will show you in a minute how this breaks down into the divisions. At group level, gross profit increased by 20.1%, yielding a gross margin of 28%.
That's 1.8 percentage points above the last year, mainly due to a more favorable product mix in both divisions, the higher capacity utilization in all manufacturing and assembly facilities, and the reduction of unprofitable service business in the US. Fabrice indicated its selling, marketing, and general administrative expenses. They represented 11.9% of sales. That's a further leverage of 40 basis points compared to the prior year. This shows the further operational leverage on SG&A overall, which is in line with our mid-range plan. Research and development expenses increased by 12.8% to CHF 30 million, which accounts for 2.7% of sales. That's well within our target bandwidth of 2.5%-3% of sales. The higher spending was mainly focusing on strengthening our position in the marine and hydrogen markets with new compressor solutions. Order operating income was negative in fiscal 2024 by CHF 5.6 million.
That's mainly due to negative currency effects and the creation of bad debt provisions that was resulting from a reassessment of polysilicon customers in China. While last year's positive result was mainly driven by the contrary, there we had a recovery of already written-off accounts receivables and some real estate income. Total EBIT increased substantially by 23.2% to CHF 140.8 million, yielding an EBIT margin of 12.9%. With overall financial expenses at prior year level, also including our new bond or the increased bond, a tax rate of 23%, slightly below the last year, total net income ended the fiscal year at CHF 105.6 million, crossing the CHF 100 million mark for the first time. How does this result break down into the divisions? Starting with systems, following a peak in 2022, the global systems market further normalized in 2024 with a decrease predominantly driven by policy shifts in the HME segment.
Despite this, the systems division, the leading position the systems division has in growing subsegments like the LPG marine business, hyper compressors for EVA, low-density polyethylene, and the LNG market resulted in a strong order intake of CHF 825.4 million. That's a CHF 5.8 million growth, respectively CHF 6.9 million net of foreign exchange currency effects. On the back of the high order intake from the past two to three years, sales increased by 18.2%, net of effects effects 19.5% to almost CHF 750 million. Further optimization measures in the field of production logistics and cooperation with strategic suppliers enabled the timely delivery of a very high number of projects in 2024. Gross profit increased by 41.1% year over year, CHF 242.8 million, yielding a gross margin of 19%.
That's 3 percentage points above the prior year, mainly due to the more favorable product mix, as well as the before-mentioned high production capacity utilization in all the manufacturing sites. The high gross margin and the further operational leverage on SG&A expenses have led to an EBIT increase in the systems division of 67.8% to CHF 68 million, generating an EBIT margin of 9.1%, which is 2.7 percentage points above the last year. Moving over to the services division, the services market, they have been strongly influenced by different local economic conditions. Order intake overall fell by 5.4%, net of effects. That's a reduction of 4.5% to CHF 326 million.
The main reason for this decrease was the closure of three service centers in the U.S., where we focus on high margin locations within the country, and also the decrease in European markets, especially in Germany, due to economic and political uncertainty in the course of 2024. On the positive side, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, they grew at a good pace, but could not compensate for the drop in the U.S. and in Europe. Worth to be mentioned is the further increase in service presence also in the marine market, thanks to the growing installed base on the one hand and our strong worldwide service network that we have in place for services. At CHF 347 million sales, we're 2.2% above the prior year's figure, or 3.1% net of effects.
This rather moderate growth has been affected by the same factors that I just mentioned on the order intake level. Gross profit increased overproportionally by 6.3% to CHF 163.5 million, resulting in a gross margin of 47.1%, which is 1.8 percentage points above the prior year. The higher gross margin is resulting from the higher share of spare parts in the sales mix and the before-mentioned closure of U.S. facilities, where we reduced the volume of low-margin business. This significantly higher gross profit reduced by one-off expenses related to the closure of the service centers and the negative effects impacts resulted then still in an overall EBIT increase in services of 2.6% year over year to CHF 85.7 million. That is an EBIT margin of 24.7%, 10 basis points above the prior year. On this slide, I would like to guide you briefly through the summarized cash flow statement.
Cash flow from operating activities was significantly above the prior year, mainly driven by the higher net income on the one hand, as well as the favorable development in the net working capital as per the balance sheet closing date. We will have a closer look at that when we look at the balance sheet. Cash flow from investing activities amounted to CHF -17 million, consisting of CapEx investments in the amount of CHF 25.4 million. That's more or less at an eye level with depreciation, mainly in maintenance and the bottlenecking CapEx. We did not have to invest into growth CapEx to achieve these sales that we have seen. What is also included here is cash in in the amount of about CHF 8 million from the sale of property and equipment in the context with the closure of the service centers, trucks, real estate that is shown on the disposition.
The cash flow from financing activities is including the outflow for the payment of the dividend last year, in the amount of CHF 52.5 million, which is CHF 12 million more than in the year before. Furthermore, we have also repaid bank loans amounting to about CHF 66 million. On the other hand, we increased our bond by CHF 50 million to CHF 150 million, again with a four-year term at a very similar coupon interest rate like the one that we had before. Currency translation effects were mainly related to cash positions in subsidiaries outside Switzerland. The borrowing slightly decreased by CHF 17 million compared to last year and is mainly consisting of the bond amount in total of this CHF 150 million.
With this, the overall net financial position turned positive to close to CHF 70 million, a strong swing from last year's net debt of minus CHF 62 million. On the balance sheet, we continue to demonstrate a robust balance equity. Property, plant, and equipment remained at the same level as in the last year. As I mentioned, we did not have to spend any substantial growth. CapEx were to be mentioned. Inventories decreased by about 4% to CHF 302 million. The balance between advance payments that we get from customers on large projects, work in progress, and advance payments to suppliers remained positive and further increased by CHF 54 million as per the closure date.
Despite the sales growth of 12.6%, trade receivables in the fiscal year were slightly below last year at CHF 356 million. What has to be mentioned, however, is that the amount or the percentage of overdue positions more than 90 days has increased to 24% of the total accounts receivables. That was at the level of 12% the year before. This increase is mainly related to projects not only in China, but also in India, where we had some large projects. In the U.S., measures have been taken. As we speak, in the meantime, we have received substantial amounts on those positions. That is the snapshot per closing date. Total shareholder equity rose by CHF 44 million to CHF 340 million. With this, the equity ratio went up to 29.1%.
That's 120 basis points above the prior year, despite the higher dividends that we paid in 2024 and negative effects that is also reflected on this position. Now, I would like to give you an update on Renoir and value creation slide that we shared already in the last year's presentation. Our Renoir further increased to 32.6% in 2024, resulting from the combination of a higher EBIT margin and a higher asset productivity. As you can see from the graph on this slide here, the profitability at level EBIT margin has continuously improved over the past six years, up from 7.4% in fiscal year 2018 to 12.9% in the fiscal year that which has closed. Within the same time span, our asset productivity, or in other words, sales over net operating assets has doubled, and the Renoir increased by more than 20 percentage points with that.
Now, if you compare us with the peers, which are indicated with those dots here on the slide, you will see that some of them have indeed a higher EBIT margin, but none of them has the same asset productivity, at least those that have published figures to compare with. This has also a reason. The high asset productivity is also linked to our business model. In a systems project, you have about 50% or sometimes even less, only consisting of the compressor. The rest is auxiliaries like electric drive, cooler stampers, etc. We can leverage the asset base of our suppliers. We do not need manufacturing capacity or manpower to produce this roughly 50% of approached value. Earnings per share have continuously grown since fiscal year 2018 as well, with a CAGR of 25.1% up to CHF 31.20 per share.
Based on this strong result, and Fabrice mentioned that the board will propose a dividend of CHF 18 per share to the AGM for approval within the guidance of 50-70%. Worth to be mentioned is also that Burckhardt Compression has paid to its shareholders every single year since the IPO without interruption dividend. As you may have seen or realized, Burckhardt Compression continues also in 2024 to be listed in the SPI Select Dividend 20 index. Last but not least, on this slide, we would like to share with you the capital allocation strategy or reaffirm what we have already presented during the capital market in 2022, our disciplined approach in allocating capital. On the one hand, we support organic growth with maintenance CapEx.
Some dedicated CapEx will also be necessary for investments in the context with the MRP initiatives, but all under Renoir greater back conditions. On the M&A side, we focus on bolt-on acquisitions with a focus on the services division. That does not mean that we will not look into other opportunities as well. On the shareholder return, we are committed to redistribute part of the profit within this bandwidth of 50-70%. We are also aiming as a kind of an ambition level to have an equity ratio of 30% plus. With this, I would like to thank you for your attention and hand back to Fabrice. Thank you all. Now let's go to the part which I'm sure you're interested in as well, or especially our outlook. I will start first with the potential impact on U.S. tariffs.
I will look beyond into the mega trends that support our business and end up in the middle with the outlook for the fiscal year 2025. U.S. tariffs present a clear short-term challenge, but mostly indirectly through the impact they can have on the economy and on some of our customers. Looking on the left of the slide, the impact is in three areas. First, the direct impact. We expect it to be neutral to slightly negative. We actually do not see any impact on our backlog for projects, for instance, that we have in the U.S. We also see a limited impact on future projects because none of our direct competitors has a factory in the U.S. It means that the customers will have to pay the tariffs and will have to pay more for the compressors, basically.
Now, where there could be a limited impact, it's on our spare parts export from Switzerland to the U.S., which are now hit by the steel tariffs and or the other tariffs. Depends. We never know. It changes every day. That is, however, a small part of our business and that we can localize step by step because the main part of a compressor, a customer has no choice. Nobody can build this spare part. What he can do is on the simple spare part, then he can try to find some alternative suppliers. Again, this is a very small part of the business. Today, customers are paying the additional 30% or 50% without challenging that too much. They don't have, they can't change quickly. Again, we can localize step by step if they start to do it.
Regarding the macro environment, the lower GDP growth could lead to slower demand in certain regions. Also, the Swiss franc, we have to mention, that could also, of course, affect our competitiveness with our Swiss factory. Finally, going to the BC markets, we expect some various response from the different markets. If I look at the hydrogen markets, clearly the IRA in the U.S. is a negative impact on this market. If I look at the oil price going down, that's also not positive because that makes hydrogen more expensive in relative terms. If I look at the PCI markets, a slowdown of GDP growth will also potentially slow down the demand for polymers and therefore the demand for additional capacity in terms of polymer production. On the other side, there can also be some positive aspects. I mentioned before, Middle East.
Middle East has a lot of energy, cheap gas, and from a geopolitical perspective, it's a neutral place. We see investments now going into the Middle East. Also China. China today is still very dependent on petrochemicals import from the U.S. They continue to build capacity in order to be less dependent. That's the segment by segment approach. Now, on a concrete project by project basis, we can see some potential delays on decisions from some customers on large projects for new projects, not the ones which have already started. The ones running where they do not have yet ordered the compressors, they will continue. New ones may have a small delay for decisions.
On the service side as well, larger projects like upgrades of compressors, maybe customers take a bit more time to decide if they do it now or if they wait another few months to see how the situation with tariff is. That said, that's the rest of the slide, it's important to highlight that we have quite some stability in our setup. First, we have this very large order backlog, which we have even increased in 2024. We have a diversified business model, a global market presence. We also have a resilient service business. I mean, as long, even with zero growth, the compressors continue to run. As they run every day, they need spare parts. They need maintenance. That provides some stability here. Finally, we have a global footprint with local value added.
We can play with that to avoid tariffs or to go around with the tariffs very clearly. Nevertheless, we do not just rely on that. We have some actions in place to mitigate the potential impact of these tariffs. As I said before, it consists in basically accelerating some of the things that we were already doing, accelerating operational excellence, MRP initiatives, accelerating local value added, for instance, in China with the spare parts, in India, I mentioned it before, and also further diversifying our offering, launching new services. With this, we can mitigate and provide some positive dynamic into our competitiveness and into our orders. That is the, let's say, the short term, and we watch this very carefully. In our outlook, we have considered all these plus and minus as we know them today. We will update you during the half-year call.
There might be a number of new things until then. Now, if we look further ahead beyond the short term, our business is supported by three mega trends. Our strategy is well in place to capture the benefits from that. First, the growing global population, especially the middle class, create needs for more polymers, I mean, more cars, more furniture, meaning more polymers, more transportation, meaning more energy, and all this more fertilizers for food, etc. All these applications require compressors. Also, new aspect, artificial intelligence requires a lot of additional energy. Looking at the U.S., there is a planning that the electricity demand in the U.S. could double between now and 2035 just because of AI. That means more energy, which, depending on maybe on U.S. states, might be with renewable energy or with natural gas, but clearly need for more energy due to growing global population.
Not only is there a need for more energy, but it needs to be more secure. One reason is geopolitics. We see that in Europe, for instance, with all the new LNG import terminals which are created, and they generate a need for LNG tankers, which create a demand for compressors. Another reason is the challenge related to intermittent renewable electricities like solar or wind that creates a need for energy storage, which can also be done with molecules, with natural gas or with green molecules. Finally, even moving to the right, even if some countries are moving backwards nowadays, the world continues its transition towards renewable energies, especially, of course, in Europe and also in China. China is moving very fast here. The first effect is the increase of natural gas in the global energy mix.
If you look at 2024, 40% of the additional energy demand has been covered with natural gas. Much more than oil, coal, nuclear, hydro, and all the rest. Natural gas is the fast-growing energy source, meaning more compressors. Also, of course, the energy transition requires new infrastructure investment into these renewable solar panels. Again, hyper compressors, hydrogen, green ammonia, meaning tankers, etc., etc. Overall, for all these reasons, independently of what happens in the short term, the world will need more compressors. The strategy that we have is basically the continuation of the strategy that we presented at the Capital Markets Day. It is in place today. Now, in the context of these mega trends and the U.S. tariffs, let's move to the outlook for 2025. To wrap up the previous slides, we are clearly in a dynamic operating environment with some uncertainties.
However, we have a resilient setup and we have mitigation actions in place. Given all this, we expect sales for fiscal year 2025 at a similar level as 2024, meaning around CHF 1.1 billion for the group with an EBIT margin also at a similar level as 2024. In terms of balance within the year, we expect a stronger profitability in the second part of the year due to the product mix and the service mix as well. Basically, with this guidance, we plan to repeat the record year 2024 in a context with a higher Swiss franc. With that, we also remain fully on track to reach our 2027 MRP guidance, which is CHF 1.2 billion sales with an EBIT margin between 12-15%. With this, it closes our presentation.
Together with Rolf, we're happy to answer your questions, which we will probably take first from the audience here and then online as they come. Great. First question here.
Yes, thank you, Adrian Pehl from ODDO BHF. Actually, I've got two questions. First of all, on your guidance with respect to the EBIT margin. I mean, obviously, you're not necessarily guiding for gross profit, but I was just curious to hear, given that 2024 has been strong on the gross profit margin as well. Is that something we should expect, that the stability of the gross profit margin is some kind of given, or what do you see in your order backlog that you currently have in terms of that KPI? I.e., phrased differently, do you need OpEx savings to achieve the EBIT margin target? The second question is on the change on the accounting towards POC.
I mean, I understood that 2023 restated is a bit lower in terms of profits. Should we assume that 2025 will then, and actually 2024 will then be positively influenced by POC accounting versus the old standard or not necessarily? Thank you.
Thank you for your questions, which I will probably give to Rolf.
I mean, on the first question, it's pretty much, as you said, at the end, it's basically given by the backlog where we know which projects will be invoiced at what point in time. Due to the product mix, there are different gross margins attached to each project. We have a pretty good view on that one. On the POC side, the restatement in 2023 is kind of an effect. You have some projects also overlapping with 2022, which is not restated, and then with 2025.
For 2025, we do not have a set of audited figures that we could share here with you. For 2024, thank you, Fabrice, for 2024. We do not have an audited completed contract method set of figures that we could share. What we can say, however, is we would have been within the guided range as well. There is not too much of an impact in 2024. It is a phase in that goes then quite smooth down the road also to 2025. Maybe an extension to your first question, we do not need OpEx savings to realize the same EBIT margin, meaning we expect more or less the same gross margin. Here, maybe your comment on that, that is linked to the record orders in LPG tankers, which I mentioned before.
They have a very healthy gross margin and that will carry certainly in 2025 and also in 2026, this backlog that we have gained on LPG. Yep,
Arben? Good morning. I would have two questions. First, in terms of demand, I mean, it sounds like you are expecting rather stable to slightly declining demand across most of your segments. Maybe just, yeah, strong normalization in your solar business. Is that roundabout correct how you see the market as of now? The second question around your service business, if you could quantify how much the sales impact was from those three centers that you closed, I think in H1 it was high single digit. Regarding your service business, I mean, there will be a boost at some point based on all the compressors that you've sold, but I guess it's still a bit too early.
That should maybe start next year, I would guess, if you could elaborate on that.
Okay. T hank you. I'll take the two market questions and give the financial question to Rolf. Talking about solar, indeed, that's one of our key pillars of the order intake in 2024. We are basically in a similar situation as one year ago where I said, wow, we received last year, it was eight, this time seven compressors, very strong demand. Same situation. We still see overcapacity in the solar panel markets. However, the backlog or the pipeline for such projects is still quite healthy. Nevertheless, we think it cannot continue like this all the time. When will it start to decrease? I don't know. Today, I'm in the same position as last year. Same kind of backlog, a lot of discussion with customers on new projects.
We'll see if they have the investment decisions or if they postpone the investment decisions based on the uncertainties that we have here. On the service market, I think I said it also last year, you have to count four to five years between the order intake of new equipment and the first order intake for service for that equipment. Why so long? It takes basically one and a half, two years to deliver the compressor, then maybe six months to install it. Then we have two to three years guarantee period where if there is something to do, we do not charge for it. Overall, it needs four to five years to see the uplift in service. Coming back to the peak of order intake in 2022, it will start to show in 2026, then 2027.
I mentioned at the moment, we have more than 20 hypercompressors into production and not yet delivered. They might even start 2027, 2028 because these are very long projects. The question on the impact of
the closure of the service centers that was announced in the first half of the fiscal year and pretty much was also executed there. This high single-digit number has not changed. It is around CHF 10 million max. More questions in the room? Yeah, one more. Do we already have questions from online? Okay, then maybe we can take one.
Thanks, Al. Can I?
Sorry, I was seeing one behind.
Yeah, Patrick Rafaiz from UBS. Two or three questions, please. One would be the order environment now starting in fiscal 2025. You mentioned there is a risk of maybe some delays, especially for larger projects that have not been started yet.
Can you give us just a hint how you've started on the order level early in the year? That would be the first question.
I mean, it's only two months. You know, even six months is a very short period for us because of this large project, which can be a bit bulky. I wouldn't like to comment too much on two months. I can just say there is some uncertainty and that's why we say it very clearly.
Okay, thanks. On the balance sheet and cash flow, balance sheet very strong, net cash now with CHF 200 million plus operating cash flow, but also advance payments in there. How should we think about cash flow this year, assuming a stable revenue environment? I guess you will be building up or absorbing some working capital now. Yeah, any question here you can provide?
Yeah, right. We cannot really guide on a cash flow. That's a pretty tricky one. It's a snapshot as per balance sheet closing date. In 2024, we had a swing of CHF 50 million, more than CHF 50 million in the balance between the advance payments versus what we have invested into work in progress and to suppliers. That depends a lot also on the new orders coming in with new advance payments. That's really not possible for us to guide on that, but I would not see a tremendous swing on that.
Okay, thanks. The third question would be on the services. You talked a lot about the new offering with Detect, right? And the already launched solutions. Can you give us some color on what the share is of your service revenues today and how you expect that to develop within the mid-range plan? Yes.
I mean, today, the UpDetect, we launched it in March. It is really not relevant for the revenue today. What we have planned, I mean, the digital business is around, let's say, CHF 20 million-CHF 25 million, including the Prognost hardware and software that we know. I think I've communicated that before. As part of the mid-range plan, we want to double that. This is with the drive of the new services. We are still in the early phase of that because we just launched the services, but the ambition would be to double the digital services. By the way, the project that I mentioned, moving from a CHF 200,000 project into a CHF 2 million project with more scope, will really help to reach that doubling.
Yes, one more?
Yannick Ryf from ZKB. I have a question regarding those overdue receivables that are longer than 90 days.
I mean, those have more than doubled compared to the previous year. I think they went up from CHF 42 million to CHF 86 million. The question is now, how much of that has now been paid until now? Because you touched on that. That's the first question. The second question is about the capacity utilization from your production plant. How high was that last year? Was that roughly 80-90%, or are you running now at a certain limit?
Take the first one, I'll use it.
No, on the first one, I mean, these are really large projects. As I mentioned, we have projects in China. We have large projects, very large projects in India. That is actually the largest standalone position.
Also in the U.S., where it is related to new energy customers, they only generate cash flow when they have everything up and running and can produce their products. I cannot disclose figures here, obviously, just as a snapshot as of today. What I can say is the payments are ongoing. We receive money. We also always have a leverage because these customers, they need also, they have a time schedule. They have an end customer if it is an EPC. We have a good leverage to get paid. As we speak, we have received substantial amounts on all these three positions.
Overall, you are not worried about that?
No, I mean, what we had to do, of course, is we had to do a reassessment on the bad debt provisions.
That's the reason why we increased that by close to CHF 5 million for Chinese polysilicon customers, where we saw it a bit more critical. Other than that, there's no reason to be worried now.
The capacity?
The capacity, I mean, we have a record number of compressors delivered. Basically, we are at least 80%, probably closer to 90%. Also, we mentioned it somewhere in the annual report, we have sold 800, almost 800 delivered, but we have sold almost or around 1,100 compressors during the year. These ones will start to enter the production. That's why it's important that we realize Fit for Growth projects in Switzerland to get even more through the factory. We should be very close to the 90% during the year.
We have enough capacity to deliver basically the same sales level because in 2025, we have the same sales level. We are getting close to the capacity we need for the CHF 1.2 billion. Here, I mentioned what we need is in India, this for service, the global parts production center, and for systems expanding the factory in India. That is what we need. Also, a gross CapEx of CHF 20 million or so.
Okay, maybe we will take one question online from Thorsten Sauter, Kappler. First question, can you provide an indicative split per application in China? This has been moving a lot the past few years. Now we see with these hypercompressors and also with polysilicon, the driver behind our solar panels, that remains very clearly the strongest driver for our order intake in China.
What has decreased a lot is the refinery business because China does not want to produce or to refine their oil themselves. They prefer to buy refined products and then go to petrochemicals. Petrochemicals would be the second largest. Maybe the first one is solar, maybe half petrochemicals, probably around 25%. The rest is the new applications that we have developed in China that we did not have three years ago, marine applications and hydrogen for mobility energy, green ammonia. Again, China continues with full speed with green energy and we have some orders there. Second question, how do you expect the geographic revenue mix to change in the years ahead?
As you know, as part of our strategy from the Capital Markets Day, we wanted to reduce our dependence from China and especially by growing in the U.S., where historically we were not that strong and we wanted to grow. This is happening step by step. Although if you look at the annual report in terms of sales, the level, the percentage of sales coming from China remains at the same level. I think it's 42% if I had the figure right. The order intake share coming from China has clearly lowered in 2024, meaning we will start to see the shift happening. Here I mentioned U.S. keeps remains the key topic, maybe not for new energies, but maybe more for fossil fuels. Especially Middle East is a newcomer, which we did not really see so strong three years ago.
Now Middle East will help to rebalance from China and also Europe with all this new project for new energies, which I mentioned before, which should come in the next couple of years and will help grow Europe as a share of the total. This target of rebalancing from China is happening as we talk and should continue in the next couple of years. Questions here? I'll take the next question from online. Can you provide an indication on CapEx in the years ahead? One for Europe.
Yep, thank you for that question. I mean, you have seen the last four years we were hovering between CHF 20 million-CHF 25 million CapEx, which is more or less our maintenance or replacement CapEx.
We also said during the Capital Market Day that we count with about CHF 30 million each for expansion of capacity and for IT investments over a five-year time span. We might not need to use that up in total. Fabrice mentioned earlier, we are about to build up a factory in India. Next year in the 2025 fiscal year, we will certainly have some expansion CapEx, but that remains to be seen how much we really need. We certainly need something for digitalization where we have our entire enterprise architecture reviewed and set up differently so that we are also ready for further growth between the two divisions to align the processes and the tools that we have in place. That is what I can say.
Overall, for the five years, I mean, the CHF 60 million that we mentioned over five years in the Capital Market Day, it is certainly enough.
Let's say it like this. It's certainly enough. I think that the second question is also covered in your answer. A question from Adrian Knoblauch, Tetkabe. The CHF 86 million receivables, what and when triggers them to be written off? What is your policy there? Are they automatically written down or are they dependent on a subjective assessment?
Yes, thank you for that question, Adrian. Indeed, it's a case-by-case assessment. Each position, it's not a % depending on the overdue days or anything like that. We do a thorough assessment. As I mentioned, I mean, as long as the customers are healthy, we always have a good leverage to put also pressure back on customers.
We deal a lot with EPCs, engineering, procurement, contracting companies, where they, well, it's difficult to get the money out of their pockets, but that's when we come in also with pressure if they need spare part services, people for installation. It is a case-by-case assessment. There is no automatic process. Now, no further questions online. Any? Yes, some more?
Yeah, follow up, please. Just wondering if you could share some initial thoughts. We yesterday saw the announced merger of Chart Industries and Flowserve. Chart owns Howden, right? They do reciprocating compressors. Any thoughts?
Yes. I mean, for the history, I mean, Howden was for us one of the key competitors as an independent player. Two, three years ago, they were acquired by Chart. Actually, they were not really integrated within Chart because this is a different beast. Chart is a lot of process equipment.
Here, it's an OEM for turning machine. The factories are completely different. We have kept the brand Howden. Basically, it did not change much for us. They were still here as Howden. Now, Chart is acquired by an even bigger player, Flowserve, which is especially in pumps, I mean, flow control, etc. I do not think why Howden would be changed. My assessment is that they will continue to drive Howden the same way, more or less independent. For us, we should still continue to see it as an independent player and as a competitor. I also do not think that being part of Flowserve provides them any advantage against us. We have not seen that as part of Chart. The factories, again, are different. What we have seen, on the contrary, when competitors have been acquired, for instance, Dresser-Rand was a very strong competitor historically.
I mean, they have most of the installed base in the U.S., for instance. They have been acquired by Siemens, now part of Siemens Energy. Since then, they become a much less relevant competitor somehow. Why? Because the reciprocating compressors are typically smaller than anything else they offer, turbines and etc., etc. The management, I assume, the salespeople focus on the big items and the reciprocating compressors tend to have less focus, we assume. Also, on the service side, they become part of a big conglomerate and typically that does not help to increase the service mentality and the responsiveness. On the service side, we also see much less this player. I do not know what will happen with Howden. Again, so far as part of Chart, there was no change. I do not assume any change as part of Flowserve. Thank you. Good question.
There was one more.
Yeah, I've got one actually on your capital spending if you want. So when I understood it correctly, obviously you were trying to lower your DSO, so working capital should improve over the years. You want to increase your margin. That should mean finally a very good cash flow in the next couple of years. I assume that your balance sheet continues to deleverage even under the payout ratio that you have outlined, obviously. Would you at some point in time when you reach your medium-term goals, assume that you would also remunerate shareholders a little bit more in terms of share buyback? Is that an option? Secondly, since you have been spoken about bolt-on acquisitions, is that something you're continuing to pursue or do you feel well set up with the technology portfolio that you have? Thank you.
Thank you. Good questions. Maybe you can extend, but I will start to answer it. First, indeed, the balance sheet today is quite positive with a positive net position. I would say today with the uncertainty, it's not a bad thing per se, but indeed, at least once per year, we review all the options, put all the options on the table for the board. How do we use the cash? Which leverage do we want? We make some projections. Today, no options are excluded. Everything gets discussed. The way, if we would do that, the way to give the cash back to shareholders is also discussed. Nothing excluded. Now, indeed, we have some CapEx for fiscal year 2025, so we need some cash for that. The net working capital, now we've seen we have a positive financing of projects, about CHF 60 million.
Once we deliver these projects, that should normalize. M&A, bolt-on acquisitions, we have a couple at the moment, quite active. Not big things because typically in our business, if we want to remain focused on reciprocating compressors, which is our strength, then the number of targets are quite limited. On the service side, we find some we have at the moment interesting targets, so we keep some money for that. You never know with the uncertainties, if one OEM, maybe a smaller player, would come to the market, we are ready to step in and we need some cash for that. I think that comes back to the graphs shown by Rolf.
All options are here with the priority, organic CapEx, M&A, but the options, when it becomes too much, we will look at it at least once per month and take some decisions or the board will take some decisions. Yep. Very good. Last chance. No? Online also not. Thank you very much for your attention online. Thank you for coming here together with us and I would like to close this presentation now. For the ones who are here, we have a small aperitif outside. Thank you for your presence and for your attention. Thank you very much.