Sulzer Ltd

to our balance meeting conference today in February reporting about the results 2023. We are proud to present to you good solid results and the clear perspective for the strategy going forward. Now let's first look a little bit back, look at 2023. You see here the key elements. Number one, we did have indeed quite a good market development in the last 12, well now 14 months. We personally believe that this is a structural growth in the markets that we are serving more than an up and down of a more transitory nature. We will be speaking more about that in a moment. We have sales growth and it is important that we have sales growth in all three divisions and we have it across the globe. definitely in all three regions. We are very proud to say that our free cash flow has dramatically increased, which is the result, among others, of the first actions that we have taken to improve our operational excellence. I will call it Sulzer excellence going forward, our operational excellence throughout our plants. Return on capital employed, that will be one of our most important parameters going forward, the return on capital employed of almost 80%. You will see later, as far as we know, Sootze has not been there for a very long time. And last but not least, we have an increase in our profitability, also highest in the last 10 years. This also shows that in its essence, this company, is a strong company and is a healthy company, which is positioned in good markets. What you need to do is to take the measures that are needed that this company can reach its potential. And the potential is quite higher than what we can see even in the figures of 2023. But this is a multi-year transition. Let's quickly look at the figures. Our CFO, Thomas Tickler, will speak in more detail about it. Just at one glance, you saw the key elements. If you look at the absolute figures, of course, we are reporting in Swiss francs. So we are also influenced by the appreciation of the Swiss franc, which cost us plus minus 250 million Swiss francs, yes. in both order intake and in sales. As our company is very well positioned with its cost also around the globe, we do not produce in Switzerland. We have pilot plants in Switzerland, but we produce along the globe. We have a certain natural hedge when it comes to the profitability figures. Only to a certain extent. Thomas will speak a bit more about that. So these are now, at constant currencies, the increase that we can report. We are proud of. We increased our sales by 13% and our intake by almost 14%. We have a much better EBITDA, up 25%, and a free cash flow close to 50% up. The return on capital employed, 300 basis points, and our operating net cash flow actually soared by 160%. I would like to take a quick look at the guidance. The guidance that we gave in the year 2023 evolved. When I stood here a year ago, here in the Wittesal, we gave you a It was not a cautious guidance at that time. It was a realistic guidance. We gave you the guidance of 3 to 6% in order intake. I'm focusing on order intake here. Then what happened is that in the first semester of 2023, we got an extraordinary amount of large orders, both in Chemtech and also in flow equipment. And following on that, we increased our guidance in the mid-year to 10 to 14% and we lived up to this now in 2023. Of course, we already knew that in the second semester, we would not again have a growth of 30% approximately when it comes to order intake. So looking forward for our order intake guidance, particularly our expectation for the first semester, please keep in mind that we will compare to an extraordinary first semester 2023. If you level it out, this company is growing also in order intake and it is growing above market. JaaSulze is really accelerating its value creation. This has started in the past years already, but it has now gained momentum and we measure that with our return on capital employed, which was close to 18% in 2023. It was already higher in 2022. It actually follows quite a growth trajectory over the last years. Based on this, and because we see it going positively into the future, we know how, and we know how we're going to do it. We are now, for the first time, at least in 10 years, proposing a dividend increase. If you just look at the figures, you will see that there was time where we paid four francs, but that was including the Mednix business, which was spun off about two years ago. So if you're correct for that, we have always paid three francs 50, and now we increase it for two or three francs 75, following also our dividend policy. This is a summary of the financial figures. Now Thomas Zickler is going to go into some more details.

Thank you very much, Susan. And good day and good morning to all of you also from my side. Let me get a bit more in the details of our very good and strong financial results of 2023. As you heard already from Susan, we had a big FX impact in 2023 because of the appreciation of the Swiss franc. We are reporting in Swiss currency, and this means that we have to translate then in the end all our results and all our assets and liabilities into Swiss francs. But when we talk about especially our order intake and our sales, you can see here on this slide, and this is the last bullet point, that we had roundabout 250 million impact. It was 250 million impact on sales, on order intake a bit more, 270 million, but you can basically say roundabout 8% of this performance of 13.9 and 13.2 is related to the FX impact. Why am I explaining this? Because you all live in Switzerland, you look in our financial statements, and in the financial statements you see then the nominal figures, you see the prior year and this year, and when you then look at order intake, you will see that the nominal numbers, that they have just increased by 4.5% because of this high FX impact, and also for sales, you see that the numbers have increased nominally only by 3.2%. The rest is related to inorganic growth and to divestments. And the details of all these effects, impacts, you can look up in our financial report. It is in the footnotes in the section 3 in the segment reporting. Just a few words to our sales team. Sales really came from a strong growth in all divisions. All divisions grew double digit in the last year. And when we look then at order intake, order intake close to 14%, but what is the good message about this order intake? We didn't take order intake just in to have order intake. Or the intake margin also grew by 40 basis points to almost 34%. So this is really the very good news. It also signals, and I also will address the situation that we received last year in H1. a lot of large one-time orders which we cannot repeat in this magnitude at least not in the next couple of months in the first half this year. I address this because you see that the order intake margin stays on a very high level So we don't see any sign for a slowdown. It is just the project business, which we have especially in flow equipment and also in Chemtech, where we can see our project pipeline. And from this point of view is absolutely good news. But it's timing, as you know it also from other companies in the project business. Let's come to the next slide, order intake outlook. I have learned, I have to say I in this case, I have learned my lesson from the Q3 order intake release and this is why I bring this slide. You see that we have in 2022 and in 2023 in Q1 an order intake growth which is far above the market. And yet you see when you take then the order intake rose in 22 and 23, and you see then in the dotted lines, you see that when you compare this very strong order intake which we received in Q1 2023, which included, for example, a large order from Saudi Aramco of over 50 million for flow and a large order in the PLA area for Chemtech of also over 50 million. You see that we had alone in Q1 large orders in a magnitude of 150, 170 million, which actually we are working on it, but we cannot repeat. And therefore, you will see, and this is where I make you aware of, you will see in Q1 this year, when you compare it to the very strong Q1 last year, that our order intake is still above the 2022. But compared to the strong order intake in Q1 last year, you will see a minus 10%. And this is just a calculation because of the basis which is so high in the last year. But the underlying growth, I say it again, the underlying growth, we don't see more issues from the timing coming from our project business related to the bigger projects, but we don't see really here a sign of any slowdown. Next slide. So, when we talk about profitability, when we talk about profitability, and Susan already mentioned it, we are very proud that now Sulzer has a profitability of over 11%. And allow me to say the following and comment on this. We have with this 11.1%, we have overcompensated the highly profitable MedMix business, which we spun off in 2021. And just to give you a magnitude, I don't want to really give you then the impact on our profitability, but when you go back in the years where MedMix was still called as a division of Sulzer APS, they always had an operational profit between say 50 and 90 million. So that you get a bit of flavor of what does it mean to not only have now the highest profitability in the last 10 years, but also to have compensated very excellently for this loss of one of our highest profitable divisions in the past. When we look at ROSI, you see that also in ROSI we have an acceleration of growth from 2022 to 2023. Here we have the strong sales. You see our double-digit sales growth. We have across the board, and this counts for all the divisions, higher gross margins. And you will see later we have worked on our networking capital. Here you see also the first results of our operational excellence, where we had a networking capital project with many, many initiatives. and where we see here also our networking capital going down. Let's go to the divisions. First, flow. In my opinion, flow is really a story of profitability and of order intake. And when we talk about order intake here, and sorry that I repeat it so often, but I really want to get this message across. In flow, we have the same situation that last year in H1, we got extremely high, large orders in the first half of the year. And especially in energy, and overall for the full year, in energy BU, we had a growth of 37.5%. So almost 40%, so you can see what really happened in the energy market last year. When we go to the profitability here, I think we have really done a fantastic job. You see on the one hand side that we benefit from a good market momentum, but this is only a part of the story. The biggest part is that we already have started in flow with initiatives in operational excellence where we now see the first results from the first measures and impacts which we have taken that we see a higher profitability in flow equipment. And you see the change 140 basis points or now they jumped from 6.6 to 8% operational profitability. Last word to sales in flow equipment. Flow equipment, all the businesses, they are growing on the sales side and here on the sales side it's driven mainly from industry and industry they grew by almost or more or less 17% last year. Then let's go to services. Services, this was for all of us quite or a bit of a surprise, let me say it in this way, because when you ask us what is the strongest growing division when it comes to order intake, it is services. Services, and you can see it here on the slide, services grew with almost 20%. And, you know, services is already our highest profitable business. And this is really a very good performance. I need to say to this or elaborate. that services, they grew mostly coming out of Americas. And here we really have seen a very good market momentum where we also had the chance with a good pricing policy and a good cost management that we really here benefited from the market situation. When you look also on the sales side, you see that services is our second highest division coming to Sales growth of 14.5%. Then coming to Chemtech. Chemtech, they benefited last year a lot from large orders in the so-called emerging technologies. We had in bioplastic biofuels and also this process technologies in H1 a lot of one-time orders I would call it, which it's difficult to repeat. I just did yesterday a discussion with our division president from Chemtech. We have an order pipeline. The problem is it's extremely difficult to really forecast when these larger projects will come to the signature. So therefore, We have a pipeline also for Chemtech, but we are very cautious and therefore I stress again that in H1 last year we had a lot of larger projects, which is not possible in my eyes to repeat it this year, therefore I showed the Q1 order intake slide to prepare you for slower growth in Q1 this year. When we look at sales in Chemtech you see sales is the leading division in our group when it comes to sales. So basically Chemtech has a sales growth of 15.5% which is excellent and beside the sales growth they are number one when it comes to the absolute improvement of the profitability. So they increased the profitability by 150 basis points. And this is thanks to a strong commercial focus and also a favorable margin mix. Let's talk now about EBIT and net income. Both numbers are the highest for the last 10 years. When we look at our EBIT, it is clear because of higher sales, higher margins that we have a much higher EBIT. But also when we look to the net income, we benefited last year from a tax project which we internally started. It was one of the measures when it comes to excellence. And I don't want to go here in the details. But we did some applications for R&D tax credits in different countries. We closed successfully some tax audits where we got refunds. So why I'm telling you this? Because we are earning much more than we did in the last year. But our effective tax rate went down from over 30% to 24.2% in 2023. This is roundabout. 600 basis points less on the effective tax rate. And we also can say in 2023 we had only minimal, almost non-operational impacts. So in the future, Susan, Thomas and I, we will go then in a direction where we will simplify our KPIs, our metrics, We will then also focus on the op, which we have in most of our KPIs in front, that we get rid of this. And this we will do when we will do then our capital markets day later this year. And Susan will say something to this later on. Coming to the free cash flow. Free cash flow. It is really a pleasure that I can say I'm the first one for many, many years, for at least 10 years, who can stand here and say, Solstice has a free cash flow, a free cash flow of over 300 million Swiss francs. And this is really a great result. And yes, the free cash flow was impacted this year from a reduction of net working capital. This is clear. But when we look at networking capital, you have to see that we reduced networking capital roundabout by 12.5%. However, in parallel, we grew by double digits in sales and also in order intake. So when you then, and this is the second bullet point here on this slide, when you then set networking capital in relation to sales, We are the first time also below 20% of our sales when we talk about Networking Capital and we improved from the prior year in 2022 from 23.5 to below 20% in 2023. This is because of our networking capital projects we have internally. I give you one example. We managed much better last year that we get more down payments from our customers so that we have always our inventory much better financed or more financed of our inventory And this was one of the measures which we have taken and you can look it up in the balance sheet. For example, you see here the delta of 51 million, which we got more from down payments from the customers than in 2022. Then let's look at our balance sheet and our net debt EBITDA ratio. Balance sheet, I think it's clear we have reduced our net debt. And on the other hand side, our EBITDA has increased. So what is happening? Net debt reduced, EBITDA increased. Our net debt EBITDA ratio went down from 2.1 to 1.2. So this is also a very good achievement. And these numbers, so that you all know, this is shown without the TVEL cash because we don't see it as our cash. And I did the calculation without the TVEL cash. And therefore, it's only this number shown here on this table. Last line on the table on the right side, our equity ratio has also increased. The equity ratio went up from 22.2%. to 25.1%. And this is thanks to also an increase in our equity of 70, I say it again, 70 million Swiss franc. Then I come to my last slide, and Susan already mentioned it. Sorry, Susan already mentioned it. When we look at our dividend, and exclude the years, I think it was in 20 and 21, when we had MedMix still in our group and exclude MedMix, you see that over the last nine years, I say directly, we had no development in our dividend. When we look at our results, our free cash flow of over 300 million, When we look also at our dividend policy, and most of you know it, that we have in our dividend policy that we are able to pay a dividend of 40 to 70% of our core net income. And when you do the calculation for this year, it's all in the financial statements, you will see that the payout ratio based on core net income is 50%. So it's in line with the 375 dividend in line with our dividend Maybe you ask why we are not increasing it more. I think as a group CFO of Sulzer I need to be very cautious for the company and last year we paid a dividend of 350 where we had this huge write-off from Russia. So I think last year we paid the dividend because we wanted to be a sustainable company This year, I think we could pay a bit more. However, it has also to compensate what we lost on our equity last year. With this, I want to close my part of the presentation and want to hand back to Susan.

Thank you very much, Thomas. I would like to give you some insight in our evolving strategy. Our evolving strategy is in a way a very simple one. You can summarize it by three points, plus one point. Number one, we are focusing more consistently, I would say, on certain markets. Markets which are structurally growing because of the transformation of the industry, because of the transformation of the energy supply system. and which are of big importance globally. Secondly, we are going to increase our value creation at customers by adding to the top equipment that we are selling additional services, additional packages that give a deeper value creation at the customer. And thirdly, very importantly in the next years, we are going to increase our operational excellence. Our company, as I said, is a good company. It's a little bit out of shape. It has already improved in 2023. We can become much better. This is also a multi-year effort going forward. And the plus one? The plus one is Sulzer is not a small conglomerate of three independent divisions. Our divisions serve plus minus the same large market. They are partly based in the same technology approach and in many cases they share customers. So we can leverage this in order to improve our profitability, grow our sales and in many cases also by working together improve our operations. So let's have a bit more detailed look. What markets are we speaking about? We are speaking about the market of energy. Energy is a very interesting market because it is extremely important and it is in transition. And it also can play on both pillars. Energy supply security globally is key. It's also the basis to transition. into a less carbon-intensive energy supply system. An important element, and Sulzer is very present there, is to use the infrastructure that we have and make it, we as a society around the globe, make it safer, make it more efficient, reduce the pollution, and extend the lifetime, because there's no sense in dismantling an energy infrastructure system if you don't have a new one to go to. At the same time, know that we are transitioning to a less carbon-intensive energy system. We have to, to keep our increasing temperature on the globe so much under control as it is possible. So it's also playing in that part. It is playing in that part because of energy efficiency. It is playing in that part because of carbon capture technology, pollution reduction, and in general, higher, as I mentioned, higher efficiency. Did you know that motors, you can influence how much electricity they use, take up 45% of the whole worldwide electricity consumption? I didn't know that. I find it quite interesting. The second part of our market, and it is linked to energy transition partly, is natural resources. We all have read about the challenges around water and water treatment and water scarcity. We may have read about the fact that to transition to renewable energy, we will need more green minerals, lithium for batteries, cobalt for batteries, copper for the grid. Now, getting these minerals out of the ground is not as green as it should be. It's actually a big mess. So we will need more of those minerals, and we need to do it going forward in a much cleaner way. And so it can contribute to this very, very important task. And the third market is the process industries. They produce polymers. They produce fertilizers. They produce base chemicals. We still need these things going forward. We will even need more of it if you think of the growing world population and the increasing middle classes. But we will need them to be cleaner and more sustainable, and they want to be like that. And we will also, with our bio-based technology, offer them a possibility in the polymer section to transition also towards a more renewable, a more sustainable product portfolio. Step by step. So the bio-based polymer is about 1% of the market, but even this 1% is a huge market going forward. So I've written down what we are doing here. I will not speak about this slide. That is more for your reference. I think it describes quite nicely in a short sentence or two what it is that Solzer is doing in these packets. An important part, I mentioned it before, is that Solzer has really super, very good equipment and also very good technology. But if you analyze what we are doing, you will find out that we are quite fragmented in the sense we do a little bit here and we do a little bit there. And by bringing these capabilities together and focusing them on these defined markets, working together between the divisions, we can offer a much better package to our customer and for us increase the well, not for the customer, to increase the value creation of our customer and, of course, with the benefit that it brings for us. This is for your reference, just that it gets a bit more tangible what it is that we are doing. But I will speak here about three examples. I will repeat, we focus on this structurally growing markets. Secondly, we are going towards packages and solutions, and we do that in all three divisions. Look at the wastewater treatment section for flow equipment. More and more, it is not only about selling pumps, which we do, and which we do profitably and well, but the wastewater treatment company needs to have its water clean at the end of the pipeline. And we have equipment and technology to increase this value creation at the customer. And by offering it in a package, we solve a problem for our customers. Let's look at a segment in Chemtech. You can buy today for smaller scale applications an entire carbon capture unit. For example, for a wastewater treatment, and here you see the link with the division, for a wastewater treatment plant, they produce a lot of carbon. I mean, not carbon, but CO2 that has to be captured going forward. And you can buy such a skid from Chemtech, which will take the whole process out and, not take the process out, will deliver the whole process so at the end you have the CO2. That is an important development. And even services, services is moving towards a more integral offering. Services more and more offers to our customers that we are looking at their installation, we call it retrofit, and give advice and implement and give technological solution so they can increase their efficiency in energy and can also reduce their pollution. That's an important part. You see here what drives our market. Why are we saying that? I'm just highlighting a few things that for me are fundamental. Number one, we have a growing world population and this growing world population needs access to infrastructure in the area of natural resources, process industry and energy. We are in a situation where spending for the established infrastructure Industry in the energy part is only slightly increasing, but there is a lot of spending going into energy transition or sustainability as a general trend. And as I said, we are there in both places. That is fundamental. We see a technological change. acceleration happening and Sulzer is at the forefront of this technological innovation. I will show you an example I think in the next slide. The other final point, I don't want to read all the points, is this increase in the use of natural resources. We as a society will have to find a way to manage our use of natural resources not that we maybe solve the carbon problem in the energy sector, but create another major sustainability problem because of the natural resource consumption. I believe that innovation and technology will substantially contribute to solving this problem, and Sulzer is fully there. I give you two examples just to make it a little bit more tangible. First example, is one of the things we love to do, and that is to equip, we call it legacy infrastructure. Here you see a gas turbine in China, who had the problem that the nitrogen oxide emission levels by law were reduced and they were there. What would they do? They could either invest heavily in what we call an end of pipe solution, taking the nitrogen oxide out at the end of the process, or they can come to Sulzer and find a smarter solution. And the smarter solution is a technological one. It is a combustion auto-tuning system, a development of our engineers that allows to optimize the parameters with which such a gas turbine is being run to reduce the emissions while not losing any performance. And the most important thing from the customer's perspective was they had practically no downtime. No wonder that the customer bought it and we have four or five follow-up projects only in China based on this technology. That technology can be deployed worldwide. It's like a technology platform that can go around the world. It's the rejuvenation of a water treatment plant in Bahrain. It's a huge installation. It cleans, let me get that right, 100 Olympic swimming, the water, the amount of 100 Olympic swimming pools, the water in it, in a day. And it has a particular challenge, not only the normal one where you have to get the solids out and the microplastics out and also the pharmaceuticals, Residues out, we also had to get the worm out, and worm, which was endangering the health of the workers on the agricultural fields. Now, why do we have agricultural fields in Bahrain in the middle of the desert? Because in the past, this water, these 100 pools per day, were discharged into the sea. Now, it is used for agriculture irrigations. Sulze contributed here with an elaborate filter system offering. Customers are very happy. Yeah. Sulze 2028. Of course, it's not only about Sulze 2028, it's about Sulze now. We are committed to deliver very good results also in 2024. but we have this mid-term perspective because what we do also needs some time. It has two pillars, as I said, organic growth and excellence. It's a very simple strategy, if you want, but there is a lot to do. And you see it here, Solstice today, quite good, not in top shape, a company in structurally growing market, and we want to grow today. above the growth of this structurally growing market. And we have launched 60 initiatives around the globe to push this organic growth. At the same time, and just so as importantly, our excellence along the value chain. We call it Sulzer excellence going forward. It's automation of production. It's sometimes just not just, it's a low-hanging fruit if you take it, fixing situations in existing plants, also to increase the throughput for the coming growth. It's optimizing our supply chain and sometimes pool our purchasing requirements so that we have a better position in negotiating with suppliers. All of that aims for Sulzer to become what we try to describe as a top industrial company. A top industrial company with a lot of innovation, with a lot of technology, but still run like an industrial company that has to be competitive, that has to make the best out of the resources that it has. Resources including, of course, its know-how. And how do we define a top industrial company or describe it? Well, it's clearly one that creates value for shareholders and also for all other stakeholders. By having a high-quality business and a future-proof business. We want a business that is here for a long time. Sulza will celebrate its 190th birthday on the 5th of April. So something is very good in this company. You're not going to survive 190 years just like that. So we have the foundation, but we can take it towards the future. What we need to improve is our capability to execute. It's not only about being smart. It's about delivering results, but that's an insider. And it's about really excellence along the whole value chain. It's not only about engineering the best product. It's about doing it in the best way from A to Z. It's this more focused and also resilient business portfolio that I spoke about, focused on these three very large markets. And there was a focused portfolio that really creates value at the customer. And last but not least, that's a cultural transformation over the year, an entrepreneurial spirit. So it's in a way, in a certain way, it's a very entrepreneurial company. We can do much better in many ways. However, we also want to be in a resilient setup. We will manage the company in a resilient way. For example, we will make sure we are not going into too much depth going forward. Looking at the outlook, short-term future, 12%, around 12% for operational profitability. That would, again, be quite an increase from 11.1%. We see our sales growth somewhere between 6% and 9% this year, and we see an order intake around 2% to 5%. Please remember Thomas Zickel's graph, 22%, 23%, plus 14%. And on top of this 14%, we see 2% to 5% more over the whole year. we are confident to reach this order intake based on our pipeline, both of large project but also of standard business. I come to the summary. 2023, we had good results. We had also a good market development, no doubt about that. We were able to capture this good development profitably. also because we already started with our operational excellence initiatives, which will accompany us going forward. When we speak about operational excellence, it's social excellence. So it includes commercial excellence, sales excellence, and it continues to include a very tight management of our networking capital. Going a bit further, Sulzer in the next year, clearly on path to be a very strong, very good, very innovative industrial company. We are serving, this is important for us, we are serving essential markets that matter. Essential markets that matter. Energy matters, natural resources matter, and also the process industry matters because they give us the base for the way we live. And we want to be active in this market and be a top company with very good, very efficient processes and a very good business portfolio. Our strategy is based on organic growth. Doesn't mean we are going to do no acquisitions in the next five years. There will be small ones to complement, for example, our product portfolio from other things. It's not the focus of the strategy. The focus of the strategy is organic growth and it is operational excellence. And we are very proud to say that we can fully pay for what we are planning by our cash flow that we are going to earn or produce, generate the cash flow that we are going to generate in the years to come. Thank you very much for your attention. Ladies and gentlemen, now we have the time to answer some of your questions. We start first with the guests here in the room, and then we will move towards the guests who are here virtually.

Christian Arnold from Stiefel. Maybe we can move to this famous order intake charge, Q1.

Or the intake, yeah. Is it possible? I think... It's very beginning.

I mean, you are showing us here growth for Q... This one, no? Yeah, exactly. Q124 versus 22. You showed that those in absolute terms. That's correct. Because it's 859 you're referring. I mean, this is two years ago. that means we have now like a minus 10% ethics impact. So that means your indicated bar here implies some 20% order intake versus 22%. Is that correct?

Roundabout, yes. That was our message. We had this bump, but we are on an upwards trajectory.

Thank you. Then on the

pump division development of your profitability here which is impressive this 8% you're showing here I wonder to what extent that has to do with a positive product mix I believe energy market is very strong here you have engineered pumps usually having higher profitability versus or the pumps, could that change? Could that be more challenging going forward?

I answer the question the following way. When we look in the flow equipment division and we see that the order intake margin has been stable during the year 2023, seeing that energy has round about a plus of 38% when it comes to order intake, I think this answers the question.

And I would like to add something that you also mentioned. The growth that you see has happened despite of pricing discipline. Actually, we could have grown more, but we didn't because we wanted to earn money and not just have this top line growth. And on the other hand, we have already quite an improved situation in our plans. That is thanks to a strong effort in flow equipment.

Maybe last question, similar question to the chemtech business, where we also have seen very positive development of profitability. I mean, here you're serving a lot of, let's say, new markets, not so mature markets, fast-growing markets, and usually these kinds of markets are offering actually less profitability. But here now it looks like that it's very, very attractive markets also in terms of profitability. Could you a little bit elaborate on that?

Yeah, the improvement in profitability comes from a change in our pricing philosophy. It has something to do with becoming a top industrial company. We have focused a lot on cost plus in the past. And now we have developed better instruments to really understand what is the value creation, what are customers willing to pay, also by statistical analysis. And that led to us being a bit more courageous when it comes to negotiating our prices. But yes, if it's the first plant equipped with our technology in a new polymer, biopolymer, then we have to have a certain flexibility. But all in all, we can increase our prices.

Thank you.

Yes, please, here.

Okay, thank you very much. Alessandro Folletti from Octavian. I also have a couple of questions. Maybe on the 300 million for cash flow. Yeah. Good number. Thank you. And you mentioned the effect of working capital.

Yeah.

My first impression was fantastic, but not repeatable. Now you seem to imply something else. Can you elaborate?

We have on networking capital, as I said, yes, impacts on the free cash flow because we used our networking capital in 2023. But our target, and we see it based on our business performance, which we plan for 2024, is that we plan, and this is the planning with the free cash flow of round about 270 million for 2024. I see your point. It won't get in the 300 area, because we have reduced a lot of networking capital already in 2023, but the work is not fully done yet. And we still have some improvement potential in our processes, also in our collections. So this means the 300 is not far away.

In 2024? Yeah. Fantastic. And maybe very briefly on the order intake again, because you mentioned Q1.

Yeah.

I guess we all got the message.

John is going to be weak. Compared to 23, not compared to 22. Oh, sorry. Maybe I didn't get that.

Now we got also that message. What about Q2, i.e.? ? How should we sort of interpret your two to five percent guidance? Obviously a little bit skewing second half, but when is it starting to sort of then beat again 23?

It is the second half, because when you look at our Q1, The big orders which we had last year, we cannot repeat. What we see currently... To that extent.

Not that we're not expecting any big orders.

Yes, to that extent. What we see is when we look in our order pipeline with our customers in Chemtech and in Flow, that there's ramping up again some bigger orders to materialize. But I cannot talk about this right now. So what we expect is then Q2, it's getting a bit better. And when you compare then this with the Q1 and the Q2 from last year, we then land round about the zero line. And then in H2, it will pick up. And this is why on the total period, it is only, and I say it really in hyphens, between this what we gave here in the guidance because of the strong H1 last year.

Right, fantastic. I have two more. One, another small one, financially. I'm not, how should I say, I'm not disregarding you. Don't worry. I enjoy it. Foreign exchange, it was massive, honestly, much more than I had expected. Now I have to imagine that for 2024, at least until October, we have the same sort of headwind.

If the Swiss franc is further depreciating, yes. Sorry, appreciating, yes. Because we had last year this massive impact because against most of the currencies, say US dollar, Chinese renminbi, round about 8% to 10%, the Swiss franc has appreciated it. and therefore we have this huge accumulative FX impact. So when you look at the Swiss currency, currently also going in the other direction again, I cannot give you a forecast when it comes to the FX impact, but I can only say last year it was around about 8%, and this is in line with the currency movements of the big currencies against the Swiss franc.

Okay, very good. I would like to go to slide number 23. 23. That's on the strategy where you mentioned the sort of, the way I understood it, selling less single components and going more to, no, not that one. This is already too complicated. Which one? 23.

No, that one. Yeah. Sorry.

So going more towards solutions and so on. How should I understand this exactly? How can you do that? Because at the end of the day, I sort of partially understand the issue of having processes. Maybe you have one customer that really asks the whole portfolio, but maybe you have one customer that doesn't. So can you really sort of push him? Can you really increase sales and then profits with that strategy?

I don't think we need to push our customers. I think the need is there, I would like to say as an introductory remark. And I give you an example out of the water treatment area. It is not just about having filters or having pumps. There's also about having grinders and having other equipment that if they are sold in a package, you have solved a problem for the customer because he doesn't have to deal with all of these things. and we can give it in an optimized way to the customer. Another example would be cross-divisional in mineral processing. If you think of the lithium excavation and then processing of lithium, you need the pumps who can do that, and you may need extraction technology coming from Chemtech again, the lithium that is in a salt solution and needs to get out there in a more environmentally compatible way. So these are these two examples that I can give to you.

But is it the market that is changing or is it just you guys realizing that you can cooperate?

Well, the latter one has some truth. As I said, you know, we were maybe a bit small conglomerate with quite thick walls. In between that was a hindrance for growth for Sulzer that we want to tear down. And the other thing is that if you look at the water treatment offerings also from our competitors, everybody is quite specialized in single equipment, single type of equipment. And there is a niche market, but the niche is big for us. where packages can be sold. I have to quickly because we have some other people, but I can come back to you if you still have time later.

I have a lot of time.

No, no.

Capital market day, that's correct.

Oh yeah, that I can say. We will have a capital market day at the end of June. It will be because we are very productive and very efficient and to the point it's probably going to be a capital half day. But there we will go and explain in more detail how we are serving our markets and how we are changing going forward.

Maybe again a bit on the order intake guidance for 2024. I assume you mentioned that there is some larger... probably orders in the pipeline and I assume with the 2% to 3% growth on a very high 23 order, it means there must be something larger in the pipeline. Can you elaborate a little bit maybe where, in which segment it is, the larger order? That's a bit the first point.

Yeah, I can. Can I just do that then? I love your question in mind. The very large orders concentrate on Chemtech and inflow equipment. Our services also has large orders, but not of the magnitude that we are discussing. Chemtech, we see an increasing interest in the market for bio-based polymers, polylactic acids particularly. We have sold one huge plant, technology and equipment for that plant last year. We see an increasing interest there. And in flow equipment, we see the large orders come out of the business unit energy. And as we highlighted, now we have two issues in the energy supply system. The one is energy security, which means the current infrastructure needs to work. And then the energy transition, which means that the carbon footprint of the energy supply system has to become less. And we have there also, that order may come or not this year, that's a very large order, and I'm not going to say which country, for obvious reason, large carbon capture. Carbon capture on the large scale is also slowly coming into market. Of course, also due to the subsidy that some governments do provide for this type of technology.

Thank you. And maybe on flow, on the margin, I was thinking that the energy segment in the past at least sometimes was even on margin side negative because you wanted to get then the service business which is more attractive. But looking at your guidance that you are still thinking to improve the margin, I was wondering, you talked a bit a lot, but We don't have to expect a decline in flow margins for 2024, despite the averse, let's say, potential mix effect?

Clear, short answer, yes. You don't have to expect it.

So, no, we will not have a decline.

Sorry. And is it because... No misunderstanding here. Is it because you clearly improved the margin on the energy side? And that must be a big jump, I think, from the past where it was breakeven or even... And then on the margin, you presented the 28 vision, but I think you didn't give any margin indications here. I was wondering, you were talking very positive on the margin to get better and excellent. So I was wondering, do you have something in mind in terms of margin, what you can achieve in 28, or is it... No, we are not going to speak in fixed number about 28.

We are going to give some sort of mid-term guidance expectation at the capital level. market stay, but we clearly say that we will grow above market and we will further increase our profitability. That is going to be around 12% in 2024.

Thank you. And let me add to this. On the flow side, you have on the one side, what I said, you have the order intake margin, which is stable despite the much higher energy part. But on the other hand side, you also have to see the execution part in our plans, where we now work, and Susan addressed it, with many, many initiatives where we work on our execution improvement. And this is then when you will also see in the future in the cross margins

Any questions from this side?

Yes. Thank you. Benjamin Treiber, NZZ. Two points, if I may. The first one regarding your focus on key markets in the future. Does this mean, on the other hand, that you will abandon some markets or areas? Could you give some examples for that? And will this lead to divestments or reshaping of the company in any way?

I start with the second question. We do not see any need for major divestments. We may have some portfolio one says I think in German, but nothing concrete in the pipeline now. We want to grow our business also to There may be some consolidations in the area of plants, but there's nothing very concrete now. When we speak that we focus on these markets, we also speak about focusing our sales force on this market. We have a more scattered sales force right now, focusing more in this area, and also our innovation and technology development to really serve these large markets. One area that may be of less importance going forward, maybe we haven't decided yet, is for example the area of textile recycling that could be in better hands somewhere else.

Thank you. And secondly, as you described to us, the strategy runs till 2028. So can we expect you or may we expect you to stay executive chairwoman till 2028?

No, no, no, that you can't say. We'll see.

Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, please. We'll take you then.

Good morning. I would just like to come back to the margin guidance that you've given. I mean, the step up is quite remarkable. So as I understood, it's mainly driven by the business mix you have in your backlog. But how do, for example, input costs factor in? Do you see tailwinds on that side?

I would like to add it's not mainly the mix. It's better pricing and maybe more courageous pricing that has also worked out well in 2022 L3. And it is clearly we are working on our costs. I mean, I call it operational excellence, but we're working on our costs. So that is this. And now I didn't understand your question. Sorry.

No, that's all right. But in terms of input costs, I mean things like raw materials, energy, labor, how do you see that developing?

Right now we see a rather stable development in raw material and in energy, energy with tendency to come a bit down.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

A question on your balance sheet. How do you think about your ideal balance sheet? And I guess all these results have to improve the free cash flow towards 28. So what are the priorities to allocate capital given that you showed already to have a strong balance sheet?

The main goal is that we always have, say, a balance sheet which is so strong that we stay within investment grade. This is our overall main goal. When you look at our equity ratio, we are currently around about 25%. So this is, for me, a minimum which we should keep in the future so that we have at least an equity ratio of 25%. When it then comes to cash flow and to other items on the balance sheet, I think we can further improve our net debt. We have currently a very small net debt. It's around about 500 million, but we can further work on this. And then in the future, we can talk about increasing dividend payments.

I would like to add something. In the calculation of our equity ratio, there are also, because of IFRS standards, quite some impact from the pension plans and the discount rate. Everybody knows that. So there are some elements that we cannot influence. We have to take that out. So when Thomas Tycho speaks about 25%, then yes, but this is without these, not exchange rate, discount rate impacts on our pension obligations due to IFRS regulation. Complicated thing for me as an engineer. And the second thing, which is really important, I spoke in a resilient framework. We have an entrepreneurial culture in a resilient framework. When we speak about resilience, this means we want to have our net debt to EBITDA not higher than 2.5. So we can always access capital if we, should we need it.

Thank you. And on this sheet 15, there you show actually the balance sheet. Maybe it's because I see it's like more than a billion you have in financial debt. So that's a lot of bonds.

Which one?

Okay, it's 15.

Sorry, it's different.

It was on my presentation. So you have quite a few bonds, but actually you have the same amount in cash. I don't follow. Why would you have almost a billion in cash and a billion in bonds?

It is not, like you say, because when you look at our cash of almost a billion, don't forget that 365 million are not belonging to Sulzer. This is cash which we have accumulated for Tiwil and we are not allowed under the OFAC regulations to pay out this dividends. So when you see our cash situation, we currently have a cash of around about 600 million. And then it looks different. And when you say 600 million and you have to 600 million round about a billion debt, then you see we need in the future a lot of cash flow and a lot of positive EBITs and net incomes to really then drive this around from our net debt EBITDA ratio to a level where then we come close to a zero net debt. Because we don't treat the DVAL cash as our cash. And we cannot do, by the way.

Maybe final question. You have a focus on operational profitability, not on EBIT. Are you having thoughts to change that? Because it's like 10% difference or whatever. It's just confusing, I would say.

I know. The figures are very confusing. As Thomas Zickler already announced, we are going to... change our key parameters. Nevertheless, the operation profitability tells you something about the efficiency of the operation. So it's, for us, not a worthless figure, but it's not so much of a strategic figure. we build up on what has been done in the past. At the end, it's the money that we earn that we can then invest or distribute and that is much closer to, of course, the EBIT. So EBIT is very important for me, but you may want to adjust what I'm just saying.

No, I fully agree and this is what I also addressed and what most of you I already discussed in many, many individual meetings and discussions. This, what we currently have with this op abit A and this abit and abit DA, we want to simplify it. And this is why I really focus on that this year, it's the first year where we really don't have any non-ops. And it was introduced in the past because it's a huge full potential program. There were reasons for this, but this was in 2015. And since then, it has never been changed. We will change it this year.

This is another example of operational excellence or SILTSA excellence along the whole value chain. You can imagine how much confusion this bouquet of financial parameters is creating in SILTSA. So we want to get rid of that. It's not value creating. Yes, Lisa.

Hello. On this margin improvement, we don't have to expect big restructuring costs to achieve the improvement in 2024, right?

No big restructuring. Maybe some – nothing in the pipeline that I know of so far.

And then a question on the service business, growing very strongly, 14 percent, and driven by the U.S. or America. So I assume that has a – group about vision. I was wondering, what is the driver there? Is there something, is it pent-up demand, maybe post-COVID, where still might be the driver, or is there something which you are already offering? I remember the package services also, which is showing some impact.

What we see is the fact that we can offer in services quite a broad spectrum. We are doing pump, we are doing Turbo, we are doing compressors and we are doing motors, and that, particularly in the United States, you can easily get more or less out of one installation. It's very attractive to our customers. It also helps us to set the pricing. We have also a very good reputation of reliability. We know that because of the comparison to our customers. So that's a small, not so spectacular, but still relevant example of putting more focus on the package. Yes, please.

Thank you. It's me again. Since you have that slide up already, I'd like to go back on this. If we project it, say, to 28, since this is your timing for the strategy, That 365 million will give or take maybe double. You have increased the dividend, so it accumulates at a faster pace, right? Plus, as far as I understand, you are not planning M&A? Not big M&A? Not big M&A.

We have in our financial projections till 2028, we have a contingency for M&A. but it's very unlikely that you will hear from one big acquisition, sorts of buying, I don't know whom, very unlikely to happen.

So that means, if I interpret these numbers correctly, that the way for you to sort of optimize the balance sheet is really the dividend at some point.

We will keep our dividend policy, but of course, with our income increasing, we will pay more dividends. We still have some costs to bear. I mean, the productivity improvements that we are targeting, partly they come with some investment and partly they come with one-off expenses. That is obvious. We have some contingency for M&A, but not much spread over the years until 2028. And, yeah, we will finance everything out of the cash flow.

Right. But did you run some scenarios on how fast that number can grow?

Because at some point it just becomes... We have done an internal financial model, but sorry, I'm not talking about this.

Please. Yeah, an add-on question. Pricing. Can you give us some indication how big the pricing impact was? I know that's difficult because you have different... How much maybe was... the strong growth you achieved in 23, how much was driven by better pricing and how much is volume. And is it fair to say that, yeah, this value approach maybe is really showing better contributions because probably some of your input costs are coming down in 24, but you're still expecting a nice growth in sales. So I assume there is still a component that you probably will keep or even increase prices in 24. Is that a fair assumption or?

Yeah, that is indeed a fair assumption. We are trying to do more and more value pricing and sometimes also just more discipline in not accepting orders that will fill up our plans. And then, as we explained at large, three months later we get a big order and then we don't have the capacity. So it's many everyday decisions, not every day, but decisions to take that in its sum is increasing the profitability. I think that you have to answer the impact on the profitability, the price and the volume

It is really very difficult to say why, because most of the price increases we had in 2022. And already in 2023, when you see the numbers. And yes, we had some of the price increases in 2023, but not in this extent when we increased in end of 2023. So currently, really, I'm not able to give you a percentage number. But what I can say, in 2023, we had much less price increases. And yes, in 2024, on a very selective basis, you will see that we are able to increase the prices. But actually, the inflation story is more or less over.

We have, of course, to make a difference between the price increases that come because we managed to give our input cost further. that we are trying to do and we're successful, particularly in 2022. In 2023 and going forward, it's more to basically sell our products better. We call it sales excellence and commercial excellence. That will be less, as Thomas was saying, a less big step, but it's a more financially sustainable step.

But it's fair to say that the price increases 22, we're probably in the order intake, so you deliver it in 23 and there where it's visible on the sales.

Partly, yes. Okay, thanks. We have a question back here.

Hi, thank you. Ingo Schessel from UBS. Regarding your net debt FEDA on a run rate, I mean, I assume that two and a half times maximum is more if you do M&A, but what's kind of the expectation there? on a run rate basis until 28?

On a run rate basis, it's for sure below one. The 2.5, as you said, is really when we do a bigger M&A, and we need then also to go to the capital markets to get more cash for this. For this, we have a governance for the next years until 2028 that we say we don't, we never want to be over 2.5, but taking this big M&A out, I think it's below one.

Just to make a very consistent message, because it's the truth, big M&A means several smaller M&As adding up to a certain number.

And the follow-up on the TVIL payable, the cash, it's not an escrow or anything. You can still use it for operations, as far as I understand. Is that correct?

No, the TVAL cash is on a separate bank account. And this is basically like, you know, we do kind of an internal escrow. And this is why I say always when we talk about our $1 billion cash position, which we need to show under IFRS, this is not true because almost $400 million belong to TVAL.

Okay, so it's restricted cash essentially.

In this interpretation, yes, but not under IFRS.

We pay no interest on it and, of course, we also don't have an expiration date. Expiration date, yeah. That is what makes it special. Thank you.

Sorry, I came to my mind another question on the sustainability and the energy segment. I, of course, get the topic of carbon captures. But I was wondering how you, yeah, the transformation in especially in the security probably segment. I always thought it's more the oil and gas activity, so probably it's still a bit on the old fossil activities. How do you close the gap between sustainability and potentially being still active in, let's say, a fuselage? market and maybe yeah I interpreted it's mainly on the energy consumption of your public pumps or whatever it's it's it's sold in that segment and yeah is that fair is there really a step up in terms of energy consumption in your pumps or in your other activities or a little bit to better understand that I can I can give you a few examples that make it easier to grasp number one if you increase

If you decrease the electricity consumption of our pumps, you have to build quite a few windmills to compensate for that on a global scale. So that is important. The other thing is we have projects. We spoke about it regarding battery storage, where we store energy that is heat at 750 degrees in molten salt. And of course, you need an infrastructure that can manage that. And we are part of this project. That's a development project, but with a customer in a big pilot plant. We have another development project with a customer, quite of importance, where we have a pump that in the pumping can separate between oil and gas we want and methane, for example. So these are steps that make a huge difference in the next years to come. where we still do rely to quite some extent on the existing energy security or energy supply system.

Any question on this side?

Are there any more questions in the room? Then if our guests, our virtual guests have the patience to wait... If they're still there, we would now be open for questions from your side.

For questions from the phone, please press star and one. Once again, for questions from the phone, please press star and one.

So the questions were obviously, or your questions were obviously not exhausting, but exhaustive. Also for our virtual guests, we close our event. I thank you very much for coming here. I also thank the guests who came here virtually. Thank you for your interest and have a very nice day. Bye-bye.

Thank you very much.