Marel hf
ICEX:MAREL
Earnings Call Analysis
Q4-2023 Analysis
Marel hf
In a year marked by uncertainty and shifting demands, Marel managed to maintain its revenues nearly level with the previous year, despite a considerable reduction in meat segment volumes. Key to their resilience was a shift in revenue composition, moving from project-based to aftermarket sales, and the full-year inclusion of Wenger, which helped counterbalance declines elsewhere. While revenues held steady, the company improved its gross profit marginally, thanks to a combination of solid aftermarket growth, cost management, and Wenger's contributions. Yet, the project volume decrease and related inefficiencies partly offset these gains.
Operationally, Marel faced increased operational expenses (OpEx) year-over-year, both in absolute terms and as a percentage. Nevertheless, a strategic reduction in workforce from 8,000 to 7,500 and an average full-time equivalent decrease to 7,789 employees resulted in significant OpEx savings. These savings were counteracted by substantial wage inflation, lower R&D cost capitalization due to decreased project revenues, and increased OpEx stemming from Wenger's longer inclusion period. As a result, Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT) for the year were slightly down at 8.9%, representing €153 million, compared to 9.6% and €163 million in the previous year.
After a phase of heightened investments leading to additional non-cash expenses like Purchase Price Allocation (PPA) and amortization, Marel has opted to heighten the prominence of EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) in its financial communications. This shift is aimed at clarifying financial assessment and recognizing depreciation, amortization, and impairment's role in shaping the earnings narrative. While EBIT declined, EBITDA experienced a lesser drop from 13% to 12.6%, indicating the significant influence of non-operational expenses.
Despite challenging headwinds that halted expected deleveraging progress, Marel's second-half free cash flow performance was encouraging, allowing a substantial reduction in net debt. Adhering to its capital structure targets, and while positioned above its desired range, the Board proposes a 20% dividend at its forthcoming Annual General Meeting. Moreover, the company benefited from an atypically low effective tax rate due to a combination of lower profit before tax and an advantageous impact from innovation and sustainability subsidies in the Netherlands.
The diverse responses of Marel's segments to 2023's tumultuous conditions underpin the importance of diversified revenue streams. Poultry showed resilience, especially in aftermarket services, while meat faced challenges, resulting in a marked decline in project orders yet slight aftermarket growth. The fish segment, although showing promising orders for 2024, ended the year on a negative EBIT, largely due to acquisition-related low-margin projects. Notably, the plant, pet, and feed group fared well, with high EBIT margins driven by strong order fulfillment and levelized input costs. These variances among segments illustrate the dynamic nature of market demands and the strategic importance of flexibility and adaptation within Marel's operation.
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So good morning and welcome to our headquarters in Iceland and a warm welcome to our online audience as well. My name is Tinna Molphy and I'll be your moderator today. We will start with presentations from CEO, Arni Sigurdsson; and CFO, Stacey Katz; who will go over the fourth quarter and full year results, some key business highlights as well as our outlook for 2024 and the midterm. We will then conclude with Q&A. And if you'd like to ask a question, raise your hand or use the raise your hand feature in Zoom, you can also e-mail ir@marel.com.With that, I'd like to hand it over to CEO, Arni Sigurdsson. Let's go.
Thank you, Tinna. Good morning. I'm pleased to join you for my first quarterly results as CEO. My journey with Marel started 17 years ago when I was in corporate advisory and then I formally joined the company 10 years ago. Through my various roles in Marel across strategy and the business, I've gained insights and experience of our company and the industry as a whole. Together with the team, I worked on transforming Marel to be a leading global provider of food processing solutions, services and software. My passion for the industry is around the huge opportunity that we have to create value for our customers and other stakeholders. And it is surprising how immature the industry still is and we have a huge potential of transforming the way food is processed.We have a lot to cover today so let's dive in what we want to cover. There are 3 main things that we want to do. We want to go over JBT, we want to go over our financials and then the market and financial outlooks. But before we go into everything, I will start with JBT. On the 24th of November, we announced that we had received a proposal from JBT, which the Board considered and rejected. We got an improved proposal in December and then a further improved proposal on January 19. So where are we now? We have communicated that while the Board believes in the stand-alone strategy of Marel, it sees compelling logic in a potential combination. It also said that the proposed terms are attractive and that it gives shareholders an opportunity to continue on the journey.So we have now gone into further discussions and gone into due diligence to just see where we are. So JBT has set a plan to announce a proposal in the first quarter and if a proposal -- if an offer is launched in the first quarter, then normally such an offer would be valid for 4 to 10 weeks; but due to the conditions that the proposal and the offer would have, it will take longer. So the conditions that it will have would be regulatory approval, it would be JBT shareholder approval, it would be a favorable recommendation from the Marel Board and then a 90% acceptance rate -- an acceptance of 90% of the Marel's shareholders. The current best estimate is that if the offer would come forward, which we don't know and there's no guarantee of that, it would take until the second half of this year to fulfill those conditions.This means that it is very much business as usual in all scenarios for Marel and we are focused on our customers, our people and our shareholders. Whilst I appreciate you might have more questions that I can answer today, we just cannot go into more detail at this point in time, but we are committed to keeping you updated as things progress. We are of course happy to go through the results and the good progress that we've made. So let's kind of dive in and go through the financials. We had some positive signs in the quarter even though we're still showing soft operational performance. We had strong orders received of EUR 466 million, but it is colored by a great greenfield in the poultry industry in Australia. So the headline number is colored by that in that project.Our pipeline is good although our order book has room for improvement because it is at 34% of revenue at the year end. We're particularly pleased and impressed with our cash flow, which is a result of actions taken on working capital, reducing the working capital, which helped us to drive the cash flow and we're having a leverage below 3.5x at year end. We have solid covenant headroom and liquidity going into 2024 and that is partially also because we reached an agreement with our banking group to have more operational flexibility over the course of this year. Stacey will cover the numbers in more detail later on. Turning to the market and financial outlook. Our underlying markets remain sound. Protein consumption is growing and our customers need to do more whilst wasting less.We are close to the bottom of the cycle, but there is still short-term uncertainty. Although this uncertainty remains, we are seeing improvement in the market sentiment, but we still have to see that translate into numbers. Historically, we've seen a strong recovery after a period of downturn due to the underlying need to invest. So we will see a catch-up and I'll cover that later in a bit more detail. Since becoming CEO, we've gone through the exercise to review our business plan and considering all of those factors, we're giving an updated outlook for the year 2024 and announcing new targets for the medium term. We'll go through this in more detail later on.But first, Stacey will cover off the numbers for us.
Thank you. All right. So thank you for joining us today as we present our Q4 and 2023 financial results. Let's start by going through the fourth quarter results. Orders received EUR 466 million showing underlying improvement alongside the greenfield in Australia that Arni mentioned, allowing the order book to begin to build up after 5 quarters of decline. The order book is at EUR 580 million or 34% of revenues, still soft though it is up from 32% last quarter. Pipeline continues at a strong level and there are improving market conditions, which Arni will cover later on. Revenues at EUR 448 million compared to EUR 404 million last quarter, a jump in both project volumes and continued growth in aftermarket. On the project side, Wenger had strong deliveries in the quarter as planned with last quarter's parts availability issues being resolved. Wenger's revenue increase in the quarter made up about half of the increase of the revenue for total Marel.Strong project deliveries also caused a bump in the installation revenues in meat and fish in the quarter while poultry revenues declined quarter-over-quarter due to the level of projects orders received previously. Aftermarket was above EUR 200 million, showing continued growth. Gross profit in the fourth quarter 35.6%, remaining the same as the previous quarter impacted by the higher volumes especially from Wenger although colored by lower releases of the holiday accruals, oneoffs on projects and mix. OpEx on an absolute basis increased in the fourth quarter due to the lower releases of holiday accruals, higher marketing activity and some higher costs from Wenger. EBIT of 9.6% or EUR 43 million, improving from last quarter though not yet where we would like to see it at this volume level we would say.Adjustments to EBIT in the quarter include purchase price allocation PPA of about EUR 6.8 million, that will continue around the EUR 7 million mark going forward; acquisition-related costs of about EUR 1 million; then we had restructuring costs related to personnel leaving of about EUR 2 million; and we did a detailed product portfolio review where we decided to scrap and writeoff a few nonperforming products that still had capitalized balances on our balance sheet for about EUR 7 million. Details of the adjustments are included in the appendix to the presentation. Now the star of today's show, at least for me, is the strong cash flow performance, which is due to favorable working capital movements, the book-to-bill of 1.04 in the quarter and normalizing CapEx. Inventories have decreased EUR 50 million year-over-year, of which EUR 25 million was in this quarter.We will continue working on rebalancing our working capital to free up cash. The operating cash flow of EUR 102 million and the free cash flow of EUR 83 million allowed us to reduce net debt by EUR 81 million in the quarter. That is what kept us below the 3.5x leverage after losing out a strong EBITDA from the fourth quarter of 2022 in the calculation. Now in the quarter the 5-year Schuldschein notes matured. We drew on our EUR 150 million term loan to repay the Schuldschein notes and the remaining amount was repaid into the revolver. As well we have agreed with our banking group for increased covenant headroom going into 2024 for operational flexibility. The leverage covenant is above 4x throughout 2024. It starts at a higher level at the beginning of the year and then gradually moves downwards ending the year of 2024 of a leverage covenant at 4x. We mention it because we often get questions on this.Finance cost of about EUR 14 million in the quarter. We do expect these will be EUR 13 million to EUR 14 million going into the quarters of 2024. The favorable interest rates of the Schuldschein are offset by the less favorable interest rates of the euro term loan. 57% of our core debt is at fixed interest rates and further details on our debt profile and our leverage are included in the appendix. So now we turn to full year 2023. Orders received for the full year were EUR 1.6 billion compared to EUR 1.7 billion last year. That's a 6% decline year-over-year and we did see aftermarket growing, which means that project orders received declined about 20% in the year. We already covered the order book though I think it's good to mention that we started the year with an order book of about 40% of revenues, we then went to an order book of about 32% of revenues last quarter and we're starting to trend back upwards to the 34%.It is very clear that we need to build up the order book to both deliver on our outlook for 2024 and be able to deliver strong revenue growth into the future and improved operational performance. Revenues were pretty much on par with the previous year with the mix shifting from projects to aftermarket. If you look at it given that Wenger delivered growth year-over-year and last year they were only included for about half the year in our results and this year the full year, poultry and fish were stable in their revenues in the year; it really shows you the impact of the meat volumes decreasing in 2023. Gross profit in the year improved slightly positively impacted by the aftermarket growth, Wenger and cost management although colored by a decline in the project volumes and related inefficiencies.OpEx year-over-year increased both on an absolute level and as a percentage. There is though underlying improvement that I want to point out. From year-end 2022 to 2023, the Marel team went from about 8,000 employees to 7,500 employees and the average FTE during the year was 7,789. Full year OpEx declined with a benefit from the employees going out of about EUR 20 million. That was offset by high wage inflation of about EUR 15 million, lower charges to COGS from the R&D side due to the lower projects revenues of about EUR 4 million and then of course Wenger is included for the extra half a year so they have about an extra EUR 20 million in OpEx as well. Continued actions on our side to work on the operating expenses. So as a result of stable revenues, slightly improving gross profit, but slightly higher OpEx; our EBIT for the year ended at 8.9% or EUR 153 million compared to last year at 9.6% and EUR 163 million.Now following a period of elevated investments, we see that there are noncash expenses that come in that we've decided in previous quarters such as PPA or amortization that are coloring and creating some noise when you look at the comparison in the numbers year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter. And due to this, we've decided to increase the visibility of EBITDA in our investor material to increase transparency. If you look at it, in this year the EBITDA declined less than the EBIT declined. So EBITDA went from 13% to 12.6% this year and that's because of the higher depreciation, amortization and impairment. Free cash flow, as I said before, improved in the second half of the year and that's great to see. Leverage year-over-year stayed the same rather than deleveraging. This was clearly not our plan at the beginning of the year and we clearly saw [ headwinds ] in 2023.The cash flow in the second half of the year helps us to reduce our net debt and shows us the strength of our cash flow model to continue deleveraging towards our targeted capital structure. Given we are above our targeted capital structure, the Board is proposing a 20% dividend in the next AGM, which is in line with our dividend policy. Good to also mention that the effective tax rate was unusually low this year at 14% if you compare to last year at 22%. The reason is the lower results before income tax and the mix of those results, which resulted in a relatively higher impact of the innovation subsidy we received in the Netherlands and super exciting, we received a sustainability subsidy for our new global distribution center as well from the Netherlands.Overall, a lot of hard work by Team Marel in 2023 to rise to yet another set of challenges after the last few years. We are not yet where we would like to be, but we have many accomplishments to be proud of heading into 2024. Now I already covered the revenues and orders received so I won't stop much more on those at the moment. For aftermarket, it's absolutely great to see the developments of being a trusted maintenance partner for our customers. Resilience in our aftermarket business and being able to service our customers around the globe is a key part of our business model. Our investments in our end-to-end spare parts have continued in 2023 and our global distribution center in Eindhoven is planned to go online in the first half of this year. I'm really looking forward to seeing the hard work come to life and also seeing this benefit our customers.Now it's always good to highlight the benefits of a diversified revenue base across segments, geographies and business mix. The resilience in aftermarket and its impact on our financials when project revenues declined this year is clear. What is a bit more unusual is that in 2023, market weakness was seen across most of our segments and geographies. Being diversified remains better than having all of our eggs in 1 basket. That's clear though what we've seen in 2023 has limited historical precedents and Arni will cover more on this shortly. Order book, as already mentioned, EUR 580 million increasing since last quarter, which is a positive development. Book-to-bill in the quarter of 1.04 or 0.94 for the full year. Cash is king for us to deleverage to be within our targeted capital structure.We have clearly shown the results of our rebalancing of working capital with the record operating and free cash flow in this quarter. We have normalized our capital expenditures and we did have the benefit of lower tax payments this quarter compared to previous quarters. This allowed for an EUR 81 million decrease in net debt in the quarter, which is very, very good to see. Now let's walk through the segments. Fourth quarter started on a strong note for Marel Poultry with the greenfield in Australia positively impacting orders received. Alongside this though, we can see an underlying improvement in the orders received and positive signs in the market that Arni will cover. Overall, 2023 was a challenging year for poultry processors resulting in lower orders received for projects, but resilience in aftermarket.Revenues declined quarter-over-quarter though did stay stable year-over-year. Business mix shifted from projects to aftermarket revenues with aftermarket showing growth and projects showing decline. EBIT ticked up slightly in the fourth quarter with improved project margins and efficiency in the manufactured parts warehouse in Boxmeer partly offset by lower volumes and higher operating expenses with lower releases of holiday accruals and higher marketing activity such as the Poultry ShowHow, which was held in Boxmeer in November very successfully I may add. Full year EBITDA improvement is driven by the business mix with the growth in aftermarket. Market conditions are expected to improve to allow a buildup of the order book for future growth and there are further opportunities in aftermarket.Now we go over to meat. Fourth quarter orders received were soft in meat although they did tick up quarter-over-quarter. Challenging market conditions still exist in for example beef and in Europe though there are bright spots of opportunities for example in the Americas and pork. We do see feed and input costs moderating and we see a rebalancing of supply and demand in pork, which is improving profitability of our processors from historically low levels. For the full year, decline in project orders received was significant for meats while aftermarket experienced slight growth. Revenues in Marel Meat were down 14% year-over-year. Revenues in the fourth quarter improved though still at a softer level. Due to a soft order book, orders received for meat are able to be converted faster into revenues than a historical level, particularly in secondary processing.EBIT margin in the fourth quarter declined despite an increase in volumes due to product mix, inefficiencies in load and resource balancing and overruns on projects. For the full year, EBIT is declining due to lower projects volume despite Marel Meat taking cost saving action and reducing personnel. Management continues to target margin expansion for Marel Meat. Actions are ongoing to drive commercial activity and lower the cost base. Now we go to fish. Orders received for fish were soft in the quarter though did show good improvements. Outlook for orders received is improving and expected to pick up in 2024. The market for salmon producers is improving though whitefish is challenged by lower quotas. For the full year, aftermarket remained resilient while project revenues declined.Revenues in the fourth quarter were at a higher level with installations and project deliveries. And for the full year, we did see a higher volume of more integrated customized solutions than standard equipment, which impacts the margin profile in fish. EBIT was negative by 5.8% in the quarter despite the higher revenue compared to third quarter driven from low margin projects, from acquisitions and mix. EBIT for the year was negative 4.6%, again declining from 2022 and impacted by both the shift in mix and the low margin projects from acquisitions despite Marel Fish taking cost saving actions and reducing personnel. We will continue to take action to drive margin expansion for fish based on cost savings, improvements in operational efficiency and optimization of the footprint.Now strong orders received in pet food in North America and in Asia and the pipeline remains solid in plant, pet and feed. Revenues were strong in the quarter. Projects were delivered as expected with favorable mix and aftermarket as well was solid in the quarter. EBIT here of 20.9% in the quarter, quite high, reflects the high volumes delivered, parts availability issues resolving and input costs leveling out which is good. Full year EBIT for plant, pet and feed was 15.2%, above the 14% to 15% historic level. Now while it makes me smile to say the same thing to yet another Marel CEO, back over to you, Arni.
Thank you, Stacey. It is fair to say that we have had an unprecedented period of global challenges to overcome. Right when we announced our midterm targets in 2020, the pandemic hit the world and it came with a supply chain disruption resulting in significant logistical challenges. That made it difficult to get the right parts and to deliver our solutions to our customers. We did manage that period well, but it did also impact our numbers. Then in 2022 when normality seemed to be on the horizon, Russia invaded Ukraine. The Russian market closed down and that is a market that was above 10% of our meat revenue so significantly impacting that part of our business. Fee costs also inclined impacting the input cost of our customers and this just increased the inflationary pressure globally.Due to this high inflation, increasing interest rates and changed consumption pattern in the world; it really affected the operating environment of our customers and it basically deteriorated across the board not in pockets. It was across geographies and it was across protein, something that our customers have not seen in recent past. Due to this, we have had and seen a material decline on our projects business both on the orders received side, like Stacey covered, but also impacting our revenue. And this has hurt our operational performance over the last quarters. We did not stand still in the face of these challenges and we did take mitigating actions such as we changed the approach that we took to pricing. We went to a more disciplined approach with quarterly drumbeat and so on.We took actions on the cost sides and have been continuously doing that since this started. And we also built up safety stock to be able to have parts on stock to deliver to our customers because that is the #1 priority. So one of the areas that I focused on since becoming CEO is also to reflect on what have we been doing well and where can we learn and do better and that gives us more confidence going into the future. So turning back to the markets. The good news is is that the macro environment seems to be improving and that is with peaking interest rates and inflation. We're finally seeing some easing also on the feed side that has been dropping and somewhat improved pricing. So that is also impacting slightly better from a worse situation for our customers in their operating environment.And it was encouraging to see the results from Tyson earlier this week where they showed improved performance and outlook in their poultry segment and also in pork, North America. We are though still not out of the woods and we have this short-term uncertainty. So Marel has a history of robust recovery after downturns bouncing back from organic revenue decline and the data support this. If you look at the financial crisis, you can see that we had a drop and then we recovered very strongly. Again when oil prices and corn prices increased in 2012 and '13, we saw a decline and then a strong recovery. Again in the pandemic and now a 4% decline in 2023 and I look forward to seeing the recovery. The reason why we see this recovery is that we have a large installed base and our leading solutions have a certain lifetime. So after a period of low investment, there is a catch-up needed.We don't know for sure what the recovery will look like and therefore, we talk about short-term uncertainty. But we are confident that the recovery will be there when market conditions improve and the operating environment of our customers becomes better. An example of the improved sentiment is this major greenfield that we've talked about in Australia in our poultry industry. This is our customer Baiada that we had a relationship for a long time and we're viewing a state-of-the-art Marel plant with all the latest and greatest from Marel from the ATLAS live bird handling system, Nuova-i, RoboBatcher, SensorX, I could go on and it's all controlled with Marel software to have full traceability and operational insights. It's great to get a reference plant in this part of the world. It will help us to further cement our position in the market and drive growth.And it's all good that I say this, but it's also great when our customers are willing to go on the record and really highlight how great and important the partnership is. Another very exciting development in the market. This is how we're staying true to our vision of transforming the way food is processed. So what we have in front of us in the U.S. is that government regulation has historically capped the line speed at inspection at 140 birds per minute. Bell & Evans, a customer and a partner with us, and Marel have collaborated now to change the industry and have gotten approval to increase line speeds up to 250 birds per minute. We achieved this with our brand new patented line split solution creating 2 inspection lines instead of 1 meaning that each inspection line runs at 125 birds per minute. And it's worth emphasizing that none of our competitors can offer this today.We installed the first solution over Thanksgiving and I'm very pleased that that is working very well and the customer is very pleased. This will be a game changer in the market because this is something that our customers have been looking towards for a while. So this is really amazing to see. I've been working hard for a long time on this so it's really enjoyable to be able to share this with you today. And we were also showcasing this last week at the poultry and meat show in Atlanta, IPPE, where I was fortunate to meet with Bell & Evans and other customers and go through this opportunity and there's a lot of excitement around this because this will help with their operation, but it can also create flexibility for them which is quite valuable.My key takeaway from last week at the show was the sentiment is clearly improving. The discussions that I had with customers were markedly better and more positive compared to the same time last year when I was meeting them in Atlanta. The Salmon ShowHow is now also ongoing so lot of activity. It's in our own demo center in Copenhagen where we're hosting over 100 customers, showcasing some of our latest technologies such as the filleting machine in salmon. And we were also announcing a strategic partnership with a Norwegian-based company called MMC First Process, which will help us to further expand our offering especially in primary salmon, which is it will help us win positioning when we're working with customers on those projects.So turning now to the financial outlook. After becoming CEO, we have reviewed our business plan and our key priorities to unlock our potential. Our priorities are centered around 3 key things. It is around what we're going to focus on in the business, what are the key levers to improve our performance and how we will prioritize the use of our cash flow. So let's start with the business priorities. We will continue to empower our people and build the team. We took the first steps with focus first where we're going in the direction of greater accountability and more decentralized decision making. We want to increase our customer centricity. We sometimes get a little bit stuck in the internal projects and it's very tempting and it happens. So you need to be continuously focused on the customer.And that's what we're going to drive now and we're going to do that by also systematically measure customer satisfaction across multiple touch points and complement that better with customer service. We will also enhance customer segmentation because that will help us refine and tweak our go-to-market strategy. It will also help us with account strategies and create efficiency and more success in the frontline. We will also continue on our journey to provide best-in-class service. This is the #1 conversation that we have with customers because our technology is becoming so advanced that it's important that uptime and performance of our solutions is best-in-class. So they want to make sure that we can help them to have worry-free processing and good maintenance and they can sleep well at night. So that is a priority for us for sure.And finally, we will continue on our software and digital journey to provide greater operational insights and traceability and here we're focusing on having standard line control on predefined solutions because that's really where the process know-how, which is the key competitive advantage of Marel, plays an important role. These actions will ensure that we are in lockstep with our customers and it will support our growth. If we now look at the financial priorities. The pipeline conversion to orders is key to building our order book. That is essential to drive future growth, but also help us on the operational side because the larger the order book is, we have then a better ability to plan and schedule and have a smoother supply chain to run. The improved customer centricity that I talked about is to help also drive the conversion into orders.We will continue to improve the working capital. We had great victories and success so far. But we will continue on that journey to drive our cash flow and to improve our return on invested capital and we're going to maintain the focus on pricing discipline. We will also focus more on efficiency in supply chain and service. We want to increase our retention rates in utilization and service after a period of high training costs and onboarding of field service engineers. And then, like Stacey mentioned, our global distribution center in Eindhoven will go live in this year and that is with high automation and will help us to improve efficiency; but more importantly, it should help us to have a better customer journey on spare parts. We will also do more rigorous internal benchmarking on the supply chain side to drive greater efficiency and accountability.Cost control will also increase and help us to have more targets on the different cost centers and so on because we want to have that and use that to drive a decline in the nonproduct-related spend that we have. Last, but not least, the capital priorities. The first priority is to strengthen our balance sheet and lower our leverage to reach the targeted capital structure. Then we will invest in the business to drive organic growth and build the infrastructure needed to drive that growth and improve our operational performance. We will look at strategic growth through acquisition, but it will need to be in line with our capital structure and leverage. Alongside this, in line with our capital allocation policy, we will prioritize returning capital to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. So now let's turn to how these priorities will deliver results.Turning to the outlook to the year ahead. What we're expecting is that we will see a soft first quarter. But revenue growth in 2024 is expected though to be in the low single digits and we also expect an improved order book in the year. EBITDA margin is expected to be 14% to 15%, which is improvement compared to 2023. From this platform, we are positioned to deliver a step-up in performance and reflecting this, we have announced medium-term targets, which are a catch-up in organic revenue growth growing above the market, which we expect to be at 4% to 6% and a target of EBITDA margin above 18%. So before we open up for Q&A, the 3 points I want to leave you with today are: we are managing the headwinds and we're taking control of what we can control; number two, we have a clear plan with actions and improving market conditions; and number three, we will drive a step-up in performance and we have set out deliverable medium-term targets.Now with that, Stacey and I will be delighted to take questions. Over to you, Tinna.
Perfect. I'm sure there's a lot of questions out there. So maybe we start with the online audience. And Klas Bergelind from Citibank. Klas, can you hear us?
Yes. Can you hear me?
Yes.
So thanks for the presentation and a very clear overview of what happened last couple of years and how you will focus more on accountability. That's great to see. My first question is on price cost. You highlight that lower input costs helped the margin in Wenger. It should help the margin elsewhere into 2024 I would have thought pushing up the gross margin. Can you please help us with how you think about the gross margin expansion in 2024 relative to how you think about the SG&A given your low single-digit growth guide? I'll start there.
Sure. Perhaps I'll start. So first of all, I would say in general the guidance that we're providing on the outlook slide that Arni gave is we're really focusing on both the revenue, the top line and then the profitability, the bottom line. We're not guiding each individual line in terms of gross profit, SG&A, et cetera. However, if you also look at the financial priorities that Arni went through earlier, there there are items that we're working on to positively impact the gross profit such as the supply chain and the service efficiency being key ones. On the supply chain side; doing internal benchmarking, making sure that we are rebalancing ourselves after also the projects decline that we saw in this year, making sure that we're running everything efficiently.On the service side, we both have newly trained field service engineers that will come into effect and we also have the global distribution center, which we don't expect to have a very positive impact this year because we need to make sure that we're delivering to our customers and it all sinks in, but we do expect it will have a positive impact in the years to come. And then you're correct, Klas, that I did mention that for Wenger that I see the input cost leveling out. We do also see that in other parts of the business as well. Although as we mentioned like also with the inventory levels we have, it does take some time for it to filter through.
Okay. My second one is on the improved orders. It feels like, as you say Arni, Australia, December was a big month. Is it possible to quantify the magnitude there? Just to understand the underlying order trends should this order not be repeated or similar order not be repeated.
Yes, that's a good one. We do not disclose the exact amount due to sensitivity. But I mean what I would say is if you would strip it out, we will still be seeing decent growth quarter-over-quarter. And even though this is also not a pure oneoff, I mean we have these orders periodically, but it's not like repeated every quarter. But still underlying improvement and growth if you would adjust fully for it.
That's great. My third and final one is on the pipeline, you say that it's very good. So do you see anything on the meat side improving? Because as Stacey said backing out Wenger and just looking at sort of the different businesses, it was really meat that was the issue in 2023 looking at volumes. So is there anything sort of alive and kicking on the meat side?
So to be honest, Klas, it's probably the least positive or least improving on the meat side compared to the other segments. But it is though -- I mean we've seen input costs decreasing 15% to up to 20%, 25% over the last 12 months. That's obviously helping with the environment. But there is still quite a bit of challenges in the market both especially in Europe, also in China; but maybe a little bit more positive in North America and Latin America on the meat side.
Is there a question from the audience here today? Okay. We will then move to an e-mail question from Akash Gupta from JPMorgan. And it reads book-to-bill ratio crossed 1x in Q4 after 5 straight quarters of below 1. You continue to see the robust pipeline, but just wondering what is your take on full year 2024 book-to-bill? And can you confirm above 1 for the full year book-to-bill? Is that what you're targeting as this will be required for growth to step-up from the low single digits to over 4% to 6% medium-term CAGR growth?
So good question. I think it's important to say that we started the year with an order book of about 40% of trailing 12-month revenues. That went down to then 32% last quarter and then went back up to 34% this quarter. I think we have been clear in what we both said that we are really looking for a buildup of the order book both to support the outlook for '24, but then also for future growth and improved operational performance. And I would say by default if we're saying we need to build up the order book, that means the book-to-bill needs to be above 1. Correct.
There is this short-term uncertainty also that we talk about. But based on what we are seeing, we are cautiously optimistic especially for the second half of the year, but that's definitely what we are aiming for and how we're managing the business at the moment.
And his second question reads you've given a more precise outlook of revenues and margin, which is different than how you've guided before. If we take the midpoint of margins and your current expectations on 2024 order intake, where do you think we will likely exit the leverage ratio by the end of the year assuming no acquisitions in the period?
So in the past, we have given guidance on where we expect the leverage ratio to be within what period of time. And the questions that we got back in relation to that were what are your covenants? Where are you in relation to covenants? You say you have good headroom, et cetera. I think at this point in time, we're taking a bit of a different approach. I mean I think we're guiding, as you say, on the revenues, on the margin, et cetera. We have full focus on generating EBITDA and cash generation to reduce our leverage, but we're not going to just throw out another period of time when we expect to be in the targeted capital structure because we really want to show you that we are doing what we can do to get there. And I think the EUR 81 million decrease in that debt in the quarter is a very good example. I definitely can't promise or guide that cash would be as strong for those quarters going forward. But it's a very good sign that the actions that are in our control to be able to deliver this improvement in leverage are happening.
There's also raised hand from Martijn den Drijver from ABN AMRO. Can you hear us, Martijn?
I can hear you. Can you hear me?
Yes, perfectly.
My first question is about pricing strategy. You've mentioned cost inflation coming down. There's a clear need to build the order book, Stacey just referred to that. So what is your pricing strategy for 2024, 2025? Are you willing and able to lower prices to entice customers in this type of environment? That's question one. And then specifically about meat. If you go back to Q3, you mentioned strong cost management improving project margins and then in Q4 with the disappointing margin, you mentioned inefficiencies in the loading and balancing, which I take as fixed cost absorption and cost overrun on projects. Those last 2 sound like oneoffs. Is that the right way to read it that Q4 was just a oneoff because of these 2 elements and that we'll see taking out these 2, gradual improvements going forward, Q1, Q2, Q3?
Maybe I take the pricing one and then you cover the question on meat. So on pricing, our focus is on providing value to our customer and charging kind of a win-win for that. I mean that is our strategy and that is the approach that we've taken. We are continuously evaluating what is happening in the market, how does it look with new solutions and how do you use the levers between having maybe a higher price or a lower price and a greater volume because of the elasticity. It is true in our industry what happens sometimes during a period of challenging environment is that players become more aggressive on pricing. And the reason is that we're doing manufacturing, we're doing assembly. So there is a [ tendency ] sometimes to go more aggressive on prices to cover the fixed cost base.And that we see when there is a very limited number of projects in the market, the pricing becomes more difficult. In some cases, we go a little bit further on pricing when that's a strategic decision to work with customers or to build up a market and so on. But we're being very diligent and robust on choosing where we do that. And more importantly, it is also evaluating the projects that are less standardized because in some cases, those are the projects that cause a lot of problems. They tend to be expensive. So we're also having that discipline. I mean even yesterday, we were having that discussion on project. So we're trying to be disciplined because we want to make sure that we improve the performance and we're not growing just at any cost.
Yes. And then to answer your other question on meat. I would say that there were definitely oneoffs in the quarter so I think that that is a correct assessment. However, with the revenues declining in the meat segment 14% year-over-year and being able to be sure that we will be able to grow and get those revenues back in the future, I think there is some level of inefficiency of not being able to cover fixed costs at the same level we would that we're really trying to just carefully evaluate and take the right decisions on. Because I think we have already reduced costs and reduced personnel in meat. There's no question there. But the question is when you get to a level that you're at critical talent that you don't want to lose for example on engineering side or certain roles in supply chain, et cetera, how best to handle that to be able to handle the future. But there are definitely oneoffs in the quarter that you mentioned, Martijn.
Okay. We then have a follow-up question from Akash Gupta from JPMorgan. And it reads at the midpoint of margin guidance, you target around 160 basis points margin expansion in 2024. Can you tell us how does this margin expansion split between segments, i.e., which segments will see higher than group margin expansion and which one will see lower?
Yes. So in general, we don't guide on the individual segments. However, what I would say is that we are targeting margin expansion in all of the segments except potentially plant, pet and feed where there may be more opportunities for the mid and long term, but I think they delivered very well this year with their 15.2%. So that is something that we are targeting going into the year. I'm not going to go into the details per segment. In terms of how we're going to do it, perhaps I didn't cover that. I think Arni did cover that earlier in terms of also the supply chain efficiency, the service efficiency, also reducing nonproduct related spend on the financial priority slide, stronger cost control that we will continue, et cetera. So that's more the how we are planning to expand the margin.
Okay. Klas Bergelind from Citi. I see you still have your hand raised. Do you have a follow-up question?
No, sorry. I'm okay.
Okay. Any questions from the audience today? Yes. Just hold on 1 second before we give you a mic.
I was wondering with the ongoing discussions with JBT, do you see any impact on the conversation with your customers due to that? Are they holding back due to the long-term nature of the relationship?
So good question. At the moment, I mean there are always different views on things that are happening in the market. So we're just staying very focused on what we are doing and engaging with the customers. I would not say that there is any material impact that we're seeing at this point in time. But we obviously are just staying close and having the conversations with the customers to make sure that we are able to deliver what we are focused on because like I said, it will be very much business as usual for some time no matter what scenario plays out. So that's our main focus, but no, no material impact that we've seen so far.
Any further questions? Okay. I think that concludes today's presentations and Q&A. Thank you very much for attending, your time and attention and continued support for Marel. Thank you.