Joining 2020. Who are the first among and its representatives do not assume any responsibility for the completeness and correctness of information included in the presentation. This presentation is also available in German. In case of doubt, the German language version shall be authoritative. This presentation does not comprise either recommendation or solicitation to either purchase or sell securities or not. It is my pleasure now, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Christoph Gabriel, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our conference call for the full year results of 2022. Together with our CEO, Gerald Mayer, as well as COO Helmut Kaufmann and CSO Victor Breguncci. All board members will guide you through the presentation. As usual, we will enter into the Q&A session directly after the presentation, where the management board is happy to answer your questions. Before we start, I'd like to remind you that the press release, the presentation, and our annual report were published on our website at 7:30 A.M. this morning. Now I would like to hand over to our CEO, Gerald Mayer, and ask him for starting with the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Christoph. Good morning from my side to our earnings call for the financial year 2022. It's a pleasure to present to you a new record level in revenue and in earnings. It was a very challenging but also outstanding year, 2022. We met challenges with high productivity, flexibility, and definitely stable productivity and stable production levels. Revenue significantly upped by 37% to EUR 1.7 billion after EUR 1.3 billion, roughly, in the year 2021. EBITDA growth was really strong to up by 33% to EUR 247 million. Net income after taxes is up. That's the first time that we can present the triple digit net income for the year 2022.
It's 69% up compared to the prior year and at the level of EUR 109 million. Also operating cash flow is up significantly by around 90% to EUR 86 million. Based on all of that, we propose a dividend of EUR 1.60 per share. The outlook for 2023 is of course difficult and definitely given the circumstances, the uncertainty in the markets a little bit too early for us. Based on weaker markets we saw in the second half in particular of 2022 and the lower or weaker economic growth, we expect this will also impact our results in 2023 from today's perspective. If you change now the slide to slide five.
We had, as we said, an extraordinary year, 2022, which was characterized by a lot of uncertainties and high volatility. The start into the year was very positive, so we had positive market environment in the beginning of the year 2022, which was characterized by very high demand across all our industry and customer industries. Energy prices at this time were already high. The increasing levels of energy prices started in 2021, roughly half of the year or middle of the year. Were very high throughout the year, of course. We saw beginning major uncertainties with the start of the invasion by the Russians in Ukraine in February or end of February 2022. These uncertainties in particular related or were related to energy supplies and the general economic outlook.
Significant price volatilities is what we saw then for the rest of the year. Energy prices were high, we saw increasing or let's say volatile commodity markets, commodity prices. I will talk about this a little bit later in our presentation. Everything was accompanied by high inflation, cost increases, also, interest rates and interest rates picked up throughout the year. This again resulted in deterioration of market environment, which is reflected then also in our fiber curve we present here with the PMIs at the bottom of the slide, which perfectly reflects also our ordering index situation, a very positive first half and a slightly weaker second half, 2022.
Given that, we, as I said, a strong first half, a little bit a weaker second half, high volatility and uncertainty. Our answer was our business model, our consistent strategy, and this resulted definitely in stability. Our focus on our two main pillars of our strategy means innovation and sustainability, accompanied by important value for us means diversity. The human touch is, I would say, was the perfect answer to this situation. We optimally utilized the capacity of our plant and our personnel, and this was a flexible response to the fluctuations over the course of the year 2022.
Also our broad product portfolio was further extended, Helmut will talk about this a little bit later, with high shipments to the aircraft industry, automotive industry, packaging industry, which we could significantly increase. Cost inflation, of course, we had an answer there. We had to really push to adjust prices, which successfully happened. This was also, I would say, a big achievement last year, but also definitely very, very necessary. Our setup, where we also have a Canadian smelter participation, as you know, with Ardent, which is totally independent of the European energy situation, provided support to our result again with very stable production levels and also high shipment volumes. With that, I would like to hand over now to Helmut to guide you now through the next slides.
Good morning from my side. I'm now on slide number seven. And I can tell you that we were able to continue our new product fireworks that we announced a couple of years ago, by introducing more than 40 new products last year, and by doing so, increasing our high share of specialty products up to more than 50% again. We spent 15% more on research, exactly EUR 19.2 million. For the near future, we will focus our R&D on automation and digital strategy. One of the examples is shown here. You see the pilot plant, so to say, our Smart Factory for manufacturing and testing of samples, especially for automotive and aircraft industries.
I can also tell you that the so-called AMAG CrossAlloy development is on track. We introduced this to you last year and told you that we are now on the way from fundamental research to towards industrial application. This is doing well, and we will continue this, and this will be certainly a specialty of the future. With the new product developments and consistent following of automotive applications, we can now call ourselves a one-stop automotive on page nine. With a mixture of cast products and rolled products, we cover, for example, engine components, structural components, as well as outer body sheet or decoration material. I think we are also quite well prepared for the transition to PPP, for example, with our existing products for heat exchangers for battery cooling.
Let me move on to page 10. As in the past, we still focus on sustainability and sustainability in innovation nowadays really go hand in hand. We were able to introduce what we call recycling friendly alloys and produce specialty products with a high recycled content. One example shown here is with linear aluminum wheels for the automotive industry, usually were made based on primary metal and now are able, together with Audi, to introduce a recycled cast alloy with more than 30% of scrap in the product. A very similar approach, we were able to introduce for skis with Fischer, where AMAG introduced the specialty product, Titanal, with a scrap rate higher than 50%.
Very importantly, we introduced a new brand, the so-called AMAG AL4ever or AL4everStar, looking at the CO2 emissions connected to the production of these products. Importantly, we guarantee certain limits to our customers, and we are allowed to guarantee this now because of a certificate that we received from TÜV SÜD here, that the method of calculating and measuring the CO2 emissions is certified and correct. Page number 11. We just repeat shortly that we keep the focus on recycling. It's despite growing volumes, our target to stay in the range of 75%-80% of slab utilization. So far, we were able to reach this target. We are focusing on closed loop products, projects with our customers.
One example is our internal closed loop with the new AMAG Components group for aircraft components, where machining chips go back to Ranshofen and are recycled in our cast house. We continue also selling ASI standard materials. It's another specific branding similar to the Al4ever, the international standard, the generous cast standard. Gerald mentioned that a broad product portfolio and diversity in general were a success factor last year. Page number 12 indicates some of the numbers. It's quite impressive that for the four product areas that are shown here in the center, from primary material to components, we delivered to more than 1,000 customers, more than 5,000 different products and more than 200 alloys.
This is done by roughly 2,000 employees coming from 30 different nations. This means that all our products, because of the high specialty level, can be shipped from Europe, from Ranshofen to anywhere in the world where specialties are required. Finally, page number 13. These actions are also visible to the public, and we are very proud that we received several very positive ratings or prizes last year that are all listed on page 13. I do not want to go into detail here, but it's certainly worth mentioning that we reached the platinum metal level of EcoVadis rating, so we are among the top 1% of the industry. Also the sustainability ratings of Phoenix are very positive. With this, I hand over to my colleague, Victor, and he will talk about market and shipments.
Thank you very much, Helmut. I'm going now to page 15. We'll try and tend to give you a little bit of background of what happened from the whole demand from aluminum based on the commodity research unit. The fundamentals are there remain strong. For the primary aluminum, we have stable level of production globally with all the pressure we had in energy melters this year. The production remains stable. We have an outlook that says we intend for the next five years to have a growth of 2%, which is a very important message to all of us users of aluminum in the flat roll product. When we go to page 16, we see that this demand is very well translated into semi-finished products. We had a 31 million tons production level in 2022, especially pushed by transport and packaging.
The expectation is that the robust usage of aluminum in flat rolls grows an additional six million and three million in 2027. It is consistently expected that this growth will be pushed by the intensity of aluminum in transportation, in key sectors for automotive and aviation. We go to page 17, we have a little bit of a breakdown of the growth also described by CRU, and we see that the expectations for the next five years is very strong in transportation applications as well as in packaging and mechanical engineering. The context is very positive. We had a very good year, 2022 in general, in all these aspects. When we go to page 18 for the shipments of AMAG, we see what happened in each business unit, in each business that we have.
In our OS melter in Canada, we, stability is the name of the game. We shipped 1,000 tons more in 2022 versus 2021, 125,000 tons in general. In our foundry alloys and casting business, we had a robust year. We went up to 92,000 tons, which proved the value of our portfolio of products in foundry alloys as well, especially given the uncertainty and volatility in our automotive conditions. When it comes to rolling, as Gerald and Helmut have already mentioned, the very strong relevance of having optimized and a very diverse mix of products and segments. We shipped in comparison to 2021, 4,400 tons less, but we shipped with a higher level of specialties.
When we look into slide 19, you see the variations were very much strong into the high-strength alloys, aircraft business, automotive clad ratings, which really offset the drop in the second half of the year. We had a very strong part of 2022 that was in the industrial application segment. As you can see on the graph, sheets and plates and drag plates were about 20,000 tons below, but it was compensated by the OEM business on the right, which proved that the specialty business and the diverse portfolio protected our business model. All the impact of this shipments strategy in the metal, in the cast foundries, and also in the rolling will be now presented in the following numbers. I shift now to Gerald Mayer who will give continuity to the presentation.
Thank you, Victor. I'm now on slide 21. This is the aluminum price trend, and what we can see is somehow some sort of a rollercoaster. We saw end of 2020 a level of roughly $2,000 per ton. Step by step it was going up to a new record high of the LME, a new peak of roughly $4,000 per ton. Step by step, going down again to the year-end level of last year, similar right now, we are at $2,350, roughly, per ton.
If we compare the average prices for aluminum last year compared to the prior year, 2021, it was $275 up, and in the Q4 these are lower by roughly $400 compared to the Q4 , 2021. This all, of course, influences on the one side our EBITDA, our results in metal division, but also our needs of working capital. This has a high impact, this up and down of aluminum price. If we turn the page to slide 22, alumina price, alumina, as you know, is a very important or the most important raw material for the production of primary metal for our business in Alouette and our smelting operation, primary division.
Also here we saw, let's say, significant up and downs, rollercoaster type of developments in the last two years. At the, let's say, at the second half or the last three quarters of last year, of the year 2022, it was more or less stable, and the levels were always, I would say, affordable levels or attractive levels for us in alumina. Let's go to slide 23. This is now the bridge and the development of revenue. We saw a roughly 40% growth compared to 2021. Interestingly, the bridge at the bottom of this slide shows that of course, aluminum price has an impact of roughly EUR 120 million, but prices, cost inflation, and so on, in general, premiums have an impact of EUR 270 million.
This is the biggest impact here, which we sort of see in the bridge. In others, the EUR 60 million, roughly EUR 50 million refers to, let's say a stronger US dollar compared to the euro. This also had a significant impact, and this means then EUR 1.7 billion turnover, a new record level after a record level of EUR 1.2 billion in the year 2022. Let's go to pro-profitability, slide 24. Some words to EBITDA. For us, it was the first time that we are above the level of EUR 200 million. EUR 186 million in the year 2021 was a record level, up to 2021. Again, we beat the prior year level. Again, the bridge, if you, we discuss a little bit this development there.
Aluminum price of course, has an impact. We see impacts in general in prices and premiums, which were necessary to cover cost increases, which is in raw material, energy, and also others, where structural costs, for example, and valuation effects are included. Big developments compared to the prior year, in particular driven by cost inflation and so on, which also led to higher a necessity, higher prices for us to sell our products. Having a look at 25, a change of EBITDA by division. You see minor changes in metal division, but there it's very important that we have a look at the starting points, 2021.
For metal, it was as far as the year history in 2021, and again, we improved and managed to improve this very high level again to the level we saw in 2021, means +EUR 5 million compared to the prior year. Casting also a new record level, high shipment volumes, a very stable production led to a new record there, +EUR 2.6 million. The baseline was already a good one, and now it's really a good one in 2022. In rolling, it was a little bit more difficult in 2021. There, the baseline was the second COVID year. It was difficult in 2021. We were still suffering from increasing energy costs. We already were suffering from increasing energy costs, but, you know, locked in prices, sales prices from our side.
All in all, the EUR 56 million growth was also the result of a very stable production, a good operational development, a strict policy or strategy for pricing and so on. Very satisfying there, and we are definitely there where we should be. Yeah, this is the change by division. A quick look to Q4 development 2022, because what we see here is a lower level compared to the year 2021. And as I also showed before, that in 2021, we saw a very high level, for example, of aluminum price. If you look at the bridge, we saw an impact there of EUR 6 million minus.
Of course, prices and premiums, these levels were up also in Q4 2022, so it has a positive impact of EUR 21 million. Raw materials, of course, were more expensive. Here you see the translation. Volume mix is down, and this is the main driver why we are below the level of the year 2021. We saw this weakening impact of the market, in particular in the second half, and this resulted in lower volumes, in particular the rolling division. Therefore we are down compared to the prior year. Net income, slide 27. We are up first time triple digit result at roughly EUR 110 million. Of course, it is a result of a very high operating result. Of course, at then depreciation was a little bit higher.
We saw rising interest rates, of course an influence there, an impact there of minus EUR 2 million. If you pay, earn more, you have to pay more taxes, I would say. A straightforward bridge for net income. In terms of cash flow, of course, the baseline is a record result. On the other side, I also explained that a very special year on the one side and increasing cost levels means also higher working capital needs on the one side. On the other side, we also have safety stocks there because of the high uncertainty, we had a negative impact from working capital. All in all, the operating cash flow is up roughly at 90%.
Cash flow from investing activity is more or less stable, a little bit below our depreciation, which was at EUR 84 million or so. Slide 29. Key financials, equity and gearing, very solid, EUR 710 million of equity, 55% of gearing, I would say high stability there. With that, going to slide 30, I think I can skip this. This is just to have the full picture including EBIT and the margin numbers. I would like to continue with slide 31, where we have the first time also present ESG key figures there. You see interestingly, I think this is what we always say that we stand out is the scrap utilization rate or input rate. We had 77% roughly after 78% the prior year.
The impact there is always product mix, availability of scrap and so on. Therefore, we have all these slide changes there, but we are continuously between 75% and 80% there. Also the specific energy consumption, CO2 emissions is what we can read there. I really would like to refer here to our, you know, ESG report, which is part of our financials and it's published now. Metal division, slide 32. I would like to start with a quick view to the three divisions. We saw a high level of shipments, 125,900 tons, very high. We stand out there compared to the prior years. Of course, we saw a combination of high, of very positive and operational development, good production levels.
We could utilize, you know, the capabilities of the plant on the one side. On the other side, of course, we had tailwinds from the market, very positive environment there. This is the combination of the high average aluminum price and combined, as I explained before, with relatively low alumina prices. This is what we successfully leveraged there in metal division. A second year in a row, a new record level. Of course, what is also very important to mention here with metal division is the last bullet point here that we have a risk sharing electricity contract in Canada, and we are fully freed of no link to Russia, Russian developments there, and European developments of energy prices. This is definitely very, very positive.
Casting division, as mentioned before, it is a highly positive result for casting, a record level of EUR 13.5 million of EBITA. On the one side, again, stable production, high productivity. This was the enabler for high shipment volumes there. We outperformed, you know, the significant outperformance, also in line with even outperformance compared to passenger car sales in Europe. The cost inflation, of course, had to be covered by higher sales prices and adjustments here, which, yes, was a successful year for casting overall.
Rolling division, you see where we come from, the two COVID years, 52 on the right side, of the EUR 53 million roughly in 2022, EUR 80 million roughly in 2021. Up to now, the best years were roughly EUR 110 million in the past. Now we have EUR 136 million. You see here that on the one side, we had to catch up from the second COVID year. On the other side, it was very successful, and we took advantage on the one side of the market. On the other side, we definitely had a very strong and stable production, high productivity there. This all in all resulted in a positive development for rolling division. As I mentioned before, we are there where we should be.
Two slides on 35 and some words on 35 and 36 regarding our energy consumption. We are very often asked, and therefore we summarize it once again, all in all, 2.5 gigawatt hours a year. This is our energy requirement, including Alouette in Canada and the Austrian operation. In Austria, out of these 2.5 gigawatt hours, we consume 0.8 and here 0.5 with further natural gas. This is our situation we have. And if you flip to slide 36, what you can see there is that we are, for 2023, we have nice hedges in place, roughly 80% of our natural gas consumption by hedge, also roughly a little bit less than 60% of our electricity needs are hedged in terms of pricing.
What you also see there is that it is the impact on the one side of hedges, hedging. On the other side, it is the bottom right chart, but also that energy costs are significant up for our Austrian operation because this simply or solely refers to Austria here. So two times after 2020, the cost doubled in 2021 and a little bit less than doubled in 2022 again. This is and we saw a good impact from our hedges that we have in place, and the good news is that we also have significant hedges in place for 2023. Yeah, with that said, in that slide 38, our proposed dividend of EUR 1 or 50 cent, I mentioned it in the very beginning at the highlights.
We will propose that to the general meeting on April 13th, and the payout date will be April 20th. Outlook for 2023, as I mentioned also in the beginning of this presentation, still, we have a high volatility, high uncertainty. It's for us a little bit too early to give you a precise guidance, I would say. We summarized the, I would say our, let's say, gut feeling and all the data we have right now, is on the one side, the global forecast give us 2.9% for Eurozone, 0.7%. Thank God we are away now from a recession in terms of forecasting.
We in general see a positive demand trend. Victor showed that and discussed it a little bit from CRU regarding the general demand for primary aluminum and rolling end growth products, growth aluminum. This all should impact, let's say, for the next months and years, our results positive and the demand and the operations for all our divisions. The stability of new order intake from aircraft, from automotive, from packaging industries is given, so it was strong in Q4. It's continued strong in the beginning of this year. On the other side, we have other operations, in particular, let's say, the industrial application business, which is definitely weaker compared to last year, and it was very strong last year. We have high cost inflation. I think this is impacting definitely our earnings.
Energy price levels are going up and down, but we are hedged to a significant extent. This is where we have a good visibility at least for our situation and for the year 2023. What is very important is energy supply, and it's key for us that in particular, natural gas and electricity is flowing. What we did last year is we secured a two month storage roughly for our Austrian operation. All in all, what we definitely see is that the growth of the economy in general is a little bit weaker now, and most weaker in the second half, and for sure this will impact development of AMAG on the one side.
On the other side, I think, yeah, I'm cautiously optimistic for what's happening this year. With that said, we are now happy to answer your questions if there are any. Thanks for your participation in our earnings call. Now the line is open for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one. If you change your mind and wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. We have the first question from Rochus Brauneiser from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your question please.
Yes. Lisa, morning all. A few questions from my side. Could you maybe talk a little bit about order development in the business? I think you, Semi, you touched base on that. Can you talk about the absolute level of the order intake in rolling in Q4? I think in previous quarters you were showing the charts how that has developed. Could you also comment a little bit where you see the destocking process in the aluminum markets, particularly in Europe? How far are we towards the completion of that drawdown? That would be my first question.
Regarding destocking, what we can share here with you is that we have now in the first, let's say, six weeks of this year, we saw again somehow higher demand, definitely higher demand from industrial applications. This is the part we were looking and for destocking at the end of last year. We saw new, let's say, at least new signs and new order intakes there, new demand, which is starting again at lower price levels on the one side, short term on the one side, but the signals are, they're definitely positive compared what we saw end of last year. This is positive. Regarding the order intakes for Q4, I
What I can share with you is normally we have the pattern of having stronger order intake for the ODM business, which happened in Q4, and it's consistent now coming in the beginning of this year. What happened is we had a very good first half of 2022, and what, as Gerhard just mentioned, the second half of 2022 for the industrial applications was s trongly impacted. We're starting with the bottom line and increasing the orders. We're expecting this this year, but for the time being, it's very volatile. We're coming from a lower base, end of Q4, beginning of Q1 of 2023. Both segments, industries have different dynamics in terms of ordering.
The ballpark, has this been under EUR 50,000 in Q4? Put it into a number. The order book, sorry, has that been under EUR 50 now?
No, the order book is above 50.
Above 50.
Yeah.
On the energy, I think you talked at length about your hedging structure. What I'd like to understand what you're expecting now in terms of costs that are up in 2023 versus 2022 after, you know, the doubling over the two previous years? Obviously, due to your hedging levels, you should have always now a pretty good visibility on how much higher energy prices will be.
Of course, there's still a certain % open, yeah. What we expect right now is slightly higher, perhaps, energy prices for our site in Austria.
To get that right, you're largely hedged now. To what extent are you currently benefiting?
We are hedged right now at roughly 80% for natural gas, at roughly a little bit less than 60% for electricity, means 40% electricity is open and 20%, of course, natural gas is open. The hedging levels and prices for compared to last year a little bit higher because we did it throughout, you know, through a longer period of time. It's a little bit higher, in particular for gas, we are definitely still in the money, and for electricity, we're also not far away from the market.
Okay. That means that the hedging level you are having or the hedge levels you have right now are above what the stock market is indicating in terms of electricity and gas.
We are roughly there. We are right now, we are roughly in terms of electricity, it depends on the year you're looking at, but we are roughly there what the market is saying as of today. We are below the levels, we're talking about natural gas.
Okay. Okay. Got it. On the dividend, I think, maybe you can share the thoughts on what you're having on the dividend. I think, the flat dividend is not a huge surprise, but what you could argue is the payout ratio is relatively small compared to previous years. It's not that much reflecting the strengths of the year in terms of pricing and margins. What shall we take from there? Is this a reflection of the weaker results you're expecting going forward? Is this kind of a one-year thing, so it's just a 23 story? Are you seeing any particular structural topics arising for you in particular in Europe coming from labor availability, structurally high energy prices, and so on?
Because I think this is easy to answer. You know, in the past, we always said our dividend policy is roughly 50% of our net income. But we would like to go to minimum 1/10 is affordable. If you look at that, roughly 50% of net income perfectly translates into EUR 1.50. This is number one. Number two is we also have reflected that free cash flow is just EUR 11 million because we had to invest in the exit stocks. We invested in natural gas and so on, and also there cash is king in our opinion. We try to balance out what we said up to now in terms of dividend policy and of course, what cash flow pre-presented us or gave us.
This is was the reason. No, absolutely no impact on what we think what could be this year, because we also think this year will be perhaps more normalized, but definitely not a bad year.
Okay. On the structural view, I think what I'm thinking about labor shortage and the pricing structure high end Europe compared to the rest of the world. How do you think structurally for your recycling business in Europe? When I look at one company in the copper space which is aggressively investing into recycling capacity outside of Europe, strategically, what is your thinking about broadening downstream business beyond Europe? Is this any interest or topic for you?
You know, strategy is always in general a topic and we focus what we said in the past. I think it's very consistent. We have a very consistent strategy in general. Recycling, just recycling, you also need some, you know, what you do then with this recycling material. What we have in Austria is we have our recycling facilities, and we have a rolling mill. We use perfectly our materials we produce in recycling for our rolling mill. The benefit is this combination. I would say this is very important to understand. Of course, we always look also to other side, to the other side of this ocean and so on.
Up to now, we did not find a proper, let's say, a proper, for us, location to do something there and the perfect fit. In general, you were also asking about personnel availability. I think it's very similar going to the States or staying here in Europe. If you talk about Europe and these people and other, let's say customers, is it in Europe? Is it here? It's everywhere difficult right now to find people. With the weakening economy, I think it could be a little bit better than it was last year, and we have a lot of initiatives to improve the situation there. Yeah, this is, I would say, I hope this answers your questions.
Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Thank you very much. That's it from us guys.
Thank you. The next question comes from Marko Remec from RBI. Your question, please.
Good morning, Darrell. Good morning, gentlemen. A couple of points has been touched already, I would like to come back to the energy topic just to clarify. You say your energy costs in 2023 in absolute terms will be just slightly higher than in 2022.
It highly depends on what we see then at the market levels. Let's assume that it's roughly that is because the hedges are more expensive than they were in 2022. Based on that, this part will be higher and the rest has been driven by the market. If it's further going down, it is also could be a little bit cheaper, this is, you know, based on our plans, I think that's the principle there.
Sure. Sure. Okay. I mean, what's your take on the price cost spread development in the downstream business? How do you... Do you think there can be a positive price cost spread into 2023?
I'm convinced that it will be negative compared to the year 2022, because this is exactly what we see right now from industrial application. It was very strong with the order intakes we had and the production and the sales, the shipments we had there. What I assume is that it could be still strong in the first month this year, but it will go down for sure and normalize. This is for me clear now. This is also the main reason why we say it will not be a copy of the year 2022, 2023. This is what we cannot assume. Markets are weakening in general. The economic outlook is weakening. This immediately translates in particular in short term, we call it distribution business, and distribution means industrial application business. For us, it's translated into that there. We assume internally that this will weaken.
This means that the higher energy costs will not be passed on to the customer.
The higher energy costs, we of course will do our utmost to pass it on, but perhaps not to the extent we managed to do it last year.
Yeah. Yeah. Can I come to the automotive sector? I mean, what's your perception of the demand pattern? I mean, we've all been aware that this has been like, yeah, rather volatile. Do you see a more, say, consistent call-up pattern and what's your take on the volume development?
Victor, please answer.
Hey, Marko. Thanks for the question. The point is we try to establish a very balanced portfolio of customers and applications in automotive, right? If you look from the combustion part engines to the electric cars, we have a good positioning in applications where intensity of aluminum is high. Call ups as of today have demonstrated that we'll persist in going this direction. Any changes in rhythm, in consumption, pricing, and the sale of cars at the end of the chain impacts us immediately. We need very cautious at the moment managing our capacity, our capabilities, and managing the order intake as they come. When we look at the braking side of the equation, the same pattern applies. The one-stop shop that Helmut mentioned and explained to you gives the outlook the capability of trying to buffer.
Whenever we have an element of resistance in one application, the other one pushes and kicks in. For us, the cautious method is any kind of volatility in the call ups, impacts one side of the equation, and we try to counter react to the other. I hope I was able to explain to you how things are looking today. That's where the specialty business that we have and how we're balancing out the portfolio has an important element in our business model.
Yeah. Good. Point taken. Just as we speak, will you say, also call ups are more consistent, a big volatility decline compared what we've seen, across, say, the second half of the year?
Marko, the semiconductor issues is going away. This is what we see a little bit. Therefore, you know, the order backlogs in the, at our customer side is definitely still high and positive, and we see now consistent orders from this side. Let's wait how it develops then for the second half. For us, we have good visibility until, I would say, end of May.
Yeah. Exactly. All right. Thank you. final question, please, on your investment needs on CapEx. I think at least compared to my expectations, 2022 CapEx was actually a bit lower than initially assumed. I guess there was a spillover into 2023, and if you could provide us with a kind of indication for CapEx in the current year.
Yeah, you're definitely right. Yeah. The expectation is around EUR 100, perhaps a little bit more for this year.
All right. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one. Our next question is from Christian Obst from Baader Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. I'll start with the first question with rising structural costs. You mentioned that in your presentation. Can you give us some kind of a runway what we expect going forward? Then I follow with the next question. Thank you.
I think, you know, structurally, costs are driven by inflation there. What we have in Austria is 7.6% in average increase for our people. I think this is a main driver for the personnel expenses. I think it will be a little bit lower as inflation is also lower for the Canadian operation. Perhaps somehow below 7% should be a runway for the main driver there, which is inflation. Of course, you overhead and other things, like maintenance and so on, which probably have, which could be a little bit higher. Inflation, you know, it's in Austria 11% right now.
Thank you. When it comes directly to personnel cost, you are adding additional personnel, and then you have a 10% runway on the personnel. Is that the right assumption? What is the increase of the number of employees you are trying to add in 2022 versus 2023?
First of all, this seven point something % or the 7% roughly, I think a decent and a good assumption there. We are trying to find people according now to the market available because demand is developing. This year really is developing this year. Based on that, we try to find new people, and if necessary, we take 50 or 100. It's too early. This is also one of the reasons why it's for us difficult to give you a precise outlook right now and a guidance. Give us some months there. It's fair to assume that we will add at least some people. It will not be 200. Don't worry.
Okay, thank you. When you stated that you are investing into some kind of three month of gas security, can you give us a number what have you invested for that kind of security for gas? For the question.
What we invested for cybersecurity?
No, for gas. The two months of gas.
You mean for the storage?
Yeah.
For the storage of natural gas, it was roughly a little bit less than EUR 10 million.
Okay. The last question is concerning. You said that you are of course constantly optimizing the mix. When I look at the impact of the mix, the sales and others, the sales was EUR 64 million and bottom up in EBITDA only EUR 6 million. The main income, or the main positive development comes from price and premiums, of course. Why haven't we seen a bigger impact from a mix change from, in 2022? If you are, or can we expect something more, from that price going into 2023?
I think, you know, if you say optimization of mix, it also has to do what market allows you to do. With our facilities, we have high flexibility, and I think this is the name of the game there. If demand from aerospace, for example, is going down like it did in 2021 and then 2022, for us, we had the chance to sell products into industrial applications. This was super successful in the first half of last year with strong price increases there. I would say also, you name it, this is positive mix or price. In the second half and what we see right now is stronger demand from aerospace, from automotive and so on.
It again be optimized for us the mix because we have the facilities, we have the qualifications, we are allowed to supply to different customers. This is, I would say, the highly positive thing there to understand. Perhaps this is also what the US struggling a little bit. All in all, you are right. It was last year was a year where we really managed to bring prices up, which was necessary to cover higher costs. We had, in particular from industrial application side, also taken from the markets, which we utilized and used.
Mm-hmm. So going forward into 2023, in the end, there is the uncertainty still in the from automotive side, of course, and we will talk about that. But on the other hand, we see in some cases, tremendous increase of order intake for the aircraft industry. I think this should also lead for you that you can deliver more into that kind of a mix in 2023, by a significant amount, I would say. Which might change the mix towards a more profitable structure. Is that right?
Yes, you're right. I mean, when you go into the more specialty side of our business, as you said, aerospace, automotive, brazing, sport products, the high-strength alloys that we have there, the quantities and volumes are smaller, but the profitability is higher. It compensates that we had the first half of last year, the industrial applications going strongly with price increases and higher volume. We had a lower level of volume in the second half, and we're starting the year with a big fight in terms of how this volume is gonna be placed in the market versus the pressure in prices. In the end, you're right. Moving to the specialty side of the business gives us the more room to increase in profitability.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Thank you very much.
There are no further questions at this time, and I hand back to Christoph Gabriel for closing.
Thank you very much for joining this conference call, and as always, I'm happy to be there for you if there are any questions. Just give me a call or write me an email. Thank you very much and have a good day. Goodbye.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded. You may disconnect your telephones. Thank you very much for joining. Have a pleasant day. Goodbye.