SMTGY - SMA Solar Technology AG (SMTGF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
2025-03-28 13:05:20 ET
SMA Solar Technology AG (SMTGF)
Q4 2024 Earnings Conference Call
March 27, 2025, 08:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Barbara Gregor - Chief Financial Officer
Jurgen Reinert - Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of Managing Board
Olaf Heyden - Chief Transformation Officer and COO
Conference Call Participants
Constantin Hesse - Jefferies
Lasse Stueben - Joh. Berenberg
Guido Hoyaman - Metzler
Roberto Casoni - Otus Capital Management Ltd.
Presentation
Barbara Gregor
Thank you very much, operator and welcome everyone. We very much appreciate that you are taking the time for this investor and analyst call on Our Full Year 2024 Results. Today in the call is my colleague and SMA CEO Jurgen Reinert and our new colleague Olaf Heyden, who took over as a Chief Transformation Officer and COO as of February 14, 2025.
Welcome to the call, Jurgen and Olaf. This conference call is scheduled for up to 60 minutes and will be recorded after the management presentation, we will be happy to answer your questions. Today's presentation is available on our investor relations website. The replay will also be available on our investor relations website shortly.
Our agenda for today. First, I will give an overview of our full year figures 2024. After that, Olaf will give an overview on the most important elements of our restructuring program and Jurgen will take. We will talk about the key items of our transformation program.
Last but not least, we're happy to look at our order backlog as well as our outlook for the financial year 2025. I expect the presentation part of the call to last about 30 minutes and after the presentation we are happy to answer your question. I refer to our disclaimer on page 2, so let's move to page 4. Financial Highlights of the Full Year 2024; Key Financials the group sales reached EUR 1.5 billion and were below last year with EUR 1.19 billion in 2023.
Large scale continued to perform strongly while home solutions and commercial and industrial solution revenues were still affected by the continuing market weakness. Group EBITDA came in at minus EUR 16 million after reaching EUR 311 million in 2023.
Reasons were the low sales and the resulting lower fixed cost digression in the home solution and C&I solution segment, but also increased cost and impairment loss on inventories and provision as well as expenses in relation to the restructuring program.
I will provide more insights on the individual segments in a moment. Free cash flow reached miinus EUR 184 million resulting from an increase of net working capital, related to the reduced sales in Home and C&I. Compared to the free cash flow end of Q3 2024, which stood at minus EUR 220 million, we achieved already a significant improvement and thus were able to stabilize our cash position end of 2024. Total order backlog stood at EUR 1.36 billion end of December 2024.
Now let's move to page 5. Sales by region and by segments. On the left-hand side, you can see that EMEA is still our biggest region but came down to 48% from 68% in 2023 due to the soft sales development in home and C&I in 2024....
SMA Solar Technology AG (SMTGF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript