SMTGY - SMA Solar Technology AG (SMTGF) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-05-10 08:29:08 ET
SMA Solar Technology AG (SMTGF)
Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call
May 8, 2024 7:30 a.m. ET
Company Participants
Barbara Gregor - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Guido Hoymann - Metzler
Lasse Stuben - Berenberg
Constantin Hesse - Jefferies
Sebastian Growe - BNP Paribas Exane
Jeff Osborne - TD Cowen
Mengxian Sun - Deutsche Bank
Gunter Greiner - WIWIN
Anis Zgaya - ODDO BHF
Presentation
Barbara Gregor
Welcome, everyone. We very much appreciate that you are taking the time for this investor and analyst call on our Q1 2024 results. This conference call is scheduled for up to 60 minutes and will be recorded. The replay will be available for seven working days. After the presentation, we will be happy to answer your questions. Today's presentation is available on our Investor Relations website.
Our agenda for today, first, I will start with an overview with some key financial highlights. After that, I will walk you through the figures of the first three months as well as our full-year outlook 2024. I expect my presentation to last about 30 minutes. After the presentation, I'm happy to answer your questions. I refer to our disclaimer on page two. So, let's move to page four, financial highlights for the first quarter 2024.
SMA starts its financial year 2024 as planned. The group sales of €362 million remained at about the same level of the prior year was 30 - €367 million. Large-scale had a strong start to the year in the first quarter, which sets the tone for a big year for this segment. Home and [iSales] (ph) are affected by the high stock levels as distributors and the normalized delivery situation as we expected since the slowed down of incoming orders already in H2 last year.
I will provide more insights on the individual segments in a moment. EBITDA also came in as expected, reaching €50 million after €60 million in Q1 2023. And free cash flow reached minus €46 million, resulting from an increase of networking capital and order backlog stood at €1.5 billion per end of Q1. Now, let's go to page five, sales by region and by segments.
On the left-hand side, you can see that EMEA, our biggest region again, decreased from 73% to 56% in Q1 2024. This is due to the high level of stocks at customers in Home and C&I in EMEA region, which led to a sharp decrease in sales for those segments in Q1. The large-scale and product solution business had an outstanding first quarter in EMEA with more than double the revenues in Q1 compared to last year....
SMA Solar Technology AG (SMTGF) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript