Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I'm Ingrid McMahon, Director, Investor Relations. With me today hosting the call is Samuel Sigrist, CEO. The slides for the call are available for download on our investor website. This presentation may contain forward-looking statements involving risks and uncertainties that may cause results to differ materially from those statements. A full cautionary statement and disclaimer can be found on slide two of the presentation, which participants are encouraged to read carefully. With that, let me now hand you over to Samuel.
Thank you, Ingrid, and welcome everybody. I'm pleased to report a solid quarter one result. A strong top line driven by price increases to recover cost inflation has underpinned margin improvement in the organic carton business. Meanwhile, there is ongoing volume momentum from the acquisitions. We are executing strategic investments to support the future growth of the business by expanding our global production network in order to produce closer to our growing customer base. We're also investing in our aseptic carton filler base, where we see an exceptionally strong pipeline. We became the first in the industry to launch digital printing in Europe. We were delighted to see our newest generation filling machine in action at the end of the quarter, along with our latest aseptic carton format.
While not making a significant contribution to the business yet, these innovations are extremely important to ensure that we maintain our competitive advantage in terms of flexibility, highest output per hour for one liter performance, and lowest utilization of resources, further reducing our environmental footprint. The new format helps our customers' products to stand out on shelf and continues our track record of leading innovation. Turning now to the key figures of quarter one. In the first quarter of the year, our organic sales grew by 6.9% at constant currency, reflecting strong growth in all regions except for a soft quarter in China, which I'll come on to later. Group revenue at constant currency grew by 44.5%, reflecting the first Q1 contribution from the bag-in-box, spouted pouch, and chilled carton acquisitions. adjusted EBITDA increased by over 47% to EUR 175 million.
I'm pleased to report an adjusted EBITDA margin of 24%, slightly ahead of quarter one last year, and a significant improvement on the 22.3% reported in the quarter four of last year. This largely reflects price increases to recover cost inflation. Adjusted net income increased by EUR 20 million, driven by higher adjusted EBITDA, which was partially offset by incremental financing expense. Free cash flow was negative EUR 95 million in the first quarter, reflecting seasonal working capital outflows, including payment of volume rebates following the strong volume performance in 2022. It also reflects an increase in net CapEx of EUR 80 million.
Net CapEx includes the contribution from the acquisitions, as well as the expansion of our global footprint as we continue to position ourselves in new markets and invest to ensure the highest levels of customer service. CapEx also includes investments in our filling machines, given the high level of filler orders in 2022. We continue to expect a large number of new filler placements in 2023. Net leverage was maintained at 3.1x, in line w-ith the December 31st last year, thanks to the strong growth in adjusted EBITDA and despite seasonally lower cash generation during the quarter. Turning now to the performance by region. Europe delivered strong growth of approximately 11% on an organic basis, driven by price increases to recover cost inflation.
As you recall, Europe's margin was most impacted in 2022 by higher raw material and energy costs. The first-time revenue contribution from bag-in-box and spouted pouch added EUR 46 million to regional revenue. The Middle East and Africa had a particularly strong quarter with growth at constant currency of approximately 18%. Volume growth was primarily driven by dairy in South Africa, Saudi, and Egypt due to new filler installations and by a resumption of milk supply in Algeria. We continued to implement our strategy of expanding our presence in dairy and food. During the quarter, the region launched white cheese in carton and continued to grow dairy in 1 L packaging. Growth also reflected price increases to cover cost inflation.
Performance in Q2 may be impacted as central banks can temporarily restrict access to foreign currency, which impacts our customers as we only sell in either Euro or U.S. dollar. Growth in Asia Pacific was impacted by weak customer demand in China in January and February. Consumption was soft as the population suffered from high levels of COVID-19 following the lifting of restrictions at the end of 2022. Early Chinese New Year holidays also delayed business activity until the second half of February. We saw the start of a recovery in demand in March and expect a strong Q2. Encouragingly, the trial with our major customer in China for alu-layer-free cartons continues to progress well. In the rest of Asia Pacific, there was particularly strong volume demand in Vietnam and in India.
We now expect 40 fillers to be installed by the end of the year in India, compared with the 30 fillers we previously communicated. Price increases to recover cost inflation were also implemented throughout the region. The revenue contribution from chilled, spouted pouch, and bag-in-box was EUR 49 million during the quarter. The Americas saw excellent organic growth of approximately 20%. This primarily reflected strong volume demand in Brazil and in the U.S., as well as price increases. We have also started to benefit from the reduction in customer lead times with the commencement of our new sleeves plant in Mexico. The revenue contribution from bag-in-box and spouted pouch added EUR 94 million to regional revenue. Bag-in-box and spouted pouch continued to grow strongly and to gain market share.
We are pleased to be able to announce a new cross-selling win with our largest customer in Brazil, who switched from a chilled Bag-in-Box supplier to our aseptic Bag-in-Box. The contract includes a full system solution and a long-term volume agreement. Turning to the adjusted EBITDA bridge. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 47% to EUR 175 million for the quarter. The margin of 24% was slightly above the first quarter of 2022, and importantly, showed 170 basis point improvement compared with the fourth quarter of 2022, which was at 22.3%. This improvement was despite the dilution from acquisitions, in addition to the mathematical dilution from price increases. Acquisitions contributed EUR 31 million to the adjusted EBITDA growth.
The top line contribution of EUR 45 million was driven by price increases to recover higher raw material and production costs from 2022, and to recover higher costs in the first quarter of the year. Together, raw materials, production, and freight costs increased by EUR 21 million compared to Q1 2022. Positive foreign currency impacts on adjusted EBITDA were offset by an increase in SG&A of EUR 9 million, which primarily reflected growth investment and wage inflation. Free cash flow was negative EUR 95 million in the quarter. As usual, cash flow in the quarter reflected the payment of volume rebates, which is a function of the strong volume performance in 2022, notably in the fourth quarter. We also saw a significant increase in gross capital investment of EUR 114 million compared to EUR 46 million a year ago.
Non-filler CapEx of EUR 51 million focused on the expansion of our global production network to enhance our presence in certain markets. In India, we made down payments for the construction of our new sleeve plant, which will have an initial capacity of up to 4 billion sleeves. We also had payments associated with the completion of the new plant in Mexico, which now enables us to better serve our customers in North America. We invested in digital printing in Europe, which will provide design flexibility and fast customer response time for advertising campaigns. Filler CapEx was EUR 63 million, almost double the level of Q1 2022, reflecting our very strong pipeline of filler installations over the next 12 to 18 months.
As expected, upfront cash for filling machines was below the level of last year, the last two years, which benefited from a higher proportion of sale and lease contracts, where we received the full payment for the filler upfront. Overall, net capital investment increased by EUR 80 million compared to Q1 2022. Net CapEx as a percentage of revenue for the period was 12%. The planned phasing of CapEx for this year is weighted towards the first half. For the full year, we continue to expect net CapEx to remain within the guided range of 7%-9% of revenue. The strong growth in adjusted EBITDA during the period maintains the group's net leverage ratio at 3.1 times, in line with end of year 2022.
We have a bridge facility in place for the redemption in June of our EUR 450 million bond. We are committed to reducing gross debt by end of the year. Given these solid quarter results, we are maintaining our full year guidance. We expect volumes to pick up in China for the remainder of the year as the economy recovers from temporary disruption caused by the new COVID-19 cases in January. We are confident that we can grow revenue and net and adjusted EBITDA margin within our guided range. We are investing in the business to support the strong growth and filler pipeline, with investments phased towards the first half of the year.
Our adjusted EBITDA growth and seasonal cash generation in the second half of the year gives us confidence that we are well on the way to reach our 2024 net leverage target of 2.5x. With that, I will now be happy to take your questions together with Chet Spence and Dmitry Lebedev, who join me here from the finance side.
The first question comes from Christian Arnold from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Can you hear me?
Good morning, Christian. We can hear you.
Very good. Maybe first on pricing. You said last year that you will cancel prices again this year in the same manner as last year. Can you confirm that, it's 4%? Shall we see different price impacts over the year, or can we assume kind of linear 4% price impact for all quarters?
Thanks for your question, Christian. Pricing is a bit higher than what we initially guided for. We went to the market with increases that are above the 4.5% level. We are currently still executing and we will update you later in the year. From a two-day perspective, we expect a bit of a higher price contribution. With regards to the phasing, I said already in the first call this year when we provided guidance that pricing will be more evenly distributed across the year. That's for the price that is put in place this year.
In a year-on-year comparison, as you recall, we had a ramp-up of price increases throughout the year from Q1 to Q4 last year in the kind of the year-on-year comparison that leads to a bigger price impact in Q1 compared to the fourth quarter. The current year's price impact is gonna be more evenly distributed.
Okay, very clear. Thank you. Second question I have is on Scholle IPN. I mean, at the time when you were announcing the acquisition, you, I think, were referring more of a, let's say, mid-single digit growth history of this business. Now, last year and as well as this year, you get the feeling that Scholle IPN is growing very fast, clearly above what they have achieved in the past. An explanation for that?
I think that's right. I would say, you know, when we look back, at year-end on the period they were with us, we talked about the growth pace in the low teens. We also said there was an element of this resin escalator in there. We see basically a growth momentum that continues at a similar pace now, probably even with a lower contribution from resin escalators. That effect kind of came through last year. We're very pleased with the performance of the business. It comes down to share gains in established market, it also comes down to us moving those substrates more and more into emerging markets. I don't think, though, that that will be the pace of growth we're gonna continue to see into midterm, we're obviously very pleased with the development.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Christian.
The next question comes from Joern Iffert from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hello, Samuel. Can you hear me?
Very well. Good morning, Joern.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. The first one would be, please, on the cross-selling. Can you give us roughly the magnitude? What was this contract about in Brazil? Given your discussions you have on cross-selling, is this providing already organic growth visibility for Scholle for 2024? This will be the first question, please.
That's a good question. Recall also last year we reported in our quarterly earnings calls on these cross-selling wins. I think I see them still as a bit of a proof of concept report. You know, I think one deal in isolation is not gonna move the needle, but deals in combination, they're gonna help us to grow. Obviously we now see that confirmed across all geographies where we operate, and we are very pleased to see those cross-selling wins, not only on pack and box side, but also on spout or pouch side. We don't comment with numbers on this specific deal, but I still would say that's kind of a proof of concept and at one point we shall then cease from reporting every single win and give you a more holistic picture.
Okay, thank you. The second question would be, please, on price elasticity. Do you see directly with your customers, some price elasticity? Do your customers also see price elasticity which is dragging volumes maybe more to flattish in 2023, 2024 for your business?
I would say you're familiar with the fact that our customers operate at this entry level of processed and packaged food. That always has given our top line a resilience that we enjoyed over the past couple of years. We don't think that that has fundamentally changed. Now, in all markets where we operate, and especially in emerging markets, inflation is a reality, right? You know that our customers counter that with downsizing or inflation, as we call it, where our format flexibility supports them. Also there are limitations to the degree you can downsize. Now, I would say if there is a pricing elasticity, just to make this very clear, it's not related to our price increases. It would be related to the shelf pricing.
The shelf price is definitely not driven by our price increases, but that is driven by the cost of the ingredients for the food product. There it is gonna be a function for how they're gonna continue to evolve. I wouldn't say that our category is completely insulated from elasticity, but we definitely should recall that we operate at this entry level of processed packaged food.
Okay, thank you. If you allow me a quick last question. You have a very strong filler, installation number in 2022. You say, "Okay, look, 23 again is also strong." Shall we expect that 2024 is normalizing or with the ramp ups you have in Mexico, India, that the 60 net new fillers are roughly the new run rate?
I would've said, I look at the gross filler placements for kind of 2021. I would have said, you know, a number between 50 and 70 is a good number. Last year we were above 90, and now we said all the magnitude for this year, a similar number. I'm not necessarily suggesting that's the new normal, but I do think with our extension of geographic expansion of geographic presence, we also increased the universe of opportunities. You would want to see us placing a bit more fillers than historically, but at the same time, I wouldn't say that 90+ is the new normal.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Alessandro Foletti from Octavian. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. If I may go back quickly to the surcharges, can you give an indication or the resin surcharges, can you give an indication on how high they were in the quarter?
I tried to say that before, maybe it wasn't clear.
Mm-hmm.
I think We went through that period last year. This year there is very limited impact from that. That's probably also the prices have stabilized. There is basically no impact of resin escalator in the top line.
Right. Great. Do you think we can account for that for the rest of the year as well?
Obviously that's gonna be a function of our raw material, how raw material prices is gonna move. We already indicated in earlier calls that we will disclose at year-end what that number was, so that there is transparency.
Right.
-on how much resin escalator is in the numbers.
Very good. In Europe, I would like to ask, you spoke about price increases or the normal or let's say the real price increases, between above 4.5, et cetera? Does it mean that the organic growth in Europe, in volume growth in Europe was as well 5%, 6%?
I think you should think of when we said 4.5% price increase for the full year, and I said before, we went to market with higher numbers, and we expect a higher number to come in. You should think of that as a global average because.
Mm-hmm.
There are regional differences. There are also regional differences in input costs. As you recall, Europe has suffered quite substantially also from energy.
All right, I can assume lower than that, but still the volumes look in Europe to be positive. I mean, 2%, 3%, 4% is possible.
I would say, you know, we're not gonna break up at this stage price and volume, but to give you a big call, I would say, Europe is per se a flat market, right? There are growing categories, but overall a flattish market. I think we are pleased with the start, but there is, there is a little bit volume, but it's not, you know, beyond what you would expect.
All right. I have a question on MEA. You have flagged the possibility of disruptions due to currency conversion restrictions. Can you remind me what happened last time? I believe it was, I don't know if it was early 2019 or late 2019. I don't remember exactly when it was, but can you remember what happened? I think you had a bad quarter in terms of growth, the next quarter it came back up.
I think that's exactly what it is, and we wanted to prepare everyone a bit for that or remind people that while we believe in the fundamental growth opportunities of the Middle East and Africa region, it comes with higher volatility, right? We had a very strong start into the year. We know that some of the markets in North Africa, including Egypt, they struggle. That always can lead to a situation where for a period of time, central banks restrict access to hard currency. That even while demand of consumer may be there, even while customers wanna buy, they just simply can't because we only ship against dollar or euros. That can lead to the fact that there you have certain catch up all the time in the subsequent quarter.
It is restricted to North Africa, and as far as I understand you, it did not happen yet.
Yes. It is mostly Egypt where we see, I mean, Algeria went through a period of that, you know. That is some kind of sometimes very specific on certain products. It's not that you can follow that and say, now it's off and on. That's where our customers and our teams have kind of developed a certain level of experience how to deal with that. Then we pre-pull orders or there's a bit of a catch-up. That leads to the fluctuation in the quarterly development. That's why we say, "Don't get hung up with quarterly growth. Look at the year-on-year growth, and we believe in the fundamental growth opportunities of the region.
Right. Okay. I have two more small questions, if I may. One is on the acquisitions. It seems to me that while the sequential margin for the group improved nicely from Q4 last year to now, in the acquired business, it went the other way around. Is that my calculation correct? Why do you think, and what's the outlook?
Yeah, I mean, we said already last year, you recall when we had one month of consolidated numbers, don't extrapolate this margin. We also see a bit of a margin fluctuation in this business. Overall, also with regard to the full-year outlook, we are absolutely in line with our expectations on the margin development of that business.
Okay, good. The last question is on the upfront cash. You flagged that this year it might not be as high as it was in the last couple of years. I remember initially, I think with the IPO and first year you were on a stock exchange, you were saying that upfront cash should be about a third of what you spend in filler CapEx. Is that number still the same? Because it was really much higher in the last more than only the last two years.
That's right. We keep saying for modeling purpose, we would suggest work with this 1/3. I know it was higher, but it is higher as a function of mix effect, right? Mix effect between how we structure deals on the one hand side, but also to what degree we can use this tool of sale and leaseback, where we get 100% upfront cash. You recall, if you have larger filler placements in a market where we have this tool, like in Europe, then that leads to more upfront cash. I would say for planning purposes, I would still work with this 1/3, knowing that historically we had, we really were able to generate more upfront cash. That remains the ambition also.
I think, you know, the essence is that the 7%-9% net CapEx is the all-encompassing guidance, and that's where we feel comfortable to continue to operate within not only this year but also within into midterm.
Right. The fact that you are installing a lot of fillers in India, for instance, will not change that one-third number.
No. I mean, again, you're gonna see likely that we will be able to overachieve our own guidance there. I think, you know, all things same and not forecasting our regional mixes and the mix of deployment tools, we still would suggest that you model it as 1/3. I think overall it's the net CapEx number that you should keep an eye on, and that's where we're absolutely in line with expectations.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Jeroen Souza from JMS. Please go ahead.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Two questions from my side. The first one is on the FX impact on sales growth now for the upcoming quarters. I mean, you had like plus 2.3% tailwind from FX in the first quarter. How, from your perspective now on your calculation, how will this be in Q2, Q3? At some point it might turn right, but maybe you can give us more indication what we should expect there. That's the first one.
Yeah, thanks for your question. You know, I mean, we have a history discussing FX rates, the two of us. I haven't really improved my skills of forecasting FX. I will remain here on the cautious side and say, you know, we are committed to deliver on our constant currency guidance for the top line. Definitely within our bottom line, we do have FX implications. You're also familiar with our way, how we try to put natural hedging in place, and that is what we pursue with the expansion of our footprint into the emerging markets. That is well underway and helps us to insulate it to some degree from FX fluctuation.
You've seen the impact for the year and that might be not for the year, but for the first quarter, and that might be, you know, continued to that degree. From today's perspective, we are confident to maintain our guidance, as said before.
May I just follow up here? I mean, the euro went up as like the US dollar compared to the euro came down right year-over-year, like the impact is going to be around 10% from this. It was at parity, for example, in Q3 last year.
Yeah.
Now it's at one, I think 11. That's gonna be like a 10% headwind if, I mean, assuming that FX don't change from here going forward. At the current rates and given that you are sometimes hedging also some exposure and so on, what would be the drag from today's perspective? If you take the 7%-9% plus scope minus FX, that's the calculation.
Yeah.
I'm making. I mean, do you have a number there or?
Yeah. It will be a drag if you see. No, I don't have a number. If we see these rates continue to be at this level, it will be a drag, that's correct. It also is going to be a function, you know, on the mix of the regional growth, which is something as we just discussed can change from quarter to quarter.
Okay. Yeah. Okay. I get you're not willing to give more color there, but, I have my own calculations, so I will have at least like an assumption. The other question is regarding depreciation and amortization, which if I just excluded the PPA number from your overall depreciation and amortization number, I get a run rate on depreciation of around without PPA of around EUR 62 per quarter. Is this like a reasonable quarterly run rate going forward to basically calculate with around EUR 62 million-EUR 63 million going forward? Also on the PPA, like the EUR 37.6, is this like now the flight level going forward that we should take into account?
I'm looking here also at Jess, and I think on your first part of your question, she was nodding on the DNA. I think on the PPA we have already provided a clear schedule that we-.
Yeah, it's not changing material.
It's not changing. Yeah.
Okay, cool. Thank you.
Thank you.
We have a follow-up question from Mr. Alessandro Foletti from Octavian AG. Please go ahead.
All right. Thank you for taking my follow-up. Surprised to be already in the line again. On Asia and APAC, maybe you can give a little bit color if you think that, you know, the reopening in China will sort of put you in a position to catch up on the lost sales that you had so far in Q1?
Yes. I mean, you can read a lot about reopening, right? We discussed that earlier. We didn't expect a big reopening effect as we didn't really see a significant slowdown of our growth during the pandemic. What we did see now, obviously, was when China lifted the restrictions end of last year. You know, I recall between mid-December and end of January, whomever I called in our team there was sick and working from home. That it affects our factory staff, but it also did affect the factory staff of our customers, where there was low output, and it did also affect consumption as basically the country was sick.
They went into Chinese New Year, where we did see the good sales already in Q4 last year when they prepared the distribution channel for that gifting event. That meant that the economic activity basically started post-Chinese New Year, which was mid-February. To put it a bit bluntly, they had half a quarter in a quarter, right? I do think that we're gonna see a catch-up effect there. You have heard us saying that we've maintained full-year guidance, so that also is clearly a recovery of the China volume impact included in there.
Right. As a follow-up, you mentioned that the acquisition, Scholle and Evergreen made EUR 49 million sales in that region in Q1. We know that Scholle is relatively small. Let's say they did EUR 9 million-EUR 10 million there. It still means that Evergreen was very strong. Is there a reason why the fresh business had a different behavior than the aseptic?
I think we are pleased with the performance of the chilled business, it was not as strong. You recall what I said before on the growth for Scholle, bag-in-box and spouted pouch on a global level in the low teens as we saw it last year. It wasn't there. It was rather kind of mid-single digit in the chilled business. I think that was a good performance for the quarter we went through.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Mengxian Sun from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Just one question on the margin development from here. How should we think about the margin development from here throughout the year since the price increase is still in place, we see the raw material cost is coming down now, I would expect the margin to increase steadily here, quarter after quarter. Are there any components or headwinds, so to say, that we should think about will burden the margin this year?
That's a good question. You know, when people that followed us over the last couple of years are familiar with our organic margin profile. You know, a margin profile that used in to start in a given year with lower margin and that peaked then in the fourth quarter. I do think that our margin profile has changed a bit. It has changed a bit also in the organic business. It's a function of just how growth has happened. You know, you recall we explained our seasonality with a number of underlying demand drivers, you know, stronger demand for dairy or more dairy production in South America in the second half of the year, the preparation for Chinese New Year. There are really underlying structural demand patterns that led to that seasonality.
Now we see more and more India growth, obviously, which has a different seasonal profile, where there's a lot of juice consumed ahead of the monsoon season. Also with the acquisitions, where we have a bit more of an evenly distributed profile, or maybe in the bag-in-box or spouted pouch, even kind of one that peaks towards Q2, Q3. All in, I would say our margin profile across the year will flatten out, and that's what we expect for this year. That's number one. Number two, on the input cost, you're absolutely right that the indices are coming down, right? Also recall, we entered the year with a hedging ratio for raw material for the polymers and the aluminum for, I think, give or take, is at 53%.
That obviously, is the part that is locked in. We still got a benefit for the remainder, from the, from the spot prices, but there is a certain element that is kind of established yet as a reality. All said, we maintain guidance for the full year, as you heard us saying before.
Thank you very much. That's very clear.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Benjamin Thielmann from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hey, good morning. Can you hear me?
Very well. Good morning, Benjamin.
Okay. Hey, Samuel. Just one or two questions from my side. You were mentioning during the presentation that you expect high volume growth in Vietnam and in India. Can you actually give us a ballpark range over here? I assume you're currently seeing an ongoing shift from fresh milk to packaged milk in India. Can you give us about what numbers are we talking here? Is it a low double-digit % amount growing? Maybe a little bit of color on that.
No, you're absolutely right. flag Vietnam and India. I meant that with regards also to the growth contribution in Q1. That said, I mean, India obviously is an exciting market, and you're absolutely right that there is a conversion in the milk market to processed and packaged milk. We always refer to, you know, a five-year CAGR of what we expect it to be that is in the mid-teens as a market growth potential. Now, we do see that our growth there is driven obviously by share gains, and that leads to volume growth. You may also heard me say before that we expect this year, end of year, to have not only 30 fillers as communicated at the CMD last year in field, but 40 fillers.
I think that's a testimony again to the great job that our team does there on the ground and that our technology seems to be well received by the customers and their perspective remain very, very positive on the outlook of India.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Maybe one more question, if I may, regarding your SIGNATURE EVO portfolio. Last year you published a alu-layer-free carton, and I just wanted to see how is that getting adopted by the market. Are we seeing customers really switching to that sustainable solution, or are we currently seeing more like a hockey stick?
Maybe a little bit of color over here.
Yeah, we definitely see that happening. You know, we were very proud that we could announce now also that we can offer an alu-free pack that has same barrier properties as a pack with aluminum. That means oxygen barrier, life barrier, aroma barrier, all these things. The way I think you should think of the introduction of these aluminum-free compound structures, that's gonna be a steady process, right? I think people are gonna use that initially to position their more premium, more organic products, and they wanna kind of have a holistic story where the packaging also supports this sustainability angle of it. We're gonna move more and more into also the more the classic application of the beverage carton. We always talk about an S-curve, how industry currently goes through, and we are leading there.
We believe that our industry over time will become aluminum free. You can think of that really as a gradual conversion happening.
Okay. Okay, fair. That's everything from my side for now. Thank you.
Thank you.
We have a follow-up question from Christian Arnold from Stifel Schweiz. Please go ahead.
Yes. Maybe just on the alu-layer-free carton. I mean, on today's solution, where's the price point versus the conventional carton solution?
I mean-
How much more is it? Yeah.
Yeah. Sorry.
For your customer.
Yes. Obviously, we consider aluminum-free an innovation because it allows customers to make a claim that their packaging material comes with a significantly lower carbon footprint. You recall up to 50% lower carbon footprint of the one substrate, the beverage carton that has pursued already the lowest carbon footprint. It is an innovation, and it is priced a bit higher than our regular structure. That said, it also still comes with a bit more cost for us, and we talked about that. As the barrier films we use to replace aluminum make the compound structure a bit more costly. We do have a line of sight to bring costs down to cost parity. I mean, from a pricing perspective, that still comes with a markup of a couple of percentage points.
I would say a very low double-digit one.
Thank you. Maybe on the financing side, I think you have to refinance a bond this year. How, what are you planning for here? How does, the structure looks like? I think last year you once said 55% is based on fixed interest and 45% are variable. Has this changed?
No, it hasn't changed, but that obviously includes the bond that is due this summer. We have we have a bridge in place and, you know, I think our goal is also to use this as an opportunity to reuse cross-debt. We haven't yet communicated the number, but we have an ambition to make that a meaningful cross-debt reduction. I think once we progress in the year, we're also gonna communicate the number. But we have everything what it needs in place, including this bridge that comes at attractive terms. Obviously, it's gonna step up over the duration of the bridge, but we also have the ambition to kind of retire the bridge, basically within 12 months again.
Okay. Last question maybe, on EBITDA levels, which were rather small in this quarter. Having everything unchanged going forward, assuming that, would you expect that this number will remain in this, let's say, EUR 10 million size?
I mean, you see it nicely also in the media release page 6, right? I mean, the biggest element in there is always, the unrealized loss and gain from the hedges, right? There it gets now into kind of crystal ball territory to predict what that's gonna be. From an overall perspective, we don't see bigger tickets at the horizon, other than... What is that, Jess? The earn-out
Yeah. Hi. Sorry. On the earn-out perspective, the earn-out may fluctuate depending on FX rates and obviously the discounting of the earn-out as we move closer to the payout period. Then there'll be some incremental integration costs. I think if you, if you assume, that number for each quarter, I think that's okay.
Yep. Very good. Okay.
Yep. The integration cost, I mean, here you probably assume that, I mean, towards second half, this should become smaller because we should have integrated it at a certain time, right?
Yeah. I don't think it's fully integrated in that shorter time period. There will be additional integration costs throughout the year.
Oh, they will shut down completely.
Yes.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Far, there are no more questions from the phone.
Excellent. We appreciate your time this morning, and we look forward to see you anytime soon. Thanks for your attention and your time, and have a good day. Bye everybody.