dormakaba Holding AG (DOKA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the full year results 2022, '23 of dormakaba Holding AG Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. I would like to remind you that the conference call does include forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Listeners and readers are therefore strongly encouraged to refer to the disclaimer, which is part of today's media release. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Jim Heng-Lee, CEO of dormakaba, please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Very good afternoon to all of you. Ladies and gentlemen, I was a bit worried because it was so silent before you all start. Now it's business as usual. It is my pleasure to welcome you here in-person. And equal welcome for you who are not able to join but participated remotely through our webcast on our full year results 2022, '23. This is my fourth time addressing you. And for the very first time in our newly refurbished Rümlang headquarter. Once again, a warm welcome. With me today is our CFO, Christina Johansson, whom you already met our first half year presentation back in March this year 2023. Thank you, Christina, for joining me on stage. A quick run-through of the agenda you can expect. First, key results followed by some insights on our operating environment and where we stand, we ship for growth implementation, highlights of how we perform at group and in our regional levels is next. And I'm proud to share with you how dormakaba differentiate itself in the market. Financial performance is next. And clearly, Christina will walk you through them. Lastly, the outlook on the current financial year '23, '24. And finally, I'm happy we are happy to take your questions. We, dormakaba, achieved our short-term growth in the financial year Q2, Q3. We've improved sequentially over the course of the past 2 half years. Strong organic sales growth that was supported by a stronger and robust second half year performance, an improvement in all sales regions. Price realization, strict cost management, procurement optimization and stable volume growth contributed to this positive development. Hence, adjusted EBITDA rose to CHF 385 million close to million Swiss franc. Adjusted EBITDA margin remained at 13.5%. Despite a rather challenging market environment, the all are too familiar with, operating cash flow increased mainly due to tightly managed and therefore, decreasing net working capital. Consequently, net profit also increased. Some insights on the operating environment that we are in, and we'll start with the downside. The market environment remains challenging. Due to various geopolitical influences, high inflationary pressure prompted by central bank's interest rate rising especially in U.S. and in Europe, we are feeling the effects in various areas such as wages, material costs, energy prices. Given these headwinds, we did well to monitor inflation and take total measures through a solid pricing strategy. Transport costs and suppliers, delivery lead time somewhat returned to pre-COVID levels. On the upside though, demand in commercial construction environment remain at a high level, and we have a good order intake and backlog in all regions. The trend towards connected and digital solutions created enormous opportunity for dormakaba to capitalize on. We continue to pursue on the growth strategy shape for growth, which will bring dormakaba to a new level over the mid- to long term. In doing so, we concentrate on basics, basics that are -- especially on the needs of our customers, for both existing and potential ones. In the years ahead, we will -- we have set the following main priorities for the transformation. We will accelerate profitable volume growth by focusing on our core markets, the [ 5+2 ]. The [ 5+2 ] market focus has announced on March 30, this year was a big and a major step in that direction. We streamlined our organization starting from the top, reducing the number of executive committee members from 9 to 6. And among the 6, we created 2 new roles within the EC, a Chief Commercial Officer and the Chief Innovation Officer in order to accelerate our time to market and to focus on core products, core markets, among others. The other priorities are to reduce complexity and simplify processes, further optimizing the cost structure and invest in common systems. Finally, the most important of all, ladies and gentlemen, is strengthening a sense of one, dormakaba winning culture that is so vital to our future success. As announced on third of July, we launched a dedicated transformation program, which is about reducing complexity that I mentioned before and laying a strong foundation for growth and consistent with the priority just highlighted. In other words, dormakaba must get better in what we do on a day-to-day basis before we get bigger. We have identified, therefore, five work streams. We want to meaningfully consolidate our global production footprint. Currently, we are producing in 18 locations globally there is room for improvement. And you are aware that we have announced relocating some production lines to other existing sites or entities. We have great potential, optimizing procurement function as a whole and reducing our supplier base. To unlock our buying power, we must reduce it over the coming years quickly. Next, refocusing on product development through 1 single global road map. Why? Our time to market is far from satisfactory and much effort is needed to maintain many, many platforms. We see potential to optimize our G&A, general and administration, functions by establishing dedicated chat service centers. And we will consolidate and invest in IT initiatives to drive standards and improve customer experience. We must be easy to do business with. Now performances at group at a regional level. At group level, we achieved year-on-year sales growth of 3.3%. Organic growth is at 8.4% with mainly pricing contributing to our increase. Absolute adjusted increased by 3.4% to CHF 384.8 million, the adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.5% was stable at prior year level. Our first half stands adjusted at 13.0% adjusted EBITDA margin, while we achieved 14.0% in the second half, which is historically second half being the weaker of the 2 halves. Going to each region, America, organic sales growth grew by 10.5%, which is very positive. Here, slowly, but surely, our initiatives to boost growth in the U.S. market are beginning to pay off. Growth in the region was mainly driven by higher sales initiatives -- sorry, higher sales prices, steady U.S. commercial construction activity, robust growth in multi-housing and lodging, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.6%, an increase of 110 basis points from the year before. We expect Americas to continuously grow based on healthy order intake and a strong order book. In Asia Pacific, all major markets contributed to growth with India, Pacific and the Middle East continuing to post strong double-digit growth. Greater China recorded a larger-than-expected decline in sales impacted by post-COVID effect as well as weaker demand for our OEM plant in China. Overall, organic sales for Asia Pacific growth was 2.2%, a decrease in plant output negatively impacted our adjusted EBITDA margins, it declined by 1.4%. Looking ahead we are cautiously optimistic that Asia Pacific can deliver moderate growth for '23 to '24 financial year despite rising geopolitical tensions somewhat compensated by a predicted growth for the Pacific and the Indian markets. Region Africa -- sorry, region Europe and Africa is next, our biggest region in terms of sales. All major markets contributed to the development of organic growth. Growth was mainly driven by strong performance in our core markets, Germany with double-digit growth. Switzerland, U.K. and Ireland show mid-single-digit growth. The adjusted EBITDA margin declined by 150 basis points to 18.8%. The reduced margin resulted from lower global demand for door hardware and a dropped in plant contribution and unfavorable product mix had also a negative effect here. The uncertain economic environment in Europe limits forward visibility, but the outlook across Europe and Africa remains broadly positive. In Key & Wall Solutions, overall organic sales growth was 12.1% year-on-year. Key Systems posted a 3.9% organic sales growth due to good demand in the business lines for key and automotive solutions. Compared to the year before, sales of Movable Walls increased by a stunning 24%. The strong performance was driven by good conversions of COVID-related project backlogs into sales and strong market share gains and price realization in the U.S. market. Ladies and gentlemen, dormakaba is a worldwide player with ever-growing base of satisfied customers who trust our expertise and the qualities of our products and services. We are a global leader when it comes to cloud-based and innovative access solution that manage the flow of people around buildings. Here, we have illustrated on the screen some of the many projects that we contribute to. These successes clearly demonstrated our rich repertoire of offerings and solutions that is capable of addressing customers' pain points at different verticals like banks, like hospitality, infrastructure, health care and others. Dormakaba is truly for every place that matter. Just look around you in this location in the area, you will find real-life examples of how we make access in life safe and secured. This is my favorite slide. Among our offering is the award-winning EHD9000, which stands for extra heavy duty door closure. Our engineers and operators from around the globe shared knowledge to design and put together an all-purpose, one size fit all solution on single piece cast-iron to ensure durability and functionality self-regulating walls and also proprietary story that goes with it to allow for automatic adjustment due to temperature change. All close adjustment point are front phasing instead of hidden behind the door closure, which is a blessing something for the installer. There are many other benefits compared to artists, there are features that make a real and we are beginning to see the market coming in with good remark. A very important today and key differentiator today is sustainability. We empower our people and encourage them to actively develop our culture so that anyone can unlock their potentials. And we have provided 17 additional training compared to the prior year. We have reduced CO2 emission by 13% since last year. We increased solar energy generation on site by 50%. And we are running a full production facility on solar power only in India. And we screen high-risk supplier via a third party in order to promote sustainable development beyond our own doors. Last year alone, more than 500 of such partners were assessed. With that, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention. I've come to the end of my part of the presentation. I will now hand it over to Christina, who will walk you through the numbers and our financial performance, Christina?

Thank you, Jim-Heng. Ladies and gentlemen, also from my side, a very warm welcome here to the headquarter in Rümlang. For me, it is the first full presentation for dormakaba as I started off in December last year. We are very happy to have you here and obviously also hope that you will be pleased with what we are presenting for last year. Let me kick off with the key figures. With our performance as Jim-Heng said, we feel that we are meeting the capital market expectations. And when I look back at the history of dormakaba, I think this is the most important thing for us that we now get back to a culture of keeping promises. And of course, challenging numbers, improvements, continuous improvement, but getting back to regain the trust from all of you in keeping what we are promising to achieve. Overall, our net sales totaled CHF 284.8 million, a growth of 3.3%. This included strong organic growth, as Jim-Heng said, 8.4%, mainly driven by price increases. We achieved an adjusted EBITDA of CHF 384.8 million, which is 3.4% higher than previous year. Our adjusted EBITA margin was stable at 13.5% on a full year basis. However, we sequentially improved our margin within the year. We had 13% in the first half, and we achieved 14% in the second half. And this, despite the fact that the seasonality in the past has always given us a weaker second half. Net profit stood at CHF 88.5 million. This represents 128.1% increase versus the year before. Return on capital employed improved to 25.1% due to high profitability and a significant reduction in net working capital. Our increased focus, especially in the second half on inventory management and accounts receivables started to pay off. As for our sales development, the top line was driven by organic growth, 8.4%, of which 1.5% related to volume and 6.9% to price. All regions and business units contributed to the sales growth. The growth was greatly supported by strong pricing measures last time, early March when we spoke about the first half I was not so happy especially with the pricing strategy that had been applied for U.S. Americas in the first half. They were slow and it was not enough. Now I'm very pleased to say that in January this year, there was another gear. And I saw clearly in America and we saw clearly in America in the second half, much, much more pressure on increasing the prices, which also pay back in the bottom line. So very well done in the second half. M&A activities had a negative impact on sales of CHF 16.3 million as the positive impact of '21, '22 acquisitions were offset by divestments of Mesker and interior glass business. Currency translation effect were negative mainly resulting from devaluation of euro and U.S. dollar versus the Swiss franc. Now moving to the adjusted EBITDA figure. The adjusted EBITDA increased by 3.4%, supported by an organic increase of CHF 17.7 million. As mentioned before, there was a significant negative currency translation effect of CHF 14.6 million. Due to a strong focus, our pricing measures resulted in a positive squeeze. However, this positive effect was offset by negative volume deviation in access hardware solutions and Safe Lock as well as shape for growth-related investments, especially in the first half year in research and development and sales acceleration. This in fact -- these factors impacted the margin, especially in the region, Europe and Africa and Asia Pacific. Region Americas and Key & Wall Solutions increased the operating margin due to strong pricing and by leveraging the competitive landscape situation, especially in the Movable Walls business in America. M&A activities improved the adjusted EBITA margin by CHF 9.4 million, mainly due to Mesker divestment and remaining months of the '21, '22 acquisitions, both of them fairly small, the RELBDA in Australia and Alldoorcoc in the Netherlands. I will now proceed to the condensed income statement. Please keep in mind that the figures for '21, '22 have been restated. We have, first of all, changed our approach in IT cost allocation. All regions now taking full accountability of the IT cost that they cause or trigger as we allocate the total IT cost to the businesses and regions. We have also, secondly, choose to adopt the revised accounting standard for Swiss GAAP FER 30 early regarding goodwill accounting. Goodwill is now capitalized and amortized accordingly. You will see later that this decision has a substantial impact on EBIT and IAC. The gross margin, and I'm especially proud of this. For the financial year '22, '23 was 39.9%. One of our most important KPIs going forward in further sequential improvement. And this 39.9% is to be compared with 39.2% in the year before. Strong realization of price increases offset inflationary pressure on raw materials and labor costs. The continuing investment in strategy implementation initial investment for the new transformation program and increased sales and marketing activities had last year a negative impact on our sales and marketing and general administration costs. At CHF 767.3 million, these costs were above the previous year's level of CHF 715.3 million and represented a ratio of 27% of sales. This is obviously one of the additional KPIs that also with reduction in the next coming years will help us to further sequential improvement. Our net financial result decreased due to higher interest rates. You will remember our refunding in October 2022 with a new bond and at a higher rate. Income taxes for the financial year increased to CHF 53.7 million. The effective tax rate was 37.8%, which is below previous year's rate of 48.5% and was also impacted by the amortization of goodwill. The items affecting comparability, IAC, were in total CHF 118.5 million on EBIT level and below the previous year's level of CHF 190.4 million. Largest contributors to this number were a, goodwill amortization, as mentioned before, and b, implementation of the Shape4Growth strategy with transformation costs. IAC at EBITA level was CHF 59 million or CHF 29 million more compared to previous year. The increase related to transformation costs. CHF 59 million, just to remind you, we said in our media release on July 3, that due to the transformation, we expected around CHF 60 million for last year, and we finished in line with that. Now a couple of remarks on the cash flow statement. Cash flow from operations increased to CHF 363.4 million from CHF 188.4 million previous year. This is the result above all of tight net working capital management with a clear focus on inventories and accounts receivables in the second half of the financial year. Inventories decreased by 9.2% to CHF 487.7 million, and accounts receivables decreased by 4.5% to CHF 461.2 million, and this despite a sales growth. The KPI, net working capital as a percentage of sales went down from 27.3% in '21, '22 to 24.4% in last financial year. Net cash from operating activities stood at CHF 288.4 million. This represent an improved operating cash flow margin of 10.1%. For me, as the CFO, the generation of cash always gets the highest priority. And in the light of the transformation that we have started, it is obviously extremely important that we continue in the net working capital to improve these numbers to also support the onetime cost that we will trigger in the transformation. Net debt declined by CHF 111.2 million to CHF 596.9 million. And thanks to a strong cash generation in operations. As you will see in the notes to the financial statements, we also have a change in the mix of the financial debt. As mentioned before, in October 2022, a new CHF 275 million, 3.75% corporate bond, which is due in 2027 was secured on the Swiss debt capital market. This was to refinance the CHF 300 million bridge bond credit facility that we had previously with a major Swiss bank. The financial debt profile now once again shows the balanced short and midterm maturity profile. Overall, financial leverage was 1.6x. The company, last but not least, fully complies with the covenant of the syndicated credit facility. And finally, with my last chart, I get to the dividend proposal. Our consolidated net profit after minorities is CHF 76.9 million. In line with our dividend policy, which we continue to apply despite the current challenging economic environment, our Board proposes to the AGM a dividend of CHF 9.50 per share. This represents a total of CHF 39.8 million and corresponds to a payout ratio of 51.9%. Our Board of Directors took the decision not to consider the impact of the goodwill amortization for the dividend calculation. With this, I thank you for your attention, and I will hand over to Jim-Heng again.

Thank you, Christina. Having looked back into the figures for the past year, I would now like to comment on the way forward and that lies ahead of us. Before I get to that, I would like to draw your attention to some changes on our Board of Directors. As of May 1, this year, Sevin Richard took over as Chair of the Board of the Directors with Thomas Aebischer assuming the role of Vice Chair. Through the changes that we have taken place since the last AGM in 2022, the position of the chair as well as the positions of all committee cares are now assigned to independent and nonexecutive Board members. The Board proposes Ines Pöschel and Till Reuter to be elected as independent board members at this year's AGM. Both will strengthen our expertise in technologies and governance, compliance, amongst other important fields of knowledge on a strategic level. Before we start our Q&A session for today, please allow me to comment on our assessment of the current business environment as well as the outlook for the financial year '23, '24. The current business environment remains strongly categorized by uncertainties and a lack of visibility. Geopolitical risks continue to be a high level particularly in Asia and Europe, especially due to the war in Ukraine. Further increasing interest rate might continue to slow down general economic growth including new construction activities. Based on a healthy order intake and order book at the end of 2022, '23, dormakaba expects to continually improve sales on a year-on-year basis. For 2023, '24, dormakaba expects organic growth to be in line with its 3% to 5% midterm guidance and profitability to show sequential improvement above the 2022 to 2023 performance level. Please be aware that a large part of the transformation cost will hit 2023, '24 as items affecting compatibility. I remain focused -- we remain focused on the rigorous execution of share for growth transformation program, which includes both growth and cost management, as explained to you earlier. With that, I close my presentation for the past financial year '22, '23. And both of us, Christina and myself are now ready to take your question. Before that I would like to introduce, and you probably know him very well, Siegfried, to moderate the questions that will come. And we will first take questions from this arena before we turn to the online queue. The operator, do you want to give a suction for that please.

[Operator Instructions].

So good afternoon, a warm welcome from my side as well. First question comes from Patrick Rafaisz, UBS.

Can we follow up on your guidance. I just tried understand, I see that you mentioned the seasonal ag typically a bit lower in the margin an exit rate of [ 40% ] of EBITDA, your guidance or higher in this fiscal year. What's the base to start.

Christina?

First of all, I would like to say that I'd like to challenge things. And the fact that the seasonality with a stronger first and weaker second half has always been happening until last year in dormakaba. I haven't been buying into that yet. There can also be questions from my side that I will say to you yet was maybe -- the way it was done, maybe it was not necessary. So I'm not yet convinced that we really have such a strong seasonality over the year. Obviously, we have seasonality in some months. But on the other side, if we look at the holiday period, I think we also have very, very strong months in autumn. So I think you need to see this as a journey when you look at the guidance. And I ask you to be fair in regard of what they said. I, and also Jim-Heng, we have highest priority in never getting back to promising something that we can't keep. So we need to be cautious, and I need to be cautious because I've only been onboard for 9 months. What we have said, we have said that in the business year '25, '26, we are expecting to get into the range with the transformation program helping us to the range of 16% to 18%. And this is a journey. So as we closed last business year at 13.5%, step by step, we will get there. And this is also, as some of you have been even asking IR today, why we are not continuing giving 6 months guidance. For me, a normal guidance is a 12 months guidance for the full year. And we would like to get back to normality, not only in keeping our promises, but also giving a year guidance. And at this point in time, also in the light of the uncertainty that the world is putting on our shareholders, we are saying that we are absolutely sure that we will make the next step in improving the 13.5% in the new business year. But I wouldn't like to be more exact than that. I know that when we are presenting the first half, depending on what we are showing, the pressure might increase. But I can say that we see it as a journey year-on-year to improve with the target to get to 16% to 18% in the year of '25, '26. And obviously, this year, we'll be determining a lot because this transformation program that we announced early July is a big program. There are not many areas that we are not shaking. There are not many areas that we're not changing. So this year will be a very, very heavy workload for our people in making sure that we start to see the benefit, but also then prepare to see benefits in the 2 years coming after.

Thank you, Christina, for a very extensive answer. Tobias Fahrenholz.

Could we speak a bit about pricing. If I look at your competition they had kind of moderate 4% pricing level in the last 6 months. Why has your pricing been above that? And you must have concrete pricing assumptions, not only for '23, '24, but also for the midterm. So is it may be fair to assume that half of the projected growth this year might come from pricing?

I'll take the first part and then Christina could jump in. I think we are continuing to work on our volume, and this is one very important aspect. But you and I are aware that inflationary pressure are not disappearing just as yet. So we continue to keep a very close watch in terms of how can we pass on no delay and protect the margin. I think we did well, we did better in the second half than we did so in the second -- in the first half and the year before in the same pattern. So I think going forward, we would like to focus on, again, protecting our margin through all the necessary measures. And pricing is not the only thing that we do to protect margin. We are also working hard on procurement savings, efficiency gain and so on. So we continue to drive that. But fundamentally, dormakaba must improve our volume. To do that in conjunction with a mix, a healthy mix, is something we did not quite do well in the first half of last year. We strengthened that in the second half, and that should be the continued focus.

I think what is important when we look at the inflation rates. And honestly, I think it is still very difficult to say where we'll be in a year's time, if it's Europe, if it's Americas, if it's Asia. But I think looking at that, we always have to be aware of the fact that we have things in that basket that definitely have shown that the price increases are going backwards again, some raw materials energy distribution cost. But we still have also in that basket elements that are very important for dormakaba like labor. It's actually our largest cost item, around 40%. And where we haven't seen that it goes in another direction. So my view on pricing is quite simple. I say whatever the inflation will do to us we need to compensate by trying at least to increase prices to pass it on to someone else. That must be the view that we continue to have. Yes, we have planned and we expect that the inflation rate in the new business year will be lower than in previous year. But honestly, it's very difficult to say. We also have raw material elements like steel, where prices are still very, very high. We have components with a lot of labor. They're also not going backwards. So whatever comes from the inflation corner, we will need to drive as soon as possible into price increases. And I think also I have to say, you mentioned competition. I think our salespeople, especially in the second half, did a great job in being great in raising prices, and they will continue to be brave.

Next question from Martin Husler, Zürcher Kantonalbank.

My question is, can you shed some light on concrete measures? What you will do this year with the Shape4Growth program, which measures come through. So maybe also what are the low-hanging fruits that you can reap this year already?

Thank you, Martin. Again, we work as a team jump in. I think working to my mind is really the areas of procurement I said that in my opening speech, there's a huge opportunity that we can work on. We shall tighten, we shall be disciplined. We have also now a new procurement lead that is in place. And he has all the plans in my and one of which is really also to challenge current suppliers. And we're also looking at supply base that we have. We have more than what we need at an optimal level. So he will drive -- he would like to bring it down to a level. As I communicated on the third of July during the transformation program, we're going to consolidate. We wanted to make our manufacturing footprint, more efficient, simplify our supply chain in order to provide the best service to our customer. And we have 18 sites globally. The optimal number is not that. So we continue to work on that. I think that the efficiency is going to pay off and this is something that we are we are working on, and we are now working with all the social partners to realize that consolidation needs. And other areas that we are looking at is IT because IT is an important interdependent enabler for the other extreme in order to generate efficiency. Now we have a plan, we would like to execute. And this time around, I believe we are now in a better position as a total company to embark on that journey. Is there anything, Christina, that you can [ add ]?

I think in regard of this, there are, of course, items that will have an impact on this financial year, and there are items that will have a lot of work for us this year, but it will take a couple of years then the benefit. When you look at our comments on regard of last year, it's very, very clear that we have plants that are underutilized -- and that underutilization in some of these parts has got its price. And we don't see that we will be able to grow the volumes fast enough to solve the problem. So consolidation of the manufacturing footprint is one of these actions that will not pay back immediately. But a closer cooperation between sales and procurement than what I have seen in my 9 months. And we also have started now increasingly to work closer to use the short-term agility that we have -- and especially in some countries, we have a lot of agility in regard of reacting. But the communication, the S&OP must work between these 2 parties. And we are on the track now where we see already that we are reacting faster. Communication is improving, and we will benefit from this because the holes that underutilization, especially in our large plants left in the results last year, we cannot repeat that. So that will improve the new year. And then in addition, the procurement that is in the focus. So procurement and operations should be for this financial year, the ones that are improving their performance first. The other initiatives, IT, shared service center, R&D, we will work hard this year, but it would take a bit more than this year to see the positive impact.

I think there's another important element to it, which I think, if you look at the performance of this financial year, second half is much better than the first half. I think what we have consciously done is to build a muscle memory across our organizations of disciplined spending. We're not 100% there yet. I think this is something that we will not let off. We will continue to ensure that there's a mindset of this is our money, this is our funds, this our finance. And this is the new dormakaba period that we would like to foster. As I said, these are work in progress. But we have already tested that this is the right recipe and that brought our second half performance. Further comments and questions. Should we go to online?

The next one is Holger Frisch from Zürcher Kantonalbank, sorry.

Question regarding the dividend policy, considering that you're proposing a 52% payout ratio for this year of adjusted profit, taking into account the cost for the transformation program. So already looking ahead, what could we expect for the next year considering that you will incur a major part of the transformation costs in '23, '24. So could this imply another cut to the dividend. If the dividend policy remains unchanged. Is this a fair assumption?

Let me say a few words before I hand it over to Christina again. I think we are at the beginning of '23, '24. The exact dividends or what we're going to pay out this coming year, it's still early days. And I think we have generally a dividend policies that over, if you look at the developments of our dividend policies over the past 10 years or so is always in the region of 50%, 52%, 53%. So I think this is what we would like to stick to in our planning horizons. Of course, this coming year is an interesting one. And Christina will be sharing more light on that then.

I mean it's a Board decision, so the management can only give a recommendation. I think it is, first of all, very important for us to stick to the dividend policy of around 50% that you can rely on that. Secondly, for last year, we decided as the goodwill amortization hasn't got any cash effect, we take it out from the calculation. Can you rely that the management will recommend the same thing? Yes, I would say so. In regard of the transformation cost, we try to be very honest and clear. Yes, we have already in July when we announced the program said, we are expecting to see CHF 225 million OpEx for doing this over the next coming 3 years. We are expecting then an additional CHF 100 million CapEx 1 time to do this. And when it comes to the timing of this, and of course, this is depending also on how we are proceeding in the negotiations ongoing with our social partners. We need to achieve certain achievements and agreements to also be allowed to provide or be forced to provide for these actions. A big part of this CHF 225 million is obviously also severance cost for reducing our staff numbers. But if we take the assumption that we can achieve these negotiations in accordance with the time plan we have set, yes, the bigger part of this we are expecting out of the CHF 225 million roughly spoken around 2/3. We are expecting to see either as cost or as provisions in this new business year. And we believe that was the way it was treated last year. And obviously, this is something that the Board in the end will need to decide. We saw that this is not only for us an investment in a better future. It's also, to some extent, something that we need to get through to then also on the other side of the transformation have a higher profitability and also be offering better dividends or higher dividends. But as I said, in regard of the goodwill amortization, I would rely on that we will not change the treatment from last year. In regard of the transformation cost, I think there is still a lot of uncertainty depending on the negotiations, and then it is a Board decision to decide how they would like to treat these costs in the light of the dividend but if we do it in the same way as we did it for '22, '23, there will be a lower dividend even if we achieve all the plans we have.

[ English Russell ] from UBS. Regarding your credit facilities. Can you comment on if they're drawn at all at the end of the full year.

We have a credit facility that we are partly using, but I can only say that there is enough space in the light of the transformation, obviously, most of the transformation costs, as I mentioned, will then take to the year after in regard of cash out because it will be a lot of provisions this year. And in the light of that, we see that what we still have available on the credit facility, we don't have any risk in regard of the transformation. So I don't want to mention an amount. We are using it, but we still have enough.

Next one Emrah Basic from Baader-Helvea.

First one, on the extra CapEx spend of CHF 100 million. Could you just elaborate a bit more about that? So -- I think you mentioned IT and operations, just how much is going forward, et cetera?

When I speak about a onetime additional CHF 100 million, round about CHF 60 million of that is related to IT. As we see that, we have a clear need to put in a standardized ERP system to drive efficiency, to drive harmonization, to drive cooperation and also to support using shared service centers. So that is around CHF 60 million of that. The additional CHF 40 million is more or less related to production, where we are consolidating the production footprint. We are moving production lines to new locations and also need to invest due to that.

I just had a quick follow on, but not related to that. To underutilization at your plans, could you elaborate maybe a bit what areas are affected? And where do you see the biggest opportunities going forward in terms of consolidation in which areas, I mean?

I mean the biggest opportunity is, obviously, as Jim-Heng said, not having 18 locations going forward. With slightly below CHF 3 billion of sales, we cannot afford to have 18 locations. So by reducing the manufacturing footprint, we will obviously having, first of all, a leverage effect on the fixed cost that we can use better. But we also have locations where the environment is not offering the kind of agility that we maybe need to have. And there, we need to have a higher workload to be in a position where we don't need a higher agility than the environment can offer. So by loading the factories that will remain higher, we see a lot of leveraging effect here, positive way. And it also means then that we obviously need to spend less time on mitigation actions when we are having the ups and downs as it is today. I don't know if that was enough answering your question.

Just if you could share some light and if not no problem on which [indiscernible] countries do you have in mind? Or is this something that you cannot share with us yet.

I would not like to share it. I think we have a clear view, but we are still in negotiation with the social partners and with respect for the social partners, and they have been informed about what we would like to close. I think it's peaceful if we wait until we are saying who is staying and who's not staying. But those of you that know dormakaba well, you know that we have over proportionally many locations in Europe.

As there are no questions anymore from the audience, we could take a question from remote, please.

The first question comes from Maidi Rizk from Jefferies.

Number one is on the volume growth. I'm a bit surprised that we haven't seen an acceleration of volume growth in H2 versus H1, which sits at roughly 1.5% and this despite you suffering from quite a large destocking in H1, which seems to have ended or at least abated in H2. So firstly, can you just perhaps sort of give us a little bit more color here and see -- and talk about why we're not seeing an acceleration on the volume growth side of things. And secondly, you talk about you having visibility or at least the backlog should support the 3% to 5% growth this year. We're still in a very uncertain environment. As you correctly said, the interest rate environment has changed, and that takes time to feed into the real estate market. How much visibility you have out of your backlog for this year. And then since I'm just going to add the last 1 here, and then I'll leave you answer all of those. Maybe, Christina, a big picture question. You're 9 months into the seat, you've obviously almost done with the implementation of the internal audit cost allocation between the different units and regions. When you look at the Shape4Growth strategy, where do you see, I'd say, the most upside? And where perhaps do you see the most sort of resistance or challenges when it comes to Shape4Growth.

Okay. So thank you for your question, Rizk. And I think I'll allow Christina to take the last questions regarding the upside and the challenges for Shape4Growth. While she is preparing that, let me try to take your question regarding volume growth. I think you were 100% correct. We noticed the undesirable lesser volume growth in our first half and even towards the end of the second half of last year. We have since been working consciously on it. And to your point, as destocking the things of the past, I beg to defer because destocking are happening still around our major markets sporadically. So this continue to happen. They continue to impact on us. And we have, in some of the markets, the revenue recognition time will take longer because it could be project-based business that we are in. I think that would also help us explain with the backlogs that we had we are able to have a certain degree of visibility but certainly not beyond a certain reasonable time frame. So one is the time taken for revenue recognition and the second one is the project-based business that we have. And clearly, from where we see so far, we are able to say that this coming year or this current financial year, we will still be able to benefit from the order intakes and so on. If you look at the growth or rather the lack of volume growth, it's mainly in Asia Pacific. Clearly, it was highly growth in the year before, close to 4%. And now in this financial year, we are talking about negative 1%. So -- and that is impacted, as I said before, China, domestic business and as well as the OEM plants that we have that are servicing outside China. So there, we experienced some unexpectedly substantial drop in our volume. So if you look at the big scheme of things, having this negative impact coming from China and yet with the orders on hand that we had in backlog, the volume growth that we have achieved in the second half year, being able to match at least first year, leveraging the full year in the same way, in my opinion, was respectable. So I think I've taken your both questions in terms of visibility and backlog and volume growth. I'll turn it over to Christina to take a question regarding Shape4Growth.

I start off with the upside potential. I think if I look at dormakaba after these 9 months, we are a very fragmented, very complex, very difficult to understand company. We are a patchwork. We have been added together to become a dormakaba but many things have never been standardized, optimized or benchmarked. So I think depending on the speed of changing this, I think this is the biggest opportunity we have. If we work more in the same way, if we are standardizing what we are doing, it will have implications everywhere that are positive in regard of people coming in, people moving within the company. But also in regard of systems, IT world to maintain and support this, also my own area of finance. So putting processes in place that are standardized, harmonized and are easy and lean plus a clear focus of what we're doing first and what we are doing second. I think we have been trying to do too much at the same time. I think that is the biggest potential. And that is also what we have in our Shape4Growth or transformation program year-by-year. A lot of the things we are changing is to move to one way of doing it, one dormakaba way. When it comes to risks, I think the biggest risk or challenge is a change in culture, to make people, all of our employers that are the important, the most important asset we have, to make them do this, like it, drive it, kick it, accept it. Because as I said, we have been living in a very fragmented world in dormakaba. So it's not about someone else changing. It's about almost everyone changing. Sometimes my version will survive. Sometimes my process needs to adjust to something else. So I think changing people, we all know is a big challenge, and that is probably the biggest challenge we have in making sure that people will buy in and join us on this journey because it is always tough at the beginning and then you start to see the payback. So that would be my feedback after 9 months.

The next question comes from Martin Flueckiger from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Martin Flueckiger from Kepler Cheuvreux. I have loads of questions actually, but I'll start off with 2. And if you allow, I'll stretch my luck for the third one. Starting off, could you share with us the underlying assumptions of your '23, '24 organic growth guidance with regard to -- we've heard you talking about the drivers from a qualitative perspective, such as the order backlog. But just curious how much of these individual contributors are actually going to bring in terms of organic growth. So backlog would be interesting. What kind of pricing you're targeting for '23, '24? What kind of phasing you're envisaging H1 versus H2? And which geographies are going to be the key drivers of that targeted performance. That would be my first question. Then the second question is regarding your restructuring programs. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember you had announced a restructuring program during the time of COVID. And now we've got this new transformation program, which has been initiated. So we know that the total cost of these programs, but just wondering about the phasing, particularly over the next, I guess, 3 years, and that would be super helpful. And then like I said, stretching my luck a little bit for a third question. What is the current guidance of the goodwill amortization since this is a new item in your P&L?

Thank you. We will not take your third question first for now, but I think Christina will attempt to answer the second question. I will take the first 1 later, which is the restructuring program for Christina.

Okay. Restructuring program, I think, you spoke about what has been done previously. I don't know if I'm the right one to...

This is the July one.

No, I understood it as -- sorry if I didn't understand your question. You announced -- we announced something during COVID in regard to restructuring, and now we came back in July and did the same. So I cannot speak for what happened during COVID, maybe Jim-Heng, you can say.

So Martin, I mean, the restructuring programs that we talk about, I think you're referring to the Shape4Growth that was [ make known ] on 15th of November 2021 during the Capital Market Day. Yes?

Yes. And then I think that was announced then. And then I think you announced something during the time of COVID, I mean even beforehand, I think that was the result of the pressure you saw on profitability during the COVID period.

I think -- let me get to the program on November 15, 2021. I think that program is more about 300 FTE that we seek to reduce, and we will then be able to generate CHF 25 million of annualized savings. So specifically, and I recall that this is the only major restructuring measures that has been announced on the 15th of November 2021 that will be fully realized in this coming financial year '23, '24.

Okay. And how much is that incrementally for '23...

CHF 25 million, CHF 25 million to be fully realized.

Incrementally?

Yes. However, I have to caution...

Okay, that's not the full number. That's the incremental number for the coming financial year. Am I right?

Allow me to say that because this number has also since then been reinvested into specification, for example. So I think share for growth, if I may remind us is, on the 1 hand, doing some minor restructuring of the FTE and subsequently rechanneling free up space for reinvestment. So this is where we are standing at this moment. We have invested in additional spec writer since the year before, close to a number of 190, close to 200 specifiers across dormakaba. So this has also added on to the FTE that we have right now.

Okay.

Maybe if I add to what we announced on the July 3, new transformation program, if I understand your question right. What we clearly have said and I repeated today is that we expect that for this business year and the 2 business years thereafter, which will be transformation. We are expecting a onetime transformation cost of CHF 225 million. I said today that we expect the largest part to hit this running year, round about 2/3 if the negotiations with the social partners will proceed in line with our planning. The remaining part then over the 2 years after. If I look at the savings, we said around about CHF 170 million -- CHF 168 million or CHF 170 million run rate sustainable savings. That obviously will be built up and we will benefit from this year. So we will achieve at the end of the third year, we will have this run rate savings of around CHF 170 million, and that will then be the main reason why we see this sustainable sequential improvement in profitability year-on-year.

Okay. I get that. But my question was actually about the phasing of the CHF 170 million. I was just wondering whether you could provide a little bit more granularity for our EBIT or EBITDA bridges to account for the incremental savings every year.

No, I'm sorry, but I can't provide that right now. I think the sequential improvement in the EBITDA adjusted is the guidance. So it will be also there a step-by-step as we are executing these initiatives and some of them already being visible in this business year.

Okay. So with regards to your first question, the organic guidance, organic growth. I think we have to look at '22, '23 because clearly, while we experienced growth in America with 10.5% organic growth and in Europe, we have a growth of close to 8% or 8.5%. It is in Asia Pacific. And by the way, Key & Wall solutions is also a stunning performer with 12% organic growth. So 2.2% is what is in Asia Pacific. So therefore, on the whole, when we look at the situations for '23, '24, we continue to have China and major Asia Pacific as part of the major perhaps an area that we have to closely monitor. But personally, I don't see the situation improving in the near term. So we will track our development in China, particularly in the commercial and residential, which were not really exposed, but the construction activity very closely. Now if you look at America and Europe, as I said before, we have a strong order book, we've backlogs. The question here is, will the construction activities continue the momentum it is now? Or is there a chance of a slowdown? We don't have a lot of forward visibility at this stage. But nonetheless, we are taking an approach of 3% to 5% globally where dormakaba would believe that this is a good guidance that we reserved based on the macro situations on the description that I just gave.

Okay. That's helpful. But just on pricing, we've seen -- from my point of view, stronger-than-expected pricing component in organic growth in '22, '23. How is that -- of course, we have tougher comps now. So how is that going to slow down? And are you going to do some incremental price increases from here?

We monitor the situation very closely. I said before, our focus is to compensate inflation, and we will do exactly that. And in addition to compensating for inflations, we are focusing on volume growth as well. And in addition to the volume growth, specifically, we're also talking about mixed enhancement. So there are a few levers that our markets are operating on. Obviously, every markets are different. And of course, in a situation whereby we are in competition with some markets whereby they are privately health company, passing on inflation is probably not 1 of the highest priority. We have to adopt a different strategy altogether. . So it's a rather complex situation. But in a high-level summary, we will fight inflations. We will make sure that pricing, we will make sure that procurement saving will compensate -- in fact, more than compensate for the inflationary pressure that we will have. And obviously, we work on our mix, and we also work on as what we have said so far so much about utilizations of our plant and capacities. So there are multiple levers that we are working actively at different locations. And obviously, our plan is to make sure that eventually, our margin get protected, our volume could grow healthily.

So -- are there any further questions here from the audience? Otherwise, we take one more remote question, so...

I would have 2 questions. Can you maybe tell us where the capacity utilizations are in your 18 plants or at least in the geographies? And then a second question in terms of ERP landscape complexity. There were figures out that you had more than 100 ERP systems, different ones. Can you confirm that and basically tell...

We don't have more than 100. That's the straight answer.

Can you confirm the number you have and where you want to go to and in what time horizon? This CHF 60 million costs, will they be distributed proportionally over a certain amount of years. I assume it's more than 3 years. Just allude on that a bit?

I think -- thank you, [ Ralph. ] In terms of capacity, Christina had already gave you that overall high-level answer, and that is that in Europe, that's where we have quite active multiple sites that are sitting. So we see that this is an area we have to do a deeper investigation, and in fact, we know in our plan what are those plants that we have to target on. So it is continued. So to your question, whether I have a capacity utilization rate across, we are 3 major product clusters, solution clusters, the traditional hardware and also -- which include a major door closer business. And we have also the access control, which is more into connectivities and into more components and into devices that we believe are offering smart solution. And the last part is really the automated solutions, and that's where we talk about lanes and so on. I would broadly say that in this regard, we will probably be talking about the hardware and the architectural elements that our utilization can be improved further. And in terms of the automation, the games and the -- the lanes for people movement flow control, I think that's where we are about right. And access control is more of a customization solution. This is an area whereby we are able to play better according to our in-house capacity and also external services provider. So that will be my response to the utilization. And there, I think our utilization is probably not where we want to be for the door hardware and the door closer product. In terms of ERP, we don't have more than 100 legacy system. The last count is that we probably have around 58 -- 62 legacy system that we have. We have over the years been able to bring it down, not to the level that I would like to have. So with this new push, we would like to make sure that it is now driven discipline manner and with a very clear mandate and endgame in mind country by country. We're going to start with some pilot countries. And by working on a country, pilot country successfully, we then roll it out. But ultimate plan is that we would like to reduce substantially on the baselines that we have today. We have a plant that is -- as for Christina said, there's CHF 100 million of OpEx that we will be incurring. 40 -- CHF 60 million of that is for IT. So I think this program will start bearing fruits in '25, '26, but I expect that the IT rationalizations of all the legacy system will take beyond that -- the time phase.

Afraid, we are running out of time. Maybe a final remote question, please?

The next question comes from Delphine Brault from ODDO BHF.

Yes. I have 2 and will ask them -- I will ask them one at a time. My first question relates to your operational leverage. I calculated a drop-through margin of only 8% at the adjusted EBITDA level, which means that stripping out the divestment of Mesker, your adjusted EBITDA margin would have been down year-on-year. So I would be -- yes, how do you explain this very low incremental margin?

You want to bring out the second question first, [ Delphine? ] Or do you want to take the first answer now?

Yes. Okay. Yes, okay. So my second question relates to the market trends that you currently see in Europe and in the U.S. Did you see any change in trend in July and August? And if you can provide a bit more color on this by region, it would be very helpful.

Did you -- can I make sure I understand your question is towards U.S. market and specifically for the 2 months of July and August.

Yes, it's U.S. and Europe.

U.S. and Europe, for the 2 months of July and August. Well, Christina will take care of the other question, I'll come back to this question first July and August in U.S. and Europe. Again, consistent with our guidance for the outlook for this coming financial year, '22, '23 -- '23, '24. We look at our major countries. And you know that today, we have put our top 5 markets under the microscope and plus 2 other emerging markets under the microscope as well. These markets at this moment. And I'm talking about the top 5 markets do not show sign of a [ deviant ] from the last financial year that we talked about or even the year before, the same comparable period. And therefore, I cannot tell of any significant trend also in these major markets. That will be my response for now. Towards your question of drop-through.

Yes. I hope I understand the question that you are looking at the EBITDA contribution from organic growth, CHF 17.7 million in -- comparing with the organic sales contribution of CHF 217.4 million, and there, you get to the 8% margin. I think in this calculation, you are disregarding the effect coming from inflation. So it's quite a specific question you're asking. And I think we are happy, Delphine to come back to you to show you, if we can, this inflation effect that I see as missing when you come to the 8% margin contribution.

Thank you. So now I think we can wrap up. So we have -- we need more than 1 hour.

All right. So thank you for all the questions. I would like to wish everyone a good rest of the day and thank you for making your way here. And good bye till the next time. Thank you.

Thank you.