Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and on behalf of Montega, a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the FACC AG, following the publication of the financial year figures of 2023. We are delighted to welcome the CEO, Robert Machtlinger, as well as Michael Steirer from Investor Relations. The gentlemen will speak in a moment and guide us through the presentation and the results. After the presentation, we will move on with our Q&A session, in which you will be allowed to ask your questions directly to the management. Having said this, Mr. Steirer, please go ahead. The stage is yours.
Thank you, Sarah, and good morning, everyone. So welcome to FACC's earnings call for the fiscal year 2023. My name is Michael Steirer, and together, as already mentioned with me, is Robert Machtlinger, our CEO, and Tanja Meisenberger, my colleague from the IR department. As always, we have already provided some detailed information in our press release issued earlier today, and if, as always, due to some time constraints, it's not possible to cover all questions on today's call, we will be happy to schedule some additional one-on-one meetings afterwards. So please let us know in case required. And now I'd like to hand over to Robert Machtlinger, our CEO, who will guide us through the presentation. Thank you.
Michael, thank you very much. Good morning, dear ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining our today's earnings call for the fiscal year 2023. I have the pleasure to guide you through the happenings of last year. And just a quick snapshot on the market development. As we all know, and as we have reported and discussed with all of you ourselves, during the midpoint of the year, the aerospace market is on a stable recovery post-COVID. Revenue passenger kilometers around the world are stabilizing and growing in all markets, national and internationally as well. As you might remember from earlier course, the national markets developed well already starting in 2022, following 2023.
The international traveling was a little bit lagging behind, not unexpected, but looking back into 2023, there was a very strong recovery from international traveling as well. In line with growing traveling demand, aircraft deliveries stepped up by roundabout 10.7% growth in all segments, also in the business jet area, which is the same bar on this chart. So what we are experiencing, starting already somehow in 2023, is a significant increase in business jet production demands ranging from 30%-40%. As said before, starting in 2023, but continuously strong in 2024.
In terms of of airplane rate deliveries, and I would have a more detailed chart later on, but, important for FACC, strong forecasts on the wide body segment, airplanes that travel, internationally, like the Airbus A350 and the Boeing 787, which we had significant decreases in demand, starting in 2020. Not really a big production demands in 2022, and 2021. Slight recovery already seen in 2023, but, both airplane platforms, will come back, to, nearly production rates as we've seen them before COVID-19. We also see, a very stable and constant, increase on the Airbus A220 production rates, which will double in the next three years to come.
What we also see in the industry is quite a big number of requests for quotations. Our customers are currently either benchmarking the industry in terms of work transfers, or they are resorting their supply chains for various reasons. One, of course, is the global environment, and working more local for local. On the very right side, supply chains, still difficulties in 2023. We had to manage and work around, but we see further stabilization, especially in the last quarter of 2023. This is a continuous and steady improvement, of course, helping also FACC to be in a more stable production environment. A few words to it later.
And the China business, as you all know, besides our majority business, which is Western-related customers like Airbus, Embraer, Bombardier, Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney, and all the other ones, we are engaged with the China aviation industry since 2004. Here, we are currently seeing ramp-ups, especially on the COMAC C919, with quite substantial rate increases already in 2024, but also in the following years, again, helping FACC to grow organically. Next page is pretty much the aircraft the air traveling recovery. In a few lines, I think what I have expressed just before, strong recovery across the global networks.
Global markets like North America, but also Middle East, already had higher passenger revenue kilometers in the year of 2023 compared to post-COVID, and international traveling is strongly picking up. Next page. Well, I will read from our customers, our deliveries and orders. On the left of the chart, we have seen an extraordinary order intake in the aerospace industry last year. So compared to 2022, the order intake with Airbus and Boeing increased by 125%. Selling 3,670 airplanes to airline customers, this is already the net orders. So the cancellations the industry has seen, which is a normal process, already have been deducted.
So, another increase in the order backlog with our customers, and it's a clear indication that airlines are ordering more efficient, more per-performing airplanes in order to meet their growth expectations, but also their environmental expectations. In terms of deliveries, 10.7% increase in airplane production and handover to airline customers. 735 deliveries from Airbus, slightly above the guidance, which was 720, and Boeing with 528, which is also a stable pickup of deliveries compared to 2022. Next page.
Just as a reminder, and we talked about this chart many times, the long-term order book is quite stable, still 41,000 airplane demand in the next 20 years. 80% of the demand is short- and mid-range airplanes like the Airbus A320, which is the strongest platform in the market and also the strongest platform in FACC. Followed, of course, by the Airbus A220, 737 MAX, and with a strong signal also from China on the COMAC C919. 20% is the wide-body airplanes, namely the A350, the Boeing 787, but also the 777 will join the market in the next quarters to come.
So nothing too much new, just to reconfirm, reconfirmation of what we have shared with you in an earlier course. Next page. What are we expecting from the market? As you all know, FACC is delivering products to all our worldwide customers. If it's airplanes or engines, product is delivered to all customers and the airplanes. Of course, our strongest customer in FACC is Airbus with a share in revenue still above 50%. Looking into the platforms, and this is the major platforms where we are invested in, Airbus A220, average rate of 2023 was seven airplanes.
This production airplane rate will climb to 11-14 between 2025 and 2026, which is a growth of nearly 60% to doubling the rate. A320 family backbone of the industry, 52 deliveries a month in average in 2023. Again, growing by 25%-44%. And if you go through the list, I will not do that, because it's just an information, a summary. So we see a nice revenue growth across the platforms we are engaged. Just looking into the 2025, 2026 numbers, taking the volume per airplane, we see a growth potential of round about EUR 250 million-EUR 300 million based on the final rate we will see in 2026.
There's a little bit of spread, whatever the airplane rate will do, but, looking forward, there is natural growth in those platforms we are currently producing. Next page, please. Fiscal year 2023. Quick, the next page, please. Key priorities. Well, we started the year with the guidance, with a sales growth of 12%-16%. We came up a little bit higher at, slightly above 20%, driven by a couple of effects, also development contracts and, good rate development across the industry. Ramp-up of new programs, of course, was a focal point. Strong focus on further financial KPIs like cash flow, profitability and leverage. We also had a target to conclude inflation cost negotiations with our partners.
That goes both ways. First of all, upstream to our customers, but also downstreams with our supplier partners. What we also had on our radar screen was the benefit from the industry, the resourcing from certain activities our customers are currently driving, and by winning new contracts to increase our market share in the core business. Next page, please. So what was the outcome? With the strong orders from airlines with our customers, our order book increased to $5.8 billion, which certainly gives us good visibility to plan further demand and investments. EUR 736 million of group revenue, which is up 21.3%, which is more than the growth in the industry.
Why is it more? I think we are benefiting slightly from new programs we have brought on board the last two years, so we're ramping up those programs. And also the urban air mobility, as well as the COMAC C919, is a stronger contributor to extraordinary growth. We had a target to a step up in EBIT, which we have successfully done. Our operating profitability climbed up to EUR 17.5 million, with a net profit of EUR 9.1 million at the end of the day. This was managed in a quite challenging environment by onboarding a couple of hundred people, qualify them, but also in a not always stable supply chain environment, which resulted the one or the other.
Stop-and-go production, we had to compensate with special shifts and weekends. So, of course, the cost was a little bit higher, in terms of, stable production, but, was managed and was inside our expectations. Operational cash flow at EUR 36.5 million, with a free cash flow of EUR 17.2 million. Leverage, we have deleveraged the company further, to 3.7 ratio between net debt to EBITDA. As you know, we have financing instruments are calling for a leverage below 4.5. So here, especially the last quarter of 2024, was very successful in managing cash, and our leverage. On and above, we have added 536 additional employees in order to manage the ramp up.
If you go into the financials, next page, please. In looking into the revenue, steady increase, as you know, we have been heavily impacted in 2020. 2021 was more a flat year, with recovery starting in 2022 to EUR 607 million, and again in 2023, 21% growth. In terms of our growth drivers, it still is with A320 family, with a 36% total revenue share on the total revenue of the group, which is coming slightly down from last year because other platforms developed well as well. And I have a comparison on the next chart for you.
Business jets is currently 1/5 of our revenue, 21%, driven by high demand in the mid-size segment of this business. A350, rather stable, but we see further significant growth in the next 2-3 years to come. To A220, more or less flat with 7%, more to come in the next years to come as well. And the Boeing portfolio is still at the low end. As you might remember, before COVID, this was the Boeing content was more towards 20%. This will come back over the next years, strongly driven by the 787 re-ramp up. Next page, please. This is the promised comparison between platforms, 2022 versus 2023.
As you can see, a little bit of a shift, especially at the A320, with a 6% reduction in share. However, A320 has grown significantly in 2023 as well, but other platforms increased even further. So, still, I think good portfolio with a good development potential, once we see the rate increases from one of the previous charts. Next page, EBIT development. Well?... Pretty much what we have talked, not easy years in the fiscal years 2020, 2021, turnaround in 2022, and further, I think, activities executed in fiscal year 2023.
In a good environment, I would say, if you consider the top line, but still in a challenging environment in terms of global supply chains, energy cost, and some other cost drivers. But pretty much as expected. If you look back into 2023, positive takeaway, continuous aerospace recovery, very much in line with our expectations. A little bit of a turning in the trend of energy and logistic cost. Logistic costs are pretty much normalized in 2023, not fully down to what we have experienced before 2020, but still on a good track. Good discussions with our customers worldwide to manage inflation costs.
Well, we had to navigate, and I think all of our teams and people navigated quite successfully through the environment we've seen. And as a result, key financial KPIs we've put into our plans have been met. Difficulties, as said before, there was quite substantial stop and go caused by supply chain instability, ramp up issues here and there, the material bottleneck we had to work around. We compensated with high flexibility in our workforce across the globe. So managed well, fulfilled all our customer expectations, but of course, this came with some extra efforts we had to take.
Labor cost has risen because of inflation, but also the qualification of new employees was a planned activity. So onboarding a couple of hundred people and increasing the workforce by more than 500 people requires training in order to safeguard stable production, produce high quality, and guarantee safety. That was done. That was a huge investment, but we will benefit in the years to come, already 2024. Customer demand still was some instability with demand signal and short demand updates, but we managed around. EU inflation is definitely higher than global and we are acting against it.
Well, and the other point is we had to support the one or the other supplier financially in order to manage the ramp-up cost. As a takeaway for 2024, I think what we have done in 2023 provides potential for 2024. We see, especially in the last quarter, a more and more stabilizing supply chain across the globe. So extra efforts being removed, special shifts are pretty much not the norm anymore, and this, of course, helps us in driving efficiency. Staff learning curve is significantly enhancing because of being trained and having a higher education. That's good.
Well, we already have negotiated customer agreements going forward, helping us on compensating inflation cost and delivery ratio of 3.7, of course, is a good support in refinancing or renegotiating some of our financing instruments, which is currently ongoing. Next page, if you look into the details in revenue, as we see, a little bit of seasonality as we always have it. Q1 and Q3 always is a little bit weaker because of seasonality effects. Nevertheless, a good trend line in Q4 2024, of course, a strong quarter with revenues above EUR 200 million. Still some volatility in the EBIT development, which came from, of course, onboarding special effects in the market, especially Q3 of last year, was a tough quarter.
Nevertheless, this is right now stabilizing, and we are forecasting a more stable quarter-by-quarter development in 2024. Next page, looking into the divisions. As we all know, looking to the left side of the chart, aerostructures are always was and will be one of our strongest divisions in terms of revenue, but also profitability. This division had suffered the most in 2021, losing nearly half of the revenue, putting utilization under some constraint. Aerostructures right now is coming back with good EBIT development. This positive effect will continue in 2024. Engines & Nacelles nice turnaround and sustainable turnaround overall.
Growth in engines, but also engine sales, and good efficiency measures across operations, in combination with developments in our urban air mobility segment, which is currently part of our Engines & Nacelles divisions. Interiors, well, we are still in the turnaround. 2022, we had a couple of very positive one-off effects, as we have reported. Well, the ramp-up of our Croatian facility is ongoing, delivering first results as expected. Last year was our first year in operations with 300 new people.
Learning curve developing, however, new project ramp-ups, we have pretty much turned the portfolio on the A320 with the Airspace and the new standard bin, but also the cost in our business jet have slightly increased, where negotiations are still ongoing with supply chains and customers. Expected turnaround in 2024, and so far on track. Next page, cash flow. Turnaround to the very positive side from slightly negative cash flow in 2022 to EUR 17.2 free cash flow in 2023. Well, we have, of course, managed our investments.
At the EUR 19.4 million investment, most of it came from our investment in Croatia, extending our floor space, and making Croatia an even more significant hub for FACC. The rest is self-expanding from higher EBIT and EBITDA, which is also going into our leverage at the end of the day. Next page, financial status. Pretty much unchanged, very stable. Our syndicated loan facilities are very stable and unchanged, with not used EUR 50.5 million of the financing we have in place. On the top right, important figures, net debt to EBITDA ratio significantly below the obligations we had.
So 4.5 was the requirement. We achieved 3.7, and the equity ratio pretty stable, slightly stepped up from 31.1%-31.2%. So overall, stable and developing as planned. Financial status in terms of investments, slight update. Next page, please. Slight update based on our IFRS requirements, we are right now splitting the capitalized engineering with the other investments. So the light gray bar is the capitalized engineering, and the bar below is the other investments.
EUR 25.3 million in total investment down in 2023, which is a slight step up compared to 2022, and pretty much putting us in the range of 2020- 2021. Leverage, well, we have deleveraged the company between 2016 and the years before. Just a little bit of a history looking into the business development and revenue development. If you overlay the charts in terms of revenue and EBIT with the leverage chart, I think we are in a repeating situation right now that utilization goes up, demand goes up, and we are able to use benefit from high utilization. So the deleverage curve shows a nice trend going downwards.
I think to be very transparent, we have our guarantees and obligations with our syndicated banks, which we are holding up to. Nevertheless, there is the one or the other investment in front of us. Our ramp up is, of course, consuming some financial resources in terms of material procurement, but also the one or the other CapEx will be in front of us because of a good market development. But overall, as planned and as forecasted. A few words on the outlook for 2024. How do we see the market? How do we see the customer, the customer demand and inputs?
We still see a strong growth again, between 10%-15%. We will be more specific at the half of the year. We still see some shifts in demands on the one or the other platform, which comes in on short notice, driven by various, I think, issues on the global market. One could be engine availability across the industry. Well, we are certainly heavily focused on managing the industrial ramp-up with all of our customers. Our action item teams in procurement with the actual supply chain are still co-located across the globe with our global suppliers in order to guarantee on time and on quality and safe delivery of materials we need.
And of course, efficiency improvements and onboarding new employees is in our focus. So safety and quality come first, and we secure this with a very high professional and well-thought-through employee training. We are completing plant number 6 extension in Croatia, which is nicely performing and progressing in the June, July time frame. The extension will be will be completed, and we will further fill up the empty capacity with work transfers from Upper Austria, but also new programs into this new facility. Continuously focus and high focus on increasing cash flow profitability, of course, is is is on our radar screen.
Achieving the leverage target of 4.25 at the end of June is on the agenda, and there is still a good dynamic in the industry, by asking, also FACC quoting on, certain products, which is part of our core business, but also part of our non-core business. In saying that, this is a quick run-through of the last year and a quick guidance for 2024. In saying that, I say thank you for your attention, and we are ready to take your questions.
Thank you so much, Mr. Machtlinger, for your presentation. As already said, we will move on with our Q&A session. For a dynamic conversation, we kindly ask you to ask your questions in person via audio line. To do so, please click on the virtual Raise Your Hand button. If you have dialed in by phone, you can use the key combination star key nine to enter the queue, followed by pressing star key six to unmute yourself. If you're not able to speak freely today, you can also place your questions in our chat, and we already received the first virtual hand by Bastian Brach. Please go ahead and ask your questions.
Thank you. Can you hear me?
Very well.
Perfectly.
Perfect. So two questions for me. I want to get a bit more color on your employee ramp-up plan. So obviously, you will finish the Croatia plan in summer this year, and I remember you said previously that the ramp-up there will be going on to early 2025. So do you see a stable headcount increase, compared to 2023 until then, and a reduction afterwards in net additions? This is my first question. My second one is on the EBIT margin for the cabin segment. So while you seem to be on track in the other two segments to reach your long-term target, the cabin segment is lagging a bit behind.
So obviously, Croatia plays a part there, but can you outline and maybe quantify other issues, maybe like the ramp-up in COMAC and urban air mobility production, or any other moving parts there? Thank you.
Well, thank you for the questions. Well, in terms of headcount, once going forward, we have a plan in place. So expected total headcount in the FACC group by the end of 2024 will be around about 4,000. So we will add a little bit more than 400 in the next rolling 12 months, where we are already a little bit, let's say, hiring in ahead of schedule, because we need some time to train people. In terms of Croatia, Croatia today stands at around about 300 people. How is the process working?
Once we hire people in Croatia, so if it's people we need to ramp up already existing work in Croatia, the training of new hires in Croatia is already performed at the Croatian site by our training staff in Croatia. If we need employment ramp up in Croatia to take a new package, we have people from Croatia being trained in our Upper Austria training center, which is a basic training, which is a safety training. We give them certain qualifications. Then they have a hands-on training on the product. We wanna move in the next stage. And if this training is finished, pretty much we already have a pre-trained workforce once the product then is moved to Croatia.
So this is a very, let's say, well-thought process. We also have applied in other transfers like India or China, in the past years. This is stable, and we are not roller coasting, so we are not hiring today, and then we are reducing the work, the workforce. So what it is, is, if people start new, they have a little bit of a learning curve, which is not at the same level, we have it in Austria at the time being. With the learning curve and efficiency increases, there are people released, we can use for ramp-ups, or new programs. So this is, and not rollercoaster up and down, higher and then reducing headcount again. This is more stable.
And to give you a figure, with the set that we currently have, by tripling the size last year and this year, Croatia will be an operation that could deliver roughly 1 million labor hours in 2027, latest 2028. This does not mean that we are significantly reducing headcount in Upper Austria. The capacity we free for the interior manufacturing in Upper Austria, we are using for aerostructures on new programs, but also ramp up. We see currently a little bit of a higher demand and employment increase in Croatia. More stable in Upper Austria, but as said before, the setup in Upper Austria will be used accordingly.
EBIT development in cabin, we have launched a plan two years ago, where Croatia plays a major role on a so-called interior turnaround plan. Croatia is one factor out of it. The one or the other re-insourcing of core competence, like we call it, vertical integration of business jet composites, is another point. Re-sourcing of a material is a third element, and I can give you examples. We have changed, just recently, harnesses we bought from Europe at a certain price. We have offshored a double source the wire harnesses right now from India, giving us a 50% cost reduction on wire harnesses. So there is a number of activities ongoing, pretty much following our plans.
I have to say, what is the intention? Interior break-even point shall be with the fiscal year 2024, latest 2025. And we are seeing a stable sustainable EBIT of 5%-7.5% starting in the year 2027, 2028. So this is the time when the offloads to Croatia are pretty much executed. There's another element, the COMAC C919 interior, where we have produced around about 20 sets here in Austria, is currently moving to our production hub in China. This is an ongoing activity during the course of 2024, squeezing out logistic costs on these platforms, but also reducing costs with our China operations.
I hope this is answering your questions.
Yes, thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you so much for your questions. We will now move on with the questions from Miro. Please go ahead and ask your questions.
Yeah. Morning. Can you hear me?
Perfect.
Okay. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I have a couple of questions. Is it okay if I, if I, ask them one by one?
Whatever you prefer, no problems.
Thank you. So the first one would be regarding the gross profit margin in Q4, which was at 18.4%, was super high. Was there any exceptional booking, or was this just, let's say, the usual seasonality that you encounter in your business?
No, I think there's two effects at the time being. The one is inflation cost compensation, which is, in 2022, 2023, an ongoing activity. As you can imagine, there is some discussions with some of our customers, the negotiations took longer, and we had a little bit of, let's say, one-off booking, compensating us for earlier cost increases in the year. So this was one element, and the second element was that we have received in terms of development contract execution. We have fulfilled the one or the other important contract milestone, which triggered a payment, but also helped us to realize our profitability on our development programs. But mainly, it's.
Quantify the first effect a bit. I mean, like, was it mid-single digit, something like that, or how much was this inflation cost compensation payment?
Well, it's, you know, it's a little bit, it's two-sided. There's inflation cost compensation payments, already happening on a rolling monthly price increases. And, the other one was, let's say, doing an invoice compensating us for November, December, which have been strong months, but also having a backward-looking payment. Out of my mind, I need to say, I cannot tell you right now. I do not wanna drop a number out of my mind because this might be a little bit complex. I do not wanna mislead anyone. So we can do this, and Miro, I think, Michael could follow up on your question.
Yes. Will do so for sure.
But I do not wanna put numbers out of my, of my mind because this might influence your, your, your ideas, and I do not wanna do that. I'm sorry for that one.
Sure. Thank you. But just on the second point, the milestone payments, I mean, isn't that a, say, a normal development, or were these really exceptional milestone payments that.
No, you are right, Miro, this is a normal development. This comes in certain quarters when I think there was quite a few milestones, especially in the urban air mobility area, where I didn't talk too much today, I have to say, but urban air mobility for us is not a bubble anymore. So we have development contracts between today and 2027 in the range of $90 million already booked. We are currently working on this development, and as you say, this is a good statement. This comes right now more on a regular basis because milestones are executed as we speak.
Okay. And, on the other hand, in administration expenses, the cost was like, EUR 24 million in Q4, compared to EUR 16 million one year earlier. Was there any, like, one-off component in this administration expenses?
Well, we need to be a little bit careful. Administration does not mean automatically fixed cost, that we have pulled up fixed cost dramatically. This is not the case. The pure fixed cost was kept stable, but in the administration cost, and this is a good catch from yourself, the training of our people, of the new people, is part of that, is part of this administration cost. So you see that we have quite, that we have quite, invested a lot, in quality and, in safety, with, the new people we brought on board. But this is a good catch. Thank you for asking. This is giving you a little bit of a guideline what we have invested in 2023 to have, a good workforce, a well-trained workforce in 2024 and going forward.
Okay. So can I drill down a bit into this admin expenses, please? If okay for you. So if I look in the annual report on 147, I see that personnel costs went up a bit, you know, from EUR 22.5 million to, say, EUR 26 million. Depreciation was quite stable. There was an FX impact, but there was also, like, the general operating expenses, which increased by EUR 8 million, from EUR 14.7 million to EUR 22.7 million.
Mm-hmm.
Is there anything you would like to mention there, or what you may can say, well, there was a special effect, or is this also quite, let's say-
No, uh-
normal scaling of the business?
No, as said before, this is the cost of the training for our employees. We have invested, so you know, the 536 people, the headcount increase we had, we had to bring in a little bit more people, because there is normal people churn, so some people volunteered to leave us. So overall, we have, we had more than 800 new people, and all those 800 people had to go through a training session. And this training of this new employee is part of this expenses you're just mentioning.
Oh, okay. It's not personnel cost. Okay.
Yeah, it is.
So this will then, if you just-
It is related to personnel cost, because those people we pay, they get the paycheck as everyone, but they're not manufacturing products. So this is a real educational cost. And again, I'm not saying too much. This is one of our biggest potentials, I think, in terms of efficiency and profitability for 2024. Because this cost is a non-repeating cost element.
Okay.
Or at least not in that magnitude.
Okay. And I have two left. The first one regarding the interior segment, which was, obviously, let's say, driven by this loss in Q3, because of the supply chain issues you mentioned at that time. Is this now gone? I mean, is, was this more like a issue for 2023, and in 2024, you now have a, say, blue sky, and we can expect profitability in interiors really to normalize again, to around zero, maybe like in the last couple of years it was, or what is your guidance?
Well, I think supply chain issues is not only related to one very specific division. This was pretty much across the business and the group revenue. So this also had an impact on the other two divisions. I think, and I am repeating my statement, in interiors, it was three elements. First of all, the ramp-up of the Croatian facility, which is doing nicely. The portfolio transition on commercial interiors, switching from the enhanced cabin to the Airspace and the new Standard Bin. The ramp-up of the Global 3500 business jet, and here, especially in the business jet environment, we talk some high-cost equipment, like entertainment system, like more complex wire bundles.
Here we have seen cost increases with supply chains. Two elements here, again, repeating, we are changing suppliers from old suppliers we worked with for a couple of years and decades into new supply chains helping us to save cost. And on the other hand, it's learning curve effects we're expecting to come. Break-even point in interiors expected during the course of 2024, especially in the last quarter, and then looking ahead in 2026, 2027, 5%-7.5% EBIT profitability in that segment, mainly influenced by Croatia.
Okay. Thank you. I just realized you already mentioned that before.
Yeah. Yeah.
The question from my colleague. One last question: FX. You typically have a U.S. dollar long exposure of-
Yeah
... which is quite significant. I see the EUR 9 million FX, or EUR 9.7 million FX loss you booked in the admin expenses. Can you please remind me, first of all, how your natural hedging progresses, and what the current U.S. dollar or unhedged U.S. dollar exposure is like, and also how these FX losses are booked, or basically, like, the economics around these FX losses, please.
Hmm. Well, I think on the FX we have a strategy which is a forward-looking hedging. Two things: materials is naturally hedged because close to 80%, it will be fluctuating a little bit on where supply chains are and what the FX is. But 80% ± of the material we are consuming, we buy in U.S. dollar. So this is a natural hedge. We buy in U.S. dollar, we sell in U.S. dollar, so no exposure there. The rest we have a strategy that 2024 right now is fully hedged with agreements we have in place.
We are currently hedged slightly at 1.1, a little bit below that, compared to the euro. So basically, FX is considered in our forecasts, in our profitability expectations. I can tell you what we have put into our internal forecast for 2023. There were certain FX impacts planned. The final result was around about EUR 0.5 million benefit, or let's say better result from FX compared to the planned. So, we're looking into a long-term hedging, and I also can tell you, 2025, we started hedging activities already. And normally, we are buying dollars once the dollar is favorable.
So again, around about 12 months minimum hedging. That's our philosophy, and right now we're starting to hedge 2025.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you for your questions. We'll now move on to the questions from our chat box. So the first one is: Can you give us an indication when a new CFO will join FACC?
Yes, of course, I can do that. The selection process is in a very far advanced process. There is discussions with one plus another person. And I'm expecting that these negotiations, the contracts, will be put in place within within the next 3-4 weeks. So there is expectations that by the end of April or during the month of April, there will be an announcement.
All right, maybe we can welcome a new face in our next earnings call. We will see.
Absolutely.
Another question, concerning your mentioned weakness of some suppliers. Is that raising the opportunity for, acquisitions in that area for FACC?
Not really, because the struggling suppliers is more the raw material and semi-finished products like metal part machining. It's more companies having a size between EUR 5 million-EUR 50 million. We see a tendency that smaller suppliers having less access to capital, struggling with the ramp up, buying material in advance, so here we help them with earlier payments. It's not... We don't see this trend with larger suppliers. They are in good shape, and our supply chain heat maps are also having a strong focus on financial health of the company. So it's more the smaller ones and not of an interest for any M&A with FACC.
All right. Thank you so much. Another question: can you give us some words about your drone efforts?
Yeah, absolutely. Well, as you know, our core business is civil aerospace, what we've done in the last 35 years. Two years ago, we have extended our strategy to include urban air mobility and space at the later phase of the decade. Urban air mobility is something we have started to look into already in 2018. We have defined a strategy with whom we would like to cooperate. I think what we have thought about, we have executed. We are currently having excellent relationship with five customers in the urban air mobility market. Three I announced. As you know, it's our first program was EHang.
We are still supporting EHang, right now certified in China, and they can fly passengers. The other two announced is Archer, a taxi drone manufacturer startup in Silicon Valley, with investors like Stellantis from Europe, like United Airlines, being the airline flying the drone and moving passengers from hubs to the center of the city and also recently, Boeing invested into that company. The other announced customer is Eve, 100% carve out from Embraer, pretty much having the same development in the pipeline like Archer, a similar system, with a collaboration with United Airlines as well.
Then there are two unannounced customers we are currently working and developing. So what is it for us? As I said before, this is not a bubble, this is not a dream only. This is generating revenue. Just development contracts, which is NREs and milestones. There's a volume of EUR 90 million which are currently booked into our next 3 years, and we are executing on a monthly, quarterly basis. In the EUR 5.8 billion order backlog, we have not yet accounted the production volume we would enjoy with the contracts we are currently having.
But giving a figure, if in 2025, 2026, this is the point when Archer and Eve want to deploy passenger service out of United U.S. hubs. And the rates are going up to the expectations, the contractual revenue stream of those five contracts is in the ballpark of $300 million a year, starting in 2026, 2027. So there is something I think we are currently quite happy with what we have done. Still, the products are in certification. Certification is a prerequisite to start earnings with our customers, or the customers can start earnings. So we are there.
Currently, it's revenues from development, but also picking up in product delivery in the next, I would say, 12-18 months to come.
All right. Thank you so much. Then we have two questions left concerning growth. The first one is: How much of a working capital build-up do you plan for your growth plans?
Well, we have substantially increased our working capital over the last two years. We see currently a turning point. We are not expecting to further increase our working capital. It's more the target to reduce working capital for a couple of reasons. First of all, the churn rates have been lowered to secure, let's say, ability to produce. The production lead times are again being reduced because of more stability from market demands. So I think we have peaked in inventory levels in 2023. There is still some add-ons in the month of January, February, but from that point on, we have a strong focus on working capital reduction.
All right, and the last question: Do you plan new capacities beside Croatia for further growth in the next two or three years?
Well, Croatia, I said before, no more investments up and running. There is round about EUR 30 million-EUR 80 million volume offload currently ongoing from Austria to our production hub in China, which is mainly the Chinese aerospace product, the C919. So here there is no need to invest out of FACC's capital because this is not an FACC-owned facility. This is a facility owned by our majority shareholder, and we are using it. So no investments planned there. There is a couple of production relocations into India, where we have a production partner since 2010.
Here, we wanna reinforce our partnership and probably in the year 2027, 2028, we wanna reinforce our production hubs in the United States, mainly Wichita and Florida.
Great. Thank you so much. So by answering this question, we will come to the end of today's earnings call by, I guess, really an hour. So we are on point. Thank you everyone, for joining and to showing interest in FACC, and for that, engaging, conversation. So, and a big thank you, also to you, Mr. Machtlinger, for the presentation, and Mr. Steirer and Mr. Machtlinger for being here with us today. So we wish you all a lovely, remaining week. Happy Easter, and say thank you and goodbye.
Thank you from here in Vienna as well. Bye-bye, everyone.
Thank you. Bye-bye.