Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our Zumtobel conference call on the annual results for the financial year 2021/2022. With me on the call are Alfred Felder, our CEO, and Thomas Erath, our CFO. Alfred Felder will walk you through the highlights of the year, while Thomas Erath will discuss the financial performance. After the presentation, both gentlemen will be available to answer the questions. In case you do not have a copy of the report and the presentation, you may find both documents for download on our webpage. After the call, a playback of this conference call will be available on our webpage as well. With this, I hand over to Alfred.
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and thank you for joining us today for our financial year 2021/2022 results. Despite the challenging environment where we are in, and despite obviously the war in Ukraine, which preoccupies us, we have been able to seamlessly follow on the positive trends of the past fiscal year. With a growth of revenues of 9.9%, we were clearly able to keep our promise of growth even more. We delivered here more than promised. Same on the EBIT with EUR 60.8 million compared to the EUR 43.4 million the previous year even represents the best operating results for the last five financial years.
Taking now all the economic challenges into account, we were able to achieve an EBIT margin of 5.3%, which is also above our guidance. In view of the strong results, we want to share the success with our shareholders and therefore recommending an increase of the dividend of EUR 0.35 for the last financial year 2021/2022. Again, we are sticking to our communicated dividend policy. Obviously, if you look, I have brought this slide with me today on the challenges, what we have. You see here just a couple of examples, the copper, the steel, the aluminum, but also that, the resins, what we have, or the transportation. We are still in most of those areas on an upward trend.
The slightly better news is that, for example, the copper is stalling a little bit, but nevertheless, you see on the steel even until April 2022, and also the resin are still an upward trend. We had to prepare also for the coming fiscal year for really a tough environment here to move forward in our business sense. Obviously, to say it once, this result would not have been possible with the dedication of our 5,800 employees, what we have in the company.
Before I go into the overview and then Thomas into the details, I just would like to share with you, as usual, what we have accomplished with a few examples in the different businesses, one on Tridonic, and then with the two brands, as you have seen, where we have done now a clear separation on and positioning on the brands. For example, on Tridonic, we have implemented a complete flexible dimming lighting solution in a museum in China, in the Imperial Examination Museum. Also we have established a smart lighting office in the center of London as Tridonic is also migrating into the smart solution type of selling connected lighting solutions, both with Zumtobel as well as with the competitors of Zumtobel. On Thorn, a quite international setup.
One is a street illumination in Sharjah, one of the UAE emirates, districts, what we have done. The other one is an outside illumination in Madrid, in the Plaza de España. In the last one are two examples, obviously the high-end, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, what we proudly completed last year, with our high-end illumination solutions. The other one with the Swiss Post, what was a combination of really already saving energy that was saving the 40% energy, compared to the previous solution, while enabling a much better quality of light into those examples. As I mentioned, two of our strategic pillars are, one, the sustainability. Moving forward is the second one, the digitalization. In both, we made tremendous progress.
Here is more or less the three pillars, what we are acting and driving forward. One is the climate neutrality. Our goal is to become climate neutral as a company by 2025. We are well on track with converting all European locations to renewable energy. Partner of choice. This was one example. Here you see this post as one of the customers, but we are doing it with all our suppliers and with all our customers. Last but not least, we have more and more projects now designed and implemented with circular economy instead of linear economy on the right-hand side. Only one example. We have reached the gold status of EcoVadis, targeting now the highest one, the platinum one. The MSCI ratings, we have moved from A to A A.
We also partner here with [Formics] just to illustrate that this is also recognized now from the outside world. Let me now switch to the overview of the results, what we have accomplished, moving our revenue by more than EUR 100 million from EUR 1.044 billion- EUR 1.148 billion. You see it here, the biggest growth comes from the component segment with a double-digit growth up to EUR 363 million. Also in the luminaire segment, we have been growing by 6.4% to almost EUR 865 million. Same on the EBIT, with the growth from EUR 43 million-EUR 60 .8 million. The gross profit in the range of about EUR 381 million, and the SG&A expenses slightly higher, EUR 320 million.
Thomas will come to that because that is also to a large extent driven by much higher transportation costs, so especially the outbound logistics. Net profit, EUR 45.8 million, compared to EUR 45.6 million previously. That might sound the same, but Thomas will highlight it also in a moment. Last year we had a very positive tax effect, a double-digit one, as well as some short-term work what we still had during the Corona. Obviously, if you take this into account, it's in the range of EUR 18 million-EUR 20 million higher net profit compared to previous year. Strong operating cash flow of EUR 122 million, solid balance sheet, and especially we are proud that we have been able again to increase our equity ratio from 32.7%- 38.1%.
That you see on the next page, this is a slide what we now expanded with the additional year. You have seen this from our Capital Markets Day presentation, how we turned around the company from 2017/2018 with -EUR 47 million. You see that we have been able to continue, despite the difficult environment, to move forward EUR 122.7 million cash flow from operating results. The EBIT increased from EUR 43 million- EUR 60.8 million, and the net profit at EUR 45.8 million. On the right-hand side, thereafter two very bad years, 2017/2018, 2018/2019, with no dividend. We are moving along according to our dividend policy, and we are able to pay EUR 0.35 per share.
You see, we gained from 2017/2018 to 2021/2022, more than 10 points in our equity. Thomas will share this in more details. Now, handing it over to him, for the details of the results.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Also from my side, very warm welcome. Let me start with the lighting brands. Q4 revenues in the Lighting segment increased by 1.4% quarter-over-quarter versus previous quarter, and totaled EUR 220 million. This slight increase has mainly two reasons. First, we had a very strong Q4 last year, and second, we had a very strong Q3 this year. As you can see, the EBIT margin is quite low with 2.9%. But I have also to say that we had to record EUR 4.2 million higher one-off item than last year. By EUR 2 million, we had to increase the extended warranty provision and EUR 2.2 million we had to increase the provision for an old warranty case.
Year- on- year, we were able to increase our revenues in the Lighting segment by 6.4% from EUR 794 million- EUR 845 million. Although we were able to increase our sales and selling prices, higher material and transportation costs negatively impacted our Q4. The reported EBIT in the Lighting segment decreased from EUR 8.7 million- EUR 6.3 million. EBIT margin, as I said before, was at 2.9%. Nevertheless, as said, we also had one-offs in the last quarter. Looking at the EBIT margin development for the financial year 2021/2022, in comparison with the sales development, we can see the impact of the increase in raw materials and transportation costs also in our bottom line.
Nevertheless, we were able to increase the EBIT in the Lighting segment from EUR 33 million- EUR 45 million. Our EBIT margin in total increased from 4.2%- 5.3% this last year. Coming to the Components segment. The Components segment recorded an increase of 16% in revenues, so very strong to EUR 97 million in the fourth quarter. This positive development was a result of the high order books reflecting the good customer demand, and we also got more semiconductors than expected, resulting in higher outputs of production. Although we were able to increase our sales and even our selling prices, also here, higher material and transportation costs, as well as higher personnel expenses impacted our Q4 EBIT. The EBIT of the Components segment decreased from EUR 11.7 million- EUR 8.8 million in the fourth quarter.
As a result, the EBIT margin, although still pretty high, declined from very strong 14% in the prior year to 9%. Looking at the full year-on-year comparison, we were able to increase the EBIT of the Components segment from EUR 25 million- EUR 36.4 million. As a consequence, the EBIT margin increased from 8.2% to a very pleasant 10%. Here, our higher turnover more than offset the negative impact from higher material and transportation costs, and also from higher personnel costs due to suspension of short-term work subsidies. Going to slide 12, to our group results. Altogether, we generated a 5.8 quarter-over-quarter increase of revenues to EUR 301.7 million in the fourth quarter. Clearly more than we had expected end of Q3.
This positive development throughout the year resulted in the reported increase in revenue on an annual basis of EUR 1,148 million and represents a 9.9% increase. Looking at the profitability, the higher sales volume as well as the increase in selling price could not offset the sharp increase in material and transportation costs fully, as well as higher selling and admin costs. As a result, the EBIT of the quarter declined to EUR 8.5 million, while the EBIT margin was at 2.8%. Also here, taking into account one-time effects on the lighting side. Looking at the full year development, our EBIT increased from EUR 43.4 million- EUR 60.8 million, and our EBIT margin in total increased from 4.2%- 5.3%.
Let me now explain the main building blocks of our EBIT development for the full year 2021/ 2022. Let's start with the prior year EBIT at EUR 43.4 million. The group's absolute gross profit increased by EUR 46.5 million based on an increase of around EUR 104 million in revenues compared to the previous year. As mentioned already, our gross profit was negatively influenced by sharp rise in material and transportation costs. Nevertheless, the increased activity helped a lot to increase the gross profit. Positive effects resulted from the decline in depreciation and amortization and lower warranty costs. Development costs rose by EUR 1.3 million- EUR 45.6 million.
The increase in selling and admin expenses had a negative effect on our EBIT, above all, due to the absence of short-term time work, higher transportation and packaging costs, as well as increased travel activities. Other effects were at EUR 2.9 million on the negative side, and as we do not disclose restructuring and special effects anymore, to fill the bridge, last year restructuring costs are shown as positive deviation this year. Our reported EBIT was, as said before, at EUR 60.8 million for the financial year. Coming to our income statement, financial results amounted to - EUR 13.2 million, which is roughly EUR 4 million below the previous year. After the deduction of income taxes, our net profit amounted to EUR 45.8 million. This result is just a little bit higher than last year.
As Alfred explained, you know, we had a big one-time effect in taxes last year, which we did not record this year. The net profit is comparable to last year, and we have earnings per share of EUR 1.06, which is exactly the same result as last year. As Alfred also said, we will also increase our dividend for the last. Going to the cash flow, we are very happy that the cash flow from operating results increased from EUR 115.7 million- EUR 122.7 million. On the negative side, we had to increase our working capital, which increased from EUR 152.5 million to EUR 211 million.
Here, especially the inventory increases due to the well-known supply chain problems are causing increases. Cash outflows from the change in other operating positions totaled EUR -5.5 million, and the cash outflows primarily resulted from the use of restructuring provisions. Consequently, cash flow from operating activities declined to EUR 57.6 million for the full year. Cash flow from investing activities was almost flat compared to last year, and totaled EUR -41.7 million. As a result, the free cash flow only amounted to [EUR 60 million] Going to slide 15. We are very proud that we have a very solid balance sheet, that we have a net debt coverage ratio of 0.8%, and that our net debt is at the level of EUR 95 million.
Both numbers are well in line with our covenants, if you also include the equity ratio, which increased from 32.7%- 38.1%. In summary, this strong balance sheet protects our liquidity position in the difficult times we are facing and gives us more than enough headroom going forward. With this, I would like to hand back to Alfred.
You're used to this slide already, and here you can see that we are continuously delivering encouraging results with our Q4 sales 5.8% above the previous year level. We were able to deliver the fifth positive quarter in a row from starting the Q1 of last fiscal year. As you know, last year's first, second and third quarter were negatively affected by the impact of COVID-19. Since then, we have been seeing a very positive development. However, as mentioned already, the shortage of semiconductors for our mid and high-end drivers continues to cause considerable uncertainty. We are not always able to deliver as much, and especially as fast as our clients requested. Therefore, the higher material prices and the transportation costs also negatively impact this development on the top.
At least the limited availability we saw in the second quarter was more successfully managed in quarter three and quarter four. After all, we have already worked specifically on the recent months to reduce the dependence on certain individual suppliers for ICs, working it around. I have to admit, some we had to do the work around two times, because after we have done it, again, we run into difficulties with certain suppliers. On page 17, you see the development by the regions. The DACH region, the largest market for the Zumtobel Group, grows by 4.2% to EUR 362 million.
This increase was lower than the other regions, because the growth generated by Switzerland and Austria in the previous year, despite the COVID-19 crisis, obviously in effect also that those countries managed a little bit better the COVID situation than others. The revenues in the Northern and Western Europe regions were 13.3% higher at EUR 292 million, where Great Britain recorded a substantial improvement in revenues after the sharp drop caused by the crisis of COVID-19. The other countries in the Northern and Western Europe region remained only slightly below the previous year. Revenue in the Southern and Eastern Europe rose by 16.8% to EUR 312 million, supported particularly by strong growth in France, Spain and Italy. Here we saw a strong catch-up effect after the crisis.
A little bit behind is the Asia-Pacific. Or sorry, Asia-Pacific also in the growth mode of +13.6% to EUR 123 million, especially in China and in Hong Kong, where obviously until now, we did not have the COVID impact. The rest of the world, that's what I wanted to say is that includes MEA, America. So South America and North America fell 8% to EUR 60 million. This, the strongest decline was in Middle East, especially in Qatar, in the UAE. As you know, Qatar is now hosting the soccer championship and more or less we saw a complete stop of a lot of construction during the last.
Coming to the end of the presentations, I will share with you the outlook and the guidance, what we would like to give for the coming fiscal year. We are still, as I mentioned at the beginning, confronted with the massive increase of prices on raw materials, availability of chips that will not ease, at least not until the end of calendar year 2022. In addition, the high inflation led to higher increases in wages and salary increases, what we have to take into account.
Therefore, we see in view of the financial year 2022/2023 an increase in growth between 3% and 6%, with a stronger part in the first half and an EBIT margin of 4%- 5%. Our guidance on CapEx spending is around EUR 70 million for 2022/2023, and it increased compared to the previous years, mainly due to the planned investments in various new product solutions, which has digitalization projects. Such as the digital factories and the roll out of the new CRM tool for our luminaire division. At this point, however, I would like to mention that we keep the mid-term CapEx planning, which we guided in the Capital Markets Day to be in the middle of EUR 55 million until 2024/2025.
We believe that we need to continue to invest to drive our innovation and to drive our digitalization projects forward. That brings me to the end of our presentation, and now Thomas and myself will be happy to take your questions. Thank you very much for listening.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. First question is from the line of Michael Marschallinger from Erste Group. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three, and would like to do them one by one. The first one on the guidance. You guide for revenue increase 3%-6%. Can you be a bit more specific on geographies and segments? What do you expect here? Is this top line increase driven more by volumes or by higher pricing?
Yeah, thank you for your question. As I said, we gave the bandwidth in geographies. We believe that we will be able to grow quite significantly again in the DACH region. We do see a slowing down in those regions where they have been growing extremely fast, like the U.K. and like France, at a little bit of a lower level. Then we are planning to grow to come back with the business, especially in weaker regions like the Middle East and the Americas. The second question what you have, we believe it's a mix between price increase and volume.
Looking at the last month, what we have, the bigger growth is coming from the price increase, as we are now consequently pushing for higher prices in the markets and a little bit less on the volume increase.
Okay, understood. The second question on the EBIT guidance. You expect top line to grow, especially as I said, in your margin strong DACH region, but you still expect EBIT to decline year- on- year. You mentioned here also salary increases. Maybe could you give us more color on the cost and wage inflation you're seeing at the moment and how much of that you can pass on?
Well, as I said, you know, prices are still going up, and we are delaying passing through our input prices, which we pass to our customers. Input prices from wages are increasing more and more. In Austria, from 1st of May, we had 4.8%, and we expected 3%. We are a little bit cautious on the EBIT guidance. Depending on the way forward, you know, it could go better, but it could go also worse. We want to have a cautious guidance regarding the EBIT margin development.
Okay, understood. Last question. Could you maybe share with us the contribution from your plant in Niš you had in the last financial year in terms of revenue and EBIT?
Cool. That's a difficult one as we don't measure it by plant, but by product group. I can tell you Niš has a positive development, and the activity level increased significantly over the last years. The production output, which we measure as cost, is at EUR 51 million in the last year at the component segment compared to EUR 43 million. In the Lighting segment, EUR 53 million compared to the previous year of EUR 29 million. Niš has a positive effect on our EBIT, of course. Nevertheless, I have also to say that wage increases in Serbia are also at 8%, compare...
Of course, coming from a lower level compared to the 4.8% in Austria. They also there you have increasing costs. On the other hand, I have also to say, especially over the last two weeks, we see also a decline in input prices, especially on steel, copper. Energy, of course, remains on a very high level. If these input prices are coming down, this would also be, of course, a no-brainer, very helpful to our profitability.
Okay. If prices continue to decline, it would be more in the direction of the 5% EBIT, or?
Exactly.
Okay. Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Just one additional comment here. Obviously, only since January, we saw a dramatic rise of energy prices. In addition, what Thomas mentioned, that we have 1/3 of our employees in Austria, and we have a rather high, let me say, increase of the wages of 4.8%. So all in all, it's around 5% compared to the 3% what we had originally planned in our budget.
Maybe one last comment, especially in the third quarter, because of the Ukraine war, we saw in the trend of input prices going up even far higher dynamic than in the previous three quarters. Nevertheless, good thing is it's slowing down and going down right now.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone. The next question is from the line of Markus Remis from Raiffeisen Bank International. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, guys. Congrats on the figures. First question relates to the availability of semiconductors. If you could shed some light on your perception of the procurement of semiconductors. Did you get any indications? I mean, recently one or the other OEM indicated that the situation is kind of relaxing. Is that an observation you would share?
Yeah, absolutely, Markus. Thank you for the question. What we see at the moment, it's still a little bit the hand-to-mouth principle for certain IC. The problem is, you know, we have 48 types of different IC, and obviously most of them are included into one driver. So if only one is missing, we cannot produce, so to speak. What we are seeing over the last month that it's getting a little bit better, a little bit more reliable. In the constant dialogue with our purchasing department, but also the management is involved with our key suppliers, it will remain tight, as I said at the beginning, at least until the calendar year 2022.
After that, it looks like that it's easing out a little bit, starting from the beginning of the calendar year 2023, which obviously would help us at least in the last quarters in moving forward into the next fiscal year.
All right. That's clear. On the topic of M&A, which you have kind of put forward as a strategic pillar, anything you can share with us? I mean, where do you stand in the process? Are targets coming on the market?
Well, we have received various teasers on some also very interesting companies owned by private equity. But if you compare the multiples they are asking at the moment, you know, yeah, these multiples are far away from what we see on the stock exchange.
Yeah. I think there are interesting opportunities outside. The prices they ask for, I think nobody will pay them. If they come also to the conclusion that their company is not producing gold, then we are really in appetite to acquire some of those companies. At the moment, we see no reason why we should buy at such prices.
Markus, in addition, that's what Thomas said, that is of course in line with our strategy that we said, we are moving into potential targets, what will add market share in countries, where we are weaker, or it would add technology, what we are anyhow pursuing. These targets are extremely interesting, and we are evaluating, as Thomas said. Currently it's a little bit, in German you say.
Like this. I believe once they get back on a solid ground and they see what they are worth, then obviously we are very interested to pursue, and we are constantly monitoring this now.
Yeah. Presumably prudent to wait a bit. Maybe there's some one or the other bargain maybe emerging.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Going forward. Yeah.
Obviously, just to conclude that, on maybe your question, of course, we are also seeing, after COVID and with the tough environment that some of the smaller competitors on our end are struggling. Obviously, as you mentioned, it is not, these are not targets to us. We have been in restructuring so many years, and we have no interest to add something where we again have to start restructure. We are interested in healthy companies.
Yeah. Very clear. Generally, on the pricing side, I mean, you said, okay, maybe one of the other input factor is kind of stabilizing at elevated levels, others are still rising. I mean, the indication you gave that the bigger part of the top line growth would be pricing related. Or where would be the point where you consider the introduction of further hikes? In that regard, do you still see kind of competitors moving in the same way? Do you consider price discipline high? When would be maybe a window for a further increase?
Well, it's currently already we are in the middle of this window. Obviously, what we said is if I only compare the cost what is overrunning us from January until now, it is going so fast that we are in that sense not able so fast to react in the market, especially in our luminaire segment, in increasing the prices. For the new projects, we are doing it constantly, more or less. We need to look into the spot prices part, even for projects, so that's going on anyhow. On the components level, a little bit better. I think currently still the location and availability of products is the key. Who is able to deliver wins the business and the price, the cost is of second priority.
Obviously, if this comes through that end of the calendar year, the allocation is coming slowly through, we need to manage this very, very carefully. I believe price increases until, let me say, autumn, late autumn timeframe is the key to drive the business.
The top line guidance, did you include only price increases that have already been introduced? Or is there already kind of the, when you said okay on new projects, there is a.
No.
Kind of,
No, no. That is a combination of both. As I said, obviously, in certain regions we have been weak, where we did trigger already a lot of efforts on new projects on in what are now in the pipeline. That's why we see the visibility, which is clearly then a volume growth. But in certain areas it's predominantly a price growth. It's a combination of both in the different countries where we operate. I mentioned at the beginning, we have a historically high order book, you know. Obviously, it never happened before that we had on both the components and as well as in the luminaire end, this high order book, what we have to work out.
Obviously with the situation of the war, a little bit the expected slowdown momentum in certain countries, especially in Eastern Europe, we have taken this all into account in our guidance. Currently, obviously, we are able to grow above that simply because of our order book, if we are able to ship it.
Okay.
Maybe one comment, you know, we had a very good start into the new financial year. There, we are really happy about the development. Nevertheless, as the future is really not foreseeable, and we also experience that a lot of projects are getting delayed in the construction industry because people do not want to pay steel prices which are 40% higher than some months ago. You know, it's very difficult to say how much volume growth we get.
Final question, maybe a bit of a bookkeeping and eventually not straightforward, but in terms of the tax rate in the P&L that has been all over the place in recent years, anything you can guide us for 2022/ 2023?
Well.
Under normal circumstances, so to say.
normal circumstances, I would say it's around 20%. But please keep in mind, we are sitting on a lot of tax loss carryforwards in Austria. That's why we have one of the lowest tax rates of the companies on the Vienna Stock Exchange. It's always difficult, you know, to foresee the effect of deferred taxes. If it's going good, you know, we appreciate our deferred tax assets. If it goes the other way around, we have to write off some of our deferred tax assets. Despite we have a very low capitalized quota of our deferred tax assets. As a rule of thumb, I would say the better our results are, the lower our tax rate is.
Which is, you know, really weird, but it is like that.
Yeah. Good, good for the bottom line. All right. Thank you very much, gentlemen.
Thank you, Markus.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask any further questions, please press star followed by one on your telephone. There are no further questions at this time, and I would now like to turn the conference over to Alfred Felder for closing comments. Please go ahead.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening. Thank you very much for your interesting questions. With this, I would like to conclude our call today. As said, I think we can look back to a very successful year despite the circumstances we are in. The outlook looks also positive despite the situation is not changing really radically. Thank you very much and have a great day.