Warm welcome everybody here in the room and also online. First of all, apologies for this delay even after two years of home office and corona time. It appears that we are still struggling with the technology, despite we tried it an hour ago. Moreover, I thank you very much for bearing with us. I welcome you to our conference call on the full year results of 2021. Today with me we have Marc von Waldkirch, our CEO, and next to him is Matthias Gantner, our CFO, and myself. I'm Heiko Komaromi. I'm the director for Investor Relations. There will be a presentation first, which will highlight and Marc will run through it, followed by a question and answer session.
Please note your questions down, and at the end of the session, we will address all the questions here in the room and also online. Please write them down in the chat, and I will ensure that your questions will be answered. Please note that the presentation will be recorded, and you can also access this presentation, which can be found on our website online. With this, without further ado, I'd like to hand over to Marc von Waldkirch .
Welcome from my side. It's a great pleasure to have you here in person after two years, and at least also of the attending people to have a physical meeting is always better than just all this virtual world. I like to start with a short review of the business last year, and then hand over to Matthias for the financial details. Starting first with the business. I think we are looking back to a very successful, but on the other hand, also pretty challenging year 2021. I think we can condense the full year into four headlines. First of all, we experienced significant post-pandemic recovery in all the markets, also in the existing older markets like humidity and flow.
This was additionally supported by all the new products like CO2, PM2.5, formaldehyde, all products they have been launched one year ago or probably two years ago. They also benefited from a very strong demand in the market. Secondly, we had these challenges with the supply chain situation. This was a pretty tough situation, and it's still ongoing, so it's not yet solved fully. I'd like also to note already here that these supply chain issues are not limited to semiconductor chips only. I have noted the very same already in the August earnings call that the supply chain turbulences had started with semicon products. Now we see shortages also for kinds of injection molding parts, some chemicals, some other electronic parts.
They are also important to build up a full electronic component. Semiconductor is certainly in the center of the problem, but it's not limited to that. I think if we are looking back to 2021, we were on the fun side of this allocation situation. We had longer lead times than users, and our lead times were significantly shorter than all the competitors' lead times. This was certainly a good position on the market, and this was in the light of the success by Sensirion, thanks to all the people at Sensirion. They have supported this hard fight to be able to ship our products with reasonable lead times.
This is a very hard time for our purchasing team, but also for operations team, to either organize all these raw materials or on the other hand, also to manufacture all the products that were demanded by our customers. Some words about the prices. Definitely we also see and we are faced with significant price increases in the raw materials, especially for semiconductor products, in that respect. We had also to increase some prices on the customer side to hand over some of these increased raw material prices. The fourth headline is about our longer-term view. We were able last year to acquire three strategic acquisitions.
We started in March with a company in the Netherlands. They are focusing on gas analyzers. Secondly, we closed the full acquisition. We were already a manufacturer before, but then we closed in May the full acquisition of IRsweep, the company in Switzerland, also a startup. Last on the list in September, we could acquire a very interesting company in Berlin. They are handling or they are focusing on condition monitoring and on the new business model we like strategically to go to about Sensor as a Service. I'd like to come back to this strategic view at the very end of my presentation today.
I think these are all acquisitions that are symbolizing our long-term view of strategically developing the company, not just for the next 2 or 3 years. All of them, they are not contributing significantly inorganically to last revenue. They are all small startups. What is important is actually that we see a very promising technology coming with these companies, bringing us into a position where we can make more out of these technologies, thanks to the fact that we have experience of industrialization, the market access. It's a very good for this and for both companies, for the small company to get the support of Sensirion, in terms of manufacturability, in terms of industrialization. On the other hand, we got a promising technology to speed up our growth for the next couple of years.
It's not a question for this year or last year, it's more for 5 years, 6 years, 10 years from now. Coming to the financials, very shortly, you have already seen the revenue top line with an increase of 13%. Included there is also this one-off effect of COVID-19. The COVID effect leveled off from CHF 70 million in 2020 downwards to CHF 22 million last year, 2021. If you adjust the top line by this one-off, then we record a significantly higher growth rate of 46% last year, reflecting all what I have explained before. EBITDA margin was on an extremely high level.
I like also to note here, and that's extremely important for me also to be very transparent to you as investors and analysts, this is an EBITDA level, which is not sustainable for the company. This was highly driven by a short-term economy of scale effect. We have actually scaled up our operations department last year with 24 hours, 7 days, and also just to serve our customers in short term. This is possible, but this is not long-term sustainable. On the other hand, and this is also part of Sensirion culture, we like also to reinvest. In an entrepreneurial spirit, we like to reinvest the money to generate our ways of innovation to support R&D.
This has not been done because it has some delays in hiring people, in finding them, good talents, and also at the very end it hits your P&L because this is sometimes a delay of more than 1 year. This is all not reflected in the EBITDA level. Therefore, we are on a significantly higher level than normal. Coming to the outlook. I'd like to spend some more time on the outlook at the very end of the presentation. What you see already there, and this is a good link to what I have explained before, that we are guiding the profitability levels on a lower level than 2021, despite the fact that we are expecting further growth next year.
This is exactly reflecting what I have explained that we are now in the process of hiring a lot of people to make the operations department more sustainable again with this higher level of output. Secondly, also to hire more R&D guys and data people to support our innovation ideas, not just in the fields we have acquired the company, but certainly also etc. That brings me to the end of this very short business review at the beginning. I'd like now to spend some words about the markets, market by market starting with automotive first. In automotive what we have seen last year is actually a robust but moderate growth in both parts. We are running in the company on one hand side we are running all the business of Tier 2.
That means all the components and smaller modules we are shipping to the module manufacturers like Continental, Hella, Valeo, these are companies. They are taking our components to make a larger module out of it with more functionalities than just what our sensors can do. They are shipping their modules to the OEMs, to the car manufacturers. This is called Tier 2 business, and we are running this business for many, many years already. This suffered in 2020. Now it has recovered last year, thanks to the fact that the car manufacturer industry had no further lockdown or shutdowns of their factories. On the other hand, since 2017 we launched the business as a Tier 1 supplier.
That means we are manufacturing the module with all the functionality inside and we are shipping these products directly to the car manufacturer. This was started 5 years ago on the basis of the acquisition of AIT in Korea and China. What we have seen in the last year, still even in the year of 2020, that we had a robust growth every year. Also this growth has supported last year to the automotive results. Especially with some products or projects they have ramped up in the European area, in the European industry. In medical I have already spent some words about the medical situation. Certainly the one-off leveled off from CHF 70 million-CHF 22 million.
This was expected because this was one big bill in of demand in 2020 which came to a an end at the very first half of 2021. I'd like also to be very clear that even in case we have additional waves of COVID in 2022, we do not expect any further extra business with these ventilator demands because I think the whole world is actually very good equipped with ventilator equipment now. Even there are some new variants or waves coming up in the next couple of months. Even in these cases, I think there is enough supply in the market.
From this year we are expecting to run the ventilator business back on normal level as we were experienced to have before the pandemic. If we are adjusting these one-off effects, then we see a moderate growth of 4% in medical, driven by all the cosmetic and all other applications from anesthesia up to CPAP. What I'd like to highlight over here is that we are expecting this year, this is also part of the guidance, we are expecting another one-off, which is driven by a special effect in the CPAP market, but this is also what should happen over the years, and therefore, we like also to be transparent and to call it out, you know, in our guidance for 2022. It's fully unlinked to the pandemic. Industrial.
Industrial is definitely one of the most dynamic markets last year. Industrial is a highly diversified market. We are competing there in HVAC, so heating, ventilation, air conditioner business, but also all kinds of industrial applications in industry and last but not least also the appliance, white goods market. Especially in HVAC, but also in white goods, we saw last year a very strong demand for our new products. CO2 definitely was driven and supported by the higher sensitivity against indoor air quality. CO2 is an excellent parameter to monitor the air quality in indoor room and to get a warning for risks of aerosol infection chains.
Especially the whole company, we have all our rooms are equipped with CO2 sensors, and you get a good indication whether you should open a window, for example, or you should turn on the automatic ventilation system in case you have one. You have on your seats here, for those they are present here in Zurich, you have a small gadget for you. This is our new CO2 sensor on a USB stick, so you can actually plug it into any kind of USB plug. And then you get an indication by a light, red, yellow or green, whether the air quality is fine enough. Otherwise, you could open the window. There is also an app, by the way, and you can download the app, and then you get all the detailed information. You get also historical data.
It's a very nice device or gadget to play with. Beyond CO2, we have also seen strong demand for PM2.5 for formaldehyde sensors and also for a combo module which is consisting of all parameters from humidity, temperature, PM2.5, particulate matter, formaldehyde, but also gas quality within one specific housing. This demand was mainly driven by air purifier companies. This is also one of the explanations for this very strong growth in the industrial market. Now I lost it. No. Last but not least about consumer. Consumer, in our definition, is all what you can actually end consumer can buy online.
All the gadgets, table-based gadgets, mobile, IoT devices, this is all what we are defining as consumer market. This market benefited from a strong demand. There was a lot of new gadgets. They were launched by Chinese, by US, but also European companies in order to give you as end consumer a good chance to get information about indoor air quality. Also this market was highly supported by this pandemic-driven higher sensitivity of indoor air quality interest. Beyond that, we had also received more and more, it's anyway a highly fragmented market. We see that we can penetrate even more and more into all these highly fragmented smaller companies with our humidity solutions.
There we can step by step, we can increase our market share in any way for us dominating the humidity market. Well, bringing you to the last slide before I hand over to Matthias. This is more for your reference, the historical development of the top line and the gross margin in the last more than 10 years. You see a steady growth of the company. Definitely, if you zoom in, there are years with higher growth rates, years with lower growth rates. That is just natural. All in all, we are still on the track as we are expecting. Also the gross margin that is extremely important is definitely oscillating somehow, but it's in a range of 62%-60%.
Normally, what you see is definitely also there, we are now on historical level, which is not sustainable long term. Well, that brings me to the end, and I'd like to hand over to Matthias for all the details.
Yeah. Thank you, Marc. Ladies and gentlemen, also a warm welcome from my side to the audience here, but also to all who follow us online this morning. I was pleased to be able to comment on the strong set of financial figures for this reporting period, 2021. The consolidated key financials really look very impressive. Marc had already commented on the top line, overall top line. Despite all this special economy from COVID-19 in the previous year, 2020, in this context, we could even overcompensate this with this 13% growth on this top line overall. About the profitability, we could benefit from strong economies of scale, bringing up this temporarily very high gross profit margin.
Last but not least, as a finance representative here, of course, also looking on the cash situation. I think the ongoing and even stronger cash conversion situation that we had during this last 12 months in the reporting period also rounds up this very impressive picture about our set of financial key data in 2021. Looking a little bit on this split up of this growth path, 2020 to 2021 here in this chart, definitely extracting this special economies in 2021. With this reference point of this 183 million Swiss francs in sales for 2020, there is calculating this + 46.5% organic growth. Where does this organic growth mainly comes from?
It comes definitely from the very good running ramp up with the new products that we launched during this period or even earlier, but that materialized now mainly in 2021. Here we talk about CO2 sensor, we talk about formaldehyde sensors, and we talk about particulate matter modules. Looking back now on our portion of total sales that is covered with this new products, we can register it's close to 25%. This brings an enormous renewal of our portfolio, a refreshing of our portfolio in this product family of the environmental sensors. There is not that much weight anymore on humidity and temperature sensing. Also as mentioned by Marc, in 2021, we had also this special economic boost by COVID-19, but reduced down to CHF 22 million.
The new companies, the new acquired companies, IRsweep, Qmicro and AiSight, they only contribute with a marginal portion to our growth here with in total CHF 2 million. As Marc already mentioned too, this will last another few periods until here we see material contributions. Talking about the FX effect in 2021, it calculates up to -CHF 5.6 million. Here the main contribution is from slightly less or weaker U.S. dollar in our annual comparison. Looking at the split of our revenue in terms of markets, Marc had already commented market by market. Here the complete picture, we see this shift from this heavyweight medical to industrial, our strongest and biggest market in 2021.
If we keep in mind that this, what we allocate to industrial market is this basket of a variety of applications. Here we talk about HVAC, heating, ventilation, air conditioning. We talk about white goods. We talk about gas metering solutions. This of course also gives us a very much better balance overall our business in terms of the product, in terms of the market, and at the end down even to our customer base. If we talk today about our top 10 customers, they are distributed all over our three main markets, automotive, medical and industrial. With this renewal, there is much more balance in the company, market-wise. Overall, we can say even if we extract here the special economy of COVID, all markets grow.
Yes, medical is only growing with a small number of +4%. Overall, there is a very positive picture on our growth by market. Talking about profitability, we see that 2021 with high economies of scale with somehow extraordinary gross profit margin above 60%. Talking about the overhead costs, we see that we have a quite stable picture in the R&D area. This is coming from the situation that we were not that fast, and we had some delay in recruiting additional staff to empower our innovation teams in the organization. We are with full power working on this to improve, to minimize the vacancy of this supporting the innovation part. In administration we see somewhat higher costs in the SG&A block.
We see some more higher costs coming from the startup period of our new production site in Hungary and also with the startup that we bought, there is some overhead cost just due to the running cost of such a starting company, but also some special portions of initial acquisition costs that is allocated there. Also here, it's not tremendously high, but it's + CHF 6.4 million in SG&A costs compared to previous year. Talking about EBITDA, I think with the downward calculated EBITDA with about CHF 90 million and this EBITDA ratio of 31.7%. Also here, this is extremely high, very positive, with its advantages taking out of the economies of scale as mentioned, down to the profit margin and in the overhead costs.
Yeah, definitely there is this kind of delay in bringing in additional staff really to support all the projects that are waiting because this project funnel that is very poor when it comes to new ideas and new technologies that we want to invest in. The labor market is also a reality. It is definitely in the main focus of our management team of the group to improve the situation there about recruiting people and find the right talents with a fit to our Sensirion culture, of course. That is a presumption for that. This chart showing a top-down view on the P&L in a condensed format. We're here to mention that we have only a marginal contribution for the earnings.
Out of the financial results, there is a minor package of negative interest here, but this is quite marginal overall. Then the profit after tax ending up with close to CHF 66 million. Talking a little bit about asset position and the track record here. I think we have a clear picture on the inventory. Of course, following here also the market situation with all the problems that we had in supply chain. We tried to build up some safety stocks wherever possible. Here the net working capital is mainly driven also by a high inventory of finished goods at the year-end. Accounts receivable are stable compared to the previous year. This brings us even to an improvement of our DSO down to 35 days.
The cash conversion here in terms of collecting the money works very good. Overall, we can say we have a continued very mitigated risk in accounts receivable. The CapEx of the last year totals up to CHF 12.2 million in production equipment, also some patents that we bought. Here with 12.2, it's a little bit below the previous presentations announced bandwidth of 6%-8% above the turnover. Here also turnover and top line is running a little bit away. The extra effect is also that we, from the procurement side, feel some delays in getting the new production equipment in time. There we have to revise a little bit with that and bringing this into the numbers of 2022.
We have ordered a lot more equipment, but delivery times have been extended. The CapEx, accounting-wise, is a little bit lower than we expected that. Talking about the balance sheet, I think this is in a very continuous way, very strong. We see the increased cash position, cash and cash equivalents there with CHF 100 million. We see also here in comparison 2020 to 2021, the stable situation about the trade receivables and the increase in inventory. What is here worth to mention when we address the three acquisitions that we made is that all the goodwill according to Swiss GAAP FER were by an option offset with the equity.
You don't see here the increase in intangible assets, so all the goodwill is out of the asset side and has been offset with equity. That is the conservative way that we do, that we want to extend our balance sheet and not to show any assets from that project coming out. At the balance last topic here, cash flow. I think here to read the cash flow the right way and to unwind it with a reclassification of this CHF 30 million cash equivalents. Here we talk about a deposit of six months that had to be reclassified 2021 to 2020. Overall, if you calculate it down, then we have a strong operating cash flow with CHF 73 million. We have CapEx spending of CHF 73 million.
We had spending cash out for M&A of CHF 35 million, which totals then in a cash flow for investments of CHF 60.2 million. As mentioned, the final cash position is with CHF 112 million. Here illustrated this development of the cash flow and the split up. Again here calculated with the final free cash flow before M&A, totaling in close to CHF 56 million or so. You can see here strong disposable cash position at the year end. The cash conversion even improved up to CHF 60 million with this, very strict collection of receivables and cash conversion overall in the company. I think that's a very competitive situation for us, and it has its basis in long-term customer relationships in scenarios where we are a single supplier with most of our top customers also.
That of course here helps and supports to take away all the troubles with the cash and cash conversion. With that, I'm concluded with my remarks and so I would hand back to Marc for some more perspective on the future and the outlook.
Thank you, Matthias. On this slide, we typically summarize our progress on strategic level. I'd like to refer to our strategic slides we have shared with you on the Capital Markets Day last March 2021. They are also available on our investor pages. If you are interested in our strategic review in our program for next couple of years, please take these slides for your reference. I think it's the best way to highlight the fundamentals again, because I think the fundamentals for our company since our foundation more than 22 years ago is our entrepreneurial culture we have in the company, which is also adopted by all our employees.
I think this was, especially last year, one of the main success factors for the results we are now sitting here and can present to you. In this year as last year, but also 2020 when we were faced with tremendous demands for ventilator sensors, it can only be done with people who have entrepreneurial thinking. They have the spirit to run and do the things whenever they see that is important to do so and to serve our customers. And also to work very closely together in order to manage these challenges we are in in these two years of extraordinary situation. I think especially last year, we could again see that these cultural elements are not just popular. They are real value for a company in extraordinary times.
This is the fundamentals for what we have now to present to you in the past. This is also the fundamentals for the innovation of tomorrow, because innovations cannot be done by processes, can only be done by culture, and therefore the fundamentals are that important for the company Sensirion. Based on these fundamentals, we have the strategic three focus, and they are unchanged, compared to what we have presented one year ago. I think in all these focuses we could make some progress. We have already mentioned most of them. I'd like just to add one story I have not yet mentioned. This is our new operation site in Hungary. Over there, we are increasing the capacity to manufacture flow and humidity products.
This gives us also a geographically broader stability to manage to manufacture our products close to customers. We could start this operation site on time, by the way, despite all the struggles with the limitations of travel bans during the pandemic. On the focus three, I'd like to mention again the three acquisitions. I think it's important also to share our vision of increasing the business models of Sensirion from OEM business only, what we are doing and that we also continue to do in future, to field as we have presented in the Capital Markets Day, to field Sensor as a Service. Our newly launched Sensirion Connected Solutions, 100% owned by the holding, is definitely focusing on that.
For example, with the company we have acquired in Berlin, which is focusing on condition monitoring. These are kinds of, I think you have one with you, small nodes with a vibration sensor inside, temperature sensor inside, and so on, and they can be plugged in any kinds of rotating equipment, and they are directly connected to the cloud. On the cloud, with all these very complex data gathered from the sensors, they are extremely hard to interpret. Algorithms on cloud, on our cloud can interpret them, and they can provide an information on the condition of the equipment in a very early stage to our customers, and that means they can prevent any unplanned failure of the equipment later on. This is one of the new business fields. We are at the very, very beginning.
They are not contributing to revenues today. They are definitely contributing in cost levels, but not in top line today. This is one of the new fields we like to enter in the next couple of years, but it will definitely take time, but strategically, a highly important point. Last one, please, the words about outlook. I think it's not very surprising to you, we are in pretty complex times. On the one hand side, we have all the macroeconomic challenges like inflation, the reaction of the central banks. They are not yet clear and foreseeable how they react on the inflation situation. Now on top of that, we have all the geopolitical aspects, the tragic war in the Ukraine, but also, the situation with China, which is not clear how it's going forward.
based on that, they all might affect the economy worldwide, which is not foreseeable at the moment. Based on the economy as we see it today, and also based on the assumption that all the exchange rates are more or less stable in the next couple of months, we expect to gain a robust growth in the 2022 with to levels of CHF 325 million-CHF 365 million. What you see, and I have already mentioned, is that we are expecting to come downwards from the dividend level based on the fact that we are hiring new talent in all the departments from operations up to sales and R&D to drive innovation.
That brings me to the end, and I'd like to hand to Heiko.
Thank you, Marc. Thank you, Matthias. With that, we have finished our review of the year of 2021. As highlighted before, I'd like to welcome you to ask the questions if there are any here in the room, but also online. For the people online, I'll give you the opportunity to either raise your hand in the GoTo Meeting app, or you can also type your message and I will read it out and address it in that way. In order to give the people online a little bit of time, maybe we start with the people in the room. Yes, Karan Inan.
Yes. Thank you very much. I actually have two questions. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit on the automotive part. The way it looks, H2 was not as strong as H1 was. I'm just trying to understand is there product mix? Is it demand? Is it kind of what type of cars were being produced? Because we saw, you know, other companies that were more into EV, for example, they also saw more growth. That would be the first one. Let me take the second one together, just about the outlook. The feedback that you were mentioning, could you just, you know, add a number to it so that we understand what the one-time effects here. On your guidance, I mean, it's pretty broad on the revenue. Maybe you have to give the lower end.
What's your basis for the lower end and for the upper end, and how much price increases do you anticipate into your revenue?
Okay. Thank you very much. Let me first maybe repeat the questions also for the online audience. The first question from Karan Inan was about the automotive market and how the revenues were divided across 2021. The second half of 2021 was weaker, and what are our comments on the automotive market development? Let's cover that question.
Yes, absolutely. Well, I think there are two effects. On the one hand, the first half of 2020 to the first half of 2021, we also benefited from a very weak base. Because 2021, especially between March and June, we faced many factory shutdowns here in Europe, and it was a complete stop of car manufacturing. On the other hand, the automotive business is typically the way that they are stopping orders immediately because they are preventing any inventories. This was one of the problems for the allocation today, by the way. This was an effect which is more a base effect of the first half of 2020 compared to 2021, which is similar. It brings the 2021 results in first half to better levels.
On the other hand, what we have seen in 2021, especially in the second half, is also that there are not shutdowns driven by COVID, but shutdowns of factories due to the shortage of electronic components. Not due to our components, but due to some other components, and this is still ongoing. There are a lot of factories, they cannot produce at full speed because some shortages are happening still today. This also might affect the business there.
Okay. The second question was about the feedback business and about the one-time contribution, whether we can quantify it a little bit more.
It's hard to say, because as always in a one-time effect, it's nothing. You don't have any kind of experience with the historical data. We expect to be on a one-off effect between CHF 20-25 million. That's also the reason why we have not adjusted the guidance by carving out the COVID effect of 2021, as I would say, for 2022, because it's in the same order of magnitude as the one-off contribution of COVID of CHF 22 million last year, and now we expect more or less the same amount of extra business driven by CPAP. This is exactly one. Also brings me probably to the second, third question we got, about the broadness of our guidance.
This is definitely one of the reasons that this one-off is not fully clear at the moment. The second reason why we are pretty broad in our guidance is just reflecting these very turbulent times. In any way, it's extremely hard to give any guidance today because the world looks completely different as four weeks ago, and we do not know how the world looks like in four weeks from now on. We are in very complex times, economy-wise, but also political-wise, and we'd like actually to reflect this uncertainties on the market.
On the pricing for-
Oh, sorry. Yes. The pricing, I cannot disclose the price levels we have discussed with customers because this is customer by customer, it's different. It's just a part of the raw material prices we are facing on the other hand. There we are talking about significant increases, especially for semiconductor products. But it's at present, as our customers are supporting us, but it's not the main contribution to the growth next year. Or next year, this year.
I think we addressed all the questions from you, sir. Any more questions in the room? Yes, please, Paul.
Yes, thank you. Thank you for bringing all the questions. The first one was on the market share. During your presentation a couple times that you gained some market share, particularly in the respiratory market. It's mostly because of the benefit of your component on your side versus competitors. Can you just give us an idea how easy it is for your customers to exchange sensors parts? And did you also receive that some customers or new customers decided to equip their equipment with your sensors instead of the ones of the competition? Is the second market trend sustainable? The second question is on the water quality sensors that you mentioned during our investment day last year. Can you just give us an update here and how big is the qualified pipeline and how big is actually the market?
The third question also, this thing I would say is on the gas cell sensors, especially the ones able to analyze hydrogen and hydrogen blend. Can you talk a bit more about this business? We see it has grown more strongly due to the whole energy efficiency initiatives in the European Union, obviously the regulatory landscape this year. How much are you targeting this market and actually, can it really get big for Sensirion? Just to give us an idea.
Sure. Yes. The first question was about our insights, how we gain market share with our products, and whether or not our newly acquired customers or also the other customers, how easily our products are interchangeable with competitor sensors. Well, I think we have to differentiate between the businesses we have already a pretty large market share as in flow and humidity. On the other hand, our new product markets like CO2 and formaldehyde, we are starting or we have started from zero, three years ago. In humidity especially, there definitely we are dominating the market. We have a market share of more than 50% of the worldwide market. There we have gained additional focus last year, thanks to our more favorable lead times compared to competitors.
There were some customers. They have switched on short notice to our solutions just to get the component. It's now our challenge to make this business also sustainable. We are pretty optimistic about that, but we can look back in two years probably when it's more clear about that. The very same works for flow, especially during COVID. We have seen that some ventilator manufacturers, they were not yet based on our solutions for flow sensing. They switched to our solutions because our two competitors in the ventilator business, for example, are U.S.-based, and in these times it was not really clear whether Mr. Trump at this time is blocking the U.S. suppliers to serve any customers that are non-U.S.
Just to mitigate any risk, they changed actually to our solutions because we are a Swiss-based company. In these cases, we see up to now that we can transform this extra business to sustainable business after the pandemic crisis. In all the other markets like CO2, PM2.5, and so on, anyway, we are gaining market share due to the fact that we can convince more and more customers, not just to switch from other solutions to our solutions, that happens, but also this is a fastest growing market. There are a lot of new customers, they are starting now to integrate and design in CO2 and or PM2.5 bi-functionalities. Or for example, probably the best-known case is air purifiers for Dyson.
Dyson has on the one hand, they have switched to our PM2.5 solution. This was more a replacement of competitor solutions. On the other hand, they have integrated additionally our formaldehyde sensors. This is a new business also for Dyson. The new series of Dyson, they are now equipped with formaldehyde sensors, and this was not the case in the previous version. Both happened in that case. Thank you, Marc. The second question was about update on the water quality. We were still working hard on water quality technical issues, that's always if you are entering new fields with innovation, with a completely new innovative idea how to measure water quality. We are progressing pretty well.
Our lead customers, they have already now, samples, pretty product close or similar, samples, but they are still on the level of samples, and we get a lot of new feedback from them. The launch, the official launch of the product is, anyway, this was already our plan one year ago, is not planned for or not scheduled for 2022. It will be 2023, or even at the very beginning of 2024. We are fully on plan there. Thank you, Marc. The third one was hydrogen. Yeah, hydrogen. Well, about hydrogen, this is a we can probably talk two hours about that. Hydrogen is definitely gaining more and more traction in the market. There are two different applications. On the one hand side, it's about kind of H2 flow measurement.
There we see that our gas industry solutions they are gaining interest from a lot of new customers thanks to the fact that our solution, which is typically measuring methane, so natural gas, is also compliant to measure 100% hydrogen, which is not the case for some of the competing technologies. This is not yet a business to measure 100% H2, but all these players, all the gas utilities, they are interested in taking technology for the future. They are also able to switch to a hydrogen in the next couple of years in case this might happen. I think this also symbolizes the market at the moment. All are looking into H2 applications.
They are not yet big business today, but all are expecting that they are gaining importance in the next couple of years. On the other hand, H2 is also about H2 leakage, because H2 is explosive and flammable. There are some products that are at the moment ramping up in automotive, or especially one is ramping up at the moment about H2 leakage based on our sensor technologies. This also happens, but also there, you ask me about the potential for the future, it's extremely hard to say. Just before the pandemic, I traveled to Japan to learn more about hydrogen fuel cell cars because Japan is one of the pioneering countries in this complex.
I don't have all the answers for this. Will this be the future or will this be no business because batteries are progressing so well that they will be replaced by battery-driven cars, and H2 is just then a transition phase. I don't know, to be very honest with you. We are definitely serving and supporting our customers if they are interested because our technology is ready and we can do it. Whether it's a sustainable larger business and grow in the next 10 years, we will see.
Thank you. I hope we addressed your question. Okay. Thank you. Yes, please. Next one.
I have a question concerning your new employees that you want to hire, because it looks like if you could look back, you would have hired more last year. You have to think in growth rates. What growth rates for next year or this year and the next few years do you expect for hiring employees? Does that mean any organizational changes?
In terms of organizational changes, this is always the case in our company. As a growing company, we have always to think about how to scale up the organization, how to scale up the processes. This is actually more an ongoing challenge we are in. About your question, 2021, to hire more people, definitely. Whenever you see that there are new chances on the market, you like actually to have the people to support this innovation idea immediately. On the other hand, definitely this is not realistic. Secondly, it's also extremely important to get the right people. That means people, they are fitting, as Matthias mentioned before, they are fitting to our culture. Secondly, they have also the potential to grow with us in the next couple of years.
Therefore, we are somehow selective which people who is actually hired at the very end of the process. This takes some time, and we like also to take the time because at the end of the day, it's by far better to have the right people and not just immediately on short notice to have enough people. About the growth rate of the next years, so we also there, as we are running the whole business, is we are in a very agile way how to do it. We do not running the same company by budget, so we have not a clear picture of what we are hiring this year. We are reviewing the core of business all the time.
Based on the business, we are also adjusting our, and based on the ideas we have in our innovation pipeline, we adjust the needs and the number of positions, we are looking for good talent. I can't tell you a growth rate for this year or next year. We will see that at the end of the year, depending on how it's going forward and how much ideas are turning more and more to get concrete in the next couple of months. Then you need more people. If you see that one of the good chances are failing, and this also happens in an innovation-driven company, then you don't need the additional people for that. This is also affecting the growth rates.
If I can ask another question. If you have new engineers coming fresh from ETH or so, how long does it take until they are productive and directly productive?
It's very highly depending on which department. For example, packaging. This is the task of how to protect your silicon from the outer world with all the plastics around. This is a topic and a skill you can't learn at ETH or in any other universities. We have actually to take or hire talented people based on physics or electrical engineering and so on, and we have to train them. Then it takes definitely two or three years to be fully trained in packaging. In some other fields, like for example, ASIC design, we have also the chance to hire people that have probably spent four years in PhD to design ASICs, and then they are definitely faster in coming into this job because it's more or less the same as they have done on this before.
This is highly depending. At the end of the day, we are more focused on potential of people and not of the skills they bring with them. Because if the people have talent and they have potential, they can learn quickly. If they bring just the skills, we are happy for the first four months, but then we might change the topics, and then they are the wrong people because they are probably not talented. I think the best situation is to have both, definitely. If you have a trade-off, then we are focusing on talent, and we are more interested in training them in-house, and we have the skills in-house.
Follow online goal. Yes, so far. Thank you for the questions. We can continue online. I don't see any questions yet. Katrina, no question? Okay. Katrina, move forward to me. There we go. Okay. There was one question. Can you specify the effect of the strong Swiss franc on your business?
Yes, I want to.
Yes.
Yeah, of course, we see the strong Swiss franc and looking at our cost structure with the actual setup of the organization, it definitely is so that we have strong cost block here with all the personnel costs. Yeah, when we look ahead what is coming with our planning, our forecasting, we still calculate, yeah, then in relation to the Swiss franc, the US dollar in this range where it actually is. Of course, we see this volatility. All what we can do when it comes then to hedging, then we focus very much on the natural hedge.
We hope that we can bring some positive effect now with the capacity load in our production site in Hungary. That will be one contribution from that perspective. The other one thing is that even more split up also on the geographical map with the subsidy in Berlin in the Euro zone. I think it relieves a little bit, but of course, yeah, we can handle it, but of course it's a challenge on the margin, definitely. It's too early for us to say in this early stage of the year what the impact is for 2022.
Okay. Thank you, Matthias. May we continue with another online question? Given our significant revenue scale we are seeing, why will the gross margin not remain as high as we've seen in 2021 in our outlook?
Compared to. You mean the.
Yeah, the new one. The new guidance. First I read the question. The significant revenue scale we've seen. Why are we expecting the gross margin not to be as high than that, yeah? That is a good question to explain it in more detail. Again, I think last year's gross margin was highly affected by the fact that we squeezed out our operations department. With the very same equipment, because new equipment was not deliverable in short notice, we had actually to work 24 hours, 7 days, with five shifts just to bring out whatever we can to serve our customers. This is definitely good in terms of gross margin because you have investments. They are already highly or on a larger scale already depreciated, and you squeeze it out fully.
What we are doing now is, but it's not sustainable. On the one hand, we like to grow further. Secondly, also, whenever you have any kind of event in production, we cannot catch up again because we are fully loaded at more than 100% utilization. It is not healthy. What we have already done at the very beginning of 2021 is actually to order more equipment. Most of them are not yet shipped to us because the lead times specifically are longer than one year at the moment. And then we start again with some depreciation, and we have a larger investment in equipment. On the other hand, we have also to hire new people to make the full operation more sustainable. These all affect just the gross margin at the very end of the day.
The growth margin now benefited significantly from the squeezed out effect. Then we have another, I think, good question. If we would now exclude the CHF 22 million revenues from the extra ventilator CPAP related, COVID related ventilator business from 2021. Then our full year 2022 growth is even higher than our implied growth. The question is this driven by new products mainly, or is it existing business also growing?
If you would compare the 2021 without, would you create a relatively slower guidance? Where does the growth come from?
I think it's more or less the same picture as between 2021 to 2020. That means it's driven on the one hand side by our all the business of humidity and flow, where we are still in an interesting ramp-up of new products driving our humidity demand and flow demand. The other hand, and this is definitely more dominant about all the new products like PM2.5, VOCs, and formaldehyde, they have started to contribute last year or some of them over 2020. That's ongoing. We expect that we also disclose that 25% of the revenue is now actually coming from PPC. We expect that this ratio will increase even more in next in this year, 2022. It's dominantly also driven by that.
The contribution of our even new business like the acquired businesses in Berlin, for example, Connected Solutions, as I mentioned before, this is not significant in 2022. It's mainly driven by all the products we have talked about.
Okay, thank you, Marc. Another question. Do you see customers stockpiling devices, chips?
Mm-hmm.
Is there a risk of double ordering?
About stockpiling, yes. I think so. We don't see it, but this is more the effect of the business today, that you cannot ask your customers. You can definitely ask them about their inventories, but you don't get a right answer, because nobody would disclose your inventory levels today. Because whenever you tell anybody that you have some inventories, you are immediately reduced in what you get. All the players in the market, they are playing tactical at the moment. Our impression also, if we see the market, if we feel the market, there will be definitely some demands. They are more for stockpiling rather than for the immediate manufacturing of their products. We cannot quantify it because nobody is actually disclosing any figures about that.
About double ordering, I think that's less important in our business. Mainly, we have direct relationships to our customers, and we are anyway a single source with them, so they have no chance to order the humidity sensors at Sensirion, but also at the second source, because they have no second source. They have just Sensirion. So this double ordering, I think it is less important for our business. But so far it's definitely one of the issues, and we are also addressing that in the guidance, but also in the reflections of the figures of 2021. It's definitely one of the contributors at the moment. How long does this continue is fully unclear.
Okay. I agree. So yeah. We mentioned that 25% of our revenue already in 2021 are related to environmental fields, as mentioned previously. Which sensors does it comprise? Does this number include humidity and temperature sensors, or is it just the new portfolio?
It is just a new portfolio. Humidity and temperature is not counted. That means it's about PM2.5, it's about formaldehyde, it's about volatile organic compound sensor, and it's about CO2, to be very precise, and definitely all the combinations of them. Without humidity as a component. That will be significantly higher.
Exactly. All right. A question on the conflict in Ukraine. How does the conflict affect our business, and how much of sales does Sensirion generate in Russia and Ukraine?
Well, we have minor business in Russia. We have no business in Ukraine. Directly, we are not affected. Indirectly, definitely what we see already today is actually some additional logistical turbulences because of the fact that all the air traffic had to prevent the Russian area, and this might trigger additional logistical turbulences in the market, especially in business with Japan. This is also minor. I think the major effect we might be affected is about the economy. Nobody knows at the moment how this war is going forward. That means also how it affects the global economy, and definitely we are part of global economy, and there we are definitely affected. This is not reflected in our guidance because it's just a lottery at the moment.
We cannot say anything about what's going on in this war. The direct business with Russia or Ukraine is really insignificant.
Mm-hmm. Thank you, Marc. I think the second question was also replied. Which are the impacts to Sensirion coming from the sanctions versus Russia? I think you explained in detail.
Why? Okay.
The next question is about CO2 sensors. To what degree do you count on the high volumes of 2021 to be one-off revenues and to what degree just accelerated diffusion?
The question is about the how sustainable the CO2 sensor sales. Was it a one-off effect, the CO2 business in 2021? One-off. I don't think so, though definitely it's driven by this fear to be infected by indoor air quality, and this has definitely supported the CO2 demand last year. There might also be a kind of a bounce rebound effect now after the pandemic, hopefully after the pandemic. I think longer term, CO2 is definitely one of the most interesting parameters, not just to get an information about air quality, but also to optimize the automatic ventilation systems in order to save energy. It's also driven by other mega trends, not just by the pandemic, but also by energy saving issue.
I expect personally that CO2 will have a pretty good potential in the next couple of years worldwide. It might be the case that last year's was accelerated slightly too fast, and it might reduce indeed for this year to recover from this. Longer term, it will have a great potential as a market driven by energy issues, but also by air quality concerns of people.
As you can see, our light turned yellow.
Exactly.
It means the CO2 actually concentration doubled. If it goes yellow, then watch it up in your those presence there. Even in this large room.
True. That's okay.
Yes. All right. Last question. Can you elaborate your ESG strategies in 2022?
That's something that we also in the annual report that we have disclosed today, this morning, we have increased our disclosures of ESG topics, especially of environmental topics. This is a high interest for the company. We have also a working group internally. As a company which is technically driven, we are more interested in taking measures rather than reporting about. That means we are doing significantly more as we are reporting, and certainly there we have also some room for improvement, and we are working on that in terms of reporting. I'd like to remind you about what we are doing directly though in our production sites and systems, since more than 10 years.
We have a very special energy saving systems where we have 260,000-liter tanks of water, which is saving the heat that the excess energy of all the equipment, and we can store it in these water tanks in order to heat the building in other times. The very same works also with kind of a heat pump system with more than 20 systems. Yes, to heat the building in a very ecological way. The very same now was also applied in our operations site in Hungary, which is completely new for Hungarian people, but also there we like actually to run the business in a very ecological level. This is just one of the examples.
There are a lot of others there. I'd like to repeat it again. We are fully aware that we have actually to improve our way how to report on that, and we like also to make it. We have already done a significant step if you compare the annual report we have disclosed today compared to the one of last year, and we are going to make another step for 2022.
All right. So far as I can tell, that was the last question online, right, Katrina? Thank you. Are there any more questions from the attendees in this room? Seems like you gave a good speech. Thank you very much. I think with this, we can close the online webcast. I thank everybody for your attendance and for your high quality questions. Yeah, looking forward to see you soon again.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for coming. See you. Bye-bye.