JOST Werke SE (JST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

A very good morning, and welcome to our 2021 financial year conference. I hope all of you are doing very well. We are broadcasting from our JOST studios that some of you already know from the Capital Market Days. And that's something that we developed during the corona pandemic. As part of our digitalization efforts, we're mainly using it for product training, but today, we're using it to explain to you our financial results for 2021 and the outlook for 2022. 2020, 2021 were very turbulent years, and it seems like 2022 will be just like that. But let's come to 2021. I'm very happy to report that we've fully achieved all our financial targets for the year 2021. Coming out of COVID-impacted 2020, our sales grew by 32% to a total of EUR 1,049 million. That's surpassing the EUR 1 billion mark for the first time in JOST history. Our adjusted EBIT outgrew that growth by 42%, and we ended up at a total of EUR 105 million adjusted EBIT for the year 2021. That calculates to a margin of 10%, which is a growth of 0.8 percentage points versus the year before. Despite the expansion of our business, we could keep our working capital below the 20% target and ended at 18%. And also, our financial position, the leverage was reduced to 1.45x. What were the main highlights of 2021? JOST grew in all of our regions, both in the transport business and the agriculture business. Despite a challenging supply environment, we all know about the material prices that went up steeply in 2021. We could improve our profitability, reaching the 10% adjusted EBIT margin. Our high operational flexibility allowed us to manage the volatile demand from our OEMs, a lot of them were suffering from semiconductor shortages. But also logistic constraints. We all remember the closure of the Suez Canal and supply chain disruptions. We could significantly improve our energy efficiency and our carbon footprint per production hour. We want our shareholders to participate in this success, and we propose a dividend payment of EUR 1.05 per share for the year 2021. We come to the market and see how the markets developed. And this is the comparison to 2020. And you have to remember that 2020 obviously was impacted by COVID more than 2021. So we've seen growth in almost all regions. In Europe, we had a strong growth in the truck, trailer and agricultural tractor market, more or less 16%, 17%, 19%. JOST benefited from our strong market position, and we outperformed this market growth with a sales growth of 28%, mainly that is market share gains and also, to a certain degree, price impact that we transferred to the market. North American market grew more or less the same way for truck and agricultural tractors. On trailers, we had a much stronger growth of 26%. JOST, the JOST team in North America did a tremendous job and the business grew by 50%. Mainly market share gains, also pricing forward to the market and also higher value products and logistics services that we offer to our customers. Asia Pacific, Africa, a very heterogeneous group. Obviously, China plays a big role in that. China, as we've presented earlier, had a very strong first half year, a very weak second half year. So that impacts the numbers here on truck. On trailers, the situation looked much better. For JOST , we had a 23% growth in the overall region. So that's the stronger markets, Australia, South Africa, but also mainland market could outperform the weakness that we saw in the second half in China. With that, I would like to hand it over to Christian to explain in more detail the financial numbers of 2021.

Thank you very much, Joachim. And hello, everyone. A warm welcome also from my side. You've already heard it from Joachim. 2021 was a record year for JOST in many ways. And in the following minutes, I would like to share some more details about these results with you. Contrary to what we've done previously, I would like to start with the group and also to look maybe not only in the last year but the year before. And what you see there is 2019 was a record year for JOST and 2019 was the last year before the acquisition of Ålö. And then in 2020, you know that we had this coronavirus pandemic, which is still going on. But essentially, a lot of things came to a standstill in the first half of the year and therefore, it had a significant negative impact on our sales development. So if you look at that last year, EUR 794 million in the year 2020, EUR 794 million in sales. And this year, is really the first time that JOST is able to surpass the EUR 1 billion sales mark for the first time in the history of the company. And what is even I mean, obviously, this is a major milestone for us as a company. But more so, I would like to point out the significant sales improvement that we were able to achieve especially on the agricultural side. What you see here is a 43% growth compared to the year before. Yes, the year before was impacted by corona, but it was not that severely impacted on the agricultural side as it was on the transport side. And to see a growth of 43% is something that we didn't believe would be possible not only because we did not assume that we would have the production capacities to make this all happen, but we did. But more so that the markets were also developing that favorably. As you may recall, when we acquired Ålö and we presented this acquisition to you, we all said the typical agriculture market would move somewhere around 0% to 1% mark. And maybe in good years, you would see a growth of 5%, bad years, it could be negative. But 43% is something that we all didn't see before and are very, very fortunate to have it happen. Also, the transport side is back to where it basically was EUR 785 million in sales is also a record year for the transport side. But I would like to point out that this is not in terms of volume. The best year we've ever seen. So there is still room for potential growth in the years to come. So that's certainly something we're looking for. The OE business really propelled sales. Basically, all 3 original equipment manufacturing markets, truck, trailer and tractors, really, really performed quite nicely despite all the challenges that we already knew would be coming, and we've talked about it in every quarterly call. We knew about the supply chain disruptions coming out of China. We knew about shortages also of semiconductors, which impact our customers. And all of that, in the end, led to the already set 32% growth compared to the prior year and a new record level in sales. Q4 basically return to the typical historical seasonality with Q4 being the weakest quarter for JOST, mainly dominated by the European region where we have the longest customer shutdowns, which are typically coming from extended holiday seasons in -- especially in Europe, as I mentioned. And the comparison to the last year of Q4 is not really a fair one because we had very high pent-up demand in Q4 last year because of the shutdowns in the first half of the year 2020. And therefore, we're still quite fortunate to see a growth of 15%, but this is the typical seasonality. And this typical seasonality is more so reflected if you go to the EBIT line for the quarter where you see a drop of 23% compared to the prior year. But with a margin of 7.8%, we are quite fortunate to see that despite all the challenges on the material side, that this is better than the year before. When you look at the global or the total margin for the year, you see also a record number there, EUR 105 million EBIT has never been achieved by the company. And again, we're fortunate to have it seen happen. And I'm very pleased to report that it's -- we're back in double-digit EBIT territory. That is something that we already announced as a midterm target during our Capital Markets Day that we want to, even in challenging environments and challenging years, we want to be on a double-digit EBIT margin. And even though it sounds all very good, this was a challenging year for JOST. And we had to do a lot to make this happen. But again, I'm very happy to say we did it and 10% EBIT margin is something that we're also quite proud of. Let's move to the next slide. So let's go through the regions very quickly, not to bore you too much. So also for Europe, it was a very, very good year, EUR 618 million in sales. Despite all of these impacts on the truck production, where we saw very, very short notices for cancellations of our OEMs when they ran out of certain parts, mainly semiconductors. But still, this is a 28% growth compared to prior year and even for the quarter, 14.4% is something that we're very happy to have seen. Certainly, there were first effects of price increases due to material pass through clauses, but the bulk is yet to come. And so we will see more of that in the following year. Again, Q4 normal seasonality, only a smaller growth with 14.4%. This was expected given the typical seasonality. The EBIT development in the full year, very positive, 22% higher EBIT, not quite in line with the growth on the sales side, but we need to bear in mind that especially the pass-through of material price increases would typically lead to a lower EBIT margin because you can only pass -- I mean, whatever you do on the bottom line will happen on the top line, and that just mathematically brings down your margin somewhat. But still 22% growth and margin of 7.3% for the region of Europe is good. This is certainly something -- what you need to bear in mind, Europe is the region which suffered most from supply chain disruptions, not only on the customer side, but also on our own company side because especially the agricultural part of the business is tremendously relying on preproduction material coming out of China. We have a dedicated plant in China that produces front loaders for sales in North America and especially Europe. And there, we saw quite some challenges that you are all aware of with ships stuck in the Suez Canal, ports being shut down in China due to one corona case and so on. And there's just a multitude of things that were impacting that. And given all those challenges, I'm, again, I'm quite happy to see still a 7.3% EBIT. And also I would like to remind you again that the -- that we do not pass through the headquarter costs that are -- the bulk of that is shown in Europe, and that is one of the reasons why the margins in Europe are typically lower than in North America and in Asia Pacific, Africa. Speaking about North America, let's go to the next slide. So North America, yet another very, very successful year. We are very happy to report that we were able to strengthen and to grow our market position in North America, both on the agricultural and on the transport side. We've outpaced market significantly, and we grew our sales by more than 50% in the last year. And that came despite all the challenges that we had, like almost all manufacturing companies, to find and hire enough blue collar workers that was quite a big challenge. But overall, not only did we achieve a 50% growth in sales, we also see a 100% growth in adjusted EBIT. So adjusted EBIT grew from 11.8% to 23.7% in North America. I mean it's an unbelievable result. I think there are 2 main items. First of all, that were called in the significant improvement. So first of all, we saw a very high utilization of our production capacity and high utilization means a better margin. That is the one thing. The other thing is on the agricultural side, after the planned relocation that took place in the year at 2020, we were fully operational in our North American front loader plant, and that also caused margins to grow significantly. So in North America, also in Q4, we achieved a 10% margin and overall for the year, a 9.1% margin. Now we go to the last region, Asia Pacific and Africa. Next slide, please. So Asia-Pacific-Africa is -- was an interesting region to say the least. Joachim already mentioned that China had 2 totally different parts of the year. So in the first half, we've seen never-seen-before high production volumes because of the shift from the China 4 emissions regulation to China 6. So the prebuy effects were enormous. And then in the second half of the year, all of that came to almost complete standstill. So if we simply speak about Q4, we've had probably roughly 50% of our sales in China in Q4 2021 compared to Q4 2020. So that just gives you an indication how significant this job was and how significant also this uptake was in the first half of the year. But overall, we were able to also grow in Asia-Pacific-Africa by 23%. We saw what I already mentioned a decline in the quarter 4 by 14%, only driven by China because all of the other end markets in Asia-Pacific-Africa performed very, very strongly and that was led by the Pacific region, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, but even more so, I'm very happy to report that India, India who's been really our concern for the last 2 years, has come back and is now back on track and is producing on a very high level. And this is also visible if you look at the margins and the overall profit. EUR 30 million for the year is 41% higher than last year. Margin now up to 17.5% for the full year. And in the last quarter, already 18.7%, and that is the reason why this -- the other countries really took up what was left behind from China. And therefore, quite happy to say that also in that region, we saw a very high growth. Now let's go to more some of the balance sheet items and -- well, not balance sheet, right, but let's go to the more financial-related items. So net income and adjusted earnings per share. What you see here is the typical bridge that you're probably used to see. And what we are showing here is the typical development from EUR 44 million in net income. We add back some taxes, again, on a very low level with EUR 4 million. And this is not going to change for the near future. Finance result of EUR 6 million, most of that is unrealized foreign exchange losses. And then we have the typical adjustments that you're quite used to, the EUR 28 million in purchase price allocation is something that happens every year for the next many years that you are well aware of. And then we had the onetime effect of the disposal of JOST U.K. Our Edbro cylinder production unit was sold in the first half of the year. And that led to an EUR 11 million negative effect due to a noncash impairment, plus an additional EUR 2 million cost effect, which was cash relevant that we had to adjust. And then last but not least, some of the usual other adjustments, the majority of those are related to relocation projects that took place and are still ongoing in the year. So all in all, the adjusted EBIT of EUR 105 million and then the typical more artificial walk to the adjusted net income, take out again the EUR 6 million finance result. And then this -- overall, as I said, a blended tax rate, not really blended. No, it's not right. It's the typical rate for Germany that you would see with 30% corporate income tax that brings you down to a EUR 69 million adjusted net income, which is significantly better than the adjusted net income the year before of EUR 47 million. And this leads to an adjusted earnings per share of EUR 4.63 -- or EUR 4.63 in 2021 compared to EUR 3.18 in 2020. And you know and you heard already from Joachim, we are more than happy to share the part of that result with our shareholders and propose a dividend of EUR 1.05. So now let's talk about some other items. ROCE back above 16%. So we are at 16.6%, a quite strong development, slightly lower than after Q3 mainly due to the lower result in Q4. Equity ratio, very happy to see it again above 30%. This is -- well, this is a threshold that is quite important for financing discussions. So 31.2% is the first time that we're above 30% again after the acquisition of Ålö. And also, our net debt declined to EUR 194 million, and that leads to a leverage ratio of 1.45x at the end of the year. And just bearing in mind, when we acquired Ålö, our leverage was immediately following post the closing was above 3%, and we're already down to 1.45x. Again, a testament to the strong cash generation of our business model. Speaking about cash. Here, we come -- the free cash flow of EUR 33 million is probably one of the few weakest points in the last year and our cash conversion rate of 0.5%. Also here, I would like to mention this is according to the new definition that we had introduced during the Capital Markets Day. And we've also said that our target for the cash conversion rate should be somewhere between 1% and 1.3%. So here, we have to state that we didn't achieve this one target, but I can give you some reasons for that. And it's something that you also see when you look at the development of net working capital on the bottom of that slide. You see that our net working capital increased by 19 point -- yes, it's up to 18% of sales, so that's already higher than last year, still below the 20% mark that we had, had before. But you see here that especially our receivables went up significantly faster than our sales or the other parts of the net working capital. So you see a 46% increase in real -- sorry, inventory. I was speaking about inventory. So you saw a 46% increase in inventories, a 23% increase in receivables and 28% increase in payables. And that is comparing to a sales growth of 32%. So you really see that our inventories grew significantly stronger than our sales and the other 2 portions of net working capital. And the reason for that is something that I mentioned already before. We had significant supply chain disruptions. And in the end, we are -- we were doing everything to protect the business for our customers. So we wanted to make sure that we will be able to deliver under all circumstances. And that certainly sometimes led to higher inventories. And the good thing is, yes, our free cash flow is not at the level where we had expected it. But the good thing is investments in inventory are typically not useless investments. This is something that we will use this year, and we will bring it down this year, and therefore, we are certain we can further improve our free cash flow in the year 2022. I left out the middle portion of this slide, that is capital expenditures. Capital expenditures were down to 1.9% of the -- of sales. And this is certainly very low for a company of JOST. We spent EUR 20 million, this is in line with what we did last year. But it just shows that the growth in sales was just very, very high. And we do not base our capital expenditures on an assumed sales number. We base our capital expenditures on needs to maintain the plants, the facilities. And EUR 20 million was enough. I do expect it to be slightly higher for the year, but it will still be within our long-term range of 2.5% of sales. So last but not least, I would also like to talk a little bit more about our ESG targets and our ESG achievements. And I'm very happy to say that our energy efficiency and our CO2 footprint significantly improved compared to the last year. What you see here is on the top part of the slide, you see the energy consumption in kilowatt hours, and you see that -- or in million kilowatt hours. And you see that we had an increase of 5.5%. This is -- it sounds -- doesn't sound too good, but if you compare it to a sales increase and also an increase in production hours of around 32%, this gives you a good indication that with the higher capacity utilization, we were also able to reduce our overall energy consumption in percent of the production hours. And this is, again, visible if you look at the lower part of the slide, where you see a separation between Scope 1 and Scope 2 in CO2 emissions. And here, you can see that despite a growth of 32%, we were able to lower our total CO2 emissions down to 35.8 million CO2 tonnes per year. But what's even more important, our kilogram CO2 emissions per production hour went down by 24%. And the significant improvement really came from a better electricity mix. And that is not electricity that we decided to switch suppliers, go to more greener energy but it was more so that we were able to use more electricity in countries which have a better energy mix in general. And therefore, our overall CO2 emissions already went down by 24%. And that brings us to our overall long-term target of a reduction of at least 50%, much, much closer than we had thought. So with that being said, I would like to hand it back over to you, Joachim. I think it was a great year, and up to you to finish it.

Okay. Thank you, Christian. So let's come to the outlook for this year. And if we go back to the market slide, then the market expectation that was drawn by the Prognosis Institute is for Europe, still slightly positive. Mind you, all those numbers were calculated before the Russia-Ukraine conflict came in. But I will give you a little bit of the background behind these numbers and how we judge it and also make some comments on how they're impacted by the recent developments. . So for Europe, truck trailer and tractors, a slight positive development is expected. And of course, if the crisis and the conflict continues for a longer time, it has an effect also on the total European economy, that would have an impact. If it remains just an impact for Russia and Ukraine, then we don't expect a huge change from this. But of course, that's all hard to predict and dependent on how that conflict develops. For North America, we are still quite bullish. We and the Prognosis Institute and our customers and still expect a growth in the double-digit percentage region in trucks and trailers. And the year has also started quite strong when it comes to demand. So we see a continuous demand. There, the issues are a little more the available labor for the production of these vehicles and also for our products and some material prices that may have an impact in demand. But right now, we're not really seeing that. Asia-Pacific-Africa, everybody reads the news about COVID hitting China and the closedowns that we have. So that could impact these numbers a little more than the already expected decline. But as we've both pointed out earlier, in these numbers, you see a lot of impact from the Chinese market. Our exposure to the Chinese market, even though it's a high volume for us, is not as big because we are also in the other Pacific areas and MENA areas are quite strongly represented. So it doesn't weigh as heavy on our business as these numbers may suggest. So let's come to the next slide, what we will be focusing on in 2022. We will certainly continue to ensure our operational flexibility to accelerate the digitalization and to maintain the cost and cash focus. That has been the recipe for the last 2 years, and it has served us well and we were able to generate good results in 2020 and '21, as you've just heard. And we certainly want to continue that into 2022. We will also continue to monitor the market developments closely and adapt flexibly to potential changes in the market environment. We are well trained to do that because we had to go through the roller coaster in many markets, and you followed us doing that for the last 2 years. Also, we will increase our penetration in our new products for transport fleets and for agricultural dealers and farmers, especially when it comes to digital products that we are implementing into the trucks, trailers and agricultural tractors. And we will certainly explore opportunities to grow our agricultural business in Asia and in Latin America, either with organic growth or through M&As. And of course, we will also implement the already identified measures to further reduce our CO2 emissions and reach the 50% reduction by 2023. Let's come to the outlook. So what does that mean for our guidance? And all of this is assuming that the that the conflict that we see between Russia and Ukraine is limited in time and remains local. So if that spreads, then we will have to adjust to that. But for the time being and assuming that this will only have the local impact that we're currently seeing and that it's not an endless story, we still plan to grow our sales in the mid-single digit year-over-year. And here, as a reference, the EUR 1,049 million is the basis. So we expect a mid-single-digit growth on sales and EBIT -- adjusted EBIT growth to follow that sales development also in the mid-single-digit range. That then calculates to a more or less stable EBIT margin. CapEx, Christian just mentioned this, as usual, 2.5% of sales that will serve as well, and that's what we've had over the years. There may be some years like last year where the sales develops a little quicker, and there may be other years where we do larger investments, but that's more or less the guideline, and we will stay in that guideline. Okay. Then let's come to the total summary of this call. We've had record sales and earnings in 2021. We clearly surpassed the EUR 1 billion mark, the first time in JOST history and reached the EUR 105 million adjusted EBIT. We benefited from our strong market position in transport and in agriculture with both business lines contributing to these record results. The acquisition and the successful integration of Ålö brought us new growth opportunities and increased the value of JOST shareholders. Logistic disruptions, sharply rising material costs affected 2021. But with price increases, operational flexibility, we were able to partially offset this negative impact. Our business model is intact. We have the right products. Our products do not depend from the industry transformation that we see towards electric vehicles, quite the opposite. There's additional opportunities to sell higher value products. Therefore, we aim to achieve further profitable growth in 2022 despite a challenging market environment and rising uncertainties. With that, I would like to thank you very much for your attention, and we're looking forward to your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Jorge González from Hauck Aufhauser.

I would like to start asking about U.S. Can you give us North America -- the North America market. Can you give us your opinion on the cycle for this market? And it will be also interesting to know if -- how you see the ramp-up of production for the truck and trailer business, taking into account, obviously, the new supply chain constraints that are arising from the conflict in Ukraine?

Okay. Jorge, thanks for the question. And concerning U.S. market, the U.S. market has been very strong last year. It continues to be strong, but I think it's fundamentally strong. So it's not that we expect the market to go down. The reason being that there is a big pent-up demand in trailers more than in trucks, but also in trucks. But especially in the trailer industry, with the tariffs that's kicked in, if there is more trailer capacity needed in North America, there is less imports into North America. And of course, all the fundamentals that we talk about, more parcels, more Amazon, more professional logistics rather than taking your car and going to a shopping center, you get the parts delivered to your home that requires more professional logistics that is driving our industry. And therefore, I believe that we will continue with a market in that level. And that it's not a cyclical peak that we currently see, but it's more a fundamental increase in the market due to the topics that I've mentioned. Concerning Europe, our -- the impact of the Russia market and the Ukraine markets to the overall market environment is not that big. So the market itself, they play a role for some of our customers, some more than others. But in the overall European environment, it's not that big. What you're referring to is there are certainly some effects in the supply chain. There is wood that comes from Russia that is needed for trailers. There is wiring harnesses from Ukraine that are needed in automotives, but also in trucks. And if these supply chains collapse for a long time, that will have an impact in the overall transport industry. But that's a big question if that's going to happen. Right now, all our customers, truck and trailer customers, tell us that they will that they will reduce the production for the next weeks, but that they will recover that production in the remainder of the year. So that's their plan. How realistic that plan is will certainly depend on the development of that conflict. But so far, on the truck side, they tell us they will recover. On the trailer side, it's the same. They say we have so many orders. We just pull ahead other orders. So right now, there is no drama that we get from them. But of course, the longer this conflict goes and the more ripple effects you have in the overall economy, then that impact will be worse. But that's the situation for now.

Okay. In this regard, can you give us some flavor on the evolution of orders in these first months of the year especially interested to see if the orders are basically same levels than the end of last year? Or if we should expect them to go a little bit down, taking into account a bit of backlogs? And also, it will be interesting to know your opinion on the truck driver protest across Europe. It is a little bit confusing because I imagine that fleet fees are going up. So I don't know if you can give us your opinion on this if this could impact at some point the order of trucks because of the drivers getting less money for the job or company or logistic companies you've seen their earnings going down. What can you tell us about this? And finally, I don't know if you can give us the price increase average that you are taking into account for this year in your guidance? Just to have a better view of which volumes should we expect in your guidance?

Okay. So 3 questions. I will start with the orders, and I will start from East to West. So order intake in China remains rather weak. We've talked about the COVID impact of some areas closed down. There are some areas where trucks are built too that are closing down. The remainder of the Asia-Pacific-Africa region is quite strong. And as I've mentioned, our penetration in that area is also quite good. . Europe, we've had a very good start in the year with orders from truck and traders being high. And as I've mentioned with the outlook, right now, they claim that they will recover what they expect to lose in the next few days or a few weeks throughout the rest of the year. North America, we started very strong into the year when it comes to orders. The truck driver question, you're referring to the fact that there's 20,000, 30,000, there's different numbers of Ukrainian drivers driving in Europe that may reduce the capacity of transport in Europe. That could be an issue, but we are not really seeing a collapse of the supply chain at this point in time. So we've had a driver issues or driver shortages for a number of reasons. There's a lot of older drivers that get retired and not enough young people coming back. So the industry is managing through that with productivity gains and that, in a way, could also help our future products because we are offering solutions that serve more comfort and more safety and more efficiency to the drivers and the fleets. So that's something we cannot influence. But right now, I don't see a big impact. Quite the opposite, the driver shortage could be beneficial for us from a product range that the higher safety and higher comfort products get more attractive. On price increases, it's a very mixed bag. It depends on our products. We have some products that are -- have a huge material impact. Others have not such a big material impact. Others have more energy. So we do the price increases more or less in line with our cost increases. So more or less for your model, I think you can assume that we will, probably with a delay in time, recover most of the impact in all regions. And that will have a delay in time. And of course, we will not be capable to fully recover it, at least not from the big companies but with other opportunities, other efficiency opportunities that we have and that we continuously work on, we expect that we will still be within the guidance that we've just given you.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is coming from [ Gene Claus ] from [ Plateau ].

I hope you can hear me well. Trying to put on my camera as well so that you can see me. So here you get a view of my living room. Congratulations on your 2021 figures, especially on reaching the EUR 1 billion mark on sales and the 10% EBIT margin. Now can you give us a little bit of flavor for the long-term outlook that you are after? Where do you see this company in terms of sales, in terms of EBIT margin going, let's say, towards 2025? And the second question would be on the ROCE numbers that you provided. I would like to give you -- I would like you to give me some perspective on how these 16.6%, 16.2% -- 16.6% for last year. How that plays into the long-term development, what's the average that you have achieved over the past 5 years, for instance? And how does it compare to your cost of capital?

Okay. Let me start with a quick bracket and then I will hand over to Christian who can give you more details on it. So long term, I think, and I've mentioned that we have growth opportunities, certainly in agriculture, but also with additional products, smarter products, more electronic products and up to autonomous driving. So I see a continuous growth opportunity in transport and even more so in agriculture because there, we also have the opportunity to serve new markets that we today don't serve. So we've given in our Capital Market Day some more information to that. And I think, Christian, maybe you share that, and then you can also answer the question on ROCE.

Okay. Perfect. Yes. Thank you very much for the question. And I think this is a very good hint that the Capital Markets Day presentation that we had in October last year is still available on our website. So I can only welcome everyone to look it up again, which gives you a better insight into the company. And during the Capital Markets Day, we've said that not only do we want to grow the company, but we also believe and that we will be able to outperform the markets that we are in over the coming years. And we've said there should be an outperformance somewhere around 3% to 5%. We know that we are in a cyclical industry. So that means at some point in time in the different market -- end markets and what we consider end markets are the 3 different regions, we will see ups and downs. And there was the first question from Jorge already that we are potentially nearing an end of the cycle in North America, but I guess Joachim already made it clear that this end of the cycle is certainly not expected for the year 2022. But there will be, at some point, there will be an end of the cycle. In Europe, the cyclicality is much longer and less pronounced than in North America. And in Asia-Pacific-Africa, I think we can only take it looking into every single country and with China being the most important and strongest and biggest economy in Asia-Pacific-Africa, I would say that this -- the down cycle has been reached and it should and will go up. So again, long-term outlook is on the sales level. We outperformed the different markets by around 3% or 3% to 5%. On EBIT margin, we also believe that given higher and more technically advanced products, we should also, in the midterm target, we should be able to not only even through a negative cycle be on the double-digit EBIT range, but also be able to improve it over the coming years. What we've said is that we are targeting a range of 10% to 11.5% of EBIT for the coming years. Now in terms of ROCE, your question was, was that a good or a bad year more or less. I think it was a decent year. We have seen higher returns on capital employed in the past, but we also know that this was an exceptional year when it came to our development in our net working capital, which certainly had a negative impact on our return on capital employed. And therefore, the 16.6% is okay. I think this is above -- significantly above industry average, but more is possible. And the good news is our cost of capital is significantly lower. And I would say it's -- roughly half of that is our cost of capital compared to our ROCE that we achieved this year. So this, I think, should answer your question. Go to the next question.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have some questions which were submitted via the chat function. Romy Acosta, Head of Investor Relations of JOST Werke AG will be reading those questions. Please go ahead, madam.

Okay. Welcome from my side too. We have a question from [ Matthias Merwoldt ] from Koçbank. Do you have any insight into what degree the end cycles, fleet operators are suffering from fuel cost inflation and to what degree they are able to pass this on to their clients? Leverage down to -- another question would be leverage down to 2x, what are your plans for additional M&A in agriculture? And what about multiples of potential targets now?

Okay. Thanks for your question, [ Matthias ]. On fuel cost, all our customers suffer from fuel costs. The larger fleets have typically with the larger customers, fuel floaters agreed. And it's -- meanwhile, I would say, almost a standard for all transport customers that we have in North America and also in Europe. So they do suffer from it because it increases the overall cost and probably they don't get a full compensation. But usually, it's not a huge issue for the fleet owner itself. It becomes then an issue for the overall industry with transport cost rising, energy cost rising, how to transfer that to the end customer. And that will, maybe at one point, have a dampening effect on the economy. But that's some of the general inflation that we are unfortunately seeing over the course of the last months and almost years. Concerning M&As, we don't have any M&A right now in front of us, but it's certainly something that we are continuously working on the multiples. And Christian can probably give a bit more insight to that too. We have -- right now, we see less activity, I would say, but we don't see a big change in the multiples, at least not from what we are seeing when we have these discussions. But of course, there's more concerns. The environment right now is not as bullish and therefore, a lot of M&A activities have been canceled or reduced. But Christian, if you can give more insight into that?

Maybe to that question and the other part of that question regarding the leverage. Yes, you're absolutely right. With the leverage now at 1.45x or let's say, below 2x, we feel ready to acquire another company. And we are actively looking for other companies, acquisition targets. And you're also correct that the likelihood of making an acquisition is higher in the field of agriculture than it is on the transport side, especially given the fact that our market dominance on the transport side is quite strong. And therefore, it's more challenging to acquire a transport company than it would be on the agricultural side. Plus, we believe that it just makes sense to acquire more on the ag side because this is now significant. It's our second leg that we're standing on, and we would like to strengthen that second leg. But again, I think we have enough firepower available for smaller but also larger acquisitions. And we know from our financing institutions that they are more than willing to support any potential acquisition. And therefore, we're looking into that. And regarding the leverages, Joachim is quite right. I think with the current situation in the world, we are not seeing that many transactions. But from what I just heard yesterday, it hasn't stopped. So leverage -- what I will say is, and this has been what we've said for the last 3 years, we are not willing to pay enormous outrageous prices. So what we did with Ålö, I think, was a strong testament to that. And you can rest assured that whatever we are going to acquire will be reasonable. And within reason, we are looking for targets and are hoping to find a good target, and this is the current status.

Yes. And I think from what Christian is saying, from a financial position, we think we have the right position to be able to do it if we find the right opportunity.

Okay. We have another question coming from [ Deidrich Websby ]. Where is the expected negative effect on input cost headwinds on margins in 2022? What was it net in 2021? What is the approximate lag effect on passing through key costs such as steel and freight?

Okay. Let me take that question, at least part of it. The -- I mean what we said already in our guidance is that we are hopeful that we can sustain the margin. So that is our target for this year. We want to remain in this double-digit EBIT territory and are not willing to back down there. And we will do everything we can. And I think the time lag, and that's the second part of your question is depending on the customer. In -- on some -- with certain OEM customers, we have automatic price adjustment clauses that come into effect typically between 3 and 6 months after the event. On other customers, more so on the trailer side, we would have to renegotiate our sales contracts, but that can happen also depending on the willingness of the customer some -- more than once a year. And actually, last year, it did happen. And the last part of your question is if you think about 2021, we did have a negative impact. It's very challenging to quantify exactly what the material price impact was because there's also the fleet -- the freight cost impacts that were significant, more so on the agricultural side than on the transport side, where we have less local for local approach on the ag side. And therefore, all I would like to point out is that we were able, despite these very challenging environments, we were able to improve our margins to 10% compared to 9.2% in the year 2021 -- 2020, sorry. I hope that was an answer -- good answer to your question.

We have another question from Jorge González from Hauck Aufhauser.

I want to get a bit of feedback regarding the vision of the OEMs in Europe. So we recently learned from PALFINGER that there is there is some supply chain issues for the OEMs in terms of -- in relation to the production of midsized trucks as they basically need those type of trucks for putting their cranes. So I was wondering if you have any feedback from OEMs if this is something that is not affecting heavy trucks. I remind that the chips will go first to the heavy trucks, but I don't know if you can give us some flavor on this subject, please?

Yes, Jorge. So the answer is for Europe more than for the rest of the world. But we've seen with the truck OEMs last year already issues with the supply chain, especially when it came to semiconductors. And that had an effect already. Right now, as I mentioned, in addition, it seems like there is a big concern concerning wiring harnesses. But overall, what happens is that the OEMs, and that's also true for cars but also for trucks, they prioritize on producing the more profitable products and they do them first and the less profitable products, they do second. Because they want to use the semiconductors and the wiring harness that they get to have the more value products. And so midsized trucks are less profitable than heavy trucks and tractors. And therefore, I think that could be one of the effects that company PALFINGER was talking about. That -- all of them, as I said, we see it also in the automotive industry. They are prioritizing the high-margin products over the lower-margin products. And that I believe is the effect that they've been talking around.

There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to Joachim Dürr for closing comments.

Okay. Well, thank you very much for the interesting questions. And I can assure you, it will be an interesting year 2022, but we feel well positioned, as we've mentioned to continue our success story. With that, thank you very much for your interest, for your attention. And goodbye, and see you in the next meeting. Bye-bye.

Yes. Also from my side. Thank you very much.