Otovo ASA (OTOVO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

January 20, 2022

Oslo Bors NO Industrials Electrical Equipment earnings 50 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Anders Rønold

executive
#1

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Otovo's Q4 presentation. My name is Anders Rønold, responsible for Investor Relations. Today's presenters are Andreas Thorsheim, Founder and CEO; Cecilie Weltz, CEO of EDEA; and Lars Ekeland, CFO. Today's agenda is the quarterly highlights, the business updates, financial results before Andreas will give us an outlook for 2022. Andreas?

Andreas Thorsheim

executive
#2

Thank you very much, Anders. I'm afraid I'm joining you from isolation at home as I contracted COVID during this week. But undeterred, we're running this from multiple locations, the team in Oslo Center and on the outskirts broadcasting through the Teams app. So let me just start by saying that we're rounding off 2021, our fourth quarter being listed on the Euronext Growth Stock Exchange, and also the fourth quarter where we meet and/or exceed the targets set for the quarter. So we paused to reflect a little bit on that achievement. And then we start looking ahead into 2022 that we believe will be great for us. In Q4, we had growth in the number of projects sold of 223%. We exit the year at a run rate of more than 8,000 projects per year in units sold. That also means that we enter 2022 with a historic pipeline. '22 looks strong even before it starts. As we're going to look at the highlights of the quarter, the first thing I would want to transmit is that this is a big step-up for us in sales, in our ability to build pipeline and our ability to install. In Q4, our sales volumes came in at 2,066 sold projects in Europe. That's up 223% year-on-year and represents an annual run rate of 8,000 projects per year. The pipeline value that we built is up 7.2x. That's 620% to generated revenue value of NOK 280 million. That's driven, of course, by strong sales, NOK 230 million in sales in Q4, a lot of that towards the end of the quarter. Now we also kept installing during the quarter, and Q4 is another record installation quarter for us. We did 1,209 installations that's almost doubling from the year before, and we exit the year with an annual run rate of 5,000 projects per year. Now of course, when you do this, this translates into our financial numbers as well. This quarter, we had growth in revenue, growth in gross profit and in the customer value creation. That's the value of each ticket that we have with customers. Revenue generated is up 173% year-on-year to NOK 109 million. And revenue generated per sold projects, ticket per customer, up 22% sequentially from Q3 to Q4 and is now NOK 111,000. That's driven by increases in all the value drivers pretty much on the customer side, subscriptions, more batteries, larger systems and higher prices for equivalent size of systems. So good progress on that. Gross profit generated is up 195% year-on-year to NOK 21.5 million, and that represents a gross profit margin generated just shy of 20%. The subscription share of booked installations in terms of units was 21% and represented the deployed value in leasing and subscription assets of NOK 18.6 million. We end the year with a cash position of NOK 224 million. That's up NOK 17 million from the end of Q3. In terms of developing the company, we have in the last 12 months from December 2020 to December 2021 entered 3 major markets: Poland, Italy and Germany, and we will add new countries. Batteries is increasingly in central part of this business, and we want to keep strengthening the subscription and leasing model so we can grow and expand profits per system the way we've done this quarter. In the quarter, batteries are growing, and on the group level, represent 12% attachment rates on the sold projects in Q4. That's driven mostly by Italy and now also quite to an increasing degree German numbers where the battery attachment rates are above 60%, but also Spain coming along nicely there. We plan to expand the battery offering to more countries in Q1, France, Sweden, Poland all getting batteries and that is also being included in the leasing offering in our countries sequentially now. And then, of course, a topic that gets a lot of attention is how are we doing in Germany? Well, I can say, Christian Rahn and his team are doing really well, very fast launch, safer and more according to our playbook than ever before. Germany is our fastest but also highest sales number in a launch ever, very optimistic about 2022 and the ability of our German team to deliver. Okay. Let's recap a bit what we are because during the quarter, we have a lot of new shareholders, and we know that the attendance now will probably include people who don't know Otovo as well as all the old-timers. So let me just start by saying Otovo is a solar and battery marketplace. Our mission is to put solar panels and batteries in every home in Europe by creating the easiest and most affordable way to go solar. Our message is one where we, on the front side of the marketplace, attract customers. For homeowners, we're the easiest way to go solar. The way they do that is that they go to their local Otovo site otovo.no, .se, .es or .it, for example. They input their address and the software will design the system that is adequate for that exact home. And then comes the beautiful part is when the software has designed that project based on input from maps and the consumer, we will live auction out that system to installers who have already put in their cost structure for the cost of their labor, the cost of their transportation and the cost of their equipment. So we know beforehand what the cost will be. The lowest cost installer gets the project and the customer sees instantly online and order that he can book and get the systems delivered a few weeks or months later. On the installer side, we have more than 500 installer companies from the north of Scandinavia to the south of Spain and Italy. We're present with an installer workforce in 7 European countries. And together with them, we installed solar panels on roofs all across Europe every single day. If we zoom out a bit from Otovo, what we're seeing now is fantastic macro environment for solar energy, in residential solar and storage in particular. What is driving the growth? Well, in general, hardware prices on distributed energy devices like solar panels and batteries are just -- prices are coming down. And the trend line is around 10% per year. That means that solar gets the lowest cost of energy pretty much anywhere on the world, and our job is to remove the cost that isn't addressed by the lowering of equipment cost in the global manufacturing value chain. In addition, we're seeing high and volatile power prices in Europe. This means that the savings from putting a solar panel on your roof increases. And of course, it increases the demand from customers to -- for an alternative to traditional expensive volatile grid energy. Then we're seeing a massive shift in terms of electrification. And maybe the most noticeable is the degree to which European households now are getting electric vehicles. This means it increases their consumption of electric energy, and that creates more PV demand, larger installations and in general drives the adoption of distributed energy technologies. And then finally, not so much related to energy, but more consumer habits. We're seeing that big ticket purchases like a solar panel that cost EUR 10,000, EUR 15,000 are now moving online. People trust online players to deliver also the big items in their home, and we're benefiting from that being a digital sales channel for distributed energy. In the more immediate term, this is quite noticeable in the extreme price hikes that we've seen during the quarter and that have been driving consumer interest. On the left-hand side of this slide, you can see the consumer electricity prices in Europe on December 6, a day of high electricity prices, but not very exceptional during the quarter. Of course, when consumers see that type of impact on their energy bills, it drives media attention and it drives consumer interest. And what that translates to in business terms is that we have record numbers of low-cost interested customers. So we get more customers and the marketing spend associated with getting a customer into the store drops. So that's a fantastic underpinning of our business dynamics during this fall of 2021. In addition to that, we are seeing that residential solar in particular, is getting a lot of good policy support. During December, we saw just a flurry of positive changes around the regulations related to solar energy. The EU Commission has prepared for a 0% value-added tax on several goods, including solar panels and their installation for residential use, and that's proposed for later in 2022, would represent a boost allowing member countries to basically have tax-free sales of solar panels. Germany boosts its solar program. Italy has extended its 2 solar subsidy programs, the Superbonus. We're giving 110% of the investment value back to consumers who get several energy economic systems installed in their house and the Eco-bonus giving 50% of the investment back in the form of tax credit for consumers who get only solar energy. Also Sweden, simplifying and detaxing the feed-in of energy into the grid. Positive movements in all our markets, with a notable exception of Poland, where it's a little bit softer. I'll get back to that in a little while. And if you look at the overall picture, as described by Solar Power Europe, the trade body for solar energy installers and the solar energy business in Europe, their outlook for the politics of solar is almost exclusively sunny. Never seen anything like this. This report came out in December, and it says, solar energy, it's all set. Fantastic regulatory tailwinds for us. Now let's zoom in on our business. During this quarter, we did fantastic sales. The sales numbers are strongly up now at 8,000 per year run rate. 3.2x as much as the 640 sales we did in the Q4 2020, now 2,066 in Europe alone. Then we did 127 sales on the Brazilian software-driven platform that we have in play in Rio de Janeiro. Looking at Europe, sold projects up 3.2x, significant increases in all -- pretty much all markets with the strongest sales growth in Scandinavia and France. Scandinavia markets that are very responsive to consumer electricity prices, deregulated market with lots of the consumers on fixed -- on rather variable price schemes. So that means electricity prices go up, demand goes up, results in strong sales in Scandinavia. Spain also picking up momentum nicely during the quarter, up 20% quarter-on-quarter, that's roughly 100% yearly equivalent. Spain has a subsidy program launched during Q4 for PV and battery being executed in regional governments in Spain. A bit unclear to what degree that drives the market because it also -- in some regions, people are waiting for subsidies to be replenished, et cetera. So a bit of a mixed bag, but strong for our teams. We're growing sales in Spain. France, nice progress on projects sold. We have a new management team in place in France. They're super eager to take part in the acceleration in the French residential market that we've seen during 2021 and are accelerating really nicely into 2022. In Poland, there's been a bit back and forth on the subsidy feed-in programs that have existed there. They cleared Senate in November. The uncertainty for consumers in Poland is now lifted. There's a lot of old systems getting installed up until April when the old program runs out, and then we're in a new environment. So we're thinking Poland could be a bit bumpy, fits and starts -- stops and starts in the Polish installation market during Q1. But eventually, Poland will stabilize, and we have a very good outlook for Poland for the last 3 quarters. Italy continues its progress and has a good battery attachment rate. And then Germany, fast launch, 60 sales in the first month of operation. And for us, that means we need to revise upwards the target we have of doing 1,000 sales in the first year. That target seems set too low. Now let's double-click on Germany. We launched Germany on the first week of December. That was only 3 months after Christian Rahn joined us and he started recruiting his team. Christian is our General Manager in Germany, and he is a fourth time General Manager, having done travel, finance and transportation platforms before. He knows the platform game. He's recruiting a very strong team. And as you can see on the right-hand side, this is the fastest time of launch from we recruit the GM until we launch and then he has the sales numbers to back this up, very strong into 2022. Now the focus in Germany shifts from getting the marketing and sales in order, which is typically how we want to do it. We want to make sure that we are able to capture demand. And then in parallel now, we're building up the installer capacity to deliver on this. We have a strong pipeline of installers that are coming into the platform, also having signed installer companies a bit all across Germany, that's the focus for Q1 to keep building up the capacity to deliver on this in Germany, but I have a lot lower shoulders about the Germany launch than I had back in October, November when everything remained to be proven. Well, now we're starting to tick the boxes in Germany and feeling very good about that. And then a topic that we haven't talked so much about in investor presentations previously, but I know, of course, for those who have Excel sheets that calculate the value of the total for the analysts, the ticket per customer is, of course, a big importance as it is for us as a company, for us as a management, focusing on how much we can get into each basket like all good e-commerce players do. The revenue generated per customer is up 22% sequentially compared to Q3. And the reason for that is that Norwegians are buying much bigger systems than they did before as are the Spanish and French consumers. Spain and France have typically been the small system countries, but they're now catching up with the rest of Europe. I'm very happy to see that. Rather stable for Sweden, Poland and Italy. So the average system size moving upwards nicely. Now we said in Q3, that Q4 and Q1 and maybe into Q2, we would see price increases on hardware. It's known globally that the squeeze in supply chains has caused solar panel modules -- solar modules to increase in price as are shipment costs, but we're able to pass that on to consumers. And also consumers are buying more yielding systems, so the consumer price is up. Battery attachment rates up in Spain, starting to be a significant contributor to the ticket size in the Spanish market. And in Italy, also continued progress on the battery attachment rate. And we're seeing batteries now at a 12% attachment rate across the group, and we see that lifting up in all markets. The leasing share is pretty much unchanged, a little bit down on group level because we've seen more leasing growth in Spain and a bit less in other markets, and that shifts the value to smaller ticket countries, but we're seeing a lot of potential here. And I think that's going to be one of the drivers for the ticket size in 2022, getting more leasing. Okay. Batteries. I mean, what a transformation from last year. Nine months ago, I thought that batteries was something that we would do in the future, when the cost would come more down, when the technology would be more ready. But we decided to launch Italy in April with batteries as part of the offering, and man, has that proved to be something the consumers want and that we, as a business, benefit from. The attractiveness of batteries is still baffling me, and we are very positive about the outlook for the battery market and for our battery sales going forward. We started with batteries in Italy in April. We launched batteries for consumers in September in Spain. So this is our first quarter of full operations of battery sales in Spain, increasing the rate of adoption of batteries every single month. In Germany, we added batteries at launch. And now as we enter this year, batteries are being made available for leasing, both in Germany and Spain that should help the attachment numbers go up even further. Now in Q1, we're launching battery offers in Sweden, France and Poland, and that's also going to contribute to the overall battery attachment rate. Now the logic for getting batteries is going to be a little bit different from market to market. Some places, it's only a backup for a situation when you run out of power. It's only a backup source and a way to make sure your fridge keeps going when there's a blackout. But in other markets, the solar -- the use of your solar system can be extended or you can avoid grid tariffs, you can arbitrage from price fluctuations in the market. And these things will influence the degree to which we will sell a lot of batteries in the market. The high battery penetration markets are expected to be Germany and Italy; medium adoption rates, Spain; and then lower adoption rates, Poland, France, Sweden and Norway. As we said, overall now on the group level, 12% of sales in Q4 were with batteries. That number will gradually go up during 2022 and 2023. Now I'm going to hand over to Cecilie, our CEO of the subscription and leasing business, EDEA. And before doing that, I would like to set that a little bit into context. So Otovo has 2 ways the consumer can buy solar panels from us, can get the solar experience. One is to buy the project directly, then it's a one-off sale. The customer pays upfront. We pay the consumer afterwards, and we take a margin on that. We call that direct purchase. It's very straightforward. Then we have the subscription business. And the way that works is the consumer pays nothing on day 1, but agrees to a contractual relationships that last for 20 years. They get monthly bills that cover both the finance and operation of the system. The solar panel turns into a service, and we make money both on the buy-now pay-later element and the servicing margin, and these type of customers are 3 to 4x more profitable for Otovo compared to the direct-purchase customers. And taking into account that we have about 75% direct purchase and 25% subscription, these 2 businesses are contributing roughly equally to profits now. And that's something we think we can keep developing the subscription side of the business in the year ahead.

Cecilie Weltz

executive
#3

So in December of last year, Otovo acquired a majority stake of EDEA and now holds about [ 58% ] of the company. We are joining forces and that sets us up to win. Why? It unlocks shareholder value by removing the previous misalignment of incentives. It also enables Otovo to increase investment in profitable growth of the subscription segment because now Otovo also gets the full value creation of that business. If we look to U.S. peers and German peers, it seems that having the asset financing and the origination under the same ownership has become a market best practice, and it enables us to access more attractive funding. We're building a European leader in residential solar by joining forces. We're set up to be the winner. Let's zoom in on the subscription offering. We like to highlight 4 key elements. Firstly, it's zero money down, meaning customers can get solar panels on their roof without any upfront investment. Secondly, it saves you money from day 1. And that means that the monthly subscription is cheaper than electricity would be from the grids in most of our markets. It's convenient, it's worry free. By entering into a subscription contract, you also get the Otovo guarantee for 20 years. So we make sure that it works as intended. And in a world with increasing power price fluctuations, a predictable electricity bill is becoming even more attractive. We're building a great subscription business. And looking at the features, taking churn first. We practically have no churn. Customers enter into a 20-year subscription contract. Price up, we have annual inflation adjustment included. Upsell, yes, of course, once we have this customer locked in for a 20-year relationship, we're in the pole position for upsell. Batteries, and in the future, services, renewables -- renewals and other hardware. In sum, it's a great subscription business, and it generates low risk, high yielding cash flows. The EDEA transaction increases Otovo revenue generation because we're adding subscription revenue. It also increases profit generation because the profit potential on the subscription contract is 3 to 4x higher over time than that of a direct purchase and this increases Otovo's value per customer. Now we need new metrics to really reflect this increased value. So while we'll continue to report segments for Otovo and EDEA separately, new metrics will be introduced to show the joint total value creation of the Otovo ecosystem. And I'll hand over to Lars now to go through that in more detail.

Lars Ekeland

executive
#4

Okay. So looking at the financial results now. There's been 2 important changes during the quarter on the accounting side. So first of all, we've transitioned to IFRS. And then second, we did an acquisition of the majority of shares in EDEA in December, and that influences the results by consolidation of EDEA into the Otovo Group. The consequence of EDEA being consolidated into Otovo is that sales from Otovo to EDEA, which are the subscription and leasing contracts, are eliminated on a consolidated basis. And that accounts for between 20% and 25% of Otovo's sales in total. So when this is eliminated on the top line, we need to show the value from the leasing contracts in a different way. And that's the new metrics that we also presented on the market update in December. So on the direct purchase business, which is 75% to 80%, we're still going to look at revenue and gross profit, which is the revenue less the cost of goods sold. That is what you will also see going forward in the consolidated accounts for the whole group. Then on the leasing side. As the leasing sales from Otovo are eliminated, we are going to look at the value of the contracts created over 20 years. So the equivalent of revenue for the leasing and subscription business is going to be contracted subscription revenue, which is the discounted cash flow from these contracts over 20 years. Then the equivalent of gross profit is going to be gross subscription profit, which is the contracted subscription revenue less the cost of goods sold for these contracts and the present value of operations and maintenance costs over the lifetime of the contracts. Then on the group level, we're going to talk about these 2 set of metrics blended. So we're going to talk about revenue generated for the Otovo Group and gross profit generated. And then we're also going to use a metric, which shows the total balance of leasing contracts at each quarter, and that's the accumulated contract and subscription revenue. I'm now going to go through how this looks this quarter. And then this quarter is a transition where EDEA has been consolidated for 20 days only. So there's different ways to look at this transition quarter, and I'm going to go through that now. So on the first box here, we see Otovo reported as if we had not transitioned to IFRS and EDEA transaction had not taken place. So revenue ended at NOK 103 million, a gross profit of NOK 17.6 million, and we're in the higher end of our guiding on the revenue side. Then due to the IFRS transition and also a change in how we account costs related to the subsidy scheme in Italy, we have a -- on the Otovo segment that is shown in Note 4 in our financial report, you see the revenue of NOK 102 million which is a reduction because these costs related to the subsidy scheme has been moved from operational -- OpEx to a reduction in revenue. And that also influences the gross profit. Then in the third box, we see the consolidated result for the quarter, where EDEA -- sales to EDEA has been eliminated for the 20 days from 8 December where the transaction was completed. So that's a small reduction in revenue now. But if EDEA had been consolidated for the whole quarter, we would have had consolidated income statement that looks like the box 4, the blue bars in box 4. So that's the revenue from direct purchase. And then we have added here the new metrics for the leasing contracts in box 4. So this is how we're going to look at revenue generated and gross profit generated going forward. So on a pro forma basis for this quarter but going forward, it's going to look like that, we ended at NOK 109 million on the revenue side and NOK 21.7 million on the gross profit generated. If we compare this with the previous quarters and conscious of this not being 100% equivalent with the introduction of new metrics, but we ended at NOK 109 million for the quarter, up from NOK 88 million last quarter, up by 173% from fourth quarter 2020. On the gross profit, we were at NOK 21.7 million, up by 197% since last year. On the EBITDA, we are then introducing the same methodology. So the revenue is the revenue generated. The EBITDA is down to NOK 49 million for this quarter compared with NOK 32.8 million previous quarter. The change is mainly driven by increased costs due to growth. We entered Germany during Q4. And marketing and sales commissions related to the massive increase in sales during this quarter is also influencing the cost side. The income from these sales will come when these are installations in the subsequent quarters. On the -- the other item is nonrecurring items related to the EDEA transaction on the advisory side and also certain changes in timing of expense recognition in connection with the transition to IFRS. On the cash flow, we ended the quarter at NOK 224 million comfortable cash position. That is NOK 43 million down from operating activities. But then the acquisition of EDEA comes in and that makes a total increase of NOK 17 million from previous quarter. On the subscription business, we have increased our number of total subscribers from 780 to 1,056 during this quarter, an increase of 35%. The annual recurring revenue from leasing contracts is up to NOK 6.7 million from NOK 4.5 million previous quarter. And then the accumulated contracted subscription revenue is NOK 94 million, up from NOK 69 million previous quarter. And then finally, on our ESG metrics. During the full year of 2021, we have installed 22.5 megawatt peak. The energy yield from these installations are 1,053-kilowatt hours per kilowatt peak on average. And this makes the total reduction of CO2 emissions over the lifetime of these installations to 240,000 tonnes of CO2. I will now hand back the word to Andreas.

Andreas Thorsheim

executive
#5

Thank you very much, Lars. So now let's look at how things are set up for the rest of 2022. So in terms of our ability to build a pipeline, it is up 7.2x from the same period last year. We entered 2021 with a pipeline value of NOK 39 million and 805 projects in the pipeline. This year, we're starting with 2,515 projects in the pipeline, each of them with higher value and a total pipeline value of NOK 280 million. So very happy to have this pipeline because it represents almost the equivalent of our full 2021 revenue locked in for delivery as we start the year. Now as you can see from me broadcasting from home today, there is uncertainty on a lot of things in our society. And that means that we have less visibility than we usually have on the time of delivery of the pipeline. Global supply chains remain a challenge in hardware. We've battled that really nicely in Q4, but it would be wrong to say that we know how this is going to go exactly in Q1 and Q2. Omicron is affecting customers, installer workforce and our workforce. That creates some friction in the delivery. And of course, as usual, since we have a lot of projects in the Scandinavian region, winter seasonality, especially the snow loads in March can shift projects between Q1 and Q2. So that means that the exact delivery time of this pipeline is uncertain. But I want to assure everyone that we plan to clear this pipeline in the first half of 2022. And in addition, be able to install sales that we do in this period so that we will come in at NOK 250 million to NOK 350 million revenue in the first 2 quarters combined. So looking at 2022, we are seeing an explosive 2022 ahead. We stepped up in 2021 and now we're all set for more in this year. We're entering 2022 with a very strong pipeline. We expect H1 revenue generated to be NOK 250 million to NOK 350 million, although with limited visibility on the split between the first and the second quarter. This quarter has bolstered our confidence in our ability to scale to new European markets and our ability to grow market share in both new and older markets. Our expectation for 2022 is growing market share in all existing markets, expanding ticket size and the product offering with more leasing and more battery as a share of our business, and thus improving value per customer in every single market. And as we promised when we entered Euronext in February last year, we said we would launch 2 markets after the German entry, and we will launch new markets in 2022. So with that said, this is a management that is very excited about 2022 and enters this year full of self confidence. And with that, we will answer your questions. Thank you very much.

Anders Rønold

executive
#6

Thank you. First question. When do you expect the leasing rate to pick up towards 30%?

Andreas Thorsheim

executive
#7

We expect the leasing numbers to pick up in the second half. Now as you understand, a lot of the first half is already programmed in and sort of contains the business methods and the offerings that we had prior to the acquisition of EDEA. So we do work our way through previous actions and previous sales, get that stuff installed. And then the upgraded version of Otovo that contains EDEA will make itself noticed in the second half of the year.

Anders Rønold

executive
#8

Thank you. Next question. Why do you expect only very modest revenue booked on sales sold during first half of 2022 considering the fact that the pipeline is midrange of the NOK 250 million to NOK 350 million guidance?

Andreas Thorsheim

executive
#9

Well, as I said, this has been a start to the year where it's -- we're not even being tactical about our guidance. The visibility on installation times is quite difficult. As I said in the previous slide, we plan to add -- to clear the pipeline and we plan to add projects sold in 2022 to be delivered in the first half of 2022. To what extent that happens and how that looks is something we have little visibility on. And I think it wouldn't be humble to think that we have certainty on that, but I'm very optimistic about this. And we see our installation capacity is good, is increasing in all the markets. And it's really sort of March, April, May, we're seeing a big acceleration, and the shape of that acceleration in deliveries is hard to gauge at this point. But we're very confident in the outlook for 2022 and I think that whatever doesn't get installed in Q1 flows over to Q2. And certainly, we're not putting the brakes on sales. We're going to sell a lot, and I think consumers deserve to have their systems installed within 6 months.

Anders Rønold

executive
#10

Thank you. Could you give some flavor on the expectations for new market launches in 2022?

Andreas Thorsheim

executive
#11

Well, I think our thinking on market launches was, back in 2018 and '19 when we did the first one, that this was a major event where we were betting the shop and it was something that contained a lot of doubt. Now we're seeing that a methodology that we developed can be used in markets that from the outside looks slightly different with great success. The same methods we have in Sweden, Spain, France, work in Italy and Germany. And so the question becomes where do we go, how many markets do we go to, and what are we looking for there? What we like in markets are markets with a big population because that means that the size of the prize we're fighting for is bigger. So we obviously want the more populous countries in Europe. We like countries where the business case for consumers is good. That could mean lots of sun. It could mean high electricity prices. It could mean that you have a predictable and good program of support. And then we would like to have an ecosystem of installers that has high quality. So we have these -- and then we want it to be a market where we can sell leasing and battery projects preferably. We've said before that we only need about 1,500 sales plus/minus in a geography to breakeven there. So that means we can sustain an Otovo business in at least 10 countries in Europe. So that's a long list. All countries above 5 million people can sustain an Otovo that is profitable. So now our job is to select between those, go for the best risk rewards and then come back to you with news on how we're doing this. I think we don't want to give anything away to our competitors. But we think we'll go in there and steal market share very fast wherever we go.

Anders Rønold

executive
#12

Thank you. Can you say something about the development in SG&A going forward?

Andreas Thorsheim

executive
#13

Yes. So most of our development will be in the local teams in terms of where we make the investment. We're recruiting teams to recruit installers, that's called account managers, technical sales staff, customer success locally. So in general, most of our team expansions happen in the general manager organizations on the ground in the different countries where we've entered recently or where we will enter. And we stepped up a bit on the head office side in order to contain this company that now is at 8,000 sales run rate and 5,000 installations run rate per year. That's a wholly different beast than we were a year ago but a lot of the step-up has been taken out in Q4.

Anders Rønold

executive
#14

When can we expect Otovo margin excluding the leasing profits to reach 20%.

Andreas Thorsheim

executive
#15

I think we can have old markets selling at those rates very shortly. Then the country mix and the pace of entry is going to mean that the mix is going to look different, but it's rational to keep going on new markets. So we see that the old ones can go beyond 20% on old reporting. And we have focused on this. We think the margin will be in the -- will be affected by the entry in Germany in Q1 and Q2. But we're picking up margin points wherever we can. And the question is just whether it's in the Q3 or Q4 that the effect of marking up in many countries makes up for the new ones.

Anders Rønold

executive
#16

Thank you. Now a question to the CFO. How much of the operational expenses increase was related to the Germany launch and EDEA acquisition?

Lars Ekeland

executive
#17

So the Germany launch is twofold. When that is coming to the accounts now for Q4, it's partly certain nonrecurring expenses related to establishment of the company, establishment of legal agreements and assessment of regulatory framework in Germany. But then again, we also have added approximately 15 people in Germany, which is a personnel cost and OpEx related to the new office but this will be a cost also going forward. If we look at that in addition to the nonrecurring costs related to the EDEA transaction, those 2 together amount to approximately NOK 7 million.

Anders Rønold

executive
#18

Thank you very much. That was it. Thank you very much, everyone. Good day.

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