Good morning, welcome to Vestas presentation of first quarter of 2023. I just want to start with thanking first of all, our customers, partners, suppliers, and also our 28,500 colleagues around the world for working tirelessly throughout this Q1. Of course, a good start of 2023, which we will talk more about. Let's therefore go into the highlights and the details of our Q1. We had a revenue of EUR 2.8 billion. That is a growth of 14% year-on-year, driven by higher average pricing on deliveries, higher volume, and also a 29% growth in the service business.
Our EBIT margin ended positively at 1% profitability improvement driven by the sale of the converter business, lower warranty provisions, but also the very strong service business performance in Q1. The order intake of 3.3 GW come from wind turbines orders, and that's up 12% year-on-year with an ASP of 0.89 impacted by mix, which we will take you through in one of the coming slides. The solid capital structure now with more than EUR 1 billion of new financing in Q1, testament to the strong credit both recognition of Vestas but also in the market. There was a EUR 500 million sustainability-linked bond issue plus a EUR 750 million RCF that was signed with a strong group of banks.
Vestas, we are leading the industry forward with discipline, so despite driving the industry maturity, Vestas maintains a leading position in the global market, and we'll give you a breakdown of that in one of the later slides. With that, let's go to the business environment. This slide is well known to you. On the left side, this is the one we have been working through over the last three years, and we still keep repeating that. Top priority is to keep the health and safety of our colleagues around the world, but also maintaining the business continuity of all our operations. This is still our operating priorities also in the year of 2023, where we expect to still have a rather remaining sort of a challenging environment throughout 2023.
We have seen the Russian exit of Vestas in Q1, and we also seen that are still being combined with certain geopolitical uncertainties around the world, but we are working through it. De-inflation is definitely becoming more pervasive. If we look at it's impacting our production, it's impacting some of our execution costs, and it also impacting some of our activities in the discussion with unions across some of our European markets. When we look at the market design and also the permitting, it's still a barrier to new installations. That is, to us, surprisingly, giving the strong need for more energy solutions, especially in Europe. We will talk more to it. This is probably one of the disappointing factors that still remains.
If we see then also that we still have some difficult conditions for completing projects, we are doing that across all continents, but we also see that there are still shortages of certain components, and we also see that still brings some stop and go on some of our factories as well. Rest assured that we will spend this year in having our full focus on getting back in black and therefore having Vestas in profitability by end of the year, which is still a key focus for all of our colleagues around the world. Let me just give you a short snapshot of the market share of 2022. Goes without saying that we appreciate we are on top of that when we look at the onshore/offshore installation, excluding China.
I think the other takeaway here is that we in a year from 2022 see that the global installation actually dropped from 47 GW to 41 GW, which for us is disappointing in a year where probably the world needed more energy than ever. I think here, this is what we will be working with, but also rest assured, we will drive both Vestas and also lead with the example to the industry of having that strong discipline commercially. We will not compromise the commercial discipline in terms of for volume, that's for sure. When we then look at the power solution in Q1, the commercial discipline intact, this is a necessity for, first of all, the industry-wide profitability and improvement, but it also is the foundation for getting Vestas firmly back in profitable territory.
We had a strong order intake. It's up 12% year-on-year, driven predominantly from Americas and South Africa. We saw in the quarter a 1.3 GW Casa dos Ventos orders in Brazil. It's the largest onshore order ever for Vestas. I will also say it's a recognition of the customer, the partnership, and also the personal relationship to the customers in Brazil. We've also seen that there is a slow permitting process and also regulatory uncertainty that remains a challenge in both the onshore and the offshore. In offshore now, probably more related to the PPA offtake levels, that still form a challenge for the players, developers, OEMs. Governments have to start moving.
When we look at our ASP, it declined from EUR 1.15 million per MWh in Q4 to EUR 0.89 million per MW in Q1 2023. That is impacted solely by mix effects from scope, country, and FX. The underlying ASP and profitability is absolutely not diluted. This relates to that we, in Q4 last year, we had EPC. We have hardly no EPC in this quarter, and it will also see that you have seen the first repowering coming through in the U.S., where there are actually no towers included, which of course are some of the main explanations in exactly that scope country mix. We will talk more about it, I'm sure, in the Q&A.
When we look at the strong momentum we are having in offshore, we've now passed 10 GW of total preferred supplier agreements. We are very pleased to see that coming across also in a couple of regions. We are looking forward to that, but it also forms basis of firm discussions with governments and customers in those markets. You will see the normal charts on the right where you can follow the development and then, as I said, respect the trend of where we will go also with ASP. To the service business, stellar quarter in Q1, strong start of the year.
We of course appreciate all our colleagues, the continued high activity with customers forming basis on top of the normal platform and the normal portfolio of service business, but there is higher transaction on one-off also in Q1. The service order backlog increased to EUR 31 billion in the quarter. Inflation indexation continues to protect the profitability of the backlog, and of course also very importantly to keep in the higher inflated environment we have in all our markets. We also saw Covento, it's the Vestas digital platform for aftermarket parts and services, building momentum. They are opening more markets, and they are getting more of both our customers, but also global suppliers on that platform, and we welcome more of that.
When we look to the right, we can see the service order backlog, as said, EUR 31 billion. We have 147 GW on the service, and we have an average years contract duration in excess of 11 years. Below, you will see the breakdown per the regions. Again here, really appreciate the strong development across all regions in growth. When we then look at the Vestas development for Q1, it's a high activity level in many of our major energy markets, but it's also a quarter where we are putting a lot of effort into is still working with the quality of the total project pipeline we have.
In Q1 2023, Vestas' pipeline of development projects amounted to 32 GW, which Australia, U.S., and Brazil being the countries with the largest project pipeline we have. During the quarter, Vestas secured 1.1 GW of new pipeline projects. Net-net, that's no change actually to the end of last year in Q4, which also is a reflection of that when we look at development, we're very disciplined, and also if there are projects that doesn't make sense, then they also will drop out. If you have the two large numbers here, new secure pipeline and the overall net project pipeline, you can do your own gross and net within there. That's just a natural reflection of still remaining very disciplined around this business. Finland generated 50 MW of order intake in the quarter.
Appreciate that. That's of course start of the year. More to come. We look forward to share that in the coming quarters with you. We look at the sustainability in Q1 2023, another quarter where we just move and work diligently forward. We are still the most sustainable energy company in the world. We are number two sustainable company in the world. We will keep working with that. We will keep bringing initiatives from our operations. The lifetime CO2 avoided by produced and shipped capacity decreased by 21% from Q1 2022. That's due to the lower produced and shipped turbines, natural reflection of what you can see in the, in the chart and the full message from us.
When you look at the carbon emission from our own operations, they decreased by 4% due to lower activity, but also against that, of course, we have had a much higher activity in the service business, so there are some underlying movements in that number. When we then look at the safety, we are now introducing a new methodology of talking about total recordable injuries. We feel it's very, very important when we talk about total recordable injuries, that we also include anyone that is on our sites and therefore in and under our leadership going forward. We now here release 2.1, which includes now contractors on site, and we will on the coming quarters follow that development with also a little bit of how do we build that statistics.
We will come back. You'll be able to follow that over the coming quarters as we go. This is also why there is sort of a little bit of a broken line between Q1 2022 and Q1 2023. They are not comparable in that sense. Very pleased. We still have more than 40 injuries in Q1, and that's 40 too many. Of course, we'll keep working hard on that discipline. With that, I would like to pass over to Hans for the financials.
Thank you, Henrik. As we usually do, we start with the income statement, where we can clearly see that the profitability is improving from the low levels we had in Q1 2022. Revenue increased by 14% year-over-year, driven by higher average pricing on the deliveries by higher volumes, and by increasing service activities. Gross margin increased by 5.7 percentage points year-over-year to 6.6%, driven by the higher revenues in both segments and also the improved margins that we saw in the power solution segment. I'd like you to remind you also of the KK transaction, which impacts the quarter with sale of technology to the tune of roughly EUR 150 million.
This is the line you can see here to the right, that sits somewhere above the EBIT line. All in all, that takes us then to an EBIT margin before special items, that increased by 15 percentage points year-on-year, EUR 40 million, 1.4%, driven by all the aforementioned reasons, gross margin, better fixed cost absorption in the quarter, but also the fact that we do not have the same types of offshore adjustments as we had in the first quarter of 2022. Turning then to the segment overviews, we start out with the power solution segment, where, as I said before, we can see that the profitability is improving.
Revenue increased by 9% year-over-year to just over EUR 2 billion, driven by high activities in the EMEA region and in the Americas. The EBIT margin before special items stood at -2.7%. This is actually an increase 18 percentage points year-over-year, driven, as I mentioned before, by the sale of the converter business, by the lack of offshore adjustments in this quarter that we had last year, and not least the high activity levels that we also saw. All in all, I would say that the underlying profitability is improving. I would also like to say that we are still also seeing profitability hampered by the execution of the low-margin projects that we have in the backlog.
Still some work to do there for sure. In the service segment, we see strong growth and a stable EBIT margin. Revenue increased 29% year-on-year from EUR 623 million to EUR 806 million, driven by higher activity levels overall, inflation indexation in the contracts, and also by higher transactional sales. This is then offset a bit by negative currency effects. The service business generated EUR 183 million of EBIT, which corresponds to a margin of 22.7%. Also there, we see an improvement compared to last year. Turning to the SG&A, I think it's fair to say that we see a level that is quite similar to what we had last year.
SG&A relative to revenue stood at 8.2% on a trailing 12-month basis, which I said is just pretty much the same. I don't necessarily want to spend too much time on this page. Net working capital increased in the quarter. However, this does reflect the normal seasonality we would be seeing. This is driven by an increase in the level of inventory, also by higher levels of supply payments in the quarter, which are then only partly offset by the down in milestone payments that has come in. As mentioned, I would say that the net working capital development reflects the seasonality we see in our business, where we build inventory in the first half in preparation for a busier second half of the year.
This is what we have seen for many years, and this is certainly also what we're expecting to see in 2023. That leads to the cash flow, where the operating cash flow before changes to working capital actually increased by EUR 560 million, driven by a higher profitability in the quarter. It actually takes us to EUR 248 million of positive cash flow. Of course, that is something positive to see. Working capital changes then take us down to the levels you can see here to the right. Furthermore, adding also the CapEx we're seeing, we get to levels of roughly EUR 1.1 billion.
All in all, that is in some ways also a reflection of the seasonality we see in the business. As mentioned, also on par with what we had last year. Investments came in at EUR 107 million. I would like to highlight here that the sale of the converters and controls business has had an impact by roughly EUR 60 million. Additionally, we did see also low investments into transportation equipment and transportation tools. All in all, I would say that the number you have here, you can't multiply that by four and then get to an estimate for the full year.
It is artificially low, and as such, you're not seeing changes either for the same reason to what we expect for the full year on this metric. Warranty provisions remain at elevated levels, but we certainly work very hard on this. We are doing our best to make sure that we say diligently do what we can to see improvement in this area. Specifically, for the LPF, it continues to sit at high levels. This is a consequence of the continued extraordinary repair and upgrade levels that we're seeing in the business. Warranty provisions, as mentioned earlier, is something we are working very much to spring into better shape.
We're seeing for Q1 a level of 4% of revenue, which is actually an improvement compared to last year, of we came from 7.8%, so almost half of what we had last year. As mentioned, quite an improvement on that metric. That takes us to the capital structure overview, where we have a net debt to EBITDA level of 5.8. It is mainly affected by the low EBITDA levels we are seeing on a trailing 12-month basis, as we've been discussing before. The profitability that we are seeing clearly has an impact on this metric, as there is a nominator and a denominator. When the numbers are very, very low, of course, you can see quite some swings in this.
I think important to say is that in March, we issued a EUR 500 million sustainability-linked bond, which matures in 2026. We also signed a EUR 750 million revolving credit facility, which matures in 2024. We had Moody's give us a rating of Ba2 with a stable outlook. Speaking of outlook, I would like to hand it back to you, Henrik, to talk a bit about the outlook.
Thank you so much, Hans, for the walk through there. Now to our unchanged outlook for the full year 2023. Revenue sits between EUR 14 billion and EUR 15.5 billion . Service is expected to grow minimum 5% of that. When we look at the EBIT margin before special items, sits between -2% to 3%. Of course, also you're now seeing the full effect of the divestment of, or to KK, which we also said in February. Service margin is expected to be approximately 22%. Then as Hans rightly said, don't do the four quarters because the total investment is expected to be approximately EUR 1 billion.
Some of those both ramp up in manufacturing and technology, of course, will affect this. As always, with this comes the outlook here is based on the current foreign exchange rate, and it also still comes, as mentioned in the operating environment, still in an environment where there are uncertainties and there are still challenges out there. There is a higher uncertainty than normal. With that, thank you for listening in, but also now opening the Q&A to all of you.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touchtone telephone. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to two questions. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. First question comes from Kristian Törnøe from SEB. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you and good morning. My first question is about the cost predictability, sort of reflecting on our discussion last year call, a lot of talk about sort of unexpected cost and the challenges from supply chain disruptions. Henrik, in the beginning, you did talk about sort of continued challenges out there, but maybe you can just elaborate a bit on the cost predictability. How much unexpected costs do you continue to see?
Thanks, Kristian. I think here, we can see it's easing. That also means that the mitigations we have to do are becoming less or fewer. For that matter, I think it's easing. We are just saying here, we still have components, critical components that doesn't ease up, from just a China reopening in Q4. Then we have a world that just operates normal. That's not the case. We have all along said it probably takes some quarters, and that's why we are here, sort of saying we are executing on projects that are in the backlog that still will be affected by that, but it should be easing up over the year, to hopefully become less and less.
No one would be more pleased with that than we if that happens.
That's quite clear. Thank you. My second question is on the service business and the transactional sale. Given the fact that you don't change your guidance on growth for service, I guess you are not assuming transactional sales to continue at the current level. Is that correct?
I think, we are super pleased with the performance of the service business. We also see they operate in an environment right now where there is a criticality of getting the assets to operate because the energy and the electricity output is so valuable. So there is a drive for transactional sales, and there is a drive for parts and others. I will also say here, Kristian, you're moving from a first half of the year into a second half of the year in 2023, where your comparable quarters also hits Q3 and Q4 last year, where you had respectively high 30% and into the 40% growth in Q4 and Q3 and Q4.
From a math exercise point of view, you are suddenly hitting very difficult quarters to hit with that. We will rather say here, let's look at a business that grows more than 30% over 24 months. We are really pleased with it. Therefore, we are very happy to see the business doing what it does right now. There are transactional sales, and of course, there are indexations included in that growth number. I can also promise you, if we can do more, we will do more.
Understood. Thank you so much.
Next question comes from Akash Gupta from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yes. Yes. Hi, good morning, everybody. I have two as well. The first one is on competition and particularly the topic of Asian competitors in the last few quarters. Can you talk about how do you see the landscape today versus, let's say, 12 months ago? Is there something that needs to be done to address some of the concerns, particularly on the cost side, given the cost difference between you and your Asian competitors? The second one is, I was wondering if you can update with this offshore wind situation.
I think your customers, launch customers, EnBW has already given final investment decision to the project, and I'm wondering if you can talk about when shall we expect the firm order from EnBW for this 900 MW German offshore wind project. Thank you.
Akash, thank you so much. I will address, and I don't think we need to say Asian. We can probably say Chinese competitors in that sense. I think the world develops as the world develops, and we see China in our market. We haven't taken Chinese orders for approximately two years. We delivered quite a lot of it by end of the last feed-in tariff environment in China, which is also why I'm saying here, that is not in our plans and any planning or any expectations or for that matter, reliance of turnover in China. Outside China, a different game.
We of course work with customers across the world, and there are some of the markets where it seems for us, even though we also have footprint across the world, that some competitors operates at artificial lower cost levels. We can welcome that because that means that there must be an underlying company investment or an underlying country investment into taking those infrastructure orders, and that we refrain from. We run a company on behalf of the shareholders, so we don't participate in subsidizing a solution build-out like that. On the offshore, yeah, as you're rightly saying, at some point in time, individual customer discussions and PSAs will lead to a firm order intake. That is solely down to the final discussion between us and individual customers.
I will have to ask for your patience to say that we will announce it when it's a firm order. Then you will see it in the mix of it. You're right. Offshore is more transparent in that sense for all of us.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Ben Heelan from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning. Thank you. I wanted to ask a question on margins. The performance in Q1 was pretty good. You've talked about costs getting better through the year, and it makes the low end of your margin range look relatively unlikely now. I just wonder if you could give a bit of an update on where you expect to land.
We expect to land within our guidance. I'm saying that. Come on. We have had a good start of the year. When we walk through this year, guys, you have to allow us that we are executing on the probably the most variated priced backlog Vestas has ever had. We will have a lumpy ride through the years of the four quarters. We only need two or three of those projects to be from one quarter to another. It one quarter maybe looks better or one quarter maybe look a little worse. For us, it's about executing this year because that means we will have a year away in the backlog where we will still have a red number around the turbine solutions in the year. That's what we have to turn a corner with within 2023.
We are doing that. We think we have had a good start of the year. When I look to Hans that sit next to me here, we are also a bit scarred from what we came out of in 2022. We execute the year, and then we will give you the update when we get to the next quarter. There's no need of changing the guidance at the current point. There are still many variables in the execution of this year.
Okay. Okay. Then a follow on in terms of pricing. You highlighted the underlying pricing development has been broadly stable. Could you talk a little bit about the discussions that you've been having with customers now that costs have largely normalized, you know, on kind of forward-look basis? Are you seeing pressure from customers around pricing, or is there still a recognition that you guys need to make money medium-term? How should we think about that?
Let's say it like this, I think there is a good sound discussion. I think there are customers that are saying, well, I don't think any customer picks up the phone and saying, "By the way, we think we'll pay a bit more for the solution." When we do this, it is tense. There are also now projects that are stalled or in discussion because either there is a delay or there is a PPA that doesn't match the project. I think that's what is being triggered right now. As we all along said, we have had a good quarter, 3.3 GW.
Some of those orders have been discussed for much longer than normally because there has been so many variables in the last four quarters for customers to then get financed and get it done. I think the positive here balance is that in most of the markets, the energy and the electricity is still at a pricing level where the turbine price is not out of sync with the underlying value of the output. That's important because, of course, if that was not the case, then we will be in a very different situation. We've also seen in this quarter huge changes in financing and the financing market, but we are also able here to find with customers the good solution to that.
We're actually quite pleased with the execution in the quarter and also in the mix of countries and others. Discipline on the commercial, nothing else.
Okay, great. Thank you.
The next question comes from Supriya Subramanian from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning, thank you for taking my questions. Two questions from my end as well. I guess coming back to the permitting issues, and, you know, of course the environment remains challenging on that end. Do you see any change in attitude? We've seen some countries make some progress there, like Germany and Spain as well. Do you see maybe the recommendations of the EU Net-Zero Industry Act having any impact on the behavior of the countries? I'll start with that and then ask my next question later.
I think we have to split a lot in between guidance and recommendation and then actual decided projects and also signed and approved permitted projects. A couple of the countries you are mentioning, I still think it's embarrassing to see that we have a larger part of auction rounds being unsubscribed. As long as that's the case, Supriya, that then we can probably conclude that then you're not doing your job as a, as a politician right now to make that happen. The truth and the fact of life is that 2022 in EU, you had a goal of 30 GW, you got 15 GW basically done and executed. That's half good. No, it's not. It's really bad in a year where Europe is still in shortage of energy supply.
That's what I'm said. We keep saying it as an industry, we keep saying it as a company, as an executive, you keep saying it. It seems like we are running in a different cycle. We put infrastructure up for 30 years. Somebody else is focusing on potentially the storyline for 12 or 36 months in a political environment. We need to come together and fix this, otherwise we won't get the assets to work.
Okay. Noted. Maybe a question on PPA levels. Given that energy prices, you know, have of course come down already, came down quite a bit in the fourth quarter and now into 2023 as well, do you see this as being a challenge in terms of setting, you know, getting new deals with customers, given that maybe there is uncertainty on the long-term PPA levels? Yeah, just wanted to get your thoughts around this, especially in the current interest rate environment, how does that impact the IRRs of clients? Are you seeing some hesitance from client end on that front?
I think on the energy pricing and markets, I think, it's actually well working. I mean, if we look at the private PPAs, volume is bigger than ever. We see private companies coming together with developers and OEMs like Vestas, putting projects up and making it profitable and financially viable for all three parties in that triangle. Super concerned when you have public PPAs at artificial levels.
There they are governments around in the world that stubbornly keeps electricity prices from two or three years ago and think that the industry can build out those projects three years on, while interest rate has increased from zero to six, and in the turbine or the infrastructure building it out has probably gone up with 30%-40%. At those PPA levels, you won't get any build-out. That's probably where I'm concerned right now, that we don't see governments being just as market participants. Be market participants, get the electricity build-out and the infrastructure build-out under those market terms.
I think little question mark, little concerned that the government PPAs are the ones that are in trouble right now, where the private PPAs are working brilliantly across all the markets. You can see that in our order intake in Q1.
Got it. Thank you. I'll save my rest of the questions. I'll come back in the queue. Thank you. Thank you so much.
The next question comes from Claus Almer from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Yeah, also a few questions from my side. Take them one by one. Warranty provisions is coming down versus last year at least. Should we see this as a, you know, strong indication of quality issues being solved? I.e., should we expect going out of this year, maybe we are back to the 2%? That would be the first question.
Thanks for that, Claus. I think on the warranty side, as you rightly point to, there is a decline from the higher levels in Q4, and not least also what we had for the full year last year, where we had 6.3%. We're seeing 4% being a good number for Q1. We'll obviously have to see how the year plays out. It is fair to say, also coming back to what you said beforehand, like also about the guidance range, there's still a lot left of the year. A lot has to unfold, and I think it would be foolish to sit here and say that we think all of the problems have been solved after a couple of months, being a couple of months into the year.
For now, at least we see that, the 4% that we have provided in Q1 is a level that makes sense in Q1. That's how we'll think about it for now.
The provision you've done in Q1 is more for what you see today.
Extra bills to be paid from what you have installed, few years back or one year back.
Of course, the warranty provisions reflects activity levels that, say on one hand, we expect to see kind of going forward. Of course, if there are issues on turbines that have been sold in the past, that gets factored into the levels that we are looking at. It's really a combination of those things you're looking at when you're looking at the warranty provisions. It's a reflection of what we see would be needed at the point in time when we made that provision, so to say.
Okay. My second question goes to cost inflation. I know we have been touched upon this topic in this call. If you look at the world today, do you still need to raise turbine prices or are you happy about the underlying turbine prices, or it's actually starting a cost inflation? That'll be my second question.
I could be a little tempted to ask you, Claus, do you expect your salary to go up or down? Because I think actually as inflation is becoming sticky. Guys, all around the world right now, inflation is becoming more and more sticky. I think we have to get used to right now that, which is also why encouragement from our side is to look at PPAs and other stuff with indexations because there is no place to run. Electricity and the whole components going into inflation are becoming sticky. I have to say right now, turbine prices are not coming down. The components and the raw materials, after probably a slightly lower level around year-end, we start seeing some of it coming back as increases.
Of course, you know, the underlying China is now fully open after Q4. Claus, inflation is not coming down, currently.
For sure. Okay. That's good to hear. Maybe not good to hear, but that's the situation at least.
That's the situation we both have to deal with, that's for sure.
Exactly. Thanks a lot.
The next question comes from Henry Tarr from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi there, and thanks for taking my questions. Two. One is just on the ASP. I know you talked about the scope and the geographic content and some repowering going into the number. If you could give us any more detail on that would be great. Then on the second question is on the service business. Is there a ceiling on the inflation adjustment or the indexation to some of these contracts or does it just run with CPI? Thank you.
Thanks, Henry. If I take the ASP first, I don't think the difference between 115 and 89 will give any breakdown of that. If you look at the quarters now, we've said that all along. It becomes a bit more lumpy with some of the larger also now onshore developing into larger orders, which means then you can start doing, "Hey, that customer paid this and that customer paid that." It sits well for us because when you have that breakdown, there is a breakthrough on some of the repowering in the U.S., which we have been talking about for a really a long point in time. Then you have hardly any EPC in this quarter. Those two as a sole explanation.
There are then a couple of country mix, which you will also appreciate if you look at the order list, where there normally are scope and lower pricing. It matches well what we want in that quarter. It just came out when you took the order backlog there to sort of say it came out low in the ASP, but the profitability we are very pleased with.
On the service question, I think what's fair to say is that we try to obviously structure the contract so that they track whichever index would be meaningful in the area where we undertake the service activities. Of course, we can structure them in different ways. If a customer is insisting on a specific structure, of course, we can talk about that, but then probably there will also be a pricing discussion to be had as to what is it that it costs if you want to have specific solutions on your contract. Generally speaking, when it comes to, say, the ceiling discussion, I would say that is something that we typically would not want to see in our service contracts.
Okay. Okay, great. Thank you.
The next question comes from Martin Wilkie from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Morning, it's Martin from Citi. A couple of questions on the U.S., please. First, just to understand what you might be hearing about the Inflation Reduction Act and when customers could start placing orders. We've heard from one of your peers that that might happen in the second half, but obviously, there is still some tax guidance, all this sort of stuff that's got to get resolved. Just in your conversations with your customers, is this something that's imminent, or how should we think about the phasing of that? Just a related question to that. If I look at your deliveries in the U.S., in Q1, it's about 300 MW. Obviously, the U.S., as we would expect, quite a low level of volume in terms of what's going through the P&L.
How are you managing your cost in the U.S. this year if we're going to get a big ramp-up over the next couple of years? Are we seeing sort of an excessively negative impact because of low fixed cost coverage that then sort of reverses into next year or so? Or is it more flexible? Just to understand your cost base in the U.S. Thank you.
A couple of observations there, Martin, on the U.S. and the IRA. As we said all along, I think it somehow must be a bit frustrating for also the commercial part to talk with customers because probably never had more activities, but as you also know, there is no conclusion until you have had a firm order. Lots of planning, lots of discussions, lots of projects that are also then coming through that pipeline up towards also seeing when can we get the permitting and when can we get the tax equity. There are some question marks still around both the guidelines and how it works. I think we encourage both the treasury and others to work diligently through that and come out with that.
We see customers being some more bold and taking decisions and taking orders, but I think the sort of the big volume and the floodgate has still to come with that, because we will see some of that coming through. We will also see a different structure when you look ahead, because some of the projects will be larger because they will start relating to the famous hydrogen as well. P2X will be a point in the U.S. when we look years ahead, and therefore, projects are being designed to be able to be built out more than what typically is the 200, 300, 400 MW, but now it will be fast approaching the several GW. That's one observation. I don't have the timing clear, Martin.
I just think we are pushing a quarter ahead of us most of the time. I can also say we are definitely coming closer to it every quarter. That's the positive. Discussions progressing well. On the U.S. deliveries, as we have said all along, we believe in the U.S., we've been in the U.S. for several decades. We would not do things to our sort of factory footprint there. We are running hardly no shifts as we discussed before. In that sense, you can say the marginal cost to a asset coming out of the factory is higher.
That also means that the operational levels for us in the U.S. sits down the line where we can start doing more orders, more deliveries, and we can add more shifts back in the factory. That's just the nature, and we definitely look forward to that. We also can say here that it's nice that we've been able to take care. We've had some idling of shifts, but we haven't idled totally the factories there. They're ready to go, and we are just doing both the repowering, and we will now also do some of the early technology ramp-up of turbines.
Great. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Dan Togo Jensen from Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. First a question on the Q1 here, maybe also Q2. Last year, you did announce that there will be some slippage of orders going from 2022 to 2023. These are likely to involve a negative margin. Can you give some flavor or some indication of how the impact of this these orders are in Q1? I guess we are talking about up to 1 GW in terms of capacity here. What is the impact of this in Q1, and can we expect any impact of this in Q2 as well? That would be the first question.
The second question was, it's relating to what Henrik said in the start, that you are working towards regaining profitability towards the end of the year. I guess we are talking about the solution business in particularly. It sounded like very finally. Does that mean that you implicit here say that profitability in the solution business will not be gained until Q4, basically? How should we think about that progression from where we are now towards the end of the year? Basically also what will decide what the profitability will be by end Q4. Is it lower warranty provisions, or is it just simply that ASP or the projects with high prices that are feeding through? That's it. Thanks.
Dan, let me try. I think we need to. Your question around orders needs to sort of be split a bit. I think for the firm order intake, we don't operate with firm order intake that has any deviations or what it drags out or anything like that. If we have orders where we have had a delay or whatever, then there is a spillover effect from Q4 into Q1. We don't say about what kind of volume that is. There's always projects that will be from a quarter to another get delayed.
As you also know, with looking at the trend on the ASP, the ramp-up of pricing means that we have a backlog where there are huge differences, and therefore also huge differences in the profitability per project. The longer you come in time, the better it gets. That's just the average of what you have seen over the last eight-10 quarters, and therefore profitability will gradually go up. That's also why when you look at the Q1 number, yes, there is a negative EBIT in the Power Solutions on the turbines, and of course, that will gradually ease out when we get through the coming quarters.
I won't We're not sitting here and guiding specifically when you will see from red to black in the turbine business. Of course, we work towards 10% in 2025, and that's therefore where we will definitely see a positive trend between where we are today and 2025. That's a promise because that's the pricing we are doing.
Okay. Then maybe just some color on, are we still going to see these trouble orders or this slippage having any impact in Q2, or are most of these orders done and dusted here in Q1?
You can't say done and dusted because as I said, slippage comes from one quarter to another. You can see we actually come out to a good start of the year, so we've done some of that that came with us from last year, we also executed on the things that was in the plan for Q1. We are pretty okay with that. There are three quarters to go and we will see how that pans out. You know, there's one or two offshore projects that has been delayed for some time, and that of course, we work diligently hard to get into the later quarters of this year. Yeah, so fingers crossed for that.
As I said, Dan, bear with us, have patience over the four quarters and be careful about not doing that. We have a full year guidance. That's the average of the four quarters, and that's what we are really focused on. As you can probably hear on the tone of voice, for us right now and on behalf of the 28,500 colleagues around, we are fully focused on trying to get that to an overall black number.
Understood. Thank you.
Next question comes from William Mackie from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Very good morning. Thanks for taking the time. A couple of questions. Firstly, on service, would you be willing to share the proportion of the service revenues that you would describe as transactional above normal? When you look historically, the proportion of transaction revenues as opposed to normal service revenues, because as we run through the year, I suppose it's gonna be important to think about a normalization of that and perhaps a flavor of the level of inflation impact on the revenue development through the execution or the implementation of your indexation clauses. That was the first question on services. If I can just follow up on power solutions.
When we think about the project backlog, you know, you've been very successful now for nearly six quarters, raising prices and actually chasing inflation, and you highlight that the margin development will improve as you execute the low margin projects. At what point should we think that you've reached or when is your planning that the majority, I mean, in maybe 90% of the business you're booking in power solutions would be at levels which are fully compensating for the inflationary effects?
Let me start with the first question or the first two questions on service. We have not traditionally been, say, giving those numbers that you refer to. I would say the impacts are quite meaningful from both. Of course, the inflation in indexation mechanisms are higher than what they have typically been. That clearly gives you, say, an indication of what we are looking at. We'll think about your suggestion, but for now at least, this is not traditionally something that we have been disclosing. On the backlog, on power systems, I'll see if I can kind of try and answer that question.
I think we have certainly been seeing pricing. I mean, chasing is perhaps not the right word to use in terms of what we have been doing things. We have obviously been trying to lift and work with prices so that they reflect what we think is adequate profitability. As we've also said multiple times before, I think we have done quite well in raising prices and also installing more discipline on terms and conditions into the contracts that we're working with. I think if I get your question right, and I'm not sure that I do, so please correct me here then. It's, it's not something that changes.
We will continue to see also that what we are doing is something that sequentially over time, it will be very lumpy because it goes up and down. A quarter like this one, for instance, is small compared to what you're likely to see in the second half of the year. There's gonna be all kinds of effects that goes into this when you then look at what manifests itself through the P&L, because that jumps around quite a bit. I would say that overall, we are continuing to work with this and continuing to see what can be done to, say, increase prices and make the margins even better.
Thank you very much. A short follow-up, if I may, which relates to the supply chain, and if you would characterize how you see the development of the supply chain relating to logistics or plate steel or particularly electronics over the past three to four months.
I think, I mean, there's, it's not a generic one. It comes down to source country of origin and company of origin. As I mentioned when I introduced here, big thank you to partners and suppliers working diligently through that. That is William, down to clear what I will call very much a backlog, but also still understanding that there are criticality in getting it to site in time. Let's not spur that. There is a time, there is a bottleneck, there is also still an inflation issue in around this. It's easing, but it's not done.
Super. Thanks so much.
The next question comes from Sean McLoughlin from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions. Good morning. Just thinking about your earnings progression through the year, do you still expect earnings to be back-end loaded? In that context, as you look through projects for delivery in Q2, should we expect no real improvement in the underlying project margin in Q2 as you work through that low price, low margin backlog? That's the first question. Secondly, just looking at the high inventory levels, they're up again year-over-year. You've got your high cash outflow in Q1. You've got EUR 1 billion of CapEx. I mean, is the consensus is looking at positively cash flow in 2023. I mean, is that looking ambitious?
Hi, Sean. I will say here, we simply in a year like this where we are aiming to be on a guidance and also getting back in black numbers, we won't give any leads on quarters. I just gave you the biggest disclaimer on taking a quarter and then extrapolate for that because the backlog we are executing into quarters are simply too variable in terms of pricing and costing on some of those projects. When you have an average on a negative EBIT in the power solution still in Q1, that will be one of part of keeping an eye on, but we won't give guidance to your Q2. We will give the underlying when we say then the tone for the full year.
That's what is to keep for. On the inventory side, fully dedicated to start offloading it. Again, here, you have to have patience as much as we have in executing on the backlog because we are just coming out. It's 90 days ago since the world start reopening a bit more than we have had. Part of our inventory is sitting at a high level for the same reason, to protect our customers and the execution of our projects. I think here, if you have an assumption of that you in an EBIT zero scenario, around zero, spending EUR 1 billion in CapEx is able to do a positive cash flow, I will say that will be a bit tricky for us.
We are doing all optimizations we can do, but we can't, we can't print the money if we don't have them. We will release the inventory if we can. As I said here, we are fully focused on it. Positive cash flow look for me, it looks like a stretch, and I, Hans is smiling here next to me, so I know I'm on the right direction here.
Oh, it's fantastic, Henrik, when you sit and talk through the details of how to generate a cash flow. I can only agree that given what the numbers, I expect it to look like on the dimensions that you mentioned there, I think, I mean, it's, I would say, how do I put it, Sean? Optimistic to think that that would be possible. No, we don't see that, I mean, as a technical possibility, because as mentioned, that's not what the numbers would say.
We work on it. We will promise you we will optimize that as well. Every little bottom we can turn on it. If we can do now, the last question is if Casper. If we can take the last questions now, operator.
Hello?
Hello. I just said if the operator could take, ask for the last question.
I'm sorry. Yes. Mr. Casper Blom, your line is open from Danske Bank.
Cool. Thanks a lot. Thanks for squeezing me in there. A question regarding I suppose bottlenecks. When I speak to different players in the industry, one of the things that a lot of people mention is the ability to attract enough of the right qualified employees. I suppose hopefully you are looking into quite a ramp-up first of all in the U.S. and then hopefully also in Europe if politicians ever get their act together. Do you see skilled workers as something that could limit your growth, or is it something that you're able to handle? That's the first question, please.
I think in reality here we can say positively we invest quite a lot. We also, whatever part of the world we're working in, we put a lot of effort to look after the Vestas family of colleagues in both good and hard times. I think some of that loyalty comes back when we also ramp back up. Generally we get good. We probably have a good name in ramping up and down. That also means that we are able to overcome some of the shortages maybe better or easier than others.
As you're rightly saying, Kasper, we can't avoid that there is an inflation also and wage in-wage inflation around in the world, which of course, when we ramp up, we also have to be part of. This is also related back to Martin's point in the U.S. We didn't let all our good colleagues go, but you can also see the number of colleagues in the U.S. dropped from well above 6,000 to now sitting at just around 3,000. There are some colleagues to come back in the factories. That we have had a long tradition for doing in both good and bad times in places like Colorado, and we will do that again.
Okay. Let's cross our fingers for that. My second question is sort of on the more general behavior of the industry. I think you've been advocating for a while now that we need to slow down the arms race in terms of technology and launching new versions all the time. I think recently, several of your larger competitors have talked the same language. GE is very fond of talking about their workhorses at least. Do you see this happening right now? Yeah. Are people acting in a more rational way when it comes to wanting to deploy new technology and expand the commercial lifetime of products? Secondly, are you also experiencing that some of these large competitors are more selective in the markets they participate in?
I think it's maybe it's not for me to comment too much on specific things on that. We are pretty adamant of the cycle we work in. We test our technology. We are very confident if that works. That also gives some comfort to customers that they can join that technology cycle and journey we have. We're proud of the technology colleagues we are having that also do open development together with our customers to get to that. I don't think an industry can change misbehavior from a decade over within a quarter. so I think, still think here probably we have as an industry something to prove, Casper.
We know there can be a lot of talks, but it actually comes down to what is then going on. There has been a say-and-do gap in this industry for many, many years. I hope executives now stand by it in saying, "This is closing," and therefore we are seeing it happening. We keep talking to it, and we will keep doing it, and we also keep remaining disciplined. That's our promise to the industry.
Thanks a lot, Henrik.
Okay. With, with that, really want to thank you for your interest. I know we are going to see many of you over the coming days. Again, thank you for your attention. For those we don't see, really appreciate your support and also the interest. See you later in the year. Thank you.