Nordex SE (NDX1) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Annual Figures 2022 Conference Call of Nordex. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Felix Zander. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much for the introduction, Natalie. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Nordex, I would like to welcome you to today's analyst and conference at our analyst and investor call for the full year '22. Our CEO, Jose Luis Blanco; our CFO, Dr. Ilya Hartmann; and our CSO, Patxi Landa, will guide you through our presentation, sharing financial strategy, markets and the latest developments for the year. [Operator Instructions] And now I would like to hand over to you, Jose Luis. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much for the introduction, Felix. I would like to welcome you as well on behalf of the entire Board. As Felix mentioned, Patxi Landa and Ilya Hartmann with me today in the call guiding you through our presentation and taking your questions later on. We have enlarged our useful agenda with some additional slides about the planned debt-to-equity swap, markets, sustainability, outlook, and our recent initiatives in the hydrogen sector. If we move to the next slide. And as usual, I would like to start with the executive summary of the last year of 2022, which was an overall extremely challenging year. As you all know, despite strong stabilization that we have seen in the second half of the year. We had to manage ongoing supply chain disruption, the cybersecurity incident, inflationary pressures, especially for freight and steel cost and after effects of war in the Ukraine. This meant extra unforeseen costs in the form of higher logistics, higher raw material prices and liquidated damage that impacted our full year performance. Despite these circumstances, our order intake continued with good momentum, and we continue to see a good order pipeline. We booked 1.9 gigawatts in the fourth quarter, which means a cumulative order intake of 6.3 gigawatts for the full year. Prices and margins in our order book are also improving, as you can also see in our [ high end ] reported ASPs. Our revenue in the fourth quarter increased by more than 20% from EUR 1.5 billion to EUR 1.8 billion, while our EBITDA margin was negative minus 2.4. With that, our revenues on a full year basis reached around EUR 5.7 billion, the top end of our revised guidance with an EBITDA margin of negative 4.3%. Unfortunately, our margins in Q4 were impacted due to higher LD costs, extra warranty provisions that we booked to address some legacy issues of all discontinued machine type. But as usual, Ilya will cover this in more detail later. Our working capital was strong again at minus 10.2% and does better than our target of below minus 7% by the end of the year. Regarding our installations, we achieved our normal run rate in the third and even fourth quarter, but unfortunately, we were not able to accelerate and catch up as we had hoped. Thus, we could only install 5.2 gigawatts for the year, clearly below the previous year. During the last year, we also launched a new product variant, Nordex N175/6.X, another highly efficient turbine especially for areas with low and medium wind speeds, namely Germany and Europe. On the financial side, we repaid a high yield bond. At the beginning of this year, we have are shareholder, loan from Acciona and this also is now being converted into equity and therefore, should certainly, surely improve our equity ratio once done, but more on this later in the presentation. On the strategic side, we have taken a couple of key initiatives in the green hydrogen space with the signing of 2 joint ventures, which I will explain later in detail. Finally, we see that the market has been stabilizing in patches, while we have been able to successfully increase our prices leading to a better quality order book going into 2023. This is also reflected in our improved margin outlook for 2023. In addition, the policy momentum continues to be strong with U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, European Green Deal and other announcements. Once these tailwinds materialize, then this could provide the great platform to enable us to achieve our midterm target of 8% EBITDA margin. Lot of positioning in the market. In recent years, we have successfully strengthened our market position having doubled the size of our company from a 3 gigawatt company to a 6-plus gigawatt company, also driven by our Delta4000 platform and its strong demand we could increase our market share globally to 15.3%. In Europe, we reached 22.9% and in Germany, well above 30%. Geographies that are expected to grow supported by policy momentum. And with this, I will hand over to Patxi for the markets, customers and orders.

Thank you very much, Jose Luis. Looking at the orders, we sold 6.3 gigawatts of new turbine contracts in 2022 compared with 7.9 gigawatts last year that also included a large 1 gigawatt order from Acciona in Australia. The majority of the orders came from Europe with 73%, largest markets being Germany, Finland, Turkey and Poland. 21% of the orders came from Latin America, mainly from Brazil and Colombia, and 6% came from North America. ASP Grew to EUR 0.84 million per megawatt in 2022, up from EUR 0.72 million per megawatt last year. ASP in the quarter stood at EUR 0.89 million per megawatt, increasing more than 20% with respect to the same period last year. Service revenues grew 22% in 2022 to reach EUR 574 million with an EBIT margin of 16.7%. Average availability of the fleet was 97% with a total fleet of 31 gigawatts on the service. Turbine order backlog grew 6% to EUR 6.5 billion at the end of 2022. And service order backlog grew 7% to EUR 3.3 billion through a combined order backlog of EUR 9.8 billion. And with this, I'll give it back to Ilya.

Thank you, Patxi, and also welcome from my side. And I would start not with walking you through the financials of last year, but with a brief update on the contemplated debt-to-equity swap that Jose Luis mentioned of the shareholder loans we have with our anchor investor, Acciona. As reported on previous calls, Acciona provided to us a shareholder loan of EUR 286 million in the summer of last year, together with the remainder of a shareholder loan that Acciona had given in 2020 and the bulk of which was converted in 2021. Those loans have a total balance of EUR 346 million. And the sole purpose of that second shareholder loan was the repayment of our high-yield bond of EUR 275 million, and that has now happened by the end of January. So thereafter, on February 16, we invited for an extraordinary general meeting to, among other topics, propose to our shareholders the conversion of those loans into equity. That EGM took place earlier this week, on Monday to be precise, where shareholders approved the resolution at a 99% rate. So the transaction will be completed once the new shares will be registered to key highlights maybe from that transaction once the swap is completed. It does, and Jose Luis mentioned it improved our equity ratio. On a pro forma basis, which we will show in a later slide. It will go up to 26%, and it will saves us approximately EUR 46 million per year in interest costs. As a consequence, Acciona's share in Nordex will go up from 41% to 47%. And for the price, the conversion will take place at a fair market price, in this case, EUR 14.15. And I believe that is another proof of the strong commitment of our anchor shareholder. But now I will come to the full year results, and that is on the next slide. Repeating a few of the facts that Jose Luis mentioned. Sales grew by around 5% to nearly EUR 5.7 billion at the end of '22. So on that KPI, we ended at the upper range of the guidance. Gross margin stood at around 9% compared to 15% last year. That was mainly impacted by the ongoing inflationary pressures, the supply chain disruptions, cybersecurity incident also leading to these project related that were mentioned. To some extent, those effects were offset by certain profits from our project development side. Also, some of those effects are of nonrecurring nature and the product of that highly volatile environment, affecting not only us, but other businesses around the globe. But going forward, we would expect these effects to subside and our gross margins to return to normalized levels once the new orders start flowing through our financials. Therefore, EBITDA landed at minus EUR 244 million and is taken as a percentage at minus 4.3%, in line with the tightened guidance, as we mentioned in our Q3 call. On the next slide, we would see the income statement for the Q. As expected, and also mentioned in the last call, sales increased over the years -- sorry, over the quarters, landing at around EUR 1.8 billion for the last quarter. That is 20% higher compared to our performance in Q4 of the previous year. However, our gross margins were impacted as we had to account for those extra costs from the LDs due to installation delays and other project issues. In addition, we also had to take an extra provision to address some legacy issues in the field for an old and discontinued turbine type. So to give you a rough idea of our underlying margins, if you adjust for these 2 effects, then our gross margins would be on a similar level like the year before. During the last year, we also closed the sale of a 50% stake in our green hydrogen project development company to Acciona, as we do not control this SPV fully anymore, we are accounting for this SPV at a fair value in the books between the 2 effects, the sale and the revaluation. We booked a net profit of around EUR 133 million in Q4. And with that, I would move to the balance sheet. Now looking at the balance sheet, the overall structure we would say, remained healthy with a liquidity level of north of EUR 710 million at the end of the year, and we would break those down into key parts, a cash level of EUR 634 million and a cash facility of around EUR 80 million. Looked at a different way, net cash position was EUR 244 million. Equity ratio, as mentioned, stood around 19%. At the end of the year, on a pro forma basis, again, after the debt-to-equity swap, both KPIs will improve substantially. We'll show this in a few moments. But before that, we go to the working capital slide. Working capital development in the fourth quarter reflects our high activity levels and remains strong with the ratio. It was mentioned at minus 10.2%. This is on the same level when compared to the end of 2021. Maybe noteworthy that our working capital ratio remained clearly below our guidance number of below minus 7 in all quarters of the last year. Now that brings me to the cash flow slide. Cash flow from operating activities stood at minus EUR 340 million roughly for the end of the year, and that was mainly driven by the negative operating results we mentioned and explained. Cash flow from investing activities was slightly above the level of previous years and mainly reflects the execution of our ongoing CapEx program, with a slight timing effect, our comment in a moment. And then finally, our cash flow from financing activities stood at EUR 335 million, and that reflects the cash flows from the capital increases last year. And now we do see the investment slide. We did invest around EUR 205 million in the last year, moderately higher compared to our guidance of EUR 180 million, and that is partly due to a catch-up of the slow CapEx run rate we had in 2021. So a slipping effect and of course, also inflation played a role and brought CapEx numbers up. Focus of the investments largely remained the same. Main investments were again in the blade production facilities in India, Spain and Mexico, as well as in the transport tooling equipment covering our higher installation levels, especially of newer turbine models. And then this is almost the last slide for the financial block. Here we do see the capital structure. I mentioned before, a few times, net cash EUR 244 million. Equity ratio, 18.5%. But then when you do a pro forma calculation, those numbers jump both, one in the net cash to EUR 577 million and in the equity ratio to 26%. And now I go to my next block, which is our sustainability part. Brief update. This plays an important role also now in the reporting and in the doing of the company, and basically, the whole business model of this company and our competitors is based on that. So in 2021 and '22, we adopted a so-called Sustainability Strategy 2025. Basically, we have put some ambitious targets for the old organization. Here to highlight 2 of the ones we achieved. We keep decreasing the carbon footprint of our turbines as our new turbine models are even more efficient and have even lower specific carbon footprint compared to previous models. And second, we have also and we are very glad about that, achieved the goal of significantly reducing the LTIF frequency compared to the previous year, which is in '22 1.5 versus '22 3.2. There remains quite a substantial scope of work, but we will put more and more focus and resources on those topics when it comes to sustainability. And then to cap this off, a few numbers on the taxonomy. As most of us know, the EU Green Deal captures ambitious goals of achieving CO2 neutrality by 2050 in Europe. So to succeed a unified classification system, all those sustainable business activities has been put together, the EU Taxonomy, Nordex reported already in compliance with those new obligations for the first time in 2021, disclosing the eligibility of our business activities, and now in 2022, also disclosing reporting for the first time on the extent to which our business activities are aligned with the EU Taxonomy and as we can see on the slide and probably, as we expected for our kind of business to a very large extent, we are eligible and aligned with these activities. And with that, I will give it back to you, Jose Luis.

Thank you, Ilya. Talking about operational performance in 2022. As you can see on the slide, our installation run rate in the first half was much slower, impacted by the effects of the Ukraine war and shortages and the cyber incident. Our running rate improved in the second half to normal levels, but not enough to cover further delays in the first half. Unfortunately, this led to some extra costs in our Q4 thresholds and still impacting Q1 this year. In summary, we erected 1,129 turbines in 19 countries with around 5.2 gigawatts, again with a majority of 75% in Europe. Production, we assembled 1,502 turbines, slightly higher than the previous year. But due to the higher nameplate capacity, we increased the output from 6.7 gigawatts by the nearly 12% to 7.5 gigawatts. Similarly, we produced 4,774 blades, 6% higher than previous year. 20% were produced in-house compared to 37% a year before. And this trend of outsourcing of blades will stay, probably in the future. Finally, I would like to highlight that the share of blades and nacelles from our production facilities in Asia and especially in India, will continue to improve in the future, helping us lowering our production cost. Moving to the next slide. And as I mentioned earlier, and we have confirmed via our press release with the preliminary figures released on March 9. We confirm that our performance was generally been -- has generally been in line with a revised guidance. Moving to long term. Long term, I would say the macroeconomic environment and the increased political focus are providing the perfect platform for a strong growth of the renewals over the medium term. As you might see on the slide, there is a huge gap between the targets and the actual forecast. The whole policy setup is driven by 2 factors. First, to achieve net zero emissions target by 2050. And second, energy security concerns. Furthermore, it is getting clear to the policymakers that we cannot get to the net zero targets without getting hydrogen from clear sources. The effects of these 2 factors are already visible in a variety of force, maturing PPA markets, repowering, inflation reduction act, support from -- for green hydrogen, European Green Deal and so on. Even if these ambitions are only partially reached, we should expect significant demand growth for the wind sector as it is one of the cheapest sources of energy in the market today. While long-term prospects remain exciting, we also see some positive developments in the short term. As you can see, turbine prices have been steadily improving over the last year, along with a healthy order intake momentum for Nordex in the market. We have also been improving our risk sharing in the sale of contracts. As a result, we entered 2023 with a better quality order book. In summary, we can state that the short-term outlook for the core operations is improving step by step with a better quality of the order intake and those order backlog. However, as you know, the risk from the macro environment in terms of higher interest rates, geopolitical uncertainty and inflationary pressures, especially in Europe and supply chain disruption still remain. And within this context, moving to the next slide. Within this context is where we want to share with you guidance for 2023. We see 2023 as a stabilizing year with our performance improving materially in the second half. As usual, we expect a soft start of the year. We expect our revenues to be between EUR 5.6 billion and EUR 6.1 billion and a small growth from last year. We expect our EBITDA margin to improve to be in the range of minus 2% to plus 3%. Given our past outperformance in managing working capital, we have decided to improve our working capital guidance to below minus 9%. And we also slightly increased our CapEx guidance to approx EUR 200 million to reflect a larger size of the operations and inflationary effects as well in CapEx. With this, I would like to repeat our midterm target EBITDA margin of 8%, which we maintain again. The last 2 years have been highly volatile, impacted by COVID after effects, war and other macro headwinds. However, we believe that the macro environment is now slowly stabilizing. Turbine prices have improved. While inflation is still perceived in Europe, it is also slowing down in Asia. The issues with the supply chain still continue, but it's getting better than last year. Looking forward, once midterm political tailwinds materialized in volume and we also continue to build a healthy order book within the overall normal market conditions and a stable supply chain. This could pave the way for the 8% margin in the midterm. Long term, our initiatives in the hydrogen sector could as well provide an extra layer of support and safety in a low-risk way. But let me explain that in the next slides. As I mentioned before, we have decided to take a couple of strategic initiatives in the hydrogen sector. As we see a lot of potential in that sector, driven by the policy momentum and its potential to help governments to reach net zero targets. As you can see, the global hydrogen demand will likely increase multifold, and most of those needs to be green hydrogen, which will mean more renewables. Right now, this is not factor in any market forecast in any material respect. But if this demand fructifies, then this will mean doubling up the cumulative wind capacity in the world and multifold capacity buildup of electrolyzers in a short period of time. To benefit from these macro trends while also leveraging our expertise in the project development side and scaling up industrial manufacturing and global services, we have decided to develop electrolyzers in-house adapted for off-grid operation and also initiate development of green hydrogen projects. We also entered into 2 joint ventures to boost our progress in order to secure a safe and low risk presence in key parts of the hydrogen value chain, including key equipment, technology, project development and O&M. Let me briefly talk about both joint ventures in the next 2 slides. First, the JV with Acciona, as you will have seen from our press release today morning, we have entered into a JV with Acciona in December '22 by selling 50% stake in our project development venture for EUR 67.7 million. This payment should broadly cover our CapEx commitments over the next 4 years in the joint venture. Through this JV, we can now progress much faster with a strong partner who also has extensive expertise in large infrastructure projects. We already have many project sites under development in the JV today that could stretch to a total capacity of up to 50 gigawatts. The JV aims to get the first project to a ready-to-build stage by 2027. Current target is to reach an annual capacity of 0.5 million tons of green hydrogen production per annum within the next 10 years. As said, not material EBITDA or cash impact in the next 4 years and substantial potential future upside with the profits from this initiative as well as additional turbine sales volume. Talking about electrolyzers. As I mentioned, we have been developing a small electrolyzer prototype that is already working in-house and we have now decided to partner with Sodena to take this development further. We will continue to have 85% stake, while Sodena will own 15% in the joint venture with equal CapEx commitments over the next 5 years period. The remaining CapEx will be funded by government grant. Again, this will boost our efforts by collaborating with somebody who has a lot of experience in supporting early-stage start-ups. Again, as said, no substantial CapEx, no material CapEx or EBITDA impact for the next 3 to 5 years, and the potential to create substantial future business. And with this, handing over to Felix for opening Q&A.

Thank you very much for the detailed presentation. And Natalie, now please open the floor for the Q&A. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question is from the line of Vivek Midha from Citi. .

I have two questions, please. Firstly, could you maybe quantify the magnitude of the warranty provisions and delays in the fourth quarter? I'm just keen to understand the clean EBITDA margin in Q4, taking out both the project development income and the extra costs.

That was one question. And thanks, Vivek. So yes, between those 2 effects, both on delay of projects and the extra provision we booked for the discontinued technology, I'd say if you -- if you picture this as more or less balancing out with what we have been booking as upside on extra profit from the hydrogen business to the tune of EUR 130 million to EUR 145 million, that gives you, I think, the range for the underlying margins. I'd be shied on an open call to go into more details on each of those pockets and especially the project ones are still under discussions and negotiations with our customers, where we ultimate land. But to calibrate it for you, that would be the number.

That's very helpful. My second question is on the longer term and the hydrogen story. You're now in the early stages of building out your electrolyzer offering, there are already existing players in this market already starting to ramp up. So how are you going to go about catching up on the project as of the product developments side?

Thank you. Very good question. I think our vision and where we focus our project development for green hydrogen projects is very remote areas with very high resource conditions, with the vision to develop technology adapted to this off-grid operations integrated with our wind turbine technology to be able to deliver the best landed cost hydrogen or hydrogen derivative to the consumption in Europe, in Japan or from the U.S. to the U.S. . So I think there are a lot of synergies in the technology in the way these projects needs to be engineered and configure and the approach from the design phase is slightly different than what you can find in the marketplace, which we think is core for making these off-grid projects viable.

The next question is from the line of Constantin Hesse from Jefferies.

Actually, one of them was already answered. The one that I had was really around the 8% medium-term EBITDA margin guidance that you have. Because I mean, last time we spoke, I think, Jose Luis, you mentioned that back in November last year, the cost base of the company had stabilized at that point. Meaning that 18 months down the line, we could potentially already see you were at least getting close to your 8% EBITDA margin. So I'm just wondering with the delivery of your higher quality backlog from Q3 and assuming supply chains improve, I mean, how realistic is it that we could already see something like that or something around the 8%. It doesn't even have to be 8%, but something relatively close to be achieved already from Q2 '24 or even Q3 '24 and probably be some to a level close to that for the full year '24. That's one.

With the information we have today and what is slightly different from this November last call is that we were suffering a little bit more than expected in Q4, trying to catch up in winter, as well as in this quarter. So this quarter is going to be very -- it's going to be low in activity and in profitability. But the margin profile of the year without getting into details points into the right direction. So without being too specific, the way you phrase it, the margin plan for Q4 points to be close to that.

Okay. That's great. And then maybe just one more on this, if I can just, drill a little bit further into this. I mean you just mentioned that Q1 is going to be low. Just to be clear, the liquidation damages and the provision, that was a one-off in Q4? Or will we see continued liquidation damages in Q1 as well? And maybe also, Jose Luis, if you can maybe just elaborate a little bit on where -- I mean, where is it so bad in terms of the supply chains? Because we are obviously hearing from a lot of industrial companies that supply chains are improving. And you clearly are not benefiting from it. So I'm just wondering where exactly is the issue? And what is the process that is currently ongoing to fix that from a macro view?

Thank you very much. I think Q1 is not going to be easy -- let's put it that way. I think where are the supply chain? I mean many, many, unfortunately, many European business partners are suffering big time. So we see companies going out of business, filing for insolvencies, quite unfortunate. And this cost you money, either to keep the operations running or to try to prevent from that situation. That is one point. Second point, although things have substantially improved, we still have some headaches here and there with missing parts from an electronic board to a communication board to a small cabinet. So it's not big things, but small things that are still impacting our ability to deliver and that we are still paying liquidated damages for late connection of wind turbines to the grid. Situation is improving. And I will say that as we speak, this situation should be almost normalized. But the 2 effects are creating extra cost for the company. So instability and difficulties in the supply chain because as we are not making money, we don't have much money to share with our suppliers to support them. They have inflationary pressure, liquidity issues and some of them go out of business, and this is impacting us.

Okay. That is great. Maybe just one, my third one on cash, having converted the shared alone, of course, helped you, but first half looks like it's going to be really tough in terms of margins. So I'm just wondering how comfortable you are with your current cash position?

Thanks, Constantin. That's a valid question. But I guess, and the answer I would reference back to or refer back to what I said during the presentation that now going into the year with a liquidity level of north of EUR 700 million, EUR 710 million. And even with some headwinds in Q1, Q2, we -- I feel comfortable on that end.

The next question is from the line of Ben Heelan from Bank of America.

I wanted to talk a little bit about the pricing environment. And obviously, you've seen a broad stabilization of ASPs in Q4 versus Q3. How are you seeing pricing in Q1 and as we head into 2023? And then from a contractual perspective, you've talked about the new orders that are coming through, with better margin and you're waiting for that, a legacy backlog to roll over. Has there been any material changes in the contracting terms of the new contracts and new orders that you're signing that is better protecting you from the inflationary shocks that we've seen?

Thank you very much. Patxi, can you take this, please?

Yes. Thank you, Ben. So we see we are closing actually today the quarter, and we will see ASP coming at or very close to [indiscernible] million per megawatt. So we see stabilization with respect to last quarter. And the outlook for the year, we also see stability in pricing. So pricing through inflation, but some sort of stabilization, not the kind of increases that we saw over the last 12 months. And with respect to risk, yes, we definitely increase significantly the risk profile of the contracts with which we have taken many of the orders this year. I would say, given the time lag between signing a contract and actually executing and going through P&L, that is around 15 to 18 months, that we will see already the effect of this particular topic 15 or 18 months down the line, so hence, hitting 2024.

And being slightly more specific, we try to derisk as much as we can. So doing back-to-back logistics, back-to-back steel tower sourcing and limiting as much as we can, the exposure to the commodities for certain blade materials and certain nacelles materials. But the rest we want to derisk that. So not having upside, not having downside, not fully hedged, of course, but a big portion of our cost base is covered by back-to-back contracts.

Our next question is from the line of Ajay Patel from Goldman Sachs.

Couple of questions, if I might. Firstly, I just wanted to understand ASP a little bit more. So when I compare you and your peers in this case, Siemens Energy and Vestas and just look at how the average selling price and the order intake has evolved over this last, say, 6 quarters, it seems that your order intake has increased far less than their past, on an absolute basis is lower. Now I understand for the absolute price may not be easy because of geography and scope. But more just wanted to understand the order of magnitude while the order intake evolution is lower here than maybe your 2 peers? And is it because of the offering changing in some way? Any clarity you can give here just to get us a better understanding would be helpful. And then secondly, clearly, we've had good legislative changes over the last 12 months, in particular, the U.S. IRA. And I'm looking at the in-house blade production. And I'm just thinking, is there any, almost changing of profile and where you produce, would you look to maybe add capacity in the U.S., for example, to take advantage of what's happening there? Or are you happy with the layer of your capacity at the moment?

Let me take -- and then I turn over to you, Patxi, for the ASP. Regarding U.S. IRA, we are evaluating what one needs to be done to participate in that market. We have a multiple facility in West Branch, Iowa, that we have -- we are finalizing the plans to start up again and ramp up that facility. And that facility, of course, qualifies for IRA and combined with the 4 more facilities that we have in Matamoros, Mexico, is as well facilities that can be used very efficiently for delivering to the U.S. So we are going to have an offering for the U.S. The question is when to launch the CapEx and the activity, which by the way, is not going to be that material because that plan is a good plan that was working. So we will wait for the demand to come. And then once the demand is there and materializing, we will take the decision to go ahead. Regarding ASP, I will better ask Patxi to comment.

I can provide some color there, especially 2 factors affecting the difference. One is the scope and the other one is product mix. So generator size. We are in contrast to some of our peers that seem to be lately enlarging scope. I have been saying some more EPC appetite on their side. We do have some of our large customers that require reduced scope. So scope may play a role there and more importantly, its product mix. to give you some color for a relatively similar margin and without providing too much details, of course, here publicly. But our largest turbines can be selling between [ EUR 0.75 million to EUR 0.8 million ] ASP, smaller -- our smaller generator size turbines might be selling at EUR 1.2 million to EUR 1.3 million. So it's a very significant ASP difference for a similar contribution margin are sold. So that is very, very relevant to understand. So what happens to Nordex is that we are so-called penalized from an ASP comparison perspective because our product mix is so much going to the 6x and 5x. So we are selling larger generators on average than our peers. Some of our peers are still selling significant amounts of 4 megawatts and smaller turbines, whilst the majority of our sales are going to the 5x and 6x, and that is explaining the difference.

May I just add one more question, if you don't mind. The other thing I was thinking is, you've laid out that there's this period of stability for '23 and '24 for the business before growth can kick in before '25 onwards. And I'm assuming that implies, over those 2 years with negative cash flow. I'm just wondering before we'd highlighted that I think we had an equity issuance to prove credit metrics to tap more of the U.S. client base in particular. So I'm just wondering if the balance sheet is adequate enough to ensure that you can still tackle these same clients? Or do you need to improve your credit metrics to tap these clients?

So I think from a financial perspective, again, the strengthening here that comes from the conversion, of course, will be substantial. I wouldn't go as far as you, Ajay, already kind of for '24, assuming again a negative our free cash flow. I think that's too wide in the -- too much in the future. But of course, we will have some deterioration during the year because of the free cash flow this year. But then I would believe from a standing perspective, what we see, as I've laid the slowdown in the U.S. market for us and others is not because we are not competing on that standing. We're not GE, but I would refer to Patxi. I haven't seen a deal by a customer in the U.S. being said to us well, with a balance sheet player like you are right now, is not what we're doing business with. But correct me, if I'm wrong, Patxi.

No. That is correct statement.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from the line of Dan Togo Jensen from Carnegie Investment Bank.

Just a couple left here. Maybe some color on your considerations entering now this electrolyzer scene. Why choose the alkaline technology? Why not PEM? And why not partnering up with one of the already established providers of electrolyzers? So that would be the first question. The other question would be on your long-term EBITDA margin target of 8%. When do you expect to reach that?

Thank you. I think the -- starting with the second question. The conditions for the EBITDA is that as we speak, we are selling orders with that profitability target in mind. So for that profitability target to materialize once executed, we need basically 3 prerequisites. The first prerequisite is that the market doesn't collapse, that we keep selling certain volume, stable volume. With this stable volume, if there is no substantial deterioration in the supply chain, so stability in the supply chain. And we mentioned before inflation in Europe, problems here and there, easing, but still uncertain, then we should be able to deliver this profitability target. As I mentioned before, the margin profile of the year points into the right direction. But I cannot be more specific than that. I think the evolution is pointing into that direction. We keep selling. We keep selling sustainable profitability margins other than the derivations that we mentioned in Q1, driven by suppliers, missing parts and some issues. We don't see that going forward. So we see things more stable. So with all caveats, I think we should be able to be there. Regarding the electrolyzers, we think, we might be right or wrong, that green hydrogen and green hydrogen derivatives is going to be the new oil or the new gas. So it's going to be a new commodity. And to play in a new commodity, the gainer is the one that has the lowest cost of that product. And in order to get the lowest cost of that product, you need the right sites with the right technology adapted to those sites. And we think that our combination of adapting our wind turbines to -- of grid forming capabilities combined with the alkaline technology can give a lower cost of green hydrogen produced compared to other available technologies. And I think the lowest cost of hydrogen produced is going to be the key factor to be more competitive and to be the first project to land in the marketplace.

Maybe can you share some color in which region, in particular do you expect to offer this product? I mean, the [ prices ] in the U.S. the RIA is very favorable towards green hydrogen. So is it...

Yes, yes, we can. We are developing a portfolio in U.S. because we started this development activities before U.S. IRA. And we were developing in the U.S. activity that we are now accelerating. But as well, we were developing in Chile, Brazil, Latin America and North Africa to supply to Europe.

We have a follow-up question from Constantin Hesse from Jefferies.

Just one more from my side, very quickly. More of a fundamental question, medium term. I mean, the Delta4000 has been around now since I think '18. I mean this question does come up sometimes. But I'm just wondering if there have been any developments with regards to what a new platform could look like, how long can you actually still work with the Delta4000 and what that would mean for CapEx?

Okay. So thank you very much, Constantin. I think lastly, I'm very glad to hear that my competitors and colleagues from other companies said that we need to rationalize the product portfolio, that the existing products are quite good in terms of cost, that we don't need to go further in developing more technology. The technology is crazy competitive. We just need a decent price for the technology we have. Of course, the decision to develop new products or not is not just based on the competitiveness of the technology, but based on supply and demand. So if other competitors do so, you are forced to do that. We said always that we don't plan to do so. We plan to be reactive, be prepared if others do, but we don't plan to do. I don't see others will do because at least what they are announcing is in the opposite direction to stabilize existing products, to ramp up existing products, to secure quality and to sell existing products for longer period of time. So I think with the new products we are developing on existing platform, 175. We should be good for several, several years. I don't know how many. But definitely, 6 to 10 should be doable. Going to even bigger machines is going to pose a lot of logistic challenges in Europe. It's going to require huge modularity, which I don't think is going to pay off. I don't think it's going to be needed short term in the market. So I'm quite optimistic that the existing platform will last a substantial number of years. Let's put it that way.

That is helpful. And maybe just one more, sorry, guys, because I just need to really get a better sense for this. When you speak to your suppliers, what is their sense? What are they saying? Are they saying is it not improving at all from their side? Or are they at least seeing some improvement, which later will be said to you?

I would say our suppliers are suffering like us. I mean there is an imbalance between -- of course, there is way more money into the system. That's a fact. But this money so far was not evenly distributed. Hopefully, we will aim for higher prices to get a better share on the distribution of that money into the system. And hopefully, we'll be in a position as well to share part of that with our suppliers because we need healthy suppliers as well. And some of our suppliers are having hard time. So we need to be mindful. The big factor here is Constantin, is volume. I think if the volume materializes because we, the whole sector in the middle of an energy crisis, with crazy high prices for electricity, the sector is contracting less. And this is not driven by economics, it's driven by permits. So there is no permits in the market to build new projects. The customers are really, really excited to go with more investments. I think that IRA and the new European Renewable Energy Act will improve the situation in the medium term substantially, saying we see in Germany that the country is aiming to triple the amount of installations. It's going to happen this year? No. Next year? Slightly improvement. The year after? Quite optimistic that, yes, that will be the case. And with more volume means more pricing power, means better utilization for us, means better utilization of factories for our suppliers, means slightly less difficult life for all of us.

The next question is from the line of Anis Zgaya from ODDO BHF..

Yes. I have 3 questions, if I may. So the first one is a follow-up on guidance and just to understand. What would you allow -- what would allow you to achieve 3% margin and the opposite, what would make you reach the bottom of the guidance in '23? Second question is on CapEx. Did your CapEx include? Yes, sorry. And the second one is on CapEx. Did your CapEx include the CapEx needed for the restart of the U.S. capacity? And the third one is on the EU, the European plan, to industrial plan. What is your take from this European plan to boost the European industry?

Okay. So the first question is basically selling around 7 gigawatts with certain gross margin per unit similar to the one we are selling and not deteriorating the execution for macro effects. Those are the 3 prerequisites that the volume doesn't deteriorate, that the margin, the gross margin of the order intake doesn't deteriorate and that we don't deteriorate in the execution. Those are very much the 3 prerequisites. Regarding the CapEx yes, it's all included. And regarding installations in Europe, we saw that European Union is working on the Industry Act. I think finally, it's a good signal that we know sure has been considered and categorized as strategic for Europe. There are targets there of 40% of European demand being produced in Europe. We are one of the market participants with more presence in Europe. So from that point of view, we are very happy to see that. But we still need to see how this is going to be complete in actions, what are the measures to support, the financial measures, the state [ aid ] measures, the support that the state is going to put for the industry to deliver to these targets.

So Jose, just one follow-up. In Europe, it's already the case of 40% onshore market. I mean it's already more than 40% coming from Europe.

According to our data, it is not. I think the majority of the majority of the plays are imported. Majority of the castings are imported. Majority of the forgings are imported. So the aim is to protect the remaining supply chain that is in Europe and eventually, enlarge that.

Okay. I think that we have answered all questions up to now. And I would like to take the opportunity to thank you all present in the discussions. And I would like -- I want to say goodbye and I give it over to Jose Luis for the final words. And have a good afternoon.

Thank you. Thank you very much. So finally, as always, let me outline my key takeaways from this year. First, the policy momentum with clear focus on energy, security and independent energy production will support demand of onshore wind industry being one of the cheapest sources of renewable energy. Some short-term challenges remain due to some supply chain disruption and geopolitical uncertainties. Third, the quality of our order intake and whose backlog are improving, while we make ongoing progress with our risk reduction measures. We have taken some first steps in the green hydrogen very early, initiating 2 partnership with a favorable risk profile. Last but not least, increasing electricity prices connected with potential demand growth could support our pass-through successfully, higher cost to support the way through out midterm margin of 8%. Thank you very much for your participation in our call. I wish you a nice afternoon. Happy Easter, next week. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.