Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the FACC AG. Today, we delve into the half-year financial figures of 2024. I am delighted to welcome the CEO, Robert Machtlinger, CFO, Florian Heindl, as well as Michael Steirer from Investor Relations, who will start with the presentation shortly. After the presentation, we will move on to a Q&A session, in which you will be allowed to place your question directly to the management. We're looking forward to the results, and having said this, Mr. Steirer, the stage is yours.
Thank you, Judith, for the introduction, and good morning to everyone. Again, welcome to FACC's earnings call in regard to the H1 of the financial year 2024. As always, we have already provided detailed financial information in our press release issued earlier today. Shouldn't it be possible to address all questions in today's call due to time constraints, we are very happy to schedule additional one-on-one meetings afterwards. In this case, please let us know within the IR department, Tanya or even myself, and we will coordinate appropriate appointments. And now, I will turn over the call to Robert Machtlinger, our CEO. Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A warm, a warm welcome also from my side to the presentation of the FACC H1 year result of 2024. I very much appreciate your participation. As always, during the next hour, our CFO, Florian Heindl, and I will share relevant business information concerning the general global market development, FACC business highlights, and the results out of the business development. We also provide information on our full year guidance and activities we put in place to deal with market environments. Besides the presentation, as we shared today, we have addressed further details in our half year report.
Before entering to this presentation, I would like to make some references to the aerospace industry that are specific and that are also influencing our business on a daily basis. In a nutshell, and this is the very positive news, the aerospace industry is growing in all markets in terms of revenue passenger kilometers, but also, the aerospace industry is growing in terms of production outputs, demand signal, and new development. All this is very positive. However, and in addition to the general favorable market developments, the entire aviation industry is preoccupied with a couple of issues. And again, and as Michael stated, in our report, we have made certain references to those, to those ongoings.
I would like to address three of them that are keeping the industry busy, from airlines to our OEMs to the tier ones, down to the tier fives. First of all, it's the ramp up of the production rates. Being very favorable, all our customers are ramping up production rates mainly in the smaller airplane platforms, like the A320 family. New players like COMAC 919 is joining with ramp ups, but also business jets are doing extremely well. However, global supply chains are still not at the stability level as we have seen it before 2020. The good thing is, it's not a big number of small suppliers that are impacting production rate increases.
It's more a handful of larger systems like engines, like a couple of complex aerostructures, components like landing gears, and the one or the other airline customer-defined interior component that is causing bottlenecks in the supply. This has resulted in the one or the other ramp up reassessment, and we are very close to the business anyhow. The one or the other ramp up curve was readjusted to a more moderate ramp up. We know from our customer discussions there is lots of activities ongoing to further stabilize the industry. Still, the good news is, even in this environment, outputs are increasing, and we will have a couple of slides prepared for yourself.
Secondly, it's the adjustment of the production rates, the results from item one above. This is, of course, resulting in a short-term demand adjustment. We are dealing with, I can just announce here, we are, in those cases, in very good collaboration with our direct customers. We have been able, also in the H1 year, to agree on certain transition clients that adjustments are not showing a one-to-one impact to FACC, so our customers are willing to take pre-deliveries in order to keep FACC more stable. However, not everything can be compensated by the market.
So, cash flow, inventory levels is a discussion globally, with all of our, our customers, with, the, competition as well, but also with FACC. And, Florian will share a couple of, of details with yourselves... how we deal with it. And then, of course, and this is more specific for Central Europe, it's the, inflation cost and how we, work against it. And here, especially, Europe has, challenges in front of it. Everyone, also FACC, is having a strong focus, on efficiency increases, a situation, that, we have faced over the last, two years especially, but where solid plans are in place.
So in saying that, we are, I think, very proactive with our customers, with our supplier partners, and internally to deal with the environment. And basically, in a nutshell, on the next slide, I think we can go into detail, information we would like to share with you. Well, next slide, please. On the market development, overall, and this is the good thing, as mentioned before, it's raising passenger numbers in all markets. We see a stable increase in production rates for all major aviation programs. Still a very high demand and a future growing demand, in short, in mid-haul aircraft and business jets.
This is a confirmation of the last couple of quarters we see continuing, but also we see a rising demand for wide-body aircraft, namely the A350, but also the Boeing 787. So even in Paris, most of or a big number of the sales announcements is linked to wide-body aircraft. Again, a market that is significantly important for FACC because of our engagements with Airbus and Boeing, with the A350 and 787. COMAC 919, as you know, we have good volume on that airplane. We do the entire interior, but also aerostructures is ramping up. We see a significant demand increase in 2024, 2025, even going into 2028.
So from last year, where we have delivered 12 airplane jets to COMAC, we are targeting a number of 30 airplane jets, a little bit more this year, which with another significant increase in 2025 and the years on. So the COMAC 919 is an extra platform that is important for FACC, that will support our growth plans in the global industry. And last but not least, a positive development in the urban air mobility market. As you know, we have couple of contracts assigned lots of development work, which is continuing as planned, but also we see zero production to be started and started.
It's ongoing, with the momentum we see, growing, for the next periods to come. We are benefiting from this strong, from the strong development, even over proportionally, in regards to the rest of the aviation industry. We have been growing by 23%, in the H1 of 2024, which is a continuation of the strong growth path we have seen already last year. Also, the order backlog is good, and we also have been able to manage to increase the profitability of the company. Next page, please. So in terms of airplane delivery rates, a quick look into the H1 year. Well, the A320 was down, actually.
The reason for that is still the ongoing activities at Boeing to sort out the issues. Boeing, in the H1 year of 2023, delivered more airplanes than in the H1 year of 2024, which is making the total picture turning southwards. On the other hand, Airbus is doing still well, even with the last adjustments they have announced in the Q1 of 2024, with even giving a reguidance on the 2024 outlook. This did not come completely unexpected for the industry, and it has no impact overall for the FACC guidance, which we will talk later during the call.
In terms of order intake, as we all know, last year was a record year in airplane orders, especially Boeing was significant. This did not continue during 2024. Also not unexpected because the order backlog of firmly ordered airplanes is significant. Demand is higher than supply, and airlines are not ordering big quantity at the time being. Again, not unexpected because the industry needs to deliver on the order backlog. Next page, please. We have added this time the business jet development as well, because business jet is around about 20% of the FACC revenue, so this is not a niche market for FACC, this is important. And our main customers, Bombardier and Embraer, they have announced their results in the last two weeks. Looks very positive.
Again, in business jets, the last quarter of a year always is the strongest quarter. What we see from our direct discussions with all of our clients, they are ramping up some of their issues, which was an ongoing concern last year, is pretty much on a good way to dissolve. The engine was an issue. The supply of engines in the business jet environment is more and more stabilizing. In the business jet environment, we see an increase of demand around about 20%. For FACC, this is not only driven by quantity, but also by more complex components where we are producing, having a higher value compared to the previous configurations.
Also, the business jet development is good, is stable, with indication of a very stable and growing demand for this year, and for the periods going forward. Next page, please. In terms of order backlog, it's around about 16,700 airplanes are firmly ordered. This is a little bit a new number because we have added turboprops, and COMAC to our chart. If you remember correctly, we always showed this 13-14 thousand airplanes on order backlog, which only counted for Airbus and Boeing. We have extended our information here to give you the full insight of the industry.
So overall, it's getting very obvious, Airbus with 51% of the market is leading the chart, followed by Boeing with 35%. But, and this is important, COMAC is picking up with around about 9% of the backlog, which we also see, I think, in terms of delivery by the end of the decade, COMAC will have a market share in terms of airplanes produced and delivered to airlines in a range of 10%. Today, we more talk about 3%-5%. So overall, a good order backlog.
Again, 80% of the demand is short and mid-haul airplanes, a market segment where FACC is developing a significant portion of the revenues. So, positive picture once going forward, the industry needs to deliver airplane, have, airlines have a high demand of, new, new airplanes they have ordered. Next page, please. Again, the next page. In terms of the H1 year, again, very stable, firm order backlog. It's slightly, have increased, but we did not update our numbers because it's, a few hundred million EUR up and down, which is, the market volatility. Revenue growth with, more than 20% to EUR 438.3 million. So very strong, first two quarters.
As you all know, and I would like to go a little bit into the outlook. The Q3 always is a little bit weaker one because of facility shutdowns and less demand from our customers. Seasonality, as we always had, it will happen also this year. But again, for the rest of the year, a very stable outlook with a growing perspective. And again, in the guidance slide later on, we will enter that point. EUR 22.5 billion of operating EBIT, which was more than 50% increase to last year's half year result. So the activities we have started are showing results. We are not stopping here.
We have guidance for the next couple of years, where we would like to be close to double-digit EBIT numbers. That's ongoing, that's a constant activity plan we are following. But so far, the EBIT number for the H1 year did meet our expectations. We are ramping up our employees in Austria and outside of Austria to deal with certification, qualification issues, and then later on with further ramp ups. And the cash flow was positive with EUR 7.4 million. And Florian will talk a little bit more about it. Still, inventory levels are an issue for the industry, also for FACC, with actions we are planning as we speak. Next page, please.
In terms of our platforms, very stable. The A320 family is still the strongest platform. Overall, comparing 2024 with 2023, not too much of a change. A few percentage here and there as an update. However, with the 23% growth, we see that all markets are growing. In some areas, we can overcompensate short-term announcements, like the Airbus reduction to 770 airplanes. We can backfill with other platforms that are doing a little bit better than expected at the start of the year. So overall, we are stable. We are not seeing too much change in this year.
The Boeing volume will increase once Boeing will start ramping up again. That contract we have on our books. Well, as stated before, this is an ongoing issue since the last couple of years, giving us some future tailwind that we're expecting to come starting in 2025 and beyond. Next page, please. In terms of highlights, as you know, we have invested heavily into plant number six, Croatia, which is giving us very favorable cost structure compared to Upper Austria. So we have tripled the size of the facility. This is a picture from July. We are currently entering the new facility space.
We also have developed an office space helping us to employ people in central functions again for efficiency reasons. In the next couple of quarters, we gradually will ramp up the workforce to around about 1 million production hours. So this facility will support interior manufacturing, and it's a very important milestone in the long-term profitability plans of FACC. So all completed as planned in time, in budget, and right now we are starting to ramp up the new capacity. Next page. COMAC 919 project transfer. As you all know, COMAC 919, we have EUR 1 million roundabout volume per airplane developed in Austria.
Produced in Austria, we have supported production lines out of Austria for the first couple of airplanes, starting in the Q1 of 2024. We have launched the production move from Austria to our sister company in China, a company we have developed and set up. This company already is producing A321 components for us. We have qualified this production site to the standards of 919. All the aerostructures components are already moved up to China. First packages of the interior workshop is moved as well, and by the end of 2024, production of the 919 components will be local in China, close to our customer, COMAC.
Ramp up will be executed out of that that facility strongly supported by FACC. How are we benefiting? Of course, local for local manufacturing, procurement in China for China, and as you can imagine, logistic costs from Austria to China, especially interiors, are quite significantly, which are right now reduced by 90% in terms of cost. So overall, this transfer was essential for us, executed as planned, and right now we are ramping up production to prepare for the future. Next page, please. Well, in saying that, I would like to hand over for more details on the financials to Florian.
Thank you, Robert. A warm welcome also from my side. I will now guide you through a couple of slides concerning our financials. Compared to the H1 of 2023, FACC AG was able to increase sales by 24% to EUR 438.4 million. Actually, the Q1 of 2024 was historically the strongest in FACC's history in terms of sales. This illustrates what Robert has already said, the support from the market is definitely there. In terms of operating results, we were able to build on the positive Q1. This is now the third positive quarter in a row, although, and Robert also mentioned it before, we cannot rest on these results. I will come back to this in my later comments. Next slide, please.
Talking about our revenue growth in our divisions, the revenue growth is very much aligned over divisions and reflects our stable and broad product portfolio. Cabin Interiors remains our biggest revenue contributor. Also, not much of a surprise here. Next page, please. In terms of free cash flow, we saw an improvement. Robert also stated that before, compared to H1 year, 2023, which delivered a slightly positive free cash flow in terms of EUR 7.4 million. A positive free cash flow is nice, but the low number, of course, cannot be satisfactory for FACC management. This will be one of the core areas where we will have our focus on, and I will give you some more details in a later slide. Next page, please. In terms of investments, also nothing surprising on these slides.
All our investments are closely monitored, controlled, and are progressing as planned, as planned. In terms of Croatia, as Robert already said, we are completing the extension of the brand right now, which means there will be a cash flow impact in the next couple of quarters as we are paying down the open bills. On the right, you have the big focus item of myself and the whole management board. High inventory is a huge burden on the industry, but also on FACC in terms of our operating cash flow numbers. Supply chains are still somewhat troubled, yes, but we have to find solutions to free up a double-digit number in terms of million EUR of blocked cash. Right now, 25% of the FACC balance sheet is inventory.
From my perspective and also from the perspective of the management board, this is way too high. Said so, we are right now in the process of kicking off a working capital improvement project, where we will have a dedicated team to drive those numbers sustainably down. Next page, please. In terms of leverage, you all know our key figures. We have to achieve 4.25 by end of June and end of December 2024. As you can see, we managed this KPI quite well, this time with 3.21 in terms of end of June. The 4.25 will turn into 3.75 for 2025, which is also a positive trigger from my perspective to work on our cash flow and a positive driver for all of the actions that we have planned. Next page, please.
I've been in office for a little over 100 days now, so the protection phase for myself is over. Of course, I already know FACC from my first time from 2016 to 2022. So what are my impressions, and where do we as a management team want to attack? As we have heard already from Robert, our core business is stable and growing strongly, and we need to work more intensely to improve our volumes, volume projects in this regard. I have already mentioned working capital in the context of inventory development. For me, this is the most important lever right now that FACC has to improve our cash flow quickly and sustainably.
Due to the massive cost increases in terms of inflation effects in Central Europe, and also Robert stated that before. However, we cannot avoid to tighten our belts at FACC. We will therefore put together a package to reduce our fixed costs and increase efficiency across the whole FACC group. So with that said, I want to hand back to Robert for the market outlook.
Thank you, Florian, for the presentation of the numbers. Well, I only can sum up in the outlook overall. Details have been presented in the last slide. Overall, we have guided yourself and the industry and our investors for a 10%-15% growth during 2024, compared to 2023. This 10%-15% growth rate is confirmed after the H1 of the year. Management focus, Florian, went into further details, profitability, and ramping up the industry and ramping up FACC is, of course, most important for FACC. Cash flow improvements are high on the agenda, and with Florian and the entire management team, we are launching programs as we speak.
This is ongoing and will be ongoing for around about 18 months to have sustainable changes including process changes how we manage material flow lead times in production and certain other things. Further improvement in profit margins you know our targets by the end of the decade 2028 round about we want to be close to a double digit group. This is on the agenda. This will be supported by our activities. This will be supported by our global manufacturing network. Increase efficiency in all areas to compensate inflation effects. This is needed. There is room for improvement.
We know how we can manage in a ramp up, where we have lots of new people, of course, it's a little bit more difficult. However, with the hiring plans we have set up, with a couple of pre-hirings, we are right now seeing a turning point in productivity as well. So this will support our profitability margins. Realization of investment programs, this is ongoing, a normal process and without surprises. And, of course, FACC will further expand its global manufacturing footprint. We entered into two very important points.
The one is Croatian, which is our best cost hub for European manufacturing, especially yep, this product, and of course, our offloads to China in terms of COMAC 919, which is bringing FACC closer to the COMAC working environment. But similar things are ongoing in Europe, but also in our hubs in the United States. In saying that, we are happy to answer your questions. If not all our questions can be answered, Mike already offered to have further talks later on. Thank you for your attention, and the floor is yours.
Thank you so much for your insightful presentation. We now move on to the Q&A session. To keep the conversation engaging, we kindly ask to ask questions via audio line. To register your question, click the Raise Your Hand button below. If you have joined via phone, please use the key combination star nine, followed by star six, and if you do not have the opportunity to speak freely today, you can also place your question in our chat box. We will wait a moment for some questions. We have one hand up. Mr. Lago Mascotto, you should be able to speak now.
… Yes, good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. Couple of questions. On your guidance, which is now unchanged, considering your figures are right now, as of H1, significantly above those you are guiding for, meaning more than, way more than 50% revenue growth. And, if I'm not mistaking, your EBIT is already above previous full year EBIT. First question would be: Are you planning to sort of narrow down the guidance, maybe Q3, which was basically the last chance for you to narrow it down? Or is there any—I mean, why—what are the reasons you are not narrowing down, or give more color on your guidance as of today?
On the implications of the guidance and having not adjusted the guidance, what are your expectations for Q3? What should we read into this? I would read into this that we would have to expect a yeah weaker Q3. I mean, obviously, it's always weaker compared to other quarters, but especially compared to other Q3s. Having those headwinds we are currently seeing in the industry, can you maybe share some comments on your expectations for the quarter that is currently running? Thank you.
Well, Miguel, thank you for your questions. I think on the full year guidance, well, last year we had a similar guidance, and the outcome in terms of top line was above the guidance. Well, we looked into certain numbers, and as always, I think the year starts strong, with a strong order demand from all of our customers. We have seen a couple of adjustments in especially the Q1. As Florian mentioned, especially the Q1 was the strongest revenue quarter in history of FACC.
I also made reference that we agreed with our customers that certain reductions they wanted to see immediately can be worked out in a transition plan, meaning that we have completed product, we have invoiced the product, and we have delivered the product. So this is right now with our customers' inventory. This is not applicable to all of our customers, but with a good number of customers. But that means, of course, that our customers will use this, let's say, FACC delivered product in the H2 of the year. So the agreement also is that in the H2 of the year some of the demands will be adjusted. So this is not unexpected, however, it's helping us significantly to manage inventory.
So the inventory we had, we have been able to sell to our customers. They are paying for it. Without that transition plan, I think, our inventory level even would be higher. So in considering those kinds of transition plans, the frontloading revenues we had in the H1 year, the output we have for the H2 of the year, and it's only natural that our customers need to burn down the inventory as well. We have a very clear picture for the H2 of the year, and the 10%-15% is a reasonable number. We will narrow it down for all of you with the Q3. There is still some volatility in the market.
We do not wanna guide every quarter and then change it. As we see it today, the 10%-15% of growth is a spread we can achieve. In terms of the Q3, again, and you mentioned it, Miguel, it's also seasonal. We have it as in years. Last year was in terms of EBIT a very, I would say, challenging Q3. We assume for this Q3 improvement, so it will not be as severe as we have seen it in the past because we did some activities already. July was still performing as planned.
August is the weakest month in the year because of many shutdowns with our customers. At the end, I think, Q3 will also not be a surprise. EBIT will be very low, if any, I would say, volume will be significantly less. So you can use the last Q3s from the last couple of years, and you will see the impact. At year-end, still, I think, we think we can, we have the right things already in the pipeline, with a gradual increase of our profitability also by the end. So more specifics, if you would allow an excuse, will be after the Q3.
Well, I guess that's, that's already, quite, quite substantial, so thank you very much.
All right.
Last year in H1, we had a significant effect coming from, I call it compensation agreements within the supply chain. Can you maybe quantify those effects for, for this H1, if any?
Well, I think this is an ongoing exercise at the time being. The entire industry needs to cope and deal with certain inflation effects, like material cost increases, the whole world has seen. We have in our contract certain regulations for compensation. On others, we've been able to work out agreements, some are long term, other ones are compensations for the time being, like energy. We have seen energy cost compensation, once energy was high, right now it's going down. So I think this is not a one answer would fulfill all of your questions. I think every contract is different, but adjustments are negotiated inside the contract.
If it was extraordinary, we've been able to get some relief of the pressure, which is helping us today, but also going forward.
Okay. But assuming that those effects have softened over the last 12 months, it's fair to assume that those effects were smaller compared to last year. Is that?
Indeed, because inflation is going down.
Yeah.
So the significant inflation numbers did hit us 2022, not us, but the entire industry, also 2023. There was some in 2024, and you said it correctly. So I think, still, I think, and I mentioned that when Europe has a couple of other challenges compared to the rest of the world, especially Central Europe, on personnel cost, this is not compensated by global customers. This is why we, as the management board, take extra efforts to reduce costs, direct costs, but also indirect costs.
Okay. Two more from my side. On your shift to production shift to China, are there any extraordinary costs or income resulting from this? Or do we see any more effects in the remainder of the year? And then, how much are the savings in logistics? You mentioned 90%. Can you maybe quantify those effects? One more then.
Well, today, talking on logistics is a challenge. Logistics was always very stable, then we had a big increase in logistics cost in 2022, because of logistics imbalance between China and the rest of the world. Containers, as we all know, it stabilized quite well in the H2 of 2023. With the container routing around Suez Canal, I think logistics cost went up again. Honestly saying, this was a moving target we had globally, and again, with being more local. So Europe, I think, is very local. We control it with our milk runs between the Austrian and Croatian facilities, between Hamburg, Toulouse, and the U.K. facilities of Airbus and Rolls-Royce.
China was a big effort in terms of shipping. This will be reduced, and I only can say 90% reduction in logistics cost is significant, and it's giving us more sustainable forecasting. Of course, if there is no cost, if it's higher or lower, it's not impacting us anymore. So logistics, in terms of interiors, is a non-significant, is in a significant number because our volumes is high. This is gone, and the big saving actually comes from China sourcing.
So, metal parts, extrusions, some injection molded parts we need for interior components, are resourced from European sources to China sources, with good cost reduction effect, and of course, producing locally in China with local people and not from Austria, is helping us as well. So overall, I think, the 919 cabin interior was a positive business for us. With China production site, I think, we're increasing our profitability after the ramp up quite substantially. So, and again, as you know, the 919 is a growing platform.
Volumes are increasing, and giving you the number of EUR 1 million of revenue per airplane and 70 airplanes, being part of our forecast for 2027 to be produced, we talk about a EUR 70 million plus revenue stream, where cost is essential.
Okay. Last one. We touched upon the working capital management. Is there any long-term targets in terms of sales maybe, or just inventory days? I mean, is there any targets you could share with us as of today?
I will take that question. As we said before, we are right now in the process of setting up a dedicated task force, I would say, with a project name, Working Capital Improvement. As you have seen on the slides before, the main focus will be inventory as the main driver of our blocked cash that we have right now. I said a little bit unspecific maybe, but I said a double-digit number in EUR millions. If you calculate it right now, and I said it before, it's 25% of our balance sheet right now blocked in inventories. And you can do the calculation if you compare it to the numbers of our peers, I would say.
As a first target, from my perspective, going into 2025, I would say a number around EUR 50 million is definitely one of our targets internally. And of course, there is a long way to achieve that, but as I said before, this is the main driver from my perspective, in optimizing our cash flow, and bringing it back to peer numbers, and on a more sustainable basis.
Sorry, sorry, a follow-up. Just to be clear, I mean, obviously, I'm assuming you are increasing your sales in 2025 as well, but you are still aiming for a reduction in inventory. Is that correct?
Yes.
Okay. Thank you very much. That's the first-
Thank you so much for your questions, Miguel. We'll follow with Christian Obst. You should be able to speak now.
Yes, good morning.
Yes.
I have a question concerning your sentence. You're mentioning additional group-wide cost improvement measures will be implemented to compensate for disproportionately higher personnel and non-wage labor costs in Austria. Two questions on that. H1, in the H2, of course, you guided for lower production and therefore lower utilization rate. How do you prepare for this downward trend in utilization rate when it comes to personnel? And for a longer term, you have ramped up your personnel, and you are still in some kind of a training mode. Are you now on some kind of a, yeah, on a top of a mountain, more or less, and you are reducing going forward? Or what kind of measures do you take to adjust personnel cost going into 25? These are the two questions. Thank you.
Well, first, Christian, thank you. I think, utilization is not going down in FACC at the time being, so we have high utilization, rates are high, and our facilities are highly utilized. In many cases, again, two shifts, in some cases, three shifts. So that's good because this is utilizing our investment. In terms of, of cost reductions, you're right, we have employed more than 1,000 people over the last two years, which had an impact on certain learning curves, in production, which we have put into our budget. That's not unexpected, because we know how to deal with it and how it - what it means. Right now, we see, a slight, let's say, the curve of new hiring is not, as deep as it was, in 2023.
So what we have is, we have better trained people, we have learning curves going up again, and we can produce more output with the same amount of people. So, productivity, learning curve, the one or the other, industrialization and digitalization program is put in place. Just meaning more volume output with less people we need to hire. In terms of white collar, we are growing, that's good, and we want to grow the business without adding new people. So, that's one item we are currently facing. That's doable. We have done this in 2016, 2017, when we had the last major industry ramp up.
Those people who are watching us for a longer distance, we had similar ramp-up effect in the year of 2016. Starting with 2017 and 2018, I think we've been over the hurdle. As you have said, we are over the peak of people hiring and training. And for the next periods, it's the time of harvesting on the investment we have made into our people. And again, quality and safety comes first in FACC. Hiring people and delivering that quality is a no-go for FACC. So we're paying for it. That's what we have done. Of course, impacting our margins to a certain degree.
But as you see, in the H1 of the year and going forward, the activities we have started are delivering results, and that's what we are continuing. Secondly, in terms of labor cost, personnel cost reductions, Croatia is an important pillar in this long-term plan. As you know, Croatia was decided in 2018, that we wanna set up plant number 6 outside of Austria. We had to postpone the plan by a year. Right now, we are back to the original size. And by filling up this new capacity with 1 million labor hours, such labor hours of capacity, is certainly helping us to reduce the share of personnel cost significantly, for products we need to produce in Europe and deliver to European customers.
Okay, thank you for that. Maybe one additional to understand the H2, especially in the H2 of the year, a little bit better. So you are now guiding for a, of course, you are lower delivery because the 10%-15% growth compared to the 23% growth in the H1 and the full year, 10%-15%. Then you are saying that utilization rate remains high, so you are in an ongoing production, and at the same time, you are reducing working capital. That really fit together? In the end, when you are delivering less, and you have to produce less to not increase your cost, or your working capital on the other side. Does that really fit together, all these items?
Well, as mentioned before, I think we have agreed with a couple of customers, some of the, demand adjustments they had to, they had to because of other supply chain issues. We have been able, to control. Well, if, that's, a controlled and well-coordinated, process, we can certainly steer our supply chains as well and ramp them down because they have lead time as well. And everything that is, coming as product from the United States, which is normally ocean freight, already is on its way, cannot be stopped. So by doing this rebalancing, I think, we have found, a very good, solution with our main customers, to help us in managing the working capital. And again, I think we have material available.
We are currently ramping down our supply, supply chains as well, in a controlled way as well. So this is all, needs to be done all very balanced, because we can also cannot afford, to jeopardize our supply chains in terms of cash, and financial stability. And as Florian said, this is, this is a task force we have put in place, multidisciplinary, from, customer engagement, supplier engagement, lead time reductions inside FACC. So this is not a one thing to be solved and all is good. This is, has a little bit of more complexity. What we see at the time being, it's manageable. And again, I think, Q3, will be a soft quarter, seasonally, as always.
Q4 will be a good quarter again, also driven by the one or the other development cost milestone payment, which always comes, as you also know, mostly in the last quarter.
And maybe a little add-on, Christian, from my side, in terms of the inventory project Robert just mentioned. Of course, we know that this is not an issue that we can solve in one quarter, and therefore it's also in our planning, and I said it before, it will run into 2025. And as Robert said, it's a multidisciplinary approach, and we will really take a look into how we are doing business today in terms of our order intake, in terms of our planning, in terms of our operations, and in our deliveries.
So, we will take our time to analyze that and to improve, I would say, the way we have done business in the past and try to improve it to bring our inventory levels sustainably down.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. So this seems to be not a very easy task, but all the best. Thank you.
Thank you, Christian, for your question. We have one more hand up from Miro Zuzak. You should be able to speak now.
Yes, hi, gentlemen. Can you hear me?
Very yes, Miro.
Okay. How are you guys? You're looking confident.
Well, we are trying hard, honestly saying, and it shows some success, so thank you, Miro.
One question. I thought it just caught my eye. The administration expenses, they were up by almost EUR 5 million compared to Q1, and I think around, like, EUR 3 million compared to last year. Can you please comment on this?
Well, I think, if we don't have it handy right now, Miro, I think it would be fair to share it with yourself. Honestly saying, I cannot give you the right answer at the time being. There is certainly also cost in the administration, driven by a collective payment agreement we had to put in at the end of April of the year, but this certainly is not EUR 5 million, I can tell you. If you would allow, Miro, we would circulate the answer by Michael later in the day, latest tomorrow.
Okay, cool.
Thank you.
And the next one, just to-
We are talking about? Sorry. You have the figure out of the report, I guess?
Yes. 16.7.
16.655, it was. For the half year, it was 28.5. Q1 was a bit lower, Q2 was much higher.
Okay, thank you.
Second one, would be on the U.S. dollar exposure. I have, you know, some old figures here from 2022, when you had, like, $600 million of revenues. Now you're at almost $900 million, well, close, at least, maybe next year, or... So can you please remind me of the imbalance again between the U.S. dollar sales and the U.S. dollar costs in the new, let's say, company size setup?
I will take this one. Thanks, Miro, for your question. I would say, it's the same as it has always been. Also, our revenues are, I would say 100% denominated in US dollars. And what we try is, some kind of natural hedging, as we have always done it. So most of our suppliers are paid in US dollars, and the remaining portion is hedged by our treasury department with easy products, basically forwards, going into a period of, I would say 12-24 months...
When we look into 2025, I would say we are right now hedged at the level of, I would say, 60% of the open exposure, and 2024 is basically fully hedged already. In 2024, there is no major remaining risk from the effect side. And as I said, in 2025, there are some open positions right now, but we are closely taking care of it in the way of our FX hedging policy.
Okay, and what's the level that you, you mentioned the 60%, on what level have you hedged this?
In terms of 2025, we are right now in a level of slightly below 1.10.
Okay. Thank you. That's all from my side. All the best, gentlemen.
Thank you, Miro.
Thank you, Miro. And we have two more questions in our chat. From Emerick. He asked: Given your renewed effort on working capital, what would be your midterm ambition for inventory days of sale? How would that work in practice, notably in terms of coordinating the effort with your numerous customers and avoiding the recent stop-and-go pattern?
Mm-hmm. As I said before, it's a, I would say, multi-quarter approach that we are taking here, because from my perspective, and also from the perspective of the management board, it has to be, I would say, a sustainable operation that we are performing here. Meaning, some short-term changes that will generate some cash and then going up, later on, next year or, or the year beyond, will definitely not help you, help us, and this is also not something we are aiming for. As I said before, and also Robert said, that it's a, it's a multidisciplinary approach, and this will take some time analyzing all the data, analyzing our value streams internally.
We know, of course, how we do our business right now in terms of our customer intake, in our planning, in terms of our material ordering, and we have to do... From my perspective, there will be some changes in, in how we perform our business. And right now, we are in the process of setting up this project team that we will have internally. Maybe we will see some first effects already in, in Q4 this year, and I expect the, the major, major improvements in 2025 to come.
If I may add one more statement. Here, I think, the stop-and-go was mentioned. This is definitely a case, which was more a case in 2023. So we see less amount of stop-and-go. It's not gone, I have to say, but it's getting more stable. Still, we have the one or the other issue. We are compensating with higher material inventory, but the number of events in our supply chain is significantly reducing. And another point I wanted to mention, and this is again, the offload of the 919 to China. This is helping us on working capital as well, because if you just imagine, we buy material in Europe, we are producing components over 6-8 weeks, then we put it on a ship.
We are in transit for another 7-8 weeks to bring the product from Austria to China, going through customs. If this is local, we squeeze out easily 10-12 weeks of lead time, especially if volumes are increasing. If the inventory is held by our China supplier, this is definitely having an impact, and this is why we said this is not a one issue will solve everything. It is also linked up with the global manufacturing network, with the local manufacturing for certain customers. So it's manageable, and I think we have put a lot of effort into securing demand and deliveries to our customers.
We've spent a lot of money on securing production by adding more working capital into our raw materials, and right now it's time to start reducing it. But simply, further executing supply chain stabilization is one element out of the program.
Thank you so much. One last question: You mentioned a double-digit margin target by 2028. Can it be achieved from the current manufacturing footprint, or would you need to make further investments in relocating your manufacturing base to low-cost countries or closer to customers' assembly lines?
Well, we have, as mentioned before, we have. And that's the good thing. We did start looking into global manufacturing networks and footprints already 10 years ago. So we looked into China. We are engaged in India for more than 15 years already. We've set up USA, Canada, and of course Europe. One significant decision was Croatia, and Croatia was the biggest investment outside Austria since the foundation of FACC. Croatia, for us, is delivering the savings we have calculated in the business case 2019. This is why we have extended the facility quite significantly over the last 12 months. This facility needs another 550 people to be employed.
This will be ongoing for the next two years. So in Croatia, we are, at the time being, not expecting significant investments. A little bit here, a little bit there, as always. Offloads to China is not financed by FACC because it's a sister company where we are not responsible for the investments. So the investments needed to cope with growing volume is done by our shareholder, AVIC, in the sister company. So we are utilizing their investment with the products we are producing there. And probably in two years' time frame, we might have a need for some investment in the United States to be more locally there as well.
But again, this is currently under review, not firmed up, and for the time being, we are very happy with what we have.
Thank you, very much, for your question, Emeric. We have received no further questions so far. I will give the participants a moment. We come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you for your interest in the FACC AG and all your questions. A big thank you also to the gentlemen for your presentation and the time you took to answer the questions. Should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact IR or us. I wish you all a lovely and sunny remaining day, and bye-bye.
Thank you very much also here from Austria. Thank you for participating. Have a great day.
Thanks to all. Thanks to all. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye. Goodbye.