Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of HUBER+SUHNER's Full Year Result For 2021. It's a great pleasure to welcome also some people physically in the room. It's always nice to see some faces in front of one and not just speak with the camera. I am going to give you a very brief overview of the business year 2021 before Ivo Wechsler will deep dive into the financial results and its details, and I will follow up and wrap up with an overview of what we do with regard to our sustainability, re-explain a bit our strategic focus, how we see the market trends, and also give you an outlook for the year 2022. We will then have a chance to close our presentations with a Q&A session. Let me give you the big picture and put 2021 into perspective to start our presentation.
While we have also suffered in the first COVID year from a decline in sales and EBIT, 2021 has started completely differently. We have seen completely different levels of business volumes coming in as of January 2021, and these levels of business continued for the full year until its end. As a result of that, we could significantly increase our order intake by a growth rate above 30% and also grow our top line sales by a double-digit percentage. All three market segments have contributed. Important for us, and we will come to that when we look into the markets, is that also our dedicated growth initiatives or the markets for the future, they have contributed very well and above average to the growth. There were significantly higher activities in all market segments and across all market verticals with very few exceptions.
As I already outlined, the very special circumstances concern the fact that we have seen consistently high business volume throughout the year, including the summer period, as well as the normally weaker second half. As a result of our top line growth, also, on the bottom line, we delivered absolute operating profit and net income on record levels in the company's history. Our EBIT margin reached a level of 12.1% and increased by almost four percentage points. Our net income rose by two-thirds year-on-year. I would like to remind you that for the first time, this time we report the full-year figures based on our new market segment structure and our three market segments. We have already reported our half-year figures in those three segments, and for the full year, it's the first time.
This new market segment organization has been introduced with the start of the year 2021 and is considered to be now fully implemented. We have basically turned our cube by 90 degrees, shifting from a technology organization to a market segment organization. Our objective with that new organization is to address the markets with more focus and also leverage on our wide range of technologies. The figures at a glance show the absolute values, and you can see on order intake level, we have almost achieved the CHF 1 billion. This represents the second-highest order intake in HUBER+SUHNER's history, while net sales rose to CHF 863 million, the third-best sales in HUBER+SUHNER's history, and on the bottom line, record levels in absolute terms with CHF 105 million EBIT and CHF 87 million of net income.
Here you can see our EBIT development over the last five years. You can see that, with 2021 we have clearly now left our mid-term guidance, which so far stood at 8%-10%. You can see that, with the exception of 2017, the last three years have been clearly within the guidance, including the difficult COVID year 2020. With this, with the last year, 2021, we have now left the guidance, clearly on the upper end, and I will come to that at the end when we present our outlook and our guidance, going forward. The industry, all three segments have contributed, as I mentioned, but industry segment contributed most, with impressive growth, coupled with a very high level of profitability.
I cannot point out just one market vertical that was at the basis of this good development. All industrial markets across all our applications developed really very well in 2021, including our core market Test and Measurement , and our growth initiative, Aerospace and Defense . Also the niches here contributed with very good growth. Hence we achieved on order level as well as on sales level, growth in excess of 20%, and the profitability which rose compared to the adjusted 2020 figures by a bit more than 5% on a new level of 21.2%. For you to remember, the technology sold to industrial customers include basically products of all three technologies RF, FO, and LF. The dominant technology in the industrial applications is the former RF, with 62%.
The Communication segment has leaped in orders with close to 50% growth, while the EBIT margin improved into the double digits, very well into the double digits, and orders reached a new record level here of CHF 420 million, while sales jumped by 18% to CHF 341 million. The driver behind, we will see that when I show you the development by region, was the expansion of 5G mobile networks, particularly in the Americas region, and also the fixed network infrastructure growth. The growth initiative in Communication is Data Center , which also contributed to the increase in sales. The sharp rise of devices in networks boosts the data traffic and drives the infrastructure investments forward. In the Communication segment, it's 85% of sales related to fiber optic products.
The transportation segment also contributed to the growth with double-digit sales growth. Orders rose even by 26%, but the bottom line here was behind our expectations and reached just a level of 5%. The business in transportation is divided in road transportation and rail transportation. Those two businesses, they developed quite differently during 2021. We have seen significantly lower volumes in railway, particularly in China, and here also predominantly related to the high-speed programs. Public transportation has not suffered probably among the markets with the most decline, as people were hesitant to use public transportation excessively during COVID times, and particularly in China, where mobility was hindered by the government. It has had an impact in the investments in rail infrastructure and trains.
On the other side, we have seen the automotive sub-segment developing favorably, and particularly there, our positive development was driven by our new initiative or our growth initiative related to the electrification of the powertrain in Electric Vehicles . There were substantial upfront investments done for products that go into Autonomous Driving applications which have burdened the result of this segment. Here we talk about these high-resolution radar antennas that go into the next generation for distance radars, which have not contributed substantially to the top line while they have consumed significant upfront investments. Also, burden on the bottom line for the transportation segment above average were the rising raw material prices, especially copper, and also the price increases for insulation compounds. For you to remember, in the transportation segment, 86% of our sales is attributable to low-frequency products.
This shows the three segments in an overview, but what I would like to highlight here is that despite the fact that our smallest segment has grown the least. It's still a very well-balanced diversification with transportation segment accounting for 29% of our turnover, while the largest segment communication accounts for 39%. A bit more to say, we can do here on the net sales by region, because, here what sticks out is the very dynamic development of the business in the Americas with 61.5% growth. I mentioned that at the origin of the very positive development in the communication segment were 5G rollouts in the Americas, U.S.A. and Canada, and that is at the origin of this very dynamic development that is shown here for the Americas region.
EMEA developed also quite well, but I would say in average with the group and grew by 15%, expanding the lead over the other two regions, while in Asia-Pacific, we see the impact of the decline of our railway business in China with the fact that that the Asia-Pacific region declined in sales by 9%. With that, I'm already at the end of our first section, the overview, and I would like to hand over to our CFO, Ivo Wechsler, who is going to give you the details of our last year's financial result.
Thank you, Urs. Ladies and gentlemen, also a warm welcome from my side to all people in this room, but also to all participants at the webcast. We have heard 2021 was a record year in different aspects, and I think the most important factor was that we actually had two excellent semesters, as you can see here on this page. When it comes to top line, but also bottom line, quite a similar picture. The other message to this slide is that we not only improved significantly compared to the 2020 year, but also to the pre-COVID year 2019. Let's go a little bit into more details, and I start with the order intake. As you can see here, we grew by 33% or almost a quarter of a billion CHF. Out of this 33%, 30% is organic growth.
It's the highest contribution from the communication segment with 47%, followed by industry with 24%, and also transportation with a double-digit growth of 15%. The currency and copper contributed about 3%. However, currency you can more or less neglect as almost everything is contributed by copper, which has then also the highest impact on the transportation segment. On the net sales side, we grew by 17% or CHF 125 million. Organically, we grew by 14%. The highest organic growth had the industry segment with 22%, followed by the communication segment, 18%, and no organic growth or a flat development in the transportation segment. Also here, currency and copper, 3%, almost all related to copper. On the gross margin side, we had two different semesters.
A very, very strong one in the first half year, and let's say a still decent one in the second half of the year. Overall, year-over-year, we could still improve our gross margin by almost 3 percentage points. Why this was possible, first of all, mix. You have seen that, our high margin business in the industrial business grew the most in sales, followed by actually also the communication business, with a high share also in America and, a decline in Asia. This mix in terms of market segment and also geography allowed us to sell more high margin business than in the previous year. The second topic is actually efficiency.
First of all, due to the higher volumes, we had a better fixed cost absorption, and we have an ongoing cost optimization program when it also comes to production cost. On the other side, we had already started to headwind, in particular in the second half of the year with respect to increased material prices, but also due to higher transportation cost. Going forward, it's important that we can pass on those price increases, at least with a certain delay, also to our customers. Overall, it has to be said that there was no production stop due to material shortages last year. However, we also now experience much longer lead times than a few months ago. On the operating expense side, we increased the absolute amount by CHF 20 million to CHF 226 million.
However, relative to the turnover, it was a decline from 27.9% - 26.2%. The highest increase we had in R&D expenses because we want to continue to have a high innovation power. In the meantime, we spent 6.5% of our cost, 6.5% of our turnover in R&D expenses. The highest increase we had in the industry segment. The second high increase was in sales and marketing costs. There it was really volume driven because there, not all costs are normalized yet because we were still very restricted to travel. I think there will be some more cost to come when going forward, when our salespersons can travel again, hopefully this year.
Overall, on the EBIT side, we have heard is a new absolute record amount for HUBER+SUHNER history with CHF 105 million EBIT. This corresponds to a 12.1% EBIT margin. A very high contribution from the Industry segment with a margin over 20%, with 20%. Communication more than doubled to a double-digit margin of 12.2%. As we heard before, Transportation due some pre-investment and due to no organic growth was still behind our expectation with 5.1%. Overall, the EBIT, absolute EBIT grew by more than 70% compared to last year. On the financial result was a weaker result, but it has nothing to do with the FX, because there we had a similar level.
However, we had a higher negative other financial result, which mainly was caused by more cash repatriation from China, where we have to pay 5% withholding tax, which cannot be reclaimed. Furthermore, we also started to pay negative interest last year. On the group tax rate, we achieved another year of a very low tax rate, and the expected tax rate with 19.2% was even lower than the previous year. I think here we benefited from a very good mix, so from a high share of profits in Switzerland, but also in China, where we actually have a high-tech status. Furthermore, there were several elements which were able to reduce the tax rate to the effective tax rate to 14.7%.
I would like to mention that we could use loss carry-forwards from our previous acquisition in Polatis. We also had R&D super deduction here in Switzerland, but also in China. We have another preference regime in the U.S., where when you do actually export out of the U.S., in our case to Canada, we also benefit from a special discount on the tax rate. Overall, this low tax rate is obviously not sustainable, so I expect already a higher tax rate this year and then even more in 2023. Because in 2023, the U.K. has already announced a tax increase, and secondly, HUBER+SUHNER will have to apply the OECD 15% minimum taxation.
As we don't know all the details, how it's really calculated and what is still allowed in terms of, let's say the Swiss finishing, we still or I still expect that we'll have to pay a certain top-up tax here in Switzerland, and this will lead to a higher tax rate also for HUBER+SUHNER. On the bottom line, also here a new record result with CHF 87.3 million. This corresponds to a 10.1% return on sales. Therefore, also our earnings per share increased significantly from 2.66 to 4.45. As already indicated a year ago, we are in a high investment cycle level as we invested last year CHF 51 million.
First of all, we actually consolidate our two sites in Pfäffikon to one site, and therefore we are building a new building. We are constructing a new building. We also significantly invest in new production equipment, in particular with respect to this radar antenna in Switzerland but also in Poland. We invest significantly in our IT infrastructure when it comes to digitalization or also when it comes to network security. I expect also a high CapEx level this year in 2022, and midterm, I would probably expect that it will then normalize on a level of approximately 5% of our sales. On the balance sheet side, I think, we saw an increase in particular in net working capital position due to the higher activity last year. Also the cash improved to CHF 220 million.
We are now also debt-free. We repaid the last CHF 1 million out of the BKtel transaction, and also the equity ratio is on a high level with 77%. On the cash flow, I'm in particular satisfied with the first line, the cash flow from operating activities, because for me always the CHF 100 million is an important threshold, and if we are able to achieve more than CHF 100 million, it shows that we had done a very good year when it comes to cash flow generation. This allowed us also to absorb the high amount of our investment and still growing our free operating cash flow. On the free cash flow level was CHF 15 million. This was also impacted by more acquisition of treasury shares, and I think you can see that here.
As you know, we have announced last October that we plan to buy back up to 5% of our registered shares within the next three years. Until the end of last year, we bought back 0.7% of our registered shares, and this gives the volume a cash out of CHF 11.8 million. Now, if I look now at yesterday or early March level, we have in the meantime bought back 1.6% of our registered shares, which means that we have almost completed one third of this share buyback program. Despite this running share buyback program, we stick to our earnings-oriented dividend policy, which is 40%-50% of our net income. Due to the new record level on net income, we also can propose a high ordinary dividend of CHF 2 per share.
This CHF 2 per share corresponds to a 45% payout ratio and is actually a very nice contribution also to our shareholders. By that, I can already conclude from a financial point of view, it was really a very pleasing year with record results, with very high growth on the top line, with new record levels on EBIT and net income, also supported by a low tax rate. As I presented before, we also reached a CHF 100 million threshold when it comes from cash flow from operating activities. Unfortunately, now after this very pleasing information, I have to turn to a very sad information. I think we all still shocked about what's going on in Ukraine close to Europe.
We expected a lot of questions out of that, and that's why we wanted to summarize quickly what we can say, what it means from a HUBER+SUHNER point of view. I mean, first of all, we have come to say that last week we have suspended all our business activities which are directly or indirectly related to these regions. It goes without saying that we will obviously stick to all sanctions which are coming from Switzerland, the EU, or the U.S. going forward. I mean, we serve this region with all our three market segments, but by far the largest is railway, which almost makes two-thirds of the turnover we make in these regions. Overall, in the last few years, we made normally 2%-3% of our group turnover mainly in Russia.
We do that via our distributors, which are also supported by a few colleagues in Moscow with our rep office. Overall, we can say we don't have any production facility, nor we have any strategic supplier base in this region. This means the direct impacts are, let's say, manageable from a HUBER+SUHNER point of view. However, all the indirect impacts, and you have seen yesterday that we had the euro at parity, but also the exploding, escalating raw material prices are also the constraint on the transportation lines. I mean, there are several impacts we can't quantify. All of us don't know what is going to happen in the next few days and weeks.
That's from a HUBER+SUHNER point of view, could also be much more severe than just the direct impacts. I pass over back to Urs. He will, as I said, talk about our sustainability report and give you some more details about our outlook for 2022.
Thank you, Ivo. As Ivo has pointed out, I will cover in our last session the sustainability, the strategic focus, the trend, and the outlook, and I will start with sustainability. I guess we all took peace for granted, hence it was not a big topic. The agenda topic number one was sustainability. Now, of course, with the war in Ukraine, the tragic war in Ukraine, our focus is on how we can secure peace in the rest of the world and bring peace to this conflict region.
Nevertheless, we believe that also with this important and strong focus on this conflict region, sustainability should remain very high up on our agenda as it is also interlinked, and as we can now see that dependencies on regions for energy is in peaceful times not a bad thing, but in conflicting times it can be quite difficult to manage. That's why our contribution as individuals and, of course, as a company to sustainability remains of great importance. Let me give you a few details on how we deal with this topic.
First of all, and that's not very unique, but still important to highlight our aspiration, is to create sustainable value for our stakeholders by, first of all, improving our economic results, but also looking at our business and production processes, looking at how we interact with our environment. How we can contribute on the social level, as well as it covers our good governance. Of course, there are many, many topics we can talk about, and we are also dealing with quite a wide number of difficult topics. While we deal with all those topics, we have declared three of them as focal areas, because we believe they have from relevance and impact from a business relevance and from a impact relevance, the highest contribution to our sustainability approach.
That's sustainable growth, because we believe firmly in the fact that only an economically sound and a successful company can contribute to sustainability. It's our greenhouse gas emissions and also our involvement in community and society where we have major locations and sites. Those three topics are the focus topics while we deal with all other topics that are displayed here on this chart. The scorecard related to these three focus topics shows that for sustainable growth today, we have 23% of our sales coming from our growth initiatives. Our growth initiatives, they're supposed to make the company successful going forward economically, but they also relate quite well to sustainable markets.
The target here is to have 33% by the year 2023, and we can achieve that by above average growth by these growth initiatives. Our greenhouse gas emissions have been at 16.8 tons CO2 equivalent, based on Scope 1 and 2 in the year 2015. That is our starting point. We have committed ourselves to reduce these emissions by 50% by the year 2025. Further to that, we have committed to a net zero CO2 target by 2030, and we are quite well on the way to reach the 2025 target as we have come down already quite significantly, and we have about two-thirds of our way done.
The community involvement is a topic which is very close to my heart as well as we would like to really be seen in the communities. We are well embedded, be it in Switzerland, but also abroad as a good corporate citizen. We have donated to the communities nearby our major sites close to CHF 0.5 million in 2021. Our objective is here to spend at least 0.5% of our budgeted EBIT or CHF 0.5 million , whatever is higher in the coming years. With these targets in mind, I would like to also highlight a bit our contribution when it comes to doing business, and we have prepared three business stories for you. The first one is from the energy sector. Transportation of energy over long distance is an important thing to make grids stable.
It's also important to secure energy supply, but it comes at a price tag, because these transmission lines lose. The longer the transmission line is, the more the energy loss is. One way to deal with that is to go to high-voltage DC, to high-voltage direct current links. The first example from the energy sector is exactly such a project which links Denmark with the U.K., with a high-voltage DC link, which goes over 767 km. Of course, this link has substations on both ends, and they need to be controlled. In order to control those substations in modern days, it is done by a set of fiber optic solutions.
We have been the supplier to these substations on both ends of all the fiber optic assemblies and patch cables, and hence we contribute to a safe and reliable power exchange between the island of U.K. and the European continent. The next example comes from the communication side. It concerns fixed access network transmission. Here, as I mentioned at several occasions, we are confronted with ever-increasing data traffic, which requires the reinforcement of those data links. Now, you can either bury more fibers or you can have faster electronic equipment, faster lasers. Or the third option is to use passive WDM system, which boost the capacity of existing fibers by factors.
The nice thing is that, the energy consumption as well as the gray energy for burying new, fiber optic cables can be reduced significantly, in this case by 80%. It's a very cost efficient, but also very economical solution. Since the acquisition of Cube Optics in 2014, we have this technology at hand, and we see also quite a good future going forward with business respect, but also with respect to sustainability. In that example, we have supplied those WDM passive system, and by that we could avoid that new fibers had to be buried in the ground. The last example comes from Rail Communication . Now, rolling stock usually has a lifetime of about 25-35 years, then it's outdated.
In fact, the rolling stock material would have another 20-year lifetime just from a mechanical point of view. The problem is that the passengers they are not satisfied with the comfort and also these old rolling stock equipment is not complying with the requirements regarding communication and information. It can be that, you know, there is a need for a refurbishment of rolling stock material coming because the passengers want more comfort. In this example that we share with you, it came from the regulation side as the National Technical Specification Notice was released in the U.K. related to rail system accessibility for handicapped people. In other words, the old rolling stock had to be made compatible and accessible for handicapped people.
That was the trigger and the starting point for a quite substantial refurbishment of an old fleet. By that, basically the mechanical side of this rolling stock equipment could be kept while old interior as well as the communication means have been replaced. HUBER+SUHNER was the supplier of the Rail Communication equipment, including of course passenger-to-ground communication. Passenger ground-to-train communication, as well as Wi-Fi closed-circuit TV, passenger information, and passenger counting devices. By that, we have contributed to a project which has resulted in a lifetime extension of another 20-30 years of old rolling stock equipment. This project took place in the U.K.
With those three stories underlining and highlighting our contribution from a business side, I would like to close the sustainability part by just displaying the reporting and ratings. We have committed to a science-based target. As we could already explain, we are a member of the CDP, we have signed the UN Global Compact, and we are also rated by a different agency, one of them being EcoVadis, which rated us among the top 9% of about 700 companies worldwide in the field of electronic components. With that, I close the sustainability part and I move over to the strategic focus, the market trends and the outlook.
When we look at the economic environment and when we look back, particularly at 2021, I can say that most or all basic trends in our key markets were favorable. Despite these fundamentally positive market trends, it wasn't a very easy year last year because we had already last year certain uncertainties and risks that we had to manage. One were the geopolitical tensions, which not just are on our radar since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but already before the strife for becoming the world economy number one between China and the U.S., but also some other conflict areas kept us quite busy.
On the other side, this economic rebound was quite broad and not just affect the HUBER+SUHNER, but basically the whole industry, and with that, the entire supply chains. This recovery from COVID effects, while COVID was still present and still some measures in force, resulted in rising material prices and very scarce transportation resources. As a result, we see inflation levels in countries like the U.S., which we haven't seen for quite a long time. Furthermore, this rebound has also resulted in shortage of chips, which is also relevant for some of our products, but which is mainly relevant for our customer. It has had an impact on raw material supply, transportation capacities, as I mentioned, and has put pressure on the entire supply chain.
To highlight a bit how that was. Ivo Wechsler has already pointed out that we were never line down, and also we never caused a line down on our customers. It was extremely difficult to get enough materials on stock to keep our productions running. That went so far that sometimes we had to buy instead of large quantities from one source, very small quantity from many sources. It goes without saying that this has had a quite an impact on the efforts to be done to get a safe material supply on the inbound side. Also once you had produced the materials and the products, then it was about securing transportation capacities also for the outbound, and that was another challenge in 2021.
Nevertheless, coming back to the more positive things, we believe that these basic trends remain favorable, and in particular, we believe HUBER+SUHNER is very well positioned to benefit from the favorable market trends. First of all, we have a very strong technological expertise, and combined with operational excellence, we are a resilient company that is well-positioned to benefit from these growing markets. We strive at all times for a balanced diversification and, without being really too diversified, we are trying to focus really on areas that offer from a macroeconomic point of view a positive development. We strive for a healthy mix of current businesses in mature markets which are still developing favorably and with a focus on new opportunities for future growth. The portfolio of these activities is actively managed.
Old things which do not promise favorable development will be abandoned and new things are coming on top. By managing this portfolio, we actively align with arising and evolving mega trends that should create a macroeconomic environment in those markets and applications that are favorable. When it's about capturing those opportunities, we can rely on our innovation culture, on our ability to act as an early mover on those trends. By that, we can position ourselves early on in a market and generate also the necessary product differentiation which results in high margins and in attractive pricing power. These are the dimensions of our strategic focus. We have our five core markets on the left.
They are complemented by four, you can call it niches. We call it focused market verticals in the industrial segment, which is energy, high power charging, medical, and process industry. We used to have our three growth initiatives. We have added two more so that we have five growth initiatives. The old ones are Aerospace and Defense , where we are approaching CHF 100 million. We have Data Center , we have Electric Vehicles , and we added two more in the segment of transportation, which is Rail Communication and also the Autonomous Driving , or as we call it ADAS, Advanced Driver Assistance System. It's a bit difficult name. Further to the right, you see opportunities with growth potential.
That's a portfolio of, I would say, 20-30 ideas that we pursue, which shall sooner or later result in new growth initiatives. As you can see, we have now defined 2 new growth initiatives. They are coming from these opportunities with growth potential, and it's our objective to constantly have a filled up funnel to the right with ideas that make sure that we have always enough new things in the pipeline. This creates a portfolio of attractive markets aligned with the mega trends being diversified, being or resulting in a resilience without being defocused. The solutions for the industry markets we mentioned them, Aerospace and Defense , our core market. That's applications up in orbit, satellites and everything that's in space. It's commercial aircraft.
We have relatively little business, and it's defense applications that also fall under this market segment. Then process industries, general industrial, the medical device, mainly products for cancer treatment. We have the core market Test and Measurement , which is dealing with test applications. There we have products going into equipment from Keysight, Rohde & Schwarz, but also connections between test equipment and the products to be tested. We have energy. We are market leader for the cabling, the control cable for wind towers. Last, but by no means least, also the high power charging for Electric Vehicles goes into the industrial market. People ask me always, "Why is it not transportation?" Because it is related to this. Yet, it's related to that. The driver behind is electro mobility on roads.
Our customers here are power companies, like a company like ABB and other electrical engineering companies, and that's why it is in the industry segment. The applications in a segment are defined by the customers that we serve. In this case, high power charging is not automotive, but it's energy. The market trends in industry, I think they are favorable, and this is important for HUBER+SUHNER. You could see how important the contribution of this segment is to the bottom line. We can observe that the need for communication solutions in industrial applications is increasing and further increasing. It concerns mainly applications which are safety critical, where reliability is really key, where availability 24/7 is of utmost important, and where quality really pays off.
That's where we have an ideal environment to develop as HUBER+SUHNER. High precision components with a maximum signal integrity, but also low weight and durability is key in Test and Measurement . We see that's not all good, but mainly good. We see this low orbit satellite constellation developing further. You take OneWeb, an Airbus subsidiary, you take Elon Musk that is driving a program forward. This low orbit or near space programs at the end cover the world from space with a relatively dense mesh of satellites, bringing mobile communication to each and every corner. Now, the downside is obviously that you have a lot of satellites in near space, which is criticized by astronomers.
Now, for instance, we see that the program of Elon Musk is up and running since a few months, and he has granted access to the Ukrainian army in order to keep up communication between their troops. He's done that in an act to support the Ukrainian people to defend their territory. It's not all bad, but of course, there are always two sides of the coin. We have these fast charging applications which are further growing. We have in this market defended the leading position. We are clearly the market leader for fast charging, and we see further opportunities intensifying the network of fast charging stations based on 500 kW power stations. We see also the trend going to even higher power, megawatt charging.
We see also Asian countries that are trying to catch up with regards to developing the network of fast charging stations. Last but not least, we've always said it, the desire to feel safe fuels also the demand for Aerospace and Defense applications. While we all would like to have peace and see a world where there are no weapons, we acknowledge now more than probably ever, that if somebody has weapons, the only way to counter this aggression is with other weapons. That sadly drives also our applications in this area.
Last but not least, in industry, we believe that the new market segment organization, where we bundle really all our products into a solution, whether they're coming from fiber, from RF, or from LF, has the highest benefit. In the communication market, we have the business with the equipment manufacturers. That's the upper right corner. Companies like Samsung, like Ericsson, like Nokia, like Cisco, are our customers there. Then the Data Center applications fall into the communication market, and then we have mobile infrastructure and fixed network infrastructure. While in many cases the same customer has a mobile network as well as a fixed network. Here we see that particularly the last two years have shown how important the communication infrastructure is for the functioning of our society.
It's also not the first time that I highlight that. We have now seen investment strongly picking up in this market, mainly driven by 5G. 5G is being rolled out since a few years, but now these rollouts have really picked up momentum, and there will also be, once 5G gears are installed in the field, there will be an evolution of this 5G infrastructure towards higher data. You take, for instance, the example of the 4G network. You may remember that in the beginning of 4G signals on your mobile device, you had between 3 Mbps and 7 Mbps . Now you stream high-resolution videos with the 4G networks. Also, within a generation of mobile networks, there is an evolution towards higher data rates. So that, hopefully for HUBER+SUHNER, once the gear is installed, it's not all over.
It will continue. Typically, such a generation of mobile equipment lasts about 10 years. Usually after 10 years, there is a new generation. The industry talks about 6G already, while 5G isn't even fully installed. On the other side, countries which have just recently invested in a 4G network, like India, they will not dare to move too fast because they need a payback of their 4G equipment in the field, and they will wait until they have enough cash flow generated with their investments to go to the next step. That's why not all the operators globally will say, "Now, hooray, let's move to 5G and go." That will be a process that will take time. Right now, the momentum is clearly in the Americas for us and in some European countries.
Densification, higher capacity, better coverage, shorter latency, very important, are the keywords here for mobile infrastructure, while Internet of Things and also the expansion of data traffic in the mobile network is the driver for the volumes in the whole network, which requires that we also reinforce the fixed net. There is no mobile network expansion without the reinforcement of the fixed net. That's always related. Last but not least, networks, they are quite rigid. The dream of a network architect is to sit in a control room and have full flexibility and to configure his network as he wishes and based and depending on the data streams and data volumes. Our optical switch offers exactly that flexibility on an all-optical solution on the physical layer.
We see that this technology is breaking through and making headway in this market. I'm quite positive for the technology that this Polatis acquisition has brought to HUBER+SUHNER. Last but not least, transportation is split in rail and road. We have. On rail, we have the cabling of rolling stock, where we are market leader. We are now focusing with a growth initiative, particularly on the communication part. There we have a large share of fiber optic and in particular RF products, and we can really leverage on our three technologies and on the market access on the cables. On the roads, our focus is for quite a while on Electric Vehicles , on the electric circuit, the high voltage circuit, and here mainly on commercial vehicles.
We have this new growth initiative, which we call ADAS, Advanced Driver Assistance System. It's radars, antennas for distance radar systems of the next generation. That's our solution, or these are our applications in the transportation area. There will be a high focus on ecological mobility when talking about transportation. There is no other way. When I say that, there are two major things that need to be done. We have to continue to invest in public transportation that is driven by electricity. It's the most ecological means of transportation today, and there is no way how the world cannot rely on that. That's why we believe railway has a future, and that's why we believe in this market.
On the roads, it's there the transition is in full swing from a combustion engine to either hybrid cars or fully electric battery-driven. With our focus on commercial vehicle, we have decided to go for the application that has higher requirements than the passenger cars, which suits us and our DNA better. Many people say, "Yeah, but battery trucks, that's not the future." I can only counter here that for all distribution logistics, battery trucks are the future, because they do between 50 and 100 kilometers a day, and they drive from the logistics hub to the retailer and back, and they have defined routes. Of course, a battery truck that goes from Genoa to Rotterdam, that's not a solution, or not yet the solution. There, most probably hydrogen will be the way forward.
I have to explain here always that also hydrogen-driven vehicles have an electric drive, and they have a high voltage cabling that they rely on. Last but not least, to make traffic more efficient, to make traffic safer, the systems and sensors become more intelligent. They become more accurate. For that, they need higher resolution pictures. We support this trend with our high-resolution antennas that we have at the start to go into this Autonomous Driving race. With that, I'm coming to the end and to my last slide and the outlook.
We have decided on the basis of three very strong semesters, starting with the second half 2020 at 10%, and now two semesters at 12%, that we will lift our medium-term target range for the EBIT from previously 8%-10% to new 9%-12%. For the current year, 2022, we expect on the top line on sales mid-single-digit percentage growth, bringing us to somehow close to CHF 900 or above. As far as the EBIT guidance for the current year is concerned, we expect the operating margin this year to be in the new medium-term EBIT target range of 9%-12%. We may specify a more narrow band in August, when we present the six months result.
For the time being, our medium-term EBIT target range is also the EBIT guidance for 2022, and that all is valid with the disclaimer at the bottom. The prerequisite for achieving our objectives and as far as growth and EBIT is concerned, we have to master the challenges such as the inflation, the strong Swiss franc, the bottlenecks in the supply chain. Last but by no means least, also we have to see, hopefully, soon an end to the armed conflict in Ukraine, which brings us additional uncertainties. You have seen the immediate impact. What we all don't know is what its indirect impact will be on our markets. With those words, I would like to close the formal presentation, not without drawing your attention to the financial calendar. I'm sure you have all noted down those dates.
I would like to highlight particularly one date, which is a new event in our financial calendar. We have decided that after two years of very little exchange with physical presence, that we organize a capital market day shortly after the presentation of the half-year results. It's gonna be in Herisau. I invite you to mark this date in your agenda. It's a Friday, the 23rd of September. The idea is really that we dive with you deeply into our applications and explain the mechanics of our markets and the drivers, and how we position HUBER+SUHNER in those markets. With that, the formal presentation has ended, and I would like to invite you to join the Q&A session.
I think we do that with the audience, first, with the audience present in the room, and then also the dear participants in our video conference will, of course, have the chance to ask questions.
Veren Bach, AWP. If you allow, I have three questions. Forex Swiss francs to euro is about the same level now. Can you give us an indication what you expect through that?
On your business. Second question is, the high raw material prices, how far are you able to give these high prices to your clients? Are these price increases accepted? The last question is, maybe you can say how you started into the new year compared to the last year. Thank you.
I think the first question, Ivo Wechsler can
Yeah. I mean,
-answer.
Our two most important currencies are the euro and the dollar, so we are long in those two currencies. We have also budgeted with a significant higher level than what we have today in the euro. Example, EUR 1.08, to give you an idea. Obviously, it depends on all other currencies, how they develop, but it will be a significant hit if the euro would remain at one-to-one level. We don't give a specific guidance to what it would mean, but because it depends on all other currencies. It's with the dollar, the most important currency for us.
Second question, related to the increasing raw material prices and, indirectly, how good our purchasing power is. I would say our purchasing power is pretty good. It's not the same everywhere. We have some commodity markets where we are replaceable there. It's more difficult to pass on price increases, but we have also a majority of our sales related to markets where we have a high differentiation, where we are designed in, where we are single source. Of course, we use our position to increase prices as far as reasonable, as far as possible. The problem here is that there is always a time lag. By the time you get it from your customers, you have it already in the margin.
Probably the best picture to highlight that is that slide on our margins, where you have seen an outstandingly high margin in the first six months last year and a negative trend for the second half. Of course, we have already started to pass on these price increases on the purchasing to our customers in the summer. There is a time lag, and we are confident that we can break that trend, and we can pass on a large part of that. Then the start into this year, that was your last question. I mean, it's a bit early. We have two months on sales and one months on EBIT that we know.
It's too early to say much, but we can say so far, I think the year 2022 has started according to plan.
Richard Fraisse, ZKB. Two questions, if I may. First of all, the guidance. The upper end of the bandwidth was already slightly overachieved this year. I'm wondering a bit, how should I think about it? I see the headwinds from raw material, FX, et cetera. You have mentioned also probably increasing traveling cost. But how should we think about it? Is that known cautiousness of HUBER+SUHNER to not be a bit more aggressive on the upper end of this new bandwidth? Second question is regarding corporate EBIT, which is also on a quite high level increase, roughly around CHF 1 million. What are the reasons for this? Is it the new setup or is there other reasons behind it? And how should we think about this going forward?
Will it decrease or stay at a similar level? Thank you.
Yeah. The guidance you have outlined that our guidance, the upper end is slightly below the 2021 result. You ask if that's normal cautiousness or if we have factored in all the negative effects in the markets. You know, it's a thin line in my point in my eyes between being brave and too brave. We have seen in 2021 a very strong performance in as far as profitability is concerned. The main factors of this very strong recovery is, first of all, the operational leverage from growth. With a sales growth above 15%, obviously this operational leverage played very much into our hands. Secondly, we have also come out of a year with a very low cost base.
Because in 2020, when we realized how severe the impact of COVID will be on our business, we have started to reduce cost. We have also announced a cost-cutting program. We have reduced our workforce globally. Last but not least, we have also reduced our expenses, particularly in areas that came for free. No traveling, little representation expenses. It is a level of cost which we cannot maintain going forward. We will have to reinvest in a customer relationship. We mentioned it, we hope that our salespeople can see customers physically again. I think we've done, like most other companies like you all, extremely well in using virtual means, but you can only use that for a certain period of time, and on the basis of a trusted and established relationship.
If you go forward on that basis, at some point, you have to reinvest in that relationship. We hope to be able to do that, and that's why we believe also on the cost side, we have benefited from very favorable situation in 2021. The second question I hand over to you.
With regards to the corporate cost in our segment reporting, I think you should apply the higher cost going forward because it's a more normalized cost. The previous year cost was really as we have already heard, it really has some cost savings in 2020. Also we had, let's say, a temporary salary cut. We had lower bonuses, lower share prices and so on. That's why it was really not a normal year. The normal year is the 2021. Compared to the previous corporate from the older, let's say structure, we have now added in these regards to the M21 reorganization. We added some additional activities to headquarters, in particular the corporate communication.
That's why the overall level is also, let's say, higher compared to the 2019 corp level.
Mark Diethelm from Vontobel. Also from my side, three questions. One is on the upfront investment in Autonomous Driving , can you quantify kind of the level? Is that you said it was substantial. How substantial was that? Then the second one on the gross margin, you showed us the sequential development, H1, H2. When we look at the industrial segment, EBIT margin, it was kind of stable in H1, H2. Can we assume that the gross margin drop in the second half was mainly in transportation? Then again, the third one on transportation segment, can you give us a split between road and railway today?
I will answer your first question with regards to the upfront investments in our distance radar business. I cannot give you the exact number, but it is a very capital-intensive business. It's typically an antenna that goes into passenger cars. Shouldn't cost much more than a low single-digit Swiss franc figure. It's high-resolution 3D antennas. The production processes are complicated, the technology is advanced, and we need a very, very high degree of automation. Capital costs account for a high share of the product cost. We have announced the nomination of a radar business from a tier one of the automotive industry, that's Continental. Here we can share the name.
Obviously, we are working with other tier-one automotive suppliers similar to Continental on additional design-ins and nominations. Already the investments in Continental business are substantial. Clearly CHF double-digit million of CapEx investments. Of course, with each and every nomination that we hopefully can announce in the next few months, this will increase. We invested in Switzerland, and we have started with a second production plant in our Poland factory.
With regards to the gross margin, first half year, second half year, I mean, there was a slightly lower gross margin in all three market segments because the price increase and also the higher transportation costs started, let's say, to end up in all three market segments. However, you are right. By far the largest impact was in the transportation segment. There we should also consider that when it comes to higher copper prices, in the first year, we had still some positive revaluation impacts because your inventory gets actually more value, so you have some positive impacts, but with this higher, let's say, standard cost, later on, your actual margin is getting lower.
We had some positive impacts on transportation with revaluation, and in the second half of the year, we didn't have that anymore. That's why the drop was the highest, but it was also the highest cost impact. We have had in particular compounds and chemicals. There we saw already last year significant price increases and the transportation market segment was most affected by that. That's the other reason for why the gross margin was most impacted in transportation.
The split in the transportation segment, roughly about 2/3, a bit more than 2/3 is railway still. A bit less than 1/3 is automotive, which is split in a declining conventional part, where we supply specialty cables into combustion engine applications. We have the growing EV, and the ADAS is not yet contributing. We have a bit of component business, but that's a few million CHF.
This is Michael Schulz from JMS Invest. I have kind of two follow-up questions and an additional one. To this investments in Autonomous Driving , can you specify what the market opportunity is for you, the kind of the size and the timeline of that? I mean, these antennas do they go into the upper range vehicles or, you know, if you can say something about that. The second is on free cash flow, just a housekeeping question. On your slides, you show slightly higher free cash flows usually than in the free cash flow statement. What is the difference there?
For example, on the slide, for 2021, CHF 51 million, if I look in the cash flow statement, it's like, you know, the CapEx part is like CHF 45 million or so. Is there anything I have to add there for the future? The margins in the transportation segment, you elaborated on the material price effect and also on this Autonomous Driving investments. But what would be a margin there for you going forward in a normalized environment? What would be achievable there? You know, in your assumptions for the 9%-12% range for the group, what would be your assumptions for the transportation-
It's cash flow, yeah. Let me explain a bit how this ADAS business works and is supposed to develop. Typically in automotive, you have a technology which you prove, and that undergoes a very heavy testing. When you pass all those tests with your technology, you get a nomination. Then, based on the nomination, you can start to invest into the serial production. Then, based on serial production, serial, I mean, product out of the serial process, you'll get a PPAP and a full approval. Then from this moment on, volumes pick up in a typical Gauss curve. They reach the peak in year three, four or five, and they last between six and eight to nine years.
That's the lifetime of a platform. It can also go a year longer or end a year earlier, but that's typically the life cycle of such a product. With this technology, we have achieved nomination. We are in the process of PPAP and get the serial production released, and then we will see first small volumes in 2022. From 2023 on, we should see a small impact and then peaking probably in the year 2026. Each and every nomination, each and every project has more or less this life cycle. Of course, by developing this more as a market rather than an individual business, we hope that we have five, six, seven programs running.
Typically, also for the automotive industry, is that these new technologies they're used in the high-end platforms, in the flagship platforms. If you wanna use our antenna, you have to buy a BMW 7 Series today. These technologies usually expand and make their way into more platforms, and finally, they end up everywhere. That's of course the name of the game, because you can't make a living on a BMW 7 Series platform. You have to get into the other platforms as well, and hopefully into other OEMs as well. There are different applications. There are short-range radars, and there are long-range radars, and they just cover different areas around the car.
It's our technology is independent of whether it's gonna be a long-range or a short-range radar. The system isn't. Your question with regards to the cash flow, I'm not 100% sure if I got it right, but I assume you wanted to know why I have investments of CHF 51 million in the cash flow, with the cash flow from investing activities only about -CHF 45 million. There are actually two reasons for it. First of all, the CapEx number, the balance sheet number are based on FX spot rates at the end of the year, and the cash flow is with average rates. There can be a deviation. Secondly, cash flow is really cash flow, and this means some of these investments are actually prepaid partially or paid later.
It's not always when you add it to the, let's say, to the system that they're already fully paid or they have to be paid partially early. That's why it can also be a temporary differences between payment and adding to the balance sheet. Thirdly, this level cash flow from investing activities also contains some other items, such as when we have acquired roadmaps for when you do an acquisition or when you have a disposal of an equipment. There are also some other, let's say, items in this summary level.
The margin potential of ADAS, I mean, depends of course how you do the cost calculation. If you depreciate your investments linearly or over the lifetime based on volumes. I would say over the lifetime, we expect clearly a profitability above the transportation segment average. We expect that it's supporting the margin increase.
The transportation margin going forward, what
Yeah, we always said that for round, long black cables going into trains, a high- single- digit EBIT margin is good. With our attempt to move into higher differentiated applications, namely in the Rail Communication as well as in the automotive, we expect that we can leave that range sooner or later and bring it in line with the group's average profitability. That's our plan. It will not happen immediately.
Okay. Barbora Blaha from UBS. I have one follow-up question on the time lag between the raw material price increases and the increase of your prices. How big is the time lag? Is it something like three months or more like six months?
I think it depends. It depends about the product, it depends about the customer. I think where we have probably the shortest turnover is in the communication area, so we can pass it on faster unless there is a large project. On the other side, we have probably the longest and the highest backlog normally in the transportation segment, so it takes some more. Particularly to mention also on copper, we can't pass on. I mean, we normally have hedged pricing. This means when you have an order, we also have then a fixed price for the copper and therefore we are normally hedged for that, but we can't pass it on later.
The copper price is hedged, and we don't make any profit on this, let's say, increased copper prices.
Maybe a follow-up on this. How did this increase in raw material prices and also energy prices change something how you manage this supply chain? Do you intend to increase your inventories, even further? Or also in terms of energy, do you intend to switch to alternative energy sources?
I mean, we have, as you have probably seen the numbers, we have already increased our inventory levels, and I think we had to buy also some in certain areas some security stock because our lead times were much longer. In order to secure the supply chain, it has also sometimes a price tag to it. I think we always review our supply chain, but often, I mean, we work with specified suppliers and specified materials, so you can't just change from one day to the other. I mean, we have already seen that, our supply chain and suppliers were quite robust during the COVID crisis.
We have, let's say, we normally try not to have single sources, but in certain areas, I mean, you are confronted with just a fact that you are single source and you have just to accept the prices, otherwise they deliver to somebody else. It really, there it's also a mix on what our suppliers are doing. There was another question.
Up here.
I'm wondering if your guidance of mid single digit sales growth for 2022 is this factored in the 2%-3% you lose in Russia and Ukraine?
No, the 2%-3%, that's the annual sales, and it's not factored in. If the war continues for the rest of 2022, I mean, we will have an impact. If it stops, what we all hope, relatively soon, then of course, the risk will also disappear hopefully soon.
Okay.
I think that gives the chance for the people in the video call to ask questions.
The first question comes from Jörg Marquardt from Zürcher Oberland Medien AG. Please go ahead. Thanks for having me. I have a question with regards to your workforce. You write that the overall workforce is increased by 178 positions, whereas in October 2020, you've announced to cut 250 jobs until mid of 2021. How did that come along? And why is Switzerland apparently the only country not affected by an increase of job positions and which location in Switzerland was more affected by reductions, Pfäffikon or Herisau?
We have decided 18 months ago, based on the outlook at that time, to reduce our workforce. One of the key measures was to close our factory in Brazil. That has been fully implemented, and that project could be closed early 2021. The workforce in Switzerland we have reduced mainly based on natural fluctuation. We have then, due to the upswing in our volumes and in the business, been forced to rehire people in Switzerland in a first instance and in order to react fast, mainly based on temporary people. If you look at Switzerland, we have, in terms of fixed employees, the number is down. In terms of full-time equivalent, we are back to where we were before the announcement.
This is due to the fact that we have tried to increase our production capacities, mainly production capacities, with temporary forces. The sites have. I have to recall that there is not a significant difference between the two sites in Switzerland.
Thank you.
Gentlemen, so far there are no more questions from the phone.
From the room? That doesn't seem to be the case. I would like to thank you for your interest in HUBER+SUHNER, for participating in the presentation of our annual results 2021. Thank you very much. Wish you a good day. Hope to stay in touch with all of you. Auf Deutsch to the people in the video call, and for the people in the room, a cordial invitation to join us for a small apéro lunch. Thank you very much.