WRTBF - Wärtsilä Oyj Abp (WRTBF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-02-02 15:19:05 ET
Wärtsilä Oyj Abp (WRTBF)
Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
January 31, 2024, 03:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Hanna-Maria Heikkinen - IR
Hakan Agnevall - CEO
Arjen Berends - CFO
Conference Call Participants
Vivek Midha - Citi
Daniela Costa - Goldman Sachs
Akash Gupta - JPMorgan
Max Yates - Morgan Stanley
Sven Weier - UBS
Johan Eliason - Kepler Cheuvreux
Antti Kansanen - SEB
Panu Laitinmaki - Danske Bank
Presentation
Hanna-Maria Heikkinen
Hi, everybody, and welcome to this news conference for Wartsila Results 2023. My name is Hanna-Maria Heikkinen, and I'm in charge of Investor Relations. Today, our CEO, Hakan Agnevall, will start with the Group highlights, business performance. And after that, our CFO, Arjen Berends, will continue with the key financials. After the presentation, there is a possibility to ask questions. Please, Hakan, time to start.
Hakan Agnevall
Yes. Thank you, Hanna-Maria, and a warm welcome to today's session. Focusing on 2023, it was a good step in the right direction for Wartsila. We improved in many areas and we managed to have all-time high order intake, net sales, and cash flow. And we are improving our profitability. We have a clear path to our 12% operating margin target, but more about that. So order intake all-time high at over EUR7 billion, net sales at all-time high at over EUR6 billion, and we continue to see the good progress on the service business, where the service order intake increased by 15%, and the net sales on services by 13%. Comparable operating results increased by 53%. So we are on our journey. And cash flow, you will see, I'm smiling more than usual today. We had a fantastic cash flow with EUR822 million.
So let's look at the summary of the numbers and let's make some comments first, now zooming in a little bit on the quarter, and then also some summaries on the full year. So if we look on the quarter, order intake up 13%, and it's both in services and equipment. You see that equipment is up 16%. And yes, energy power plants, they had a strong order intake in the second half of the year compared to the first half of the year. We had a really strong run towards the very end of the year on the energy power plant side.
Order book continues to develop positively. We will have a stronger order book going into 2024 compared to going into 2023. And the book-to-bill continues to be above 1, at 1.13. And now it's the 11th consecutive quarter that we have actually had a book-to-bill above 1. Net sales is down 7%. And you see services continue to go up, but it's the equipment side, that is down. We will see more about that later on. Operating results up quite significantly, and comparable operating results as 10.8%....
Wärtsilä Oyj Abp (WRTBF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript