Gurit Holding AG

Good morning. I welcome you to the presentation of our full year 2022 results. I'm here in GURT's corporate office in Zurich, together with my colleague Philipp Wirt, our CFO. Let's start and have a look at today's agenda. I will start by providing you a business update, highlighting the key events and achievements of last year. Philip will provide details on the 2022 financials before I will spend a bit more time explaining our view on the markets and our outlook for 2023. Following the presentations, we have scheduled the Q&A session. The year 2022 was a very special one. At the start of the year, we still had to deal with the COVID aftermath, supply chain disruptions, capacity constraints, and shortages of thief rates. Mid-February, the war in Ukraine started, while GURT was in the middle of two M&A transactions. We were able to successfully close both the sale of the aerospace business to Isovolta, as well as taking over the majority ownership of Fiberland Composites. to complement our wind product portfolio. The conflict between Ukraine and Russia led to an immense inflation, and almost overnight, we had to deal with surging energy costs, exploding prices for raw materials, freight, and logistics costs, impacting the European economy and our company as well. Looking at the markets, our non-wind business had an excellent year with more than 20% year-over-year growth and healthy profit margins. The team progressed well in diversifying our offering to new customers and new product segments, and I will provide later a few examples of that. The situation looked different in the wind markets. China's biggest wind market of the world saw growing demands. and Gurit could keep a strong market position as supplier for PET and wind blade molds. Our Western customers have been struggling with lower demands and increasing cost pressure, which negatively impacted the profitability of the whole supply chain. For Gurit, that meant very low sales for wind blade molds and lower sales of core materials and kitting to our established long-term customers. Overall, GURID achieved a revenue of about 500 million Swiss for the full year and an operating profit margin of 4.5%. Excluding the gain on the divestment of the aero business and adjusted for restructuring and impairment charges, the adjusted operating profit margin comes in at 2.3% of net sales. Due to the significant funds required and the resulting debt level from the strategic acquisition of the fiber line business and the current level of profitability, we recommend not to pay out a dividend in 2023 and to use the cash flow to reduce the debt level of the company further. Tactically, our teams focus on operational execution with an all-hands-on-deck mindset. We work hard to mitigate energy and raw material cost impacts as good as possible and improve our networking capital position. We are on track with our Fit for Future program, improving our global manufacturing footprint and targeting reductions of indirect and SG&A costs, primarily in high-cost countries. Ultimately, we continued to execute our strategy 2025 and we successfully improved our ESG performance. I will highlight a few examples on the coming slides. Before getting there, I want to introduce two new members to the GURID executive team. Lars Fuglsang joined the team already last year with the acquisition of FiberLine and leads the newly established business unit structural profiles. But Daniel Dahlquist joined us in January this year, leading our wind systems business unit. We inaugurated our new wind campus in Chennai, now combining all wind businesses of Gurit underneath one roof in India. The teams successfully launched production for PET and Kitting and will reach full capacity utilization in 2023. We also booked the first revenues for molds and mastered the industrialization for carbon protrusion in just half a year after closing the transaction. We increase manufacturing capacities in Chennai as we speak to further strengthen our Indian footprint. We already have a strong footprint and team in China that is addressing the market needs with corresponding design to market solutions. To manifest our market position in China and strengthen our competitiveness, we continue to invest in our plans in Taizhang and Yanzhen and implemented a more decentralized organization to empower our team in China, aiming to increase customer proximity and further reduce time to market. Talking about China and wind blade molds, we see a continuous trend towards larger rotor diameters. GURID is leading the race with technologically advanced modular designs and most extensive offering of plate manufacturing solutions for our customers. Product innovations are the key for future success. Our new OptiCore design platform, which is now being validated by one of our key wind customers, has been recognized as finalist of the prestigious JSC Innovation Award. We converted our site in Ringköping, Denmark, into an R&D and technology hub for our wind blade customers and opened our new wind innovation center where we work together with multiple customers on new, improved kitting designs. A quick recap on the acquisition of the 60% stake of FiberLine Composites. FiberLine is a manufacturer of glass and carbon-cultruded profiles for the wind industry, headquartered in Denmark with manufacturing sites in China and the meanwhile completed investment in additional capacities in footprint expansion in India. FiberLine's strong R&D capabilities fit well to the GURID DNA. Since May last year, we achieved a revenue of 102 million Swiss francs, still yielding a negative operating profit. While the market for carbon protruded profiles will grow strongly over the coming years, we expect flat sales in 2023 due to a delayed ramp-up of a major customer in India. The business will not reach profitability before 2024. Consequently, we have launched activities to further improve the cost structure of the business and increase the operational performance. We also do leverage GURIT's access to our Chinese wind customers, as well as our strong position in the marine and industrial segments to extend the current customer base. The strategic rationale behind the acquisition remains intact. It was an important enabler on our trajectory to serve our wind blade customers as a full service provider. With the addition of FiberLance capabilities, GURID's extended wind blade product portfolio is unique in the industry. GURID is able to cover up to 50% of the blade value chain This positions us as a leading supplier and development partner towards our customers and marks an important step in our transition from a pure material supplier to a solution provider to our customers. Strengthening the non-wind business is part of our strategy and remains highly relevant for GURIT. Our teams have been successful in diversifying our green PET offering towards new customers and market segments while using the economies of scale from the wind business. We continue to see an increasing thrive towards sustainability that drives boat builders to use recycled PET foam as core material. Same trends in other industrial segments, recycled PET being used in many new construction projects, building and transportation applications. To complement our marine product offering, we have launched a new core cell iPhone to substitute PVC. We newly developed the business with customers for rotor sales, where we are indirectly part of reducing the CO2 footprint of large transportation vessels. That brings me to an update on our ESG initiatives. We are progressing in all group-wide work streams and we can claim that we are executing our sustainability strategy according to plan. Our health and safety campaign enabled us to achieve the lowest LTA ratio since the start of the program, which underlines the health and safety of our employees as highest priority for us. We implement greenhouse gas reduction targets and launched CO2 and energy saving campaigns in our plans. Another highlight was the introduction of the one share, one vote principle and the implementation of the single registered share in May, which further strengthened GURIT's corporate governance. And finally, we are proud to see that our commitment towards sustainability has been recognized by improved ESG ratings. With this, I conclude the business update and hand over to Philipp Wirt and the 22 Financials.

Thanks, Mitya. Let me start with the P&L and here with a quick summary on sales. Sales in materials include 102 million Swiss francs from structural profile, excluding these sales and adjusted for the sales we lost due to the sale of our aero business. The organic growth of materials is 3.6% and the group is declining 8%, both at constant exchange rates. The organic growth in materials of 3.6% includes a strong growth of more than 20% in our marine and industrial business, coming mainly from our recycled PET. The material sales for wind and the decline of kitting of 14% is the result of the reduced plate demand in the Western market. Manufacturing solutions declined 21.5% compared to last year against a record first half year last year. We continued to see the low level of sales in the Western world. However, these sales are picking up again already in Q1 of the new year 2023. In total, this led to an increase of 17% in sales for our continued operation, which includes structural profiles but excludes aero. When we look at the P&L, obviously profits are impacted by the declines in the wind market in general. But there are some special items that I would like to elaborate on. Gross profit margin is 5.3 percentage points below prior year. The decrease compared to prior year includes a dilution due to the acquisition of fiber line of 2.4 percentage points And the remaining decline is mainly coming from manufacturing solutions, where we are losing in the full year about 12 million compared to prior year due to lower prices with Chinese molds, which impacts our gross profit margin negatively by about 2.6 percentage points. You will note that I do not mention material price increase on this slide. And this is because as a group, not with every product and customer, we are able to catch up on offsetting high material costs with higher pricing. So while this had a dilutive impact on our gross profit margin or about 0.8 percentage points, we are not materially impacted in Swiss franc terms for the full year. EBITDA amounts to 39.1 million Swiss francs. It includes a gain of 18.3 million from our sale of the aero business and the restructuring expense of 5.1 million to right-size our organization to the current demand in the wind market. This includes closure and relocation of our kitting production in Denmark and partly in China, as well as further downsizing of our balsa operation. Excluding these items, our EBITDA is decreasing, and like on gross profit level, the reduction is due to lower volume mix and price, only partially offset by savings from our cost savings program. Adjusted operating profit excludes the gain on the aero divestment, restructuring and impairment charges and amounts to 11.2 million for the year compared to 33 million last year in the same period. The next slide summarizes the key drivers for this reduction. Compared to prior year, we lost 17.3 million due to the reduced sales volume in Vint and the inclusion of structural profiles, which made an operating loss in the eight months in 2022. Then, as mentioned earlier, we have experienced a significant profit drop in our manufacturing solution business since we almost only sold Chinese molds. We lost about 12 million on profit due to that. This was partially offset by savings of 7.6 million Swiss francs resulting from our cost savings initiatives. And we are ending the year with an adjusted operating profit of 11.2 million Swiss francs or 2.3% of sales. I would also like to highlight two impacts that you don't see in this walk anymore if compared to earlier presentations. You don't see a weakening due to the material price increase. I explained that before. And we had no negative impact due to the ramp-up costs since the new manufacturing sites in Mexico and India are up and running and stabilizing. Okay, now let's move to cash flow. which strongly rebounded in the second half of 2022. As a reminder, free cash flow in the first half of 2022 was minus 19.3 million. In 2022, we experienced an increase of the average trade networking capital compared to prior year. In the graph, you see an average of the last 12 months. This is caused mainly by on average longer payment terms on receivables in the wind business, which is amplified by the reduction of tooling business, which is favorable on prepayment terms. Then we have experienced inefficiencies in our inventory levels. First, we need higher safety stock to overcome supply chain disruptions and long lead times. Second, we experience a much more volatile demand. orders tend to be rescheduled or even canceled in short notice more frequently. Third, we have ramped up production in India. To counter these trends, we have put several initiatives and measures in place to bring the networking capital back to approximately 22% of sales. The first results we see on this chart in 2022. When you go back to the KPI networking capital of sales in June 2022, Then you see an improvement of 1.3 percentage points within the second half of the year, down from 24.8%. Capital expenditures amount to 15.2 million Swiss francs in the year. 10.7 million or about 70% of it is related to capacity increases, mostly to our footprint expansion in India. Free cash flow, which equals to net cash flow from operations after capital expenditures, amounted to 3.5 million. Compared to the previous year, we faced a lower EBITDA from operation, offset by a favorable impact from the timing of cash paid, lower tax payments, and lower capex. To conclude on the financials, a couple comments on the December balance sheet. which is more leveraged, as you know it, from Guri due to the acquisition of FiberLine. Net debt increased by 45.7 million Swiss francs since December 2021, almost entirely as a result of our M&A activities in 2022. Net debt has reduced by 20 million since June 2022. The equity ratio is 31%. and is used mainly due to our accounting policy that offsets new goodwill against our equity and due to currency. Gross debt to EBITDA ratio has increased to 2.8 times as a result of lower earnings and but higher debt. This ratio benefits in 2022 from the gain of the aero business. later more about the outlook of 2023, but this arrow gain will not repeat in the first half of 2023, and we expect that our profitability will only recover significantly in the second half of the year 2023. In order to keep the balance sheet ratios under control and generate some headroom for unexpected events, the board of directors will propose no dividend in 2023 to the AGM and no shares will be granted to the GURID management and board. Our return on net assets was negative in 2022 due to a theoretical goodwill impairment of fiber line. The impairment was necessary given the updated demand projection in 2023 and probably 2024. which is below expectation as a result from the difficulties in the Western wind market. While this shift does not impact our long-term view of the carbon protrusion business, it does have a negative impact on the discounted cash flow valuation of the business as of December 31, 2022, which results in this impairment. So as a summary, difficult year in wind, but the highlight in marine and industrial. Much stronger execution on many levels in the second half of 2022 than the first half gives us confidence that our countermeasures bear fruit. But we are cautious going into the first half of 2023 on the balance sheet and have debt reduction as first priority. And with this, I hand back to Michio.

Thank you, Philip. And now let's come to the business outlook and allow me to start with a look at the profitability of the wind industry. As you can see in the blue chart to the right, there is a disproportional margin distribution within the wind energy value chain. While wind park developers and asset owners make decent margins, the turbine manufacturers and their supply chain are struggling. Last year in particular, the Western turbine supply chain saw a strong decline in profitability driven by the known circumstances. As illustrated in the lower chart, Western wind customers increased prices for future projects quite significantly. The ASP, the average selling price of new wind turbines, increased by 30% compared to 2021. Considering that demand is driven by a growing need for renewable energy, we anticipate an improvement on profit margin generation along the wind supply chain in the coming years. Our view on the wind market outlook and referencing to the latest market outlook from Wood Mackenzie, there are a few observations. China will continue to drive the global installation growth. we anticipate even higher levels than the dark blue bars shown on the chart, potentially reaching 70 to 80 gigawatts levels this year already and gradually growing over the next few years. That underlines the relevance of the biggest wind energy market of the world and emphasizes the importance of China for Gurut and other global players. According to Woodmac, the new turbine installations in the Western markets are stagnating in 23 and 24. What we see for this year, and we are using a chart from one of our Western customers on the right side of the page, is a declining blade demand versus last year, since order intakes have been low driven by the mentioned increases in ASP and customers still eating through sizable blade inventories. For 24, we think that the PTC extension will lead to a rebound of the North American installations, providing an upside to the numbers shown. We see that some of our customers already investing in capacity extensions for North America, and we consider this as an encouraging signal. The growth rate for Europe seems reasonable, with an upside potential in 2024, depending on country-specific decisions on subsidy schemes for renewables. So overall, a positive midterm outlook, with plate demand reductions of Western customers for 2023. A brief look at the marine and industrial market segments. Curit was growing above market average, and we expect this to continue in the coming years. As I already mentioned, we see a trend of replacing conventional materials with green PET in multiple industry segments. We expect the marine sector growing steadily and we will continue to strengthen our position in those markets. Let me conclude today's presentation. 22 was a challenging year for the wind energy supply chain. Our focus was and remains on operational execution and debt reduction. The initiated Fit for Future program yields the expected savings. Western wind markets continue to be volatile near-term, while first positive signals in North America and offshore are coming. The China wind market momentum remains high. Marine and industrial with a strong ongoing growth and profitable growth trajectory. We are on track with our sustainability ambitions and GURIT's strategy 2025 implementation. As full year outlook for 23, we guide the net sales of 450 to 510 million Swiss francs, driven by reduced plate demands of Western wind customers as explained. We expect an operating profit margin between two and 5%, which compares to an adjusted operating profit margin of 2.3% in 22. Beyond 23, we see a sound growth momentum driven by stronger wind markets, further PET diversification, and a profitable structural profiles business. This ends our presentation. Thank you for joining us today. With this, I'm handing over to the operator for the Q&A session.