Jost Werke Se

Yes, very good morning from Neuesenburg and a warm welcome to our investor and analyst call for the full year results 2023. 2023 has been a good year for Yoast and therefore I'm happy to share with you some strategic insights and also some financial highlights. Let's start with the strategic highlights of last year. Yoast was able to expand its product portfolio through M&A acquisitions as well as own R&D activities. We have expanded our geographical footprint through a greenfield investment in India and M&As in Brazil and Finland, mainly in the area of our agricultural business. We've signed new OEM customer contracts in transport and in agriculture, as well as in construction, and that will enable us to boost midterm growth. We further improved our carbon footprint reduction to support our customers' requests, but also to mitigate climate change. And we find that a very important topic also for our internal purposes, not only for the customer purposes. And we have group wide gains in production efficiency paired with product portfolio adjustments, and they enhanced our profitability in all segments, which you will see in the financial numbers. But let's come to the products first. It has been an important year because we could also expand our product portfolio and we've added products in our agricultural range. And these are the orange plus signs that you see. Those are the three point linkages, the coupling hooks and the pickup hitches for the rear of the agricultural tractors. but also counterweights and center booms for agricultural machines and construction machines. In the transport segment, we've added the bus link systems where we also have new contracts with OEMs. Last but not least, let's come to the financial highlights of 2023. Our sales at 1.25 billion were more or less on last year's level, with organic sales and transport up by 29%, which could offset the decline that we've seen in agriculture of minus 25%. Our adjusted EBIT margin expanded significantly, 1.5 percentage points to 11.3%, and adjusted EBIT reached a record level of 141 million euros. also the free cash flow increased significantly to 112 million euros and the leverage could be improved below the 1.0 multiple of net debt versus adjusted ebitda adjusted earnings per share up eight percent to six euros and 24 per share and therefore we raise our dividend proposal seven percent and propose one euro and fifty per share as a dividend to the annual general meeting So we could achieve all the financial targets in sales, 1.25 million, which is in line with previous year's level as we've announced and planned. We said we would have a high single digit growth in adjusted EBIT and increase our adjusted EBIT margin. Also there, I already mentioned 14% higher EBIT, 11.3% EBIT margin checkpoints on both boxes. CapEx, we are in the range of 2.5%, which is our normal range for CapEx without M&A acquisitions. And leverage, we could dramatically improve much lower than previous year, even below the 1.0 mark. The market has been supporting us last year. This is just to give you a bit more insight in the market environment of last year. Truck markets in Europe had a record high level, especially in the first quarters because of pent-up demands that we've seen from post-COVID. um and our customers struggling to get their operations back up after covet and all the logistics problems that they've had so plus 14 in the truck market in europe plus four percent in north america um and 31 in asia pacific and africa mainly driven by the chinese market on trailers we year, starting last year, 2023 in Europe. But in the second half, 2023, we saw already some contraction in the market and weakening of the market. in north america trailer demand was stable actually slightly growing still and also in asia we had a robust trailer market those strong transport markets helped us offset the weakness in the tractor markets we've seen minus four percent tractor production in europe and minus nine percent in north america where the compact tractors had a much bigger reduction than the high horsepower tractors and we are very exposed to the compact tractors in north america so for yours that meant minus three percent in europe More or less compensating the tractor weakness by a strong truck and trailer market minus 8% in North America where we, as I mentioned, were exposed to the small and compact tractors. Um, but also could offset it with a stronger trailer market to a certain degree. And Asia, a big growth of 30% in Asia Pacific and Africa with a slowly recovering Chinese market, but also all the other markets on a very good development last year. So that's the summary of last year. And with that, I will hand over to Oliver to give you some more details on our key financial figures. Oliver.

Thanks Joachim for the overview and hello and welcome from my side. Let's jump now into the details and a little bit different to our intra-year quarterly calls. Let's focus a little bit more on the yearly numbers starting with Europe. Profitability has improved significantly despite the challenges we had in the agricultural segment. You see for Europe that sales with a reported decline of minus 1.1% suffered from the agricultural business. But more or less, the strong demand that Joachim just mentioned for trucks cut off that weakness and also the weakness in trailer. And that effect was even more significant in the fourth quarter, whereas the consolidation of our two recent acquisitions, Crandall do Brasil and LH Lift, supported the nominal growth as well. On top, we had significant FX headwinds throughout the year, finally resulting in minus 2% sales decline just from that effect. If you look on the EBIT margin for Europe, as mentioned in the header, significantly improved from 6% to 6.7% for the total year, which is an absolute EBIT growth by 10.5% up to 46.2 million. And this is done by a tremendous job in our transport team, just, I mean, realizing the momentum within the truck market and all the scale effects that helped us here. But also on the other side, not despite the weaknesses in the agricultural sector, A segment, the plant manager there did a tremendous job in terms of cost control to safeguard our margin here. Overall, also the ease up in the supply chains as well as well as lower trade costs supported the margin development and the absolute EBIT development here as well. There are some specific effects in quarter four. We were burdened by a negative product mix there and a much more strong seasonality than we anticipated. On the other side, as I mentioned before, to safeguard the operational efficiency in our agricultural plants, they took a little bit longer year-end breakouts, which for sure supported the overall margin, but the absolute EBIT is affected by that. so that's in a nutshell europe let's go to north america another very successful story a very strong profitability boost despite a sales decline the robust demand went throughout the whole year with a slight decline only in the last quarter we also had in north america fx headwinds a little bit even a little bit more than in europe is two point uh minus 2.5 percent points And we had a very sharp decline in the compact loader market, as Joachim mentioned before, to deal with. That all in all led to a sales decline reported wise by minus 10.6%. down to 354 million euros organically. So adjusted for especially here in North America, the FX effects, it's a minus 8.1% decline for the total year. And in quarter four, the organic sales decline is minus 28.7% point. And that's because of the very strong decline of the agricultural market just in the fourth quarter. When we look for North America into the EBIT numbers, exceptional good result. Absolute EBIT went up to almost 45 million euros. That's a growth of 25% and a full year margin of 12.6% versus 9.0% last year. And what you can also see supported by a very strong year-end run where we could incorporate Several effects where we worked out all the year, like the portfolio clean ups, our negotiations with our customers and so on and so forth. And on top, we had a very strong aftermarket business in the last months of the year, ending up also in the fourth quarter with a record high EBIT number. of 50 million euros or 22.5%. But for sure, we have to mention you need to look more on the full year results as this number just for the fourth quarter is affected by that one of effects as written down here as well. Let's go to our third segment, the Asia Pacific Africa region. There overall we had support from strong market demands in general. So sales went up from 173 to 208. That's an organic growth of roughly 30% because also here we had strong acceptance of roughly a bit more than 10% points. Overall, especially our markets in India, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, where we have also very strong off-road business with high margins, supported that growth. But also you see a step-by-step recovery in the Chinese truck market. Here especially that's driven by the export market, so the export sales that Chinese producers OEMs into the world where we are also well positioned and also here our acquisition of LH Lift in China supported a little bit that sales course on top. EBIT wise also a record year for the region. Almost the same number like America with 43.2 million EBIT. It's a fantastic year having grown by roughly 16% versus prior year and an overall full year margin of roughly 21%. That's fantastic. As I said, the main drivers here are the strong profitability we have with our off-road business, but also the proportion of the agricultural business is increasing here as well. And all this includes also for the last months of the year some ramp up costs we still have for our new plant in India, because those costs are not adjusted after SOP of the plant. So that's the picture for the three regions. If we sum that up now to have the full group picture, as we announced in the press release, it's a fantastic year for us, we believe. Profitability has improved significantly despite the flat sales. You see here on the chart on the left side that the organic sales growth was more or less versus prior year, so 0.1%. There are two main effects in there. That's the FX headwinds. All in all, roughly 42 million euros down. On the other side, we had support from the M&As by 26 million euros. But the very robust demand for the transport sector, which is organically plus 9%, as Joachim pointed out, could then offset the decline in the agricultural market. um and then resulting in an absolute ebit of 141 million which is an ebit margin of 11.3 percent both record numbers for yoast and what we have seen before is we have a strong boost in profitability in all regions and on top um compared with the efficiency measures district cost control especially in the agricultural segment and the strong aftermarket business that led to these fantastic results, we believe, for the full year 2023. And if you keep that in mind for a second, you also would see that we are now very balanced, so that 141 million EBIT is more or less equally split between all the regions, so that underlines somehow the global presence of Yoast. and the high diversity of where we make the money. Finally, we make the money everywhere with relatively good margins. If you now go to our adjusted net income bridge to derive earnings per share, you can see we started with a net income of 52 million. Then you have to add up the reported taxes and finance expenses. showing a reported EBIT of 93 million. And then, as usually, we adjust for our PPA expenses and some other exceptionals like M&A transaction costs or reorganization and relocation costs. There's one specific topic this year as well, which has been announced before. We settled the arbitration process for the final purchase price calculation with the former owner of Erlö. That has an EBIT impact of 12 million. That's going to be adjusted. Finally, it's part of the purchase price, so to speak. And for sure, we would have expected that this is a bit lower. But finally, it turned out to that number. And we are happy in some way with it because that underlines how successful the business of ALU is. And finally, we have to pay for it. So we are fine with that. Ending up with the reported EBIT number of 141 million. And if you then adjust for the finance costs and our adjusted tax rates, you end up with 93 million. adjusted net income or translated into earnings per share with an earnings per share of 6.24 versus 5.76 of last year. That's an increase of 8%. And as Joachim pointed out, we will propose a dividend of 1.50%. per share to our shareholders on this year's annual general meeting. So let's come to some other KPIs. So ROSI equity ratio and leverage, some were already mentioned by Joachim. ROSI went up for the full year to 21%. I think that should be the highest number used reported, at least since we are on the stock market, so it jumped by 15% or 2.8% points, showcasing our capability for value creation. Equity ratio increased up to 38%, for sure driven by the net income and the leveraging we did over the year. And this in light the effect that we also had inequity, some negative external relations effect. So that shows that we are really, really stable and have a strong balance sheet which opens possibilities for the future as well, for sure. And the same as with net debt, a number that we disclosed. already in February, and Joachim mentioned that before. Let's go to the next page. Some cash flow figures, free cash flow, also that mentioned by Joachim, almost quadrupled. So four times the number of prior year up to 112 million. um and that's not only because of strict inventory management which we announced before um that's also pretty much driven by the excellent operating performance and you have seen that in the uh in the results of the different regions basically all the regions contributed to that um strong free cash flow development um and finally and that's that's happy to announce or happy to disclose um we end up with a conversion rate of 1.2 which is then since a couple of years now back to our target range of at least equal or more than 1.0 so we are quite happy to to disclose that number here today um capex mentioned by joachim as well um we stay at the 2.5 percent so no surprises here even including some of the um greenfield investments we did in India, we stayed in that range. And for sure, that number is without the transaction costs of the two M&As we did. Networking capital improved also significantly. We now stay on an LTM basis at 18% versus sales for sure is a consequence of the strict working capital management. And on the other side, the trade payables development that here somehow is down to the reduction of the safety stock needs, so to speak. So that's a little bit of counter effect, but even including that safety stock reduction, we are down at 18%, as mentioned. Okay, then last page, I believe, is also with regards to OSG goals. We can disclose a very successful year. The overall energy consumption decreased by almost 3% down to 105 million kilowatt hours. And that in light, the fact that we have acquired two companies. So I think that's a very good result as well. And you see that on the bottom chart, more specifically, that we show our CO2 emissions in terms of tons and as well as per production hour. And you see there versus prior year, we have decreased that KPI from 4.2 down to 3.4, which is decreased by almost 20%. And even better, if you compare that to our base here, which is our ultimate target in 2022, we have now a reduction of almost 50%. So we are much faster here. And this is also driven by our teams, by our plant managers who really support the ESG idea and are looking every day for possibilities to invest intelligent wise, so to speak, here in reduction. Because finally, we also see that in our P&L and that makes me even more happy. So I believe that's from the financials. So with that, I will hand over back to Joachim to give us some insights on the outlook for 2024.

Thank you, Oliver. And thanks for all the details on what I think is a very impressive financial performance, but also strategic setup in 2023. So it has been an exceptionally good year for Joost. And of course, the question is, how will that continue? Let's start with the market view. We expect the markets to not give us the support that they've given us last year in the same amount. In Europe, the truck market, we expect a contraction of five to 10%, which you could call is a normalization of the demand compared to the very high pent up demand driven levels that we've had last year. On traders, More or less, we expect the second half year of last year to continue. And with that, in the full year, we will expect a 5% to 10% reduction in the trailer markets in Europe. And the same reduction we expect for the agricultural tractors, also 5% to 10%. North America, the reduction expected on the truck market is 15% to 20%. The year has started a little better than that. So the hope is that we will be more around 15 at the end of the year. Traders is expected 20 to 25% reduction versus the record levels of last year. And also in agricultural tractors and market reduction of 10 to 15% is expected. It will not hit Yoast in the same way, especially in the agricultural tractor segment, because we are very strong in the compact loaders and there we don't expect the same contraction to continue. So I think last year we've been penalized a little bit by a mixed effect. We expect that this year the mixed effect will play into our favor in the North American agricultural market. Asia Pacific, the Chinese market is coming back and we see the other markets more or less stable. And with that, we expect an increase of 5% to 10% in the market demand in Asia Pacific Africa region. Same is true for traders and on agricultural tractors. We see more or less a stable market in the minus 5 to 0% development over the year 2023. Here it says 2022. Sorry for the typo should be 2023. Let's go to the next slide. What does that mean for yours, for our expectation? We expect sales to decline year over year in the single digit percentage range. So one digit decline in sales. More or less in line will be the adjusted EBIT. Of course, there will be some negative effects, some negative volume effects. Therefore, the margin will also decline slightly, but it will remain in our strategic corridor between 10 and 11.5%. And on a personal note, I expect that to be in the upper half of that range for 2024. CapEx, our usual 2.5%, maybe a bit higher because of lower sales and some trailing investments that we have, but very well within the healthy range that we consider healthy between 2.5% and 3%. And rookie capital targets, again, below 19% of sales. Last year, as Oliver just pointed out, we've been at 18%. So those in a nutshell, the expectations for the outlook, let's come to the strategic targets for 2024. In agriculture, I've showed you our extended portfolio. And of course, we want to generate new and global cross-selling opportunities from these new agricultural products. And also from the global setup that we now have with the plant in India and the plant in Brazil. And of course, we have the targets to acquire new OEM contracts. There's a lot of interest of the OEMs looking for looking for tier one supply base that can follow them globally. And we're now very well positioned with the factories that we have in North America, Europe, Brazil, India, and also China. In transport, the target is to increase our revenue per customer by upselling new products. We have some products, also some intelligent products launched in the last two years. And they will be in the focus to bring these products to the market and therefore increase the revenue per customer. And it will also strengthen our market position in all regions. In operations, the target is to localize our production loader designs in Brazil. Today in Brazil, we have cabins and existing loaders, but we want our global loader designs to be located in Brazil. And that's one of the main activities and operations. And also to combine the two plans that we have in Ningbo, China, one from the acquisition and one that we had with the loader business already for four years. And we are planning to consolidate those two plans to gain synergy effects. In ESG, we will continue to identify and implement further measures to reduce our CO2 emissions. We are on a very strong path on the scope one and scope two emissions that we have in our own production footprint. And we will also start in 2024 to measure the scope three to get a grip on the emissions across the supply chain. and in finance of course our target to defend the high profitability levels that we've had in the last years by using our flexibility to sharpen the cost focus further to improve working capital and identify potential for additional efficiency gains that we will need in the future that's the strategic focus and then let me give you the quick summary of this year we are set up to achieve a strong and profitable mid-term growth by leveraging our excellent market positioning that we have and to grow the global business further in transport, but especially in the agricultural business where we are now a global tier one for our existing global tractor OEMs. Our high flexibility and our continued efficiency gains supported a major increase in the profitability in last year, despite the flat sales and development that we've had in 2023 overall. The improvement in working capital and operational excellence boosted the free cash flow. and accelerated the deleveraging below the one times mark. Therefore, very strong balance sheet as a result of the strong years that we've had in the past and the strong year that we will have in 2024. So despite the cyclical slowdown in 2024, we will defend this high profitability and keep our adjusted EBIT margin within the strategic target corridor. And I already added the personal note on the last slide. We see the current market environment as a window of opportunity and see us in a very good position to further invest in our strategic organic and our inorganic growth. Next slide. So with that summary, as I mentioned, we are very happy with the 2023 results. We feel we are well positioned for 2024 and we're looking forward to the Q&A session. Thank you for your attention.