Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the PALFINGER Capital Markets Day 2023. Of course, we'd like to welcome everybody who is here in person today, and a special, very warm welcome to everybody watching via live stream. My name is Karina Toth. I will be your host for this afternoon, and we are today in the PALFINGER World in Lengau, in Upper Austria, also the location of our largest plant worldwide. Today, we want to give you insights and a glimpse behind the scenes into PALFINGER as the world market leader. Of course, in addition to the plant tour and the product show, where all of you will be able to test out our lifting solutions for yourself, you will have the chance to hear from and, of course, speak to the top management of PALFINGER and, of course, the executive board.
You will also find out how PALFINGER navigates in times of turbulence. We will give you insights into the actions implemented to increase corporate resilience and, of course, to increase the efficiency in operations. Furthermore, we will talk about the regions of EMEA and North America, who operate in very different economic circumstances, and then we will talk about sustainability and the topics that we'll be working with in 2024. With Gerald Mayer, the CEO of AMAG, Stefan Pierer from Pierer Mobility, economist Eric Heymann from Deutsche Bank, and of course, our own CEO, Andreas Klauser, the management team has been able to attract some of the top speakers and participants for our ATX Prime Round Table, where we will be discussing the economic difficulties and, of course, take an outlook on the next year, 2024.
To round off the Capital Markets Day, and this is also very important, the management team would like to invite you for a wine tasting downstairs, hosted by Christoph Morandell. Before we start, however, there's some technical information for you. We will be live streaming this event, so we would kindly ask you to not pass in front of the cameras, if possible. Another thing is, there is no Q&A session after each speaker, but we will have a Q&A session after every event block, so you'll definitely have the chance to ask all the questions and everything you want to know. For the people in front of the screens at home, you can type your questions into the designated fields, and of course, we will take those questions into the Q&A. Let's start off with our first very, very exciting speaker.
Since the Corona pandemic, we've been facing turbulence, headwinds, and of course, geopolitical uncertainties. Many companies have been struggling, but PALFINGER has managed to overcome those obstacles. How? Our first speaker will answer this question for you. Please welcome with me, the PALFINGER CEO, Andreas Klauser.
Thank you.
Hello, Andreas.
Hello.
Nice to see you again. This is a very special day. We are in the PALFINGER World today. How proud are you to have special guests here in this very special location?
Yeah, I'm proud that you followed our invitation to come here to this famous place, Lengau, the PALFINGER World, which is a little bit far away, maybe, from any urban city, but I think it really values what we are doing here, and I'm very proud that you followed this invitation. And I've been more proud that we can invite you here to the PALFINGER World, which we just introduced earlier this year. And I think it's important that you see what's happening here and as well, what our customers and dealers can experience. And I think when you can convey this impression back, it gives a better picture of what PALFINGER is doing.
Thank you, Andreas. I'll gladly hand over to you.
Thank you. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, welcome here at the PALFINGER World. I think it's a unique opportunity, after we had a hybrid Capital Markets Day, including the first tasting of rum for some of you. Some of you, I think, might still remember. Then secondly, last year, when we had our ninetieth anniversary, which was more a fancy environment at the Cobenzl in Vienna, and today, here in the PALFINGER World, the real world, the real world of PALFINGER. So you can look behind the scenes here. You will see what's really happening here. You can touch products, you can see the workers we are having here, you can see the management team. I think it's important when we are really considering this, that we are not forgetting where we are coming from.
And just a couple of months ago, I was asked, "What was the largest improvement, the largest way we were looking forward in terms of achievement?" This was clearly the setup as an organization to become a GPO, the Global PALFINGER Organization. You could see along the way, between the COVID challenge, cyber war inputs, and all these ingredients, that we still managed to stay the course. I know it's not yet reflected at the stock exchange, but hopefully, after this event here, you will get more clarity to understand this better. PALFINGER stands clearly in terms of having innovative technology-focused products and solutions. And I think, looking at this, this is a very stable, a very strong environment we are coming from.
This is a very, very solid base, and I also happy, and Felix Strohbichler will show it later to you, in terms of results, what we have achieved so far, but as well, what is expected to come. When we started this journey to reinvent the organization setup of PALFINGER, it was very important not to forget where we are coming from. Some of you in the room, the older ones like me, remember 2010, PALFINGER had a total turnover of roughly EUR 650 million. compared to today, where we aim for about EUR 2.4 billion. So I think this was a major step forward, and how did we get there? This was for sure the setup of acquiring new businesses, joint ventures, and other stuff.
Now, in 2018, we started more way of consolidating things, of moving forward in the sense of having a proper global setup, which is matching all the requirements we have and all the challenges we see. And as I said, three major elements, three major challenges, as I said, the cyberattack, the war, and at the beginning, COVID, has proven that we can do so. On the other hand, and here I need to step back again to our joint venture partner in China, we learned a lot in March. There was this famous Monday when somebody from the government told us, there is something coming, there is a virus in the air, and, nobody really understood what does it mean. Is it a atomic war where we cannot even leave the house, or what is it?
And here we had a chance to talk to our Chinese partners, and they already gave us some hints and some information how critical this can be. So this was something as well, when you are having a good, strong, solid network, that you can take certain ingredients. And we rolled out immediately a task force. We implemented a task force dealing with this virus, and we had to slow down. We had 10 days, nothing to do, nothing to work. We couldn't even bring our workers here to the sites. But in May already, we managed to be back, and this was as well, thanks to the setup we have established. Why I'm saying this? One of the ingredients to strengthen resilience means a strong, solid setup.
So in terms of product, in terms of how the organization looks like. Then looking forward, it's important that you really understand what your customers require. One element, so daily tomorrow, but as well beyond that. One third, and I'm also happy that we have our colleagues here from R&D. We have to look into challenges, and we have to address challenges which even our customers do not yet know. A new technology in terms of fuel for the trucks, where our equipment is mounted. All these ingredients, we have already to identify what's happening here. Not to forget about the megatrends in terms of sustainability. We will hear later on from Thiemo here, some clarification. The social change we have in terms of demographic environments. So where can we really source people?
Where can we have the right human resources? What can we expect? Not to forget about digitalization, I think also something, which is not somewhere far away or everything is related to digitalization. No, it's the combination of the different ingredients that we have. And not to forget that all these megatrends, yes, they are heavy and they cost money, but in all these megatrends, we have, beside the challenge, great opportunities to grow. And when you have noticed our results, after all these three major challenges we have faced, the last couple of years, we always turned out afterwards stronger, more solid, and even once in a while, as the winner, winning market share and also winning profitability.
And today, I already discussed with some of you that this dynamic pricing, and at the beginning, nobody really understood where it's coming from, but we managed to increase significantly our profitability because of dynamic pricing and being a premium product. Because if our customers would not value who we are, what we are doing, they would never, ever pay extra. This means all these investments we are doing, and you will hear a lot about today, is related to the premium brand, but not only because of a premium brand of recognition, no, as well in terms of profitability and delivering results. So this is as well something where we are heavily investing. On the other hand, as well, to have to be innovative, but innovation, just to be innovative, just that, you know, we are having R&D because it's nice to have, is not enough.
This is the aim, and this is the focus of PALFINGER: to make ideas work, to make ideas operational, in the sense of solution for a customer, to have a benefit. To have a benefit for a customer, to be faster, to be more efficient, to be more sustainable. All these ingredients are very important here to PALFINGER. Yes, we overcame supply chain issues. We overcame many of these challenges we have faced. On the other hand, we are as well currently for Austria, and I'm talking now to the Austrians in the room, in a quite critical moment in terms of these salary negotiations. And this is something, yes, for Austria, we might need it, we can absorb it, but in the European global context, if this will go beyond a certain limit.
It will not work, and it will not turn very well out for Austria. I'm here talking now to the Austrians in the room. Luckily, we have a plan B. We have opportunities, not immediately shifting to China, where we might face other challenges and problems. No, we can be in the European context, we can be on the Balkans. We have sufficient operations there, and we are building a new one in Serbia, for example, where we can work as well as a plan B for certain kind of operations, where here in Austria, with the high costs we might face, we can't deal anymore. This is just a message as well, which we are giving and which we were giving in the last couple of days as well to the unions. So not to forget where we are coming from.
As I said, among all these challenges, opportunities are coming along. Opportunities even in volatile environment. For me, for us, as good Austrians, Germans, the Germanic approach in terms of planning and then working in accordance to the plan, it's a nightmare, this volatility. The good thing is, because of this volatility, if you play it well, the volatility. It's very volatile, going up and down. It's coming fast, but it's as well going fast. But you need to understand where do you sit and how to deal with it. So if you are always a little bit ahead of the curve, and we managed so far, as I said, using these three examples, we managed so far doing this quite well, then you can be ahead the curve.
So yes, it's coming faster, and you don't have any more three to five years plan, where you put the check mark after every quarter, but you need to be ready to deal with it. And you need to make sure that as well, the entire management and leadership team can work in accordance, and this threat becomes an opportunity. And I think this is as well something where I'm really proud here at PALFINGER. No doubt, Germany is suffering. We see as well some negative impacts coming from France, from Scandinavia, but we already seen other places, and luckily, this is not only on the construction business, this is more the bigger picture. Like Italy, Spain, Portugal, is in terms of business, already showing positive signs. So now when you lean back and you say, "Okay, where is more volatility?
Where was more volatility in the past?" It was as well in these countries. Yeah. As I. I'm not asserting that we have no plan, but dealing with a focus, with a vision, with a plan, being able to deal in a volatile environment will bring us forward, it will further strengthen us, and has by far more, opportunities maybe than, than threats. And at the end of the day, and I know with our cash flows, where cash flow situation is not maybe the something you can be very proud of, but on the other hand, we managed not to lose any customer. We managed to get the business in, to have a proper coverage in our operations, and this was a certain kind of trade-off, but later on, we will hear more to that. And we are really the clear number one in EMEA in Europe.
Also interesting, since you had to travel over here, some of you commented, it seems this is really PALFINGER world, because any truck you see with a crane is a PALFINGER crane. And that's right, because here we are enjoying 60%-70% market share. On another side, there are other places. I mean, we had APAC, we had China, other opportunities, other regions. I wanted to reference a little bit as well the North America. North America, I think from a European perspective, is always something between a threat, hope, something in between, then different people leading this country. One guy doing utmost just to blow and show up, the other one hiding somewhere and being the administrator, not being too busy. But for us, and as an economy, it's really a powerhouse.
It's a powerhouse in terms of logistics, but as well in terms of construction business. Luckily, I can report and I think later on we will as well see it in the numbers. North America, especially U.S., is really a booming market for us. Not only for the truck-mounted forklift, as well, for the other business we have been enjoying. Just compared to, let's say, 2018, to take this as a reference point, we were enjoying roughly EUR 200 million. Now we are going beyond EUR 600 million, and by 2027, we expect that one-third could come out of North America in terms of revenue.
When we are considering this, suddenly something which was maybe always a threat from a European experience, becomes something which will be quite successful and which will be a solid second pillar to the contribution of PALFINGER. I know some of you raised the question already at the beginning, and say, "Okay, Mr. Klauser, you are more than 60%, depending just on EMEA and here, mostly on the German-speaking countries." Yes, this was right, but we are progressing in the right direction. We managed to be on the truck-mounted forklift, now already number two on the U.S. market, vis-à-vis our competitors. As well, we established a solid point of reference. We established our North American headquarters in Schaumburg, Illinois. No worries, it's not in, not in Germany, even it was founded by German, Austrian family.
It's close to Chicago, it's within the center of U.S. And also not to forget LATAM. So here we have in the mining forest industry, positive signs. So I think as well, all these ingredients, all these different regions, will make sure at the end of the day, that we can deliver further on the results which we expect—which I expected and which we announced. In terms of construction business, we had already some talks. Private housing is still suffering. I think, within a certain time frame, even the different minister of finance in Europe should be able to understand what they are triggering here, because costs are already going down, so people could afford building as well.
Private investments, the German government just recently announced a EUR 40 billion investment to rebuild railway within the next five years, six years. So let's see where this is coming. But it's also something we can benefit. So when these investments will be kicked off, this will really help us as well in these regions. So there are always some positive signs we can see. I think it's very clear for us here in this room as well, that 2024 will be a tough and challenging year. It will be, no doubt. Luckily, we are preparing ourselves a little, little bit in advance. This is different to the other three major challenges we had, which we could not see coming. This somehow came overnight, but we also dealt with it.
But with the circumstances and how we are structured, we are really quite confident, and you will see certain plans, what we are doing, that we can move forward and that we can as well, under these tough circumstances, making sure that we are delivering what we are committed, what we have planned. Last but not least, it's also important to understand who is working on that. That's also the reason that despite my board colleagues here, naming here, Felix Strohbichler, Alexander Susanek, maybe you stand up just that all the people will really know the name to the person is important that as well, they are sharing with us all the actions and all the activities we are planning, but as well, not to forget about the management team, the leadership team.
This is maybe a little bit different to other capital markets they are enjoying with other companies. This is not only all the CEO dancing and the board, and they are the heroes, and then there's a bad days, the others are guilty. Therefore, also, we wanted to show you and that you get an impression how strong this global organization is. One PALFINGER works, and I want to introduce you Gerhard Sturm, Head of Global Sales. So he's bringing the then we have Andreas Hille, R&D. Then we have Harald Hauser, Procurement, should be here. Then we have Philipp Smole, PALFINGER 21st. So all the stuff which is beyond. And last but not least, Thiemo Färber, who is the head of our Sustainability Management. He's from Bavaria, as you will might hear later on.
We found him there, and he's now helping with some of the ingredients as well to drive our activities forward. As I said, I'm very happy to be here, and I'm also happy to answer your questions. Enjoy this day, and try to be a little bit inspiring here at the beginning with my speech, not just giving a couple of slides. There was one slide which I missed now, so I need to put this on. And this was something where you can see we are PALFINGER place, we are talking, we are not, let's say, in a sales room. We are out with our customers, and we are ready to deal with any upcoming challenge and to turn these challenges into opportunities and success. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you very much, Andreas Klauser, and of course, we will see him in just a minute at the Q&A session. Last week, PALFINGER published the best Q1 to Q3 results with a record revenue, with a record EBIT, and a record consolidated net results. However, PALFINGER still has to do some homework when it comes to optimizing the balance sheet. Our next speaker will talk about the roadmap to financial resilience. Please welcome the CFO of PALFINGER, Felix Strohbichler.
Yeah, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Very warm welcome also from my side. Of course, investors, shareholders, banks are future-oriented, so what counts for you is: What can you expect from the future? Our main focus as executive board on daily basis is to navigate the company in times which are very volatile and to take the right levers, to, to take the right decisions for the future, a future we don't know today. So the only thing we actually know, we need to be resilient and flexible. And this is why I choose this, "Resilience is key" as a headline and not "Best result ever." This is actually on the second slide. And of course, I would like to focus, also on this. Unfortunately, the pointer doesn't work, so if somebody can help me, please. Hopefully, it only works once now.
So of course, I would like to start, first of all, with a few, few slides out of the Q3 presentation, showing you the actual performance, going also a little bit into some details, but then talking, of course, also go about outlook, not giving a guidance for 2024. This is a little bit difficult nowadays, but at least to tell you, what are we doing to increase our resilience? So starting again with Q1 to Q3, so obviously, as you all know, we had a very good result for the first three quarters. Revenue, EBIT, especially consolidated net result at absolute record levels. This, despite of the fact that inflation is high, we have a lower order intake, especially in Korea, but due to the long-lasting order book, this didn't really affect 2023.
And what is also a topic Andreas Klauser already mentioned, we have an issue with very high inventories. This is due to the fact that despite of supply chain issues being solved at the moment, we still have an issue with trucks not being delivered on time, sometimes too early, sometimes too late, which in the end created a bottleneck in our installation. And on top of this, also, our installation network is completely full, so that in the end, we have very much of volume of finished goods sitting on our yards, and I will come to this also in a few minutes. So here you see the KPIs you have already seen and you know. So we had an increase by around 14% to about EUR 1.8 billion of turnover for the first three quarters. And this is, of course, also due to inflation.
So what is more important than the increase in revenue is actually the increase in EBIT, which was an increase by 47% to EUR 165 million. And of course, even more important, the last line, almost EUR 91 million of consolidated net result, an increase of 71% compared to last year. I think these figures speak for themselves. I don't need to talk about this any further. A more critical slide is cash flow. Also already mentioned by Andreas Klauser. You see here a free cash flow of EUR -27.7 million for the first three quarters. Obviously, this is not the figure we're happy with, but if you look how this figure comes to this result, you see that we have a very good starting point with a very good profitability, but then we have especially one lever, which is actually affecting us a lot.
This is this change in working capital. I talked about the finished good stock mainly, so it's the third year in a row with a dramatic change in working capital. On the one hand, inflation-driven, supply chain issue-driven, and nowadays, mainly driven by finished goods inventory. I will explain to you some things we are doing to come down here. And of course, another important lever is the cash flow from investing activities. 2023 is a year of heavy investment, so that in the end, we see here still a negative figure, but important is that in Q3, we already had a clear positive free cash flow of about EUR 20 million. So you see already the reversal of the trend here.
Of course, this high level of inventories and this negative free cash flow also affects our net debt, so it's on the same level, more or less, as in half year two. I would have hoped that, that this Capital Markets Day, I can show to you already a substantial improvement. Unfortunately, this is going to happen only in the coming quarters, but it will happen. You see here also our average interest debt. I don't need to explain this to this audience. Obviously, this is quite a heavy lever here. We have come from only 1.3% two years ago now to almost 4%, and obviously, with every financing which has to be renewed, this interest rate on average goes up quite a bit.
So as I said, we have taken, of course, actions to bring down our inventories, and I'm talking here about our target to bring down inventories until half year one by more than EUR 50 million. Of course, we want to see the first major reduction already in this year, so it doesn't mean that we wait until end of half year one to work on this. But our clear commitment is that until the end of half year one, we need to come down at least by EUR 50 million. Of course, we target for more.
This initiative will, by the way, continue, so this is not the end, but we also have to be clear about the fact that especially the reduction of finished goods inventories takes some time because we have to debottleneck the installation capacities, and this is not something which happens in two or three months. So the most important topic is clearly is stated several times now, to bring down the finished good stocks. What we did already was to reduce the working days in Q4, so we have reduced the output in the factories, which will not impact our turnover because we have plenty of stock available to fill the gap. But of course, this will help us to bring the inventory levels down.
On the other hand, we are working on improving the planning with the installation network in terms of not producing products which then cannot be installed on trucks to better balance out our production with the pipeline in installation and also with the truck supplies. The second big lever is obviously our factory inventory in terms of work in progress, components, and raw materials, and here on the one hand, we do review our stock strategies. We work, for example, but this is rather long-term, on improving our sourcing footprint, for example, in North America, to have more local supply in order to improve here the working capital. And of course, there is a big lever in improving our inventory management, governance, tools, processes, for example, advanced inventory simulations.
But of course, these are topics which are rather midterm, but in the short term, it's clear the focus to bring down components which are just too high in terms of safety stock on the one hand, on the other hand, to get rid of excess stock of finished goods. Another reason for, the negative cash flow, as I stated, is the high level of investments, and it's clear an exceptional level of investment. So we are working also on reducing the need of having such a high level of investments in the years to come. Of course, this is not a change like this. It's actually a strategic exercise to find out and to define exactly where to invest as much in the future and where to invest less in the future. But this is obviously something which takes some time.
So you will see a lower level of investments in the coming year, but it will take some time to really change here also the approach and to come to substantially lower levels of investments for PALFINGER. Some details about our financing. Here it comes. So first of all, you see a chart which shows that already the majority of our financing is ESG KPI linked. So we have clearly a sustainable financing. And by the way, we will not do any other financing except, for example, some small credit lines or so, or some small bilateral loans, where it's perhaps still happening. But I do expect that very soon we will surpass 75% of green financing. So it's clearly a commitment from our side that we want to have every major financing linked to a sustainability, sustainability KPI or eventually, the rating.
Another information is, you see on the right side of the slide, the mix between fixed and floating interest rate loans, and clearly this has changed quite a bit. So in the past months, for good reasons, we have not fixed our financing simply because we do expect, as probably everybody else in the room, that we've reached now a peak, that interest rates will go down. So of course, this is always changing. In the times of low interest rates, we had a much higher percentage of fixed interest rate loans, whereas today we are below 50% here, even going down further because we have a major refinancing coming up in March next year. This is what you can see here.
This is our maturity profile of our financing of our financial lines and our loans and ESG. Sorry, and our promissory note loans. So you can see it's a very well-balanced maturity profile, which gives clearly stability and supports the financial resilience of PALFINGER. This is kind of a sidestep. As you might recall, we have changed with half year one our segment reporting, because we decided to carve out the business of tail and passenger lifts from the Global PALFINGER Prganization. It's a very special industry. It's a commodity industry, low cost-oriented, with a very different need for certain perspectives, compared, for example, to a premium product like a Loader Crane, a timber recycling crane, et cetera. So we decided to carve it out, to put it next to the organization.
This is why it's not part of the new segment, other non-reportable segments. What we did here in the meantime was a complete reorganization of the managements, of the functions to take out costs. So in cooperation with the Works Council, in the meantime, we've reduced the number of people and taken out other costs, amounting to, in total, EUR 4.7 million, which will lead to a clear turnaround next year. So this restructuring case should be on track already next year. I think this is also an important message, that we address problems, we solve them, and we bring them to a positive situation.
What we also did was, as it's now carved out of the PALFINGER organization, to be more flexible with tail and passenger lifts, we also decided to rebrand those, this product line to Interlift in North America and to MBB in Europe, which were the old brands used in the past, always with the addition by PALFINGER, but still, we want to put the old brands more or less in front of the customer to make sure that we have flexibility, whatever we want to do with this product line in the future. Well, the outlook for this year has been changed slightly, but I think it's an important slight change because we have changed only one word, which was: we don't expect revenue of EUR 2.4 billion and an EBIT of EUR 200 million, but we expect an EBIT over EUR 200 million.
We don't want to overpromise here, but, actually today we feel quite comfortable that it should be possible to exceed the EUR 200 million. Don't expect now a significant overshoot, but, at least we feel very comfortable that we shall reach here, should reach our target we communicated. Of course, also based on the very good order book coverage we have until end of Q1 2024 already today. Another clear target we set ourselves internally, so it's not a promise, but it's a target and we are really striving for this, is to achieve a positive free cash flow until year-end. You have seen a figure of EUR -27.7 million still after end of Q3, so this is still a major effort, which needs to happen and where we need to be successful to, achieve this.
The main level, obviously, is the finished goods stock. We are working on this, and this is something where we have put a major emphasis into the organization to get there. Coming now to 2024. Of course, here it's extremely difficult to give a guidance, but still, we have already today an order book which covers us until the end of Q1. If the next two months are not getting completely crazy, we should have, at the year-end, an order coverage which is at least in the middle of Q2. PALFINGER is starting into a very difficult, volatile, unsecure year, 2024, at least with a much better starting base than many other companies. I think this is the first thing to keep in mind, even if we know that in the markets, we do not have to expect a positive momentum.
So on the one hand, we still expect that North America and marine regions will grow, despite of the fact that for North America, a certain slowdown is forecasted in general, not talking about PALFINGER now, but we can still get market share in North America. We still have product lines where we are actually entering the market, right now with the truck-mounted forklift, for et cetera, for example, with our service cranes, where we have a big potential, to increase market share. So these regions will still grow, even if North America probably will slow down to a certain extent. APAC, LATAM, are expected to be stable. Unfortunately for EMEA, we don't see a big reason or any indication that there should be a quick recovery.
But again, the good thing is that the order book at the moment, and also the order book at year-end, will give us some possibility to balance this out. So if, for example, in the second half of 2024, we see the start of a rebound, we can hopefully balance this out and get across this gap, hopefully quite reasonably. If you then go to profitability, of course, we have some positive effects. Lower material costs, obviously, we have now the potential, after the supply chain issues have substantially improved, also the work on our productivity. We are at the moment, of course, putting high focus on bringing down structural cost. And this is also needed because obviously, in Austria, as most of you will know very well, we are facing high rising labor costs.
So at the moment, we are talking about around 10% of labor cost increases, and it's very similar in many other markets. But on the other hand, the pricing elasticity, especially in Europe, is extremely limited. So today, it's very much different to two years ago, when everybody understood if there is a price increase of 5%, okay, these are the times, and everything is getting more expensive. Today, this is simply gone, and this is not possible anymore. Coming down to the next point, balance sheet. Of course, improvement of working capital, namely of stock levels, inventory levels, shall lead to an improvement of net financial debt, improvement of gearing, and improvement of equity ratio.
So this is a clear target, and in terms of liquidity, to add to this, working capital improvement also, that we work on reducing the CapEx, as already mentioned. We are expanding our factoring, reverse factoring lines, and, clearly, the target for 2020-2024 is to achieve a clearly positive free cash flow. So no possibility today to give kind of a top line, a bottom line, but at least this is what we are striving for, and to give you some feeling where do we stand and what you can expect. Going now one step further, and I already received this question, I think, three times today: What about your 2027 targets?
We remain committed to these targets, and we have to add to ambitious targets, because, of course, the assumption is that the overall economy, especially in EMEA, will pick up again in 2025 to reach those goals. But this is our basic assumption, this is what we believe in, and if this is the case, we feel very confident that we can keep here our target. We communicated for 2027 to reach EUR 3 billion of turnover from organic growth, with a 10% EBIT margin and 10% return on capital employed. With this, I hand over to you, I think, before you will hand over to Alexander. Thank you.
Felix Strohbichler for those interesting insights into the PALFINGER balance sheet, and of course, an outlook on what's to come and all the measures that are being taken in the foreseeable future. By joining the executive board in July 2023, Alexander Susanek took over the COO's agenda. Today, he will introduce himself to all of you for the very first time. He will talk about his highlights so far, his responsibilities, and of course, the challenges. Please welcome the newest member to the executive board, our new COO, Alexander Susanek.
Yeah, thank you very much, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very happy to be here. For me, it's the first time that I can participate in this Capital Markets Day, and that's why we said I want to start with a personal introduction, so that you can get to know me and that you know who is the new guy on the, in the executive board of PALFINGER. And I have to start to confess that I'm also coming from Bavaria. After Andreas' introduction, I'm not really sure if this is a plus or a minus, big plus, but I can tell you that I was very warmly welcomed at PALFINGER, I think, which also tells a lot about the culture of the company, and I feel really very happy to be here.
From my education and qualification, I, I'm an engineer. I studied manufacturing technologies and production management at Munich Technical University, did an MBA afterwards, and did a PhD thesis in business administration. I started my career with MAN Trucks, M-A-N, well-known company and an important partner of PALFINGER as well, which was a very good start, a company which I was really happy to start there. Even as a young employee at that time, you were allowed to quickly take over responsibility to do things, get things done, and this was really a great experience. After several functions in the headquarters and also in the Munich plant, I switched to Poland and took over the responsibility for the Kraków assembly plant of MAN.
One of the plants which is now excessively grown, actually, and is one of the key plants from MAN. And of course, this also was a good experience because I learned what the world looks like from a perspective outside Germany, outside Austria. And I learned that in Poland, as one example of an Eastern European country, you have a very high level of quality of work, very high, very good work attitude of the people, and this was a really good learning for myself. In 2017, I switched from trucks to cars, and I had a chance to join BMW, where I spent the last nine years of my professional life.
I started as head of prototyping, which, looking back, was an excellent start, actually, because prototyping in a car company is a crucial point. There's so much technological complexity in a car that, the prototyping phase of a new product development, all the faculties come together. So that's the point where product development, product lines, purchasing departments, as well as production, all meet, and it's the moment of truth where you see if all the different project streams fit together, if the car works as it should. And, I was very happy to start my career in BMW at that point because it also helped me to learn a lot about the processes and to get to know the company.
After working as Head of Assembly in the Regensburg plant and Plant Manager of the biggest engine plant of BMW in Austria, and my last function before I joined PALFINGER, was the Head of Production for all engines in BMW. So that is combustion engines, as well as electrical engines, and also the fuel cell. And as one of my most important tasks there, it was just shaping the transformation of BMW towards electromobility at a very interesting responsibility of engine production. And I think you all are aware how important this transformation is for a car manufacturer, because you still have to deal with combustion engines, keep it running, make sure that you earn money with them, and at the same time find ways to establish the new technology, electromobility, and make it a success.
This year, I was very happy that I was asked to join PALFINGER Executive Board, and I'm really happy with the decision and with the option to do so. And since July, now I'm part of PALFINGER, and as I said, I was very warmly welcomed. I really appreciate the open culture and yeah. So I want to share with you what I did in my first month and what are the first impressions. It was very important for me to quickly go and see the places. So in the very first weeks and months, I was traveling a lot.
PALFINGER is a really international company, so we have plants all over the world, and it was important for me to quickly go there, to learn about the products, to learn about the production sites, and to get to know the people. To get to know the people and to understand what kind of teams do we have, and what kind of maturity do we have in our plants, and that's why I had quite an intensive traveling program, some parts of it with my board member colleagues, some parts of it alone, and this really allowed me to have a quick deep dive into our organization.
You see some impressions from our sites all over the world, and what I really learned is that, a big highlight of PALFINGER is that we really have strong teams all over the world. We have a very good attitude towards entrepreneurial understanding, and we have a very good mix between, I call it experience and talent, because we have a lot of colleagues who spent long years with PALFINGER, who know the history, who know the customers very well, who have a good understanding of the business.
We also have a lot of people on the management level, as well as on specialists level, a lot of people who joined in the last years and who bring in all kinds of different perspective from their former experiences, different companies, different industries, and I think this sums up to a really good mix of perspectives. I also learned that we have many plants who are well-working, well-organized, operating on a good level, and I also learned about our products, and I think you are all aware of how strong the brand name PALFINGER is. And of course, this relates to good products, Andreas mentioned it, premium products, which are highly estimated by our customers. But I also learned that the product portfolio is pretty diverse.
So it's not the single crane that we sell and that fits to every customer all over the world, but it's a big variety of products, a big variety of businesses we are in. And of course, that brings with it quite a high complexity. A high level of complexity, which we have to deal with, which translates in a high number of suppliers, which translates in a high number of production sites, and which, of course, also translates into some challenges with the supply chain. And I think this is for sure one of the issues which we have to address, how we can handle this complexity on the product side as well as then in the operation side. My area of responsibility is Chief Operating Officer.
That means that combines the fields of product lines and engineering, procurement, supply chain management, and operations, which is production. And I think this is a pretty interesting range of responsibilities for me personally, that made the attractivity of the job on the one hand. On the other hand, I think it's a very good setup because from my experiences in my former companies, I learned that quite often at the interfaces between these functions, that you cannot really take the synergies and the optimization potentials, if you really cut the organization in silos. And this is something which I consider to be very positive from our setup, that in my responsibility, I have a good.
Good chance actually to take the potentials which come up if you can redesign the product, for example, optimize the supply chain, optimize the way they are produced, then you have much bigger lever than if you just talk about optimization in each single silo. So let me quickly give you an overview over some highlights of 2023 and challenges that we are facing in 2024. I will not talk too much about product development because Andreas Hille and his team, they will introduce some overview later on, and you will have a chance to experience the products. Highlights this year definitely were the introduction of our new TEC line for the Loader Crane, and Andreas Klauser mentioned it, we are a premium brand.
It is important that we have a high level of innovation, that we are ahead of others, and I think the new TEC Range is a good example that really underlines our ambition and our reputation, with our customers. And alike with the launch of the Gen Three of our, timber and recycling, cranes and, and the on-road version, and I think we will have a chance to, to see them and to experience this kind of product. We also made a good step in regarding our, competitiveness in this area, and we just recently, and this is also something I want to highlight, we just recently announced the cooperation with Aker BP and Optilift to work on a fully autonomous operating cyber crane for off-shore platforms, which of course, is a very interesting innovation product for us.
Because to design an electric and remotely operated or autonomously operated crane, of course, acquires or requires a lot of technologies which we have to develop, and a lot of knowledge that we have to build up, which we then later on can also transfer to our other products. Challenges for 2024, and Andreas also will say, Andreas Hille also will say some words about it. Of course, we can never rest. We have to keep our product portfolio competitive, and that means on the product performance side as well as on the cost side. I think on both, we still have some homework to do, and we will do so. We will have to reduce the time to market and the complexity. I already mentioned some issues, so some ideas about complexity.
And we will also put one of the focus on our platforms, where we see that this is a business we want to grow, and of course, we have to make sure that we have the right product, that product is ready for the growth, quality-wise, performance-wise, and also on the cost side. Let's have a look at where we are in procurement. We also had some side discussions during lunch. We know that we are coming from a very turbulent times after Corona, with a lot of difficulties on the supply side, and we were happy that there we managed to ease it, to make it more stable this year.
Increase of the delivery performance was one of the big issues this year, which helped us also to show the performance, which was just presented by Felix Strohbichler. At the same time, we managed to reduce the costs in purchasing to EUR 20 million this year, and we want to do even more next year by continuing, of course, this optimization on our purchasing price side, and we want to go down by additional EUR 30 million at least. One highlight of 2023 was the cooperation with Steyr Automotive, an Austrian company, which is our partner for assembly of the truck-mounted forklift.
It is one of the first times that we have an assembly partner to produce one of our partners, one of our products. We can say that this is a success story until now. We rely on the big competence of, Steyr Automotive, which is a former MAN Trucks plant, which by accident, I know well from my, from my past experiences in, in MAN as well. But they have the competence to do serious assembly, because they, they did this with the trucks, and they are very, very good partner for us, and they show it in their performance, in the KPIs, quality-wise, and also in the price they can offer us. So this is a, this is a good option, and this is something which we want to extend also for 2024.
I'm absolutely convinced that we do need strong strategic suppliers. We have a size of a company where it is important that we have good partners to make sure that we have, can also, that they can also fulfill our technological requirements, but also our, our volumes and, reactiveness, responsiveness to the volatile, demand issues that we will face. So this for sure will be one of the important issues for next year, to find good strategic partners and also to look deeply into the supplier structure, because, as I said, this is one of the results of the complexity we are having. We have quite a fragmented supplier base, and I think there's something to be done. Of course, again, we will have a focus on North America.
We heard a lot about the importance of the region, North America, where we want to grow the business up to EUR 1 billion by 2027. And to do so, we need the right setup on the supply side as well. So that's why we will work intensively to look into our suppliers. Mexico, of course, will be one of the preferred target countries to look for this. We already heard, and you know it from the numbers, that one of our big challenges is the cash flow, driven largely by inventories. And that is priority number one for the supply chain management, which we are already working on and which we will have to continue and also to intensify in the next year. We saw a strong stabilization of the supply chain after COVID this year, fortunately.
We are about to finish the new setup of the supply chain management organization. This will happen this year, and we already worked on the footprint, as you know, from previous meetings. The plant in Krefeld was shut down. The plant in Heideck will be closed down in the next year, but the process has started so far. So there are first steps to reduce the footprint of our production sites, and I think this directly indicates what must be the priorities for 2024. It will be inventories, it will be, of course, a very careful CapEx process, and it will be an optimization of our footprint. We will look into this. This is nothing which you can do overnight and from one day to another.
There are different things which has to be considered, and then if we take decisions, of course, the implementation has to be prepared well. But footprint and inventory optimization will be top priorities for next year. Yeah, and last but not least, in operations, I talked about the platforms already. Platforms are an important product for us, a product where we still see a lot of growth potential. We closed the plant in Krefeld and shifted the production to Lübbenau, which is in eastern Germany. We installed a new production hall, actually. We are ramping up the production there, and this was a big step actually to bring the platform business to the next level.
We did some relocations in our production network, on the fabrication side, to shift from high-cost countries rather to the best cost countries. And as you know, we have a good footprint in best cost countries like Bulgaria, Romania, we are extending this in Serbia right now. And of course, we want to leverage the cost opportunities that we have there, and we did this in this year. And we also started to do some optimizations. We are, volume-wise, we are not, of course, not in very high volumes in our production. Nonetheless, we are shifting from bay production, bay assembly, to a more line-oriented production, which always goes along with efficiency improvements, and we started to do this in several plants already. For 2024, we already heard it an insecure environment.
We have to stay flexible, and of course, we will have to adjust the capacities according to the demand. We will carefully look in this because we all assume that sooner or later, business will come back, and of course, we do not only want to slow down now and keep costs under control, we also want to be ready, when the demand is back to be able to respond. So this will be a major challenge in operations this year. Of course, we will strongly work on, productivity increase, and as you all know, sometimes difficult years are even a good moment for working on productivity increase and, to improve structures. So this will be a focus of 2024 in operations.
And last but not least, also as an important contribution to keeping or to further improving the cash flow, we'll be very careful dealing with the CapEx and investments. To sum it up, after my a little bit more than 100 days, I'm really happy to be part of the PALFINGER Executive Board. We do have some challenges. We do have some homework to do, but from what I've seen so far, I'm absolutely convinced that we can do this from a position of strength. The company is in a good shape. We know that we have to deal with some challenges in 2024, as all our competitors as well. So the question is: Can we handle it better than they do? And of course, we are absolutely convinced that we will do so.
At the same time, from this position of strength, we will, we will use the next year also to shape the future and to make sure that we will keep this success in the next years and make sure that we really reach the targets that we have, as Felix Strohbichler just showed for 2027. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Alexander Susanek. You're staying here with me on stage, and I would also like to ask Felix Strohbichler and Andreas Klauser to join us for our first Q&A session. Just a quick information for everybody on the live stream. If you would like to ask a question, just type your question into the designated field, and I will see it on my iPad. And of course, if you have a question, please raise your hand. We have microphones available. And please, before you ask the question, state your company and name. I don't know who was first. Please.
Good afternoon, Markus Remis with RBI. We keep the tradition.
A few questions. I mean, firstly, starting on the tail and passenger lift business. I mean, I think it's EUR 100 million, you target to bring it to break-even level. I mean, will that business be able to earn its cost of capital at the later stage? And if not, is a kind of disposal or divestment a feasible way?
So actually, last year it was under evaluation, and there was even an attempt to sell this business. But the reality is that today, with entities which are making losses, there is no market. Of course, there is a market if you give on top of the entity also some cash with the entity, which is not our intention. So we decided to keep it, to restructure it, and to be open for alternatives in the future. Historically, we know that with this business you can make money. We also know it from successful competitors. So yes, it's possible to earn the cost of capital with this business, but clearly this is a way where we are now on the ramp up, and it will take some time.
But clearly, this is something which is out of the core business, and this is now also very clearly visible, as is in the other non-reportable segments, and we are completely open. If there is somebody knocking on our door, paying a reasonable purchase price, we will listen to such an offer, clearly.
So, is my service as a platform now for the potential divestment?
Maybe, maybe don't drive it too proactively because we are still happy with it. But as Felix mentioned, if somebody would knock on our door. On the other hand, it's more related to commodity business, and as I was saying at the beginning, clearly, the premium and being based in Austria, having innovations, all this kind of stuff, on a tail lift, it's difficult, to reflect this properly. So it's more of a commodity business, and that is really the reason why together we decided here to keep it more on a separate curve.
And also, perhaps to add, don't expect that this is a divestment next year. So first of all, our target is to restructure. So for the time being, this is part of PALFINGER, but clearly separated as an entity which is not fully integrated in the core business.
I think there was another question.
Yeah, there's another one.
Another one.
Two more, if I may. Then on, I mean, staying on the product side, this TMF outsourcing, I think that was kind of the first kind of true outsourcing within the group. And, I mean, personally, I like it because it flexibilizes the cost base, it reduces the CapEx needs. Might that be a blueprint, also then going into, say, for the expansion into new markets, Latin America, North America expansion, et cetera? Or would you even consider that for the European core market?
I mean, that's something we are exploring, and Alexander for sure will further look into it. I mean, it was a first wave, and it made sense because the plant was available. And when you know the quality standards BMW applied in the Steyr plant, it was one of the best plants in the network. So we can really participate on that, and we are further exploring. But maybe, Alexander, you want to?
Yeah, I think it all depends on the right partners and on the competitiveness. So, for sure, in our core products, this is not the first option and not the first alternative that we look at. But of course, we have a wide variety of products, and there may be the one or the other where this makes sense. And that's why, from my point of view, it's so important to work with the supplier base, to have good strategic partners in different fields, because this gives you options. And yeah, if we have the right partners, and we proved this with Steyr Automotive, they are very professional in everything they do, in series production, in assembly. They have a good production system, so if they can offer good prices, it's exactly what you say.
It, it offers us flexibility, it reduces our CapEx, it reduces our inventories. It has a lot of, a lot of advantages.
You need to differentiate between core business, core technology, which we will never give out. For example, welding, I think we would never, ever, give this kind of expertise out. But on assembling, assembly quality, there are others maybe who can do it better. Then as well, there's a cost and price reason also for less money, so why shouldn't we do that?
Okay, last question would relate to Europe. I mean, you said that you would not expect a recovery in 2024. Should we that interpret as kind of bottoming out as a base case, or would you see the kind of peril of a further kind of moderate revenue decline i nto next year?
W hat you need here to differentiate is, one is the revenue itself, and one is maybe the profitability. As I said at the beginning, for sure, the cake will be shrinking, but since we were already gaining market share because we are having the right features, we are having the right solutions and products. So in terms of revenue, could be rather flattish, whilst for sure the cake is shrinking, so it will be more competitive. So we need to react faster, we need to be stronger related to our customers, to our dealers, and all these ingredients we are having now in our hands to deal with. But for sure, the market is slowing down. The cake is getting smaller.
I think there was one. Yep.
Good afternoon, Patrick Steiner from Kepler Cheuvreux. Thank you very much for the great presentation. I think it answered most of my questions, just three are remaining. I'll take them one by one. First question would be, I mean, you mentioned an order book coverage until end of Q1 2024. Can you give us an update on demand and order backlog for the specific product groups? Product groups, I mean, are there some which are significantly weaker or stronger than others?
So we don't give clear communication at the moment in terms of order backlog. We will actually do this starting from next year onwards. So this was also an input from some people even in the room here, that you wish to have more visibility on our order book. We will not go that far that we show the order book backlog for individual product lines, and even less so for product lines in respective regions, for reason not to be too obvious to our competitors, frankly speaking. So no, we can't give you details, and we don't want to give details, but clearly yes, there are differences.
So what you can see, for example, is that the timber and recycling industry or timber, sorry, the timber crane industry is more down than other industries because timber price is quite low, demand is very low. Pulp is not needed for carton packaging, for fiber production. You don't need pulp at the moment because the market is down, and also in construction, you have lower demand. So in the end, there are no positive signals at the moment. So this is the market which is the most depressed, and there are some markets like, for example, wind cranes or, if you look at railway applications, which are not impacted at all from the macroeconomic environment, because there are other drivers which are just not, which are just very different from construction industry, for example. So yes, it's very different.
It's not the same, and the coverage is by far not Q1, end of Q1 for every single product line. It's an average.
Okay, thank you very much. Very helpful. Then the second question would be, you mentioned that you need to take out at least another EUR 30 million in purchasing costs next year. Can you give us more details on this? I mean, is this based on 2023 purchasing volumes, and where do you see the most potential?
Yeah, we will start an intensive negotiations. Of course, we, as you all know, we also see that energy costs, transportation costs, they came down, and of course, we expect we expect also efficiency increases from our suppliers. And I think this is one thing, is just a normal purchasing negotiation process, sorry. And another thing is we will really, really look into our supplier base and understand where we can bundle, where we can also shift from high-cost countries to best cost countries. We will also really look into the details of the regional distribution of our suppliers.
When we want to shift more towards North America, of course, also, our supplier base must shift, and, as we know, in Mexico, we have quite good sourcing conditions, and we expect that we can gain quite some saving from that, and that should be in the range of EUR 30 million.
Thanks. Coming to best cost countries, can you tell us a bit more about the new production plant in Niš, in Serbia? Wage cost levels compared to Western Europe, plant capacities, product types produced?
Well, we had the opening ceremony a couple of months ago, or the ground, groundbreaking ceremony. The plant is supposed to start operations in the course of second quarter next year, and we will step by step start with some welding components and then increase the production, ramp up to a level of roughly 370-375 employees. But of course, we will see what the economic situation will look like next year, and then we will decide if we slow down a little bit or accelerate whatever is possible.
But of course, this also is one opportunity to shift value-adding from high-cost countries in our own production towards Serbia. And what we experienced there, and that was one motivation why we decided to do so, is that you have a very good availability of labor force. And this is one of the crucial topics which we are experiencing in all the regions of the world, more and more, and this is one of the decisive reasons why we decided to go there.
And maybe one number. Average annual costs of a worker is maybe in Serbia, roughly EUR 20,000 , compared to here to EUR 50,000+. And as I said, and especially in these days, it's important to communicate this. Not to offend anybody or however, but this is reality. And there's the Austrian reality, there's the European and the global reality. So, and here we have this kind of flexibility, as I mentioned earlier, as a plan B. We don't want to threaten anybody, but that's the case. On the other hand, we don't need to go again to Far East or to China or whatever, which it takes again, ages, and what we have experienced out of the supply chain doesn't work so well. So this is I think.
And let me add this, local for local, as a philosophy, will be the guideline for designing our supply chain.
Yeah. Integration.
This is something which has been started in the past. This does not only mean that assembly should be close to the customers, but this should also mean that the supply chain, wherever it makes sense, is really locally distributed.
Okay, perfect. Thank you.
Are there any other questions in the room? There's. You, sir, with the microphone.
I guess I take the chance, given that I already have the microphone. Lars Vom-C leff from Deutsche Bank. Two quick questions, if I may. The first one is, you already mentioned several times that you have a quantitative target, revenue target for the U.S. market. Is there also such a target for the Asian market?
The Asian market is, let's say, by far a smaller portion. If you consider, for example, for next year, EUR 2.4 billion, EUR 2.3 billion in this neighborhood, and you calculate 4%-5%, you will have a number.
Okay, perfect. And then the second one, if I may? Yeah.
Yeah.
I have to take the chance that Alexander Susanek has just joined the board with a fresh pair of eyes, and you must have had hopes, fears, when you joined the management board. Yeah, I need to ask you already, you already shared some observations with us, but, if you ask me, that was a bit too descriptive for me. So, yeah, I would rather hear you judging the situation, weighing what you saw. So maybe you could share a quick SWOT analysis with us, so strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and embedded in that, yeah, what, what, what is better than you expected, and what is worse?
Okay, then we know what we will do in the next two hours. So you will listen to my SWOT analysis.
All the good things.
In fact, of course, I did a SWOT analysis from my perspective and also with my team together. Well, of course, this is a little bit too difficult to explain in two or three sentences, but as I said, we have a very good product base. We have a very good brand reputation, and we have excellent teams, actually, and this is very good ingredients, actually, for being successful. Nonetheless, we have a high level of complexity. Was it something I was surprised with? If I have to say, yes, maybe it was this. Because if you look from the outside, you think, well, it's cranes, and maybe it's platforms, but more or less it's about lifting. It should not be that different.
If you have a close look and if you want to understand the business of our customers and the product which is needed to support them, then you see that even if it looks like a crane all the time, it's still very different. This level of complexity has a lot of consequences, as I said. This translates into the product structure. This translates into many sites. This translates into a very fragmented supplier base. And from my point of view, this is one of the core questions which we have to address on several levels. Maybe within a product line, maybe above the product lines. That's also why, from my perspective, footprint is so important because you know, footprint means a lot of things, actually.
It means working capital, it means CapEx, which you need to stay, say, fresh and to stay up to date all the time. So it means risk exposure and so on, and this is one of the priorities for sure, which I will have to look at together with the colleagues. Some steps have been started in the past. There are good reasons why things are as they are, and we have to figure out which is the way to go forward. I think this is, in a nutshell, to say this is one of the top priorities. But as I said, and this is not just something I'm saying because it sounds nice, we have the good situation that we are really in a good shape and that we are in a strong position.
From that position onwards, of course, it is our task to prepare the company for whatever comes in the future. A lot of activities are already started and are ongoing, and I will set the priorities as I just mentioned.
We are not standing still. I think this is also very important.
No.
This is something usually in the European context, when we achieve something, you are quite self-confident and happy, and now this is just a duty to keep moving, to move it further on.
I think we only have time for one more question, the man with the microphone, because, then shortly you will go on the product show. We will hear from Andreas Hille, and of course, you'll have the chance to ask questions later on in the breaks. Please.
Okay, thank you. I would like to turn the focus to China a little bit. Some time ago, you, you changed the cross-holding structure with your Chinese partner. Has there something changed in the opportunity maybe to increase your stake? Is this still something that you would aim for in order to be able to fully consolidate the, the Chinese joint venture? And what about the European part or, or the European joint venture, where you actually, were set to increase actually the stake to 51 in order to, which would also trigger the book gain of EUR 2.5 million. Has this happened already, or what, what's the status, basically, on both?
Yeah, maybe Felix, you give some of the details, and then I will watch it. But let's start with Felix.
Okay, so we communicated that actually there was a deal done about two years ago already, where we agreed on the principle that we want to increase, in fact, our stake in China, in our joint venture. Also, to be able to fully consolidate, but mainly to control really the factory and to be able to integrate it fully in our global organization as it's our core product. A lot of the cranes, which is mainly produced there, so it makes sense from a global perspective. But in the end, due to the geopolitical developments, actually, we have stepped back from this idea. So today, we do not pursue this any further to increase our stake in China. We have there still a cash position of about EUR 20 million in the joint venture, which allows us to invest, to further grow.
So this will happen also further on, but it's not our intention to increase the stake or to make further investments, not to send money to China additionally. So this is the one half. The other part is we have another joint venture in Europe, and also concerning Russia, where we have agreed that we would like to go out. This is still the case. The negotiations with SANY are a little bit complicated, sometimes take a little bit of time or even more time, but at the moment, we are in the phase of evaluation. We have agreed on evaluation. This is now reworked. So yes, there are discussions, but it's very slow.
I would have expected two years ago that we have already finished this at the beginning of the year, so I'm not daring to make another prognosis when it will happen, but it will happen. So in the end, I think there will be no change with the joint venture in China, this is working. We have a set up. We will continue to operate this setup as a 50/50 joint venture together with SANY, using the money we have there for CapEx, for growth, to cover the Chinese market. The other markets in Asia probably will be covered out of another factory, perhaps in India in the future, probably not out of China.
The joint venture, the other joint venture with SANY, we will sell to SANY in the near future, and the principal agreement to do so has been signed already two years ago. The operational side, as I said, I mean, we keep going. The market itself turned out not being that relevant for PALFINGER products, as well in terms of technology. So in terms of business, it's again four or five points, so this is not something significantly impacting our P&L or our net revenues. But we are covering, we are covering China Railway, special businesses. There we are for sure, safe and strong involved. But the overall business on the construction side, which anyway, heavily slowed down, we are not participating. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Andreas Klauser, Felix Strohbichler and Alexander Susanek for your detailed answers.
You will see what Andreas Hille will tell us, I guess.
That's right. Thank you.
Thank you.
How is PALFINGER maintaining the position as a world market leader in an environment that's quite challenging, very competitive, and sometimes very rough? Our next speaker will tell us all about it, and of course, you will all see in the product show right afterwards. Please welcome the Senior Vice President, Global Product Line Management, R&D, Andreas Hille.
Yeah. Good afternoon, and welcome also from my side to the Capital Market Days 2023. I'm happy to be here today and to give you a little overview about the organization, PL, Product Line Management Engineering, what we do, what are the topics, and the challenges we are addressing. Today, you know, within the next 10 minutes, I would like to give you a short overview, and then I invite you to follow me and to move to the outside area, where we have a few products, which is a little glimpse of our big portfolio, where we show a few good examples of how we address our... the requirements and the challenges of our customers, how we increase value for our customer, and how we actually implement technology to support our customers.
When we look at the two pillars of our strategy, Go for Solution and Go Digital, at the end, PALFINGER is transforming and developing into a full solution provider. And being a solution provider means for us that we need to understand what the customer really need, what are their problems, their jobs to be done, we need to address, and then provide an integrated solution to our customer. When we talk about integrated solution, it means that systems are not just connected, they are integrated, and that means optimized in the operation with each other. And that really combines the solution also with digitalization. An integrated solution consists of a vehicle, a lifting system, but also many digital features which actually help our customer to provide additional value by integrating the solution in their digital ecosystem.
That's really what we want to show with this picture, that our lifting solution is really part of an ecosystem where it operates. Really important now, and that's really an upcoming requirement for us, is sustainability. When we look at sustainability, this is not just a new regulatory requirement for the engineers we need to comply to. We view sustainability really as a something where we can increase the effectiveness and the value for our customer. We can differentiate by integrating and by improving our products towards sustainability. To have really successful sustainability means at the end for us, that we have a successful business. So it's not just complying to requirements, it's really making the right things and being able to differentiate against our competition, to be better in those areas, and to move forward. Really important for us.
We are investing heavily in R&D. The organization, we are focusing on products, we are—our customer is in the focus, our customer are using our products to generate value, so the products is really the core element of our organization. And of course, product development is where all this comes to play. We are a market leader, and we provide premium products. We are now investing heavily in new materials, in new technology in regards to control system, into, you know, intelligent components. And a good example here is the launch of our new TEC range, which we launched 2022, which is really creating, let's say, a premium position in the Loader Crane market with higher performance, lower weight, better controllability, a lot of digital control functions, which increase safety and productivity.
The other very important topic, and Mr. Susanek pointed that out, is complexity. If we look at our six product lines, we have a highly complex, let's say, portfolio of applications, customer applications, which we address, of course, with a lot of different products. We are focusing a lot to generate a common modular kit structure, one common architecture where our products actually fit in. This helps us to reuse components, modules, technologies. This helps us to scale up volume, because if we look at the volume of products we produce, we are not in the automotive industry, so scalability is important. So, modular kit structure, which is intelligent, so we can still address the needs of our customer and reduce complexity, is important. And a good example here, and you will also see an example of that in the product show, is our new truck-mounted forklift.
Here we are really generating the models for the North American market, as well as the European market, out of one modular kit structure. We can produce it in the same line. We have the main components are the same, the steps, the parts, the suppliers, the functions, the technology is common and even shared with other product lines. Innovation, really important. Technology leadership, especially in the digital area, so investment in computer visioning, object recognition, these are the basic functions we need to move towards autonomous operation. Assisted functions, these are key elements where we are building up the capabilities, building up people, knowledge, so we can really introduce this. And two example is, of course, our Smart Lifting Assist, which we have also introduced at the IAA last year.
And as a new thing is our so-called OPTS system in the marine business. Very interesting. It's actually where we are able to move people from a moving vessel to a fixed platform in a safe way. If you need to maintain windmills, it's really hard to bring material and people from a vessel to the fixed installation, and this system is completely four-dimensional compensated, so we can move people safely from one place to the other. Really important product for us. All this leads to another very interesting example, and also Alexander was pointing this out. We have signed a development agreement with a very important customer, Aker BP, in Norway, to develop a fully electric and autonomous-operated off-shore crane.
The interesting part is that the technology we're using here, and we are building it up on, is actually the existing, let's say, control technologies we have in our organization, which we apply and use today in land applications. We are now moving forward in the marine to bring this one level up. Everything we do is in a kind of harmonized architecture, so whatever function and technology becomes available, we can bring back to other product lines. We are really moving here from an autonomous level two, which is like a system, it's like an autopilot function we have today, towards autonomous operation, autonomy level five, more or less like driving a car, with this new product in this market.
Very important for us, and here we are really able to apply our technology, our knowledge, our capability in this partnership with a very important customer. Now, I'm really happy to invite you to come with me to the outside area, where we actually have those four products. We will see our new Generation 3 timber and recycling cranes, we are really proud of. It was also launched last year, which really sets a new standard in the market and further pushes the limits on performance, and weight, and productivity in the, in the timber market. We have our Loader Crane, PK 24.001 SLD 5, on an electric chassis, also showing how we actually move from the classic combustion engine vehicle towards electricity. Then, we have the example of our truck-mounted forklift for the North American market.
Very interesting product where we're really rapidly gaining momentum in the market, gaining market share against our competition, really eating up their position. And, the fourth part is the an aerial work platform, also first of its kind on a fully electric chassis, for especially those markets in urban applications where, for example, you cannot-- you are not even allowed to enter with a combustion engine vehicle in the future, where we have now an electric version, to really be competitive. So with this, I'm happy to take you all with me. So we go down, and I think, the plan is to be back at 5:00 P.M.
We will be back online at 5:00 P.M. For all of you, we've divided you into four different groups. I think you have a PALFINGER badge with pictures, with product pictures. The guests with a pictured Loader Crane will be accompanied by Valentina in the back, who is waving. If you have a timber crane on your badge, please go to Sabrina, right next to her. Hannes will guide the guests with the aerial working platform. And anyone with a truck-mounted forklift, please join Fritz. I'm going to say goodbye to everybody joining online.
Just one note here. We forgot earlier to mention Martin Rehling, who is the host, who is the Plant Manager here in Lengau. Also, welcome, Martin. He joined us. Please.
He's the host, and he's, let's say, the landlord. So if anything you would not like here, just tell him. Thank you.
Of course, we'll see Mr. Rehling a little bit later at the plant tour as well. After the product show, you will transition into a coffee break, and we will meet back here at 3:35 P.M. for the plant tour. Enjoy.
Thank you.
Which is lacking a little bit of market demand. Well, for sure, for this audience, what you see now on the screen is nothing new, and that's very well known. So for sure, the economic environment, especially in Europe, especially in construction industries and all the related industries, is significantly impacting the current market demand. So I think I don't need to tell you, but for sure, the highest interest rates we have since 2008, so since 15 years, is currently impacting the demand for our products, is giving certain insecurities for our customers. And the same is true, of course, for the high price increases we have needed to forward to the market.
Of course, no secret, the high interest rates were to compensate the high inflation. So as well as in Europe, North America, and a lot of other regions in the world, I was just coming this week from Brazil, and the guys told me in Argentina, we have inflation of 130%, so lucky we are here. Yeah, we need to deal with this topic, and we don't need to stand still and be proactive managing those volatile situations. Even so, supply chains are improving, getting more stable. Still, the supply chain delivery reliability, especially of the chassis situation, is causing disruptions for PALFINGER. In EMEA, it's mainly delivery reliability.
You see it in our inventories as we do a lot of installation ourselves or as we're invoicing a lot of installation through our own distribution network. Here we are, more or less peaking in our inventory, so we are not yet able to invoice all the machines which are somewhere in this pipeline. I'm pretty sure that in the next months, and Felix was indicating, we will be able to, you know, have this breakthrough with these bottlenecks in the installation. Here, a lot of bodybuilders are still waiting for our chassis and cranes are piling up there. So that's the main topic of our cash flow situation of the inventory.
But for sure, in the upcoming months, this will be significantly improving as well because the order intake and with this, the market demand is going down a little bit. In North America, we have a different situation. Here, it's still rather the chassis allocation for our business. You see here on this side, the RAM, so it's rather smaller chassis, smaller trucks, we need for our platforms business as well, for the service crane business. Here, we are struggling with the chassis allocation, so get sufficient machines for our business to sustain the growth. And here, what is extremely important is, stakeholder management with the truck manufacturers on one side, but as well with major dealers, to get the amount we need for our business in 2024.
As well, and this was not yet, yet not, mentioned today, of course, as well, the high inventories at our dealers are somehow impacting the order intakes. So just when our dealers, our distribution channel, is seeing reducing inventories, then as well, they will again place orders for keeping up the inventory at the high level. So they are today more cautious because of the interest rates. When we are getting back into a more stable situation, for sure, also, this will impact the order intake. As I understood, there is some request from this community about more details about the regions, but as well, the order book. So here I will talk a little bit about the development of the respective PALFINGER regions.
Despite we see consistent increases in the interest rates globally, more or less, and as well, the inflation, the PALFINGER regions are developing differently. I will start with EMEA. We have seen strong increase of the revenues in EMEA last year, here with +16%. This year, we are very much on plan, so this year is referring to our budget, to our target setting. We will hit our targets in EMEA, but the +9% is mainly just the price increases coming out of inflation.
Coming to APAC, we see is quite a steep increase this year above inflation, but that's very much based on a major order we have had in the field of AWP, so aerial work platforms, in a specific country, where we were shipping units from U.S. to Thailand in order to respond to a big demand. AWP is quite important for us also in this region. I would like to mention here, Marine as well. Marine is developing currently very well. So here we most likely or almost sure will exceed our targets quite significantly. So Marine market situation is currently good. Also, the profitability situation is significantly improving, and as well, we will see a good demand looking into next year.
Now, coming to the main growth regions we have seen in the last two years, I would like to mention here first, LATAM. Despite we see a kind of leveling out of the market situation currently in LATAM, we have seen significant growth over the last two, three years. If I would compare here even to the year 2020, we would have seen a tripling of our revenues, in the region of LATAM. Of course, that's somehow based to the currency of high inflation and so on, but still, the team there has done a outstanding, good job, in order to also use this tailwind, which was coming from the market.
Now, finally, coming to North America, strong increase last year, strong increase this year, and also the outlook for next year is quite promising, and this is also as well already underlined with the order book we have, where I'm coming now to. So the order book development, and how it's, more or less, developing from the year 2021. In the second half of the year 2021, we have, based on an extremely strong market demand, seen a strong increase in the order books. Order entry was high. We were not able to cope with this increasing speed and demand situation. We were having, by the end of 2021, beginning of 2022, all-time high in terms of order book, above EUR 1.5 billion. Lead times in our major product lines, way beyond one year, partly.
So, the big Loader Cranes you have seen outside, on the stability setting, you had to wait 56 weeks, something like this. The same was true for timber and recycling cranes. So extremely strong demand in those years, leading to all-time high in the order book. The order book at that time was still very much linked to EMEA. You see here, 58% in EMEA, North America 2021, already 23%. All-time peak, as again mentioned, was in April last year, 2022, and still we see here a good order book. And this is also giving us some confidence for next year, that we will somehow level out current lower market demand based on some good visibility in order book we still have.
Of course, it's not one-to-one comparable because, for sure, 2023 order books are inflated by all the different price increases we have done, so it's not one-to-one comparable. But still, around, up to EUR 1.4 billion of order book, we are currently sitting on, with a shift, however, in the regional and product mix allocation. So if we compare here, EMEA, 48%, of course, because of a lower order intake in EMEA, but North America, almost 30%, based on the strong increase, and as well within the marine sector, which was growing up to 17% in the order books. So based on this, yes, we are in a tough situation currently, but, with the visibility we have, it will not be too difficult.
It will be a difficult year, but we will somehow manage this, starting into next year, with a good visibility. And we do expect that in overall, we will have order book reach of average, I would say, four to five months. In terms of development of the respective regions, some words to EMEA, has already been mentioned now several times. So in Central Europe, in Northern Europe, in Western Europe, yes, there is still no recovery foreseeable. October order intake was a little bit better than the last months, not yet back where we should be. Southern Europe as well, has been mentioned now several times. Spain, Portugal is more stable compared to the other countries in Europe.
This is as well due to the lower inflation rates, and as well by some programs into infrastructure in those countries. So here we do expect more or less a more stable situation and a positive development. We do further expect in the Middle East region, in Eastern Europe, in Australia and New Zealand, for all the different countries where we see an increasing demand, different reasons. Eastern Europe is as well due to the demand for military equipment, especially the Baltic countries, Poland and so on.
Middle East, Africa, especially Middle East, with all the different infrastructural programs in UAE and as well in Saudi Arabia, we do expect increasing business, and that's why as well we have opened a sales hub in UAE in order to be really more present, physically closer to our customers, in order to be able to answer all those needs coming from this region. If we're going now more into detail with the different product lines as well, it has been mentioned now several times in Loader Crane, we do expect a slowing down, a decrease versus the revenue this year. As well for the timber and recycling cranes, because there is less need for the timber and recycling.
Timber price was mentioned, need for pulp, pulp mills, paper mills, and so on. What was not yet mentioned is as well, recycling cranes. It's more or less the same crane like the timber crane, just with a different gripper. Also, the steel scrap price is on a different level, is on a lower level, and also here, that's why the demand for this product is not that high. However, and quite important, for several times as well mentioned today, we see increasing demand in AWP, so in the aerial work platforms. This product is used in, for example, in building maintenance, so it's not 100% in construction, but in maintenance. And with this, we can level out a certain demand.
We have talked to many of our big accounts, big rental companies, and they currently have an incredible high utilization. One of the major accounts in Germany told us he has 100% utilization rate, and he's in need of our product. So here, we will definitely see increasing not only demand, but as well, increasing output from our side and a positive impact into the P&L on the AWP. So quite important that we are fixing our homework in this product line. Yeah, but, as I mentioned, yeah, we are not staying, we don't stand still, yeah. We are not sitting on our hands just waiting until the markets are recovering.
No, we are facing the headwinds, and taking on the opportunities and, from a kind of harvesting and farming of orders, we're turning now our attention into really hunting orders. And, those things, just a few example, what we are doing. On the upper side here, we are still investing into our sales and service footprint. That's an example of our sales and service site in Munich, we are next year going to build. So here to secure our market coverage, our market position in the region of Munich, but this was not yet properly done, so that's how it's gonna look like in two years from now. As well, we see some growth in the defense business. We have done some major deals, just recently. Mentioned, the Baltic countries.
Some other bigger deals are still in the pipeline. Quite a good profitability here. Increasing our market presence in emerging markets. We were opening, three weeks ago, our sales hub in Dubai. Quite important spare parts sales, yeah, service business. We were launching our e-commerce platform, which in the end, is just making it more convenient for our customers and for our service partners to order the parts at PALFINGER, so they more easily find the parts with us, and this tool is supporting this. So with this, we are boosting on the one line, on the one hand, the top line, on the other hand, as well, the bottom line. Strong presence in core markets, so that's a picture of the Coreum in Frankfurt, extremely close to the airport. What's that?
That's the 365 days expo center, where you can run our machines, where you can experience them physically, as well with some other products in the construction business. So not probably attending each and every show in the future, but rather giving our customers the possibility to really use our products physically all around the year. And finally, we are continuing to develop our network, partner standards, distributor standards, supporting them to grow in order to be ready to take on market shares when the market is coming back. So that's a quite important element we need to continue when the market is rebounding. So that's what we are doing in EMEA. Now, let's have a closer look to North America. It was mentioned today already several times. We do have a good- very good setup in North America.
Market environment is good, but there might be an outlook that the market could go down in the construction industry, but that's not the big issue, because in our plans, we're not only betting on growing markets. Here we as well mainly focusing on taking market shares from our competitors. Just to give a brief overview of the footprint of PALFINGER in North America, we have around 1,000 employees. We have 19 manufacturing, assembly, and service locations in North America, and extremely important for us is the mobile service fleet. So to secure the uptime of our machines is a crucial element and USP, especially in North America, based also on the geography, obviously, to secure the uptime of our customers.
And that's a key element of our argumentation to buy PALFINGER's, because we are securing uptime when there is a breakdown of our machines. So the mobile service vehicles, our mobile service fleet, together with the engineers, the trained technicians on the field, is a key element and USP of PALFINGER. Yes, and we are 35 years already in the regions with the entire portfolio. But 35 years, what are we making now different? And here I would like to comment on one thing, a quite important element from my point of view. Yes, we have 35 years experience and track record in the region, but so far, until the creation of the GPO, all the businesses were run more or less independently and autark.
So little synergies, little cooperation. GPO was first important step in order to bring the entire businesses together, but there was still one thing missing, and this was a common hub, where the regional management, our customers have a place to meet, the sales team, the service team, all the guys have a kind of a common home base, where they're going also to be physically together, and that's what we have worked on in the last 1.5 years, approximately. So we have, in the region of Greater Chicago, in the village called Schaumburg, defined a headquarters there. We have built it, and the key element of this headquarters, it's not only administrative headquarters, where we have accounting and payroll and so on.
No, it's a headquarters where, first of all, the regional team, cross-functional, is working together, having their meetings there, regularly meeting together, as well with the sales and service team. But even more important, we have copy and paste what we have in Kasern, a demo center and a training center. Demo center to show our equipment to our customers, so we bring some traffic into this headquarters, not only being a administrative headquarters, but really bringing life, bringing the pain and the need from the market into this building. As well, a training center for our sales team and for our service team to have regular exchange with our sales and service partner network in this location. So quite important element, this part of training and demo center.
We launched it in summer this year with the presence of Andreas Klauser, with the mayor of the city, and as well with the Austrian ambassador, the lady in the blue clothes. Was a very, very good event here. Yeah, and some words where the growth is expected to come from. As I already mentioned, it's not only coming from increasing market, it's also about really stepping on the toes from the competition. Where do we expect the growth? Loader Crane will rather stay stable. We are already the market leader there. Here, we expect a rather stable development. Service Crane, that's the picture here on the upper side.
These products are typically used to service construction equipment, mining equipment out there in the field, especially in the oil and gas industry. So here we have a incredible good market demand in the last 12 months, a quite high order book, high order coverage, even into the third and fourth quarter next year. So this is still continuing to give us a good growth and also to get some market shares here. You have already had the chance to experience this product, the so-called TMF, the Truck Mounted Forklift. Here we have a huge market. The most biggest single market is still U.S., North America, total market around 5,000 units, and here it's mainly about taking market shares from our main competitor, Cargotec, Hiab.
We have the right machines, we have the right setup, we know the customers. It's big fleet accounts. We have the contacts. We already gained some major orders, and probably what is not yet known today is we are able to this year to double the sales from last year, and we'll do another step as well next year. So we have very, very good response from the market here with all the different USPs like this we will see you got introduced today. So quite important as well in terms of getting into competition with Hiab and Cargotec to make this successful. And then last but not least, AWP, we want to grow as well here. North America is by far the biggest market for such kind of platforms.
Here, that's insulated platforms, the guys working on power lines. That's the main application. So electric utilities, enormous market potential. We are somehow a small player there, and we are now fixing our homework and improving our revenues and profitability as well here. So out of those three products, we do expect a major improvement of our position in North America. Not only based on growth in the market, this will as well partly happen, but as well, just doing our homework and increasing our market position. That was the deep dive with regard to North America. Now I would like to open up a little bit what could come next, what is, what is beyond the growth we will see in North America.
And here, we clearly identified that India will be, not only could be, but will be a big story for us in the upcoming years. We have our presence in India since already several years, and we have seen enormous growth potential here. So we have been able to increase the PALFINGER revenues here by 50% in just one year. I would not to raise too much expectation, we are coming from a really low level, but still we have been able to grow 50% this year, and this is as well underlined now by these macroeconomic indications here. The development in India is really incredible. So it's going to be the third largest economy by 2027, and over proportional GDP growth.
Especially, all the infrastructural investments, especially in the segments, they are put into roads, railways, urban infrastructure, airports, and so on, those are typically industries where we have the right solutions for. From this side, I'm very convenient, confident, that we will see here a major development if we are going to do the right steps. We have been present in India this year several times, together with our local team, and what we have seen there was quite impressive and also kind of a changing story, because the first time we see that topics like, and elements like cost of ownership, efficiency in load handling, safety, and quality is increasing importance in the customer base in India.
So we might not have yet all the answers how to tackle this exactly, but what we are for sure is that we are, next year, setting up a team strategically working on this topic, how to sort this on the one hand, for the market demand, but as well, what this means for us, for a supply footprint. Yeah, with this, I would like to close the market session. And Karina, you are going to introduce the next point.
That's right. Just a quick intermezzo. Thank you very much, Gerhard. Gerhard will stay on the stage and will be joined by Philipp Smole. Together, they will talk about the digital customer journey and how it also impacts and supports the future success of PALFINGER. Please welcome the digital transformation officer, Philipp Smole.
Thank you.
Y es, hello. Now, together with Gerhard, we will basically walk you through a little bit the progress we have made on our digital customer journey and how do we create value for them. I think Andreas actually pointed out already earlier, we are in a transformation in PALFINGER from a developer of products to a supplier of integrated, seamless lifting solutions, and that's a huge change for us as a company. Vision 2030 is helping us and to go on that learning path and move forward, to capture opportunities, address the challenges ahead, but proactively transform ourselves, 'cause at the end of the day, in 10 years, we need to have a competitive offering still in the market and stay relevant. This is where we are. We don't innovate because we can, and we don't digitalize because the infrastructure and the technology is there. No.
We only do that for three reasons, and that's extremely important. Reason number one is, we add value for our customers to help them win in the marketplace. The reason number two is, we digitalize because we have smarter data to take better decisions, to be more effective. And the reason number three is, we automize and be more efficient in the way how we move forward. These are the only three reasons for an integrated solution to really move forward and also put money into digitalization. An integrated solution is much more than what you see on the right-hand side, which is extremely complex. You had the chance today to look through our productions, how the whole crane vehicle and the integration is working. It's actually integrating this and all of the data we create into the ecosystem of our customers.
This is where we really create value after all. To do that properly, however, we need to have an intimate knowledge of what they have and how they work. On the other hand, we have to balance two things. We have to create what Felix and Andreas said today, the short-term impact with the investments into the future. To do this right, one thing is extremely important: we need to really understand what our customers truly need and pay attention to very much in the details. At the end of the day, this knowledge about our customer, really understanding their needs, their jobs to be done, is what is driving us.
So you have seen this guy on the very first video. So let's assume that's our customer, and, PALFINGER is for sure a customer-centric organization, otherwise, we would not be the market leader. So it's quite obvious that we need to know who this guy is, what is his daily job, what is his so-called job to be done, what are his challenges all day long? However, based on our, let's say, multi-level, multi-layer distribution channel, it's sometimes difficult to follow up, and to know each and every customer, because we have many thousands of customer, and based on our distribution channel worldwide presence, it's quite difficult to know all of them personally.
However, the digital customer journey is helping us to bridge this gap, having a seamless connection from PALFINGER to our channel distributor, to the dealer, to the body builder, to service partner, to the customer. So through this seamless customer journey, we know who he is, what he's doing, and as well, what he's doing with his equipment. And that's a quite valuable information for us, and with this 360-degree picture of the customer, we are enabled to target him, and as well, to personalize interaction, and based on data-driven analysis, we know exactly what we need to offer to him. And now Philipp is going to introduce the concept of the customer journey.
Before I do so, I will make our life a little bit more complex. Our customers are not only our operators. It could be a fleet manager, it could be an owner of an equipment or a service partner, and we need to understand all of these journeys to get the thing right, because Andreas and also Felix said before, uptime and having sure that the machines are working all of the time are extremely important. So where does the customer journey start? I sit at home, and I realize that I need to have a job. It starts with the awareness cycle.
Walking through the customers from our marketing pages towards basically providing the right information when they are considering to buy, getting them the right information for a quote, and hopefully capturing the order, to transferring them and getting them the product, putting it into use, but also providing the service, so we have the uptime over the whole life cycle. The only purpose of the customer journey is to transform someone which is interested in the lifting job into a loyal customer of PALFINGER, so he's a repeat customer going forward. Gerhard will explain why an integrated and seamless customer journey is extremely important, and we'll walk you through a couple of examples, not all of them, in detail, what we are doing along that journey, so you get a little bit of an idea what our picture is.
Well, I mean, of course, we're not doing digitalization for the sake of doing digitalization, so it needs to add value, and especially for our distributors, for our channel distributors, we ask them to provide us information, to provide us some certain access, so they also want to have something from us. So it's key that with this, we need to have a win-win-win situations. So PALFINGER needs to have a benefit, our sales channel needs to have a benefit, and of course, as well, our customer needs to have a benefit. And I just would like to highlight a few of them, which are, I think more than obvious in the field of digitalization, high availability, 24/7 of information provided, convenient to our sales channel. Efficient processes enable quick decision, yeah.
Just imagine an inquiry process to an order, to an offer, order acknowledgement with a CPQ order configurator, product configurator. Maximum equipment availability, uptime through efficient services, smart services, efficiency gains, just not doing things twice. Through our distribution channel, you don't need to book orders several times. Machine data, information about machine data through connected solutions. We are getting, we are getting those information in the R&D team, in our service team, securing again, the uptime, deriving important decisions out of it. And last but not least, and very important as well, to get instant feedback from our customers about their experience with PALFINGER in order to take some countermeasures. So quite important elements to improve the way how we get connected with our customers.
Now, looking into the different elements once again, starting with marketing, typically looking into the awareness topic, so quite obvious, it's the social media, it's as well our webpage. And the important element here is the webpage is not only anymore something where we are providing information to our partners or for our customers, it's in the meantime something where we are getting leads, and the cost of the leads are much cheaper than through a standard sales channel. So we have seen that through our investments into the webpage. We increasingly get leads through our website with a kind of evaluation from the marketing team, from the marketing team. This is then followed up with the sales team.
So quite important to use here the webpage, not only as information, but as really a lead-generating topic, and transform visitors to leads. In the sales side, actually, what we want to achieve is not only the final sales, of course, that's the target, but we want to be the consultant for our customers. We want to accompany the customer throughout the journey, from the inquiry to the final order acknowledgement. Here we have different tools. I already mentioned the CPQ, the product configurator, with which we are explaining to the customer what is the best solution for your purpose. The backbone obviously is the CRM, but as well we have some other features where we are rather skilling the customer in which way he can use our equipment the most efficient way.
So there are certain tools where we show him, "Look, you need to do with the crane positioned that way in order to lift that weight in this reach." So all those elements are included in the CPQ, and as well, we are using virtual reality in training our customers. Philipp will talk later about this. So here, it's not only the selling, it's really being a consultant to our customers, what to buy, what's the best solution for his challenge, for his job to be done. And finally, a very important element, of course, is the service. We always say the first machine is sold by the sales team, the second is sold by the service team. After the handover, the service starts, and best-in-class services and maximum uptime normally ensure customer loyalty, so recurring customer.
And here we are, with the digitalization already pretty far. We have, different elements like the e-commerce, the connected solution, the smart services. So a lot of elements we are providing to our network in order to improve and enhance their, processes. But in the end, it's, all about, ease and convenience of detecting the errors, finding the parts, having a skilled, service network, and with this, avoiding unplanned downtime. Yeah, in the end, it's, mainly about this. So all in all, that's, more or less the journey in this integrated customer journey, and all those colored dots are the elements which we have already more or less digitalized.
So all the different touch points with our customers, with our sales and service partners, are reflected in digital tools and processes in an integrated customer journey, where we have the entire, touch points from PALFINGER to the channel distributor, to our service partners, finally to the customer. Now, looking into one topic, which is quite important, element and is more or less the backbone of the sales process, it's the, it's the so-called CPQ, so the Configure Price Quote. We call it the product configurator. And here we would like to look back a little bit, how was this done some four, five years ago in the, let's say, in the analog world? How did a typical sales pitch of a salesman look like?
I think let's make things a little bit more concrete. You had the chance today to look at the product downstairs. And a typical sales guy would basically, just two years ago or three, still use these. And your 3D image down there, this was a 165.002 TEC crane. You actually saw the actual product also back there. And a sales guy would have actually looked it up. Skilled ones would find basically page number five and chapter five, and there is in total 60 pages with different feature sets and rest.
Now, it's very easy if you're skilled, if you know how to do it, and basically do the whole process, but just imagine how tedious the process is to get the right quotation, confirm the order period, make sure that the combination is the correct one, that Martin, which is sitting in the back, can even produce it. So what did we do, Gerhard?
Yeah, in the end, I think you see the answer in the picture. And, I mean, the PALFINGER sales guys were quite heavy guys because they had to carry all this paper. We thought that's kind of awkward. So, in the end, we have developed a CPQ, where you have on the different mobile devices all the price lists, all the different USPs, all the videos, all the information about our products on the mobile devices. And in the end, the CPQ has two functions. On the one hand, it's for the salesman, a sales tool, yeah, to sit in front of the customer, giving him the different technical background, doing configuration, showing him the different USPs, the different configurations, and so on. So the sales pitch itself, but then as well, the...
It's an order tool to PALFINGER, because then the sales guy does not need to book again in a different system. It directly forwards then the inquiry or the offer and the order to PALFINGER, and that's the kind of the order tool we are going to use. And we have launched this, the CPQ back in 2019 for the Loader Crane. We have rolled it out now for all the different product lines in EMEA since then. Now we are on the way also to roll it out in some other regions. And here you see the ramp-up curve, quite a steep ramp-up curve, which proves that we were in doing the right things.
This year, we are already targeting around 90% utilization rate, which means that 90% of all the orders coming in through the CPQ, as well means no additional booking of the order two, three times, no mistakes, in the configuration, because you do just once the configuration, and then it's only checks. The salesman can cope with all the complexity of our product, so with the entire digitalization and, additional features in electronics and mechatronics, our products get more and more complex. So a huge benefit of the CPQ is to manage, complexity, providing USPs, during the sales pitch. Again, fast order processing, yeah. This, is more or less just, just in time.
We see the offer from our distribution partners, so we can already anticipate there is increasing market demand, ramp up our operations accordingly, and quite important, and we have seen the importance, especially here in the last two years, to deploy new price lists. We have never been before in deploying so much price lists than in the last two years, and, in the past, our distributors were taking about six to eight weeks to process in order just to adapt price lists. Now it's press button, new price list is valid. So extremely important in terms of efficiency gains, not only for PALFINGER, as well for our sales partners. But, I think the CPQ is not the only tool with which we are supporting the customer to familiarize with our tools.
No, actually, you had today the chance to play a little bit in the background with our small models. And, actually, it was, actually something which we used on trade fairs and else, to use virtual tools to have operators train. But frankly speaking, one of the biggest challenges we have right now is the increasing complexity in our machines and the labor market, where skilled labor is basically getting more and more scarce. So how do we address that? Of course, physical training is still important on the products, which is important, but we found that we also can do virtual training. It's a safe. You can test the machine, and you don't damage anything. You have seen the timber and recycling crane.
It's cost-effective because you can repeat it as often as you want, and you don't block a physical asset which is worth EUR 200,000. It's sustainable with an immersive experience, but last but not least, and that's most important, you can test all of the features and have always the newest version before they even arrive into the market. We, in the meantime, deploy actually different sessions, where from a very basic training, how do you operate the machine and how is it working, to very complex tasks with dangerous payloads. Gerhard mentioned defense before, and a lot of these products, people are trained in the virtual environment first, because both the price, but also the impact of a misuse or a misunderstanding in the operation of the device could basically not move forward.
We are qualifying people moving forward with this, and at the end of the day, it's just a via Google with a device all around, the actual remote you can use, and we have made out of this a commercial product in the meantime. A commercial product which is going into operators, fleet managers, driving schools, which are actually educating train operators, but for example, also the Federal Agency of Technical Relief. Why? Because there's 20, 30 different operators operating the same crane, and you don't know whether they are qualified, and this makes sure that they basically can do that properly.
I mean, this is for training. Is there something we have in the back end for some equipment already in use?
Yes, we do as well. I think we talked out there as well, all of our high-tech solutions are equipped with a telematics. I think using the actual machine data in use and moving forward is one of the core of an integrated solution, and providing services and the data right there where you need to take a decision. PALFINGER Connected Plus is exactly doing this. In the end of the day, how does it work? We have an IoT platform on the device, which is basically providing data in real time. There's basic services, very simple, for the fleet manager, where is the machine? Where is the geolocation? Is it running on Saturday and Sunday, and should I rather switch it off because it's actually not planned?
To the operator, where is an error code, where he want to look into to the service partner, which wants to plan an intervention before actually something is going—we can move from basically reacting to a service intervention to proactively planning them. That's the basics. Most of the challenges is, how do you earn money with this? I'm very glad that you saw the timber and recycling crane today, and actually, this is why I booked that one out there. Interesting enough, we have built the capability with an IoT and data science team, and we have identified that with the existing sensor systems we have on board, we can measure the weight without a physical sensor, just with all of the data we have on the machine already.
So we're saving up to EUR 10,000 just for the sensor, but we can offer our customers what the payload on the whole truck is. Does anyone know why this is important? Safe use of the device, and the other one is the police, because you pay a EUR 5,000 fine. Opportunity cost, very simple. At the end of the day, we are using the data also for third-party platforms. So if you go and talk to Bundesforste or Mayr-Melnhof and the rest, they're using Felix tools. Why? Because they plan their harvesting process to their sawmill and when this is all going through, and what we are doing right now is we are also integrating there.
I think with PALFINGER Connected Plus, we're actually having value-added services where, for the first time in PALFINGER, we don't earn money just with the solution itself, but also.
We're providing data moving forward, and I think this is what we talked about, going into the integrated solutions. But there is more, because we do also something in the service in the end as well.
In the past, service was about to fix the problems on the field, but for us, service is, has as well a different understanding. I think you will be very much interested about this. So for us, service is as well an important business driver, top line, even more bottom line. And, here we just pointed out two elements which we have been developing. The one thing is the service cockpit. The service cockpit is a platform, which provides the full transparency of the lifetime of an equipment. Where is the top line growth coming from? Because it indicates when does the customer need to have the next service stop, the next maintenance stop, the next legal inspection.
There is a win-win-win situation for PALFINGER, because we are selling probably some spare parts, the service partner, because he can sell the service slot, and for the customer, because he does not forget about the service stop and does not have an unplanned downtime. So extremely important, one thing. Second thing, e-commerce. I already have mentioned this. We were launching the e-commerce platform, and the main idea behind is make finding spare parts as convenient as possible, and with this, we will gain market share in the spare parts. Spare parts is extremely important element of our profitability, and here we just want to make it as easy as possible for our service network to find the right parts in PALFINGER.
That's the main topic: find the right parts, know what is the price, know what is the location, where it's stored, what, what is the amount of spare parts we have on stock, what's the delivery time, when can I have it at the right service partner? So that's the things which we want to answer with the e-commerce platform. Yeah, in the end, what we want to have achieved is a satisfied customer, a loyal customer. That's the main topic we want to achieve, and the loyal and satisfied customer, in the end, brings a lot of value for PALFINGER. Recurring customer business is a key element.
Closing with this, I hope we have been able to somehow give you a short presentation and idea what we have been doing in the last few years in order to transform PALFINGER from being a product provider into a solution provider, as well, digitalizing some elements of our business model. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Philipp Smole and Gerhard Sturm. Lastly, we're talking about a topic that needs to be addressed today as well, and that's the topic of sustainability. Our next speaker will talk about areas that have the biggest lever and areas that we should focus on in the upcoming years, 2024, and also long-term. Please welcome the Head of Sustainability at PALFINGER, Thiemo Färber.
So ladies and gentlemen, I'm really happy to speak to you about sustainability today. So it's now arrived at the core, let's say, of the company, and we really integrated it into the strategy 2030. So one thing, how PALFINGER expresses this is that I'm reporting now directly to our CEO, so I think this is one thing that's really important on that hand. And what I'd like to show you today is just give a little insight into how we approach the process, and talk about results that we've achieved, and what are we working on right now. So, this is our process, starting from the ESG. In the middle, you can see materiality matrix, and then we have this bubble on right-hand side. So, we're doing this year is really emphasizing on preparing for the CSRD.
I think you all know there's some reporting issues coming up the next years, and we really wanna be ahead of that wave and be proactively addressing these needs there. So at the same time, while doing the materiality analysis this year, we put our framework to the test, and I'd like to show you today what is the outcome of what we've seen. But first of all, let's have a look at what we've achieved so far. Just two elements or two ideas about fewer emissions. So back in 2015, PALFINGER started to use green energy, so this led to reducing, until 2022, our carbon footprint by over 50%, and at the same time, revenues grew or nearly doubled.
So I think this is quite impressive on that hand, and what we've done in the field of social is also dramatically reducing our TRIR, what is the work-related accident rate, and I think this is shows how important in the past it was already, it already was for PALFINGER, and obviously, we're continuing to work on sustainability. So this year, we conducted the materiality assessment, and it's, as I said, already in preparation of the CSRD. So we were asking both internal and external stakeholders, and basically, not much or not that much changed, so I don't want you to go too much into detail. But what's really the takeaway here, we are well prepared, and we could right now start to engage with our auditors to do the assessments. So now, talking about lifting positive impact.
So what does that mean to us? I think this is really about continuing the corporate strategy, how we integrate our actions into the fields of 2030, Go Digital and Go for Solution. We have defined four strategic fields, and you can see in the middle, it's clearly based on where we come from. It's the corporate culture and integrity that is really the basis where we start from. For us, sustainability means always focusing on where we can have the biggest impact. For example, to preserve natural resources or to leverage our impact in social topics. Let me explain a bit what's behind these headlines.
So circular value chains, we've already heard a lot about the customer journey, and this fits perfectly when talking about a future value chain and talking about how essential circular systems will become for PALFINGER in the future. So starting from research, development, in procurement and operations as well, we are going to accompany our customer during the whole lifetime of the product, and so this is something we really emphasize on. We have to ensure that in global value chains, we're really able to help our customers. So the transition towards the circular economy is really a central task for companies, and we will continuously reduce our use of materials. So second thing we've heard also about today is product safety and the cybersecurity.
So you can all imagine, product safety is really one crucial thing for PALFINGER, and we are right now at the market leader, the ones who are providing the most safe solutions in the world, and we are gonna uphold this standard for sure. So for us, it's clear to protect people who work with our products, and this allows no compromises. So going digital, we are bringing together digitalization and physical products. And that's clear that also cybersecurity will play a crucial role in the future to prevent the information or the data on our products from unauthorized access, data manipulation, or theft. The third thing, people at PALFINGER, we also heard about that today, so we think it's the people who define PALFINGER, and they are defining our products.
So we are already a strong community, and we will continue to invest in the development of our people. It's clear that people create our products, and we must attract and retain the right people, and we are doing this by investing in diversity and learning formats, for example. The last one is climate action. Climate action for us is clear a contribution to the societal needs today, so we have come to a limit. As a world, we might slow down the climate change. We might not be able to stop it, and so the one thing is about reducing our own footprint in the production, reducing the footprint by the goods that we buy, so upstream and also for the product in use downstream.
Of course, we are preparing PALFINGER for changed climatic or to adapt for this climate change in the future. So I've talked about what's the plan and how we focused, and just want to give you an insight how this is meant to be. So first of all, I explained by what my approach is, how to drive the sustainability at PALFINGER, so developing principles, that's what we saw right now. But even more important is how to bring these ideas to the ground and how to execute it. So this is the second thing, steering and support. So at PALFINGER, we think as a sustainability management, we have to start initiatives, like we started to calculate our carbon footprint, like we are driving the diversity initiative. And of course, it's really important to me to mention this third pillar is about capacity building.
Educating the people, they have to know what they are dealing with, and engaging, empowering. So I brought one example that we were running with PALFINGER 21st, so the internal incubator this year, and it was a challenge about sustainability. So we were asking our colleagues to tell us about what their ideas about environmental sustainability are. So on the one hand, we had some ideas, on the other hand, some projects that were already running, and I like to tell about two examples that we can see there. So one thing was about the minus 10% at the plant in Kosrat. So Kosrat was asking all employees there to hand in some ideas about how we can reduce our energy footprint or the energy used.
By combining this over all hierarchy levels, the colleagues really realized within one year to achieve the goal set, and this demonstrates really a great success that the investments in sustainability turn out on a positive way, and we will transfer this concept also to other plants to really move on like this. So the second thing is, like the aerial work platforms that we saw today, just to give you a little insight why this is from a point of view, from a point of sustainability, so interesting, because there's right now cities that are setting up, like, zero-emission zones or lower-emission zones. And knowing this, it's really crucial for us to invest there because we're solving several pain points of our customer.
First of all, as there's reduced noise or nearly no noise, they can operate even during nighttime, so this means longer operating times. They are allowed to enter the city zones, and at the same time, we are also decreasing the carbon footprint with this product. So the prototype has been already gone into serious production. And, just to sum it up, with sustainability, we create added value for our customers, and we are lifting our positive impact while boosting the business opportunities. So happy to answer your questions.
Thank you very much, Thiemo Färber. While we are already rearranging the stage for the panel talk, unfortunately, I have to tell you that we.
There are no questions.
I don't have time for the Q&As today, due to the length of some of the presentations here in the first row. But if you're watching on your online stream, of course, you can ask those questions, and we will get back to you via email or telephone. And if you in the room have questions, of course, we will answer them during the wine tasting or later on. And now I'd like to welcome the guest of our panel talk of today. So welcome to the stage, Gerald Mayer. First, we are rearranging the stage. Perfect. So maybe we actually can take one question for Thiemo or Gerhard. Perfect. We will wait for the wine tasting a little bit later on.
This has to be done, of course, with all detail required, and I think we're almost perfectly set for the panel talk and, of course, the discussion afterwards. So now I'd like to welcome to the stage, Gerald Mayer, CEO of AMAG. Very warm welcome. Stefan Pierer from Pierer Mobility, and the President of the IV Upper Austria. Welcome.
Hello.
PALFINGER CEO, Andreas Klauser.
A very warm welcome to the economist, Eric Heymann, from Deutsche Bank.
Here, here, where to sit?
Please have a seat. First of all, thank you so much for taking the time and for being here. We appreciate it very, very much. We've talked about the upcoming challenges a lot already. Many are talking about a coming recession. Maybe Andreas Klauser, we'll start with you. How challenging do you think 2024 will be, and are there also opportunities to be taken within those challenges?
Before then handing over. Sorry. Before handing over here to the other colleagues here on the panel, I think it's will be a challenging year, no doubt, as we said before. Luckily, for the start of 2024, we have already quite sufficient orders in-house, and we can cover the first, more than the first, quarter of 2024. The cake will be shrinking, so it's about cost adjustments, cost management, very important, the efficiency, and as well, how flexible we are in terms of dealing with volatility. As these will be the key ingredients for next year, still to come out of this phase faster, better, more successful than our competitors. And I think this is something as well we need to recognize, we need to plan, and we need to deal with.
Mr. Pierer, how challenging do you think the next year will be? And also, how do you prepare for a year like this?
I think, first, I was waiting for his information because that guys are not telling what's coming, and afterwards they are explaining that it came differently.
Unfortunately, it's the last question.
But we are used to that. I can tell you, it's getting seriously tough, and especially for Europe, because in Europe, we have a special business case. It's named the Green Deal. Yeah. The Green Deal was very positively thing, but finally, it's destroying the industrial base and economy in Europe. And instead of setting up incentives, we are regulating us to a standstill. So that's the circumstance. Certainly, the demographic development, immigration, we did very well. We know, 2015, there was a picture with Schaffner. So that's the, I would say, the surrounding. But what does it mean? Consolidation. For sure, the European market will face a serious recession, a serious one. I tell you, keep it in mind.
For example, just today, the German government decided for that support for the energy. It's crazy. We are sitting here in Austria. Yeah. We are missing maybe 20% of competitiveness. Yeah, but that's. Globally, I think, we are in a world where instead of globalization, we are facing the opposite. It's de-globalization. It's in the U.S., the Inflation Act, and if you are running a global company like we are or automotive in Europe, you are forced to invest in the U.S. Otherwise, you are not anywhere, anymore in that market. Yeah. Secondly, China is doing okay, but between Europe and China, it seems that the European politics will be raised with some customs. Yeah. That's clear. The only benefiting area is India, because they are getting cheap energy from Russia.
They are qualifying it, we are buying it. So that's basically the big picture, but I think it's challenging, but if you're doing the right thing, you are brave, you are global positioned, you are on the forefront.
At least a little bit of a positive outlook as well.
Yes, yes
I n 2024.
A crisis is a chance, honestly saying. First of all, welcome to the Innviertel. It's the first time the capital market here. The Innviertel is a very special area. For us, it's not easy to come here because in the neighborhood, it's starting in the north with Gerald on AMAG. He is on the south, and him, I am in the middle. 30 years ago, that area was the most difficult one. There was an unofficial bankruptcy of AMAG. Yeah. I had the chance to take over the biggest bankruptcy in the middle, KTM, and throughout 30 years, it's the most efficient industrial area what we have in Austria. If you put together our. How many employees do you have?
1,500 here. 1,500 only here?
Yeah, 1,500 here.
Two thousand.
5,000. So here sitting 10,000. 40 km, just.
Yeah. So a very good area for business obviously, or for opportunities.
Absolutely.
Of course, we will talk about the different markets, because you mentioned them, a little bit later on. Maybe, Gerald Mayer, how have you prepared yourself and also your company, for what's to come in 2024?
First of all, I think we have, we are in so many different markets that you have to prepare a little bit differently. I would say the most important challenge we have, and Stefan also mentioned it, is I think the environment in what we are right now. And I think one of the most important things we are facing exactly now as we speak, because we have negotiations in Vienna right now going on, our collective agreements for the upcoming years. There are a lot of things to be done and have to be solved for the future and for a bright future, actually, here.
And that we are right now at the point, I think, where we really, from employer side, have to fight, that we manage to improve the situation. Because during COVID times, we started, or it was actually in the year 2019, in our industry. And I'm just now comparing Austria to Germany, and we are two kilometers from the border of Germany with our plant and our 2,000 people. What we managed since 2019 is they are way more expensive than they were, and they are way more expensive than they are in Germany. So for me, the P&L would be better by some millions, simply by moving our plant to Germany, and we are comparing Austria to a Germany, which is a weak Germany right now.
So this is a very big challenge, and how do we prepare? We automate wherever. We are, thank God, we are capital intensive and not really employee intensive, which is important. And so this is a very important part of the environment which has to be solved. Talking a little bit about the different, let's say, business areas we are in, aerospace is doing well.
Very well
On our side, so this is something which is, like, pushing, booming, positive. Automotive is stable, so we are trying to. Of course, we have to bring costs down because personnel expense is really high. We have energy. We are always talking about the energy, which is very high. We are an energy-intensive industry, so we have to manage costs strictly and have to bring them down, and this is simply what we are doing. And then we are in other areas, like industrial applications, and this is the difficult part on our side because industrial application, we are talking about machine building industry, and so on, short-term business.
This is very weak and has been very weak for the last 18 months, and I do not really expect a big improvement there for the next months, and/or let's say next year. And so this will be the difficult exercise we have to target there, to stay cost competitive, keep costs down, but being prepared for the point in time when it starts again to ramp up. So this is what we are doing right now, so, preparing a little bit for the storm and keeping the sail. I don't know, I'm not a salesman, but keeping it tight. Yeah.
Now, like Stefan Pierer asked, we're asking the man with the crystal ball, hopefully, from an analyst's perspective, how challenging do you think the next year will be, in which sectors, and where are the opportunities that can be exploited?
Yeah. Thank you for your question. It has been quite a tradition during the last few months, quarters, or even years, that after presentations that I give on business cycle or industrial perspective of Europe or Germany, that I'm asked, "Can you say something positive, please, at the end of your presentation, at least?" And now it's interesting that Stefan Pierer starts with just such a negative outlook. But I think we have to distinguish between these structural challenges, problems that you mentioned, the energy transition, decarbonization, demography, especially in Europe, and the business cycle.
So with regard to the business cycle, I think it will be another difficult year in 2024, with limited growth, probably close to recession in Germany, maybe a bit small increase of GDP on average next year, but nothing where we can say, "Yeah, yes, yeah, now we are over this economic crisis." United States, maybe better, even though our colleagues still expect a very mild recession at the beginning of 2024. They were quite early to say we will not get out of this high inflation situation without a recession, and said some one and a half or two years ago that there will be a recession one and a half or two years later. Now, with the positive numbers of GDP and other early indicators, the word of soft landing is gaining in importance.
So it might be the case that we prevent a recession in the United States, but still, it will be a weak year in the United States. The difference from U.S. to Europe is probably that after they are gone through the trough, the dynamic will be higher thereafter.
D ue to a pragmatic regulatory approach in different sectors. Like, you mentioned the Inflation Reduction Act is a kind of subsidy program for many sectors. And Europe is always telling to reduce bureaucracy, but what we see in reality is.
The opposite
Taxonomy, CBAM, the due diligence law, supply chain act, or how it is called in English. So different additional bureaucracy measures that are introduced in the market. So this is, China is the big unknown so far. They had some problems after surprisingly opening up the economy in early 2023. Of course, they are not independent of the weak industrial business cycle in Europe and United States. They will probably increase monetary and fiscal impulses.
M easured by their growth potential, it will be probably another difficult year. The propensity to save in China is still high. Private companies are reluctant to invest compared to former business cycles. The overall public impact of the government during the last few years on the economy has increased, which leads to an uncertainty, and the problems in the real estate sector are, of course, very relevant. With regard to sectors, I'm more optimistic for electrical, mechanical engineering. With regard to European production, they still benefit, as you mentioned, from a high order backlog, which was built up during Corona and thereafter. There is some pent-up demand and recovery in the automotive industry, which might turn the other way around next year.
But overall, private consumption could return because real income might now increase again when inflation rate is going down and the higher wage increases are coming into the market. But the structural things are something that is a complete different topic from the current business cycle, something that we could talk about for hours, and about the instruments that we use to address all these challenges. But I leave it with that at the moment.
We leave it short for the moment a nd then later on downstairs, we can talk some more. Stefan Pierer, supply chain is becoming more and more important in a global context. Are you focusing your sourcing activities in Asia or more in Europe? And, what could be the reason from moving away from one of those two markets? And maybe even a second question, because you mentioned it in the first answer: what do you think about the Chinese market?
So my whole group is fortunately positioned very globally. So I've on the part two-wheeler, since 14 years, I have a strategic partner in India, in Pune, where we're doing the small displacement bikes, in Pune. So in that, I have a whole supply chain, an Indian one, with some Chinese components. Yeah, casting wheels and something like that is still missing in India, but the rest is 100% from India. Then we have also, since four years, a joint venture in China, in Hangzhou, where we are doing the middle class. It's based on a Chinese one, and the high-end and off-road bikes we're doing here, it's mainly an European or mainly DACH area with some Japanese components.
So that's the structure, and that is a help in that de-globalization situation, yeah? And that it's for sure, it will move on in the car industry, and is already there. You have to follow your OEM customer, where he's going there. So that's, that's the way it works. And I'm a real- as president of the... I'm really sad for the small size companies. They just a footprint here in Europe doesn't look good, I can tell you.
Mm-hmm. It's going to be difficult. Maybe let's talk about PALFINGER, Andreas Klauser. How can production and manufacturing be prepared for all those challenges ahead? And also, how is PALFINGER positioned in that regard? And is there also time for innovation in a challenging time, where you have to think about other things most of the time?
I think it's very important in terms of efficiency, as I said earlier, that we become more efficient. We look at our costs and automation. And I think what you said, Gerald, it's important that any kind of process where you can do it mainless, you need to do. And this is something which works against now the workforce in terms of asking for more money. And I think this is as well something the environment needs to understand. We, as a global player out of Europe, yes, we have opportunities to balance it out. And because of this balancing out, we can still go for our turnover as planned, like a similar level as this year.
So this means if we add all these elements together, we will find ways through, but maybe not in Austria, maybe not in Europe. And this is as well, I think, the critical moment now for Europe to step up and to say, "What can be done? Where can we fulfill the green requirements, and where not?" On the other hand, innovation, we need to drive it forward, and you have seen the plans. It's not only because of being innovative and being a technology company, is as well to provide best-in-class solutions for our customers. And this is, goes in hand with digitalization, artificial intelligence, et cetera. So this is needed and required even to be more efficient in future.
Mm-hmm. We will also talk about how competitive Europe can be in the future as well. Gerald Mayer, you've touched on this a little bit in your first answer. Your customers are largely from the automotive and aerospace, but also packaging industry. What has the order situation been like in the recent months, and where are the major differences between those different customer segments?
We have even more than those three, but for the three, I think it was very positive for us in terms of aerospace industry. So for us, we not just renewed, we extended a contract with Airbus, our most important customer there. So we increased the market share starting from 2024 onwards. It's a long-term contract, until 2029, so it's for us, a very important one. Automotive is, for us, perhaps surprisingly, also very stable. Also for next year, demand is all the orders we have for next year is high. The demand is good, so we don't really see the reduction of volumes.
But we have also a global setup there, so we are discussing not just with the German OEM customers there, in this case, we are talking to the Koreans, we are talking to the Japanese, to the French. So we have a strategically, we said we wanna have a diversified customer portfolio, and this works out to be quite a stable one there. It also, for us, you know, with the reduction of weight, which is necessary for electrical vehicles, this is also a market for us, which is very positive. And so we see demand there also for next year right now. As we speak, packaging is, per definition, a stable business.
This year, we see some reduction of demand when it comes to, let's say, high quality or more expensive products, where you need perhaps cheaper packaging material.
S o it's a little bit reduced compared to what you would expect, but right now, sorry. Right now, also strong and stable. There are other business areas for us which are perhaps more interesting in that sense, this is sports. We are shipping, for example, alloy, which is a high-strength alloy for bicycle industry, for skis, for poles, for sports industry. And this part is, this industry or this business is definitely very difficult right now. We discussed it before. Bicycle industry was super strong during COVID or right after COVID, but there we are in the middle or at the end of a bullwhip effect, so where we think minimum six, 12 months that this demand will stay weak. Then we are in the architecture business.
Architecture business means for our products, China. China and real estate industry in China is difficult right now. This is what we know, and this is a part which is more difficult, and this industrial application is the most difficult part right now, and it's the German machine building industry. But all in all, I would say it's okay, what I expect for next year.
Maybe, staying with the different sectors, Eric Heymann, which sectors do you think will be hit hard, not even next year, but even long term? Or is it not possible to say that because of those geopolitical uncertainties that are changing, it seems like almost every other month?
Yeah. Leaving aside these geopolitical, circumstances and looking at the framework that we have so far, the new energy world, the ambitious, to be polite, goals on the climate policy area, I think it's quite clear that of the vertically integrated industrial value chain in Europe, in Germany, we get under pressure at the very beginning due to higher energy costs. Not necessarily in between Europe, there are some in some countries, electricity prices are higher or lower than the others, and gas is a bit different, but the difference to United States is massive, and this is especially a factor for energy-intensive industries. So we will come under pressure in these areas structurally, and also all these ideas with the green transformation and now the bridge electricity price in Germany, which was decided today.
Companies who invest in a plant that should produce for 30, 40 years have to be confident that the circumstances are okay also in 20, 30, 40 years. And they have to believe in the promise that there is abundant and cheap renewable energy in 10 years or so, and they have to believe that there is green hydrogen to a vast majority. I'm not sure if this holds in any case and sector. Always try to compare that with the Rhine-Ruhr area in Germany, which was industrialized 150-170 years ago because the coal was there, and at that time, it was expensive to transport coal. You can transfer this example to green hydrogen.
I can imagine that at the beginning of this value chain, energy-intensive industries will switch over the long term to locations where it is cheap to produce green energy, best in best, 24/7 at very low cost. I always take the phrase of investment leakage when I do not believe that we close down plants here and build them up immediately somewhere else, but whenever there's a decision about a new big investment decision in energy-intensive products, especially if they are tradable, like chemical products or even steel, the decision will be not not primarily for Europe, but maybe for United States or China. Of course, there are the geopolitical tensions are also difficult. At the other end of this industrial value chain, the automotive industry is coming under pressure due to the transformation to e-mobility.
This will lead to net losses of value added in Europe. Of course, we will build up new battery factories and other stuff, and reshape our factories to build electric cars, but the net balance will probably net be negative because we have so many suppliers that are focused on internal combustion engine, and they will lose, well, value added in Germany. So the strengths of Europe, maybe Germany as industrial powers in Europe, especially to have a vertically integrated natural value chain, will be weakened at the beginning, energy, and at the end, automotive. But I'm more optimistic for mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, because they will benefit from these trends to decarbonization, digitization, also demography, automation, need for infrastructure, and other issues.
Andreas Klauser, on another very positive note, for the very first time, you have a woman as the fourth executive board member, Maria Koller, as of January 2024. What were the supervisory board's motives behind this decision, and how do you think it will impact the management board work in the future?
First of all, I think it's an important sign as well to not only to our investors, as well to our own company, to our own employees, that we have a female as an HR responsible. I think it's important as well to guarantee sufficient focus on all the HR challenges we are facing. It's not only about keeping the machine running and maintain different contracts, whatever, it's as well about how to develop people, where how to find people, how to attract people. I think this is something very important, and I think together with the supervisory board, we managed to bring Maria Koller on board. She has a strong background. She was working at Magna, and she was now in Germany, even in the eastern part of Germany, which is a bit tougher.
She will be back in a quite nice and good environment, and we are looking forward and happy welcoming her.
Gerald Mayer, maybe moving on to a more difficult topic again. The metalworkers' unions are demanding 11.6% more in wages and salary, and the industry has offered 2.5% plus a one-time payout. What is your position as an employer of approximately 2,200 employees at the moment?
You gave me two choices. I think it's clear what my choices are.
Yes.
My opinion is we have to. No, I think I mentioned in the beginning, we have to change something there. My industry, in the metals industry, we simply compare Germany to Austria. There were three years in a row in Germany with a 0% increase, just one-off payments. Last year, they did a two-year collective agreement, with the first year 5% point something and the second year 3% point something. We did 7% point something. So we lost, in three years, 14.4%, in terms of competitiveness compared to Germany. We have to change something. This is crystal clear, otherwise, we do not have a good future in front of us, and I think this is exactly the reason why we have, I think it's the fifth round today that they are negotiating, and I'm convinced we will not have a solution. Zero.
And we will face, I think, interesting weeks which are coming, and I think we all are willing to change something there. We have to. I think it's... this is not a choice, so it's not, it's not a game.
It's a must.
I think it's a must, yeah.
We just heard it's confirmed that today there was, of course, no decision made.
No, no, no. There's a party talk of blah blah issue.
Issue.
This is needed for some themes on the podium. If you look what they are proposing, it's crazy. It's really crazy, yeah? They are living in a bubble.
Maybe let's talk more about labor, but-
Bubble in the bubble.
Bla bla in the bubble.
Presentation for me is not bla bla, it's bla bla. I stick to that.
Stefan Pierer, let's talk more about labor, but the shortage of labor which is also a burning issue. In times of a shortage of specialists which, of course, are needed in your industry, how do you manage and address it also in your company? And what are maybe the measures you have to take?
No, it's a joke for, I forbid home office. No, that is a joke, yes. No, no.
I'm never in home office, actually.
Yeah. No, fortunately, the Austrian labor law is providing a very flexible system, yeah? One day at home, it's possible. Just do 12 or 10 hours the other days. But Corona is Corona. We are offering in our group, one day a week, a home office, but it's decided by the team leader, and it's not part of the contract with the union. So. And that works, yeah. And there are some areas which won't work. Production, it's clear. And even in R&D, I'm heavily convinced that innovation and development, you need a physical meeting, yeah? It's not just the language, it's also the body language, the reaction, and that's very helpful. Yeah. For sure, there are other activities you can do it. That's one thing.
Then, secondly, I think what we do, a very strong apprentices program. We have 300 apprentices, yeah? For sure, we have an advantage based on the product, on 16-year-old girls and boys. You are in the pole position. So we have the big.
An aluminum coil is more difficult.
I know, I know, I know. Maybe we have to, to talk to each other because just for example, this year, at the end of March, we stopped the applications because we got 850. We're just taking 100, yeah? So maybe we have to talk to each other and over. Yeah. And so. And they have a guarantee after the education to get a job, yeah? And you can imagine, the best ones already covered and identified, and they were, yeah, taken by the race department. So and it, it's working perfectly. And the third, I think, strength in what we have here, going there, where the skills are. If in. For example, in Austria, if you need digital skills, you have to go to Linz.
Yeah, we have in Linz, meanwhile, more than 200 people for software and other applications. Secondly, Salzburg, where we have our pre-development design center. 16 nations, you need an airport, you need some nice surrounding, otherwise, you don't convince New Zealand guys or wherever to come here. We have also, meanwhile, in Barcelona, a very good R&D department with 200 people. There's a good education there. They wanna stay at Hotel Mama and the nice surrounding. So that's the way how to deal it. And, for sure, sooner or later, we are also starting to set up R&D centers in China and India. So and I think it's not just production, what we are doing. The next step is we are moving also that kind of employees.
And that's a little bit, yeah, to be or to stay successful, you must do it, but as a European standpoint, it doesn't look good.
Mm-hmm. Talking about Europe even more, Eric Heymann, in your view, will Europe lose this international competition with regards to the United States and then a newly forged alliance between Russia and China? And of course, at the moment, a lot of problems, uncertainties in Eastern Europe, in the Middle East. Do you think Europe can really get back to the point where it's one of the top business locations?
Well, the short answer to your first question is yes. It's, it seems that we.
Sounds very promising.
It seems that we will have really problems to compete with the United States and China. However, we should not forget that Europe, European Union, is still the third-largest market in the world, that we have talents, that we have strengths, especially with regard to, manufacturing products and integrating new digital solutions, like your colleagues, just showed, into these traditional products. It's nothing that you can copy from now to then. From the political landscape, I think the European approach is too slow, too bureaucratic, compared to the pragmatic American approach on the one hand, and to the steered process and, idea in, China. And of course, they have a huge pool of talents and so on. There was a study conducted, I think from the Australian Ministry of Economics.
They searched for the most relevant technologies for the next 20 years or so, and they said that... And they identified 44 technologies, don't ask me which they were, and who is located at what position. And in 35 or 37 of these 44 technologies, China was in the lead, and then United States. Nothing from Europe. So we are still strong in traditional sectors where we cannot be copied that easy, but we should. We have the challenge to have enough skilled labor also in 10 years. The demographic challenge will just enter the market, the baby boomers, which we are talking, have been talking about for 10 or 15 years, they now start to retire. And of course, all the environmental climate regulation compared to the rest of the world, will lead to a disadvantage on the energy side.
My hope is that technological progress will give us some solutions in the long term. I have the fear that for some sectors, this will come too late. My hope is also that, democracy will change somehow. Maybe for, for those of you who are from, from Germany, we had this discussion about the, the heating law, which was very intensive, where the, where the government brought in a law and people were very uncertain what they should do, and so on. And the democratic process worked to change this law, and this is also something that could happen in the next 10 years on the scale of: how do we deal with these overarching challenges? How can we secure that we are not falling behind from our regulatory framework compared to the other countries?
Maybe it must hurt more, because before it gets better, before a change in this political mindset takes place.
Maybe let's come to a closing round. Andreas Klauser, we've talked so much about the challenges that are coming up in 2024. What makes you confident that PALFINGER will achieve a very good year next year?
I think first off, a very good year depends.
A good year.
H ow you see a good year in terms of the Capital Markets Day here. I think what we already see that the orders are coming in for the first quarter. We can drive forward efficiency and costs. We are more concerned about 2025 in terms of how can we keep, let's say, the manufacturing workforce in Austria, yeah? And this is something as well, in the next couple of years, we'll need to decide: where do we have these manufacturing places? And I'm not talking about going out of Europe in general. We have the Balkans, we have other areas. But for Austria, I'm really concerned, and this is now the right time to decide where this direction will lead to.
But for 2024, I'm confident with all the plans you have seen today, with all the actions we have in place, that it will, it will be a good year.
Talking about 2024, and hopefully a very good future, Stefan Pierer, of course, climate change is also a big topic. There are, EU regulations for passenger cars that have to be climate neutral, from 2035. At the moment, two-wheelers don't fall under that regulation. How do you expect, or what do you expect will happen to two-wheelers? And of course, you have a big part in racing and, talk a little bit of this part of your industry and how it still will be conceivable in the future.
Yeah, electro mobility is a big headline. For sure, for mobility will become a certain part of the mobility. It's depending, in developed countries, it's higher than in emerging countries. In the car industry, it's easier because you have on the bottom the place, and you can afford a weight of 800 kilos, so that works. But unfortunately, in the motorcycle industry and in the power two-wheeler, and then they are in the forefront. Look to the electric bicycles. That's. It's more or less done. You know, it's 100%. It's a hybrid because you have your muscles and you have the engine. That goes up to a, I would say, to a performance of around 11 kW.
We see the European A1 class, urban mobility, scooters, even motorcycles in that, mopeds, because you have enough space to put in 4kWh or 5 kWh. But as soon you're going up in long-distance travel bikes or sport bikes, you're missing space, yeah? If you have a 15-liter tank, compared to get it the same energy density in a lithium-ion battery, you must have 150 kilos. I don't know how, if you're in a rucksack or a lorry or whatever. That's logical. So because that part of our industry is heading towards synthetic fuel, yeah, which is becoming very important. And already in two years' time, MotoGP is moving like Formula 1 in synthetic fuel. And if you visit Saudi Arabia or the Emirates, what's going on there.
There on investments in industrial equipment for synthetic fuel, then you can trust me, in 20 years, we still rely on Saudis or on Emirates. So that's the thing. But I am convinced is a big part goes electric. The Chinese are on the forefront. I can tell you, I'm sitting in the board. It's impressive what they are doing. So, but finally, without a linkage in China, without a strategic partnership in China, you get lost globally. That's my clear expression.
Maybe just to have a short, positive outlook on 2024.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah, you must have the right partner in the right global area, then you're on the forefront. Yeah.
German, the German saying is always saying, usually, "Aufgeben tun wir nur einen Brief."
Yeah, genau. Yeah.
This is what's the missing comment. I'm just adding all the time, usually, because we need to fight. I think this is clear. We have the tools, we are stable, we have the financial background, so I think we have all these ingredients. Then, okay, if there's a major downturn, we have still reduce costs, whatever, but we are strong and solid enough to fight back.
Yes.
Gerald Mayer, in most of your segments, the institutes are predicting further growth in the upcoming years. What makes you stay cautious with the statements like this, and where do you see your company going in the next two years?
I'm not, I'm not cautious. I think it's realistic that our materials, the material which has a bright future, so we have been growing. And so our material has been growing in the last years, and the projections are quite positive. I think, in particular for old products, it's a 4% increase per annum, which we expect for the next years.
I think we need the microphone. Sorry.
So we are expecting a 4% growth, roughly, in the next years, for our rolled products. Also, primary is growing, so I'm quite positive there. And I think I mentioned aerospace and so on, where we have definitely a bright future in front of us for the next. With the huge backlog, which in particular Airbus has now in the pockets. And they are ramping up and step by step, not as with the pace they want to do. It's a little bit difficult also in their supply chain area, but we see very positive, let's say, demand from this side. And so I'm actually confident, and I think we will have the next six months will be interesting. The next nine months will be interesting with regard to industrial application on our side.
For the rest, I would say, well, stability and growth on, on aerospace, in our Canadian operation, I think, as we saw, and I, I would expect the long-term average year, which is a good one. So yeah, I'm not too negative. Yeah.
Maybe the same question to you, Eric Heymann. You're the specialist for the sectors where we have representatives here, of course, with an outside look on those sectors. While maybe facing slight challenges and maybe a little decrease in orders, how do you think the long-term prognosis is for those sectors?
Well, the demand for many of the products that are sitting here is there globally. Yes, it depends on where you have your future value added. You just mentioned it about discussing where to produce, where's the manufacturing part of your company. And this is something where the company has to decide whether where are... how the cost structure is, where the clients are, and so on. And maybe it's more important in the future to distinguish between Europe as an industrial location and at least the large European industrialized companies. So this, this is, this will develop differently, yeah, and, and also driven by different, challenges in demography, in overall economic, growth potential, and so on.
But I'm more optimistic for the companies because they can decide, "Well, we have the cost structure in country X, and we can change some parts of the manufacturing part to country Y, and our clients are in country A, so let's change our system and adapt to this situation." For the industrial location, Europe, I'm more pessimistic, but not fundamentally. I'm not a doomsayer because I believe in adaptation, also in terms of regulation and and of course, also innovation at the company side.
Now I think we still have a few minutes. No, they're shaking their heads. Unfortunately, we are 15 minutes over time, but I think the gentlemen will stick around for the wine tasting, so you'll have the chance to ask anything you'd like to know. In the meantime, on behalf of the PALFINGER management board, I want to say goodbye to everyone who joined us on the live stream. Thank you for logging in, and hopefully see you soon at PALFINGER. For everyone that's here today, of course, we'd like to invite you for a great wine tasting with Christoph Morandell, of course, the PALFINGER executive board, and you'll have the chance to converse a little bit more. If you have to get back home or to work before we see you, thank you so much for joining us today.
Have a great evening, and see you next time at the Capital Markets Day. Thank you.