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Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Analyst and Investors Full Year 2021 Conference Call and Live Webcast. I'm Andre, the Chorus Call operator. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Eva Borowski, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead, ma'am.
As you know, earlier today, Landis+Gyr issued its financial year '21 results ad hoc release and accompanying presentation. You can find these documents on our website. Before we get started, we want to emphasize that some of the information discussed today contains forward-looking statements, and we want to explicitly emphasize that there are numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors many of which are beyond Landis+Gyr's control that could cause Landis+Gyr's actual actions or performance to differ materially from forward-looking information and statements made on this conference call or in this presentation. Consequently, Landis+Gyr can give no assurance that those expectations will be achieved. For more information, please see Page 2 of the presentation and our press release issued today. This conference call will follow the presentation, so we suggest that you have it on your screen or otherwise available to follow along with our remarks during the first part of this call. Afterwards, you will have the opportunity to ask questions, and Andre will provide further introductions as we start the Q&A portion. With that short introduction, I'd like to turn over the call to our Chief Executive Officer, Werner Lieberherr.
Thank you, Eva. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our financial year 2021 results. I'm here with Elodie Cingari, our CFO, and we are very pleased to have all been able to join us this morning. Look, before we start with the presentation, I would like to give you a brief overview of the key messages of today's call. First, we are pleased to announce an order intake of almost USD 2.7 billion, resulting in a record backlog of almost USD 3.4 billion. Second, we were able to achieve a 10% adjusted EBITDA margin and produced a solid free cash flow, excluding M&A, of $89 million despite the global and cross-industry supply chain challenges. Third, with FY '22 as a transition year, we are reconfirming our guidance for FY '23, which we established during our Capital Markets Day in January '21. And I'm convinced that we have the right strategic focus to drive leading-edge innovation and transform our company. So let's talk about what's been happening over last year and move on to Slide 3. In FY '21, we were able to win quite a few major contracts, and as a result, our order intake of almost USD 2.7 billion more than doubled versus the previous year with a book-to-bill ratio of 1.82x. As a result, our backlog of USD 3.4 billion is at the record high with an increase of 56.5% year-on-year, mainly driven by major contract wins in the Americas and EMEA. This allows us to look optimistically into the future mid to long term and our focus is now on execution. As the global supply chain situation continues to pose challenges, we were able to deliver strong results overall for the past financial year.
Net revenue came in at USD 1.46 billion, an increase of 6.9% in constant currency. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $147 million with an EBITDA margin of 10% despite supply chain constraints and cost pressure. Free cash flow, excluding M&A, remained positive with $89 million while demonstrating the cash-generative power of our business. And we continued to drive innovation forward with temporarily higher R&D investments of 10.7% of net revenues, which represents an increase of almost 2% over the usual 9% of revenues that we typically invest annually in R&D. One of our greatest strengths has always been our balance sheet. This remains very solid with a net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA of 0.98x. On April 1, the divestment of our stake in the Intellihub joint venture cost, resulting in over $220 million proceeds before tax in FY '22, which we will reinvest in strategic organic and inorganic growth areas. We are proud to contribute to efforts to decarbonize the grid with a strong positive environmental impact. In FY '21, our large installed base of smart meters allowed us to avoid over 9 million tons of CO2, the equivalents of over 2,500 wind turbines running for a year. In addition, we continue to transform our company with strategic acquisitions, which provide the foundation for future growth in support of our strategic pillars: smart infrastructure, grid edge intelligence and smart metering. And on June 24, a progressive dividend of CHF 2.15 will be proposed to the AGM. Let's take a closer look at some of the activities in FY '21 on Slide 4. When I look at this time line, I'm proud that we continue to progress well on strategic and operational initiatives, driving positive business development with important wins and strategic acquisitions. Since the list is quite comprehensive, let me pick a few highlights. In every region, we were able to bring home important wins, and we are proud of the long-standing partnerships with our customers. Some of these in the U.S. include national grids deploying our Revelo grid edge intelligence sensor, PSEG and LG&E and TEPCO in Japan, allowing us to continue to provide our command center head-end system for the upcoming replacement cycle. In EMEA, contracts awarded by Enedis in France, Horizon in the U.K. and Fluvius in Belgium show our continued leading position in these markets. And in Australia, we are proud of a win with South East Water, featuring leak detection sensors to prevent water loss. On the acquisition front, we have made good progress, and I will talk about that in a minute in more detail. But let me say here that we continue to invest heavily in new technologies, M&A and partnerships to strengthen our core of smart metering and expand our reach into grid edge intelligence and smart infrastructure. Let's move on to Slide 5 and take a closer look at the recent acquisitions and transactions. During FY '21, we have made quite some progress with our strategic transformation. A vital part of these efforts are targeted acquisitions that strengthen our holistic solutions portfolio. Looking at smart infrastructure, portfolio additions with Etrel and True Energy and by investing in charge point operator, Allego, we are further solidifying our position in the EV infrastructure technology market, and we will dive a little deeper into that in a few minutes. By adding Rhebo and Telia's meter reading service business, we are strengthening our reach in grid edge intelligence. Luna provides a cost-competitive metering platform that gives us a competitive advantage in smart metering. As mentioned before, the Intellihub proceeds are for investments into strategic growth areas to further push our strategic transformation that we look at on the next slide. Our commitment is to continue to be a leading provider of resource management solutions. As you can see on the left, smart ultrasonic water and gas technology development propels our organic growth in smart metering, and the addition of the cost-competitive metering platform, Luna, expands our reach. Grid edge Intelligence received a boost by leveraging Rhebo's technology, which offers cybersecurity threat detection at the grid edge, which is now more important than ever. Telia's meter reading service business, which you can see on the right, expands our managed services position in EMEA significantly and builds out our position for the second wave of smart meter rollouts. In addition, we are proud to have strong partnerships. Vodafone is enabling meter and sensor communication through cellular technology. And the 7-year strategic partnership with Google is a big part of our transformational journey as it allows us to co-innovate new offerings in smart infrastructure. The acquisitions of EV companies, Etrel and True Energy; as well as the investment in charge point operator, Allego, allows us to offer holistic flexibility management solutions to solve our customer challenges today and tomorrow. Let me dive a little deeper into our partnerships with Google and our EV and DER offering on the next slide. The digital transformation partnership with Google allows us to offer integrated customer solutions with a holistic software and services portfolio and supports the transformation of our business towards a more software- and services-driven company. In Q1 of FY '22, we will launch our first test release in the cloud as part of our utility IoT platform offering, and we are excited to onboard and migrate the first 30 to 40 customers in the U.S. over the next few months. The first releases of data analytics use cases are in the pipeline as part of the co-innovation efforts and we allow our customers insights into the vast amount of data our smart meters and grid edge sensors collect on their behalf. This includes grid power quality, smart grid insights and pattern detection, for example.
In addition, all of our acquisitions will be cloud native going forward. Further, we are moving our digital operations into the cloud, which reduces ongoing operational costs, increases resiliency and improve business efficiency, while at the same time, ensuring industry-leading security standards. Let's take a closer look at the work we have done with our EV acquisitions over the last few months on Slide 8. By expanding our portfolio, we are able to offer integrated solutions for DER flexibility management, or distributed energy resources, which allow us to elevate our contributions in decarbonizing the grid. Having long-standing customer partnerships and the reputation to solve their challenges with leading innovation, this is the next logical step as the grid becomes increasingly more dynamic. Our integrated solution intelligently manages the charging infrastructure life cycle preventing great overload while balancing electricity supply and demand in real time for automated load flexibility. The holistic platform for utilities seamlessly manages DER flexibility by monitoring the charging infrastructure and its utilization rate in patterns as well as managing power flexibility through application of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our presence is already today a global one with activities in 40-plus markets and over 40,000 charge point deployed, which delivered around 2 million charging sessions in FY '21. In addition, over 15,000 charge points are already today connected to our OCEAN software. So you see, we really have a robust business here with over 100 partnerships that generates recurring and nonrecurring revenue streams from charging equipment, software and apps, adding around $18 million in revenue since closing. Our easy-to-use solution is scalable and both EV and EV charger agnostic, which gives consumers maximum choice. In addition, our software algorithms help consumers reduce their carbon footprint, lower their costs and balance the grid by enabling automated clean energy charging. We are excited about the future of EV and DER flexibility management and see a double-digit expansion opportunity that is generating profitable growth for our business. Turning to Slide 9, we will take a look at the positive impact we have had on the environment over the last financial year. We are proud to have committed to the science-based target initiative as the next step on our journey to reduce carbon emissions. Our portfolio of products and services enables us in a unique way to have a direct sustainable impact. In FY '21, we were able to avoid over 9 million tons in CO2 emissions through our installed smart metering base, which allows us to play a key role in decarbonizing the grid. In addition, in FY '21, we have raised the ESG component in our short-term incentive for all eligible employees to 20% and continue to work towards carbon neutrality for Scope 1 and 2 by 2030. On May 30, we will publish our ESG report for the first time, combined with our annual report, and invite you to take a look on our website once these documents are published.
In summary, we are working actively towards a greener future as we continue to manage energy better with our unique portfolio that supports global efforts to decarbonize the grid. Now let's move on to Slide 10 and talk about the supply chain impact in FY '21. Over the last few months, we have seen an impact on our supply chain, as have many businesses around the world, amidst his global crisis. Around $100 million in top line was deferred due to the current supply chain constraints and EBITDA results include around $30 million in supply chain costs. Let me add that to date, we have had no cancellation. We have migration actions in place [indiscernible] closely with our customers and suppliers, but we expect the situation to become increasingly challenging in the current FY '22. The impact we see is mainly related to 3 topics: material nonavailability, material price increases and heightened freight costs. That said, we were able to manage costs diligently and thus deliver full year results within the published guidance. Let's turn to Slide 11 and have a look at the developments in each region. I'll start with the Americas, led by Sean, who took over the position in January. We are excited to have him in this role to drive the execution of our record backlog in the U.S. We have seen a lot of good news from the Americas region over the last few months with some major wins, a promising federal investment plan to modernize the grid and upcoming refreshment cycles. We were able to book a record order intake of $1.7 billion, resulting in a backlog of over $2.4 billion. This was mainly driven by large wins in the U.S. with National Grid, PSEG and LG&E. In addition, we are excited about the important win with TEPCO as well as further expansion of our South Americas business with our new Magno cabinet meter. On the technology side, we continue to focus on the edge computing platforms, software solutions and market-leading centers. In summary, we are proud to be a provider of critical infrastructure supporting resiliency and modernization of the grid cybersecurity efforts and initiatives to decarbonize the grid. Let's move on to Slide 12 and take a closer look at the EMEA, led by Bodo. In September, Bodo took over the EMEA segment, and we are excited that he will lead our EMEA region into a successful future. Over the last year, we have seen some fantastic wins and further recovery in the region with order intake up 55.2% year-over-year. Next to the Fluvius conference in Belgium, we have won a key contract with Enedis in France and remain a top supplier for the Enedis rollout. We are also proud of the contract extensions and new wins with Horizon Energy Infrastructure, AltHAN in the U.K. and significant wins in Switzerland. Last but not least, we are excited about the Eskom tender win in South Africa. Now let's take a look at APAC, led by Steve, on Slide 13. In Australia and New Zealand, we continue to see good momentum for smart electricity meter rollouts and also a growing interest and first sales of smart water metering technology to combat distribution losses, which amount up to 40% in some places. In Hong Kong, deployment for AMI projects continues, and we were able to win contract extensions. In China, we saw sales improve year-over-year, driven by grid meter sales. And in India and Bangladesh, we saw an uptick in AMI demand. Overall, we saw increased order intake, up 43.5% year-over-year, with a significant portion of smart water reflected in that. Now let's turn to Slide 14 intake a closer look at our consolidated results. Order intake was at almost $2.7 billion, up 103.9% in constant currency, driven by major contract wins in the U.S. and EMEA. We saw revenue growth in all regions, so primarily driven by EMEA recovery with easing of installation and rollout restrictions as well as by our acquisitions, while supply chain constraints impacted revenue growth. Further, adjusted EBITDA margin expansion was driven by operating leverage and mix, partially offset by supply chain cost pressure, investments in R&D, strategic transformations and acquisitions. Overall, despite the current challenges, we were able to generate a strong free cash flow, resilient margin and solid balance sheet. Let me now hand over the call to Elodie to give you a more detailed review of the financials. Afterwards, I will come back to our guidance for FY '22, before we open up the call for questions. Elodie, please.
Thank you, Werner, and good morning, everyone. I would like to walk you through the financial details of FY '21 ending 31st of March 2022. As mentioned by Werner, order intake was at approximately $2.7 billion, driven by major contract wins in Americas and EMEA. This is a very positive development and underlines the demand for our technology and product offerings in the market. Based on our FY '21 revenue, book-to-bill ratio for the company was 1.82x. All regions contributed positively to this development with a book-to-bill ratio above 1. At the end of FY '21, we had a record backlog of $3.4 billion, which represents an increase of approximately $1.2 billion or 57% versus prior year and supports the repositioning of Landis+Gyr for both in future years. We expect the majority of the recent order intake to start converting into revenue in FY '23, and we have upfront costs related to R&D and operations ramp-up that started this year already across all regions. Moving on to the net revenue bridge. Our net revenue results for FY '21 was $ 1,464 million. This represents a 6.9% growth in constant currency versus prior year, which translates into an organic growth rate of 5.1%. Key driver was the EMEA region that profited from U.K. installations recovery and growth in the Nordics. Acquisitions made throughout the financial year contributed with about $25 million of revenue. In all regions, the global component shortages put pressure on the delivery plan for the financial year. In particular, demand in North America was higher than our ability to serve. For the Americas region as a whole, though, this was compensated by higher volume in Brazil and Japan and strong software and services contribution. The APAC region remains resilient despite significant disruption of operations due to COVID-19 lockdowns in India. Strong growth in Australia and New Zealand were in part offset by timing of shipments in Hong Kong. Moving on to the EBITDA bridge. Our adjusted EBITDA for FY '21 increased from $139.6 million to $147 million year-over-year. This translated into a minor adjusted EBITDA margin reduction by 24 basis points from approximately 10.3% to 10%. In more detail, our gross profit increased for 2 reasons. Gross profit volume benefit was $31.3 million, driven by the higher revenue in EMEA. Gross profit margin benefit was $10.3 million due to favorable product mix, higher profitable U.K. volume and increasing Americas software and services sales more than offset the higher material and transportation costs. The overall negative impact of the higher supply chain costs were approximately $30 million. This translated into an unfavorable EBITDA impact of about 2%. We expect inflationary pressures to increase significantly in FY '22. Our adjusted operating expenses increased by $34.7 million year-over-year. The reasons for this development were investments in strategic transformation, in particular, Google, gas and water to expand our product offering as announced during Capital Markets Day in 2021; ramp up investment in R&D to support future backlog order conversion; and operating expenditures associated with acquired businesses throughout FY '21. We were able to offset some of the cost increase through cost-out efforts, reducing overhead and optimizing support functions. Overall, the inorganic investment in acquisitions resulted in an EBITDA impact for the group of 0.6%. Moving on to bridging EBITDA to adjusted EBITDA. The bridge here contains 3 items as shown on the page. First, restructuring. In FY '21, there were no major restructuring initiatives. Second, warranty. Warranty normalization representing warranty provisions amount made in FY '21 relative to the 3-year average of actual warranty costs incurred. Due to lower warranty cases, the downward trend from prior year continues. And third, timing differences on FX derivatives. Here, our biggest FX exposure is in the U.K., where we contract revenue in pounds and [indiscernible] supply chain costs largely in other currencies. The adjustments exclude unrealized losses of $12.4 million related to mark-to-market differences on our FX hedging. Moving on to cash flow, Page 19. In FY '21, we continue to generate strong cash flow, highlighting the resiliency of our operating model. Excluding M&A transaction, our free cash flow was at $89 million. Working capital development for the core business was in line with revenue growth. Inventory increased driven by supply chain to ensure material availability and through the integration of our acquisitions, in particular, Luna. Net loss from equity investments related to our share in Intellihub and certain noncash costs recognized by Intellihub in the period. Warranty and warranty settlement cash out was $16 million, continuing to trend lower than previous years as the cash-out legacy component issue decreased over time and no new significant warranty [ void ] has occurred. Other cash flow is impacted by $34.6 million due to the unfavorability from hedging instruments and timing of income tax payments. Our capital expenditure remained low at $27.1 million, in line with previous years. We expect CapEx will increase in FY '22 to integrate our acquisitions into our manufacturing network and support our strategy to leverage Luna as a cost-competitive platform. Finally, we recorded cash out of $157.4 million for the acquisitions, investments and divestments undertaken in FY '21. Moving to Slide 20. As of 31st March 2022, we had a net debt position of $143.6 million. In FY '21, uses of cash were the dividend payment of $65.9 million in June and the acquisitions of AltHAN, True Energy as well as our investment in Allego in the EV space, Telia in managed services and Luna in Turkey. A significant part was financed through our strong cash flow generation in the year of $89 million. From our available credit facilities at the end of '21, in addition to our cash position of approximately $85 million, we had undrawn facilities of over $345 million available. All in all, we maintain a strong balance sheet with a net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of 0.98x. The divestment of the company take Intellihub transaction occurred in April 22 after FY '21 year-end and is treated as a nonadjusted subsequent event. The cash receipt is recognized in FY '22. We expect the net proceeds after tax of this transaction to be around USD 170 million, depending on the final tax assessment and exchange rate fluctuations. We plan to use it for reinvestment in strategic organic and inorganic growth areas. If we now look into our regional performance, starting with America on Page 21. In the Americas, order intake was approximately $1.7 billion, resulting in a book-to-bill ratio of 2.4x. Revenue increased by 0.8% in constant currency to $706.7 million, driven by growth in South America and Japan, strong software and services contribution, partially offset by component availability in North America. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 40 basis points to 15.5%. The expansion was predominantly driven by favorable product and customer mix and operational efficiencies. In part, these favorable effects were offset by increased supply chain costs, strategic investments and investments to support large future order conversions. Moving on to EMEA, Page 22. In the EMEA region, we recorded a solid book-to-bill ratio of 1.23x, driven by a significant increase in orders, particularly through Fluvius in Belgium and order intake in France and in the U.K. Revenue increased by 17.4% in constant currency to $590.1 million. This increase reflects the recovery of our U.K. business compared to prior year as well as increased installations in the rest of the region, particularly the Nordics. Adjusted EBITDA expanded to $25.7 million, translated to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 4.4%. This was largely driven by operating leverage. Like in Americas, the higher gross margin flow-through was in part offset by higher supply chain costs. Our acquisitions contributed to approximately 5% revenue growth for the EMEA region as we integrated them throughout the year. The increase in OpEx is primarily driven by acquisitions and R&D investments. Turning to the APAC region, Page 23. APAC order intake increased year-over-year, resulted in a positive book-to-bill ratio of 1.43x. APAC revenue demonstrates residency and grew 1% in constant currency, predominantly from ANZ. Adjusted EBITDA margin declined to 4.7%. Gross margin was similar to prior year with product cost-out initiatives and FX favorability of certain supply chain headwinds. OpEx increased due to R&D investments to support upcoming portfolio rollouts. And with this, I will now hand it over to Werner to conclude on the guidance.
Thank you, Elodie. Turning to Slide 24, let's talk about the guidance for our financial year '22. In light of ongoing global supply chain challenges, we still see a high level of uncertainty. We look at the FY '22 as a transition year with headwinds from supply chain costs and the continued commitment to additional expenses of around 2% of net revenues as in FY '21 to drive our strategic transformation. We expect a 6% to 10% net revenue growth, including FY '21 acquisitions and adjusted EBITDA margin between 5% and 8%. We see free cash flow, excluding M&A, to come in between $30 million and $60 million. And a progressive dividend of CHF 2.15 will be proposed to the AGM on June 24. With FY '22 as a transition year, we will continue to drive our strategic transformation forward by managing costs diligently to mitigate supply chain exposure. That said, turning to Slide 25, we are reconfirming our guidance for FY '23, assuming that the supply chain situation normalizes as we move further into '22 and '23 and remain confident that we are taking the right strategic actions to drive growth and profitability up in the midterm. And now we will open up the call for questions.
The first question comes from the line of Andreas Willi from JPMorgan.
My first question relates to the medium-term guidance that was reiterated. In terms of your assumptions you're making for that year, both in terms of component costs started to normalize or come down again, but also discussions you're having now with customers about potential adjustments to fixed prices in the backlog, if those are possible and how are those progressing. So What's the base case assumption you make to achieve this 2023 guidance? That's my first question.
Yes. Very good. Andreas, thank you for asking the question. So a midterm guidance, how do we see that? From '22, probably from the outset, looks a little bit okay, quite steep. But if we dissect it, then the way we look at it is really that volume mix, we laid around 2%. Then we will think also the supply chain will ease, will normalize. We don't think that it will go completely down to '20 level, but we see about another 2% of supply chain easing. And then we have, obviously, the strategic transformation with 1% to 2%, which we will invest slower, as we said. And you know that well, Andreas, that we said 11%, going down to the 9-plus time range. But that actually leads then to this 12% midterm guidance when we feel very confident. Same goes for cash. When you think about -- we do have a pretty compressed cash, but that's really driven in '22 in terms of EBITDA, plus some CapEx investment we are doing, an increase in working capital. But in '23, I think we are well positioned also on the cash side that we achieved that. Then in terms of customer discussions, I think, obviously, we have very solid discussions going forward. We do have a mix of different contracts. We have contracts which are fixed and firm, where it will be very difficult to make changes. We have contract with indexes. Then we also shouldn't forget we have around 30-plus percent of book-to-bill. And book-to-bill, obviously, allows us much more leverage in terms of pricing because we can much more price in these things. But that's how the situation looks like, Andreas.
It's very clear. The follow-up question is on April, May, what you have seen in terms of the supply chain coming out of China. Obviously, we have seen some additional restrictions. Is there a specific incremental risk in terms of exposure you have on the supply side to the Shanghai area? Or is that less important given you -- where you -- where some of the assembly for your product are based in China and suppliers that you have?
Yes. So China, obviously, it's an important market from us -- from a supply chain perspective. But -- and the situation at the moment with this number of ships in Shanghai, it's unpleasant. It's ongoing, and we don't expect that this situation will ease off in the very near future. But I do think that we are able to manage it actually with the suppliers that we are able to achieve these results.
The next question comes from the line of Patrick Rafaisz from UBS.
Maybe a follow-up on that second question around current trading. If you look at your full year guidance, how do you think about H1 versus H2? Will there be a significant improvement half year on half year? Or do you think both half years will be still quite under pressure before we then see a recovery in fiscal '23? That's my first question.
Yes. The way we think, and frankly, when you and I talked, maybe 6 months ago, we had a little bit of a different picture in the way that we saw maybe '22, we would see some recovery in '22. But looking at the current situation, a stressed supply chain; China, as we just discussed, actually locked down; Ukraine situation, our view is that we don't see a material improvement in '22. The situation is definitely more stressed than in '21. And that also leads then actually -- to this situation. So H1, H2 -- so Patrick, H1, H2, I would say both -- I don't see a significant improvement in H2. I really think it's -- throughout the year, it's pretty equally challenging.
Okay. That's clear. And then a second question would be on your cash flow expectations, 2022, 2023. Last year, we saw some big swings, right, in receivables and inventories, but also in payables. Now given your order backlog, which is extremely high that will then transform into revenues in '23, shouldn't we also expect, again, another buildup of working capital at the beginning of 2023 that might now be released entirely in time for your free cash flow target of $120 million to be met? Or how do you think about that?
No, I think you make a good point. Look, I mean when I -- maybe starting with '22, clearly, we see the cash. We have a lower EBITDA, which has quite an impact. But then we also have CapEx investment of about $10 million. We have working capital increase exactly for these upcoming jobs. But then when I look -- when we look into '23, we do still have that going on in these large contracts, but we also have a much higher volume. And therefore, I feel that the numbers we have given the $30 million to $60 million this year and then going back to $120 million, it's doable. Now having said this, Patrick, obviously, as we mentioned during our previous remarks, it does -- I would say, we expect a more normalized supply chain. We are not saying that it goes completely back to the '20 level. It will be elevated, but it will be a more normalized supply chain starting in April '23, and I think that's a pretty reasonable assumption.
Okay. Great. And my third question, if you allow, is on your order intake. Again, a very strong number, of course, driven by all regions, but in particular, by America with the big tenders you won as planned. How should we think about order intake or your order intake targets for fiscal 2022, right? I mean projects are getting delayed. I assume your revenue delay of $100 million might even go up a bit. Will that impact the tendering activity in the market? What do you expect there?
Yes. First, I think -- I mean '21 was a phenomenal year, and I think we will probably not repeat that. I can say that with confidence. But I do think that we will have a solid order intake because I just feel that there's good momentum. And I look into the U.S. with this whole grid infrastructure alliance -- or infrastructure projects, I think that's very positive. We see in Europe, good activity. Also Europe, I mean if you think about that we are talking about brownouts in Switzerland and Germany, that tells you that we probably need more [ attention ] in the grid. So also, we see there good activity. And so our view is that we should be able to achieve a book-to-bill of 1.1, 1.0, 1.1 in the neighborhood somewhere.
The next question comes from the line of Daniel Koenig from Mirabaud.
Can you hear me?
We hear you very well, yes. Very good.
I had a question on general administration, what to expect for this year because it has gone up quite considerably last year while sales and marketing is rather flattish. What can we expect in terms of this item of the P&L for this year? Will it go up again?
Yes. No, I think Elodie has some very good answer to that.
Daniel, I'll be glad to answer that question. So as you rightly point out, we had an increase of general and administrative costs this year. This is driven by 2 points. One is our effort into transformational initiative and the overall 2 points of EBITDA we're investing, a part of that is in the G&A. So that's why you see these points increasing. And the other is simply the fact that we've integrated our acquisitions. So that gives us a broader SG&A base, and we have made also some investments in these acquisitions. So these are the 2 major drivers, I would say, that explain the results in 2021. Now as you look forward to 2022, I would expect similar. Our acquisitions are there. We'll continue to put our efforts into integrating them successfully. And on the other side, we have also said we have -- we'll be sustaining efforts on our transformational initiatives. So that will also keep this level in 2022 plan.
Exactly. And I think we can say that we are SG&A sensitive. We watch it very carefully. I think [ 23 ] plus 11%. So we watch this very carefully. But as Elodie said, I think these are critical investments actually to position us very well for future success, yes. Very good [ target ].
Okay. I had a second question because I looked at the regional difference in terms of gross margin. And in the Americas, the gross margin is going up by 200 basis points, while in Asia, it's more or less flat. Can you elaborate one more time why there is this regional difference in terms of gross margin? Is that sustainable what -- the level we have in the Americas? [ Or it might fall off ]?
Yes. So in terms of gross margin, first, inherently, gross margins differ in the regions. Generally speaking, U.S. has a little bit stronger gross margins than we see, for example, Europe, we see in APAC. In particular, in the U.S., it's also mix-driven. Depending what kind of mix you actually have in the revenues, that drives it up. But obviously, we are very happy to see the uptick in the U.S. But going forward, there is some volatility in that depending on the quality of the backlog.
There no more questions at this time.
Okay. Good. Then I just would like to make some closing remarks. Just thank you for your question. I would encourage you also in between, please, we are very approachable contact us any time. We are very happy and we highly value the input and the discussions have with you. Just a few takeaways. First, a record book-to-bill. Backlog of almost $3.4 billion, a testimony of our leading technology and motivate us to keep developing, delivering leading-edge technology. I think that's very important for you to know. Second, 10% adjusted EBITDA margin and cash flow of $89 million despite this industry challenges we have. I think we are pretty proud of that. We put a lot of efforts in, but it's also a thank you to our employees who did a phenomenal job. Thirdly, reconfirming guidance. '23 with '22 as a transition year. We believe in the strategic transformation, which we are driving. I think we are on the right path. We are in the right industry and more to come. With that said, thank you again for joining us today. Stay healthy. And again, we look forward to speaking with you very soon. Thanks a lot.