Dear Shareholders,
The year 2022 marks the 25
th anniversary of u-blox and represents the best year in our history. We are proud of the incredible journey since our beginnings and the very solid work and dedication of our entire team in transforming u-blox from an ETH spin-off with some novel positioning components, to a global leader in innovative chip to cloud solutions for the automotive, industrial and product markets.
Thus, for full year 2022, we reported record numbers in terms of revenue, profitability, EBITDA, and cash-flow with an orderbook reaching far into 2023. We achieved buoyant revenue growth of 51% to CHF 624 million, expanded adjusted EBITDA by 136% to CHF 170 million, grew adjusted net profit by 376% to CHF 109 million and generated free cash flow of CHF 66 million.
While 2022 was still a challenging year with regards to the supply chain environment, we were able to successfully manage tight component availability and fulfilled customer demands to a large extent. Thanks to established long-term relationships, we were able to work around specific shortages and succeeded in negotiating with suppliers and subcontractors. Our diversified supplier base gave us the ability to support our customers with strongly growing demand in their markets. Our technology often helps our customers to gain markets share and win the leading position in the market.
Strong growth across all segments and regions
Demand was strong throughout all of our business segments, end markets and geographies. All regions contributed to the encouraging growth, with APAC showing the strongest increase. We also noted continued broad demand for our solution offerings across all applications. During the year, our largest segment, industrial solutions, grew across the board thanks to strong ramp-ups with existing and new customers in core applications like network infrastructure, healthcare, automation and telematics. Our Automotive segment also experienced robust growth, mainly in demand for navigation and infotainment applications, whereby the shift of end users demand towards more electric vehicles accelerated our customers’ demand for our products. Higher revenues in the consumer segment, our smallest segment, were the result of increased demand for telematics and wearables.
Leading with innovation
2022 was again a year of innovation across our entire product portfolio. We introduced new products, enhanced functionalities and provided our customers with an even larger set of solutions. During the year, we launched a total of 15 new products and shipped more than 100 million units to customers which is testimony to the continued successful implementation of our focused research and innovation strategy across the verticals we are present in
.
Investing in our future
Over the last 15 years, we have persistently invested more than CHF 1 billion in our core Intellectual Property (IP), which laid the foundation for our competitive advantage by building our strong capabilities in radio technology and signal processing, all cast into our own silicon. We thus being able to offer our customers a value-adding edge for easy integration and secure upgrades to their solutions. Our strong balance sheet and cash position allows us to invest further in new technologies, by introducing new products and capabilities for us to grow our business organically, and by acquisitions and partnerships. As such, as part of our growth strategy, we completed a total of 18 acquisitions over the years, mainly with a focus on adding technology, know-how, and people. These investments have created a sustainable competitive advantage over our competitors and have positioned us well to take advantage of multiple opportunities arising from the expanding IoT adoption and the desire for connectivity throughout the world. Several partnerships add possibilities for our customers in a synergistic way.
Our strategy going forward is to continue to lead with innovative solutions that combine core technology in the form of chipsets and modules, together with services.
Innovation is our life blood, and our growth is fueled by our diverse, global talent pool of employees who help u-blox stay ahead of the global IoT innovation curve and the competition. We offer solutions that fully meet our customers’ expectations and we design our products with socio-economic and eco-friendly factors in mind. Our products have a very small CO
2 footprint and enable enormous improvements of environmental friendliness in all the applications where they are used. We stand behind our products as we are offering high-quality and long-lasting products that are compliant with relevant standards, and we continuously take steps to improve and streamline our supply and distribution channels.