ABB Ltd (ABB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending December 31, 2022

February 2, 2023 4:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ann-Sofie Nordh

Greetings to you all and nice to connect again as I welcome you to the presentation of our Fourth Quarter Results. I am Ann-Sofie Nordh, Head of Investor Relations here at ABB. And next to me here, I have our CEO, Bjorn Rosengren; and our CFO, Timo Ihamuotila. And as always, they will take you through the presentation before we open up for a Q&A session.

But before we begin, I want to mention the information regarding safe harbor notices and our use of non-GAAP measures on slide two of the presentation. Also, this call will include forward-looking statements, which are based on the company's current expectations and certain assumptions and are therefore subject to risks and uncertainties.

But with that said, I will hand over to Bjorn and Timo for their quarterly comments.

Bjorn Rosengren

Thank you, Ann-Sofie, and a warm welcome from me as well. I would like to start with a quick look back at the full-year of 2022, and it's safe to say it was another eventful year. We have executed on our business promises, despite being challenged by several external factors.

And before we move on with the presentation, I want to give a big credit to all the ABB colleagues, who pushed through and delivered what I would call a record year for ABB. This is a strong achievement considering that they had to manage the implications from the war in Ukraine, energy crisis, lockdown in China and a strained supply chain. And on top of that, we were also hit by a significant negative FX impact.

Despite all of this, the team delivered orders, revenues and operational EBITA and margins at the highest level in recent history. We achieved an operational EBITA margin of 15.3%, meaning we delivered on our margin target one year ahead of plan. Looking beyond the key items impacting comparability, EPS performance was good. And we improved the ROCE to 16.5%, which means we brought it within our target range.

Based on the improved performance and in addition to distributing the turbocharging division to shareholders in October, we proposed a steady increase of a dividend to CHF0.84. We also plan to continue with the share buyback during 2023. I allow myself to include the signing of the power conversion divestment in this 2022 summary. And in doing so, we have delivered on our promises from 2020 to streamline our business portfolio by exiting three divisions.