Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Schindler conference call on the Q3 Results 2022 conference call and live webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Marco Knuchel, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the conference call for results as of September 30, 2022. My name is Marco Knuchel. I'm Head of Investor Relations at Schindler. I'm here together with Silvio Napoli, our Chairman and CEO, and Carla De Geyseleer, our CFO. Silvio will provide an overview on recent developments and update on the Top Speed 23 program, as well as on our priorities. Carla will then lead us through the financials. After the presentation, we are happy to take your questions. Marco Hasler, the Head Area Controlling at Schindler, will be present for this as well. We plan to close the call at around 11:30 A.M. at the latest. With that, I'd like to hand over to Silvio. Silvio, please.
Thank you, Marco. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this quarterly conference call. I'd like to thank all four of you for your time. I understand it's a busy period with many companies announcing the results, including some today. I appreciate how difficult it must be for you to organize your time. We'll try to be as effective and clear as possible. Before we dive into the slides, let me just start with a key message. Since I took over this double role of Chairman and CEO and had the pleasure of meeting you again last February, I said very openly that we are facing a difficult situation. I also said that we will fix it, and I also said that this would take time.
Accordingly, we initiated a process of change, confronting reality and focusing on what we call the vital few priorities. I've shared these priorities with you, and we provided regular updates. Today, I must say that we have the first signs of improvement. At the same time, I'd like to stress it and say again, we still have a long way to go. With that, perhaps let me start by addressing the first challenge, which was the market. It is never easy to provide a market update or a market statement, but probably in my 28- years in the industry, I must say this is one of the most difficult periods because things change so quickly. If we start with the new installation market, and you have here a chart where we try to summarize the situation, it is truly in continuous flux.
The year started with a solid market development all around the world, with the exception of China. In quarter three, somehow the same trend continued with some initial signs of slowdowns. Now, if we look at quarter four, I must say the situation is that China would continue to contract as it has since the beginning of the year, unchanged. The change here is that the rest of the world has also now started to slow down in a much more visible, and I must also say, quite rapid fashion. This includes key markets such as North America, South America, and also Europe. On the other hand, the existing installation market, there I'm pleased to say in the service, we continue to have stable growth, both in units and in volume, thanks to the conversion.
Notably, the modernization pickup continues very strongly all over the world, including in China. We have a chance to discuss it later on in the presentation. With that first market outlook, and I'm sure we're gonna come back to this also in relation to our order intake and address your questions, let's move on to our challenges. These are the same challenges, again, we presented to you since the beginning of the year. Today, I wanted to start maybe with a new format by first providing a general overview of all the challenges on the chart that you see here in front of you. Of course, there is an element here of qualitative assessment, but nonetheless, I thought it was important for you to have a very transparent view of the overall progress.
Before diving into the specific projects, let me perhaps add here, the most important update. That is that we stopped losing altitude. I say altitude in the sense of declining performance. We have started to stabilize the margins, and we have initiated a new trajectory where we now plan to undertake profitable growth on a steady level. At the same time, once more, we still have a long way to go, and that is visible on this chart. Because when I said it will take time, it was in February, beginning of the year.
Now if you think of our book-to-build cycle, as you all know following us and our industry for some time, we talk about 12, 18, 20 months, depending on the type of project, the type of units we sell. Now if you relate this 12 month , 20 month proportion to the time that has incurred, we've had nine months. You could say we're about 1/3 of the way about there. You can see this is reflected somehow in the chart that you see here in front of you. You will see we go through each one of the challenges in a second. However, what's more important is what?
It's that while we progress on individual priorities, individual aspects, we have to continue digesting the bad food that we ingested in the last two years. Sometimes in a company, we call this the boa constrictor phenomenon, when you just have to digest the backlog while the same, which then is affecting the P&L, while at the same time preparing the results of the future. Nonetheless, again, I'm pleased to say that progress starts to show. Let's now have a look at each individual challenge. Starting with the first one on the foreign exchange. Now, that is another very volatile environment, where, you know, with the US dollar appreciating, we were very much looking forward to having finally some tailwinds instead of headwinds.
Unfortunately, the improvement in US dollar, and to some extent also in the Brazilian reals, has been wiped out by the steep decline in euro and also in the RMB. Again, this is the reality. We must deal with it. At the same time, once more, we reaffirm our pride to be a Swiss company and in our deep roots in Switzerland. In dealing with this reality, what do we do? Well, we focus on the efficiency of the Swiss-based headquarter cost.
As you can see here on the chart on the right-hand side, you see that this doubling down on efficiency has basically led us not only to a reduction in absolute value of the Swiss-based headquarter cost, but also, and most importantly here, on a reduction of the percentage of revenue reflected in this cost. As you see, in 2022, actually, we were hoping to be even lower. Unfortunately, because of the initial slow pickup of the operating revenue, the percentage has not yet gone down as we planned, but we are definitely firmly resolved to continue reducing that both in cost and in percentage of revenues.
Moving on to the second challenge, I can imagine this is one that is the source of much interest, by the way, not only among yourself, also for us within the company. Because this is absolutely key. You can see what we've been driving from day one, and we openly said that, you know, unfortunately, we were a bit slow in the previous two years in reacting or even we should have anticipated inflation. We see that our effort are now paying off around the world, with the exception, unfortunately, of China, where you will have heard from other industry players. Unfortunately, the situation makes for a very difficult environment to increase prices. So far, I must say, you can see that we have high single-digit price increases in APAC, outside China.
We have double-digit, very strong price increases in the Americas, both north and south. This is, I think, something notable. We even delivered price increases in the EMEA region. Now, that's good news. On the other hand, the fact that China is so big, of course, somehow dents this whole effort on a global level. Nonetheless, if you look at the right-hand side, you see here the trajectory of the order intake margins. This has been going up. At the same time, when we speak about digesting bad food, you see that the backlog margin has in fact not improved. In fact, it even went down because the more and more some of the orders that were sold with the, let's say, overly optimistic cost base in the last two years.
Now they flow through the P&L, and so you can see that the backlog margin, in fact, is reducing. The plan is once this margin, margins in the new orders will flow into the backlog, you will see that also increasing and then overall impacting finally our P&L. Yes, overall positive, but I like here to stress three words of caution. Number 1, markets, and we just discussed it a second ago, are slowing down. The ability to continue increasing prices going forward has to be questioned. We definitely continue unabated, but that has to be said. The second, and again, I'm sorry to be like a broken record on this, but I think it's important, is that sales margins do not equate build margins.
This improvement will take time, again, 12 - 18- months to flow through the P&L. Third word of caution, and this is now something which is very clear, wage inflation is now picking up very strongly. Unfortunately, as material inflation declines, wage inflation is picking up. It is true in unionized environment, but also in non-unionized environment. Pricing alone, and this we will come to that when we speak about our priority, will not be sufficient to reestablish better margins. We will have to work on efficiency. If you don't mind staying with me for a few minutes, we'll address that later when we speak about our priorities going forward. Moving on to the next two challenges, three and four, which we call supply chain and product complexity, and as of last time, combine them together.
On the left-hand side, you see a positive development. When we spoke last time at half year, we clearly highlighted the difficulty in producing in a factory to a large extent due to the lockdowns, in particular in China. But not only with us, also with some of our suppliers that in fact struggle to deliver the components all around the world, even in factories outside China, and hence the difficulty on time delivery, et cetera. The good news is that this has now started to change, and you can see that, as you see that July, August, September in Q3, production capacity has been ramping up very, very strongly, even well above the capacity production that was delivered in 2021. This is positive.
On the right-hand side, you see this, again, congestion phenomena of the new orders versus old orders, but this time the perspective is between modular elevators and legacy product lines. Remember this has more to do with factory difficulty in managing multiple production lines, in the lines. The fact that, you know, for two years there was this slowdown, you know, this created this traffic jam in the factory. You can see there is progress in that. First of all, in order intake. Now the new product lines are about half year to date. Then in the order backlog, you know, there is progress as the production capacity ramps up, you saw on the left-hand side.
It has to be noted that legacy products still constitute 2/3s of the total order backlog. Going back, not only a question of margins here, but also a question of production efficiency in dealing with multiple product lines at the same time. Moving on to challenge Number 5, this may be one that we spend a bit more time, which is China. Of course, China is so important that it affects the whole of our world market as we saw before on the new installations market and on the pricing level. Now, you can see on the charts that we update for you on a regular basis, first of all, that the floor space sold continues to decline across all city Tiers.
We now reach the levels of the latest crisis of 2017. What I find even more of immediate relevance for our industry is the housing inventory on the right-hand side chart. Then you see the crisis level is such that we now came back to the peak levels of the 2014 crisis in all city Tiers. Now, what could be a positive thing is that you can see there is, based on official data, a sign of an inflection of the curve. The key question is here, does that mean that we hit bottom or could it be that this is a temporary one and then we'll continue increasing inventory going forward?
This, of course, we all hope that would be the former, i.e., that this would be the peak of the crisis in terms of housing. I must say for the moment, the estimate for the Chinese NI market is still of a contraction in between 15% and 20%, which we're not here now to provide forecast, but based on latest indicators, including the ones you see here, is likely to extend into 2023. Now, what does that mean for China? Of course, there is a lot of doomsayer, and of course, there are also many other aspects of China, including geopolitics, but we're not gonna go into that.
As far as our industry is concerned, and I know it's well known, but sometimes it doesn't hurt to restate the reality, is that in spite of this major contraction, China still remains by far the largest new installations market in the world. You've seen the operator chart here on Page 10, that China still accounts for 63% of the world market. Well, of course, this is in units. Last year it was 66%. Most importantly, you see that the second-largest market, India, is, depending on how you measure it, about a tenth of the size of China. We need to stay very close to China. Then you see that the other countries, thereon, are actually even a smaller fraction of the world, but also the China market by itself.
Again, not only is China the biggest market in the world, but we believe, moving on to the next slide, that China still has major potential for growth. Why do we say that? You see on the chart, and again, it's sometimes good to see it on a chart. It is the highest concentration by far of mega and large cities. I'm talking here of cities about 10 million, between 10 and 3 million of anywhere else in the world. As you may have seen in some studies by the EIUs and other independent organization, these cities are still growing due to the continued urbanizations in China. Now, if you look more granularly at our industry, and you look now at the right-hand side, you look here at elevator density measured by number of installed units per 1,000 people.
Some of you may remember that when I was CEO in 2014, 2015, I actually used the chart on a regular basis to look at potential. You can see that China here is still way behind South Korea, Germany, and Japan, much smaller markets than China. China, on the same chart, you see, had a tremendous progress, as one expected, over the last 11- years. Still has wide range to grow before it reaches the levels of, again, of South Korea. All in all, if you combine the two factual data points on this page, you see that China, medium term, long term, is still expected to continue growing. This is true for the new installation, but it's also true for the existing installation market.
Moving on now to the next page, on Page 12, where you see that the figure on the left-hand side for the China installed base or the overall number of units of maintenance elevators and escalators is about to reach 50% of the world's total. Incidentally there, you can see that if the market over the period 2017-2021 grew by 12%, Schindler growth of portfolio in the same period was above market in the order of 15%. Now, much more to come. This is not only a unique opportunity, but one could even argue it's historic in size and one that must be seized. How do we go about this as Schindler? We clearly, as a first big block, have to invest in technology.
You may have heard some of the speeches at the CPC Congress happening at the moment. You see there is a lot of talk about technology, a lot of talk about how China continues to invest in technology. This is true in the old economy, including in our business. The authorities are now promoting, and this is I'm sure known to you, a new program to promote safety via remote monitoring. We are supporting them in that, running pilots. Of course, there's also the topic about connectivity and digital services. We'll come to that in a second. Which also not only drives the service portfolio growth, but also a differentiation versus local players.
There is the whole aspect of the more classic approach, which is regaining units that we have lost on the basis of differentiation and better quality. Also doing that to some extent by acquiring independent service companies, and there are several of those in China. Again, the focus there is to look at density, efficiency, quality, to make sure that we overall gaining efficiency as a whole. Of course, there is the modernization in China, because after all this growth over the last 20- years, there is now up to 1.5 million units which are aged. Which are especially in view of the high usage in China, they're up for modernization, which constitutes a huge opportunity. For that, we are introducing a new modular platform. We'll come to that.
It was one of the programs that we have in Top Speed 23. Then there is of course a big opportunity by combining this with sustainability solutions to reduce the carbon footprint of buildings and our customers. This was an update on all our challenges. China is a key one, but again, there are big opportunities. Now, over the last two calls, three presentations, we stopped here and then we started speaking about financial results. Now I also meeting you and also through exchange we had over email, we understand there was a strong demand, which I understand very legitimate to get a bit more color about how we operate, what are our priorities.
We clearly, now that we start stabilizing our performance, I think it's time that we also dedicate our resources to provide you with this update. Here I would like first to provide an update on the Top Speed 23 program. You remember we announced it, and we explained that it was something to build the future of Schindler with substantial investments. Today we'd like to provide you an update on where is this overall Top Speed 23 program. Then I'd like to move to Page 14.
I'm pleased to say that overall, when one speaks about Top Speed 23, we have progress, we have a further focus on which module of the program address our immediate priorities, and third, most importantly, that some of these modules already start providing paying dividends. Let's have a look at the summary here. You see the subtitle speaks about realigning with operational priorities because, yes, when the year started and we took stock of the situation, we said, "Yes, this is very important, but let's make sure that now we apply the same aspect of efficiency and focus also to this program." The six modules you see here, some of them are either close completed or close to closure. The first one is on new installation growth in selected strategic markets.
You can see part of the immediate payoff is what you're seeing in improvement in margins, in a refocus, in specific segments and markets where we can be the most successful. Another one that is very close to closure is the bottom one, which we call Procurement Excellence, which I would say it was about time, I'll admit. Now, of course, in confronting the challenges of inflation or now the quick changes in raw material changes, we now have an organization that is set to address those and yield bottom line benefits, but also quality and safety. Is it not yet completed? We do have some staffing to be completed by year-end, but clearly by year-end, this will be completed, and we already start seeing some of the benefits.
Now, maybe moving to the third one there, Sustainable Modernization Solutions. I spoke about China as a unique opportunity. There you see, we decided instead of working on a modernization solution worldwide, we saw we have this huge opportunity in China. Again, we refocused the project only on China. That, in fact, brought us back a bit in terms of progress, because, you know, we had to re-look about how we could really make sure that we had the right product for China using a modular platform. We anticipate already EBIT impact as of next year. You have two that are more long-term. They were so planned because even if they will be completed to some extent by end of 2023, the EBIT impact, as planned, will take a bit longer.
This is digital twin. There's new products for the market coverage in segments where we've been less present. Digital twin, you see, we are much more advanced with escalators. This is the one we started with, where our factory and R&D modules are about to be launched beginning of next year. On the elevators, on the other hand, we started later, as planned, with a pilot phase, where then we will focus much more on the field operations to make sure how we can apply this digital technology seamlessly with our other tools that we have for the NI for the installation and service, as well.
Finally, and I mention it last because there I'd like to spend a bit more time, you see that, the connectivity, which is the second module here on this page, has progressed very well. We have now 25% of our portfolio, which is cloud-connected. I'd like to stress that point, it's cloud-connected. So we do not include here the old tel alarm or all these analog lines that we used to have before. These ones are there, and if you add those, the percentage is much higher. This is really with Schindler Ahead, cloud-based with the whole software stack, edge computing, everything which we need to have in order to provide a unique digital service to customers. This has progressed well and is starting already to have a positive EBIT impact this year.
Maybe to elaborate, I'd like to move to the next page on Page 15, where you see here some key numbers. I see some of our upgrade industry presented the case. I think it was time we spoke about ours. I'm pleased to say that the whole topic about connectivity in the elevator and escalator business is now a proven model. Again, you see here 25% of our portfolio cloud-connected. What are the benefits immediately when I spoke about EBIT impact already this year? First of all, look at the right-hand side on the more classic aspect. Our portfolio loss rate, our number of units in maintenance that we lose to competitors is dramatically reduced. I'm talking about one half.
This I would say is even beyond some optimistic scenario. That's exactly what I was hoping for when we launched it back in 2016, and I'm very pleased with this development. That's now a fact. The other one on the right-hand side is that you can see, thanks to the data connectivity, the type of early detection of defects of callbacks remotely, thanks to our technical operating centers that we have in all key markets, which are on top of our normal call centers, we could reduce on these connected units callbacks by 30%. The 30% is compared to non-connected units.
I know that some others have published higher numbers, but if you now include all the improvement of callbacks for you as part of our quality effort, I'm talking about a much higher percentage. This is simply the difference between connected and non-connected, and this in itself is a tremendous result. I'm talking about a one-third efficiency gain. Now on the left-hand side, you see now the new areas of business that can be open thanks to this connectivity. I'm very pleased to say that 50% of the connected units now provide revenues. We call this the monetization rate, which is an important number, especially because to be very clear, from a marketing point of view, perhaps after MIT, we still have some way to go.
This is a bit of a change in mindset, but also competencies throughout the organization. This of course shows for very substantial potential. You may remember I presented it in Q2. This is all aspect of green maintenance module that now we actively sell in some strategic markets and this is now certified by TÜV. You may remember also we presented last time. In fact the overall footprint for our customers, so it is for us Scope 3, for them is Scope 2, for buildings, due to elevator maintenance goes down for as much as 99.5% if all the aspects are applied, including electric vehicles, etc.
That is I think a very important element and again showing how this Top Speed 23 investment was absolutely right. You can see on the next page we provide a bit more color on explaining how this sustainability aspect is being addressed and how you reach this 99.5% reduction potential if you apply the remote maintenance, less physical visits, and thanks to the efficiency in terms of time, but also of course that then whenever we have to go because legally we still have to go a number of times, then it is done with electric vehicles. That was the Top Speed 23 update, and we continue providing you there, and we can also address it if you like, in the financial aspects.
Before passing the word to Carla De Geyseleer, our CFO, I also wanted to address another question that was asked by you, which is, you know, how do you operate? What are your priorities? As you can imagine, we have been addressing that since the beginning of this transformation. This is something that we have drum beaten across the organization, starting with our leadership on a regular basis. If you now move to Page 18, we see our priorities that I was seeing in a shamelessly maybe unoriginal manner for those of us that studied marketing at business school. There was an expression called four Ps. Well, I think four Ps applies very well to us, except these are different four Ps.
The priorities we've had are four Ps, people, products, performance and planet. This is something that everyone in the organization now gets accustomed to. Everything that we do has to fit in one of these four boxes. Otherwise we put it on hold or we just simply scrap it, perhaps giving some color within different boxes. You see under people, the first point is frontline is the bottom line. Let's not forget, 2/3s of our workforce are field people, technicians, installers, project managers. They are the ones that carry the Schindler brand. They're the ones that are the most important people in a company. The idea is that all our resources must be driven in order to support the frontline. Anything that doesn't should be put as a second or third priority and therefore by definition, put on hold or scrapped.
We're also a big element of culture, which then addresses the change management. We call it back to basics, because I think we learned the hard way that we must avoid at all costs this gap between narrative and reality to make sure we confront the facts head on and simply deliver by sticking to our original values. There is of course a topic of inclusion, diversity, and the fact that, you know, we have to upgrade all our teams to make sure we are prepared to perform with a quality second to none in our industry. The aspect of products, we already discussed it to a large extent. The topic of profitability in new equipment business, the idea of modernization growth and profitability to profit from the unique opportunities today.
We couldn't speak about products without addressing service, which is the essence of our value creation going forward with emphasis on efficiency. The topic of supply chain, where you know we addressed it as part of our priorities. There is the need of after we fix the issues today, once we've done it, we need to look at a complete overhaul, which we're already starting to address. On the performance, I like perhaps to stress the first part here, which is a formula that I think people in our organization are tired of hearing me repeating like a broken record. Pricing plus efficiency has to be bigger than inflation. Again, pricing will not be enough to offset inflation, all the more now with the wage inflation picking up.
It's about accepting inflation as a reality and driving the organization to stay above inflation with a combination of what we can do, what people can do on pricing, but making sure we also drive efficiency to stay on top of it, to stay ahead of it. There is the aspect, of course, of strategic markets. Of course, China is one of them. The idea is what? Is that one size does not fit all. There are markets with a dominant position where we are very profitable, and there we have to continue growing. We have to make sure that we not only defend, but build on these positions. There is a second group of markets where we are solid, but with a profitability that is on par with the group minimum requirement.
These markets can only grow if they improve the profitability. They either keep or improve the profitability. There's a third category, which are markets where we are way behind in profitability. In those markets, the message is clear, and it is clear now and will be even clearer now as we go forward with the objective in 2023. They can only grow if they improve the profitability. This is the 3-Tier approach we apply worldwide. Of course, we shouldn't forget that at the end, the success is measured not by how we meet our targets, but what our customers think of us. This is another message that is constantly driven across the organization. Finally, it could have been mentioned further, the aspect of planet.
We remember I presented it last time, so this time we have less of that, you know, we have an ESG roadmap, the first one of which comes to fruition in 2022. We're working incessantly to make sure we can deliver. There are some challenges, in particular in terms of electric vehicles, but, you know, nonetheless, we are doing everything we can and more. We have a new net-zero CO2 target certified by a science-based target organization, on which now we are making plan, executing, already driving. Finally, what we call Industry 5.0 is the application of the new circular economy to the elevator and escalator model, which we are certain will provide unique opportunities and not only for our shareholders, but also for our contribution to the planet.
In conclusion, main takeaways before I pass the word to you. We have stopped losing altitude by focusing on the priority we established at the beginning of the year. We have stabilized our business and started a new trajectory towards profitable growth. At the same time, it will take time before we close all the gaps we identified. We have a long way to go, but our resolve is absolutely unabated. Thank you. With that, I'd like to pass the word to Carla De Geyseleer, our CFO. Carla, please.
Thank you, Silvio. Good morning to everybody. You might know that I started here my role as CFO seven weeks ago, and without any doubt, I'm very much looking forward to engaging with you and to meeting you in person at a certain point in the future. Before diving into the details, let me first make some high-level comments. Third quarter results show initial signs that the corrective measures that were implemented throughout the year are starting to pay off, since the revenue recovered in the third quarter and the profitability clearly started to improve. Order intake remained under pressure due to globally slowing growth and our focus shift from volume to value and margin. We see definitely an encouraging trend in continued order intake margin development.
As pointed out already, the complex mix of challenges persisted in quarter three, and eventually they will still impact our overall results. Nonetheless, we narrow the bandwidth of the revenue guidance and confirm our net profit guidance for the full year 2020. The following two slides show the key figures for the third quarter and for the nine months year-to-date respectively. As I mentioned, with the exception of order intake and cash flow, the third quarter 2022 results show encouraging signs of recovery, particularly with respect to revenue and margin. Even more importantly, we recorded a progressive trend throughout quarter three. Adversely, the year-to-date 2022 key figures reflect a very weak second quarter results, which were particularly impacted by lockdowns of our China operations during several weeks. Moving on to the next slide, I'd like to present you the order intake development.
You can see here in the third quarter of 2022, the order intake reached CHF 2.7 billion, corresponding to a decrease of 8.5% and to a decrease of 5.9% in local currency, and this as a result of our focus on sales margin and a slowing growth across the globe. In the first nine months of 2022, the order intake reached CHF 9 billion, corresponding to a decrease of 0.8%, but equivalent to a positive growth of 0.7% in local currencies. Organic growth amounting to 0.4%, acquisitions contributed 0.3 percentage points, while the FX had a negative impact of 1.5 percentage points to growth.
The next slide provides you with an overview of order intake growth by region and product line compared to the first nine months of 2021. An order intake here represents all product lines, so the new installations, the modernizations, the repair, and the maintenance. The Americas and the EMEA regions grew, while the significant contractions of the Chinese new installation markets weighed negatively on Asia Pacific. Overall, the new installations declined while maintenance, modernizations, and repair business continued to grow nicely, resulting in an overall positive growth. Since the beginning of the year, the order intake margin has been continuously increasing, and this is also reflected here in the value development which outgrew units development and is the result of successfully implemented price increases. Our ongoing focus on higher margin projects.
Our portfolio of maintained units increased by more than 4% year-on-year, and the order backlog was 1.2 percentage points higher, increasing to CHF 9.9 billion. Backlog margin stabilized in the last quarter and declined by less than 100 basis points year-on-year, reflecting cost inflation, product legacy, and portfolio rotation. I continue now with the revenue development on the next slide. Obviously, I'm happy to share here the positives first. The third quarter of 2022 showed an accelerated growth due to strong backlog execution throughout quarter three. Revenue increased by 5.6% to CHF 3 billion, corresponding to an increase of 7.9% in local currency. Encouragingly here, performance was almost evenly distributed across all regions, but also across all the product lines.
In the first nine months of 2022, revenue reached CHF 8.3 billion, equivalent to an increase of 0.3% and 1.7% in local currencies, respectively. Organic growth reached 1.1%. Acquisitions added 0.6 percentage points, while FX had a negative impact of 1.4 percentage points to growth. The increase in the EMEA and the Americas regions was offset by a decline in the Asia-Pacific region, clearly resulting from the situation in China during the second quarter of this year. Growth in new installations was negative, again, particularly due to the situation in China. Modernization was weak in Asia-Pacific, while repairs and maintenance remained solid and is across all the regions. Now, the next slide shows you the development of the EBIT adjusted and the EBIT.
The inflationary pressure, product legacy, semiconductor shortage, supply chain issues, and restructuring costs persisted in the third quarter. However, I would like to draw your attention to the positive trajectory of performance narrowing the gaps year-on-year. EBIT adjusted in the third quarter of 2022 reached CHF 272 million, which is equivalent to a decrease of 11.7% and a decrease of 8.8% in local currencies. In the first nine months of 2022, the EBIT adjusted reached CHF 738 million, decreasing 22%, 22% and 20.2% in local currencies. As a result of this decreasing profit, cash flow from operating activities significantly weakened. In addition, the weakening was driven by substantially increased net working capital requirements, particularly reflecting challenges in our supply chain.
Cash flow from operating activities declined 67.5% to CHF 77 million in the third quarter of 2022, and to CHF 376 million in the first nine months of 2022, equivalent to a decline of 60.8%. I've been now here with the company for a few exciting weeks, and obviously I knew when I arrived that the team had been analyzing the situation and implemented a whole list of corrective actions. Based on what I've seen so far, I will continue building on this, and I will focus my attention on four areas which are very much in line with the challenges and the priorities that were presented by Silvio. Pricing efficiency and efficiency are top of mind, since these two at least need to exceed inflationary pressure to further improve our profitability going forward.
In view of slowing growth, efficiency across the organization will gain even more in importance, and we will therefore further analyze all our processes to unlock additional potential that we might have. This applies also to our supply chain and the procurement challenges where performance needs to be further improved. Last but not least, I also strongly focus on the net working capital management in view of its most recent development and the economic environment. With this, I would like to turn now to the outlook for 2022. Schindler expects the markets to further slow down globally, and assuming no further lockdowns or other unexpected events, Schindler foresees revenue growth between 0% and +2% in local currency. We confirm the net profit guidance of between CHF 620 million and CHF 660 million for the full year 2022.
Let me now close with a bit of a personal note. First of all, I'm very happy I joined Schindler, and I'm very much looking forward to working with my colleagues on further growing the company profitably and sustainably. I would like also to thank all Schindler employees around the globe for their hard work and their dedication to this encouraging performance in the last quarter. With this, I hand back to Marco.
Thank you, Carla. We are now happy to take your questions. I would like to ask you to limit yourselves to two questions only, given the limited time we have available. Thank you very much. With that, I hand back to the operator to start the Q&A with the first question. Sandra, please.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question or make a comment may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Lars Brorson for Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning. Silvio, Carla, Marco, thank you. I will restrict myself then to two questions. Thank you for the candor, Silvio, and the additional detail you're providing. My two questions would be, one, on your Slide 7 right-hand side, the chart there on OI margins. And secondly, S lide 8 on the left-hand side, your region 2, which I assume is China. The first question on Slide 7, it's obviously helpful to get your new installation orders received margins ex China. Guess it would have been even greater to get it including China. Maybe I can ask, where China new installation order margins are and whether this chart, had it included China, would also have shown an improvement sequentially on orders received margins.
In other words, is rest of the world more than offsetting the weakness you're seeing in China new installation orders received margins? That's my first question, please.
Lars, thank you. Yes, we refer to Slide 7. Very good question, I understand. To be clear, the margins in China, in fact, are staying flat. The trajectory you see, in fact, is the trajectory. China stays flat. In fact, it doesn't alter the change. To your question, yes, the net effect is positive even offsetting China.
Related-.
The last two months, we have seen a slightly big but very, very limited, which doesn't have, if you want, an impact so far. It's really consist of, you know, looking at the right project and finding them. The situation is in China, as you heard also from other sources, is one of these. I hope this answers your question.
It does. If I can sneak one related into that. I mean, if the industry doesn't appear to be seeing better pricing now, I can only assume the pricing gets worse in 2023 in China as steel prices move lower and volumes continue to decline. At least that's my assumption. High level question then is if you accept that assumption, why would China new installation pricing for the industry not mirror that of, should we say, the last major downturn in 2015, 2016, when industry pricing was down high single, low double? I'd be keen on your reflections on that.
Yes, thank you, Lars. It is a question that you can imagine also interests us immensely. I would say, having, as you probably know, lived six years in China, in Shanghai, and having faced a situation exactly this kind of trends, I think the assumption you say that in view of the reduction in raw material, the price may go down in China. That is, I think, it's a rational observation. You may even add to that, and I don't mean to be too gloomy, that with the market shrinking, which I think for me is the key element here, then of course the likelihood of pricing further declining in view of the excess capacity in the market is also very much a fair assumption. The key there and then on top of that, there is also wage inflation.
Now in China, that is less of an issue. However, there are pockets, some of the cities we mentioned, where this is one. That, I think, if anything, is easing a bit in China at the moment. Overall, I think any assumption of improving prices in China, as much as we never stop trying, is probably still unrealistic. We probably, I think I would support your observation here, Lars.
A second quick one, if I can. Slide 8, left-hand side, year-over-year deliveries. Again, region 2, which I assume is China. September is reversing that recovery you've seen since April. We heard Kone also flag, of course, in their pre-release, the lack of site progression among developer customers in China. They're effectively deferring deliveries. Should we continue to see that sort of sequential downtrend in Q4? Have you already seen that in October? Related to that, if I can, how do you assess the broader risk around order cancellations in China? Thank you.
Order cancellation as such so far is not a big deal in China. No, order cancellation is not. The question, though, is site delays. That is one topic. Cancellation, no. We do have, as you saw before, you heard from Carla, the topic of bad debt, which is one that then can affect, depending on the stage, the project itself in view of our payment schedules. But at the moment, we don't see order cancellation, I must say. The backlog being still solid, we do not see any immediate risk of sudden interruptions. The key, of course, is going forward. You know, depending on the order intake, how can you keep the right backlog at the right level to then produce in order to generate the profit results?
We're talking about now further down the line, and we're working very hard to address that too.
I'm sorry.
Lars, we lost you.
Sequential.
Could you repeat? Sorry, there was a moment that interrupted the communication. If you don't mind repeating the question, please, Lars.
Sorry. One last one, and then I'll go back. I was just curious on that Slide 8, where we see the region 2 again, I assuming that's China, that the September is reversing the recovery it's in April. I think it's a key question because we see deliveries being deferred in China. I'm just curious as to whether you've seen that sequential downtrend continue in October, and is that your expectation that that will continue to slow down in the fourth quarter, meaning deliveries in China, please?
No, not at the moment. This is more of a big push in August. You can see 100% is already a big delivery in a factory. Sorry, I have to say that. Barring another lockdown, and as you read, there is a bit of a few scares happening here and there. Barring a lockdown, we don't see the risk of a further slowing delivery. This is, if you want, a monthly trend. We don't see this as being an ongoing trend going forward.
That's clear. Thank you.
Thank you, Lars.
The next question comes from Andre Kukhnin from Credit Suisse, please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I'll stick to two as well. First one, just on top line guidance, for the year, given that we've only one quarter to go. You seem to be implying quite a slowdown in the run rate, in the fourth quarter, with the midpoint or even at the top end. I just wanted to check, if that's kind of degree of conservatism built in because of what you mentioned, potential lockdowns, et cetera, or is this what the order book is telling you?
Andre, I thought you and your colleagues would pick up the point. I do think, you know us. I mean, there is an element of a conservative approach, precisely in view of this, frankly, incalculable risk of possible lockdowns. It is a conservative-.
Very clear. Thank you. Oh, sorry, Silvio. Didn't interrupt.
No, no. Go ahead. Andre, we lost you.
We take the next question from Yifan Zhang from Goldman Sachs, please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. My question is actually also related to site delays. You comment on China, but what about Europe and U.S.? 'Cause Kone mentioned that they also see slow progress on site delivery for U.S. and Europe. That's the first question. I'll ask the second after this one.
Thank you, Zhang. No, at the moment, we don't see site delays. If you look at the immediate, I would say next two quarters, no, we don't see that. There are indications, if one speak to some of our customers, of them probably it's more a question of them making less investments going forward. The ongoing project backlogs is going as planned in Europe.
Makes sense. Thanks. The second one's more on the margin target. I know you don't probably give a specific one, but, you know, where do you see potentially immediate term your margins going to be given the progress in your programs? Is that going back? We can think of a level like back in the last five years, about 11%-12%. Is that a reasonable assumptions there?
We say we don't give a time by when this should be there. I think in this uncertainty we're not prepared to do that. However, I think the figure you mentioned, since we said our goal is to close the gap with our competitors, this is the minimum target we could, as you can imagine, legitimately give ourselves.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from, Rizk Maidi from Jefferies, please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my question and the details provided today. I'll start with the first one on China. Silvio talks about, you know, a potential decline of 15%-20% this year, and potentially a decline into 2023, in light of the CPC announcements and perhaps a lack of stimulus, which has always been the case in previous downturns. Whenever we hit these levels, we've seen China coming in with big stimulus, which we're not seeing now. Maybe if you use your sort of experience and your crystal ball, what would you think would be the sort of market performance next year? I'll start here.
Thank you, Rizk, for the question. My gosh, I'm afraid the crystal ball, I lost it some time ago. To your question, I said before that at the moment we are now triple-checking, triangulating data even with external sources, but the likelihood for next year in China is similar market contraction as this year. Now this is maybe the short and simple answer. If you'll allow me, one related question could be how long will it take for the market to come back? If you look at the crisis that we suffered in 2014 and I was very close to it back then. You know, it took two years to come back.
Now China, of course, the economy is not growing at the pace it used to back then, so you probably cannot apply this one to one. Just top of my head, I would say maybe it would take definitely more than two years. Though in the meantime, you saw what the data represented before. China will remain a huge market. This is all I can say for now, Rizk. I'm sorry, I cannot provide more color, but does that address your question?
Yeah. That's helpful. The second one is on wage inflation and how we should think about it for next year. I think this year you're having something like CHF 140 million. I guess that's essentially coming from the U.S. If you could just update us on how sort of negotiations are ongoing in Europe and other regions, and how should we think about that sort of wage inflation heading next year? Thanks.
Okay. Thank you for this question. Carla, would you like to address the question?
Yes, with pleasure. Obviously, you know, we take into consideration that the wage inflation will be picking up, Silvio pointed out already. Even I would say if we need to go a bit more specific for the full year. We are actually counting on more than CHF 100 million for the wage inflation. Obviously that will, you know, further also, you know, increase in 2023.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Rizk.
The next question comes from Martin Hüsler from ZKB. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my question, and thank you for the interesting slide deck. My first question is turning to the one-off costs that you usually deduct, and it looks like that after nine months, those were kind of pretty much lower than we were expecting. Can you shed some light on why TS and also restructuring costs were below our expectations, and what is the full year outlook regarding those costs? That was my first question.
Yeah. First, okay, I mean, yeah, sorry, Silvio. I know you want the first topic is definitely the Top Speed 23 program that Silvio pointed out. You know, we have been realigning really the program there. That resulted in the fact that we are actually foreseeing that we will spend less on the Top Speed 23 program as a whole and also obviously in the year 2022. That is one of the big elements there.
Would you share a number with us, maybe?
I would say on the full year, you know, we foresee to spend approximately CHF 65 million on Top Speed 23.
Okay. The restructuring costs will stay on Q3 level also for the last quarter?
Yeah, no. For the full year, actually, for these costs, we foresee around CHF 50 million.
50. Thank you. Then my second question may be a bit more strategic, but also turning to China. You were mentioning and showing the potential that you see for service and modernization. What margin at the moment do you achieve in China, let's say for new installation, but also service and modernization? Probably you won't give us a clear number, but if you compare it to the group average, can you give us there some more insights? What trends do you expect for the margins for, let's say, service and modernization in China in the future?
Good. Very good. I understand your question. Again, you're right to understand we're not gonna give exact numbers, but we definitely can give a relative answer. Marco, would you like to address this question?
Yeah. EI margins are lower than group average, because we have a very, let's say, significant regulation in China of 25 visits a year, which is very, let's say, limiting our ability to drive efficiency. However, there is also progress in terms of using connectivity to replace physical visits, et cetera. We expect that we can drive this down the road, but it's clearly below average of group margin in EI.
Did you also ask about modernization?
Modernization is aligned with group.
Does that address your question?
Yes. Thank you. Just to help me to remind that in new installation, it used to be always more profitable in China, but I think due to the pricing pressure we see and obviously the market downturn, is it now below average in China?
That is correct. It's below average in China for the Schindler brand. It's different for dual brands.
Very tired. Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Aurelio Calderon from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll take them one at a time, if I may. The first one is around one of your comment you were making on the order intake. I guess of the 6%, 5.9% decline that you've seen in the order intake, how much of that do you think is due to end market weakness itself? How much do you think is you just staying away from projects which don't meet the margin criteria?
Broadly, excellent question, Aurelio. Thank you for that. I mean, broadly, it's about 50/50. That's probably why in China is mostly due to the market decline and the thing. But there are also other parts of the world where, frankly, if one talks about large projects, there are some that we very intentionally decided to step away from in view of the low profitability, by the way not only in NI but also EI. We look at the things always. We call it wall-to-wall. We look at the factory, at the margin in the field, but also the future revenue. It's about 50/50.
Okay, that's great. My second question is, sorry, to go back to China. You've mentioned overcapacity in the industry, and we can see the numbers. But I understand that you also have an export business from China. The question would be kind of two sides to this question. One, would you expect to see a major restructuring your China business set up to this new normal? Or do you think that export market could still somewhat compensate for that weakness in the domestic market? Two, if you can remind us how much you export from China and how much is just local for local. Thank you.
Okay, good. There are three elements to the question. Let me see. Let me do it one by one. Let me start with the last one. It was about export, right? As you know from our manufacturing setup, we have factories in India, we have factories in North America, South America, Europe, actually, we have several. Our approach was always to manufacture where the market is. Contrary to other players, we never used China as the global export hub. Nonetheless, I refer to that because of course, the Asia Pacific proximity, China for us was mainly used as an export hub for Asia Pacific. Plus, there are some component suppliers that actually are present in China that then we also often channel through our China supply chain.
Overall, if you don't mind, allow me not to give an exact number, but I would say a fraction of our production capacity in China is dedicated to export, but the majority, the large majority is dedicated to production in China for the domestic market, which as we saw by size, definitely justifies it. Second question is how do we plan to adjust for the China market? There, I think we need to be realistic. A market that declines 15%-20% two years in a row, if that is the way it is gonna be, calls for a fundamental restructuring. Now, you use the word major.
Now, whether it's gonna be a major or radical resizing of the China presence, for me, and we discussed it openly with the team, I think is becoming more and more a very probable likelihood, if not an urgency. It doesn't mean that it has to be exaggerated. No. As you saw, the figure in China still justifies a big presence and important market, but it's not the same size. When you saw this chart we presented, it was, I believe, on Slide 11 on identifying cities with most growth potential, but also with portfolio density. This is the type of approach we're having. In this note, of course, as you know, the China system also has agents.
The idea is to focus our sales network and maintenance network in a more concentrated area where you have a more sustainable business in terms of margins, new installation, but also in terms of service conversion, service density, et cetera. This would be the essence, and I'm sure we'll talk more about it in February when we present the plan for the year.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Aurelio.
The next question comes from Vladimir Sergievskiy from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, and thanks very much for taking my question. I have one left on the cash flow. On my numbers, to get to CHF 77 million of operating cash flow in the quarter, you could have faced a working capital headwind not too far from potentially CHF 200 million, which obviously is a big number for one quarter. What was driving a sizable headwind? Is it unwinding prepayments or high inventories or unbilled receivables? Are those headwinds related to any particular region at all? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Vlad. Carla?
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. It is mainly related to the inventory buildup. Obviously, you know, that hangs together with the supply chain issues, you know, that we are working through. Yeah, that is actually the main reason.
Is it across the regions or again, any particular region is kind of a highlight there?
It is actually spread over the whole portfolio, over all regions. Yeah.
If I may follow up on that, would you expect those inventory builds to start reversing perhaps in Q4 or at some point soon? Or that's too early to call?
Yeah. We definitely expect an improvement in quarter four.
Yes.
Understood. Thank you so much.
At the same time, I'd like to draw attention to the chart on Page 8, where you see that this, I call this traffic jam in the factories between legacy products and new products still not being resolved. Carla is right, we definitely want to make sure that we continue producing at the rate we showed on the same chart on left-hand side. However, I think we need to be realistic about the speed at which we can really go back to the, I don't wanna say glory days, but, you know, to a time that we can really run the factories with the level of, you know, efficiency that we aim for.
Maybe final point, one of the lessons from the last two years is also how to run factories by combining efficiency with risk management. That means, I'm sure you probably hear it from other companies, now is that probably the old idea about just in time will definitely remain, but the level of just in time minimum inventory most likely will change. Now, but then you—Vlad, you rightly spoke about a trend, so the trend definitely should improve. Let's only keep in mind what is the ultimate point we could reach. Does that make sense?
Absolutely. That's very helpful. Thanks very much, Silvio, Carla.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Martin Flueckiger from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, gents, and morning, Carla. Thanks for taking my question. Actually, I've got two as well. Firstly, on modernization. Seems to be quite a bit of volatility in your order intake in modernization. Just, you know, looking at the last few numbers that I've estimated based on that slide, what is it? 2024, I believe, yeah, in your presentation. Just wondering what's behind this huge volatility, yeah, 'cause looks like, you know, Q3 modernization was again down, or am I missing something or misinterpreting something here? That would be my first question. I'll take one at a time.
Thank you, Martin. Good observation. The answer is some projects in modernization are large projects. In particular, there are large projects in relation to infrastructure projects that now governments or local authorities decide to modernize as opposed to replace the whole thing. For example, in North America, part of this, you know, drive by the current government has had a number of those which then qualify as modernization because it's about, you know, replacing part of the escalator, replacing part of the lift, which of course then gives and causes less disruption to public traffic. This is the answer. It's like when you got these chunky things, they are so big compared to the base that then they result in this up and down peaks.
Clearly, if we manage as we want to grow the base of those standard products, you will see less of these peaks. At the moment, that's the situation.
Okay, great. That makes a lot of sense. Secondly, just wondering about the previous indication on wage inflation. I think if I remember correctly, the indication was more than CHF 100 million now. Does that just pertain to personnel cost inflation, or does that include subcontracting cost inflation, too?
No, I was talking about, yeah, indeed, north of CHF 100 million. We talk about CHF 140. That's actually what we foresee for the full year, and we are talking here about the wage inflation only. Yeah.
Sorry, I didn't get that acoustically. Which inflation only?
Wage inflation only.
Wage inflation only. Okay. We have to consider subcontracting cost inflation as well.
That's correct.
And this goes-.
Okay.
Martin, this goes into our margin. The subcontracting goes into our NI margins as part of custom goods sold.
Right. That's helpful. Sorry, just for clarification here. There was the statement about OI margins being below group average. I presume when you talk about group average, you mean the group average OI margin and not the overall consolidated group EBIT margin. Is that right?
That's right. Yeah. It was for China only, the statement.
Right. I got that. It's for the business area average and not for the group overall average, right?
Correct.
Perfect. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Nick Housden from RBC. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. The first one, hopefully just a quick one on China again. I was wondering if you could tell us what your, you know, the respective exposures are to sort of Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, versus the lower Tier cities, because, you know, just looking at the data, it seems like the property downturn is hitting the lower Tier cities a lot harder than, you know, Tier 1 and Tier 2 ones.
Thank you, Nick, for your question. Allow me to split in two. We have nearly three brands in China, and the way we are organizing those, and actually the way even they were originated. Schindler China is mainly Tier 1, Tier 2, very little presence in the in more remote part, smaller cities. Jardine Schindler, which is a larger dual brand, they are mainly Tier 2 with some presence in Tier 3, but mainly Tier 2. Volkslift, that's the newest of our dual brand. They are basically Tier 3 with some presence in Tier 2. We try to. This is, I must admit, that works well into the coverage, but also in terms of product specs, and combination to market.
All in all, as you know, most of our revenues today are generated by Schindler China. Without giving a specific percentage, I think that gives you some indication that our exposure to Tier 2 and Tier 3 or actually to Tier 3 is by far smaller than to the rest of the urban environment.
Thanks. That's very clear. Just on you know the net cash position and you know the interest rate environment. You've got CHF 2 billion of cash on the balance sheet, I think actually a little bit more. It seems like you know in the coming months, maybe for the first time in a while, you can actually start to earn some decent interest on that cash. I guess it kind of depends which countries the cash is parked in. I mean, how should we be thinking about the impact that rising interest rates could have on you know say net profit or the interest income? Will there be a clear net gain or will there be sort of correspondingly large increases in the interest expense?
Let me very good question. Indeed we do have cash. Maybe Carla can add. But our approach, and I think this is public, is that we repatriate with a system of dividend, I think, cash to Switzerland. The discussion is how do we allocate. Then of course, leaving enough cash in the operations that they can run the business. This has always been our approach. As you know, the interest rates in Switzerland now are slowly emerging from the negative interest rate area. But as some of your colleagues here who are from Switzerland can confirm, we're not yet into a very, I would say high returns on interest on Swiss bank accounts. That is progressively shifting.
In other words, we definitely are looking at an improvement, but at the moment, there is nothing extraordinary coming.
Yeah, that's very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from Miguel Borrega from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one, just going back to Slide 7 on the high margin intake. Is that already being influenced by what you think will be a higher margin from modular? In other words, are you estimating a higher margin because these will mostly come from modular, or is it the point of the chart to show higher pricing? Following up on that, can you give us some sense of the gap between a normal order today versus modular? Is that one, two, three, four percentage points different? Some color there would be great. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Miguel, for the question. Let me just say, let me answer this, put it in perspective. Modular today essentially applies to what we call our residential mass product. Traditionally, these products always had a higher margin than the mid-rise and the high-rise. Part of our issue is that because of the issues that we presented, this new generation of modular unfortunately didn't have the impact we expected. What is the idea is that now progressively now as these issues are resolved, we want to reestablish the margins in residential that we always used to enjoy. I'm talking about margins that are superior by a certain dimension.
I don't think we never revealed exactly what a different market margin is per unit, but this is really key for us to reestablish profitability in new installation and ultimately for the whole product. This is the approach. In this chart, it is basically the effect come from this modular product line and the improvement in the margin that get there simply by sheer size. The other ones are usually more bulky product, and there I would say the margins are, except for the disrupted supply chain, somehow unchanged. The biggest impact we have today was indeed in improving that. Does that answer your question?
That's very clear. Thank you. Can you just talk a little bit about wage inflation and help us understand what percentage of the business would be a pass-through? What is today, you know, as far as visibility you have in the business, what would be the headwinds for 2023? How much would that need to be covered by the price cost spreads? Thank you very much.
For 2023, I'm afraid, Miguel , believe it or not, because certainly we're working on that now. I suggest maybe if you don't mind, we park this question for February. Maybe in terms of which business is the most affected. In service, in fact, most of our contracts have an escalation clause. You cannot. It is not true in every country. For example, typically the U.S., which is a very high value country, doesn't have that escalation. There is maybe there are pockets of service where there is an exposure, though you can actually then increase prices in a more flexible way. But overall, by and large, I would say in service, the exposure is hedged. Where you have an immediate risk, for I think for the industry is on the new equipment.
That's why I raised this word of caution when presenting the slide, specifically on wage inflation, because there, as we discussed for raw material, the escalation is not always enforceable, depending on where you are. Inflation clauses are often related to material rather than wage. Of course, there is a topic of the backlog, so a certain wage level and what the impact could be. This is for us today, the biggest, one of the biggest concerns we have. I must be very open, and I can see your question suggests you see it the same way.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question from Joel Spungin from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe I can just start with a relatively simple one, which is, I was just wondering if you could tell us what the revenue growth rate for the third quarter, specifically, by region was. Just to give a bit of color on that. Obviously on Slide 25, I think you give the nine-month with the blobs there. I was just wondering if you could just break that out specifically for the third quarter.
Carla, would you like to give some indication of this?
Yes, yes. If we just look, you know, at a breakdown from the region, then it is clear that the Americas and Asia Pacific, but obviously excluding China, and, well, I must say, EMEA, they are actually all three contributing at a similar level. Yeah.
Okay. Can you say what that level is, roughly?
Yeah. That is like mid-single-digit to high-single-digit, you know, that they contribute. Obviously China is the exception, you know, with the lower single-digit growth there.
Understood. Okay. Thank you for that. Maybe just second question, just coming back on the last question actually on wage inflation. Oh, can you hear me?
Joel. Sorry, go ahead. Sorry to interrupt.
Hi. Yeah.
Are you still there, Joel?
I am.
Go ahead, please. Can you repeat your second question? Apologies.
Sure. Yeah. I just wanted to ask with regards to just adding to your previous comments around wage inflation, about the CHF 140 million. Is it possible to say sort of broadly, you know, how much of that applies to the NI business as opposed to the service business? Is that something you can give a bit more color on?
Great. Carla.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. I would say it's around 2/3, 1/3 NI, 2/3 EI. Because EI is obviously the more heavy labor part of our business. Right?
Great. Thank you for that. Maybe just very quickly, in terms of subcontractor costs, can you say roughly how much that is? Is that predominantly, I assume, going into new equipment installation?
Yeah. We estimate that around CHF 13 million for the full year.
This is predominantly NI and modernization because in existing installation, we work with our own workforce in all markets.
Got it. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We've time for a last question, maybe.
The last question comes from Daniel Gleim, from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, Carla, Silvio, and Marco. You mentioned the 25 physical maintenance visits a year in China and your expectation to convert this to remote monitoring down the road. Could you elaborate on that expectation? I'm especially wondering about the potential timeline and the extent of conversion. That's my first question.
All right. Sure. Thank you, Daniel. I understand the line wasn't great, but let me see. Do you refer to the China opportunity in terms of connectivity and conversion? As you may know, the Chinese government is running pilots as we speak. I should have been doing that. They started doing it before the COVID started. The deal was to have these pilots completed within, I think, a period of, I think it was 18- months, to be precise. Now, because of the COVID situation, there was uncertainty thrown in in terms of timing. The idea of these pilots is really to replace these physical visits that Marco referred to with remote visits.
Now, there is a specific request that then the connectivity will not only be between Schindler and the customer, but also the local government will also have a side access. In view of what they say is their concern to monitor safety of these equipments. I must say we've been trying to get answers or because we have been it's not only us, I think, most large players have been involved in these pilots. Based on latest information that we've been asking our Chinese colleagues to provide us with, no decision has been taken as to when they'll become completely effective and actually becoming full-scale. As you can imagine, we're very keen for this to happen, for all the reason I mentioned, starting with safety, quality, but also efficiency and differentiation versus our customers.
Now, at the moment these pilots are done not nationwide, but by city. Ideally the conversion would then be that as soon as this is open city by city, it will start. I have to say, I'd love to give a figure on this, but at the moment, it is not in our hands. It's really not for the lack of not wanting to give a number, but I don't have this number. What I can tell you is the day it starts, because of portfolio connectivity, we are ready. We were the first ones to go in China, and I think in our portfolio, we are in China, definitely, ready. I cannot tell you how. All we need is a green light.
Very clear. A very quick one, if I may. Do you plan to provide quantitative midterm targets at some point? What I'm referring to is above and beyond the narrowing of the gap on margins versus competitors. If yes, at what point in time could that happen?
I understand your question. I think we would, if you allow me, I'll park this for when we speak in February. At the moment, there is so much uncertainty around that I think I'm not prepared, I'm not in a position to give an answer to this. Let's address this question again when we speak again in February.
Very clear. Thank you all.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for attending this call today. We would like to close now. Please feel free to reach out to me in case you might have any questions. The next presentation will be on February 22, 2023. Thanks again. Take care and goodbye.
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