CHAIRMAN’S STATEMENT

“Aliaxis is a global industry leader and everywhere we operate we are acting for a sustainable future.”

The macro-economic and geopolitical turbulence in 2022 were a great test for the renewed Board and the newly strengthened management team to check that we are collaborating effectively. There’s no better way to develop new reflexes and approaches than to be faced with the sort of external challenges we saw throughout the year.

Clearly, as a privately-held company, with a family reference shareholder, Aliaxis has a real advantage over many other businesses, in its ability to create long-lasting value and make a meaningful impact on sustainability for generations to come, even in that turmoil.

Aliaxis reacted quickly – speed being a key requirement to execute well – but never lost sight of the long term need to invest in our operations and in innovation to create relevant solutions for the world’s sustainability and water challenges.

Maintaining strong performance

All through 2022, the Board worked side by side with the management team to advance on our Growth with Purpose strategy. Despite all sorts of headwinds and economic shifts, Aliaxis was able to consolidate the growth in revenue and earnings it had started to achieve in recent years. We were even able to maintain the step change in profitability recorded in 2021.

Aliaxis executed well on its agenda to accelerate carbon reduction, increase recycling and in bringing more innovation to the market at a faster pace. We made significant investments to expand and modernise production capacity, while inorganically strengthening our US and Europe presence by acquiring Harco and Lareter.

It demonstrated well the company’s laser focus on investing with a long-term perspective, which will continue even though market conditions remain challenging.

Sustainability

In that same vein, Aliaxis continues to take actions to tackle head on the immense climate and water challenges around the world.

Recent flooding, heatwaves and droughts prove that the stakes are high. Billions of people today already lack access to clean water and sanitation. As the world’s population grows and climate driven weather events become even more frequent, these challenges will only continue to intensify.

For the Board, it was very gratifying to see how the whole Aliaxis organisation has stepped up to these challenges – seeing their real mission to be about bringing solutions to these existential challenges and, by doing so, accelerating the business model to achieve sustainable growth for the company.

Clearly, people at Aliaxis have embraced sustainability as being at the heart of what the company does. As a Board, we are proud to be part of an organisation that is so determined to make the difference.

An engaged Board

In 2022, the Board was reinforced with a diverse mix of deep experience and perspective. We welcomed Peter de Wit, Myriam Beatove and Thomas del Marmol as new members bringing highly relevant industrial, human resources and financial experience to the table.

This was also my first year as Chairman of the Board. While having the luxury of standing on the shoulders of Olivier van der Rest – the proverbial giant before me – it allowed me to focus on making sure we could continue to foster the excellent dynamic both inside the Board as well as between the Board and the broader organisation.

In that respect, it was truly valuable to hold three of our Board meetings in the field at our new Pineville plant (USA), at the Mannheim-site (Germany) and at our new Paris Research hub (France).

I was delighted to travel even more widely – often with other Board members in tow – to see more of the operations and meet many Aliaxis colleagues. It was great to sense first-hand a growing enthusiasm and sense of pride in the organisation.

Growth with Purpose is a living strategy, fully embodied in the way the teams work. The “One Aliaxis” idea seems to be deeply rooted and becoming a strong reality, this time driven from the ground up and not just from headquarters.

Today, Aliaxis is a global leader in our industry, and, in every country we operate in, we are acting for a sustainable and strong future.

Thierry Vanlancker

Chairman

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER’S STATEMENT

“Our aim is to tackle some of the world’s most pressing water and clean energy challenges. We’re using our scale, skills and resources and turning that ambition into action.”

The challenges we face around water are already immense and will only intensify without urgent action.

The facts are staring us in the face. Today, billions of people lack access to clean water or sanitation, while 35% of the water distributed through networks is lost in leaks. The impact of climate change is also increasingly evident in extreme weather events, heat waves, floods, droughts, disappearing glaciers and wildfires.

Aliaxis can make a real difference in tackling these challenges because they go to the heart of what we do, every day.

With over 75% of our products used to distribute, treat and store our most precious resource, water is a major part of our raison d’être. Our solutions also play an important role in storing and transporting clean energies.

United by our purpose

So, for us, the call to action could not be stronger. In 2022 we underlined our commitment to create positive change by restating our purpose with a clear but simple phrase:

“We exist to bring solutions to the world’s water challenges and to accelerate the transition to clean energy.”

Our Growth with Purpose strategy, launched in 2021, has sustainability and innovation at its heart and is focused on taking immediate action up to 2025.

Backed by ambitious targets, it is all about creating value by operating sustainably and bringing game-changing water and clean energy solutions to our customers at greater speed. As one of the most international companies in our sector, we have the scale and the local market knowledge to make a real impact.

Dare, care, deliver

We know what we want to achieve and how to get there. And we are energised by our new behaviours – “we dare, we care, we deliver” – which are inspiring people across Aliaxis to focus on tackling climate change and the water crisis with the urgency they demand.

Our Growth with Purpose strategy in action

In 2022, we made tremendous progress on our Growth with Purpose strategy.
Since 2021, we’ve transitioned about a quarter of our operations to renewable electricity. We are well on course to meet our target of 100% renewable across all our operations by 2025.

We’re making solid progress in quadrupling the amount of recycled material we use in our products, with each of our regions bringing great new ideas to market. And our efforts to get smart water solutions to customers faster are advancing at pace.

We’ve massively stepped up our capital expenditure on internal growth by more than tripling our level of investment with a plan to invest over €1 billion between 2022 and 2025.

In 2022, we invested €325 million to expand capacity both by modernising existing facilities and production lines, and by building new plants. That includes a new state-of-the-art factory in North Carolina, in the US, two new greenfield facilities in India, with a further three to follow, a plant modernisation in Germany and a highly automated plant in Australia.

We’re growing through acquisitions as well and were delighted to welcome two great companies with proud histories into the Aliaxis family last year – Harco in the US, and Lareter in Italy. Our new division, Aliaxis Next, set up in 2022 to invest in and partner with promising water tech start-ups, has already invested €60 million in ground-breaking disruptive digital water solutions businesses.

Where innovation is concerned, we are increasing customer intimacy to make sure we create the right solutions for the right markets. In 2022, we boosted R&D spending to over €30 million, our goal being to invest up to €65 million by 2025.

The percentage of sales from new products (less than five years old) has risen steeply from 4.3% to 6.2%, representing €260 million in additional sales. Our target is for new-to-market solutions to account for 10% of total sales by 2025.

Powerful performance

Despite a challenging economic environment, we had another very strong year in 2022, continuing the big leap forward in our performance that we achieved in 2021.

Current EBITDA grew from an average of around €450 million between 2016 and 2020 to €674 million in 2021, and came in at €728.2 million last year, an increase of 8% as reported (stable on a like-for-like¹ basis vs 2021 and 48.7% vs 2020).

Although our CEBITDA margin declined slightly, from 18.3% to 16.8%, it remained above 15% for the third consecutive year. We were delighted to be named Belgium’s EY Company of the Year.  It recognises how Aliaxis is a purpose driven company, aiming to solve some of the world’s water challenges and accelerate the transition to clean energy. This recognition validates our choices in the eyes of our employees, shareholders, and customers.

Net profit in 2022 was €371 million, while revenues grew 11.3% on a like-for-like¹ basis to €4.3 billion.

These excellent results were underpinned by a powerful performance in North America and the Pacific, which offset slightly weaker results in EMEA, India and Latin America where a variety of pressures, including high inflation, resin price volatility and slower demand, impacted us.

Short-term challenges ahead

The road ahead this year and next could be bumpier and we expect our recent powerful growth trajectory to moderate slightly. We will control our costs and manage our inventory carefully.

But we are clear about two things.

First, we will continue with our plans to invest in sustainability, innovation, productivity, and customer intimacy, even in these challenging times. We think it is right to keep investing wisely for the future and have the resources to do so, combining both internal and external growth.

Secondly, we remain confident we can achieve our goal to reach Current EBITDA of €850 million by 2025, based on our success to date and our ability to overcome short-term disruptions thanks to the combination of our teams and business model.

Committed and energised

I’m greatly encouraged that people throughout Aliaxis are committed to our purpose and our strategy and have been energised by the culture we are creating. That’s true right across the company, from our strengthened leadership team right through to colleagues on the ground. It’s been great to get out and meet many more of them in the last year.

Our strategy is on course, and I sense that people across the company share not just my optimism but also my belief that – when we put our minds together, learn from and challenge each other – there’s nothing we can’t do, no problem we can’t solve and nothing we can’t overcome.

Eric Olsen

Chief Executive Officer

¹ 2021 adjusted on a pro-forma basis to reflect the impact of the acquisition of Harco Fittings LLC in April 2022, Aquarius Spectrum in August 2022, OptiRTC Inc. in November 2022 and Lareter in December 2022. Impact of FX excluded to reflect underlying performance at constant exchange rate.