Hello and welcome to Alfen 2021 full year results. Please note for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. I will now hand over to your host, Marco Roeleveld, CEO of Alfen, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you, Stefano. Good morning and welcome to this Alfen full year 2021 webcast. Let me firstly introduce the participants on our side. This webcast and the questions that may come forward will be handled by the management board of Alfen, Jeroen van Rossen, CFO, Michelle Lesh, CCO, and myself, Marco Roeleveld, CEO. Despite the impact of COVID on the whole society, the wider economy and everybody's well-being, we are proudly presenting the results of Alfen for the full year of 2021. We as a company are confident that in the course of 2022, we will be able to leverage on the increased European focus on the energy transition, although the supply chain is still challenging. Assuming you have noted the usual disclaimer, we can now start with the presentation. First, I will start with the highlights of 2021.
Michelle Lesh will continue with setting the stage for further growth. In the last section of this webcast, Jeroen van Rossen will go in more detail on the financials and the outlook for 2022. We now can go to sheet 4 with the financial and commercial highlights of 2021. Our revenue in 2021 has risen to EUR 249.7 million. This represents a growth of 32% compared to 2020. The adjusted EBITDA in 2021 came out on EUR 36.8 million. This is a growth of 51% compared to 2020. Also in 2021, we continued our strong growth with existing clients throughout Europe and important new client wins. Some examples will be addressed in more detail later on in this presentation.
As proof of the growing momentum in the energy storage market, I would like to mention the contract with Aggreko Products, where we will provide three stationary storage solutions, including grid integration, as well as four mobile energy storage systems. By actively managing our supply chain, we continue to safeguard supply deliveries. Where above all, we prioritize deliveries to our customers. With regard to the revenue outlook for 2022, our projected range is EUR 330 million-EUR 370 million. This revenue growth is driven by the growing momentum of the energy transition and especially for EV charging and energy storage, we project strong revenue growth. We reconfirm our strategy of profitable growth and our ambition to strive for the medium-term objectives as stated at the IPO in 2018.
We can now go to sheet five with the revenue split. As already mentioned in the highlights, overall revenue has grown with 32% in 2021. For energy storage, the revenue growth was limited and amounted to EUR 17.7 million. However, we saw the battery energy storage market picking up momentum after COVID-19 headwinds. With markets being less affected, we see momentum getting stronger and stronger, and we have seen our qualified lead pipeline grow strongly in 2021. An example for the improved market condition, I can refer to the U.K., where the government's simplified planning permission processes reduced some lead times from about two years to a few months. Another example for the improved market conditions is that our request for generating capacities where battery energy storage solutions are considered for a relevant part of this plant's generating capacity.
Altogether for energy storage, we are convinced of the market potential and our strong market position. For EV charging, we benefited from increased volumes on the framework agreements, as well as from new clients, and the revenue has doubled to EUR 103.8 million. Across Europe, we see positive market developments for electric driving. More and more car manufacturers commit to electrifying their cars, while governments keep on stimulating electric driving through subsidies and other incentives. Our internationalization strategy continued to deliver growth across Europe in 2021, and around 60% of our EV charging revenue was generated outside of the Netherlands. The smart grid revenue grew in 2021 with 8% to EUR 128.2 million, where we're seeing temporary challenges such as project delays and supply chain pressure.
The impact of the energy transition on the grid becomes increasingly clear. Grid operators progressively talk about how the grid is reaching its limitations and how it needs to be reinforced and expanded. Towards 2050, in the Netherlands alone, around EUR 100 billion of investments are needed to make the grid future-proof. Now we can continue on sheet six with a strong EBITDA growth. Based on our operational leverage strategy, in 2021, our adjusted EBITDA increased to EUR 36.8 million. This represents a 51% increase compared to the EUR 24.4 million in 2020. As a percentage of revenue, the EBITDA grew from 12.9% in 2020 to 14.8% in 2021. We continue to drive forward our strategy of levering our fixed cost base to further improve profitability.
On sheet seven, we go in more detail on the supply chain. We have a strong focus on mitigating actions against supply chain challenges. The pressure on the supply chain can be seen throughout the world as a result of high demand for components, especially electrical ones. Over the course of 2021, we took three actions to manage supply chain challenges, and we have been able to mitigate those pressures on up to this point, as can be seen in our revenue growth. The first action was the formation of an integrated team with purchasing R&D, sales, and operations. On a daily basis, this team monitors and engages the supply chain and takes purchasing and logistical decisions. This allows us to quickly react to changing circumstances.
As a second action, we increased engagement with our suppliers, and besides our tier one suppliers, we also engaged with some of our tier two and tier three suppliers in order to increase our circle of influence and to secure supplies. Thirdly, we made strategic down payments for batteries and electrical components in order to safeguard and enhance resilience in our global supply chain. We anticipate that the supply chain pressures will continue well into 2022 and potentially even into 2023 before the situation will be normalized. As stated already in the highlights, above all, we prioritize delivery to our customers. Of course, as long as this situation lasts, we keep monitoring and managing our supply chain closely. On sheet 8, we summarize the progress on our CSR strategy. Corporate social responsibility is a key focus point of Alfen.
In 2019, we formulated our new CSR strategy. Based on a stakeholder survey, we have focused our CSR strategy on four elements that were also aligned with the relevant United Nations sustainable development goals. The progress on our CSR strategy is therefore presented based on those four focus elements. I will not go in detail on the complete summary on this slide, but limit it to the top left regarding the 7 UN sustainable development goal that stands for affordable and clean energy. Looking at our progress on this element, we conclude that one, we have helped to avoid the emission of about 2.2 million tons of CO2 with our installed charging stations for electric vehicles.
Secondly, that we have helped to avoid harmful emissions with our smart grid projects, where we've been able to make solar energy available for about 206,000 households. For all aspects of the progress on our CR, our strategy, I would like to refer to the relevant section in our annual report of 2021 that's available on our website. In 2022, we plan to set environmental, social, and governance targets for our own business activities to further drive our sustainable performance. Michelle will now continue with setting the stage for future growth.
Thanks, Marco. Now I'd like to talk through how we're setting the stage for growth in 2022 and beyond. First, on slide 10, we continue to deliver strong international revenue growth, 72% CAGR in the last five years. At 38% overall international revenue, we are moving towards our goal of 50% of our revenue from outside the Netherlands. The growth is primarily driven by the expansion of our EV charging business line. In addition to the market opportunity, we've strengthened our sales and service organization across Europe. We've also seen our customers expand their reach, which is evidenced by our products being in approximately 30 European countries. As we move to slide 11, we'd like to share a sample of our commercial success that reinforce our growth across all three of our business lines.
In smart grids, we secured a domestic contract with Liander to supply secondary substations, as previously announced, as well as a new international contract with Vattenfall for secondary substations in Sweden, and a contract with Chint to provide transformer substations to multiple solar projects. In EV charging, we continue to solidify our international footprint. For example, we had wins with Auto Group in Germany, No limit in Poland, and Fifty-Five in Belgium with a project to support lease provider Arval. In energy storage, we had wins for both our stationary and mobile solutions. First, as previously mentioned, we secured a contract with Aggreko Products to provide three stationary storage solutions ranging in size up to 40 MWh, as well as four mobile systems.
With Greener and Bredenoord, we secured contracts to supply our mobile battery solutions, expanding Greener's fleet to more than 60 mobile systems and supporting Bredenoord's accelerated path to sustainability. In addition to these selected wins, as we move to the next slide, we continue to see our markets develop favorably with double-digit CAGRs into the future in all three business lines. In EV charging and battery storage, we also see success in key European markets with unexpected growth projections by countries. In EV charging, for example, this is driven by multiple market stimulants, both financial and regulatory, to support the transition to EVs. Now moving to slide 13, we'd like to share the investments we continue to make in our solution portfolio to serve the market. First, in smart grids, we developed a new variant of our state-of-the-art active substation, especially for the new Liander framework agreement.
We also launched a new innovative prefab walk-in station, especially designed for the Benelux market. In addition, we've also driven continuous improvement in our manufacturing facilities to safely drive speed and efficiency to support future growth. In EV charging, we introduced our next generation hardware architecture that provides increased flexibility to accommodate different market requirements and allows for accelerated corresponding software developments. We also implemented the ISO 15118 standard that provides more extensive communication between the charge points and EVs. For energy storage, highlights for 2021 include the newly engineered scalable battery energy storage solution that we developed for utility scale applications, but also an innovative mobile fast charging solution where we developed a mobile skid with a 300 kW fast charger and combined it with the battery mobile so that we can charge heavy-duty vehicles anytime, anywhere.
As we continue to slide 14, we'd like to share that in addition to the market growth and investment in technology, we also continue to invest in other areas. We've expanded our personnel to 636 FTEs in 2021, up from 571 in 2020. We've invested in our manufacturing capability, both efficiency improvements and more production lines to support our EV charging business and smart grids business. We have also concluded a lease for a new building of more than 30,000 sq m, which doubles our footprint in Almere. This supports our further expansion of our manufacturing, production, and office requirements. Now I'd like to hand it to Jeroen to walk through our financials.
Thank you, Michelle. We're now on slide 16, and let me start by stating that we are proud of the financial result in 2021, which was a record year in the history of Alfen and where we once again delivered profitable growth. Now we'll go into more details, starting with the revenue and other income. That revenue and other income increased from EUR 189 million in 2020 to EUR 249.7 million in 2021, an increase of 32% driven by growth across all our business lines. The gross margin slightly declined from 36.7% in 2020 to 36% in 2021. We continue to benefit from our strong market position and leverage from increased scale, but this was partly offset by a challenging supply chain as well as by product mix effects.
Personnel costs increased by 16% from EUR 34.4 million in 2020 to EUR 40.1 million in 2021, showing operational leverage. The average FTEs increased from 571 in 2020 to 636 in 2021. Other operating costs increased from EUR 11.1 million in 2020 to EUR 13.5 million in 2021, also showing further operational leverage. If we then exclude one-off costs and special items, we arrive at our adjusted EBITDA. That increased from EUR 24.4 million, which was 12.9% of revenues in 2020, to EUR 36.8 million, being 14.8% of revenues in 2021. An increase of 51% driven by our operational leverage strategy.
Finally, our adjusted net profit increased from EUR 12.5 million in 2020 to EUR 22.1 million in 2021. From the income statement, we now go to the balance sheet on slide 17. I'll start with the non-current assets. They increased from EUR 37.8 million at year-end 2020 to EUR 43.1 million at year-end 2021. Our capital expenditures amounted to EUR 11.7 million, which was 4.7% of revenues, compared to the EUR 9.6 million, which was 5.1% of revenues in 2020. These capital expenditures included investments in our IT infrastructure and data security, in our R&D test facilities, in new molds for the smart grids business line, as well as in production and warehousing-related improvements.
Included in the EUR 11.7 million are EUR 7.7 million of capitalized development costs, which demonstrates our continued efforts to invest in innovations for the future. Working capital increased from EUR 2.5 million at year-end 2020 to EUR 23.8 million at year-end 2021. This increase is related to an increase of our stock levels. Given the supply chain challenges, we maintain higher safety stock levels, which is further supported by strategic stock down payments for batteries and electrical components to safeguard our supply chain. Finally, we go to the outlook for 2022 on the next slide.
We anticipate that markets for all of our business lines will continue to develop favorably, driven by the energy transition. As we do not yet see a reduction of supply chain challenges, and these challenges may continue well into 2022, we also continue to deploy mitigating actions against these supply chain pressures, of which the details are explained earlier on in this webcast by Marco. As we anticipate further growth of our business in 2022, we will also further invest in our organization, in our facilities, in the production, and in new innovations. Finally, from a revenue perspective, we expect our revenues to be in the range of EUR 330 million-EUR 370 million in 2022. We are now at the end of the presentation, where I will hand over to the moderator for any questions. Moderator, could you please take over?
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question or make a contribution, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star two. Please ensure your line remains unmuted locally. We currently have two questions on the line. The first question comes from the line of Emmanuel Carlier from Kempen. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning all. A few questions. I will take them one by one. The first one is on your sales growth guidance for 2022. Could you provide a little bit more color on how you expect the growth rates to be for the different divisions? You mentioned we see especially strong growth at energy storage and EV charging, but maybe you could be a little bit more specific on that. Thank you.
Hello, Emmanuel, here Marco speaking. Let me first start with stating that we have already included in the sheets also that we see that the market on all our business lines show double-digit growth percentages. The biggest growth potential is there with energy storage and EV charging. Because there we don't only look at our domestic market, but also at the growth potential throughout Europe. Where, say, if you take EV charging, we have already built a strong market share in the Netherlands. If you look at the, say, impact of the Netherlands across the whole of Europe, then of course there is much potential in there. We see also then as a consequence that the market is picking up, especially in the bigger countries in Europe, being U.K., France, and Germany.
Due to the fact that we have already set our market positions there for many years ago, we can leverage not only on the market growth but also on our already built market position in those countries, so that we not only grow with the market, but also we think we are able to leverage on our existing customer base and be growing more than only the market percentage. If you look to energy storage, that market was for us affected most by the COVID situation. What was already stated in the third quarter results of last year, we saw that momentum was coming back into the market. Our qualified pipeline was three times higher than in the year before. Now we're happy that we can see that we only...
that we also have been able to transfer off into orders and that we are as a consequence confident on the outlook for 2022 for energy storage. To give you a little bit more flavor, at this moment of time, our order book with, say, fixed order, our order backlog is higher than the revenue we had last year for energy storage.
Yeah. Thank you for that. Is it fair to say that the biggest step-up, I guess, will come from energy storage in terms of growth rates in 2022? Because EV charging was already very high in 2021. Is that correct?
We don't give, say, percentages per business line, but we also are optimistic that all our business lines will contribute to the growth. What I already said is that due to the fact that we can leverage on our footprint throughout Europe, the biggest growth potential is there for EV charging and energy storage. I would not say that EV charging is limited in growth. What we already see is that maybe the Netherlands is quite more advanced in relation to the electric driving. We see that all other countries are now stepping up, and we see that there is a huge potential not only for 2022, but also in the years after, to grow our revenue portfolio throughout Europe.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. The second question is on profitability. There are actually two questions included in the question. You expect strong sales growth, so from that point, I would expect to see continued positive operational leverage effects. On the other hand, there are also two potential negatives. One is the fact that as you grow more in energy storage, that might weigh on profitability, in my opinion. Secondly, we have seen plenty of competitors getting listed the last couple of quarters, and all these companies are targeting market share gains. The question is, do you believe that the competitive intensity will pick up, and that this might have an impact on your gross profit margin going forward, and total profitability as well, of course? Thank you.
Well, there are a couple of questions in that question, but I'll try to answer them. It's fair to say we have a profitable growth model. Already at the time of the IPO, we said we want to gradually increase our gross margins. But the major contributor will be operational leverage in supporting that further growth of profitability. I think that's also what you see and what is showing. I hope you appreciate that we never give guidance on profitability per business line, but I can assure you they all contribute. But of course, in a project business, not every gross margin per project is equal. So that's what we try to do.
Having said that, we are always trying to optimize our growth margin, but the major contribution to further profitability will come from operational leverage indeed. As said, we also said here that we reconfirm our medium-term objectives as stated at the IPO. Still the goal is to drive our adjusted EBITDA to mid- to high teens, so between 15%-20%. With respect to your question on the competitive landscape, it's true that you see that a couple of the competitors also are more in the public profile, but it's not new. We saw that already also in the past with investment rounds or whatsoever. They are seeking that public profile to also further internationalize.
It's not that easy to spread across Europe in an instant. We already built up our presence for a decade throughout Europe. That's why we feel we are very well-positioned. Yes, we see it, but it's not new to us because it was also there in the past.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I will go back to the queue.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. The next question comes from the line of Thijs Berkelder from Oddo. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, gentlemen. Congratulations on the great performance. First question is coming back on the outlook. If I simply look at Q4 revenues multiplied by four in EV charging, then in 2022, you already are at a 50% growth rate. How much capacity potential is in EV charging from the EUR 37 million revenue level in Q4? At what point in time do you need the new factory to come in? When can we expect the new factory to be opened?
Hello, Thijs. Marco here. At this moment, we are more or less preparing the site for the new building, but the new building will firstly be used by the smart grid solutions business unit. Because, yeah, we have to accommodate also for the growing demands that we expect from the grid operators to accommodate the growth that is necessary for them to cope with the grid transition. If you look to the charging stations, yeah, we have to bear in mind that the building we have now in operation has only been in operation for the last 1.5 years. We have still room to expand our production capacity quite strongly there. What we're trying to do is try to envision the revenue growth for the coming years.
What we've always said, we don't want to have that production capacity is a limiting factor for our revenue growth. What we will always try to do is to make investments quite well in advance to be able to cope with the revenue growth. Especially for EV charging, we've always stated that it is asset light and we can relatively quickly expand our production capacity. Although it will not go by itself, we have to, of course, take measures to be able to handle the revenue growth in a sensible way. We are quite confident that within, say, the given outlook we have, we will be able to cover not only the revenue growth in 2022, but also the revenue growth that we expect in the years after.
On gross margins, you do not give explicit guidance. It primarily depends upon the split per segments and per projects, probably. Is that a logical assumption, or should we expect due to, let's say, higher pricing in the supply chains right now, that in 2022, it's quite logical that we first will start with lower gross margins?
Well, I think I indeed appreciate that we do not give an outlook on gross margins. If you look at Q4, I think it's fair to say that to some extent, you all see there are somewhat higher costs due to the decisions that we take, especially in the logistical costs, where you sometimes see that we speed up the supply chain to make sure that we have the components in time, but then accept a slightly higher logistical cost, for example. The majority there is related to product mix effects, which can from time to time have an impact on the gross margins. Looking forward, you could expect to some extent a bit of impact on the gross margins.
At the same time, of course, we are continuing to execute our strategy of profitable growth and also to leverage our scale further. We try to keep that in balance as much as possible. Of course, also, we are looking at situations where we can further optimize our margins and our prices into the market. It's a combination of it all. We monitor it very closely, but it's not a one-dimensional answer I can give because there are multiple elements influencing it. Having said that, as we also said in the past, the major contributor of further rise of the profitability will come from operational leverage.
Yeah. Clear. Next question is on personnel. You indicate average personnel you've increased to 636. At your end, what kind of personnel number were you looking at? And let's say, what do you need to recruit in 2022 to indeed make the products you want to deliver?
Well, at year-end, we were around 700 people. Somewhere in there, in that area. We are driving that further up. As said in the past as well, the direct staffing has a bit more direct relationship with the growth in revenue, but the indirect staffing definitely has not. It's not our aim to drive the number of people as much as we drive the growth on the top line. Of course, we do need some extra people to help us in the support of further growth. That's not new for us, so we're used to having people come in and absorb them and make sure that they contribute to the company.
Okay. Can you indicate how many people are working in R&D right now?
Yeah. More than 80 people are working in the R&D department. If you only look at-
Yeah.
We have all grown, so we hire some people, so around 100 in total, Thijs.
Do you also, let's say, you mentioned an IT budget of EUR 60 million somewhere. What part of that EUR 60 million is, let's say, hired in externally, so, maybe in your cost of sales? What part is hard CapEx and what part is people? Your own people, roughly.
I think you're referring to the EUR 60 million mentioned in the webcast on the total spent on R&D.
Yeah.
That's including the EUR 7.7 million of capitalized development costs. It's a combination there, and the other is in the research area. Also the amortization of the earlier capitalized development costs are included in that number. It's a combination of the elements there, but it's to express the total spend that we have more or less on the whole R&D.
Yeah. Maybe for Marco, can you explain what you're really now developing in R&D? Is it just on the products mentioned in your, let's say, in your slide deck currently or ongoing, or are you also looking at potential addition of new product lines? Many clients always ask, so I have to ask it. Are you also preparing for fast charging and what is the plan there?
I appreciate your question. I also, you can appreciate that, whether we are at this moment busy developing new product lines, that is sensitive information and that we'll only go to the market with this information when it is clear and we are projecting the market introduction. I think you can more or less conclude that we are continuously monitoring the development within the overall market scheme, and also looking which element or products or market areas could be entered by Alfen by leveraging more or less existing knowledge and adding extra element to that. It will be possible that, in the coming year, there will be elements where we can use our technology and market position to further expand.
On the other hand, our main focus at the moment is in further developing the existing product lines, in making them better suited for different markets to increase, for example, the speed of development. In the, as I mentioned, introduction of the new hardware platform, we have chosen for a way to have it more open to step up in increasing speed for the bringing new features to the market, so that the system is more open to add elements in it on a timely manner.
Also, with the battery, we see we have announced not only that we have now a new way to combine systems to behave grid-scale products for the market, but also for the mobiles, where we see that not only that we think there should be a market for the product, but that we have tuned the products to be an optimal fit. We have built that experience in the last years, and we also see what things are necessary to have a mobile container, because it sounds easy, right? Just put this equipment in a container and now it is a mobile equipment.
We have also seen if you put such a type of equipment on different type of applications, different sites, you have to accommodate the product to be safe, to be reliable, to be tuned for this application. We are confident that we've been able to then transfer our experiences in an optimal way so that the product is meeting the demands of our customers. That's also proven by the fact that not only Greener is buying product for, say, the third or fourth time and now expanding to more than 60 units, but also Bredenoord, that is in the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark, one of the major suppliers of temporary power.
has now made a choice to do that with Alfen energy storage equipment, well, that we can improve on the track record we built in the last years, not only to be able to build systems, but also to make the system resilient for all kind of different applications that can be encountered on sites, whether it is festivals or build construction sites or all kind of different applications where the mobile systems are being used in.
The one maybe for now, final question is on you said you're preparing your EV charging equipment for new markets. Are these markets still only inside Europe, or are you also preparing for markets such as potentially U.S. and or Asia?
Hi, Thijs. Right now, Europe continues to be our area of focus. We see significant market opportunity here, and we'll continue to stay focused on our further development in Europe.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Jan Richter from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three of them. The first one is on the gross margin. Could you help us or could you talk us through the extent to which a different revenue mix in 2022 with maybe a bit more, you know, with maybe a higher share of storage, the extent to which this different mix could impact the group gross margin? That would be helpful if you could help us understand this better.
Yeah. Once again, Jan, I appreciate the question, but we don't give a gross margin outlook per business line. Of course, it's fair to say, and I think we also know that not a single product or a single project has a comparable gross margin. As we explained before that there are product mix effects within each business line as well. I also explained earlier on that a transformer substation of a specific type can be different if you sell it from one customer to another one with some additions. It also has a different gross margin.
Going forward, I think most important is that we always said we do our utmost to optimize our margins where we can, whether it's in selling prices to the market, in our positioning, in increasing scale, in purchasing power, all these elements are in the equation. But the major contributor is, will, and remains to be operational leverage. That is the big contributor to driving our profitability further ahead in time. The focus will be on all elements. But it's very difficult to precisely predict because it also depends on the product mix.
In terms of gross margin per segment, I mean, are we still looking in 2022 at a roughly similar gross margin across all each business lines or not?
If you compare it to 2021, I think that's a fair statement.
Understood. The second question is on supply chain. You do talk about, you know, issues or supply chain bottlenecks continuing well into 2022, nothing new here, potentially into 2023, which is more new from your side. I mean, if we just look at some of the core components, which ones do you expect supply chain tensions to ease first? Then which components do you think, you know, it could take a bit longer for supply and demand to adjust again?
Well, I think I reversed that question to where do you might expect that some challenges are remaining. I think that's especially in the electrical components. Why do we say might also go into 2023? Because there are a lot of companies also already announcing, especially in the chip area, where they say, "Hey, we do see that there's no reduction of pressure yet." I think the CEO of ASML also mentioned that he said, "Well, might take into 2023 before it's normalized again." It's very difficult to predict. For us, it's not new. It's business as usual. We're used to it now. We explained in the webcast the number of actions that we take. I think we are on top of it.
We're acting very quick. We can take actions on a daily basis to adjust to have drop and replace components to make sure that we have it in time, the further diversifying our supplier base. Yeah, we do everything to support our growth. We overcome all the challenges. We do not expect that it will be different in 2022, so we're optimistic in that area. We will continue to stay on top of it. It's also fair to say that at the moment, we do not see a reduction yet. That's why we will continue in taking the actions that we take under the direct supervision of us as Board. Safeguarding the supply chain was high on the Board agenda and will remain to be high on the Board agenda. That's what we want to emphasize.
It's more or less business as usual today.
Okay. Last one. EV charging will again grow very, very strongly in 2022. The question is in two parts. First one is, what investments have you made into your international organization ahead of the growth, which you expected for this year, 2022. Then second, as far as investments into the EV charging organization are concerned in this year, where are you going to put the biggest effort? Is it on either by functions or by geographies, where do you see some weak spots which you would like to address this year?
Yeah, I think where we've really focused our efforts in building out our international organization is in our commercial organization, both sales and service, really making sure we've got localized people on the ground able to serve those markets, understand the market needs, bring that back to the business and help develop those markets. I think as you look ahead in 2022, continue to focus on key markets such as the U.K., France, Germany, as well as other parts of Western Europe. Again, with a focus on how do we build out our commercial sales and service organization to support our customers in those countries.
Okay. Understood. Yep. Very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Maarten Verbeek from the IDEA!. Please go ahead.
Good morning. It's Maarten Verbeek of the IDEA!. Sorry to bother you again on the gross margin. Firstly, I would like to look at the development of the gross margin in Q4, which was about 400 basis points below Q4 of last year. I was just wondering, you discussed it really a little bit. What was the impact of the cost of sales, and what was the impact of the business mix? Could you elaborate on that?
Yeah, I cannot give you the precise split on that one, but they both contributed to that decline. I think, looking backwards in history, the gross margin in the fourth quarter last year was very high, also driven by product mix effects. Now we saw product mix effects which had a bit of a declining effect in this fourth quarter. That's what I can tell you about that. Furthermore, I think I explained how we look at gross margin, how we monitor it, and how we look at it. It is.
It is fair to say that what we said at the end of Q3, we take some decisions, especially to safeguard supply chain or have components, timely in and take some higher logistical costs. It takes some time to also pass those on further in the market. The effect of those decisions were not that yet shown in the Q1 to Q3, because there's always a kind of time lag before you use components in your production process. With a bit longer lead times in the supply chain, it also takes a bit longer time before you see those effects, included in your gross margin. I think that's to some extent also the effect that you saw in Q4 of this year.
Having said so, we continue to position ourselves in an optimal way, have further leverage from increased scale, because it also makes a difference, if you buy components for 10,000 charges or for 100,000 plus charges. We also see some opposite effects.
Okay.
Maybe we also restated our objectives that we released at the IPO. One of the objectives was that we have more or less the aim to raise our EBITDA in the range of 15%-20%. We still have that objective, and we think we will be able to strive for that objective.
Okay. Thank you. Just once again, getting back to the gross margin statement you just made, you mentioned that full year 2020 is expected to be gross margin virtually unchanged against the full year 2021. Was that statement for the group as a whole or per business unit?
I think the question was, do you see different growth margins per business line?
Correct.
If you compare it now until what you saw in Q4, for example. There the answer was no, we don't see different growth margins per business line. I did not say that the growth margin will be the same in 2022 as it was in 2021.
Thank you. What's your view currently about acquisitions? Are you still looking for those, or do you think you deprioritize organic growth, and you feel that should keep you busy enough?
Like we said already for the many years, is that our prime focus is autonomous growth. We also said that we're not against maybe an acquisition, but it is not our prime focus. What we've been doing the last years is step by step expanding our international position in each individual country. If the country goes into next phase, then we are expanding our organization to cover, say, what Michelle already said, our sales capacity and also our service capacities in those countries. For the coming time, this is also the emphasis we want to bring forward, is that we are basing our strategy on autonomous growth, although it cannot be excluded, but it's not our prime focus.
Lastly, you mentioned you reiterated your midterm targets you stated at the IPO. According to me, there was a slight difference, and I just want to know what I should read into that. When you IPO'd, you mentioned you expected a compound average growth above 40% and now on average 40%.
I think, more or less, there's always a question of what is the difference between an aim and a target, and is that in the minimum. We can agree with you that the wording we had at IPO was whether it is at least or more than. I think also we're not stepping away from this element. I think what the reference is that during the impact of COVID, we saw that the growth went down, and we're now more or less back to the track that we think that when COVID now more or less has been overcome, we will go back to the ambition growth percentages as what we said during the IPO.
What you see now in our projected range, it's from a little bit below 40% to maybe above 40%. There's also with the reference that COVID is not away yet. Also what we see is that in the supply chain, there is still some area of doubt whether everything can be mitigated. That we think that based on what we have seen in the developed auto market in the last, say, month, what we see now and what we think we can achieve, the target range is, we see a more or less good representation of the Alfen capabilities within this given market growth environment.
Okay, thank you very much.
The next question comes from the line of Emmanuel Carlier from Kempen. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning again. I still have two questions left. One is on EV charging. Just want to check if your view has changed on the fact that you believe AC charging will be the dominant form of charging in terms of electricity consumption because you have quite some reports who are more and more saying that super fast charging will be needed. Secondly is on energy storage. I think for all of us, this is probably the segment that we still know the least about. I think it would be very helpful to maybe reiterate what's really the competitive advantage you have in that segment. For the other two, I think it's quite clear, but for this one not that much in my opinion. Thank you.
Okay. Maybe first I'll react on the EV charging question. When you look at the EV, we know that in the whole ecosystem of EV charging, AC and DC charging have both to be there. But on the other hand, what we see is also that if you all the reports that whether it is 80, 85 or 90% of the charging stations are being projected to be at, say, AC charging, in AC charging range. I think if you talk to any EV driver, he wants to charge his car when he's not driving. He wants to charge his car at home. He wants to charge his car at the office.
He wants to charge his car at the leisure center, at the hotel, at the shopping mall. We are convinced that 85 or 90% of the requirements will be on AC charging. Of course, there will be many locations also where DC fast charging is a necessity because with the limited range of cars you need, say, if you have a longer trip, you need the flexibility to be able to fast charge your car. Maybe on some locations that's a convenient solution, but we have seen at the customers or as a company also, we have more than 50 electric cars in operations.
Almost all of our users favor AC charging when you're not driving, whether it's at the office, at home. Of course, sometimes there is no escape. You have to do the fast charging along the highway or some other locations. That's for us what we see the minority of the situation. Where our client base has a strong focus also in trying to resolve this, these charging stations at home, public and semi-public locations.
Yeah, maybe to add to Marco, we said it before, and these HPC chargers also needs a grid connection. The majority of them are our customers, so we grid connect those fast charging stations to the grid.
Okay. We go to your question relating to energy storage. It's a combination of elements. Where of course, we are not only there for a year, but we have, say, more than 10 years experience in this marketplace. We've been able to use that experience to get to a point that we have high quality, highly reliable products with a proven concept and proven line of operation, where we also can easily adapt now our systems to the changes in the market environment, but also changes in the availability of batteries, availability of other components. We have a very reliable software layer where we can integrate all the different components, adapt also the performance of our systems towards the different application of our clients.
We have seen also in the last month where we have been able to transfer several quotations also in a competitive environment to orders. Because the client is not only looking at does the system work, but also is leveraging, is using our proven track record, our quality of the product and our proven service organization to choose for Alfen as the supplier for their requirement on on energy storage solutions.
Can you offer these solutions you believe at a lower cost versus competition, or is that not too important for your clients at this moment?
I think all clients are sensitive for cost. To bear in mind, it is not a piece of equipment where you can say, okay, if it is not, I'm not fully happy, I'll buy a new one next year. This is a decision for our clients they make for uses of the battery storage system for at least the coming 10 years. They extremely value the reliability of the partner they're choosing. They want to be able to understand why we can as a company can not only supply a project, but also warrant the performance of the project for that long time period.
What we have seen is that our customers value not only the fact that we can bring a good solution, but also value the experiences and the translation of those experiences in a high quality, highly reliable product, you know, that we have been building up in the last years.
Okay. Thank you.
There are no further questions on the line. I will hand over now to your host to conclude today's conference.
Thank you, Stefano. I would like everybody's for their participation in this webcast. There were some good questions I think, where it also gave us the opportunity maybe to pinpoint a little bit better where to emphasize the performances of Alfen, how this can be valued. I want to close this meeting by thinking maybe again and that we speak again in future to see whether our promising future will be.
Reality.
Will be reality. Thank you all.
Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.