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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Nordex SE Q1 2025 Results Conference Call. I am Yousuf, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or for broadcast.
At this time, it's my pleasure to have to Anja Siehler. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Yousuf, and also a very warm welcome from the Nordex team in Hamburg. Thank you for joining the Q1 '25 Nordex conference call. As always, we ask you to take notice of our safe harbor statements.
With me are our CEO, José Luis Blanco; and our CFO, Ilya Hartmann, who will lead you through the presentation. Afterwards, we will open the floor for your questions.
And now I would like to hand over to our CEO, José Luis.
Thank you very much for the introduction, as always, Anja. On behalf of Management Board, I would like as well to welcome you to our first quarter results for this current year 2025.
Let me start with a recap of the first 3 months of the year '25. Overall, we are pleased to report that the first 3 months of 2025 have progressed as planned, marking on a strong start into the year for Nordex. We have delivered improved margins and achieved positive free cash flow this time already in the first quarter. In detail, firstly, our total order book comprising both services and project orders grew by a remarkable 21%. We recorded a turbine order intake of 2.2 gigawatts in the first quarter, up 5%, which translates to a 12% year-on-year increase in euro value.
Secondly, profitability levels increased across all segments throughout the quarter. Our total EBITDA rose by 53%, delivering EUR 80 million in the first -- EUR 80 million EBITDA in the first quarter. This translates into a 5.5% EBITDA margin, and a positive net income of EUR 8 million, which is more than the total net income for the full year 2024. Additionally, our service EBIT was also up by 1.7%, achieving a margin of 16.8%. Despite a soft start into the year in terms of installation and working capital outflow, we were able to deliver a positive free cash flow of EUR 4 million.
We reiterate our confidence in achieving positive free cash flow for the full year 2025 despite some provisions outflows yet to come. On the strategic side, the last few months, we have seen some positive developments in Europe and Germany, particularly. Germany is expected to auction 12 to 14 gigawatts this year, which is another strong year after 12 gigawatts of auction volume of last year.
On Europe, the commitment to the clean industrial deal underlines that renewals and wind onshore in particular, are crucial for both energy independence and also for national security. Finally, on the tariff discussions from the U.S., let me clarify again that we do not expect any material impact on our financial performance either this year or next year.
Overall, we are on track to deliver guidance for this year and to achieve our EBITDA margin target of 8% in the medium term.
And with this introduction, let me move the next slides to more detail. Regarding order intake, the first quarter of 2025, we saw a strong order intake quarter in line with our expectations. Nordex delivered 2.2 gigawatts in Q1, marking a 5% growth and a 7% increase in order intake value compared to the same period of the year before. This translates to EUR 1.9 billion in value from orders across 10 countries, the strongest individual markets were Turkey, Germany and Finland.
On the pricing side, we remain stable with average selling price up EUR 0.87 million per megawatt year-to-date, up from EUR 0.85 million in the first quarter of 2024. As always, while we are not providing specific guidance for '25, we remain confident in our order momentum, and we expect to repeat or better order intake compared to 2024.
With this, let me move to the next slide, the order book. Driven by strong order intake in both segments, our total order book grew to EUR 13.5 billion. The turbine order book increased by 12% to EUR 8.2 billion in the first quarter of 2025, up from EUR 7.3 billion in the first quarter of year 2024. Most of these orders will be installed in Europe, followed by North America, rest of the world and Latin America.
On the service side, our order book increased by 37% year-on-year, reaching a remarkable figure of EUR 5.2 billion by the end of this quarter. This growth reflects the expansion of our turbine business over the past 2 years across multiple regions, now contributing to the service order book as well.
And with this, let us move to the service business. Looking at the first 3 months of 2025, we can confirm that our service business continues to improve and we are on track to return to prior profitability levels. Service revenue grew by 19%, reaching EUR 197 million in the first quarter of 2025. As previously outlined, EBIT margins have started to improve and are on track to return to our normal margin levels of around 18% to 19% in the next 1 to 1.5 years as we commented in previous calls.
Please keep in mind though that the improvement in margins is not linear, but the trend should be visible across the next quarters. We expect our revenues to increase further at a low-double-digit percentage driven by an expanding service order book with longer tenors and increased installation activities expected in the future.
Regarding other service KPIs, the average fleet availability remained stable at 97% and the average tenor of the service contracts increased to around 12 years.
Moving to next slide, talking a little bit on installations and production. Installations reached slightly over 1 gigawatt in the first quarter, down around 5% points year-on-year. The slight decline was mainly due to customer delays with limited profitability impact for Nordex but remains in line with our internal schedule. For the whole year, we continue to expect better installation levels compared to last year.
In the current quarter, we installed a total of 180 turbines with the majority of installations occurring in Europe followed by Latin America and then North America. On the production side, turbine assembly increased by 3%, totaling 1.2 gigawatts, corresponding to 209 turbines with a geographical split you see in the chart, and blade production in units increased by 14%, with 39% in-house production and 61% outsourced as well with the split you see in the chart, slightly increasing the shares from Asia.
And with this, I would like to hand over to Ilya to go over the financials.
Thank you, José Luis. Welcome from my side as well. And as always, I will start with our income statement. So in the first 3 months of 2025, sales reached slightly above EUR 1.4 billion compared to the previous year's figure of EUR 1.6 billion, and that was mainly driven by lower installation levels and timing effects on the production side as explained moments ago by José Luis.
We again have further increased our gross margin, reaching 27.3% for Q1 compared to 23% in Q4 and 19.6% in Q1 of 2024. As a result of that uptick, we achieved an absolute EBITDA of EUR 80 million in Q1, compared to EUR 52 million in the first 3 months of last year. And this then translates to an EBITDA margin improvement from 3.3% to 5.5% year-to-date.
Going forward, we continue to expect that sequential improvement in both operating margin and in absolute EBITDA levels for the next 3 quarters remaining in the year. And given the performance we have been describing in the first 3 months, José Luis mentioned it, we ended the quarter with a positive net income of EUR 8 million.
With that, let us move on to the balance sheet. The overall structure of the balance sheet, it remains on a comparable level as per year-end. We ended the first quarter with a cash position of more than EUR 1.1 billion, almost identical to the year-end number. And like always, when you include the cash facility of around EUR 80 million, the total liquidity level is almost spot on of EUR 1.2 billion.
Working capital at minus 8.3% is in line with our planning. I'll get to that in a second. And the equity ratio was 17.6% also remained similar to year-end levels.
And now let's have a closer look on how other balance sheet KPIs have developed/performed. The net cash level reached EUR 824 million at the end of the quarter, up from EUR 359 million in the previous quarter or the quarter, the Q1 of the previous year 2024.
As mentioned before, working capital ratio stood at minus 8.3% or in absolute numbers, EUR 593 million at the end of the quarter. And for the full year, we are keeping our guidance of minus 9% or lower. And -- but now we're preparing for higher activity levels in the remaining quarters.
With that, let's go to the cash flow and CapEx slide. Cash flow from operating activities before net working capital stood at EUR 97 million at the end of the quarter, demonstrating again the strong operational performance. Working capital then saw some minor changes, absolute number EUR 71 million. So the cash flow from the operating activities after working capital was EUR 26 million at the end of Q1. And with that, of course, clearly above the previous year's level. As a result, we generated a positive free cash flow of EUR 4 million in the first quarter despite the working capital outflows I just described.
Let me point out once again that we expect to achieve a positive free cash flow for the full year 2025. CapEx spending stood around EUR 25 million in the first quarter, slightly less compared to the same quarter of last year, but we can clearly expect to catch up, and we maintain our view of around EUR 200 million for the full year. Our investment focus, like most of the times, remained largely unchanged with investments in blade and the cell production, logistics, facilities, tooling for installation and for transport. And with that, already, I would like to hand it back to José Luis for the guidance slide.
Thank you very much, Ilya, for guiding us through the financials. And as mentioned before, the first quarter fully developed according to plan, both operationally and financially and hence, no change to our guidance. We expect 2025 to be another year of continuous improvement in profitability, and preparing Nordex for the growth expected in Europe, particularly in Germany in the years to come.
Given our order book and project pipelines, we continue to be quite comfortable getting to the midpoint of our sales guidance. And we are also continuing to expect a consistent step-up in our EBITDA level throughout the next 3 quarters.
Finally, we are also confident to deliver another free cash flow positive year, even considering some provision outflows in 2025. With this trend, we are confident as well to deliver on our 8% EBITDA marketing target midterm.
And with this, handing over back to you, Anja to open for Q&A.
Yes. Thank you, gentlemen, for leading us through this presentation. I would now like to ask the operator to open the Q&A session.
[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Vivek Midha, Citi.
I have 2 questions, if I may. The first is around the service order and revenue growth, again, another very strong quarter and you've guided to low-double-digit revenue growth earlier as you have in the past. Recently, your pace of service revenue growth has been a little bit higher than that, not just in this quarter. So I was just wondering if you could walk us through the assumptions behind that?
I think, of course, revenue growth in service there are 3 main factors: renewal rate on existing contracts, inflation on the backlog that you have on the cost and on the revenue and order intake in the turbine business. And we prefer to be slightly conservative and to guide you towards what we think could be the worst-case scenario of revenue growth and to give you a view that in certain areas, it's a little bit out of our control because it's very difficult for us to forecast inflation in the future, which is a big part of the revenue growth as well.
But if we keep the current pace of order intake, this will translate into installations. This will translate into service. We are quite confident that the growth of the service business will be above double -- will be double digit that we are confident.
Understood. And just following up on that, would you be willing to disclose how much of the recent revenue growth has been driven by inflation?
I don't think we have that data but happy to get back to you through our Investor Relations to give you the information that we can.
But it's far smaller, obviously, than the order intake rate. So it's really a minor portion of regular inflation.
Yes. Well, on EUR 700 million, 5% inflation is EUR 35 million. So it's minor in a bigger scale compared to the service revenue associated with an order intake of EUR 8 billion which is bigger than that. But nonetheless, important.
Understood. My second question is more a broader question, high level about your sourcing strategy. Clearly, you're not as exposed to U.S. tariffs given your smaller U.S. footprint. But just in recent years, you've been gradually increasing the share of turbine assembly taking place in China in particular as well as India. So could you maybe walk us through how you are thinking about that sourcing strategy more broadly and how you're balancing, for example, proximity to demand in customers with things like cost optimization?
Yes. I think that's very, very, very, very spot on question because this is a continued discussion we have, what our strategy should be. So far, we have decided for diversification and optionality and having certain room to maneuver, instead of optimizing shorter best configuration possible. This has the downside that you carry under utilization that gives you the flexibility to adapt to geopolitical circumstances. And that's our strategy going forward. We don't plan to change our strategy. We plan to have foot on Europe. It might be valuable in the future, depending nonprice criteria for auctions. Of course, we need the U.S. for the U.S., and we are committed with that. We want to leverage on the competitiveness of China and as well as in India. The share between China, India and Europe for the global delivery outside U.S. will depend basically on geopolitics. U.S. is for the U.S. But we won optionality and higher short-term costs versus having the flexibility and the optionality to increase in one area and decrease in another area if needed.
The next question comes from Ajay Patel from Goldman Sachs.
I've got 2 questions, but on 2 separate topics. Let me start off with the first one and it's on margins. So if I hear correctly today, you deliver a 5.5% EBITDA margin on a relatively light volume quarter. You're on track to delivering increased profitability on service. You're seeing strong orders in Germany from last year, but also see the same this year, giving you sizable visibility on volumes ahead of this. I'm trying to put those 3 things together and thinking, well, is the 7% margins that we see in consensus for next year in EBITDA look right, given what you're delivering over this year? And really this should be the worst margin quarter over across the year, unless there's some sort of quarter-to-quarter effects that we need to take into account?
And then with that sort of mindset, I just want you to maybe revisit if you can, why 8% margins as a medium-term target is the right level for this type of business? And then the second area I wanted to tackle was just on the cash flow, very strong cash flow, right? You're EUR 250 million or so higher than you were at Q1 '24 in terms of free cash flow generation. You already started the year with a good cash position. When do we get an update on what your priorities are here? Is it to reduce interest costs? Is it to give dividends? Is it to invest? When are we going to get that clarity of picture to see where the journey is going to take us next?
Thank you very much for your questions, Ajay. I think regarding margins, I mean this quarter is a low activity. So we expect next quarters to ramp up in activity and sequentially improve our margins as well. Nonetheless, this is a project business. I mean, and different projects might have slightly different -- slightly different profitability. And we are happy with the order intake momentum, but what we are seeing in the marketplace is that the lead time from orders to execution is longer in the current configuration of countries that we operate than in other countries. So in the past, we used to sell more in North America. Hopefully, we will sell more in the future again. And that was order intake December year 1 and revenue Q3 year after.
What we see in Germany, especially is that the lead time takes longer, permitting issues for BOP and so on. So customers are slightly delayed with the permits, which is something that doesn't concern us because the backlog is there, and the backlog is improving and the revenues will be processed, but might be processed with a little bit delay. And -- this is point number one.
Point number two, as always, nothing business as usual. We still need to sell certain volume for percentage of completion this year, and this might or might not come on time. So we are confident about order intake. We expect next quarter to be as good quarter as Q1 without guiding order intake not for the quarter, not for the year. We expect a good year in order intake, but timing might affect your ability to process those orders with percentage of completion and revenue recognition this year.
So in summary, it's a quarter. So we cannot take many conclusions with a quarter. We need to let the year go and figure out where we are in 3 months from now. And the same reasoning applies to the 8%. I think we -- so far, we are committed to deliver that midterm. We see now midterm is shorter than previous quarters, but give us some time. And regarding cash flow, Ilya, you better take it?
Yes, I'll take it. And again, just finishing on José's comments for this year. I think we repeat the statement, if we calibrate you for the EBITDA margin guidance around the midpoint of this, I think we would repeat that statement from the full year call. But to the capital allocation or what comes next question, which is a very valid one, and we got this, of course, on the full year call as well is the answer is a bit similar to José Luis, it is still a bit early to say because we have generated now a net profit in the quarter, a very small one. If things develop as we clearly expect them, that, of course, will be a very different deal for Nordex in terms of net profit for the first time in many years. So that question is also coming to the front of our mind, especially with our cash positions. But nonetheless, 2 remarks on those.
The business is also growing substantially. And we will always use our leeway to support and derisk our operations in supply chain, and in every aspect of the project execution, also helping where needed in the order intake part being a bit more open in terms that we can accept. So it will, first and foremost, sustain the business. And of course, I think you explicitly asked when it comes to dividends. We're not ruling those out, of course, not. As the company goes on the trajectory, the 3 of us are just discussing now. No one can rule this out. But I think you asked the question, when will we come back to that. And I would say with a more specific response somewhere between when we go in front of you in the Q2 or the Q3 call. I think this is when we'll have a bit of a more detailed and strategic answer to that.
Okay. And then just sorry, on the 8% margin, what situations do we look at when we look at this that drive you above it. I'm not necessarily asking for hard numbers here and where the margin might go. It's just that we've talked about this volume pickup that we need to get to really kind of demonstrate the profitability of this business. We want to recover margins back to where we had in previous years. What really kicks things further on? Is it really just as simple as saying it's order intake? Or -- and then how far can you stretch this business as in any kind of qualitative things would be helpful.
Yes. I think we gave you the building blocks in previous calls. Volume was one. Service growth was one. We are still very confident about the service one, and the service contribution. We are quite confident in the volume as well. So if we keep selling similar level as last year with similar -- with similar margin level, it's not a question of if. It's a question of when. And the when is a little bit -- I cannot be more specific because the key driver there is the timing of executing the projects from our customers. And you see that in the order backlog. You see that the profitability has improved on a very low revenue level, which means that we are not paying LDs for being late delivering low volume, but we are delaying revenue recognition because customers are late. And we can -- it's very difficult for us to forecast when the company will move to the same activity in installation as we have in order intake. We should -- we will be there. We are not certain when this is going to happen. And that's for me the key criteria for achieving that. When the good order intake momentum is going to translate to a similar level of installation level.
The next question comes from Sean McLoughlin, HSBC.
First question, just coming back to the customer delays in Q1. Have I understood correctly that this was related to permits? And secondly, would you expect, therefore, to be recouping these revenues in Q2? That's the first question.
Yes. It's mainly driven by permits to enter the size to do the installation. Production is as per the plan, installation has slightly delayed the plan. We expect to recover some in the year. Overall, in the year, we expect a slightly better installation level compared to last year. But we need to -- I mean there are high level of activity quarters in installation in Q2 and Q3, let's see how those quarters go, and let's see how much we can recover. We are -- we gave you comfort that we plan to deliver the mid-range of the guidance on revenue, and that's our assumption today. On the profitability, we are quite comfortable as well.
Understood. The second question on Germany. Just wondering any early conversations with the new coalition, just what impressions you have on policy continuity in Germany for onshore wind looking out over the next couple of years?
We do it together here. I think after the noise in the campaign, I think since settled after the campaign and the formation of a new government in a record time and great to see that even the current government took the action to go for this big investment in infrastructure, which will be an enabler for many activities, for grids, for other investments in infrastructure, which are enablers for our business to prosper.
And on volumes, it's too early to say. Our view is that the new government doesn't want to roll the boat. So let's do the necessary changes that are needed with common sense and with agreement with stakeholders to make sure that Germany keeps delivering today the targets to reduce energy dependency. And of course, the new government sees renewals as a key role for the energy supply of the country. Ilya?
These are the 2 key takeaways. We're not getting any -- in those early conversations, we're not getting any disruptive feedback, where this will then land in actual terms of auction volume and the like still to be determined, but we don't see any big changes in that sense. And I think for what it's worth, the idea that was probably still in the campaign more prominent at the forefront of the reactivation and renewal of nuclear power in Germany. I think these things are basically off the table as well. So I would see those 2 things as positive for the onshore wind industry.
The next question comes from Xin Wang, Barclays.
I would just follow up on the Germany question. So in the coalition paper, they maintained the 2027 onshore wind installation target but talked about adjusting 2032 targets lower. What would be the reason for this in your view? Could we see a scenario where inflation would peak by '27 and hence, your orders would be peaking now in 2025?
If we want to calibrate that, I think apart from the coalition paper, so those years like last year, we've got 14 gigawatts of permits almost 12 gigawatts of auction volume. This year, '25, all the customers' feedback what we're seeing points to a direction of again a 14 gigawatts of permit, if not more, an auction volume of probably up to 14 or even a bit more of auction volume gigawatts. I don't think everybody has ever expected that, a, the peak would be so high and I don't think anybody expects that this will keep on those levels beyond '25. That was always clear.
Yes. So if you want to talk about a peak, I think, '24, '25 in that context is as high as it will get. I think the very relevant question was also asked in the previous round is, where will it normalize? But if you want to have it as a peak question, I think '24, '25 and then the order intakes up until early '26 will be a peaking of the industry, but we don't see that the cliff will be so dramatic.
That's very clear. And then just following up on the Asian production footprint question. I just want to ask or maybe get some idea of -- if I look at China's turbine production, this has reached 35% in Q1, and that was 1% 2 years ago. Can you maybe talk about how much this production cost base shift has helped your margin? And how much room do you have to increase the reliance on agent supply chain further?
I think we cannot be so specific there for -- I mean, we will understand for competitive intel. We need to be cautious there disclosing competitiveness of the different options. We are discussing with policymakers about different options about how to configure the industry, we cannot be that specific there.
Okay. No worries. My last question is on non-allocated costs. So Q1 at EUR 104 million looks -- or is the highest Q1 in recent history. Can you remind us what goes in there again and whether we should expect this level as a run rate going forward, please?
Yes. I mean, we have been saying that this uptick would be coming is what we see here in the actual numbers for the segment as well. I wouldn't read too much into 1 quarterly number, but it's a trend, yes. Draw a line, which is a certain inclination up and then you have the right one because we will see a different size. But it still remains a quarterly number.
The next question comes from Constantin Hesse from Jefferies.
I've got a couple left. I want to drill down a little bit into order intake, José Luis. So I mean, looking at Q1, 2.2, just wondering how much of that was exactly Germany? Because I'm just thinking Germany auctioned 10.9 gigawatts in the last 3 auctions. Nordex has a 30% market share typically tender all the way to orders take 6 to 9 months. So we should see at least 3 gigawatts coming into the books in the, I would say, next couple of quarters potentially. So if we could just discuss this a little bit. I'm just trying to understand when could we see all that volume coming into your books? Is it -- I mean, obviously, you just talked about Q2 being at least as strong as Q1. So -- are a lot of these volumes that are coming in Q2 German, are these related to the German tenders? What about Q3? Just trying to have a bit of an idea in terms of timing of these orders into the books because obviously, the permitting data, again, in March was very, very strong, which indicates tenders should continue to be pretty good in May as well. So just wondering when we should expect that to hit the books?
Yes. Thank you very much for the question, Constantin, I think order intake out of the 2.1 roughly 550 megawatts are coming from Germany -- were coming from Germany in the first quarter. And we expect asset better quarter eventually, equal or better quarter the next year, which will mean that in the last 12 months, end of June, we will be above the 8.3, which is a good early indicator for revenue growth in the future when this translates into installation.
And out of the 500 in the first quarter, I would say the volume from Germany is still to come, and we are optimistic. Let's put it that way. I'm not sure if your numbers are maybe slightly aggressive. The 3 gigawatts, let's see. We don't rule it out, but we don't guide you nor order intake in quarters or in the year nor order intake by markets. But Germany is mainly 3 players operating in the market. And the volume auction is what it is. It will be a matter of time when this auction volume will translate into order intake and share could be slightly more than 1/3, slightly less than 1/3 but we expect to be in that range.
But just to understand, typically from tender to your books, is the average 6 to 9 months roughly?
Yes. 3 to 6 for order intake and then -- 3 to 6 for order intake. And for installation, unfortunately, is longer in Germany could go from 1 up to 2 years.
Okay. That's understood. And then other than Germany, I mean, I think you mentioned in the full year call Turkey, Baltics, Nordics, any other markets that are quite interesting at the moment for you?
I would say, generally, the company has a fantastic position in Europe. And Europe is doing well in all European countries, not only Germany, of course, not such a growth as the one we see in Germany, but happy with Eastern Europe, satisfied with Nordics, with Turkey, with Mediterranean, U.K. slightly behind. We expect to pick up but maybe not this year, eventually the next year. Satisfied as well with the development of the company in Australia, in Canada and suffering in LatAm, but still selling at profitability.
So -- and North America, we haven't changed our plans. We're still committed to the market with U.S., but this might come slightly later in time, things need to settle. But all in all, very happy with the performance of the company in the markets where we operate.
Great. And then just last question maybe more towards Ilya. Ilya, looking at the margin progression for the year, I mean gross margin at 27%. When we look at gross margin versus operating margins, do you expect gross margin to stay at this level? Or is it going to be -- so in this case, OpEx as a percentage of sales clearly comes down? Or is it going to be just a bit volatile what the gross margin is concerned?
Thanks, Constantin. Yes, that gives me room for 2 responses. So Q1 is a bit skewed by a relatively weak top line. And then, of course, you have a service margin that kind of over proportionately influences the gross margin of that quarter. So of course, gross margins continue on a normalized basis to increase, but you shouldn't expect to see that gross margin number again in the bigger quarters, if I may call them like this.
So if I get you then -- walk you again to the full year and your question on the EBITDA level, absolute numbers. As José Luis mentioned earlier, every quarter will be better in absolute EBITDA numbers than the one before. And so for the full year, this also here, midpoint of the guidance range, 6% is the midpoint, from 5% to 7% is where our collaboration for you is. And then roughly, I mean, first half of the year expected to be -- to come if that midpoint ultimately is true to come in slightly below that and the second half slightly above that. And that's how we see the year.
The next question comes from Richard Dawson from Berenberg.
Just coming back to the margins within the Service business. You've clearly seen growth coming through in the first quarter to now at about 16.8%. And -- but it does appear that the rates of the sequential improvement has slowed slightly across Q4 to Q1 versus historical quarters. Is there anything we should read into this? I know there's probably a bit of lumpiness coming through on those margins. But is the time taken to get back to sort of those historic profitability levels maybe increasing to an extent?
And then second question just on CapEx, relatively light this quarter versus the full year guidance of EUR 200 million. Are you able to provide any color on the likely staging of that CapEx across the rest of the year?
Yes. Let's do both. So service, we expect the trend to continue. And as we mentioned in previous call and today as well in the call, in 1, 1.5 years, we should be back to previous profitability levels of 18% to 19%. And of course, the journey should not start -- should not stop in 1.5 years. The journey should continue. But this is as far as we can go with the visibility we have in front of us. We are quite confident with the order intake of this year. We don't see any reason why next year, things will be completely different with the visibility we have today.
And as a consequence with this visibility, give us sufficient visibility for the service business in the next 2 to 3 years, and with that visibility is as far as we can go today. Regarding CapEx, very slow start of the year, but we expect to catch up and to be in the guided CapEx around EUR 200 million for the full year, the cash out of the CapEx Q2, Q3, Q4, I don't have the exact expected distribution, but could we say even?
No, we -- I'm afraid the catch-up will take us a bit. So it was too slow. For Q1, I would say, you will see more the EUR 200 million, if you want to distribute them, you will see more of that CapEx spending in H2 than in H1.
The next question comes from Sebastian Growe from BNP Paribas.
And just 2 left for me on the supply chain. I would be interested in potential knock-on effects with regard to the supply chain and -- from the tariff debate. So how do you view the risk that supply chains might initially be more stretched again vis-a-vis to what extent might sourcing costs inflate from here? Maybe we can start there.
I would say the view we have today, the view we have today and this might change, what is very difficult for us to assess is what are the knock-on effects of the consequential impacts of the tariff situation, because it might be the case that tariffs bring inflation to the markets where we operate, and that could impact the local part of the activities.
So if we put U.S. aside. So U.S. for us, little volume this year, so no impact. And apart from the little volume, the contract that we are executing, we don't have impact on inflation. The question mark in U.S. is when is the volume going to start picking up again. And for that, I think every stakeholder is expected the situation to settle, understanding what the tariffs are, and understanding what IRR changes might happen, yes or no and what is the impact.
So this is regarding U.S. So no impact for us short-term this year or next year and timing could impact the order intake expected for that region. Other than U.S. in the geographies we operate, mainly Europe, a little bit Latin America, South Africa, Australia, the cost base of the product with the stability. So we don't see a risk of tariff impacting our cost base. The local execution base is going to depend a lot of how much inflation this tariff situation will bring. If inflation stays in the current forecast, we don't expect big impact for us.
Okay. That's helpful. And the other one question that I had is more for Ilya, because you said in one of your earlier answers around the free cash flow that we had before to keep an eye on derisking the business and you specifically mentioned the supply chain execution and also terms and conditions. I would just be interested in some more specifics what's behind those statements?
So maybe on both. I was -- the question was what I think when Ajay asked me about future thoughts on capital allocation. What I was trying to say is that we will always put our money to work first for operations. When you need to buy, and that's what José Luis speak about a new mold for putting up another line when you have to increase the speed of your tools for transportation. So whenever there arises a need of supporting your operations. This is where we want to put the money and the situation of the company, which I think is in good shape to foster and support the core of the business.
I wasn't trying to say that there's any specific risks we see coming our way from the supply chain. What I was saying is that before thinking of other deployments and of course, for shareholders and for other stakeholders, we will always put the operations first and then the product, which means the investments in our engineering. That's what I was trying to say. I was trying to make the priorities of our deployment, not any specific risks.
That makes sense. But if I may just follow up quickly on this one and then [indiscernible] promise is just when it comes to the supply chain, we talked about the peak in Germany, the peak about the potential cliff that you mentioned shouldn't be as pronounced as perceived by some probably. How should we think about the supply chain and the ability of the supply chain to handle these ever bigger volumes and particularly in Germany, are you concerned that some would just sort of play a bit on time and not go all in, if you want, on the volume increase? Or how should we think about that trajectory?
I think that let's -- how can I face it. We were more concerned than we are. So every quarter, we are more confident that all the roadblocks in Germany are slightly removing the permits for highways, availability of cranes, availability of trucks, logistics, availability of people, availability of towers. We have on top the risk strategy to complement the very good collaboration we have with our key suppliers for towers in Germany. On top, we have a derisk strategy in case more towers are needed, we can deliver. So we have a good product that fits very much the market needs and the ability to deliver which is great. So we are, I would say, more comfortable every quarter that we can deliver.
The next question comes from Christian Bruns, Montega AG.
I have to admit that all my questions have already been answered, but maybe I take the opportunity to ask a different one. And in Germany, we see very strong volumes now. And what do you think, which countries could offset lower volumes in Germany from the year '26 or '27 onwards, what do you see will be the next big markets?
Yes. In our planning is definitely U.S., is Canada, although Canada is a very high -- is currently at very high levels and is definitely Australia. So in those 3 geographies in the long term, we should expect the volume growth to compensate the potential volume decline that we might face in '28 -- what, in '27 order intake or which means '28 P&L impact. With the current order intake level, we have very good visibility from a P&L perspective until 2027. So we have -- we have 2 years to make sure that we ramp up -- that we ramp up U.S., Australia and eventually even potentially increase in Canada.
The next question is a follow-up question from Xin Wang, Barclays.
So my next question is on provisions. Just a housekeeping one. So provisions continue to increase, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of trailing 12-month sales. Could you confirm 2 things for us. One, are there any more exceptional provisions in the quarter? And secondly, have you settled part of the exceptional provisions in the quarter? How is the conversation going with customers? And do you plan to settle more this year with a better cash position now?
Shall I take the first part on the provisions numbers, and then we go to the commercial part of settlements and the like. So thanks for the question, it's a good one. So maybe to clarify that. So provisions right now are only increasing with the business. There's no extraordinary further increase of any specific items or legacy issues why we're increasing.
So with the good order intake we have and with those contracts, that's how provisions have increased. So give or take of a gross addition number of around 3%, of course, we're not showing the report, but I have come -- those additions have come down and they're just in line with the business.
When it comes to specific cases, I would guess José Luis will say, we're not going to comment on the very specific cases. But everything we had basically discussed with you and with our customers in the past has been already factored in, in all our numbers. And right now, it's basically going to the execution mode of this.
Yes, I think we are satisfied with the settlements, and we are executing.
Okay. Good to hear. My last question is on tax planning. So your deferred tax asset has increased further to now almost EUR 570 million, very material number. I think in the last call, you were talking about tax planning, which would help with your cash performance this year, if I remember correctly. Do you have any updates on that, please?
No, we don't. I think I remember that conversation we had this on the call. I think typically we're not going into specific of the tax, we believe that, of course, now with the company becoming more profitable taxes is obviously a different -- important topic altogether. But nonetheless, if you want to model your taxes for the full year, plugging in a number similar to this year's minus some efforts we're going to do, I think that would be the right way to see it.
The next question comes from Tore Fangmann, Bank of America.
Only one follow-up, maybe broadening the question on the supply chain situation, not only regarding Germany, just generally your global supply chains. How is the situation right now? Are you relaxed or are there any problems arising on the horizon?
We are, let's say, starting options but relax. I think we are happy with the stability we see. But of course, planning different scenarios to react, if needed. But there is no any single indication that we see today to be worried.
The next question comes from Rajpal Kulwinder, AlphaValue.
So I just wanted to follow up a little bit on the sourcing question as well. So when you get a firm order intake, what part of the cost base or what part of the input cost do you already source in advance? Because when we are thinking about tariffs and the knock-on effects, is there a certain amount of cost base that you can protect from that? And also, are the contracts air tight enough beyond a certain inflation range to allow you to use the price pass-through to maintain your contribution margins?
Depends from contract to contract. A lot of contracts we have tariff protection, but again, it's customer-specific and contract-specific and from -- regarding what we lock when we have order intake, I mean we always comment, we try to do back-to-back tower and logistics, and that depends a lot where the project is located. This could be up to 50% or more or less, depending the composition of every specific projects, nacelle costs and blade costs, we usually, for offers with a delivery time of 2 years, we give a fixed price for those.
The next question comes from Anis Zgaya from ODDO BHF.
So I have 2 questions. The first one is regarding Enercon and RWE agreement on long-term partnership to jointly realize onshore wind projects in Europe. So how do you see this partnership? Do you see this as a threat for your market share in Germany and in Europe? And my second one is on supply chain, again, so could you please come back to the question to -- I think you said that higher local inflation could impact supply chain, could you elaborate, please, more on this as I'm not sure I fully understand the point.
Yes. That's right. So first on RWE is a super good customer for us. And we were very happy to be their supplier, but you need to understand that it's not very sustainable to be their supplier. Everybody wants to diversify, so RWE as well, and Enercon is a very good company. So no more to comment. I think we are still confident that given our size, footprint, market presence in many countries in Europe and Australia, Canada, U.S. we can keep our order intake volume as commented. We expect a better year this year or slightly better or at least similar volume as the previous year, and we don't see any reason why next year should be different with -- of course, with the caveat of the visibility we have today. And this is very much as far as I can comment there.
Regarding supply chain, we tried to explain. I mean, today, you lock a price for delivery 2026. I say the cost of components with the visibility we have today, we are quite comfortable that we are going to see stability. What is a little bit potential risk, which, by the way, we don't see because we see people talking about deflation in Europe but not about inflation, but it could be the case that tariffs bring inflation to the U.S., no impact for us and bring inflation to Europe as a knock-on effect. If inflation comes to Europe, the local execution, people, cranes and so on, for the projects that you are executing might deteriorate slightly your profitability, which hopefully we expect to compensate with improvements in supply chain on the goods that we import from Asia. So all in all, we don't see a risk, if any, the risk could be local inflation.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Anja Siehler for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Yousuf. So as usual, I would like to give the final word to José Luis, this is a key takeaway.
No. Thank you to all of you for the time and the questions, and let me outline our key takeaways for this quarter. First of all, we delivered a strong start into the year in terms of order intake, and we are confident of achieving another good year, a better year with total order intake expected to be similar or above last year's level.
Our focus is on improving our financial year-on-year and delivering a positive and sustainable free cash flow. And finally, we confirm our guidance, and we are well on track to deliver on margin improvement and are also reiterating our medium term margin of 8% EBITDA. So thank you very much. Wish all of you a fantastic weekend ahead of us. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.