SUZRY - Sulzer Ltd (SULZF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-02-22 19:50:23 ET
Sulzer Ltd (SULZF)
Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call
February 22, 2024 04:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Suzanne Thoma - Executive Chairwoman
Thomas Zickler - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Christian Arnold - Stifel
Alessandro Foletti - Octavian
Benjamin Triebe - NZZ
Arben Hasanaj - Vontobel
Presentation
Suzanne Thoma
Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our pilance meeting conference today in February reporting about the results 2023. We are proud to present to you good solid results and a clear perspective for the strategy going forward.
Now let's first look a little bit back, look at 2023. You see here the key elements. Number one, we did have indeed quite a good market development in the last 12 -- well, now 14 months. We personally believe that this is a structural growth in the markets that we are serving more than an up and down of a more transitory nature. We will be speaking more about that in a moment.
We have sales growth and it is important that we have sales growth in all three divisions and we have it across the globe, definitely in all three regions. We are very proud to say that our free cash flow has dramatically increased, which is the result among others of the first actions that we have taken to improve our operational excellence, I will call it, Sulzer Excellence going forward, our operational excellence throughout our plans.
We have a return on capital employed that will be one of our most important parameters going forward, a return on capital employed of almost 80%. You will see later as far as we know Sulzer has not been there for a very long time. And last but not least, we have an increase in our profitability, also highest in the last 10 years.
This also shows that in its essence this company is a strong company and is a healthy company, which is positioned in good markets. What you need to do is to take the measures that are needed that this company can reach its potential. And the potential is quite higher than what we can see even in the figures of 2023. But this is a multiyear transition.
Let's quickly look at the figures. Our CFO, Thomas Zickler will speak in more detail about it. Just at one glance, you saw the key elements. If you look at the absolute figures, of course, we are reporting in Swiss francs. So we are also influenced by the appreciation of the Swiss franc, which cost us plus/minus CHF 250 million, yes, in both order intake and in sales.
As our company is very well positioned with its cost also around the globe we produce, we do not produce in Switzerland. We have pilot plants in Switzerland, but we produce along the globe. We have a certain natural hedge when it comes to the profitability figures -- only to a certain extent. Thomas will speak a bit more about that.
So these are now at constant currencies, the increase that we can report and we are proud of. We increased our sales by 13% and our intake by almost 14%. We have a much better EBITDA, up 25% and the free cash flow close to 50% up. The return on capital employed 300 basis points and our operating net cash flow actually soared by 160%.
I would like to take a quick look at the guidance. The guidance that we gave in the year 2023 evolved. When I stood here a year ago here in the Winterthur, we gave you a -- it was not a cautious guidance at that time. It was a realistic guidance. We gave you the guidance of 3% to 6% in order intake. I'm focusing on order intake here....
Sulzer Ltd (SULZF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript