Yes. Hello everybody. Good afternoon. Good morning in the United States. Good night in Asia. It's nice to have you all in the call today. We have, as usual, you might have found all the documents and the presentations on our website, or the ones who are in the webcast to have it in front of you. We have with us Thomas Reist, CFO, and Jens Fankhänel, our CEO. Let's start with our presentation. Please, Thomas, can I hand over to you?
Yes. Thank you. Hello to everyone. I would like, as always, start with the highlights and key achievements 2021. If you look at the figures, then the bookings grew very strongly. This has two main reasons. One is the catch-up effect of the investments of the COVID-19 crisis, and also that we see recurring trends in automation in the intralogistics industry. On the other hand, net revenues at the growth pace was not as fast as on the booking level, mainly due to the shortages in the global supply chain. Resulting backlog there is very strong currently. At the very end of the year, has substantially increased compared to the beginning of the year and provides us for a very long visibility. The gross profit margin suffered mainly from inefficiencies in the production.
Those who joined the capital markets, they heard us describe how difficult it is to produce machines currently because of non-availability of components. This leads to these inefficiencies, but on the other hand, the gross profit margin was also affected by price increases from our suppliers. The costs, so our OpEx, has seen an under proportional increase, and this despite the investments we do in our strategic projects, which we communicated quite a while ago already. The absolute EBIT increased by roughly 10%, and EBIT margin remains stable. This despite the ramp-up cost of the new activities, which we also communicated later on and which amounts to roughly CHF 3 million in 2021. Also, during the capital markets day, we announced already that we increase our financial targets.
Later on in this presentation, I will also again give a wrap up in regards to these financial targets. I'm happy to announce that we, as part of our overall ESG strategy, made a first step and became member of UN Global Compact. If you look at the key figures, there I can make it very short. Except for the free cash flow, where we see that the free cash flow has more than doubled compared to the previous year, and this mainly based on the advance payment from our customers. The year 2021, for all the other key figures, ranks number two after the last pre-COVID year, 2019. We see if we look back three years, the net revenues, EBIT, and also net profit is slightly below 2019.
The conclusion of this is that despite the challenges we have in global supply chain, 2021 was a very successful financial year. If you look into more details, have a look at the income statement. There we see that the bookings went up by almost 45%, or in other words, EUR 186 million. Coming to bookings level of EUR 603 million, never seen a figure as Kardex in the history. There we achieved a book-to-bill ratio of 1.3. The order backlog also went up by 66.5% to almost CHF 370 million. This CHF 370 million stands for visibility of roughly ten months.
The net revenues, on the other hand, also grew double digits, so 10.3%, but not at the same pace as I mentioned before. There we could achieve an absolute figure, plus of CHF 43 million. The reason for this slower pace, as I mentioned before already, is the non-availability of components and in the first half of the year, raw materials. The gross profit went up by CHF 10.3 million or by roughly 7%, and there we see the impact I mentioned before. The gross profit margin levels went slightly down by 1.2 percentage points. Also here, due to inefficiencies in our production processes and due to price increases from our suppliers, which we could not immediately hand over to our customers.
On the OpEx, on the other hand, the growth rate is only 4.8%. There we still had positive impacts due to the travel restrictions. If you want the positive effect of the COVID crisis, this led to a lower level of travel costs and also lower level of trade fair costs. The resulting EBIT amounts to CHF 61.1 million, being an up of 10.1% or CHF 5.6 million, and I see that the EBIT margin is exactly on the same level as 2020. If you look at the second page of the income statement, there we have a positive impact on the financial result level. There we profited from a positive impact from cash management of roughly CHF 400,000.
The tax rate went up quite heavily if we compare to the previous year, but this is mainly based because 2020 we had extraordinary positive impact because of tax loss carryforward. The current tax rate of 26.7% is exactly in the range of the tax rate we communicated earlier. The range amounts to 26.5%-27.5%. Results for the period amounting to CHF 43.7 million represents a margin level of 9.6%, slightly below previous year's level, but comparably good. Based on the good result for the period, the board of directors will propose an increased payout to the shareholders of CHF 4.30 per share.
The proposal will be done at the annual general meeting, which will be held in April. Now having a look at the balance sheet. There we have two main effects. One of these is the increased equity based on the results for the period, and also the advance payments from our customers which went up quite dramatically. This led to an extended balance sheet, and this then as a conclusion led to a reduced equity ratio. Last year, we had an equity ratio of 62.9%, and this year it's down to 57.4%. On absolute numbers, you see that we almost increased the equity level by EUR 20 million. What you also see here in the balance sheet is that we did some reallocation of our cash position. This is mainly to prevent negative interest rate effects.
If you go further to the cash flow statement, there again, we see the very good free cash flow of EUR 51.4 million. This is almost, well, a bit more than double than the free cash flow we achieved the year before. This is mainly due to the increased advance payments from our customers. This level went up year by year by CHF 35 million. We achieved to increase the cash level from our customers by CHF 35 million. If you look at the operating performance, so what I look at is the net cash flow from operating activities before changes in current fixed term deposits. The sum of the CHF 38.6 million and CHF 41 million, this amounts to roughly CHF 80 million operating performance in regards to cash flow.
If we compare this to the roughly CHF 50 million of 2020, this is an up of CHF 30 million, which is quite a substantial increase. Now what I always like to do is compare the current performance with the pre-COVID years. Here, this is why I brought with me the income statement 2021 compared with 2019. There we see that the bookings went up by 1/3, even compared with the pre-COVID area. The order backlog went up by roughly 70%, whereas we had in 2019 a visibility of roughly a bit more than six months. Now, as I mentioned before, it went up to 10 months. You also see that the net revenues level, we have not achieved the level of pre-COVID, so we are down by roughly 3% or CHF 16 million.
We also are below the pre-COVID level in regards to gross profit margin, where we are 0.5 percentage points behind 2019 levels. At the OpEx level, we see that we became more efficient, where we spent in 2019, 22.9% of our net revenues in OpEx. Now it went down to 22.4%. But we need to keep in mind that we still have positive impacts due to the COVID crisis, as I mentioned before. At the EBIT level, also there you see that we are roughly 4% behind 2019, but as I mentioned before, we also have in 2019 special effect of our new activities or the ramp-up costs of our new activities. This amounts to CHF 3 million. If I add up this CHF 3 million to the 61.1% in 2021, there's an easy calculation that we are above 2019.
Also the EBIT margin goes up to 14.1%, which is above the 2019 level. Now, having a look at the financial targets, new financial targets, which have been published during the capital markets day in November last year. There we see that overall, we increased the targets. On the other hand, we reduced the bandwidth or the span for the EBIT margin. The financial targets of the two divisions, Kardex Remstar, Kardex Mlog. Main reason to reduce this bandwidth is that even though we went through this COVID-19 crisis, we remain within the bounds of this rangej we communicated earlier.
That's the reason why we reduced this bandwidth. We also introduced a bandwidth for the Kardex group, and we replaced return on capital employed by return on invested capital, mainly to improve the comparability with other companies. On the other hand, the dividend policy as well as the debt factor remains the same. With this, I would like to hand over to Jens.
Good evening, good afternoon, and good morning to go with the sun. This is Jens speaking, and as always, I will briefly explain the performance of the two divisions. I will start with Kardex Remstar, then follow with Kardex Mlog. One slide about the new affiliate or the new acquisition, and last but not least, the outlook, which is probably the hardest slide today for all of us. Looking back into 2021, Kardex Remstar had quite a strong performance in bookings, as we can see. What I'm happy to say is that it's not only in LCS, in lifecycle services, which is typically a stronghold for us, but it also has seen a substantial increase in new business bookings, so new customers, new segments and new volumes.
A total of EUR 460 million, or an increase of 40.7% over 2020. Similar to what Thomas just did, we also compared that to 2019 levels, and the bookings are also substantially higher than in 2019. Both comparisons work out quite well. This is mainly due to the new business bookings, which had been slightly lower in 2019 and now we are picking up there as well. Net revenues, I think we keep repeating ourselves. They trail the bookings. We did not materialize our net revenues as we wanted it to be. Mostly due to the already mentioned supply chain challenges, material availability, and not so much the pricing, but the availability of parts, components from all over the world.
Also due to sometimes and that was valid for the second part of the year, restrictions to customer sites, again, due to the pandemic. Omicron, I think, played quite a substantial role here, where we had to postpone or even cancel certain installations and move them into 2022. As a result, on one hand, good news because it increases the visibility, but on the other hand, not so good news because it means not enough net revenues in 2021. We take an order backlog of EUR 238 million into 2021. A record high order backlog, which if we really get the materials, should provide for extremely good base for 2022 net revenues.
Higher cost of material, already mentioned by Thomas, hit Kardex Remstar very hard. Inefficiencies due to shortages of materials led to inefficiencies not only in the factories, mostly in the factories, where we had scheduled people, trucks with material did not arrive, so we had to send people home. That's what we call inefficiencies on one hand, but the same applies to inefficiency in the field, where we had scheduled service calls or installation crews, and they, on short notice, could not enter the site, the customer site, and thus effectively had to go home without productive work. That led to a slightly reduced gross profit margin of 39.6 versus 40.8. EBIT margin still in the upper range of our communicated ranges with 16.6%.
Given the lower than expected net revenues, I think we managed the cost in the total organization quite well and managed to secure the bottom line to 16.6%. Number of employees increased to 1,628. What's worth mentioning here is that we are short of people that we actually need to do the work that we have in the organization by about 100 positions. If you look in the total Kardex Remstar world, which is a portrayal or reflection of the current talent market, which is actually pretty scarce. No matter where we look in the world, we have severe problems to actually get the required level of people of competency into our organization. I would say not because we are not attractive as Kardex, it's simply because people are hardly not available.
Last but not least, I think the bookings and the success of a new business, in particular in Kardex Remstar, was also a result and a positive result of our strategy to focus on target industry segments. I think we communicated this a number of times on the capital markets day and previous presentations made to you guys that we wanted to focus on industry segments to become better specialists in certain industry segments, and that started to pay off. Also, retail e-commerce, to mention one, but also healthcare and hospitals. As we already explained, special applications in these industry segments, which help improve on our position in these industry segments and provide better solutions for our customers in this, in these segments. Over to the next page. You see the key figures for Kardex Remstar from 2017 through to 2021.
We see the net revenue level compared to previous year, but also to 2019. We are even behind 2019 numbers with CHF 365 versus CHF 392. On EBIT, we are almost back to 2019 level with CHF 60.5 versus CHF 61.4. Net revenues mix is not a mistake. It's really exactly the same split. We did verify this quite carefully. It's really the same net revenues mix as in 2020. The geographical split has also not changed too much. We ticked 1% up in the North American market. We lost a little bit in Asia-Pacific on the overall numbers, and Europe being extremely stable from a development point of view. Over to Kardex Mlog.
Kardex Mlog, looking back at a very difficult year last year, as you remember, with the one-off effects that actually impacted our results. Kardex Mlog actually picked up quite a lot in terms of bookings. CHF 124 million, that's a number I have not seen in my time with Kardex for Kardex Mlog. Pretty strong in new business and also in terms of net revenues. Kardex Mlog increased a fair bit with 38% and also 22%. LCS bookings, net revenues, and gross profit have also seen some slight improvement in Kardex Mlog, so the focus on life cycle services pays off, also there. Order backlogs, with these booking numbers, substantially increased to CHF 110 million. This is not just for 2022.
These projects also stretching into 2023, to put this into perspective. Longer running projects of integrated systems that typically have lead times or realization times of more than 12 months, just to put that in perspective. The under CHF 10 million is also a record high number. Gross profit margin improved by 1%, which is also a good achievement for Kardex Mlog. EBIT margin with 6.6% in the medium target ranges that Thomas explained before, 4%-8%, so we are a little above the middle. With a substantial improvement over 2020. Keeping in mind that 2020 had a one-off write off, so we are like for like, we're probably on the same levels.
Sales funnel, that's the good news in terms of looking into 2022. Sales funnel remains strong. The order intake start to the year is also pretty good for Kardex Mlog. It seems that the market holds up. The market trends for automation and demand for Mlog solutions, and by the way, also for Remstar solutions, I didn't mention it there, remains fairly stable and supportive of our development. Number of employees in Kardex Mlog also increased a bit by 6%. Also here, we struggle with the same challenges, especially in the German market, to get the right talent on board. That will accompany us for the years to come. I'm sure the scarcity of available talent.
What's also worth mentioning is that we won the first projects with Mlog with the new technologies, Rocket and AutoStore, which is good news. We managed to have Mlog as an integrator for either of these two new technologies that we presented on the capital markets day as our new technology acquisitions. Key figures. I already mentioned net revenues being above 2020 and also 2019. EBIT and EBIT margin not quite on EBIT margin level of 2019, but in absolute terms, higher than 2019. Net revenues mix, what looks like a little drop here from 38%-30% of lifecycle services is due to us reassigning some of the business that previously was reported under lifecycle services now under new business.
We have a business line there, which is called refurbishment. Existing installations of customers where we do modernization upgrades and refurbishment, and we decided that some of these projects are not really service projects, they are more like new business projects. Therefore, they have been reallocated to the blue the 70%, and that's why it looks like we did shrink. In factual terms, we did not shrink. We did partially increase also our service business compared to 2020. The geographical split almost the same, except that Europe has actually picked up with 83%, over 80% in 2020.
What we need to mention here is also there is one-offs, sometimes in parts of this world which somehow impacts given the relatively low numbers, which impacts the distribution of revenues over the world. Next page, a very short summary of our new activities, the new activities being AutoStore business, Robomotive and Rocket Solution. We did already mention in our statement today that we have about 30 million bookings with these three new companies or ventures achieved, of which CHF 19.1 million are shown in our consolidated results. The AutoStore business is fully consolidated in the Kardex reporting. Robomotive is consolidated in our financials. Rocket Solution, given that we have a minority share there, is not at all consolidated in our numbers.
If we summarize our ramp-up costs, ramp-up costs being mostly people that we build up, organizational organizations that we build up, like in AutoStore, the sales teams, the realization teams, where revenue is not fully covering all the total costs up to about CHF 3 million in 2021. If we eliminate that, you can also see that the total EBIT of Kardex without these extra costs would have exceeded the previous years by quite a bit. All right. Now I already mentioned in the beginning, the most difficult slide for all of us. I think you're hearing the same story wherever you attend a data conference these days. I think so far we see positive market conditions, which should, under normal circumstances, support a pretty positive bookings development.
Start of the year was, as I said, pretty promising, so there seems to be relatively little impact so far in January and in February from the external environment, even though the supply chain issues continue to be a major problem. Based on the strong backlog, we expect also both divisions to show increased net revenues in 2022 over 2021. It's pretty logical if you look at the backlog numbers of both Remstar and Mlog, they have to carry forward into increased net revenues unless something completely breaks apart.
The only major concern, like probably all others have, except maybe for the political environment, is supply chain shortages, which, compared to Q4 and Q3 of 2021 actually increased in terms of shortages, problems and uncertainties from our main suppliers who sometimes don't even commit to delivery dates, never mind delivery volumes. That seems to be on the increasing side rather than the declining side. That is, if I would have to mention one main topic, that is the main concern for all of us in terms of reliability of expectations towards net revenues and results. Nevertheless, as we strongly believe in the future of the intralogistics market, we will continue with our key strategic elements for Kardex's portfolio extension.
First step will be to develop these three new activities from the previous page into stronger organizations, into more sustainable operations, increase bookings, but also improve results of these three companies. Then look further with our strategic activities, whether we can find similar add-ons to Kardex's portfolio that help us to serve the intralogistics markets and our customers even better. By the same token, as we believe in the future of intralogistics and Kardex, we continue with our strategic investments in our supply chain, our, I would say, refurbishment of our supply chain in Remstar, the expansion of our supply chain in Remstar. We invest into technology, so new products for the Remstar portfolio and also into digitalization.
Last but not least, we see current challenges, but we believe that for the mid to long term, Kardex is well-positioned to benefit from the global intralogistics automation trends, increased demand for automation due to shortages of labor. Because what we suffer from is also what our customers suffer from, and they need automation to help their logistics parts. We believe the future is pretty bright despite the current challenges that we are suffering. With that, I'd like to hand over or hand back to Edwin.
Yes. Thank you very much, Jens.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Thomas, for going through the figures and going through the business and give us an outlook. May I hand over now to the operator, please, to start the Q&A session.
The first question is from Remo Rosenau from Helvetische Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you. Good afternoon. Could you give us any insight about, you know, the split of the growth in 2021 between price and volumes?
Hello, Remo. Yes, that's a question for me. I mean, the effect of our price increase is not very substantial. If you look at the net revenues level, we see there an impact of around 1%, which is based on our price increases. If you look at the bookings level, there the impact is a bit higher because the growth rate is higher, and there we see an impact of around 2%. Was there another question?
Yes. I mean, your gross margin only came down 1 point something %. It's actually quite a low impact, given that you increased prices only slightly. Was that all, you know, compensated by internal efficiency measures or, you know, could you go into that a bit?
Remo, I must admit, I did not understand your question before. Can you say it in other words?
Well, the gross margin only declined by 100, I think, 30 basis points. Given the input price increases in general, you know, not only raw materials, also transportation costs and everything, it seems like a pretty low decline of the gross margin, given that you only increased your prices on average by 1% in your sales.
No, no, we did not. Sorry, this was a misunderstanding.
Yeah.
Our pricing, we communicated this already. In 2021, we applied two price increases. One was in May, there we increased prices by 4%. In quote extension, correct. These 4% are only effective after a certain timeline. This timeline is around four-six months. You can consider that this price increase has only had a positive impact during the second half of the year. In December, we increased the prices again by roughly 6%, but this has no impact at all on the level of net revenues, a bit on bookings.
This is the reason why I said, if you look at the P&L currently, 2021, and you look at the net revenues in 2021, then you can consider the increase of the net revenues compared to last year is impacted by 1% from our price increase. Same on bookings level. The increase there is impacted by roughly 2% from our price increase. This was my statement. Sorry, I misunderstood your initial question.
Okay, that means that the price increases will have a stronger impact in 2022 than in 2021, right? Because of the time lag.
Yes, they will, but at the same time, our suppliers have increased prices already again. We are confronted with quite substantial price increase from our suppliers now in the beginning of the year, 2022 already. This, as a first indication, I mean, this depends from supplier to supplier, but this is around 8%. This was the communication we already have from our suppliers. There you see that in a market where prices increase from our suppliers, we always are behind with our price increase. The effect will always be negative until the prices will stabilize, and only then, and after a certain time lag, as I mentioned before, 4-6 months, then we will have to see a positive impact on our P&L.
That's perfectly clear, you know. You know, first you try to estimate, you know, how sales could develop, and there the price effect is one of the elements. You've got the volumes, huh? You know, so one element, pricing will be substantially higher just looking at sales, not at margins and everything than in 2021, you know. You said you increased 4% at one stage. When was it again exactly? 4% and then 6% or even more? Could you just repeat that?
May and December. 4% May, 6% December.
Okay.
Yeah, you're
We will.
Looking forward, it mentioned 1% for sales and 2% for bookings, they will go up. That's clear. On the other hand, the impact on the gross profit level will also go up.
Yes, perfectly.
Yes, volume driver will remain and there will be a volume driver in regards to our price increases, but we will also have the negative impact on the gross profit margin. This also remains.
Yes. All in all, we will have some stronger pricing effect. We'll have still I mean, you expect higher volumes, right? To some extent if you know, things remain more or less normal. However, the margin will be somewhat under pressure, the EBIT margin at the end of the day.
That's perfect summary, yeah, of our discussion now.
Okay.
As it already was in 2021, Remo. We had the same in 2021. Prices going up or the inflation going up quickly, and we are only able to react later on. Going up with prices in May means selling machines at that higher price as of September, October. Then still continuing prices of whatever you buy. That continues and will only stop, it will only stabilize when this whole cycle is stabilizing. Then it takes four-six months until we will see it.
Okay. Now about these ramp-up costs, will they reoccur, get higher, or be offset by the revenues and the contributions of these businesses, or what should we think about that?
For these three new ventures, we plan to reduce them in the current year because we expect that increasing revenues. I mean, we reported on bookings for 2021. These bookings should turn into revenues, and that will offset the organizational costs. We expect that they should not be at the same level like in 2021. We don't expect another CHF 3 million for these three companies. If we have another venture, that would add up again, but so far there is none.
Okay. Still some
That should have a positive impact. Positive impact on EBIT.
Okay. Still some impact, but lower, and that is on the net level.
Yeah.
adding up, you know, what comes in and what you invest in everything.
Yes.
Okay. I mean, the EBIT margin, you know, it's anybody's guess. I mean, it's very difficult to say, but it could be under pressure, you know, by anything between 50 and 200 basis points.
Anybody's guess, as you said.
You wouldn't exclude also the higher number?
Remo, very clearly that's. It's the wrong answer, but it's not my biggest concern. If we get our supply chain back in operation, and in operation I mean if the global supply chain and the shortages of materials will not be an issue anymore, then we will not talk about EBIT margins. If we continue to see the problems and we have suppliers like Siemens who do not commit to delivery dates before 60 weeks, I mean, we just need to think about it. It's more than a year, and we don't get any commitment. That is for us, the operational day-to-day challenge. I've never seen my purchasing so busy like the last year, and it continues.
What effect that will have in terms of stoppages of production, maybe inefficiencies in our supply chain, that's very hard to assess because it's really much dependent on how long this supply chain issue continues to be an issue.
Okay. No, very clear. Fair enough. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
The next question is from Stephanie Schultze from Mirabaud. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello, everyone. I mean, you stated in your press release that you have underutilization of your production line in the U.S., and if I understood it rightly, like everywhere, and that underutilization, is this mainly because of labor shortages, or is it because you don't have the components you need for production, or is it both? Also maybe what do you expect in terms of wage inflation going forward? I mean, that sounds like a real big issue for you. What can we assume in terms of wage increases on the bottom line
First thing is an easy answer because it's both of them, Stephanie. This is Jens.
Okay.
It's really components. Same as what we experience in our European factories, we experience in the U.S. for now. I mean, this is all the components. It's raw material like steel, but it's also electronic components. It's no surprise it's the same design of our products. It's a standard design. Using the same components in these machines leads to the same challenges. The procurement market in the U.S. is almost the same like it is in Europe, or at least in our experience. Labor shortages is also something. This is very funny. No, not funny, but it is really a challenge. People opt out from hard work in the U.S. these days.
I spoke to one of my colleagues in the U.S., and he said people now rather go work with McDonald's because they pay excessive hourly rates. I'm not kidding. This is something that seems to come up now. It's also a challenge to get the people on board. Loyalty of people. They come for a couple of days, and they're gone again. We go through all the learnings that other companies have made there as well. I think we're now reaching a point where we at least see a stable organization going forward, and now it's about getting the parts in and ramping the production up. We also had some challenges, to be fair, with our ERP system there.
That is also an element, our S/4Hana, which contributes a bit, but that's not the major blockage. It's really the availability of parts and getting the operation up and running. Second was wage increases. That's an interesting topic. We have our averages that we assume for the year. What we do in the budget periods, we expect increased wages, salary levels, which we typically expect to be offset by productivity gains. That is our rule of thumb. Whatever we increase in terms of salaries, we typically offset with revenue increases and/or efficiency increases. That's our typical target in the organization. Straight, it should not have a direct bottom line impact.
However, in this scarce market, it may be that we are confronted with higher than normal salary requests by certain talent, and that's where we need to be careful in terms of who we opt for, whether we need the competence, and we probably have to pay a little more than in the years before. That's currently the situation. It varies, interesting or not, it varies by region. The demand in the U.S. is substantially higher, so the demands in terms of salary levels and salary expectations. Demands in Europe, mostly in our manufacturing, is typically driven by the unions. I'm not sure. They came up with,
I'm not sure. Did they come up with something like 4%-5% demand? No, here in Europe.
I think and that is normally negotiated down by the employers' side. We will have to see. Not a straight answer, I know. Some of it could carry through if we are not able to compensate for by higher sales margins and/or higher efficiencies.
I have another one, and then I'll go back in line. I was a bit surprised looking at your CapEx number. You actually only spent EUR 7 million in 2021. I would have expected something like, I don't know, around EUR 15 million. Was that just a miscalculation by me, or did I miss something? Or did you put something on hold or, and this is going to be caught up later on this year or in 2022 or going forward? Maybe can you give us some indication on CapEx in 2022?
Yeah, sure. Hi, Stephanie. This is Thomas.
Hi.
That's a question for me. It is a mix. On one hand, you did not consider all the CapEx. The total CapEx amounts CHF 10.1 million. But this is very much below our guidance. We guided CHF 18 million during the half year result presentation. This is substantially lower. This is mainly based on availability of resources. Postponement of projects and not availability of resources. We wanted to go forward with certain projects, but did not achieve to get the resources. The construction company did not show up or did have longer delivery times. The machine delivery takes longer, and this is a clear sign. It is simply postponed, so it's not eased. You will see higher CapEx in the upcoming years.
Okay. Thanks a lot. How much CapEx would you then expect in 2022?
Yeah, 2022, it's expected with high uncertainty in regards to the availability. We expect around EUR 20 million for 2022.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
The next question is from Sebastian Vogel from UBS. Please go ahead, sir.
Hello and good afternoon. I wanted to come back to the new ventures that you have outlined in the slide deck before. By when do you expect to see a positive EBIT contribution from these ventures on your P&L? That would be my first question. The second question is on price increases. Now what are your plans there for 2022? Do you have something or you already planned or will you react ad hoc here? The last one, our third one, would be on inventory levels. It seems to be rather low per year-end. I was wondering what is there behind? In general, how do you see net working capital for 2022?
Okay. We're just shuffling the questions around. Hi Sebastian, this is Jens. Number one was the expectation on positive contribution of our new kits to the bottom line. It's, let me think, late 2024. As simple as that.
Got it.
Now the second was price increases. We of course are discussing those, and I think we will go with the price increase. I think we discussed something like next month or April. April is the next targeted price increase that we are currently discussing to follow suit with the cost increases on the purchasing side.
Hi, Sebastian, here's Thomas. Third question is for me. Inventory levels, yes, you have seen it correctly, balance sheet inventory levels went down, but it's mainly due to the advance payments from our customers. The net working capital in total decreased year-on-year by EUR 24 million. Last year we had a net working capital of EUR 68 million. Now it amounts to EUR 44 million, so quite a substantial increase. Not meaning that our inventory levels dramatically went down in 2021 compared to 2020. As I said before, the advance payments from our customers have reduced the inventory levels.
The expectation going forward, this will go up clearly, 'cause we received the cash and we are working on the projects and then we are going to deliver. Whenever we have delivered, then the inventory levels will be neutralized again. You can consider that the net working capital will go up in the future.
Understood. Just one quick follow-up with regard to the price increases. When you said it will follow suit to the price increases from your supplier, I guess you were alluding to this 8%, you mentioned earlier in the call, right?
Unfortunately not, because there is a limit to what our customers expect. Their level of sympathy to our price increases is relatively low because they suffer from same things. I would think that we travel between 4%-6%. As I said, we are discussing with our divisions of how much we can afford before we start losing contracts or projects due to the too heavy price increases.
Understood. Many thanks.
Welcome.
The next question is from Milena Kälin from AWP. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question. I wanna know what influence does the current war have for Kardex? Do you expect a further deterioration of the supply chain because of the war?
First of all, the direct impact to our top line should be relatively low, or very low, to be specific, 'cause we currently don't sell anything in the Ukraine and almost nothing in Russia. The other question is a good one. We are assessing right now the impact on supply chains, reason being that some of the suppliers went on rail instead of ship and/or plane. That could have a shorter term impact until they eventually go back to ship or to planes for delivery of parts. For now, that's. We are in the evaluation. I mean, we are a week into the situation, and we are assessing with our procurement guys what impact, if any, we will encounter in the next weeks before we can react to it and reschedule things in terms of bringing it into Europe.
If I can add here, we already assessed if we have a direct impact. We have seen that we have no major suppliers either, nor in Ukraine or in Russia.
Thank you very much.
We have a follow-up question from Sebastian Vogel from UBS. Please go ahead.
Actually, there would be two follow-up questions, if I may. The first one would be, how do you see demand currently in terms of, more specific, if there's something on the positive or negative side related to particular regions, industries or customer groups, that you could share with us? The last one would be a little bit more of a housekeeping exercise. Can you remind me of the FX impact on the Remstar sales that you have seen in 2021, please?
I take the easy one first, Sebastian. Yes, Thomas. The second one, the FX impact on bookings level is CHF 3.5 million. On net revenues is CHF 2.5 million, and on net level it's CHF 500,000. Negative impact.
Thanks.
That means he leaves the more difficult one to me. I think I understood that you wanted to know what the booking or the general market sentiment is by region.
If there's some industries that are standing out, on the retail or on the logistics side, any sort of standout on the positive or negative, compared to what you have expected so far?
No, that is an easy answer. No, we see the same mix in segments so far. It's not. I mean, I already said that we had an enjoyable increase in wholesale retail e-commerce in 2021. Specifically for Remstar and we see this continue, but you also see other industry segments remain strong for now. Therefore. We don't see a shift in this.
Perfect. Well, that was my question. Many thanks.
Okay.
There are no more questions at this time.
Okay then. Thank you very much, everybody.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, sir. We have a follow-up question from Stephanie Schultze from Mirabaud.
Okay, Stephanie, go on.
Thanks a lot.
Go ahead.
With two other questions, in fact. I mean, could you please maybe elaborate a bit on AutoStore? I mean, AutoStore itself, they reported great order intake, so how much can you profit from it? Or for how much can you book on that for yourself? And can you give a bit an outlook on AutoStore? And then a second one would be on your Asian strategy. At your last capital markets day, you stated that you were not so pleased with your Asian business. What are you seeing currently? And maybe if you could give us some flavor on this.
The second is, I think I mentioned, on the capital markets day that we are in the process of revising our Asia Pacific strategy. We are in the process there. We have our mid-year board meeting where we will discuss of how we want to continue our business in Asia. That is a clear target for further discussions and decisions to be taken. Given that you haven't done much, there is not much change to the business itself. I mean. We also see that the market itself is stable but not booming. With the numbers from China, with the GDP in China, with all these things, we think the market environment has not much changed. What we need to change is our go-to-market strategy. Working on it, to be decided mid-year. The first one, I'm not sure I understood. You referred to a booming order intake of AutoStore in general?
Yes.
Did I understand that correctly?
AutoStore in general. When I looked at the AutoStore results, it looks like they're going to increase their partners they're working with. I mean, how is this affecting you, and what's your outlook in terms of future revenues or orders and revenues with AutoStore solutions?
Number one, AutoStore should thank all of us as partners that their revenues go up because they don't have direct business. Everything they achieve, they achieve with us being partners. They have very substantial growth plans that they sold as their business plan to the new investors, like SoftBank. They have to meet these targets, and it's very clear that they add one or the other partner, integrator partner, for their technology on the globe. When it comes to us, we made a business plan for our own development of this business unit, and that, I don't think, is in any form affected by AutoStore adding partners. Because we focus on certain regions, we focus on certain industry segments and certain existing clients from Kardex, which was one of the things we could bring to the table, as a potential integration partner to AutoStore.
So far, for now, I don't think our plans to grow our own business based on AutoStore technology is not affected. Do I wanna disclose how much? No, I don't want to. Like always. Just to maybe answer the follow-up question on the follow-up question. The most prominent one.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
You have seen, Stephanie, that it actually started quite well, if you look at the order intake, which is mainly AutoStore in what we published.
If this was the last question, I would like to thank everybody for joining us for the earnings call. I'd like to thank Jens and Thomas for going through this not so easy discussion that was more focused on the future than on the past. I hope that we have our next discussion together with you again, with a good past and maybe a better and clearer outlook on the future. By then, I wish you a very nice afternoon and stay safe. Thanks very much. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.