Georg Fischer AG (GF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a great pleasure for us to welcome you today to our Annual Media and Analyst Conference, which we held for the first time as a joint event for analysts and media representatives and also for the first time here at the Metropol in Zurich. Present from our side are CEO, Andreas Muller; CFO, Mads Joergensen, our Head of Investor Relations, Nadine Gruber; and myself, Beat Romer, Head, Corporate Communications. I would like also to welcome our new member of the GF Executive Committee; Michael Rauterkus, former Uponor CEO and now President of our division Intelligent Flow Solutions for buildings. Welcome, Michael. CEO, Andreas Muller; and CFO, Mads Joergensen, will give you detailed insights into our '23 financial year and an outlook for the current year. Following the presentations, we have planned the Q&A session for about 30 minutes. Afterwards, you are cordially invited to a lunch at the room adjacent close to the street. With that, I would like to ask Andreas to start with the presentation. Please, Andreas.

Welcome, and thank you for joining our annual conference here in Zurich and online. First of all, I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to our organization and employees. On behalf of which I have the pleasure today to present our achievements of the past year. Let's turn to Slide #3. Highlights of the year 2023. GF's well-balanced global presence and diversified group portfolio with a focus on sustainable solutions have driven GF's strong performance in 2023 despite headwinds. We achieved an EBIT margin, excluding Uponor and all acquisition-related effects of 9.8% on par, with last year's record level. With the acquisition of GF -- Uponor, GF accelerated its Flow Solutions strategy to become a global leader in its businesses. The acquisition builds an excellent base for further growth, the integration of the business is in full swing. Synergies have been confirmed, additional opportunities identified and major organizational changes have been concluded successfully. Reflecting moreover, the successful acquisition in 2023 of Corys Piping Systems in the United Arab Emirates and the group's reinforced focus on sustainable water and flow solutions, GF has raised its strategic target ranges for 2025 to 10% to 12% for the EBIT margin and 20% to 24% for the ROIC. We are also introducing a complementary EBITDA margin range of 13% to 15% for this same strategic period. Let's take a look at the key performance indicators on Slide 4. GF achieved an organic growth of 3.7%, remarkable, given the headwinds faced in selective markets. The microelectronics end market with its application for ultra pure water, the aerospace industry and the demand for lightweight components for sustainable mobility performed well and were the main driver of this growth. Substantial negative currency effects affected both our top and bottom line. For comparability and transparency reasons, we have disclosed the EBIT for the GF legacy businesses, excluding the acquisition of Uponor and its related effects. This EBIT margin came in at a strong 9.8% on par with previous year's performance. The comparable EBIT margin, including operational contribution from Uponor, but excluding the nonrecurring PPA effects on inventory and integration costs came in at 9.7%. This includes the last 2 months of the Uponor business, which is traditionally seasonally subdued and hence, understating the true annual performance of Uponor. Still, Uponor's November, December 2023 EBIT margin was 200 basis points above the 5-year average for this period. Including all the effects of the acquisition, the reported EBIT margin for the GF Group stood at 9.1%. The comparable EBITDA margin came in at 12.7%. At the upcoming Annual Shareholders' Meeting, the Board of Directors will propose a dividend of CHF 1.3 per share, on the same level as last year. Let's turn to Slide #5. The donuts illustrate GF's pro forma sales split. As you can see from the chart on the left and assuming pro forma that Uponor was part of our group for the full year 2023, GF had reduced its Asian sales share from 30% to 23%, and increased its American share from 22% to 25%. Europe increased to 48%, reflecting the strong home base of Uponor. It is worth to mention we have a stronger presence in East, North and South Europe. As you can see from the chart of the right, on a full year basis, the 2 floor solutions-related businesses represent almost 2/3 of the group sales. Beyond the positive development of our financial KPIs, we achieved further important milestones on the way to reach our sustainability targets 2025. Slide 6. For the first time, GF achieved an A rating in CDP, an outstanding achievement. GF entered the reputed group of 346 global companies who made it to the top 2% out of 22,000 company submissions. In addition, EcoVadis rewarded GF Uponor, GF Piping Systems and GF Casting Solutions with a gold medal. The share of products with a social or environmental benefits among the group's total sales has further risen to now 68%. Here, it is worth to mention innovative solutions that facilitate our customers with a sustainability advantage, such as the newly launched recycled PVDF product range or products with superior longevity such as solutions for water pipelines. GF also introduced a recycling process for its pre-insulated piping systems while a higher share of lightweight components for sustainable mobility and a new generation of highly energy-efficient billing machines continue to have a positive impact. CO2 equivalent emissions were significantly reduced by a further 9%, thanks to various measures proactively implemented such as a more efficient production processes and newly installed for the photovoltaic systems. Noteworthy is as well that 31% of our newly appointed managers were women, a portion, which is already today above our target. Let's turn to Slide #7, which highlights key investments in growth opportunities in attractive market segments. 2023 was a landmark year for GF, marked by the acquisition of Uponor, the biggest acquisition in the history of the company, in addition, we also acquired the majority of Corys Piping Systems in the United Arab Emirates. With these acquisitions, GF has set the base to become the global leader in sustainable flow solutions. But there was more than acquisitions. We also continue to build new assets and to expand existing ones in order to reinforce our leadership position. In 2023, we started the expansion of our process automation plant in Seewis, Switzerland. At this plant, we produce activated and manual wells for industrial segments such as the chemical process industry, microelectronics, water treatment and a multitude of different applications. To meet the strong and growing demand for our utility solutions in the U.S. we are expanding our assets and are building an additional plant in Shawnee, USA. Finally, in the 2 pictures at the bottom right, you can see our new plants in China, which support the growth in Industrial Flow Solutions and lightweight components for sustainable mobility. Slide 8. GF is well on track with the integration of Uponor. Most of the organizational changes were made and implemented in January 2024. In order to fully exploit the potential of the 2 Flow Solutions divisions, the Building Technology business unit and its 1,300 employees moved from GF Piping Systems into the GF Uponor division. This means that, in addition to production companies, departments such as marketing, product management and R&D were also merged providing an opportunity to further sharpen and streamline the organization. Uponor's 800 employees, strong Infra business was integrated into the GF Piping Systems division to enable synergies with their Utility business. Also here, we strive for agility and maximum efficiency in the new merged setup of this division. The 2 new Flow Solutions divisions work together in many areas, including procurement, operations and sales. We see the potential of our synergies confirmed, our CFO, will come back later to this topic. Let us now take a closer look at the divisions on Slide 9. GF Piping Systems grew organically by 3%. Sales totaled to CHF 2.1 billion. The division saw lower demand for its building technology products in Europe and China as well as for gas utility applications in Europe. The industrial segment with its highly fragmented, but attractive applications continue to grow and supported the division's overall satisfying performance. Demand for ultrapure water applications, water reclamation and treatment as well as for chemical processing remained solid throughout the year. The acquisition of GF Corys Piping Systems strengthens GF's position in a rapidly growing economy such as the UAE, but also Saudi Arabia. With an EBIT margin of 13.3% and an EBIT of CHF 275 million, the division delivered a result within its strategic corridor. This is especially remarkable as we always have to keep in mind that the significant negative currency impact eat up a massive CHF 49 million of the divisional EBIT. Let's now look at Slide 10, which illustrates 3 important end market segments for GF Piping Systems. Sales of product and services for microelectronics and data center applications increased by 13% to approximately CHF 250 million despite a slowdown in project activities. Most of our customers are in the high-performance chip business. The Water Treatment segment has grown by 1% and reached CHF 240 million in sales in 2023. Water reclamation is becoming a clear way to address water scarcity and has become mandatory in many cities. GF is uniquely positioned to provide complete flow solutions as one-stop shop including smart wells, sensors and connectivity technologies. The Gas Utility segment developed unevenly at regional level and came in flat in 2023. In the U.S., the market remains solid, while demand for gas applications in Europe were subdued, but starting to stabilize recently. Let's now turn to Slide 11. GF's business is closely interwoven with global sustainability trends. The picture shows the planned battery recycling plant in South Korea. The demand for recycling capacity for discarded batteries will increase by around 25% per year over the next 7 years. Recycled batteries have a 4x lower carbon emissions compared to batteries made of virgin materials. The plant in South Korea will have the capacity to recycle 12,000 tonnes, recovering 2,500 tonnes of nickel, 800 tonnes of cobalt and 2,500 tonnes of lithium carbonate. GF's industrial flow solutions are used in almost any application in these factories. As a result, GF's potential supply volume is in the range of 0.5 million for each of these new plants. Allow me to shortly explain a bit what our products being used in such kind of chemical processes. As you can imagine, recycling processes of such kind of batteries comes along with a lot of chemicals, but also a lot of fluids. This is a product range which is being produced in our plant in Seewis in the canton of Grisons, and this is an electric activated butterfly valve, as you can see here, this is an electric and pneumatic, electric-controlled ball valve control unit, and this is a so-called diaphragm pneumatic control unit. And this kind of products are all being connected. They have the latest industrial standards. It's just newly launched product range and enables our customers to, first of all, remotely control having rare data of this kind of wells, also giving indication when such a valve is getting to its end-of-life status. So we bring intelligence to our clients' factories to -- and allow them to make them even more efficient and effective. So you can imagine in such kind of a plant, what we see on that chart here, we talk 5,000s of such valves being installed, all of them need to be controlled, and this is obviously not any longer a manual process. So the newly connected versions make flows much smarter in our customers' facilities. Let's move to Slide #12. One of the global megatrends is urbanization, approximately 2.7 billion additional people will live in urban areas by 2050. Weather extremes are on the rise, causing flooding or draughts, in the year alone, approximately CHF 700 billion will need to be invested in water supply and sanitation construction projects over the next 6 years to protect against extreme weather. The Infra Solution business unit of GF Piping Systems, formerly Uponor Infra offers turnkey solutions for storm water management on the one hand, an infrastructure supply solutions with installation time advantages of up to 75% on the other. Our management team had the opportunity to visit an impressive installation with a length of 1 kilometer in Sollentuna, Sweden 2 weeks ago. Average business volume for GF of such projects is CHF 3 million to CHF 6 million. Storm water solutions, as illustrated, do not only protect against flooding but equally important filter microplastics, floor and many other impurities from water. Our offering in that area will further fit from the integration into the GF Piping Systems, utility unit and the combined know-how and increased portfolio of products and solutions. For the full year 2023, Slide 13, Uponor sales reached CHF 1.2 billion. Excluding currency effects and the divestment of the District Energy business with sales in the amount of CHF 45 million, sales organically decreased by 5.8%. In the U.S., the division achieved an excellent growth of 6.8% organically, whereas the European business was hit hard by slowing European markets and the corresponding headwinds for the business. The comparable operating profit reached CHF 145 million. The comparable operating profit margin improved to 12.3% versus 11.1% in the year 2022, reflecting the benefits of its margin resilience initiatives and the dedicated transformation project launched for the operating model. It is important to highlight that GF consolidated Uponor's results for the last 2 months of 2023, which reflects the ordinary winter and holiday seasonality that traditionally causes lower activity in the construction industry. GF Uponor contributed to GF sales with CHF 164 million. In addition, the company contributed CHF 11 million in EBIT before PPA effects on inventory and items affecting comparability, implying an EBIT margin of 6.9%, well above historic recurring levels for the last 2 months of the year and also positively reflecting the results of the company's transformation program. Let's turn to Slide 14. Where we illustrate important key figures for the construction industry in Europe and the U.S. The continuing market weakness in Europe is not unexpected, and was assessed as such by GF. Interest rate reductions are expected in the course of 2024, which could consequently lead to a rebound of the construction end market, particularly in Central and Northern Europe. In the U.S. market, we could already observe such a reversal in mortgages, mortgage interest rates in the fourth quarter of 2023, accompanied by increased customer and homebuilder confidence as illustrated in the charts. Moving on to Slide 15. With its energy-efficient solutions for building temperature control, GF is addressing one of the most important trends in making buildings more energy efficient and therefore, more CO2 neutral. 40% of energy consumption in Europe is related to buildings. Heating and cooling account for the lion's share of this consumption. The picture shows a building in the newly developed science and technology park in Cartuja near Seville, Spain. GF has supplied 700 square meter of efficient sealing cooling solutions, but also smart rigs, an intelligent indoor climate control system. The energy savings compared to conventional solutions could be up to 30% with these solutions GF will support the implementation of the European energy performance of Building Directive. We all support a few products, along with us in terms of making houses more energy efficient. It might look straightforward. This is the so-called smart rigs of Uponor. It is an intelligent indoor climate control unit. Of course, now you can say it only controls my floor heating systems. But with that system, we bring intelligence to your home how you're going to heat your rooms up. I was recently talking to the Chief Technology Officer and the Chief Innovation Officer, who developed this kind of program. He was giving me an idea about the magic, which is behind it. For example, all the data being stored in the cloud and optimized to understand the legacy in terms of temperature injection into a building and the temperature you feel. That means, with that system, we are also able to understand when a room is being equipped with an additional carpet, we would immediately recognize that the system has a longer lag before the temperature has really risen to 20 degrees. If that kind of system is being used in houses where you don't have any control at all, you might have a saving even up to 40% of your energy. How does it work? You want to have a room nicely heated up until maybe 10:00. So the system should not shut down at 10:00, it should shut down already maybe at 7:30 because it knows and exactly learns, what is the energy preservation in such a room. So with that kind of intelligent solutions, we are able to reduce the CO2 emissions without having major investments in housing. It can be even refurbished and equipped later on. This is only one of the examples since indoor climate control with so-called core activation of construction equipment or construction walls or floors and ceilings is much more energy efficient than anything else. Now turning to GF Casting Solutions, Slide 16. GF Casting Solutions recorded solid organic growth of 11.4%, driven by sales of innovative lightweight solutions, which allowed to outperform the global growth of the automotive industry. The division's EBIT for the year stood at CHF 64 million, up from CHF 55 million in 2022, resulting in a pleasant increase of the EBIT margin from 6.2% to 7%. The division also achieved a strong EBITDA margin of 11.4%. This performance is commendable considering the significant challenge of rising energy, labor and transportation costs alongside other inflationary pressures. The recovery of the aerospace sector continued with its -- which is reflected in an increased order backlog for its investment casting technology. The pictures on the right shows big castings offered to a select group of OEMs. Last but not least, the recently inaugurated plant in Shenyang, China has been characterized by our customers as one of the most efficient and modern casting plants they have ever seen. The plant will serve the rapidly growing automotive market in Northern China. Slide 17. Leading market observers are expecting the automotive economy to flatten in 2024, following the significant recovery in 2023. In the year under review, GF won new big casting projects for Chinese and European OEMs. GF's strong position with the Link 5 Chinese OEMs is the one of the back basis -- is one of the basis to drive the division's future growth. The pictures on the right illustrate car models of selective Asian customers and the respective components we contribute. Let's move on to Slide 18. With its key competencies in the design and industrialization of complex large body and structural components, GF is playing an important role in meeting the growing demand for sustainable mobility. 50% of the order intake over the life cycle of any new car model is due to the strong R&D involvement at an early stage. Large castings, such as the one shown optimize the assembly process at our customers' plant and also make cars lighter. We have also brought along with us, it should be light. It's not that light. It's actually close the whole demonstrator close to 80 and the part is in the range of 40 kilograms. It's a so-called bulk head. It looks a bit stubborn, but it demonstrates exactly what goes on in the automotive industry. This bulk head what you see here is replacing 20 individual high-pressure die casting components, which normally would have been welded together. Welding together these components would mean 300 welding dots equaling around 40 robots in an assembly line of a car manufacturing or representing in the range of 4% to 5% of the total amount of robots required, which can be saved by just simply integrating all these components into 1 so-called big casting. We have spoken a lot about these big castings. We see now the first orders being produced at our facilities in Shenyang, but also in our facilities here in Europe. With this kind of components, we optimize and streamline the production and assembly processes of our customers and at the same time, make cars even lighter, which is an important requirement for the new e-mobility. Let's now turn to GF Machining Solutions, Slide 19. The division benefited from the recovery in the aerospace industry and the continued strength of the Energy segment, booking orders worth of CHF 907 million, leading to a solid book-to-bill ratio above 1. The division demonstrate that resilience in Europe, while it faced challenges in Asia, especially the ICT segment, information and communication technologies continue to remain flat, particularly in China. However, the ongoing rebound in the aerospace and energy segment could partially compensate for these subdued markets. Sales amounted to CHF 887 million, a slight decrease of 1.9% organically compared with last year. EBIT for 2023 was CHF 60 million, a tad below last year with an EBIT margin of 6.8% compared to 7% in the year 2022. The division has reinforced its position as an industrial technology leader with a high innovation rate. The recent launches of new generation of laser texturing and electric discharging machines dedicated to aerospace applications will enable customers to use increasingly sophisticated materials with the ultimate goal to use and reduce the fuel consumption. GF Machining Solutions has further strengthened its customer experience and service offerings, supporting our customers to cut their production times and to increase efficiency in their own manufacturing processes. Multiple innovations allowed to reduce energy consumption and a new launched reuse refurbishment process of old machines ensure the sustainable handling of precious materials and reduce waste. Slide 20 shows the sales trend in selected end market segments of GF Machining Solutions. After 3 years of subdued sales in the Aerospace segment, the division is now reporting a strong growth of 47% from this low base. A sales of around CHF 150 million in this segment remain still below pre-COVID levels. The medical market segment continued to grow by 2% with sales close to CHF 100 million. Our 3 competence centers for machining, medical devices in the U.S., Germany and China, are highly appreciated by our customers and continue to create new business opportunities for GF. The ICT segment with its strong presence in Asia, had to contend with ongoing weak consumer demand and consequently, a slowdown in the capital expenditure of our customers. GF Machining Solutions reported another decline of 22% in this segment. Let us now turn to Slide 21. As said, after a sharp drop in orders during COVID, the aerospace industry enjoys strong order intake and full order books for the upcoming years. New and next-generation jet engines will become even more fuel efficient by using new materials in the combustion section of the engine. Super alloys that can withstand temperatures in the range of 2,000 degrees Celsius are challenging the machine tool industry to develop new technologies. Traditional technologies such as broaching or milling have reached their physical limits. GF has further innovated its EDM technology and launched the CUT S 400 series, a tilting access combined with a rotary access, which ensures accurate path positioning and fir-tree slot machining, each working to name one of the latest innovations ensure machine data quality assessment, a key step in the production of supercritical jet engine components. And we also brought along with us one of these jet engine components. And please make use of the break or after the presentation to have look at this disk. This desk has the so-called fir trees, which you can see on that illustration also up on the screen. Where then normally, the plates will be slipped in. As you can see, you have the male part of this fir tree on the plate. They're being then connected, and it is very critical that this kind of, let me say, tolerances are within the 1 to 2 microns, but also that the machining process is 100% accurate. And the complexity comes because this is not only in a 90-degree angle, it is actually we have a shift. So therefore, you need distilting tables in the wire cutting processes and GF is the only 1 producing that kind of machine tools. And it became more relevant since the material changed. So a couple of years ago, still this kind of disks have been broached, broaching [indiscernible] in Germany, which is a process which is very expensive, but also very appraisive in terms of the tools is now being exchanged with this wire cut technology and in addition to having a spark track control to ensure that the quality each and every of this car is 100% secured, which obviously is quite critical when you sit in a jet engine. With that, I would like to conclude the first part of my presentation, and will hand over for a detailed financial reflection to our CFO, Mads Joergensen.

Thank you very much, Andy. Ladies and gentlemen, also a warm welcome from my side. I have the pleasure to present the 2023 accounts. And admittedly, they are somewhat more complex than have been in previous years. And hence, the purpose of my presentation is that I will increase the, hopefully, transparency so that you better understand the financial accounts. But let me allow to make a couple of introductory remarks before I move on. First of all, GF Uponor is in the income statement only consolidated for 2 months, whereas the balance sheet is in our books to 100%. Secondly, the income statement is substantially impacted by one-off inventory-related purchase price allocation adjustments or PPA adjustments. And finally, you will also notice that to increase the transparency, et cetera, et cetera, we are starting to use the EBITDA and the EBITDA margin going forward. Now turning to Page 23, starting by order intake. Our orders declined organically by 3.7% in the full year 2023. After minus 5.1% in the first half, the decline was reduced to 2.3% in the second half. Order intake in GF Piping Systems declined for the full year by 8.4%. Please recall that this was mainly caused by a normal surge in order intake from the semiconductor industry in 2022. It was caused by a combination of raw material increases as well as supply shortages. Casting Solutions orders increased by 3.7%, in the first half and was much stronger than the second half. And finally, Machining Solutions orders for the year came up by 0.6% and achieved a book-to-bill ratio above the 1. Moving on to Page 24. Sales for GF Corporation increased by 3.7% organically to slightly above the CHF 4 billion. GF Piping Systems achieved an organic sales growth of 3%. Good demand in high-end microelectronics and process automization more than offset the head swings that we saw in the European building technology and the gas utility sectors. GF Casting Solutions had a good year with organic sales growth of 11.4%, this was primarily driven by the increased demand for lightweight components in China and the recovery in the aerospace sector. If Machining Solutions declined organically by 1.9%, and faced many challenges in the Asian ICT segment. However, the ongoing rebound in the aerospace and the energy segments could partially compensate. I'll now show the major impacts affecting our sales on the next slide, 25. Starting on the left-hand side with the sales 2022, the organic sales grew by CHF 146 million or 3.7%. Next, you see the massive negative foreign currency effect for which I will provide more details on the next slide. On April 1, 2022, we sold our share in the U.S.-based joint venture, GF Linamar, the full year effect of the deconsolidation is minus CHF 34 million. In November last year, we closed the majority acquisition of Dubai-based company Corys, contributing CHF 12 million. And in the last step of the bridge, you see that the effect of CHF 164 million from the Uponor acquisition, bringing us to a consolidated reported sales of CHF 4,026 million. As additional information, you can see in the upper right-hand corner, the organic growth mostly happened in the first half with 7.5% versus second half was flat organically. On Slide 26, we have summarized the income statement. The material cost decreased year-over-year by 3.1%, which was mainly due to foreign currency effects. The cost ratio decreased from 44.9% to 43.2%, mainly driven by a partial normalization of the raw material prices. Personnel expenses went up by 5.4%, of this increase, acquisitions of Uponor and Corys constitute 3.8%. Another effect is that on average salaries increased worldwide by 1.8%. Acquisition contributed actually more than 6% of the increase of 8.3% in the operating expenses. The reported EBITDA came in at CHF 486 million, which is CHF 20 million lower than previous year, resulting in an EBITDA margin of 12.1%. And I will, on the next slide, walk you through the individual effects on the EBITDA level. Finally, depreciation and amortization increased from CHF 116 million to CHF 5 million, CHF 6 million. And hereof, the main contribution came from Uponor. Let's have a closer look at the EBIT margin on Slide 27. For GF Corporation, we reported an EBIT margin of 9.1%, however, this 9.1% were impacted adversely by the one-off inventory-related PPA effects and items affecting comparability. Adjusting for those one-off effects would result in a comparable EBIT margin of 9.7%. And totally excluding the acquisition of Uponor, we would keep the EBIT margin at 9.8%, which was at the previous year's level, which was a record year. For GF Piping Systems, the EBIT margin was 13.3% versus 13.5% a year earlier. And the slight decrease was mainly due to the subdued markets within the division. And nevertheless, the margin is within the strategic range for 2025. At GF Casting Solutions, the EBIT margin increased from 6.2% to 7%, and this was achieved despite significant challenges in rising energy, labor and transportation costs. GF Machining Solutions achieved an EBIT margin of 6.8% in 2023 after 7% in 2022, mainly due to the lower sales volume. And finally, for GF Uponor reported an EBIT margin of minus 8.2%. Excluding the aforementioned one-offs, Uponor would have achieved an EBIT margin in our books of 6.9%. And for the full year 2023, Uponor reported previously a comparable EBIT margin of 12.3%. Slide 28 provides more transparency on the development of the EBITDA. Starting from the left-hand side, the contribution from the organic growth is an additional CHF 58 million organically, which was adversely impacted by a CHF 67 million currency effects. Adjusting for Corys and GF Linamar brings us to an EBITDA of CHF 492 million with a margin of 12.8%, which is at previous year's level. The operational EBITDA of GF Uponor contributed in the last 2 months of 2023, additional CHF 15 million. This was, however, negatively impacted by one-off noncash inventory-related PPA to the tune of CHF 21 million, as you can see here. Hence, overall, the effect of the consolidation of Uponor was a negative CHF 6 million, and this led to a reported EBITDA of CHF 486 million or EBITDA margin of 12.1%. Turning to Slide 29. You can see some more details about the impact of the foreign exchange movements in 2023. The total impact on the GF corporation was a negative CHF 263 million on sales and a negative CHF 62 million on the EBIT level. On the right-hand side, you can see that the largest impact came from one can almost say as usual, the euro, the U.S. dollars, the Chinese renminbi and the Turkish lira. Moving to Slide 30, which shows the development from EBIT all the way down to net profit. While we benefited from the positive interest on our cash position until November in total CHF 12 million here, the financial expenses increased slightly to CHF 63 million the financing cost of the acquisition of Uponor amounted to CHF 8.6 million. Income taxes amounted to CHF 71 million. The tax rate increased from 29 -- 20.9% to 22.7%. This is mainly a result of GF having used up tax losses carryforwards in several jurisdictions and also recording higher taxable income in high-tech countries such as Germany and the U.S. Furthermore, Uponor had a substantial higher corporate income tax rate around 1 percentage point. And therefore, for 2024, we expect the tax rate to increase to around 25%. On Slide 31, we want to provide you with some more insight into the effects of the PPA. In the first column, you will see that the step-up effects of the relevant opening balance sheet items. And in total, we have CHF 190 million pretax step-up effect with the main increase in buildings and production equipment. On an inventory level and in line with prevailing accounting standards, the acquired inventory carries no margin until it's turned once, which for this company is about 3 months. As you can see from the second column, the corresponding negative effect is distributed with CHF 21 million in 2023, and with CHF 13 million in the current year. As of 2025, the annual effects of the PPA will be roughly CHF 8 million additional depreciation. In the last line of the table, you can see that the resulting effect on our net income in 2023 and for the next 2 years. Let's move to Slide 32. Here, we have highlighted the effects of the acquisition of Uponor in 3 separate columns for you to get a better feel for the development of the balance sheet. First column shows the effects of the actual transaction, and second, the opening balance sheet of GF Uponor. And thirdly, it's the changes in the opening balance sheet until the end of December. As can be seen in the column transaction, CHF 340 million of cash was used to acquire the shares of Uponor. And overall, our total assets have increased in 2023 by CHF 421 million to CHF 4,119 million. Turning to the liabilities and equities on Slide 33, which applies the same logic in the columns. Due to the acquisition of Uponor, our interest-bearing liabilities increased from CHF 735 million to CHF 2,444 million. We financed this acquisition with a bridge loan of CHF 636 million and a term loan of CHF 986 million. The consolidated equity is reduced by CHF 1,638 million to CHF 22 million. And the reason for this is that GF has opted in accordance with Swiss GAAP fair to offset the goodwill directly against retained earnings. Excluding the effects relating to the Uponor acquisition, equity would have stood at CHF 1,686 million, CHF 30 million above previous year. On the following Slide 34, we go through the cash flow statement. Despite the lower EBITDA, cash flow from operating activities was CHF 338 million, higher compared to the previous year, mainly as a result of successful net working capital management. We continue to invest in future growth of our business, additions to property, plant and equipment was 20% higher in 2023 and amounted to around CHF 200 million. As a result of the higher investments, free cash flow before acquisitions and divestments came in at CHF 134 million, a tad lower than previous year. Moving to the key figures on Slide 35, as we finance the acquisition of Uponor with debt, our net cash position in 2022 turned into a net debt position at the end of 2023 of CHF 1,879 million. For reasons of transparency and predictability going forward, we are showing the net debt EBITDA multiple for 2023, including the pro forma 12 months EBITDA from Uponor As we have offset goodwill with retained earnings, the equity ratio is now at 0.5%. Without Uponor, the ratio would have increased to 46.3%. Return on invested capital decreased slightly from last year. Main effect again is that we only consolidate Uponor for 2 months in the net operating profit, but we have 100% of the company in the invested capital. And as mentioned earlier, our tax rate increased to 22.7%, including GF Uponor. And for 2024, we expect a slightly higher tax rate. Moving to Slide 36. Our earnings per share decreased from CHF 3.37 to CHF 2.87, which is an effect of the lower reported profitability, but also due to the higher one-off effects from the PPA, reflecting the still underlying performance achieved in 2023, the GF Board of Directors proposes at the Annual General Assembly an unchanged dividend of CHF 1.30. This corresponds to a payout ratio of 45%, which is slightly above the targeted payout range of 30% to 40%. On my last slide, I will provide some additional details on the expected synergies from the Uponor acquisition. When the bid was announced in 2023, we estimate that the synergies would be within the range of CHF 35 million to CHF 45 million. Our analysis and additional due diligence have now confirmed our assumptions, and we are now increasing the range slightly to CHF 40 million to CHF 50 million on an annual basis. On the left-hand side, you can see that approximately half of the synergies are foreseen to come from the commercial side. We've done extensive analysis of the market situation in Europe and U.S. and have developed specific market plans. Although there are some low-hanging fruits, these initiatives would only develop gradually over time as it involves tendering, local product approvals, local product adaptations and logistics. The effects of the cost-related synergies should be clearly captured earlier. We see a large part of the cost synergies and operations, but also in integrating certain functions such as procurement within the GF setup, and eliminating duplications in central functions. On the right-hand side, you see the synergies are expected to develop over the following years. The cost synergies are clearly more front-end loaded and hence foreseen to key in before the commercial synergies. And on that note, thank you very much, and I pass the word back to Andy for the outlook.

Thank you very much, Mads. Let's move now to Slide 36 or 40, the update of our strategic target range. Just halfway into GF's current 5-year strategy cycle, 2023 marked a key milestone in the implementation of the Strategy 2025. The acquisition and swift integration of Uponor and Corys Piping Systems, 2 complementary businesses to GF Piping Systems is set to accelerate the implementation of the Strategy 2025 and further supports GF ambition to become a global leader in sustainable water and flow solutions. GF increases its Strategy 2025 target ranges from the previous sales target of CHF 4.4 billion to CHF 5 billion, including acquisitions to now CHF 5 billion to CHF 5.5 billion, also including acquisitions. From the previous EBIT margin target range of 9% to 11% to 10% to 12% and from the previous ROIC target of 20% to 22% to 20% to 24%. In addition to these existing strategy targets, GF introduces a new EBITDA margin target range of 13% to 15%. Let's now move to our last slide, outlook 2024. Slide 41. Despite persisting short-term global challenges, GF with its innovative solutions is well positioned to benefit from long-term mega trends such as water conservation and treatment, sustainable mobility, energy-efficient indoor climate solutions and high precision machine. Economic conditions remain generally subdued, but GF expects a gradual improvement during the course of the year, leading to further organic growth for the full year 2024. Operating profitability ratios before extraordinary items are expected to reach the revised Strategy 2025 target ranges, with EBIT from 10 to 12 EBITDA, 13 to 15 and ROIC 20% to 24%. With that, I would like to conclude our presentation, and we are now ready to take your questions. Thank you.

For our Q&A, we will first take the question here in the room, and afterwards, also questions from the webcast, if there are any. We have 2 microphones, so please use the microphone and to whom may I give the first question? Oh, there are many hands rising, maybe there, Walter Bamert.

Walter Bamert from Zürcher Kantonalbank. You're mentioning the outlook somewhere that the start into this year was somewhat weak, in which area did you identify that? I assume rather in orders than in sales? And what do you expect there to happen in the coming months?

Thank you very much. Mr. Bamert, I think as said in our outlook, we have not -- and I think this is most likely true for all of us not seeing a major change in the geopolitical uncertainties as the last year ended as the new year started. So what we're going to expect is that the construction industry will -- may see certain recovery towards the second part of the year with interest rates might come in slightly down, which will increase as shown on one of our slides, the builder's confidence but also the consumers' confidence in that area. We also have seen that the ICT segment, as we have illustrated, is still remaining subdued at this point of time. But also here, we expect gradually improvements in that kind of market.

Okay. Next question, Remo Rosenau.

Remo Rosenau, Helvetische Bank. Have you got any guesstimate about the financial result in '24? I mean you mentioned in the press release that you will most likely issue a few bonds, financial costs were net minus CHF 50 million this year in '23. That, of course, will go up significantly in '24. Have you got any idea where it could roughly be? And what is your view on the net debt at the end of '24? And hence, the net debt-to-EBITDA? And have you got a target where the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio should be in order to feel comfortable going forward?

Thank you. Mr. Rosenau, I think this is an excellent question for our CFO. Thank you very much.

We have additional acquisition date probably around CHF 50 million, CHF 55 million. We are moving quickly on the bond side to replace that. However, you will not get a significant release of interest rate at the moment because of the market conditions, we expect towards the year-end, probably to be in the area of 2.6% to 2.7% net debt-to-EBITDA. That's our target at the moment. And as you know, we have pulled back the ABB, and we will earmark free cash flow probably over the next 3 to 4 years, probably in the area of CHF 600 million to pay back the debt that we have. We are working on replacing, I would say, within the next 2 years, the bridge loan. And the next 5 years, we have this term loan, and we want to replace that with bonds as well.

And the financial result?

The financial result would not be too much different than this year, as I said, because the interest rate that we pay on the bridge loan is not so far away from the current bond conditions that we are getting. It's more when we start paying back the term loan probably next year or replace the term loan with a bond, you would see a release on the interest rate.

Okay. Last question. Okay. I understand there are some special items now and PPA and so on. But will you continue to now report adjusted figures? Or is that just for a very brief period. And then we go back to the EBITDA and EBIT?

The thing we would like to create transparency on is the one-off inventory-related purchase price allocation. There is the additional depreciation that we have is part of our account. So we're not adjusting for that per se. We are going forward, we are in a value creation program. We have stated here in the presentation, we also expect some one-off and we'll also transparent, communicate what are the effects on our EBIT and EBITDA from these one-offs when they occur during the course of '23 and '24.

But the targets are related to the comparable figures. Right?

The targets are related to the comparable figures In Swiss GAAP fair.

Next question, Dominik Feldges, [indiscernible] -- the third row.

Yes. Dominik Feldges, Neue Zürcher Zeitung. The Casting Solutions division has been somehow the shining star, the shining division, which has not always been like that. I mean do you expect it to continue to outperform maybe because of this China effect maybe all this investment now there? Or did the growth of the electric vehicle business. Will it remain like that? And more generally in China, I mean, is this now -- can you operate there as before? Or have you also certain concerns? I mean, about China and the business, the market environment there.

Thank you very much, Mr. Feldges. I think 2 very interesting questions. Let me reiterate that we expect our Casting Solutions division to be able to achieve its strategic corridors in the year 2025, which is set to 9% to 11% return on sales. So we also expect a gradual improvement during the course of the next 2 years in that division. This is mainly due to the fact that such kind of components as shown here in this room will come into production. We are currently undergoing industrialization of such kind of products, which are obviously also attractive. We have a very, let me say, solid and diversified customer base in China, which balances also the risk from being dependent on only one of this kind of OEMs as we also discussed during the break before this presentations. It is a bit like that not each and every of the Chinese suppliers remains a solid Chinese OEM as we have seen. However, it is crystallizing more or less now and singling around 5 to 7 OEMs, which became more and more solid over the last year where GF isn't showing being their supplier. But not only China is of relevance for us, also the European market and also certain export business. So therefore, yes, we expect a gradual improvement over the next 2 years in terms of the profitability of that division. Bearing unforeseen circumstances, I think I have to put up this disclaimer because this is also a business sometimes heavily affected by imputed costs. China. GF is in China since more than 30 years. We were celebrating last year in September 30 years with [ OEM ] presence in China. We're having all 3 divisions with substantial localized space. We produce in China for China, but we produce in China also products at the high quality level. So we are not there to compete on a commoditized level. Now we're going to compete and we're going to offer our offerings at high level. As you may recall in my presentation, I have stated that our clients in China marked this Shenyang facility, which we just inaugurated as really a step, a leader when it comes to automization and efficiency of a die casting facility. And I think this is something which GF always have abided over the last couple of years to keep up with technology and also apply efficiency and productivity measures as we do it here in our European plants. So we have a very local for local business where we play in high-end market solutions, and we see a good demand for that once going forward.

Next question. Yes, maybe second last row.

[indiscernible] from UBS. I have a question regarding the net debt EBITDA guidance. When you announced the transaction, you guided for about 1.5x within 2 years. That seems relatively challenging now. Do you have an update on what your longer-term guidance is kind of what it should be run rate? And a follow-up on the bond issuance from earlier. You guided previously CHF 400 million to CHF 600 million in new bonds. Now you said, if I understood correctly, you want to refinance the bridge and term loans with bonds that sounds like a lot more than CHF 400 million to CHF 600 million if that's correct.

Thank you very much for your questions. We have not got a long-term update on the net debt EBITDA. But again, I think you have all the -- those solutions today. We stayed at about 2.6, 2.7 at the year-end. The bond issue will be substantially larger, but it will not all happen this year. our bridge loan is a 2-year financing and our term loan is a 5-year financing. We would aim to pay back the bridge financing as quick as possible. That's why we're probably looking to increase the issue in the area, maybe CHF 600 million and even higher on the bonds?

Next question, second last row.

Jörn from UBS. A couple of questions, please. I will take them one by one, if it's okay. The first one would be on piping. You mentioned orders improved somewhat in terms of momentum in the second half 2023. Do you see this already translating in some acceleration organic growth in the first half '24 versus second half '23 would be the first question, please.

I think more importantly, is an equal spread of the orders on hand during the course of the year. As you might have seen that the microelectronics orders, which we have had an amplification of the intake in the year 2022 has been somehow leveled out the growth in 2023. So we expect more or less also here a credible start during the course of this year when it comes to Piping Systems. So we see project activities, particularly in the microelectronics sector now in the U.S. picking up, which means that orders will take up in Q2 and subsequent quarters. We have seen a slowdown in the microelectronics projects in the course of the year 2023 in the U.S. whereas Asia and certain areas of Europe have been rather strong in the year 2023, towards the end of the year. So I think what we see is it's a relocation of growth centers now from Asia and now a bit more to Americas once again. I think we all have read about the chips act and the slowdown of the payouts there, but also this kind of project. And I think it's also the digestibility of this kind of projects. If you're just going to consider this gigantic factory new builds, which we will see now in the course of 2024 and subsequent years. So these kind of projects, as we have alluded to at our Flow Solutions Day, are important for GF in terms of for more than only a month or 3. We normally supply into the microelectronics project during the entire course from the initial ground breaking to the very last moment when the operations will be started. So we have normally periods of 24 to 36 month supply on this kind of project. That's also one of the reasons why we could still, let me say, provide growth in this market segment where other industries might have not shown growth in that segment. This is mainly due to the fact that we have a very balanced supply chain over the time of such projects.

And the second question, also more technical, please. Do you expect organic sales growth in all 3 divisions? And how do you treat the divisional reshuffling between Uponor and Piping. Does it also mean that Uponor should grow already in 2024 because it becomes more difficult to split organic versus M&A contribution given the reshuffling.

It's a very good question, Mr. Iffert. It's a really very good question. So first of all, for the legacy businesses, yes, we do expect a low single-digit organic growth in all 3 divisions. Uponor is set to come in flat for the year 2024, particularly since still certain markets being subdued and as we might have seen and it's bottoming out now in a couple of Central European markets. So we do expect organically, this business being rather stable made there is -- it depends a bit towards the second half of the year, a certain growth, maybe a higher growth than has been seen today.

And third quick question, please. In piping, you had significant FX transaction risks. I think the margin impact was around 100 basis points, plus or minus, with your pricing power, are you able to pass this through in 2024 that you can price the FX transaction risk to your customers because they want from you to produce in Switzerland.

The situation that we have on the pricing in piping is that we have not had the same level of price increases this year as we've seen in the past. Last year, we actually were able to pass over most of it to the market. But this year, we are not in the same situation that we have increased prices across the board. We still have -- it's more on a market on a selected market basis than it has been in the previous years. But last year, we were able to increase the prices significantly as well.

And the last question, if you allow me, you show the EBIT return as capital. But when I look on the cash conversion, the equity fee of free cash flow, it's much weaker versus the EBITDA at the end of the day. So we are not really earning cost of capital in 2023 on the free cash flow terms capital. What do you expect on the equity free cash flow range or free cash flow range for the next 2 to 3 years, which run rate should be achieved, including Uponor that you can really make progress of this important profitability metrics?

Very good question, Jörn. It's -- first of all, look at the full year cash flow of Uponor last year was roughly about EUR 130 million. Our previous guidance has been for the cooperation between EUR 150 million and EUR 200 million, which we have not always been able to achieve. Next year, we're looking probably EUR 200 million to EUR 250 million on a free cash flow on a continuous basis. And that should definitely be doable. Last year was hampered a bit by the net working capital situation. We did expect a large improvement that we've seen, but the areas have been identified is mainly with piping and machining where they need to do some more work on the inventory management.

Okay. Here in the front row, Foletti.

Alessandro Foletti, Octavian. Also a couple of questions. I take them also one by one. Coming back on pricing, can you give any information about the pricing in casting sort of the pass on of raw materials? That will be question number one. And question number two, can you be a little bit more precise by how much the prices went up last year and how much we can expect for this year? That would be the first one.

So coming to car solutions, and you correctly observed Alessandro, that we had a negative development on the metal prices in the year [ 2023 ]. So therefore, sales have been negatively affected by the metal price contractual obligation to pass on. We can allude to the 3.7% organic growth more or less at above 50% was due to price increases across all of our 3 divisions.

Okay. The other question, if you can repeat quickly the salary inflation last year and then give an outlook for '24.

Salary increases on average last year was 1.8%, and it's roughly 1.5% to 2% this year as well on a global basis.

And then a little bit more about Uponor if possible. What do you expect in terms of synergies, first of all, top line and bottom line? You increased them a little bit, but it still doesn't sound like enormous when I compare that to the to the top line. What can you do more here, maybe on a market-by-market basis? And what can we expect -- you said flat maybe this year? Can you differentiate a little bit between the different markets?

First of all, I think we can expand our offerings by combining the building technology businesses with the Uponor Building Technologies. I think here, we're going to expect growth in markets. So we expect the U.S. to grow in the year 2024. And this is also due to the expanded offerings, what we're going to have. We're also going to have joint customers which we can consolidate and therefore, going to play a more important role. When you take the European markets, we believe that in the Nordics, we have an excellent offering now for all of our customers there. So we can accomplish that. For example, when you recall our Flow Solutions where we have shown our high clean solutions, but also our water sanitation solutions now, which are not only central but also now decentralized. I think we're going to have quite a huge potential on that one. We have new services and new offerings which comes into more intelligent piping systems. For example, the smart rigs indoor climate solutions. We have now planning and designing teams, which allow our customers to have a customized set to be installed on site, correctly marked, ease the life of installations and its use the time of installation. And this is also being combined then with the wealth technologies, which come from the JRG group, which is a Swiss-based building technology company, which is now part of the Intelligent Flow Solutions division for buildings of Michael Rauterkus and his team. So we expect that we can consolidate quite a lot. And I think as Mads alluded to, it is not that this happens overnight. Now first of all, I think the preparation for this kind of consolidations and commercial, let me say, impact needs its time because our customers need to be aware about these new offerings. And then they have to list these offerings, and they have to be, let me say, approached to see the advantages of that one. And that means we will use most of this year in terms of commercial attractiveness and consolidation of these product ranges to promote them, but also to establish them. It's not said that we will not have quick wins terms of sales. But the majority of the commercial impact will come in the subsequent years. So I would say, starting with 2025 onwards, but even further. I think this is an important mark. So -- and also what Mads has shown is that synergies will happen also on production side on the offerings. At this point of time, the building technology business unit of Piping Systems was buying in products from today competitors of Uponor, which will obviously being changed to our own internal supplies. We see mainly Germany being one of the weakest markets at this point of time in Europe. And that's one of the reasons why growth can't be expected. We see markets more in the south part of Europe, which are rather strong, and we expect the Nordics to recover faster than Central Europe, mainly due to miss of restricted permission processes, which are obviously important. If you would apply today for permission in Germany, most likely the execution of the construction is not happening before 2024 and or, let me say, in 2025, whereas you see permissions in Nordics and other regions of Europe much quicker. We see also South Europe being intact. We just came back from a trip to Italy, where we have been visiting mutual clients of GF and Uponor was quite impressive. And also interesting to talking to them, they have seen a much more resilient start into the year 2024 than other regions.

Okay. It was interesting. Maybe my last question on piping, again, you mentioned the weakness in gas. Can you say a little bit more in detail what that is related to? Does it have to do...

First of all -- yes, it is the urban infrastructure. As you may have seen, it's hardly any gas network being installed nowadays, but we have nicely diversified our business now in that region. So we, for example, providing similar solutions, even first of all, for hydrogen solutions but certainly also for low-temperature district heating systems. And thirdly, it is now also one of a very interesting application. It's the energy conveyance of the wires being underneath the floor, the underground cabling of the energy transition from north to south and that's also very interesting and attractive applications. So we're going to see new applications coming up in the developed areas. However, we should not neglect the fact that gas applications is still a very attractive end market segment in the Americas, but also in other regions of this planet. So it's not only Europe and particularly here, Germany, which has changed over. You also see across Europe, still attractive markets. We have said, we have flattened, and we see also slight growth now in the utility businesses.

Okay. Second row.

[indiscernible], the market. Is the capital increase off the table for good, the price the share had quite a good run since last fall. So maybe you could reconsider that options because you have quite a stretched balance sheet. And the rating agency, don't you get any nervous. It also makes -- it's important because when you issue bonds that the rating stays as it is?

Thank you very much, Mr. Muller for your question. First of all, we went into the acquisition announcing this ABB, but it was actually not necessary to stem the acquisition to do it. It was done in the hindsight to be able to have the degrees of freedom to make another move on the M&A side. We wanted to have the degrees of freedom. We were expecting that this could potentially trigger a new wave of consolidation in the industry, which has not happened for the last decade. A lot of questions have been around now, does this limit your M&A muscle? We still could hypothetically do a larger acquisition, but using a full ABB. But the ABB in the context of the Uponor transaction is off the table, I can confirm that. And -- we went into all our scenario analysis without the ABB and our ratings have been confirmed around the BBB area by the rating agency so far.

Next question, next to Giorgio Miller.

Bernd Pomrehn from Vontobel. Could you talk a little bit about your investment plans in the coming years? If I correct in the last years, you predominantly or mainly invested in China. Could you talk a little bit about your plans now in the coming years and for which application, which segment, which region do you plan your next major investments? And maybe could you also provide a CapEx guidance for the current year?

Thank you very much. So I think one of the capital expenditure plans is our facility in [ saves, ] which is more or less in the range of CHF 30 million to CHF 40 million over the next 2 years. We will also further expand our East European footprint. So we will establish new facilities and new factories in Poland. We just have started the planning. So you're going to see for the Piping Systems business, the new East European hub for our solutions there. We also plan or have started our investment in the U.S. for our gas and utility business, which is also in the range of CHF 35 million. So you see much more of our investments going forward in the Flow Solutions area. And our guidance will be in the range as usually between CHF 150 million to CHF 200 million. It depends a bit. So we have been on the other high side last year, but generally speaking, we want to settle in between CHF 150 million to CHF 200 million.

Next, the first one here.

Tobias Fahrenholz from Stifel. A follow-up on pricing and the performance of Uponor, as far as I remember, pushout surprising organic growth even in the fourth quarter, could say how much of this was price driven, what was volume? And I'm still wondering how you can grow in such an environment when building permits are plummeting significantly in Scandinavia, where this just base effects? Or are we really speaking about a lot of market share gains here?

I think, as said, the robots business in the U.S. was definitely contributing to an organic growth. However, in Europe, it has been a base effect due to the cyber crisis and the cyber attack in the year 2022, which happened in November and December. Therefore, we had a subdued jumping base in this last quarter 2022, so it is a bit of an artificially inflated organic growth in the fourth quarter. You're absolutely right. this kind of circumstances, it would be largely against competitors, but no, it has been really a base effect considering the cyber attack.

Good. And a follow-up on the margin performance of the piping business. Could you explain how you managed to grow the EBIT margin by 20 basis points sequentially despite much lower revenue. So is it here the price at the raw materials component? Is it the mix? Or why is that?

You said increase the which margin?

The EBIT margin, I think, is up by 20 basis points, H1, H2.

I think it dropped.

On a half year or a full year?

On half year level.

Okay. Okay. All right. Now in the second half, the main reason was in certain businesses, a better utilization. We have a couple of problems. We have also communicated that the margins have been subdued in the BT sector. We have a business here in Switzerland. Turkey has been clearly a negative impact, and these have, I would say, been moderated, and we've made progress on that area in the second half. So that's -- yes, that's the main reason for that.

Next question goes also here. And then in the last row.

On your outlook, organic growth outlook for -- Martin Flueckiger, Kepler Cheuvreux -- sorry. Just curious on your outlook for organic growth in 2024. What kind of mix should we expect in terms of volume and pricing going into the new financial year? And do you target a neutral or slightly positive price/cost spread for 2024? That would be my first question.

First of all, we strive for each and every year, a slight price increase as much as said we do not expect 2024 being one of the major price increasing years. However, in selective end markets, we believe that strategic pricing is of key relevance. It will not be the key denominator for growth. So we expect certainly also some volume growth. As we have seen, the aerospace businesses being picking up in Machining Solutions. We also expect this to continue. We have said that we have full order books when it comes to the aerospace business. So we see the aerospace business being an attractive market during the course of this year, also expecting a bit more back year loaded because the lead times for this highly complex plate and list machine tools is between 12 and 16 months or even sometimes going further up. So we expect this kind of business being more present in the second half of the year as well as microelectronics, we expect project activities to restart in the U.S. towards the Q2 and therefore, Q2, Q3, Q4. So that means less of a price increase in the year 2024, but I would not say that we are not giving up on prices. We might going to see certain issues on metals, but this is really out of our hands when it comes to casting solutions. At this point of time, we see rather stable on secondary materials, which becomes more of a pressing need now for our customers that they urge us that we're using, secondary materials because they want to have this recycling bonus on the CO2 footprint of the cars components. It's not a secret to be very honest, if we would let say, serve all these visions, there wouldn't be enough recycled materials. So that's one of the reasons where we see a slight surge on that materials, whereas the primary metals might see a flattish to even a decrease depends a bit on how markets in general will develop.

Okay. So does that -- from a ballpark perspective, does that translate into a roughly flat raw material price outlook?

On the casting at this point of time because we have this imbalance of primary and secondary materials at this point of time, it looks a bit like that the secondary outperforms the primary and therefore, we have a flattish metal price development, which is into a contractual obligation for us to pass it on to our customers.

Okay. In pipings?

Piping Systems, we have seen resin also being rather sticky. So Also, if you may would have expected in the year 2023, the prices come down much more, they are still above the pre-COVID level. So they have not come down to the same kind of price levels as we have seen them in the year 2019. So I think it's Performance Materials. Performance Materials is going to have its own logic. So it's not too much commoditized even so when you may -- would consider it. But polyethylene, high density grade 100 or even higher remains rather solid. If you go for the big pipe materials, yes, then you might going to talk price volatility and then you have price adjustments. But a PVCC, an ABS, PVDF and ETF, which is all technical engineered polymers, you don't see actually this kind of volatility in the end markets.

Okay. Great. My second question would be on GF Uponor. Now with all the complexity in the first 2 months, still some complexity going on in 2024, at least from a modeling perspective here. I don't need to tell you that. So I was just wondering whether you could provide us some guidance for the new division in 2024. In terms of top line, in terms of organic growth, in terms of margins, EBIT margins or EBITDA or whatever you prefer.

I think we also have a strategic target range for our GF Uponor business. That means also here, the strategic target range from 12% to 15% is what we're going to strive for in the year 2025. As I already alluded to, we do not expect an organic growth on the GF Uponor side this year. So we rather expect a flattish development. Yes, we are not set to deteriorate our margins. So therefore, as we have alluded in our Q4 release or for Q3 release of Uponor in Q4 release, we have also giving some hints on the transformational program, the transformational program wars, a project, which has gone on for more or less 1.5 years, which has increased the agility. For example, they have substantially reduced their SKUs, their stock listed items down to the range of 2,500 to 4,500 with a reduction of more than 50% of these items, but also consolidating certain production footprints. And our investments, for example, going forward in Poland will be also a further consolidation of our footprint in Poland to optimize and streamline. So yes, we are there now to keep this margin, and that's what we intend.

Okay. And my last one is for Mads regarding the free cash flow development, which came in a little bit below consensus expectations, at least from what I've seen, I've noticed that there was a major swing in changes in other liabilities and accrued liabilities as well as deferred income in 2023, I think, from plus 30 to minus 70, something like that from '22 to '23. Could you just explain to us what's behind that move?

Very good question, Martin. It relates to differences in the balance sheet of Uponor from the first day of consolidation in November until the year-end, in particular, their liabilities decreased substantially and it relates to a lot of payments, among others, the payments to the investment bankers, transaction related, et cetera, et cetera. So it's, I would say, not exclusively, but it's mostly related to Uponor and the movement in the balance sheet in the last 2 months.

Okay. Then gentlemen, in last row.

[indiscernible]. Can you elaborate a little bit on the conversion from Uponor to Swiss Cap fail with respect to the lease liabilities and the pension, I don't really understand what was going on there. When I see the lease liabilities, I believe they go from IFRS into the footnotes but they have only increased slightly. So are they there 100%. And with the pension, something similar going on, can you elaborate whether there is still some to come?

Let me shed a little light on this one. So for the year 2023, what actually happens is most of the lease items of Uponor wet leases. So in Swiss fair there off balance sheet. So the balance sheet goes down by about EUR 44 million. There's also a shift in the income statement for the year 2023. The EBITDA decreases by EUR 1.5 million. It's flat on a neutral on the EBIT level. And for the full year, 2024, you will see a negative effect on the EBITDA from the increased operational lease charges for about 20 -- correction, CHF 12 million maximum. But that would, of course, be relieved on the depreciation, if you go and look at the historical accounts. So that's the main effect. The pension fund. You see a lot of -- most of the pension funds, they have a U.S. system, which is a 401(k) all the Scandinavians are government-sponsored mainly. They don't have the same system in Switzerland. They don't have defined benefit system. So there was not a big effect in the swing of the pension funds as such. That's the main reason for the Swiss fair conversion.

Okay. Then the second question, there was a big increase in the provisions for warranties with Uponor, the question is, is that a one-off? Or is that typical for this business that you have a lot of...

Relates to the opening balance sheet. And it relates to product warranties or potential risk cases that are in the market at the moment.

Can you then comment on the timing of the outflow of the cash?

It's an operational provision and the -- it's actually an ongoing case in the U.S., which we cannot say when that case will be closed.

Okay. Before we proceed here, maybe the question do we have questions from the webcast No. Okay. Then for Foletti.

Since we are doing some of these details. When we transfer the building technology business from piping to Uponor and vice versa infra from Uponor to piping. I guess it will happen only with H1 '24.

Not even.

Okay.

Yes. Just you understand. That thing has to be hardwired. And we are operationally shifting, but the actual reflection, I think it will be more like for the full year. our work plan will be probably more for the full year. The half year, we will not be able to revise the financial accounts fully reflect that. But the operational responsibility is already shifted. But for financial accounts underlying, you need to revise these 2 divisions.

So we are best advised to model on a piping like it was before, Uponor this year at the moment...

A good thing for you guys at the moment, try and reflect it as it is, will probably be easier for your modeling.

And then at the end of the year, when you provide a restatement also H1 and H2, maybe that would be a...

When we provide the full year, we'll give you more transparency that number? Absolutely, yes.

Right. So okay, the second question follows off because it was about the margin, if there is an effect on the 2 -- there is a continue like this. Okay. Great.

Maybe important, not that you get a wrong understanding of how we're going to do that. The remodeling of the business and the organizational changes happened as it has been legal entities, which are now under the control of the respective presidents and also where we have joined operations, we are fully aware about sales and contribution margins but the hard wiring in the consolidation tool is not yet happening. So we have, at this point of time, pro forma, but pro forma wouldn't be good enough for you. And that's one of the reasons why we will take the time of this year. and we will also do certain restatements as much as they will be possible.

Okay. That's great. The last one, you mentioned your tax rate going to 25 this year. And then thereafter?

That stay probably around the same level. The main earnings for Uponor is in Germany and in the U.S., and they are high tax countries.

Okay. Maybe one last question from me on for -- it's a very quick technical follow-up. On your EBIT margin guidance for 2024, the 10% or 10% plus. Is this including the PPA? And then also what else in terms of one-off costs you're expecting transaction integration costs or if you could split this?

I think our target range set out and it's also set commented in his on comparable base. So we would exclude the nonrecurring PPA effects, such as the ones on inventory as shown by Mads, but they would include the ones on our assets because that will be recurring for the next couple of years, let's call it this way, it will last and stay there for the next 6 to 10 years. So it is without the effect on inventory, but also in case of major restructurings as being shown by Mads, we expect to part happening in the year 2024. That will be also excluded in the target range what we have shown.

And these restructuring expenses, what is the magnitude roughly?

It's on my last slide, CHF 25 million to CHF 30 million relating to the...

Okay. Maybe one very short, very last question from Dominik Feldges.

So can you elaborate a little bit on the restructuring? And what is happening then staff-wise just for our...

Yes, first of all, I think when we turn to talk about the restructuring, it's maybe a bit about consolidating certain areas. It's more related to assets. It's also streamlining the product portfolio, which might -- could come along with some write-downs on our inventories. So it's all sort of it's less of a topic in terms at this point of huge restructurings in closing down facilities and massive layouts that layoffs that's not the plan at this point of time. So it's more the writing down of certain assets, consolidating certain assets. As we said, for example, in Poland, we have 4 sites currently in the western part of Poland, which we're going to consolidate under 1 roof. It will be more or less in the same region because we own already the land there. So what does that mean? We're going to have some PPE, some plant and property and equipment, which has to be written off because you cannot allocate such as infrastructure, which would be in the building. So the new build will then obviously care for all these 4 sites, which is more or less in the same region.

Okay. I think with this, we close our Q&A and our conference. There will be, of course, also the opportunity to discuss further questions during lunch, which is served just outside this room. On behalf of GF, I would like to thank you for your participation. The very interesting Q&A session, and we wish you all a good week. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.