Ascom Holding AG (ASCN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to the '22 Financial Results Media Conference taking place here in Zurich. I also welcome all the participants participating on the webcast. You see the agenda. There are 4 agenda items. We start with the full year '22 at a glance, presented by our CEO, Nicolas Van den Abeele, then we continue with the financial review. Afterwards, the strategy and business update, followed by the guidance, and then we have the Q&A. [Operator Instructions] With this, I hand over to our CEO, Nicolas.

Good morning to all of you, and welcome to our full year '22 media results. I would like to start to give you a brief update of 2022 at a glance and start with saying that we've made good progress on the various points that we wanted to achieve, in particular, good progress in the transformation of Ascom to become much more a solutions company, but also good progress on its financials. And let me give you some of the highlights. First of all, we grew our top line at constant currency at 7.2%, which is actually in line with the increased guidance that we had given over summer, where we went from mid-single to mid to high single-digit growth, particularly happy about the growth that we managed and that we realized in patient systems, which was 20-plus percent, but also in software business, which was actually double digit and which confirms the growth that we can achieve, in particular, also transforming our business to becoming much more a solutions company. Secondly, good and strong order income there if we look on a year-to-year comparison. And if we take out a big project that came in late 2021, we had a growth of around 9.8%, which is excluding a large OEM deal, reported order intake around 3%, but especially happy about the strong order backlog that we have built and that will realize or that will be converted into revenue in 2023. And last but not least, in terms of EBITDA contribution, reported EBITDA of 8%. But if we look at the adjusted EBITDA at constant currency was actually at 10.5%. I'm particularly happy about the EBITDA of the second half, which was close to 15% and which is really showing that Ascom can bring profitability levels back to where it used to be in the past, which was around 15-plus percent. So that's really what we want to aim for also going forward. Now being 1 year in the job as new CEO of Ascom, how do I look back to 2022? And I think '22 was definitely an eventful year with quite a number of headwinds. As you can see on the right-hand side, in terms of component shortages, in terms of inflation, in terms of, well, the geopolitical environment having quite some impact. But despite that, I think we fared well. And there's a number of key points I would like to mention here. In particular, we managed in '22 to reinforce our software and our solutions business. And we've launched in October last year, a new platform, which is an integrated platform of the different solutions that we offer, which is called the Ascom Healthcare Platform and the Ascom Enterprise Platform for our enterprise customers, which is really combining the different solutions into one, making it much more easier for customers, but also for ourselves to scale growth and to generate impact. Secondly, we did a nice acquisition over summer of a company, bolt-on acquisition, technology acquisition, a company called Appliware with a solution called Ofelia, which also strengthens our software suite, in particular for long-term care homes and for enterprise customers. And we're really happy about that because it's generating quite some traction in the market. So that's the first point. The second one is that we worked hard on stepping up the growth. I referred to the 7.2% at constant currency, which is actually twice or more than twice the growth rate that we had in '21 and also the highest growth rate that we had for many, many years. So I think that's a good proof point that as Ascom, we can generate that growth, and we need to continue to step that up to get to a double-digit growth rate in revenue. Particularly happy about some countries. I mean DACH, France, Rest of World, which were in the high teens. Happy about Nordics, USA, Canada as well, OEM, which had mid-single-digit growth. Specifically for the U.S., we made progress. Am I happy where we are today? No, definitely not yet because we need to make also there the journey to 10 plus growth in the U.S. and in Canada. We made good progress with moving much more to direct sales to software sales in a lot of IDNs and a lot of other customers like Veterans Association, Department of Defense, but it's definitely still a step to go to get to 10% growth as well in U.S. and Canada. Shaping and strengthening our foundations, Shape Up, which is the theme of the annual report and also of the presentation today. We've worked hard on making our foundations more solid with a lot of things happening there. We've also worked hard to reducing our cost base, and I will come back to that throughout the presentation this morning. And as I mentioned, in particular, happy about the second half profitability where we've shown a step-up and that we got back to 15%, last year, we were impacted by some headwinds, component shortages, spot buys, where we had to buy a lot of components at a very significant premium. Price increases that we diligently pushed through and which became visible also in the second half of the year, both at EBITDA level, but also at gross margin level, which is a good proof point that as a company, we can make that step to higher profitability. Now just in a snapshot, the financials, and Dominik will go into much more detail here. Top line, CHF 279 million, which is plus 2% at actual currency, plus 7% at constant currency, but in line with our increased guidance as we said. Incoming orders plus 3% at constant currency, but if we single out a large contract, it was close to 10%, large contract in 2021. And then EBITDA, as I mentioned, reported CHF 24 million or 8% adjusted for some one-offs, in particular, pension funds was 9.8%. Now if we look at the impact that we've had in the market, I'm particularly happy about many projects that we've won, of which a snapshot of some of the projects. Here, all projects which prove the success we can have in the market, but especially prove that we're on the journey to transforming our company much more to becoming a solutions company and much more also a project and software company. And you can see a number of references here. It's not an extensive list, but these are all references between CHF 1 million and CHF 5 million, which are, I mean, definitely the CHF 3 million, CHF 5 million is on the higher end of the typical project that we win. And it's all projects, as I mentioned, which are a proof point of the transformation, but also some of them are actually part of the European Investment and Recovery Fund. Like, for example, the project in France with UniHA but also the project in Italy with Roma. So most of these projects are linked to the new Ascom Healthcare platform, as you can see in Sweden, which is a CHF million project where we will deploy our platform in around 7, 8 hospitals in the Southern region of Sweden. The solution Mathias Stiftung in Germany is a very large group with about 50 different type of hospitals, clinics, long-term care homes, where we will also deploy our digital solution as part of the Ascom Healthcare Platform. I'm particularly proud about a major win in France with UniHA, which is the first large contract as well with our Ascom Healthcare Platform, Digistat for dashboarding and medical device integration, and it would really help us to scale our Digistat rollout in France in different type of countries. Last but not least, Belgium, not because I'm Belgium, but because it's a very nice and actually big first contract with Ofelia. So CHF 1.5 million contract with a large pan-European long-term care home, Korian, which has 70,000, 80,000 beds and residents in their different homes, and we secured actually a big contract with Ofelia, recurring contract, CHF 1.5 million to deploy that solution across their 70-plus long-term care homes in Belgium. So just a snapshot, a flavor of a number of our references, which we are very proud of and which shows the impact and success we can have in the market. With this, that was my introduction. I would like to pass the floor to Dominik to give us some insights on the financial performance, and then I will come back with an update on our strategy and also looking forward. Dominik?

Thanks, Nicolas. A warm welcome from my side to here in the Metropol and the other ones in the webcast. Looking on the key figures. As already mentioned by Nicolas, incoming orders, a small decrease of 2%. But if you take out the extraordinary deal we had in OEM, the growth was 4.3%. At constant currency, the growth was 3.3%, mainly driven by all markets, except the OEM and with a high carrying out of the rest of the world part, which was carrying a large share of it. Normalizing this number too, taking once again out the OEM deal, we were at 9.8% growth at constant currency, as already mentioned by Nicolas, really, really a good result on that part. This is then reflected in, once again, a record order backlog with CHF 276.5 million, which is, of course, driven by the bigger deals we had in the past too, the Wales deal and the mentioned OEM deal, which I said some minutes ago. Net revenue, positive growth of 2% and this 7.2% at constant currencies, coming out from projects, products and services across acute and enterprise segments. With this, we were able to achieve an EBITDA of CHF 23.9 million, normalizing excluding the one-off charges we already mentioned in the half year press conference, this would mean that we would be at CHF 29.1 million. which is slightly higher than 2021. At constant currencies, as already mentioned by Nicolas too, we had an EBITDA margin of 10.5%. Net working capital, an increase of CHF 12.2 million due to mainly 2 reasons: increased inventory and WIP. This effect comes out from the fact that the projects were not able to close all of the projects due to the fact that we were having missing components. And we had, in addition, as you may remember, spot buys in raw material. In addition, we have high receivable balance, the high receivable balance of around CHF 4.2 million is due to timing of the revenue. To highlight, November and December, the revenue there was CHF 9 million more than 1 year before. And this is then influencing the receivables part. Then we had CHF 2 million change in income tax receivables and payables. So in total, as mentioned, CHF 12.2 million additional working capital. CapEx of CHF 1.8 million additional CapEx, if you compare it to the year before, we've done investments into our software platform and our products. Now let's look on the incoming order part. Incoming orders, as already mentioned, a small decrease of 2% at actual currencies, but a really continued strong development in incoming order, significant increase we had in maintenance and support with 23% growth at constant currencies. The largest share there of this absolute growth was coming from the U.S. where we had CHF 6.4 million more, which follows the growth in recurring software revenue, which we set last time too. Project product and service incoming orders was declining, but normalized with the OEM deal, as already mentioned, then this part was growing 5.1% at constant currencies, too. If you then look in the markets, we achieved in our major Europe market a growth of 6.5% at constant currency. If you compare that with the year before, where we had 5.6% growth, even there, we were able to increase our growth rate. This growth came mainly out from DACH and The Netherlands, which were the largest growth contributors in the major European markets. Rest of the world with a really significant growth of 43% at constant currency, mainly driven by the Belgium, the MEA and the Australia part. That's really a highlight, and I'm confident looking on the pipeline we have that we will able to have a significant growth in 2023 in rest of the world too. On overall level, as already mentioned, we were growing our part at 9.8% taking out, of course, once again, the OEM deal. If you now compare H2 to last year, the year before, we were having and taking out the OEM deal, we were growing H2 compared to H2 the year before, 6.5% at constant currency. So even the H2 comparing to the H2 1 year before, the growth was 6.5%. This could result, as mentioned, some of the deals by Nicolas is not reflective of everything in the IO. You cannot see everything in the IO. Why can you not see everything in the IO? Because the frame contracts were not booked as IO. And we've done new frame contracts with GPOs in the U.S., we've done a frame contract with the Southeast Norway, the way Nicolas explained it. And we've done 1 in Germany with the University of Bonn. All these deals are not reflected in the IO. This is, of course, the IO is driving then the backlog, and that's the story about the once again record order backlog. And if you compare the order backlog and you look at the CAGR, we were growing 16% at actual rates since 2018. And if you take the constant currency, we were growing 19.5% our backlog. Maintenance and support was having a CAGR of 9.3% and remained stable over CHF 100 million in 2020 and 2021. Now in 2023, we reached CHF 116 million. Important to mention that these service contracts, they are not renewed annually. They are every 3 to 5 years, renew them. So if you see the decline we had in 2021 to 2020, that's due to the fact that not everything is renewed every year. Projects, products and services was having a CAGR of 21.9%, including the Wales and the large OEM deal. If you take out the Wales and OEM deal, the CAGR was still 13.1%. And is showing the underlying backlog growth with our special big deals is very strong too. You can see here the effect of the component shortage on the percentage split between the 2 boxes, the yellow, the blue and the light blue one. When you look on the projects, products and services, we were around 50% in 2019 and 2020. The last 2 years, now you see that the percentage was growing up to 60%. So this change is due to component shortage. We were not able to deliver all the backlog. And in addition, the 2 deals mentioned the Wales and the OEM deals. As mentioned by Nicolas, around 40% is long term, meaning that we will have revenue out of the backlog in 2024 and beyond. And if you then do the retro calculation, you see that 60% is going to be revenue in 2023 out of the backlog. Let's now have a look on our revenue and where the growth was coming out of the revenue there. Looking on a little bit more details on our revenue. We increased it from CHF 291.5 million to CHF 312.6 million at constant currency. And then we had, unfortunately, a negative currency effect of CHF 15.2 million, minus 5.2%, resulting in a reported growth of CHF 5.9 million, 2% growth rate on actual rates. I will now on the next slide, go in to show you the positive increase in local currency to show you the development in H1 and H2 and then the development of the regions. Positive revenue development, as already said, 7.2% at constant currency was driven by the increase in projects, products and services, which was growing 9.6%. Even we already have a backlog there. You remember the backlog we've done some years ago. The spot price we've done helped to mitigate the crisis and to deliver to our customers. We had a moderate growth of 1.7% at constant currency in maintenance and support. Mainly to mention here is the software recurring portion S&A was growing 13.6%, in absolute terms, CHF 3.7 million, mainly driven once again by the U.S. market. Hardware maintenance and support remained flat, but is the larger part of that pillar where we are having 79% out of it. H2 growth now looking on the H2 was 7.4% at constant currency, slightly higher than the one we had in H1. In H1, we realized 7.1% at constant currency. The H2 growth was driven by projects, products and services, plus 11.1% at constant currency, reflecting the positive outcome of the spot buys, which allowed us to deliver against the backlog. Now on the following page, let's look what happened in the regions. DACH, as you may see, we were able to see it on our annual report very strong growth of almost 20%. And if you compare that to the year before, year before, we had a decline of 9.7%. This was driven by key deals we've done in acute care. France and Spain, continued strong growth of almost 15%, driven by the long-term care market, driven by deliveries in nurse call devices and software sales. Rest of the World, substantial growth across most countries, driven by mainly the acute care segment, markets to highlight here are Belgium, Italy, Asia and Australia where we were heavily growing. Nordics, a solid performance, driven by mobility and software sales into the healthcare and the enterprise secure establishment segment. U.S. and Canada, a growth of 5.6%, underpinned by software sales and nurse call devices. We were heavily growing in nurse call, we were shrinking a little bit in mobility. OEM, the growth following the backlog carried over what we had in 2021. Where I'm not really happy is the performance about the U.K. and The Netherlands markets. In the U.K., we had challenging economic environments and the slowdown in the long-term care segment, which could not be offset by the growth in acute care and enterprise, which we had. First time since years where we were not able to grow. Positive here was that we had a very strong growth in software license sales in acute care. The Netherlands, similar situation, challenging economic environment here in the all-over healthcare segment. We had customer readiness, challenges and delays in customer acceptance, slowing down project revenue in The Netherlands. And just to remind you, we are heavily depending on projects in The Netherlands business. And in addition to remind you, the performance of the individual markets was influenced by the shortage. U.K. and The Netherlands nurse call is a project-based business, and so they need all products to be delivered before they can reflect it. If you compare it now to France, France is nurse call items with partners where we sell directly to partners where we can do separate treatments, and we could realize, and we do not need to wait until the project is finished. So that's the big difference if you compare the French market with the U.K. and The Netherlands market. We will now have a look on the EBITDA bridge, the EBITDA development and the EBITDA margin of 10.5% at constant currency on the next slide. Starting with gross profit. That's the table on the left, the small box on the left, offsetting for the one-off costs, as already shown in the half year conference, we would be at 46.8% at constant currency. Comparing that now to last year's 46.9%, we were able to mostly compensate the burden of the cost increase of components, energy, raw material and logistic costs with our own price increases we've done in the markets. And we continue with that to strive to a level of above 50% on gross profit. Remember that we were forced to do spot price, if now taking this exceptional spot markets net influence costs out, the gross profit margin would even be at 48.7%. Just to remind you, we have done the spot buys to be able to deliver, to produce high volumes on our hardware products. Now let's look on the EBITDA bridge. As shown in the half year results presentation last time, we had CEO severance and the one-off Swedish pension with, in total, CHF 5.2 million of extraordinary costs, which brings the reported EBITDA to 9.8% when normalizing it. Second, the currency effect of CHF 3.7 million, bringing the EBITDA at constant currency to 10.5%. Adding now the effect of the spot price into 2, meaning a net effect of CHF 5.6 million. What do I mean with the net effect? The net effect is out of the price increases we were able to do for the spot price minus the spot price cost. If you add that back, our EBITDA margin would be at 12.3%. And to highlight on the EBITDA part too, as already mentioned by Nicolas, we achieved that constant currency strong H2 EBITDA main EBITDA margin close to 15%. Now in the P&L. I would like to highlight here some points. Once again, starting with the gross profit. Offsetting that with the one-off cost, as already mentioned the slide before, we would be at 46.8% at constant currencies. If you then take the performance of the second half, we realized a gross profit margin of 48.6%. And if you compare that with the year before, there, we realized a margin of 45.6%. So there, you can see second half was much better than last year or the year before. Marketing and sales includes CHF 1.8 million of Swedish pension cost, this one-off cost, normalized by this one-off cost, marketing and sales grew CHF 1.1 million and is due to continued investment in our clinical and enterprise sales teams, which is contributing to our continued IO growth. So we invest that we are able to grow for the future or in the future. Research and development includes the CHF 1.9 million Swedish pension cost too. Nevertheless, we have lowered the cost as we reduced offsets this year. We were focusing on the product development and having there a lower cost and improved efficiency on that part. G&A includes CHF 1 million of extraordinary cost too. It's the CEO severance and the Swedish pension part. If you normalize that out and you take that out, the G&A cost was flat despite we had a growth in revenue. So if you look on that part, we were more efficient if you compare it with the revenue we realized. Looking another point which you may have seen, the Group tax rate went up from 23.8% if you adjusted it by tax effects relating to prior periods to 26.2%. This increase was influenced by the country split, where the profits have been recognized and tax losses in countries where the losses has not been fully activated. And looking now on the Group profit, even with the lower Group profit we had, if you compare it to the last year, our Board of Directors decided to keep the same dividend payments we had 1 year before. So no change on that part, even with a slight lower Group profit. Looking on the CapEx. Lastly, on the CapEx part, nothing really big to mention, small CapEx increase. We invested in R&D and product development and in our ERP system. And of course, you may remember we've done the Ofelia acquisition. Looking on the cash flow and cash development. where I'm not really satisfied and you're looking on the number, we need to focus more on our operating cash flow. The operating cash flow was lower than 2021 and was mainly impacted by the net working capital increase of CHF 12.2 million, as I already presented at the beginning of the presentation. The CapEx is CHF 13.4 million and the purchase of own shares of CHF 0.6 million is then resulting in total in a borrowing of additional CHF 10 million, which we used to maintain the same cash level and to finance the working capital, the one which we were needing to do the spot buys due to the fact that we had delays in projects and so on and so on. Then we had the dividend of CHF 7.2 million and the foreign currency translation of CHF 1.3 million. And then on the others, that's the acquisition of Ofelia and some other financial and other noncurrent assets, which we had. So let's now finally look on the balance sheet. The key points here are the borrowing of CHF 10 million, which was driven, as mentioned by the net working capital increase and as already mentioned, not satisfied on that part. To remind you, it was influenced that part on the working capital by CHF 10 million increase in work in progress from the projects where components were missing combined with spot buys of raw materials that we were forced to do. And it's influenced too about the high receivables already mentioned at the beginning of the presentation. I'm not satisfied, and we need to work that we bring down the working capital the way we had it in the past. And that's one of our tasks in 2023 to bring down the working capital. Nevertheless, we still have a healthy net cash position. We are cash positive CHF 16.6 million despite the reduction of CHF 12.9 million, which we had due to the fact I already mentioned. The increase in total assets was driven by increase in current assets and the acquisition of Ofelia as already mentioned, a small decline in equity ratio, which we are now having a 36.4% equity level. To make a short summary of our numbers, we had a strong development on the revenue. We even reached the raised guidance. We have a record order backlog. And together with the 3 chapters of the equity story, which Nicolas will present you on the following slides, I'm quite confident that we are prepared to bring and to realize the numbers be produced or we showed you in the guidance. So we are ready. We have everything. We have a strong balance sheet. We showed that we were able to grow in second half, we showed that we were able to increase the gross profit margin. All this makes us confident that we are going to be able to deliver 2023 and the following years. Nevertheless, Nicolas will go on these points in further details in his presentation. And I would like to hand back to Nicolas for his second part.

Thank you, Dominik. I would like to spend a few minutes on our strategy. What are our plans, where we're heading to and especially also how we look at 2023 and '24? So just as a recap first, what is our ambition? Ambition is really to deliver better outcomes. And Ascom does this in what we call mission-critical environments in enterprises and in hospitals. And by doing so, it increases the situational awareness of workforce workers, medical care staff, orchestrating workflows, helping them as such to deliver better outcomes to make their work and care delivery also much better. So that is our ambition. Now if you look at the environment in which we operate in the healthcare environment, the healthcare industry is going through a quite significant transformations in the year to come. And there's a number of important factors that are driving that. First of all, I think on the demographics, if you look at the aging of the population, I mean, today, in Europe, 1 out of 5 people is above 60, in 20 years from now, 1 out of 3 people will be above 60. And the number of people above 80 will actually increase 3x versus what it is today. So this will create a massive strain, a massive impact on care, on care delivery, on the way care has to be delivered also in the future. And that's where our solutions definitely do come into play and making it more easier for the medical staff, making it less cumbersome, automate, digitalize it and you name it. Combined with that, we see also worldwide that there is a continued and chronic shortage of staff, medical staff, which puts additional strain on the system, and that's also where our solutions can help to make it easier for the medical staff to deliver care. Now if you look at the next 2, 3 points on the slide, point 2, 3 and 4 are linked to the whole digitalization of care. So the consumer becomes or the patient becomes the consumer consumes healthcare all along, let's say, the journey and consumes it everywhere and anywhere, meaning being informed having that information being more knowledgeable about care, which is also changing the way care has to be delivered, digitalizing it much more. And then last but not least, new regulatory pathways. Regulation is becoming much stricter in terms of registering time logging the different activities that are being provided in a hospital, making sure that this is also implemented, recorded with a time stamp linked to that, there's also much more with the pressure on the financial performance of hospitals, much more trend to go from high acuity areas, intensive care unit rehab to lower intensive care areas. And that's where hospitals and vendors at Ascom benefit from that increased regulatory position. Now Ascom really helps to overcome these pain points in a hospital in terms of shortage of staff and automating tasks, communicating much better between the different patients and nurses or doctors between the different medical staff as well with improved real-time communication and collaboration solutions. And that's really the core of our business. And where we see in the years to come also a very significant uptake also in investments and improvements that are possible across the healthcare industry. Now if you look at our ambition short to midterm, we want to become what we call the enabling platform in a hospital, the enabling platform, meaning a platform to which all medical devices and other devices connect and everyone connects to that. And it's medical devices, it's nurse call and patient systems. It is also mobility devices and then the workflows, which are the software platforms in between. We want to become that enabling and leading platform, which is a real-time platform of action in a hospital. Now today, we have a strong market share globally in nurse call. I mean we're 1 of the 3 biggest player with [ Rauland ] in U.S. with Ackermann in Europe. We want to continue to grow in that. Same for the mobility devices, we're one of the bigger players. We have around half or 50% market share in [indiscernible]. We have a very strong position also in mobility smart phones with 2 other big players, which is Spectra, Zebra and Spectralink. But we want to grow, in particular, a lot more in the middleware and connectivity area, which is the whole workflow area and workflow orchestration that I was referring to. Now becoming that leading enabling platform in a hospital, you can see it on this slide, is really across the whole what we call care continuum going from emergency department when a patient is arriving in hospital to imaging, to ICU to operating room back to the rehab and general wards and really becoming that enabling platform which is a clinical platform of action. It's a real-time, not a static platform. It's a clinical platform of action and out of registration. Now I've put there the emphasis on platform of action. Unlike the EMRs, which are much more static, not necessarily real time, which is much more a platform of registration. So that's really the ambition that we have to step up our position in all of the hospitals to become that leading and enabling platform to which everything and everyone connects medical devices and nurse call systems and then providing outputs to the different caregivers on their mobility devices on the dashboard, on different reports and waveforms that are being generated. So really becoming that orchestrating platform, transforming data into insights and specific actions. Now back in August, I presented the 3-step journey that we are working on in the company and that we started last year when I joined, which is a 3-step journey based on shape, expand and exceed. And last year, we've pretty much been working on the first chapter of our journey, which is what I call shape, which is really strengthening in our bases. And these are the 3 chapters of the [ equity ] journey that we are executing upon. So shape is pretty much strengthening our foundations, stepping up our growth, working our value propositions, integrating and converging our different platforms in order to enable that growth, but also in order to enable better financial performance, and we have strengthened our capabilities there in 2022. We've also worked a lot on expand on growing, as you have seen and probably appreciated with the top line growth. And that's also what we, in the course of 2023, we'll also focus on much more to step up that growth to get to our double-digit guidance that we've guided you to. So these are the 3 chapters of our journey. Now looking at 2023, what are the key -- the 4 key areas, the 4 key pillars that we want to focus on. First of all, growth acceleration, and I'll come back on each of these in a minute. Secondly, operating excellence, making sure that we are more efficient in what we are doing that we are more productive, but by the same token that we also tuned down work further on our cost base. Thirdly, continuing our journey to becoming more even a solution than an outcome-based company. And we've made some important steps in that direction also last year. And then last but not least, ESG, where we have a renewed ambition and stepped up our ambitions and our road map in terms of sustainability. So let me go through one by one. In terms of growth and growth acceleration last year in '22, we upped our growth to 7.2% in constant currency. We want to make the next step this year in bringing that growth to around 10%, and I'll come back to that on the next slide. And we want to grow in each of the 3 market segments in which we are, long-term care, hospital, but also enterprise, and it's a good combination as we can really leverage our portfolio across these 3 segments, segments which have different economical cycles, but also different decision cycles. And depending on the geographical markets where we are, we have a more outspoken position in 1 or 2 of these areas, and we want to really diversify that much more. Growth in all regions, but with a key focus on 5 key growth regions, which is U.S. and Canada, which is U.K., which is France and Spain, which is Italy and which is definitely also DACH. So looking at 2023, and I would like to give a good message of comfort here. As Dominik was saying, we have a very strong backlog 1st of January, which is good. About 60% of that, which is around 50% of the growth of this year or 50% of the revenue of this year is the conversion of the backlog into revenue. So that's around 50% of, let's say, the top line figure of 2023. On top of that, we have around 20% of run rate business. So 50% backlog, 20% run rate business, which gives around 70% of where we want to get actually this year. With the supply chain easing over first half 2023, with also the price increases with the funnel that we have in new projects. We are -- and with the additional pricing effort as well, we are pretty confident on our guidance to make the next step in terms of growth in 2023, coming from the 7% last year to get to the 10-plus percent growth. That's in terms of growth acceleration, operational excellence, and I'll come to EBITDA there as well in a minute. So as Dominik also highlighted last year, we made quite some effort in making our cost base more efficient. We are making a second step and an important step this year in lowering that further as well and then working on improving further our efficiency and many, many activities that are going on in the company, be it on processes, be it on sales enablement, be it on R&D efficiency. And specifically, we have launched an internal plan, which we call Shape Up to further tune our costs, lowering our breakeven point, which at this point in time is sitting in the second half of the year and well into the second half of the year, we want to bring that earlier forward in the year as well and lowering overall our cost base and our breakeven point. So the plan that we are currently implementing, and we've started already in 2022, brings around CHF 10-plus million run rate savings on a full year basis. in 2024, with already saw net additional savings starting also in 2023, which we have included in our guidance of 2023. So that's an important plan. It's again showing that as management and as a leadership team of the company, we are working on our cost base, bringing down our costs. It's not eliminating or stopping things. It's really doing things better. And you can see it on the left hand, a number of initiatives here, which are part of that Shape Up plan in terms of platform convergence, which we are working on in terms of sales enablement to really improve and digitalize the customer journey, automate a lot of things in terms of order intake, working on remote monitoring, improving that, which will also improve our service to our customers and customer satisfaction, working also on process optimization with our IT systems, but also with our installation quality and systems. So a lot of initiatives going on there, and there's also quite a significant focus on really making sure that we are more productive, more efficient as a company going forward. Strengthening our position in solutions and software. That is our journey. That is our strategy, and we've made some good steps ahead last year with the launch of the Ascom Healthcare Platform. But also the acquisition and the injection of the technology platform of Ofelia, and we are getting quite some positive vibes and good traction in the market of that. I will not go into the details here, but you can see a picture of the healthcare platform on the next page, the enterprise platform with our different solutions in terms of alarm and workflow management, clinical data integration coming from our Unite and formerly Digistat platforms. Mobility, safety applications, our nurse school platforms, obviously, and the professional services. And these really serve to provide better connected care between the caregiver and the patient. Orchestrated care between the different caregivers to have, I mean, that easier and better communication, orchestrated communication between them with filtering with escalation with alerting safer care, safety for the caregiver, but also safety of the patient, Wander Management, I mean to know where the patients are, especially in elderly care homes that is quite important and data-driven care where you really have all the information at hand, vitals, waveforms, statistics, actions and also the whole logging of the care delivery. So that's on the Ascom Healthcare part. Likewise, for Ascom Enterprise, and I will not go through the details here, but we are focusing primarily on why they're called 2 plus 2 segments, which is industry and hospitality with a number of workflows for these particular segments. And next to that, secure establishments as well as -- I forgot now the fourth one. So retail, industry, secure establishment and then the fourth one, I will come back to it in a minute. So these are also the same platforms with the same type of products that we are launching and delivering and where we have with the technology integration of Ofelia, basically, I mean, a very good cloud-based solution step-in in our entry level solution for these type of markets and segments. Sustainability last but not least, we've upped our ambitions there in terms of striving to become fully carbon neutral by 2040 and becoming also top-tier in our industry by 2030, with really a road map and specific actions for the E, the S and the G. And I must say, next to, I mean, being a very important ethical importance. It is also becoming a market imperative. As many of our customers next to product and pricing also value sustainability as very, very important and as part of the evaluation proposal that we have. So going forward, more to come. We have, in our annual report, a very extensive section on sustainability, but it's also something that internally we're working on very diligently. Now this brings me to the guidance of the company. So '23 guidance and the midterm guidance for 2023, we confirm our revenue growth target of around 10%. And I believe with the point that I've highlighted in terms of our backlog, backlog conversion in terms of the run rate business on top of that in terms of price increases, in terms of also the component shortage, which is easing, we have a good plan in place to get to that 10% plus guidance. Secondly, in terms of EBITDA margin, we guide for an EBITDA margin of around 11% based on operating leverage, based on the gross margin improvements that we are doing in terms of pricing but also in terms of component costs. Based on the OpEx plans and OpEx cost savings plans that we have put in place and many more actions, mix of sales going to much more projects than software, which again underlines and confirms the guidance that we are giving of 10% EBITDA margin. In terms of our midterm guidance, midterm guidance has not changed, which is that we have an ambition and see clear path to double-digit growth, top line growth over the next couple of years, but also a continued annual improvement of our EBITDA margin of around 100 basis points until 2025. Now we have our Annual Shareholders Meeting -- Annual General Meeting, which is planned on April 18, where the Board will propose a dividend of CHF 0.20 per share and where there's also a proposal for reelection of all the Board members on the AGM in April. This brings me to the conclusion of today's presentation. Thank you, everyone, for being here in Zurich, but also on our webcast. The message that we wanted to bring along this presentation is, first of all, that the markets that we're in are markets which are resilient with positive underlying growth trends for more digitalization for critical and real-time communication and collaboration. And we see a continued strong growth over the years to come in that particular market. Secondly, 2023 too while there are some improvements that we still can make and need to make, I think, 2023 showed that we made very good progress on a number of fronts in terms of top line growth, in terms of working on our cost base, in terms of also our margins and transforming the company to becoming more a solutions company. We're very confident of 2023 to make the next step. And I believe also throughout the presentation, we've given you some insights and also comfort on our growth plan to bring our top line to that 10-plus percent growth. And linked to that, also the EBITDA accretion with our guidance to around 11% EBITDA margin in '23. With that, again, I would like to thank you, and I would like to open up for Q&A. Daniel?

Ladies and gentlemen, with this, we will start our Q&A session. Who would like to start. Walter Bamert, please.

You touched on the challenges in the U.S. I think at the beginning of the year, it was rather component shortage in the nurse call systems. Did you transfer those systems from U.K. where you missed them in the second half to the U.S.? Or how did that develop? Can you give us I think the order intake was quite good in the U.S., but the revenue generation not. So give us more color to that, please.

So we're not yet happy about our performance in the U.S., as you all have seen and heard throughout the presentation with mid-single-digit top line growth, right? So we need to bring it to double digit. So on the one hand, we made good progress in U.S. If you look at the project that we have signed that we have landed good progress with a number of IDNs and major IDNs and good progress as well with VA, Department of Defense, which we did not have before, and we managed to get in and actually signed up quite some projects, eating some market share from some of our competitors there. We made an important step in U.S. to move and to invest, to move away from a primarily indirect business model that we used to have before and mostly in nurse call business model. To next to that, also a direct touch business model, which is going forward, let's say, the business model that we want to use, specifically for growing that workflow and software business. So we invested in that in the first half. I am happy about the funnel that I see and also the traction and projects that we see there. The second change that we did last year that we also invested in setting up an enterprise team. So we were primarily and only doing health care. Today, we do health care plus also the enterprise. We're also there. With the team that we've brought in mid-last year, we have seen some positive development. Now good and positive development in funnel, which is a leading indicator, partly translated into the order intake, but not yet fully in revenue. And that's where the U.S. has particularly been hampered also by some shortages that we had specifically on the nurse call system. And I mean if there's 1 or 2 where we had most of the issues, it's mostly in a nurse call and has impacted the U.S. in particular. So I would say not fully satisfied or I mean, moderately satisfied in the U.S., we need to make a next step this year, bringing the top line growth to 10-plus percent also in U.S. But that's where the leading indicators are going in the right direction in terms of funnel in terms of number of projects. It does take a little bit of time to change the business model from a primarily indirect channel business model to also next to that, a direct business model. But we see good progress there.

Jörn Iffert, please.

I'm Jörn from UBS. If I may start with 2 questions. The first one is on the CHF 10 million cost saving program, which is quite significant. Can you split this in COGS, SG&A and R&D that you have a better feeling here and give us maybe some concrete examples? And the second question is, please, on you merged Unite. And did you start what is the first customer feedback? And if you give us also a concrete example of how this is improving the convenience factor for the customer? Maybe if you have a small case here.

Good. So on the CHF 10 million cost savings plan, the bulk part is actually -- or there's a portion linked to COGS, but the biggest portion is coming from OpEx savings. Now it's across all functions. So it's partly on marketing, not on sales because actually, we're stepping up our sales efforts, we're investing there, but partly on marketing and doing things better. It is on our global functions, and it is on R&D. Now to give an example on marketing, I mean, we are leveraging our assets and money spent and spending it more smartly globally. We used to have a very decentralized marketing organization. We have brought them back under one global leadership. We've also streamlined the activities and the operations that we have in marketing. Now likewise, on R&D, last year, we brought some of the different R&D teams that were still managed to run separately together under 1 leadership. We have worked on costs, bringing down the cost, being more efficient, working on integrating these platforms, the 2 nurse calls becoming one. The different software platforms also being integrated into one for this. That is one aspect in terms of R&D. There's the second one, which is also having a much more optimal cost base between what I call the higher-cost countries and the more lower-cost countries. And we have also looked into rebalancing that to a certain extent to have a better mix between the different sites that we have. So that's on, let's say, the CHF 10 million cost savings program. On the -- and there's really a lot of initiatives behind that. So it's on -- as I mentioned, on sales and sales enablement, making it easier with more standardized value propositions with a common marketing tool behind that. It's really integrating the different products, having also templates in terms of the installation and implementation of that so that basically we are more efficient in the professional services part. So there's quite a number of initiatives supporting that. Now in terms of Unite and Digistat. The -- as you've seen in the references that we've shown, many of them are actually linked to the new Ascom healthcare platform. They have been integrated, and it's a first step of the full integration of the platform because the end goal is to have them sitting on the full common and unique software architecture, which is a new state-of-the-art software architecture based on micro services and the containerization of these microservices. What we've done is actually integrated the platforms, Digistat and Unite with the same workflow engine with the same graphical user interface. We've seen positive feedback from our customers since the launch. And we've signed up a number of wins, some of which I highlighted here. For example, the win in France, UniHA, which is an important program, which basically will deploy the Ascom Healthcare Platform in around 13 to 15 hospitals basically across France in an ICU environment. So there's good traction in the market. There's much more to come there, but I think it's a good and important step in the direction that we want to go, which is really coming to fully harmonized and integrated platforms. Now what will it bring? It will bring on the one hand, a much more efficient R&D organization because we will basically have a common and fully integrated platform. It will also improve our deployment time professional services where we need to make a step up in improving that being much more efficient in our professional services. It will also improve the deployed cost of a solution, hence, having also a margin benefit in terms of reduction of professional services costs, but also in terms of the cost of the solution that we deploy. So on the one hand, potential cost reduction. On the other hand, also, in my view, a good enabler to improve margins and eventually also accelerate our sales. Yes. So I hope it answered the question.

Next question here in the room. Serge Rotzer, please.

Serge Rotzer from Credit Suisse. I'm not sure whether you have said it, but you mentioned that sales increased by 7.2% at constant currency and orders by 3.3% at constant currency. Now I'm wondering how much was the price impact on this 7.2% sales growth? And obviously, the same for the orders, as I feel that orders probably have been flat, excluding the price effect. Can you give some color here? And obviously, you mentioned that for next year or this year, 10% growth includes, again, decent price increases, probably you also can give us some flavor here.

So on the revenue growth of last year, the price increase component is fairly limited. And it's below 2%, mainly because of the time lag between, let's say, the moment we increased the prices, and we started during the first half of last year, and we did multiple price rounds. And then the revenue realization, because it takes 1 or 2 months before, let's say, prices are updated. But then before it converts into revenue, you're 6 months down the road. And that's basically the effect that you have seen also partly in the second half where price increases have started to kick in. So we had a margin erosion in the first half, but a good step-up in margin in the second half, thanks to operating leverage, thanks to cost but also thanks to a small pricing effect. So all in all, as part of 2022, it's a minor part, I mean 1% to 2% below 2%, because of that timing effect that I was referring to. Now we did price increases in 2022, and we'll continue to do so differently this year. But we did about 4 price increases in total, yes, I mean, between 8% to 10%, let's say. Now if you look at the order intake there, it is a bit different because some of the price increases are surcharges, which are temporary price increases, which you see then in the revenue, but which you don't see in the order intake because it's a surcharge on the backlog or a surcharge on orders which you have on hand basically. And that's why there's a muted effect in terms of price increase on the order intake. If you look at 2023, Dominik, so in terms of price increases, we expect that a couple of percent points of the top line guiding that we do come from the price increases that we have implemented in '22 that we will continue to implement also in 2023.

So a couple of percent points. It's more than last year. So it's more than 2%, but whatever it is that help. Okay. Fair enough. Can you also elaborate what does this mean for the frame contract? Are they somehow indexed? Or how this is working in the future?

So it depends on the type of frame contracts. We have a number of frame contracts where we have, I mean, renegotiated prices or where we have indexation clauses. I mean, going forward, since last year, we have really made sure that we do have that in our contracts. Some are public contracts and there it's a little bit more difficult because public contracts when you change one condition, sometimes the contract is void and has to be retendered. So there, it really depends on the renegotiation effort and the success that we had there. So if you look at our backlog, a part of it has been renegotiated, has been adjusted at current prices. Some contracts, unfortunately, which were public contracts, we were not capable of doing so because of the very strict Ts and Cs in that contract.

If I may another 1 or 2. OEM was terribly down by 50% in orders. And can you confirm that OEM still has the highest margin of the group, point 1. And point 2, do you expect any recovery going forward that this also contributed to margin improvement in 2023?

Taking the first question about the decrease of the order intake. That's due to the fact that you have this special deal in OEM last year. And the OEM IO normally is following, so the incoming orders following the revenue. There is no big difference on that part because the -- what you book as revenue is then IO except the story what I mentioned. And then when you're looking on the prices, we were doing some spot buys, some additional price increase due to spot to some of the OEMs -- to the OEM partners. And of course, these spot prices will come down. And as the spot prices will come down, we will reduce the price level on that part, too. If you're looking on the margin, I do not see a big deviation on the margin we had in the past. It's following the way we had it in the last years.

Okay. And then probably the last one. Net working capital. Well, the balance sheet is quite old today. It's back from the end of December. So today, we are beginning of March. Can you tell us what already has changed? As you said that you want to improve the net working capital. And you mentioned you had a lot of inflow in November, December. So DSO was moon number and the same is true for some others. And then also, I would say, payables were very high in days. So can you give us an update here 2.5 months later?

Yes. Receivables, we were working to bring it out. So of course, it's following the revenue pattern but, as I mentioned in the last quarter compared to last quarter 1 year ago. So since December, we were bringing in. Looking on the cash situation, you saw that we had a borrowing out of CHF 10 million. If I look today, it's 0. So there is no borrowing. So this is showing that we were bringing in the cash following the pattern. In addition, I need to highlight that there is always a special pattern in the first quarter to that you have service contracts, which you invoice at the beginning of the year for the full year. So this is, of course, influencing the cash flow in the first quarter/first H1. But looking on the story, we are confident we are working on it to bring down all the things to bring down the -- as mentioned, the receivables to look on our inventory to optimize the inventory, and we are working on that. And if I look now on February/beginning of March, it looks promising that we are on the right track in the way I explained it.

So just adding on that, cash is king, and I was not happy about the working capital last year, but also the cash generation, the free cash flow generation of the company. So that's one of the major points of attention this year, I mean next to the ones that we mentioned in terms of revenue growth, cost and EBITDA growth. But as Dominik has said, there's a lot of focus on that. Last year, the results, unfortunately, are explained by, I mean, the inventory that we had to build, a lot of projects that we could not fulfill or fully deliver. So there's a lot of focus on that now to really bring down inventory, work on our free cash flow generation, which should be significantly better this year.

Now we have a question here from the webcast from [ Mr. Jose Ming ] from Research Partners for the CFO. Could you please explain in detail why the R&D costs were lower in '22 and how will be the R&D cost development in the next years.

Yes. So -- yes, I can comment on that. So the -- we worked on -- and we also have mentioned that in our last media conference, mid of the year, to make R&D more efficient. We have multiple sites, multiple platforms, different programs. And really, there's quite some opportunity to make it more efficient. So what we started last year is to improve that. And you can see it also in the reduction of our R&D expenditures by around CHF 2.5 million in '22. Something that we want to continue to do also this year. And to be clear, I mean, it's not that we are cutting our innovation efforts. We're stepping up our innovation effort with the Ascom Healthcare platform, with Ofelia, with quite some new innovation and workflows, which we will be adding to our portfolio, but also with new generation mobility phones that will come out also in the course of 2024. So there's quite some innovation that we are doing today and which we'll continue to do. We have to, and we want to be top notch in there, but we can do it better in a more efficient way. And I think the first step was made last year. As part of our Shape Up program this year and next year, we want to continue to work on that and I mean increase further the efficiency and productivity and R&D, which is coming from the full integration and convergence of our R&D platforms to nurse call systems, software platforms. So we want to integrate that, which will have a lot of benefits for us in terms of scalability in terms of making our operations much more efficient. Working further on the sites, high-cost, low-cost sites, et cetera, et cetera. So that's quite a number of initiatives going on there, which our CTO and R&D head, Yves T'Joens is working on. And again, it's continuing and stepping up our innovation while doing it smarter and being more efficient in what we do there. So there's quite more opportunities we can do to do it better.

Any further questions? Otherwise -- yes, Serge?

Sorry to bother you again. Your midterm plan was set up without the new restructuring program of CHF 10 million. What does this tell me? Should you increase the midterm plan? Or is this alarming as basically you are 1 year behind with increasing the EBITDA margin every year by 100 basis points.

So the CHF 10 million cost savings run rate cost savings as part of our current guidance for '23, but also our midterm guidance. Now it's part of really making the company more efficient. And again, we're not stopping things. We're investing in sales power. We're investing in more innovation. But there are things that we can do better, which were also programs part of these programs were also in place or, let's say, being thought of in the past number of years, when the guidance, the long-term guidance, midterm guidance was actually made. Now we're executing on that. My ambition is to be very hands-on and work on improving the foundation, as I mentioned, shape, which is factor 1 because that will help us to be much more efficient. And by doing so, also help us to scale our business, scaling in terms of sales, but also scaling in terms of the, let's say, the professional services behind that, the solutions and the simplicity of the solution that we can offer. So this is the plan that we are doing. We commit to our guidance. We are working very hard to deliver upon that. That's why we've also confirmed our guidance for 2022 -- for '23, sorry. But we'll take it step by step. I mean the macro environment has also changed last year. I mean if it was not for the spot buys, if you single that out, our performance, which have been already much, much higher. So we're operating in a fairly volatile environment today, and that's why we have very high confidence in the guidance that we've given for 2023.

Maybe a small add-on, Serge. Nicolas joined us come in February, and the midterm guidance has been published already in August '21. And already in August '21, when the mid-term guidance has been published, of course, there was in the mind that there some cost saving will be needed. So this is nothing new.

Okay. Walter. I think this week cybersecurity team arrived in the health care area. Is there any investment need at your side? Are you somehow affected by that? Are you prepared for it or the risk for you? Or are you part of the solution?

Yes. Let me start and then I will give the floor to Dominik. So it is very high on the agenda, and it's also, if you look at our risk matrix, one of the top indicators are risk matrix, and it's something that, I mean, keeps us quite busy. We have good systems in place where you -- I mean, with a lot of protection, I mean, the firewalls but also where you disintegrate a different, let's say, databases and things like that to shield it from potential attacks. I mean -- so from a system point of view, I think we have done the right things, and we are stepping that up also day by day. But more importantly, the vulnerability lies also with our people and our workforce. And so there's quite some trainings being done continuously to indicate the hazards by fishing meals by different contacts by apps, et cetera, et cetera. And we're continuously stepping that up to make sure that, I mean, we can protect ourselves as much as possible. Obviously, we've seen over the past 2, 3 years that the number of attacks are really increasing. So that's one thing internally. Obviously, we operate in a critical environment with our customers in a health care environment in a mission-critical environment. So that's where it even becomes more important, obviously, to make sure that our systems are fully sealed and protected in that arena. Do you want to add something on that?

Yes, just 2 points. We are going in the direction of standard software to follow the standard part that the risk you can reduce your own risk, let's say. And in addition, we are doing testing outside on our systems. We look for reports. We check what is happening. If we have open systems, if systems are not patched the way they should be to be really able to follow the path to minimize the risk, let's say.

Then we have another question here on the webcast from Tobias Fahrenholz from Stifel. I think this is now going to the CFO. He says a transaction burdens. You have to digest the 70 basis points margin burden coming from currencies. To which extent can you close the sales cost mismatch and increase the natural hedging? And does your full year '23 margin outlook, again, include additional headwinds?

If I would know what is going to happen on the exchange rate situation, I don't think I would be CFO here. I would invest my money at the market. No, just stop with that chock, but as yet, you don't know. What we are doing, what our risk is or our burden is, we have lots of revenue in Europe and our cost base is in dollar, due to the fact that the material of the products, the hardware ones are produced on a dollar basis. By the way, the world market in chips and so on is all in dollars. What we are doing, we are using natural hedge, natural hedge to the fact that we have a U.S. operation, and we look forward as we use the dollar. But at the end, we are influenced due to the fact that as a Swiss company at the Swiss stock market, where we are doing the smallest amount in Swiss franc. And everything is reported in Swiss franc, we are having that challenge, let's say, due to the fact that in the euro and the dollar swing. And in addition, we have in Sweden, the Swedish SEK, we do forward contracts. We try to limit our risk, let's say, due to the fact that we do it on a rolling basis. But at the end, we are following the way the market is. And as said, due to the fact that we are in Swiss franc, that's a little bit the challenge of Ascom on that point.

Okay. Any further questions here? Otherwise, I would like to thank you for your interest. You can download the presentation and also the annual report on our website. There are also some of our rare paper copies of the annual report, they're on the table, if you like to take one with you, just here on the right. And with this, I hand over to Nicolas.

So again, I would like to thank everyone for being here today during the media conference here in Zurich and also on the webcast. As we mentioned, I mean, we are committed to delivering the next step in our transformation, but also in our financial performance in 2023. So again, many thanks, and hope to talk or see you soon. Thank you very much.