All right. Good morning. Welcome. Greetings from my side. My name is Heiko Komaromy. I'm the director of Investor Relations, and I'm very pleased to welcome you to the financial results presentation of Sensirion for the year 2022. Today with me, as always, is our CEO, Marc von Waldkirch, and our CFO, Matthias Gantner. I will be moderating through this presentation, and we will do it analog to last year. First of all, we will show you the financial results from 2022 moderated by Marc von Waldkirch, including an outlook. Matthias Gantner will then deep dive into the financials, and Marc will conclude with the deep dive into the outlook. Once we finish that third session, we will be open for Q&A, and I invite everybody online and also here in the panel to ask your questions.
Here in the meeting room, you can feel free to raise your hand. All the online attendees, I would invite to post a question in our chat. We will read them out and then answer them respectively. All right, without further ado, I hand over to Marc.
Yes, thank you, Heiko, and warm welcome also from my side here in Zurich, first of all to you here in the room but also to our virtual colleagues, online. First of all, a short summary of 2022. I think 2022, and this is more than known for you, was characterized again by a lot of geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges. Starting with the shortage in electricity, about the allocation in raw material markets, about the Ukraine war, but also last but not least, also the COVID situation in China. Unfortunately, at least two of them, that means the COVID situation in China allocation seems to be relaxing more now today. But all the others are still there.
Despite all of these challenges, we can actually look back to a pretty successful 2022 again. We ending up the top line with a growth of 12% to CHF 322 21 million. This was mainly driven by all our new products in the environmental sensing area. That means with particulate matter, with CO2, these products, they have now taken over the major contribution of our growth story. There is also humidity, there is also flow products. They are still contributing, but not on the level, which is for only with them we cannot actually record these growth rates as we can present today.
On the other hand, we have also, if you are looking back to 2021, we had this medical ventilator business driven by the pandemic, which normalized 2022, but which was also more or less compensated by an additional one-off extra business which came also from medical, but this was more on, driven by a replacement activity of one of the largest fab companies, which is also disclosed today as a one-off business of CHF 28 million, to be very transparent to you on this extra value. In terms of profitability, we recorded again some above average profitability levels on gross margin but also in EBITDA level. This was driven by very high utilization of our fab.
Both figures went down slightly compared to 2021, which is also illustrating the fact that we are investing heavily into additional CapEx in order to bring down the utilization of our fab to a normal level, also to be ready again to react fast on additional wishes of our customers. That's one of the major USP of the company that even during the whole pandemic and allocations phase of the last few years, we were always able to deliver, and we had always long lead times that were significantly shorter than all our competitors. We like actually to keep this USP with the company. That's also one of the reasons why we are investing heavily into CapEx.
On the other hand, we like also to invest into additional R&D and sales resources, also this is part of our DNA, in order to grab and to address additional growth initiatives for the next couple of years. That's also one of the reasons why we are coming back now to normal levels of EBITDA. Since middle of 2022, and this was also one of the messages I shared with you, during our conference call in August 2022, we see also some slowdowns in the market. This very hot phase where all the customers were mainly concerned about the fact that they might get too few products is over. Now the customers, they also start again to optimize their inventories. This is mainly seeable in the appliances and the consumer industries, not yet in automotive.
As I have written in my shareholder letter this morning, we expect that also in automotive there will be some slowdown effect in the next months to come, due to the fact that the automotive seems to work still on the backlog to reduce the backlog of orders they have taken in the last couple of months, that they were not able to do so, to deliver due to the shortage of components, which is now relaxing more and more. As a result of all these estimations, we are pretty cautious about the forward-looking statements of 2023, but I come back to this at the very last slide of this presentation today. First of all, coming back to 2022, some words about all the markets. In automotive, we recorded a small growth of 3.4%.
After a weak H1, so H1 was in the, was a shrink of top line, we could now come back to a small growth due to the fact that we have also seen in the second half of 2022 that the orders picked up. Also this was on the base or on the back of the fact that the automotive car manufacturers, they could normalize more and more operations in their plants, thanks to the fact that the electronic component shortages relaxed in the last couple of months. Strategically, we made a significant progress also looking forward to win additional sockets with European OEMs directly. Probably you can also remember that we started this direct business in 2018 by an acquisition in the Korean and Chinese market.
We are now more and more, we can actually win track record in this direct Tier 1 business. Looking back in 2022, we could win additional designs for European car manufacturers. These are not yet influencing top line because it takes typically two years in order to be ready with start of production. Medical markets here again, as I have already mentioned, this was heavily influenced in 2020, but also 2022 by one-off effects. In 2021, it was mainly by ventilator sensors, and in 2022, it was mainly driven with one-off business by these CPAP replacement activities of a CPAP manufacturer in U.S. Those one-off effects seems to be over.
That means we are not expecting to have significant contributions to the top line in 2023 by one or the other of these two one-offs. In the core of medical, we could record a robust growth rate of, I think it was more or less 8% from 2021 to 2022. There is more dynamic in industrial market. Industrial is actually a market which is highly diversified. In these markets, we see all these appliances, but also HVAC, heating, ventilation, air conditioners. There's also semiconductor is part of industrial. There we have a high dynamic in the last couple of years. This is mainly driven by all these new environmental sensors. All these new products, CO2, particulate matter, formaldehyde, but also Volatile Organic Compounds.
All these measurements or sensors they address, the indoor air quality is mainly addressing the industrial markets. Here that tells you the reason why we see these very high growth rates in the last couple of years. We could more than double the top line of industrial markets within two years as you have seen here on the slide. Here we see also some slowdowns now. If you compare the full year results, 2022, with the half year, first half of the year results, then you see that there is still a good growth rate, but it's lower than the one we have disclosed in August last year. We see also good demand, or we have seen in last 2022, a good demand for flow sensors for semiconductor industry. Semiconductor is definitely also running pretty well.
Also there we see now some slowdown effects due to the cycle of semiconductor industry. Last but not least, the consumer, which is more or less the same dynamic. We had a very strong first half of the year, and we have a weaker second half of the year. Consumer is typically one of the fast-changing markets, especially if it comes to slowdowns or to a pickup in the economy. Here we are addressing mainly gadgets. The gadgets you can typically buy in any shops, electronic shops, as a consumer, the end consumer directly. They are table-based, indoor air quality monitors, humidity monitors and so on. There we see now these slowdown effects, mainly the Chinese markets as well.
For both markets, for industrial and also for consumer, we can also state that we see still the strong demand of this higher sensitivity for indoor air quality in any aspect. Either for just as the end consumers are interested to get the information about the air quality in rooms, but also from all the manufacturers, they are interested to do more in order to guarantee a good indoor air quality. This, to guarantee that, they need also the sensors to either control or to regulate their air conditioning systems or their heating ventilation air conditions. On the other hand, we see also this comes together. The indoor air quality sensitivity comes together with energy efficiency. On the other hand, if you like actually to increase the quality of air in rooms, you have actually to ventilate more.
Ventilation needs also energy. In order to optimize these two different goals, you need sensors, for example, CO2, in order to get the information about how many human beings are in a room. If there are many human beings, you see a higher CO2 level. Definitely you have actually to increase the ventilation rate. Whenever you see that the room is empty, or almost empty, you can reduce the ventilation rate. You can save energy while keeping the quality of the indoor air quality. That's actually one of the main motivations to integrate sensors to, you know, to get this information to optimize the system.
This is just for your reference here, the historic revenues and also gross margin rate in the last couple of years, as I like to provide you as usual. Last but not least, I like also to shortly mention some strategic progress, not just of 2022. You might remember, our strategy, which is the very same as we have presented in 2021 in the capital market day, is actually based on three different strategic focus, all on the fundamental of our very special entrepreneurial spirit of the company. Focus One is actually focusing on humidity and flow. Our core business, historic core business, where we have very high market shares, and we like even to expand our dominance in the markets.
Here we can state that we launched successfully the fourth generation of humidity sensor. This was already in 2021 with the base model. In 2022, we could expand the family of the fourth generation by an automotive version with a high-end solution in order to provide our customers all possibilities. Also, an analog version is part of the family today that the customers can actually pick up those solutions they need best for their individual applications. Secondly, we have recently, I think it was last year, last week, we announced that one of our competitors, it's STMicroelectronics, they decided to give up humidity business with their own humidity centers and to take over our solutions. There will be some transitions for their customers the next couple of years.
To be very transparent to you, ST is a big company, but not in humidity. It's definitely a good message that another competitor actually decided to bow out of this humidity field, which also underlines our dominance in these markets. In Focus two, we like to do the very same. We have already done in humidity and flow. Now with environmental sensors, namely to become market leader. We are not yet there. We like to become market leader for the whole environmental sensor market. There, I think we can say that with the 2nd- generation of CO2, which was already launched in 2021, where we see additional design wins from months to months, we are fully on track on that.
We're also working on the second generations of particulate matter, which is very close to be launched and for formaldehyde as well. This is exactly the DNA of the company. We start first with the first generation, which is more or less a robust solution, but not yet optimized in all corners. Then we come up with second one, where we bring all our technologies in. That means about CMOS, about chip design, CMOS chip design, but also about packaging in order to make the solution smaller, more cost-effective and better in performance. This is exactly the track we are following for all these three new product lines, CO2, particulate matter, but also formaldehyde. In Focus Three, there we have the long-term orientation.
That means we like to lay the foundations today on technology level in order to continue our growth journey for the next not even 5 or 3-5, but also 5-10 years. There, this was also already disclosed to you. We decided to develop an additional business model with the company, not just to focus on hardware only, which is the historic business model with the OEM customers, but also to go more into the field of selling data or selling qualified data based on sensors in a kind of a Sensor as a Service basis. To launch this strategic initiative, we acquired a company in Berlin in September 2021. We are still working, and this is a main focus on, in Focus Three.
We are now developing this new business models for the company. Up to now, we are fully fine with that, but it takes some time in order to contribute heavily but significantly to the top line. Last but not least, I come back to the fundamentals. This is probably the most important asset of the company. That means culture of the company. We are very proud that we have now got the certification on Great Place to Work for all our European subsidiaries. That means in Netherlands, in Germany, but also in Hungary, definitely in Switzerland as well. We have the certification for Great Place to Work, which helps also to attract a lot of good talents for the company.
I think if we are looking back, especially all through these lockdowns and these additional demands in medical, this would not be possible without the spirit of entrepreneurship in the company to take chances whenever they pop up. I think I'm really proud. Also on this side, a big thanks to all the employees worldwide. They have supported the figures we can now present here on this media press or the earning calls today. That brings me to the end of my short review of 2022. Now all the details of financial figures, I'm happy to hand it over to Matthias.
Thank you, Marc. Also, warm welcome from my side to the whole audience. Let me take the opportunity to elaborate a little bit on the set of numbers of business year 2022. Starting here with another overview about the KPIs that we have in our company Sensirion. Looking at the first three from left to right, I think it's more or less, as Marc mentioned, it's the continuation of our growth and also a quite stable scenario about stability. Where we see for 2022, and I will elaborate on that a little bit later, that is the matter, the topic, capital bound, further invest and CapEx, resulting in a new or in a refreshed picture of free cash flow.
I will elaborate on that. First starting from the top line development, 2021 to 2022. I think what is illustrated here on that chart is again, this great blocks with one time business that we could book in 2021 in the range of CHF 22 million. Again, with this replacement of products in the field, with customer Philips with CHF 28.3 million in 2022. Overall, if you carve out those both stones of the revenue pillar, you see with a reference point CHF 265.5 million in 2021, also for the sustainable business, a quite good growth rate in 2022. What is according to the plan is the contribution from our new acquired companies in the last business year, 2022.
This is marginal with CHF 0.6 million. That is not a surprise as we bought that two companies, really, as start-up companies, which definitely had to do their homework with market integration and initiate empowerment of sales force and so on. The FX effects in our reporting is on the top line, - CHF 0.8 billion. Of course, we took a lot of benefit from a strong US dollar, this was definitely overcompensated by weak currencies, Euro, Korean won, and Japanese yen. Especially for Korean won and Japanese yen, we saw a down of percentage in the year-over-year currency rates. A lot of you on the revenue composition, as mentioned by Marc, is already about the markets themselves.
What makes us quite confident and gives us a lot of relief is the composition of the market shares of this total revenue. There is this strong, very strong developing market industrial, which itself again is can be split up in several sub-markets. We see over a period of three years, a growth in all markets. This gives us a lot of resilience if we see downturns in one or the other market. Of course, this gives quite a good safety level when it comes to development of our revenue. When we look at the revenue distribution in terms of the geography, we see an increase in the EMEA market. This is driven by the top project that we have with Dyson.
Of course, it is also driven that we succeeded in getting projects with Tier 1 supplier with European car builders. Here we see also there a smaller change in the composition from geographical perspective. Looking at the profitability, as mentioned, we have still this high 50s% in contribution margin. I think on the one hand, we had the impact of increasing material costs during 2022, which we could majority transfer to our customer by increasing sales prices. On the other hand, why definitely there is a slight down in the contribution margin is that we, as Marc said, we started to normalize the utilization rate of our production facilities. Meaning, okay, bringing more operators in, starting to increase CapEx, which in the end, resulted in some higher depreciation.
That, of course, drives the contribution margin down to still very high and above long-term average. You saw that on this long-term track record and the always announced mid-50s target for the gross margin that we have. We are still above that. If we look on the other cost blocks, especially R&D and SG&A, I think in the in the cost block of R&D, here we see the starting or the first phase reflected in the numbers of our strong ambition to increase the R&D forces that we have in the company. As per today, we have around more than 300 R&D people allocated to this function. More or less all of them are graduated.
We have empowered also here the initiatives to find the talents, but the situation in the labor market is still a very tough one. We talked about this war of talents, and that is ongoing, but we are doing our best to recruit more and more people, really to take all the opportunities that are in our project pipeline. I think the project funnel with ideas, following the mega trends, starting initiatives, doing really long-term investments in very new fields that is very high loaded, and there are numerous opportunities we want to start. Looking on SG&A, we also see an increase here. This is more or less driven that on the one hand, we now for the first time have a 12 months consolidation of the new companies in 2022.
They need a certain setup of This functions of sales especially. Second factor is that we, of course, for the new company AiSight, which is in now in this phase where they want to penetrate the market, where they want to do more and more acquisition of their Sensor as a Service solution. They need a lot of sales staff, and they have increased tremendously their sales. On the other hand, regional wise, we have also empowered our sales force in the U.S. market, where we definitely saw that we have a little bit of lack of sales power there. This drives the SG&A cost up. No, resulting on the EBITDA, I think we end up in an EBITDA close to CHF 90 million. EBITDA ratio in the higher 20s%.
I think this is a little bit on the way to the normalization. I think we had reported for H1 an EBITDA of around 30%. Now we see that on the cost side, we catch up a little bit to really empower the functions and bring the utilization of our production facilities to this normal sustainable level. Having a look on the condensed complete income statement, I think, below the EBITDA or the EBIT, there is not that much special effects. We have the net finance result, which is more or less generated in majority by realized, unrealized FX losses.
We see still this favorable situation about the income tax, which definitely is sustainable because we have taken all the opportunities that we could get from STAF, the revision of the tax ruling in Switzerland, where we take a lot of benefit as we are a company which generates a lot of R&D activities here. Also the instrument of using patent boxes also gives us or brings us in this quite favorable tax situation with a majority of substance here in Switzerland. So net profit after tax close to CHF 64 million in a ratio of close to 20%. I think this is still very good performance. Second part, as mentioned already, let's talk a little bit about capital bound in the company.
I think here we see a little bit of change compared to the last years. Why that? First, if we have a view on the networking capital, we have definitely proactively driven our inventory in terms of, raw material, in terms of, increase of semi-finish, in terms of, increase in finished goods. Why that? I think it's a matter of risk mitigation, looking at prepare for, downs in energy, for, potential next COVID waves, which we don't hope to see. but here to really assure that we can keep a service level for a foreseeable time horizon of 12 months. I think that is our ambition. For that premium, of course, we had to increase the inventory. The other composition is more or less, the increase of receivables.
If you look to our balance sheet, you see also a increase of receivables. This is more or less driven by this pure 31st of December view on that. If we look at the risk on debtors here, we can definitely say that with DSO around 40 days and the long-term relationship with our customers, we feel very safe here, so there is no additional risk. In terms of CapEx, I think also here, when it comes to where do we spend our money to, we see that 2022 definitely is a new horizon for us. Now it's up to CHF 30 million, close to CHF 30 million CapEx in PP&E, compared to CHF 12 million or CHF 14 million or CHF 10 million that we saw the years before.
I think that definitely is this catch-up of adjusting our facilities and in parallel prepare for the next growth steps. I think here it's definitely a lot of money spent in production equipment in Stäfa itself, but also in Hungary. Here, we prepare us for the next growth steps. Looking at the balance sheet, still a very strong balance sheet, I think with an increase of the equity up to CHF 304 million. Not having any plans about dividends still. So, equity ratio is 85%. And with a high CapEx and a high bound capital, I think of course, the net cash did not develop so tremendously.
We have an increase of net cash of close to CHF 12 million as per year-end in the year-to-year comparison. What you can read here also is this increase in receivables, as mentioned, about close to CHF 10 million. The increase in inventory, CHF 22 million net. I think all at this point in time, just to mention it, all what is here reported with some judgments and valuation principles. I think here we are quite conservative in valuating our assets. As a result of that, I think, as a last topic here, the view on the cash flow. I think with the increased net working capital, we have a reduced operating cash flow with around CHF 50 million.
We have this high cash flow for invest, cash out, and this results in this net cash of CHF 12 million. If we then come back to our KPI free cash flow, which is then again net cash change without cash spent for merger and acquisitions and financing. We end up in a free cash flow with CHF 18 million. Yeah, I think that's it. We see more or less the change here in our cash situation, our cash generation, but that is proactively driven as one of the foundation stones of our growth path that we definitely want to work. I think with that, I'm closed, and I give back the floor to Marc.
Thank you, Matthias. The last slide, I'd like to shortly comment the outlook for 2023. I think, it's still a pretty fast-changing world we are in. That means that, to make any kinds of forecasts is pretty hard, and it's hard to predict, and the visibility still remain low. As I have already mentioned before, at the moment we see some slowdowns in appliance and the industrial. We expect also this might continue for next couple of months. There are some indications from our customers say that the customers expect to pick up with additional orders in the second half of the year, also based on the fact that the inventory should actually be optimized at that time. On the other hand, and I think that's important to understand, this is all about the existing business we have.
Fortunately, on top of the existing business, which is highly depending on the economic situation, we have also additional growth projects they come in this year. There, this is completely unlinked to the economic situation. There we see that a lot of new projects should actually now be launched during this year. What we expect is actually that we have a kind of a slowdown in the existing business, but on top of that, we can also compensate for that by new growth projects. They contribute first time to the top line in 2023. Some words about the one-offs of the last year. As I have already mentioned shortly, we do not expect that we have an additional contribution of one-offs, either in CPAP nor in medical ventilators for 2023.
Also with there, we expect that more or less we can compensate this one-off effect, which goes away by additional growth projects coming in during 2023. That means if we bring all that together, we expect that on top line, we have a more or less stagnating situation. We indicate CHF 300 million up to CHF 340 million. The midpoint is more or less where we are today, but then without these one-offs, of CHF 28 million. The gross margin we expect to come back to the normalized levels of mid-50s. Also due to inflation should also come back to levels we have already guided for the midterm guides in 2021.
EBITDA, this should also come down to say normal levels, as we have already guided in 2021. On one hand side, we have these additional one-offs should vanish this year. Secondly, we have these additional resources in R&D and sales. They are fully expensed as we do always, and we are not going to capitalize any of these additional R&D efforts. We come or we expect actually an EBITDA level of around 20% in 2023. That brings me to the end, and I'd like to hand over back to Heiko for the Q&A session.
Perfect. Thank you very much, Marc and Matthias. It was great. We can start with Q&A session. As announced before, we're going to have some online questions as well as some from the audience. I will read through the questions. I suggest that we start with the questions here in the room. If there are any. Yes, please.
Yes. I have two questions. The first one is on your CapEx plans. You said you need to invest further, and so what do you expect for 2023? That's the first question.
Yeah.
I'll ask the second one.
Here, taking the reference, I think, we always talked about 6%-8% of our top line. That is our bandwidth where we see CapEx. With this higher top line, I think, if you calculate around 8% and see this level that you have seen for 2022 numbers, I think if we take this ahead for 2023, I think that's the right dimension for that we see definitely as in CapEx. Yeah. There might be one step impact that is when it comes to.
New buildings where there are some ideas about expanding in Hungary. The next phase for expansion there, this might be on top of that. This is not that concrete, how this will look like. It could also be that we go there for a build to suit solution, meaning that we pay it as a long-term rent. If you take this as an extra, but for the normal regular expansion plan, it is definitely around 80%.
Okay. The second question is, the split between your traditional RHT sensor business and new sensors. I remember back at the IPO, you had this picture of your core market and the expansion into new sensor applications. The question really is, what's the contribution to sales now from all these new products and what's basically the size of your addressable market or market share, if you want, in that new market or new markets?
Well, at this point, typically, we are not going to disclose revenues by product due to competitor analysis reasons. What we have already disclosed last year is actually an indication of 25% coming from new environmental sensors without humidity. This figure is definitely increasing from year to year. Just to give an indication about that. Some words about the addressable markets. I think in humidity, my estimation is that we have a step-by-step increase in market share. During the IPO five years ago, we indicated to have 53%. Now we expect actually to be higher than 55%, probably up to 60%. These are our own estimations based on the fact that we are winning additional sockets from competitors, and we are not going to lose other customers.
Also on the back of the fact that in the meantime, there were two Japanese, but also now as microelectronics deciding to go out of the humidity field. Also there we can actually grab additional minor, additional market shares. In environmental sensing, without humidity, it's not that easy to estimate addressable market because CO2, for example, is emerging at the moment. Some years ago, when we decided to go into this market to launch the first development project, the market was estimated to be pretty small. Already now we have revenues. In our company, they are larger than first estimations 5 to 6 years ago. Definitely we are not at the market share of more than 100%. We cannot believe that 100%, unfortunately.
Unfortunately, though, definitely the market is highly dynamic and is increasing from year to year. I think looking forward, the market is not the limitation to grow in CO2. The challenge is more to have the right products and especially also to be better than the competitors, as always. Whenever you have a new emerging market, there are also some competitors. Infineon is one of them, but also the ones, the usual suspects like, Cubic in China.
Thank you.
Tim?
Can you give us, first of all, the design wins for European OEMs in the cars? Is it similar products that you are already designing in Korea? Just for an understanding. On the R&D, that was already well flagged. You are increasing the R&D spendings there. Can you give us some examples? What are you exactly doing there? Can we expect completely new sensors like, you know, the Total Organic Compounds for water, for example, that we were talking about so often, but I think doesn't really exist yet? Can you give us a couple of examples maybe there? When I look back on 2022, your initial revenue guidance back then, the full bank was CHF 360 million. We are now still well below that.
Which is not the issue, but I'm just trying to understand how were these CHF 360 million on price that you know, that you didn't make it, like for example, in 2023? I mean, are there projects that are postponed? You know, will there be maybe a catch-up effect in 2024 from the pipeline that you have and that you couldn't realize for external reasons? Just to understand how is development maybe from second half maybe 2024 without giving any guidance.
Definitely. First off, the first question about automotive business and additional sockets won in Europe with European customers. This is a whole bunch of environmental sensors. What you are addressing or referring to is actually the Korean business is particulate matter sensors. Also, this exists here in Europe, and also there is part of what I have mentioned before, but it's not limited to particulate matter sensors only. It's also kind of antifogging modules. It's about dew point sensors. It's all the sensors monitoring the air cabin quality or the energy efficiency of a car. For example, with dew point, this is definitely also supporting the energy efficiency of the car. Second question about what is actually the pipeline in R&D. Definitely, I cannot disclose you the project.
To give you some light into that, on the one hand side, we are working heavily on the second or the third generation of the environmental sensors. For particulate matter, but also for formaldehyde, we are working on the second generation, which would be significantly more miniaturized compared to the one which is already on the market, and while keeping the performance. This is already done with CO2. There we have already launched second generation. This is the sugar-like sensors, you might remember that. There we are working on the third generation. Our ambitions there are actually to bring it even to package it smaller.
To bring it, and this is our reason, to bring it on chip. So to make a humidity sensor or humidity sensor likes sensor for CO2, which is not yet existing on the market. In our company, it's not yet on the table, but we are working on that. That's one of the opportunities. Another one is that there are also new additional opportunities popping up on the markets. For example, we have already talked about that during the capital market date. It's about leakage sensors. On the one hand side, we see that A2L or in Europe it's R32. That the new refrigerant for coolants, for air conditioner coolants is one of the hot topics there.
The fact there is that the, especially in the U.S. markets, there will be new regulations starting in 2025, to switch from the old coolants to a new one, which is less harmful for the environment, for the climate, but on the other hand, more flammable. That's the reason why a leakage sensor has to be installed or to be designed in at least for larger air conditioning systems. This is the race that carries on. We like definitely to grab some of these additional opportunities with a leakage sensor based on our technology. There is also a leakage about H2, CO2, for example. There are more and more CO2-based heating pumps coming onto the market.
That's probably longer term oriented, if CO2 is leaking, it's not that harmful for the environment or for the human being, as long as the room is well-ventilated. If you have, for example, in a car, if you have a leakage of CO2, then it's definitely harmful for the people pretty fast. Therefore, there's a need for leakage sensor. That's looking forward. That's not affecting the top line 2023 or 2024. Just to give you some lights about the R&D. Leakage sensor is one of the topics. One word about Total Organic Compounds for water that we are still working on that. What we have learned in the meantime is the market is not yet fully prepared to adopt these solutions.
There are some interests, but it's not that fast-moving as they had expected two years ago. We are still working on that. Definitely last but not least, to give you some light into the R&D pipeline, one is definitely also Connected Solutions. All what we are doing with this 100% owned Sensirion addressing this Sensor as a Service market. We are providing more than just a hardware solution, but also the qualified data. Last but not least, about 360 as one of the expectation last year. I think it's not driven mainly by projects that were proposed. Definitely, there are some. There are projects can be delayed, they can be proposed, but we are not seeing significant delays or cancellations of projects we are working on together with our customers.
It's more that the whole market is not that booming as it was expected to be at the beginning of 2022. one year ago. It's actually the main reason, if we are comparing two years, then we are probably 10% lower than anticipated one year ago. It's not strategically changing, it's just the normal course of economy.
Thank you. I suggest that we move to the online questions because we can address your questions then, later on here in the audience. One question from Monsieur Jean Paul Garaud is, "What is the so what's the reasons behind or from the drop of the EBITDA levels coming from 37-38, 31 down to the 20% for the 2023 guidance?" I think you addressed it a little bit already, but maybe some comments again.
I think there are two different aspects. One is definitely that we are coming back from a gross margin of 57%- 55%, due to the reduced utilization of our fabs, which is extremely strategically important to be flexible enough to address forward notice demands of our customers. The other one is the in-depth higher investment into R&D and sales resources. There especially was in the second half of 2022, but also the first months of 2023, we hired a lot of new engineers in order to address this full pipeline of R&D business. As always, in our company, first you have to invest into R&D, and secondly, you can harvest the fruits.
That typically takes between two up to five years, between first investments and harvesting top line, and exactly this affects this EBITDA margin.
Good. The next question from Sandeep, he's asking, what percentage of our sales were coming from environmental sensors in 2022 and whether this will continue towards 2023?
I think this is a pretty similar question that Michael has already asked. 25% was the disclosed figure or the portion of environmental sensors and trend is actually to increase further.
Exactly. There was another question here, from the online people, whether we disclose our shares by product group, which we typically don't do so.
The reason is actually not to give you full transparency, but there are a lot of competitors that are extremely eager to know about our humidity business or our flow sales. That's the reason why we cannot disclose it.
Exactly. One more question from Mr. Huber. He's asking whether it was the first time that a direct competitor was switching to us and becoming a customer. How often has happened that in the past? I think you mentioned that this, I think to my mind, it's actually the third time. There were two Japanese competitors that they are now customers, and now it happens also here in Europe. Yes. The next question was: What is the market share of our CO2 and PM2.5 sensors today?
That's hard to say. As I have already mentioned before, the market is too dynamic in order to estimate any market share. What I can say is actually that we are definitely in CO2, but also particulate matter, we are one of the top three, up to top four manufacturers today. We are not top and number one, not yet, in CO2 and in particulate matter, we are among the three largest manufacturers. They are not the same ones. We are not competing with the same other ones with particulate matter as compared to CO2.
This one is interesting to clarify. He's asking, "In which regions have you increased the inventory the most?
Inventory is definitely our main focus this way. As you know, there is some additional uncertainties in the Taiwan region and 60% of all the semiconductor chips worldwide, not in our company, worldwide semiconductor supply chain comes from this very small island of Taiwan. We like to be safe there, and we like actually to increase our inventory from a strategic point of view in order to react on any unforeseen events they might have in this area.
Thank you, Marc. There may be two questions towards Matthias. Matthias, do you have any forecasts for us regarding depreciation and amortization for 2023, and any forecasts for our FTE growth for this year?
Yes. I think, the last one for FTE growth, I think we want, could easily say, okay, we want to get as many as we can get in terms of R&D. I think it's still our ambition that we will grow between 150 and 200 in headcount. That is our ambition, where we are aiming for. In terms of depreciation and amortization, I think it's just the calculation that we have. I think we do the normal depreciation mode that it's about machinery for eight years, for all the rest, software, et cetera, that we definitely capitalize, it's three years.
Here to talk about, I think if you calculate the ratio, I think it could be around CHF 22 million-CHF 23 million in depreciation in 2023.
Thank you. Another interesting one, I believe, is, with our current production facilities and productions, how much sales can we do?
That's not easy. It's not that easy to say because we're starting with very tiny humidity sensors up to a pretty complex solutions for Sensirion Connected Solutions, and they are driving different sales at the end of the day. I think we feel comfortable now with the humidity capacity we have installed in the last couple of months. We are now, as Matthias has mentioned, we are now also working on investments for new products coming in in the next couple of years. There will be definitely some limitations in the fab in Switzerland in the next coming years in order to increase the output more. What we are doing at the moment is also to transfer some of products manufactured here in Switzerland to Hungary in order to have some empty space here to start new and exciting products.
This is what we do. We cannot flag that by a sales level because it's highly depending on the product mix.
Mm-hmm. Thank you. Another question is whether we recognize some reshoring, some business going out of China.
Reshoring or I would say it's a slowdown, but not reshoring. Probably it's also addressing the, this, or this increasing wish of especially U.S. customers not to be sourced or not to be supplied by, from China. Definitely, we see some increasing at least questions on that topic. Either questions about do you have dual sourcing in any Chinese events to be safe on that terms, or we actually prefer not to be to get products from China. It's not yet extremely concrete, and it's not extremely dominant. It's just some questions. They are more compared to probably the situation two years ago. What we see, definitely, and this is emerging, is the fact that, for example, Chinese competitors, they have a pretty hard life in U.S. for U.S. customers.
On the other hand, also U.S. customers and sometimes also Swiss customers, suppliers as we are and have harder times in China. In China, definitely our customers, they prefer to have local sourcing whenever they can. Fortunately, we are in a field where technology is decisive. There are still not good solutions in China. We see that the wind in China is cooler than before. On the other hand, we have better cards in U.S., thanks to the fact that we are a Western company and not a Chinese one. This is more and more coming, and this is also seeable. Still, it's one factor. It's not that dominant that this decides all.
For the following, I will allow myself to combine two questions. They're very similar. Nicandro and Sandeep, they ask, what gives us the most headache when it comes to the financial year 2023 to not reach the guidance, or as Sandeep was asking, what is driving our revenue guidance? It's more or less the same.
I think, referring to the guidance, top-line guidance, I think the most critical aspect is about the economy. If there is an escalation of Ukraine War, is there any kinds of escalations, what we have seen in the last-With the bank system in U.S., with inflation. All these macroeconomic and geopolitical aspects, also the tension between China and U.S., if any of them are escalating, you can never know how they might affect the economy worldwide, the worldwide economy. I think that's the most critical aspect. In terms of our growth projects to come in and to contribute first time to top line, I feel pretty comfortable because typically you are working for 1, 2, 3, 4 years with customers to come to the point actually to start up the production. I'm pretty safe on that.
Thank you. At the time of our I-IPO, our automotive market was around 30% of our sales. The question is, this has now declined over time, will this shift in future again or whether you see the automotive in terms of share?
I think we should actually change the question because at the end of the day, the reduced portion of automotive business is just the effect of a dynamic increase of industrial sales, especially in appliances. It was the success of all the environmental sensors in industrial. Looking forward, I think we also working new solutions for markets that are not industrial. Definitely allow us to strengthen automotive and medical. They have declined in the last couple of years. It's not strategically driven that we are now in a reduced level for these two markets. In automotive, I think a lot of the environmental products, they are extremely suitable also for automotive. As always, automotive, it takes longer to adopt these products there.
In medical, definitely we are working on other projects because all these environmental sensors, they are not the right ones for medical, which was anyway clear at the very beginning already. Coming back to the question, I think the success for industrial will also come to some limitations in the future, and then definitely automotive will also catch up with their portion and of the process, the full sales.
Thank you. Probably the last one from Mr. Testa. He's asking whether we can explain the gross margin 2023 versus 2022, and how this is impacted or influenced by the price cost of goods versus the inflation that we see ongoing.
I think as Matthias has mentioned before, we were able to transfer most of the increasing raw material prices to our customers by I think it was three price rounds in the last couple of months. This was well also accepted by our customers. The gross margin decline is not driven dominantly by raw material price. We expect that raw material prices might come down in the next couple of months, and we see some first indications on that. I'm also pretty sure that our customers will knock on the door to ask also to discuss the prices on their side again, if combined with the fact that raw material price might come down, but it should not influence the gross margin.
The gross margin or decline in the gross margin is only driven by additional capacities we are now installing in order to have a good utilization rate again. Just to remember, the last 18 months probably till autumn 2022, we were running our plants, especially here in Switzerland, on a level which was more than 100%, which is not healthy, especially not in order to also to react fast. We like to come back to a normal utilization. This is the main reason why the gross margin is coming back to normal levels.
The final question from the online crowd. What has been in 2022 the price effect on the organic growth, and whether we intend to increase the prices again in 2023?
The price effect on the top line might be in the level of mid-single digits, I would say. Looking forward, it depends highly on inflation and on raw material prices. If we see that there is a need to increase it again, definitely we have to do so. My expectation, that's just today on March 14th, I don't think On the back of the slowdowns, I think there will be also normalization of raw material prices, definitely not coming back to the level we've seen, we have seen before, the allocation situation because there is also some inflation effects. They are more recurring, but at least there will be some more likely to come back the raw material price.
It's very unlikely that we have actually to start another price round in the next couple of months. You never know in these very fast-changing times.
Thank you very much, Marc. We reached the end of the online Q&A. Since I don't see any more questions coming up from the online... Yes, one more from the crowd, Mr. Sola.
Quick question regarding the competitor becoming the customer. What was the driver behind the decision? I sort of missed that a little bit at the beginning, the background was.
No, you didn't miss because I didn't elaborate on that. I think finally, you have also got C back very strongly. I think what I have understood is the fact that humidity business is a chip business. That means at the end of the day, you need higher volumes in order also to depreciate your very high R&D by C front. All the competitors we have, this Japanese one, but also now ST, they have seen that in order to invest again into the next generation of humidity in order to keep the same level as we are to keep the to remain competitive in the markets. They have actually to invest again, and it's extremely hard on their volume levels to depreciate that in future.
The economy of scale is at the end, the crucial aspect. They have decided actually to switch to us, because what they are strong in is not sensing. They are really extremely strong with microprocessors and all the telephonic components. Sensor is more a side market for them. The good opportunity for both companies actually, that they can actually rely now on the humidity sensors for all the boards they are providing to their customers. For us, it's an additional field where we can promote our sensors with a partner which is extremely well established on all the electronic markets, and where we have also a very good combination of a microprocessor, which is not our business, and but that will be S-Max business, and our humidity sensor, which is working very properly together. That's actually the strategic advantage of this partnership.
From their point of view, it's economy of scale, which was not, was against them.
Let me see if I will take you one more online question from Mr. von Arx. Industrial, we have a very broad portfolio, and we had again, we showed a very good growth rate in 2022. The question is whether we can elaborate on our outlook for 2023 and beyond, and whether we are confident to keep that growth in that specific area with our sensors.
I started the outlook session with a statement that it's extremely hard to predict, I would never give an out, a guidance for one market only because then you have even higher statistical uncertainties. Definitely, if you are looking back, we have grown industrial by 116% within two years. That's the only what I can say. Definitely not, cannot be continued for the next couple of years on the very same high growth rate. To double every second year in one market is pretty unrealistic. I don't like to give any guidance on market level because it's definitely... The only what I can say, it's wrong what I say about the guidance in one market.
Okay, I understand on this.
Yeah, it's fine. Thanks. Just two initial question. One on, basically on products actually. IKEA has launched or is launching a new air monitor devices that seems to be Sensirion products in there. Can you elaborate a little bit the economics on that? I mean, that's just one device, but there are obviously others, Amazon or other devices. Can you elaborate a little bit what's actually in there? Seems to be a combo modules. What, what would you get per device, if you can say that? The second thing is a bit more generalized. As an investor, I invest with you a lot of money in your Sensirion Connected Solutions subsidiary. How can I know how much you're actually investing into the Sensirion Connected Solutions with people and probably technology, and how can I understand what I'm getting back in a couple of years time?
What's the potential really of that market? It must be either really huge because you're investing a lot of money or I'm losing together with you a lot of money.
First of all, about the air condition monitoring, I don't like actually to talk about customers today. definitely to have a very good picture of air quality, you need a bunch of different sensors. Temperature is important, humidity is important, particulate matter is important typically, NOX values is typically what the customers are interested in. last but not least, also a Volatile Organic Compounds and sometimes formaldehyde. these are the bunch of typical parameters to be measured. definitely we also offering a combo which all, apart from formaldehyde, all others are actually integrated in. this is definitely a good offering to these kind of customers. the second question about Connected Solutions, we are at the very beginning there.
We wouldn't do it if we had not the ambitions and also the confidence that we can also create values there. How much and how fast? I think it's too early to call at the moment. What we do all constantly, not just for the Sensirion Connected Solutions, but also for all what we do in our innovation pipeline, is continuous monitoring of, is it worth investing more into these initiatives? I think that's very crucial for a company which is also taking risks, entrepreneurial risks, in order to drive innovation. To monitor all the time on a, typically it's on a quarter base, that we are reviewing all these innovation projects to see where we are on track. Is the market the same as we had anticipated? Is it changing faster or slowly?
Is it worth continuing to invest? Based on that, we have. In all the reviews in past, we have decided actually to go forward in the very same way. This gives us the indications, but at the moment we cannot say it's three years we are there. Especially, it's also not one initiatives, we are doing more in that terms.
Good. Another online one is, whether we can disclose more about the share of distribution customers of our sales base, and our visibility regarding our distributors and more or less the same question about the visibility of our customers inventory.
Good question.
Inventory customers.
Distribution, I don't know the exact figure. I think the indirect business is more or less 20% of the whole sales. That more or less correct, yeah? Especially in cons. It's not evenly balanced between the markets. It's mainly in consumers and in industrial. Medical definitely also some, but it's lower and automotive is not the business for distributions. About inventory levels of customers in distribution, we do have a very good visibility of inventories at our distribution sites, which cosmic depends. There are some customers that are pretty open in doing so, and also to give us some light to provide, share, to share their figures.
Some others they don't. Some others they are disclosing some figures, but you never know whether they are the true ones. Especially during the allocation, this was just part of the game, that they were happy to announce that all the inventories are actually empty, but it was not just not true. That's also part of an allocation phase. It's a mixed picture there. We have some indication, but it's not the full picture.
Okay. Thank you very much. I think with this we have, also run over the time by eight minutes. I thank everybody from the online panel for all your questions. Thank you very much for your attendance. Yeah, if you have any follow-up questions, feel free to contact me, contact us anytime. With that, I close this morning session. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Have a good day.