Good morning. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. I am Francie, your [Chorus Call] operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the DEUTZ AG First Half 2022 Results Conference Call. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. Press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. It is my pleasure, and I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Christian Ludwig, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. Warm welcome from our side to you all joining us today for our H1 call. Please note that this call is being recorded, and the replay will be available on our website at deutz.com later today. Your participation in the call implies your consent with this. Joining me today are our CEO, Sebastian Schulte, as well as our Head of Finance, Oliver Neu. As usual, Sebastian will walk you through the highlights of the performance of the group and then hand over to me as I will provide some more details on our financial figures. Sebastian will close the presentation with our current market outlook and our guidance. After this introduction, we will be happy to answer your questions. Please note that management comments during this call will include forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties.
For the discussion of risk factors, I encourage you to review the disclaimer contained in our half-annual report and this presentation. All documents relating to our H1 2022 reporting are available on our website. Without much further ado, I hand over to Sebastian.
Thank you very much, Christian. Also from my side, good morning, good afternoon to our first half-year earnings and results call for DEUTZ. Yeah, let me start, as usual, with some key operational and also strategic developments which occurred in the last six months. Let me start in the new order or the intake. We increased, improved, increase again by 5% to now EUR 1.01 billion. That is a significant milestone, achieving here half-and-a-half year more than EUR 1 billion. Book-to-bill ratio on the entire six-month period was still positive, still positive beyond one, 1.16, obviously in the last, last month, a little sort of slowing down but still above one. Also in terms of unit sales, talking here about our classic engines, which is the majority of our sales, as you know, increased by 20% to a bit more than 90,000 units.
In line, we increased revenue by 21% to EUR 930 million. When it comes to result-adjusted EBIT, significant improvement also by EUR 26 million to now EUR 42.6 million for the first six months. That means an EBIT margin of 4.6%, improving by 2.4 percentage points. In particular here on the classic segment in the first half year, we are at 6.8%, improving by 3.5 percentage points. That means also when we look at the Q2 isolated, we see that later when Christian goes to the numbers in more detail. The group scored 5.6% in Q2 and 7.7% in classic engines. We are moving in the right direction, for sure. We will come on to some of the outlook because, as you know, we are in a highly volatile environment in manufacturers.
On some qualitative and strategic points on the bottom part of the slide, we did, beginning of March, initiate here a new strategy process to sharpen our strategy. We defined a couple of priority areas of action. We'll come to that in a bit. On the product side, there's our hydrogen combustion engine. You know that well from previous calls. One of the products we're particularly proud of. Now what we did is actually we moved this first engine in a genset, a hydrogen genset, to the site of our partner RheinEnergie, where we launched now the pilot project. That first genset, that first hydrogen genset, is now in operation. On the commercial side, one of the most important initiatives, currently ongoing, mostly completed in fact, is the repricing.
We said already in the last result, last call, quarter one, that we're targeting here 8%-12% across the portfolio, simply to mitigate the cost, the cost impacts we have on our side. We almost completed the second round. There's still some accounts open, as usual, the not-so-easy ones, but we actually achieved quite a lot. We will come to that in a bit, in a bit more detail as well. One of the things, obviously, we need to keep an eye on is the whole issue of supply, particularly of gas. You know, we're all having this discussion in Europe and Germany in particular, what happens if we go to an emergency situation with gas supply. We, for our side, prepared quite well, particularly the Cologne site, in order to mitigate potential outages.
I'll come on to that in a minute. Looking at our strategy program, we call it Powering Progress. We have identified four areas of action. On the one hand, the priority side, really sharpening the overall strategy. There was some sharpening to be done, is still to be done, but also describing, developing here the roadmap. That's what we call on the potential, when it comes to technology and future markets as well. That left part is more under the bucket of transformation. The top right is performance, and that's been the focus of the last six months. We will go through some of the initiatives in the next pages, yeah, that we are continuing here, progressing, you know, improving our performance for the entire company, but also for some individual areas. We achieved quite a lot already.
I think the numbers, the numbers show that. It's proof points are there. Also, not to forget passion. Passion is extremely important for a company with that tradition like us, that we need to put our values into practice, improving our culture. We are coming from a fairly hierarchical setup and the way we work and collaborate, we identify need to be improved. The last six months actually showed that we made some good progress here. That's important. That's crucially important to master these headwinds we're having right now, in particular, you know, on the supply chain and on the overall economic environment. That's something to speak about at a later stage. Yeah, looking into the first performance initiative, we are kicked off.
Yes, that is to do with the volatility on the markets, particularly here on our supply side. I mean, raw materials is a huge thing. We talked about semiconductors quite a lot in the last months. That situation is still not easy, although we're getting it better, more and better and better under control at the moment. Big issue, as you all know, is the development of energy prices, in terms of electricity, but also the gas supply, the potential risk, and of course, logistics. It's not only the cost, it's also the transit times. That brings quite a few burden on us, but as we also know, on our suppliers and also our customers, right? That's something we need to, we call it your sharing your pain.
We need to find a way of dealing with this situation together. On the one hand, we have to work together with our suppliers. We want to absolutely defend our cost position, you know, mitigate as much as possible. Unfortunately, with that environment, that's not entirely possible. We do see significant impacts, which we now assess in a very cross-functional team with our sales, with our finance team, with our purchasing team. The people are working very well together in several task forces. Yeah, in the end, it's also important that we are entering into dialogues with our customers on really finding the right way of sharing it. We're doing that. It brings me in a bit to also the price increase subject.
We are here on a good way, because in the end, one thing is very important. You know, we want to continue supporting our customers on the important path of us towards green mobility in the future. For the time being, we need to walk that path also together here when it comes on these headwinds which we foresee. Moving on to price increases. That was something we announced after the first quarter that we envisaged this range between 8%-12% for our new engine business in 2022, because, as I said before, energy price development, raw material, logistics, the product cost. We said before that it was not possible to immediately pass on the increased costs to the customer due to that high level of order backlog.
That still holds true to an extent, particularly for the first round of price increases we implemented last year at the end of last year. We was in around 2%. In hindsight, that was far too optimistic from our point of view because then it, you know, the situation got significantly worse. Now, we implemented the majority of accounts for the second round of price increases effective usually July, some in June, some a little later, but in principle around July. We're focusing on delivery, right? Not on order, but really on delivery. With that initiative in mind, we've been working very, very hard on that over the last three to four months.
That will help us, easing the pressure on our profits on the fire procurement cost so that we are moving here into the second half, let's say, with a solid position. Although, obviously, the end of these cost increases is not necessarily achieved as of yet. Now we have processes in place, and good discussions with suppliers and customers that we are beginning to be much better in managing that. Another initiative on the performance side is really to diversify our customer base. We have had a high concentration on a few big customers. We want to sharpen here the focus of our sales activities so that we are really expanding our customer base, not only in group A, but also in group B and C.
Everything pretty much where we have more than 2,500 units per year, we need to ensure that we reduce the dependency on individual customers, right? It's important to diversify our demand. We want to also do that together with the customers, very, very clear. You know, we stand to commitments, no doubt on that. It's important for the years to come, particularly 2023, 2024, that we increase the resilience of DEUTZ also on the demand side. That process is in place and making here first progress. Related to that is the subject of portfolio optimization. When we look at the status quo, we have more than 2,000 engine variants, for some customers, very many. And that's all a good reason for that.
You know, in the end, the status quo is also that with 15% of our variants, we cover roughly 80% of our sales. In turn, that means 85% of the variants cover only 20% of the sales. Out of that 85%, we have even a number of roughly 50% who just account for 2% of the engine sales. With that situation, it's quite challenging to manage the complexity in supply chain, purchasing, and production. You know, we need to ensure that we are also remaining here cost competitive. That's something we want to reduce, the variance, in the range of 15%-20%. Process initiated, first steps taken. That's something where we expect also results in the next quarters already to pay off.
Looking a bit further towards our green strategy or green activity. I mentioned earlier, in the highlight pages, our hydrogen combustion engine. Here, as you see, we show you a picture of the TCG 7.8 H2, built in a genset. We put that in service at RheinEnergie, a Cologne-based utility company in the area of Niehl, suburb of Cologne. This product here, in the genset, combined with the generator, will deliver an electric power of up to 170 kVA. We are running that for a test phase of roughly six months. That is a great test phase. We expect to learn a lot about the behavior of the engine, the behavior of the product.
In the second step, we are already exploring that. We're trying also to use the waste heat from the genset for heat generation to improve the efficiency further. That's a good sort of proof point for this technology. We hear a lot of interest from several parts of the industry. We expect that we can scale that hybrid engine up in a higher volume production from 2024 onwards. Obviously, we want to develop that further from just the stationary equipment utilization also towards mobility. It's a promising product, and we believe really we have here a USP in that.
With that as a start, in terms of highlights of the first half here, I will hand back to Christian who will guide you through the numbers in a bit more detail.
Thank you very much, Sebastian. Yes, let me pick up here and give you a little bit more detail on our H1 numbers. I'll start off with our new orders. As already you have been told, we grew the new orders by almost 5% to EUR 1.077 billion. If you look at it in detail, in Q2, actually, we were basically flat year- over- year with EUR 568 million growth in the new orders. We can see that the trend of growth is slowly coming down. If you look at it in more detail, if you look at the different segments, material handling was still very positive with up 22%.
Also, the Agricultural Machinery was up with 13%. In the Construction Machinery business, we saw a decline of 16%. We already see that in some sectors, there is already a slowdown in the general industry there. If we have a look at the unit sales, the picture, of course, is still much more positive as we're benefiting from our strong order backlog. We were able to grow unit sales by 16% in the first half of the year, mainly driven by our classic business. As you can see, the torpedo engines were basically flat year- over- year, as we already see that, especially the leisure boat sector at the moment is slowing down as well. On the revenue side, an even better performance. We were able to outgrow our unit sales significantly.
The reason is that we had very positive price mix effects on our classic engines. Our average sales price in Q2, just to give you an idea, rose to EUR 7,500. That is up 4.7% year-over-year . If we look at our orders on hand with EUR 770 million at the end of June, that basically relates to roughly 94,000 engines that we have in our order backlog. Basically, we're sold out for the remainder of the year. Now a quick glance at our service business. Again, we had a very successful quarter where we started the year positively with a growth of 15%. We had a Q2 with a growth of more than 13%. After six months, we're up 14%, which is significantly above the more than 5% that we're targeting for a year- over- year growth.
Our new service target of EUR 500 million by 2025 seems well in reach. This is also supported by the new orders we had in the business, up by 12%. Orders on hand only grew slightly, but this business turns very quickly. It is not a KPI that is very important for us at the moment. What is important is we already announced with our Q1 results that we acquired two more distribution partners, Altima in the Netherlands and South Coast Diesels in Ireland. We are looking at further targets as I speak. I expect there will still be some more deals to be announced in the remainder of the year. Now, a quick glance at the revenue breakdown on the regions and application segments. I think there are three main takeaways here. First of all, all regions were up year-over-year .
As you can see, Asia-Pacific, only 4%. Here, especially the weakness in the Chinese markets played a role. The Chinese economy is not growing very strongly at the moment. We also see that in our numbers. On the positive side, the Americas are up by more than 50% here, driven by two application segments: one, material handling, and two, the stationary equipment or the genset business, which are both very strong for our American operations. A glance at our profitability: Q2 was definitely a major step forward for us with an EBIT margin adjusted of 5.6%. Drivers were the increased volume of business, bringing economies of scale, the effects of the cost savings. Also, of course, the price increases that we initiated in January. Last but not least, we had some positive currency translation effects included in there as well.
Important to point out is that the price increases that Sebastian mentioned, the second round, did not have any impact yet. Also, on the other hand, the strong increase in raw material prices that we're seeing also did not come through very significantly here. This is something that we'll expect to offset each other probably more in the second half of the year. For the half year, the EBIT margin before exceptional items increased to 4.6%, versus 2.2% the year before. Our net income before exceptional items amounted to EUR 34 million, which led to an earnings per share after six months of EUR 0.28. A quick glance at some more KPIs. On the R&D spending side, we increased our expenses by almost 20%. Due to the strong growth in our top line, the R&D ratio was stable at around 5%.
That is something that I would expect to be also the case for the full year. On the capital expenditure side, we dropped by 20%, but that is only due to less investments in leasing business. The brick-and-mortar investment was basically flat year-over-year. I would expect that we see a slight increase in the second half of the year, but not too much. We should be around the range we had last year for the CapEx for the full year. A little bit different is the picture on the working capital side. Here we had a stronger increase in the first six months of the year. This is mainly driven by our inventories. They are up by more than EUR 60 million.
Due to the issues in the supply chain, we have been a little bit more careful with the levels of inventories we keep on hand. Also, due to issues we have in the logistics sector, we have more engines at the moment on stock than we usually have. This is something that I would expect to come down a little bit towards the end of the year. The working capital effect is also reflected in the cash flow from operating activities. Despite the strong operating EBIT, our cash flow from operating activities is down year-over-year by EUR 30 million to EUR 14.6 million after six months. This effect then also, of course, is also visible in our free cash flow, which is down by a similar level, a little bit more than EUR 30 million -EUR [audio distortion] million after six months.
We can see this development as well in our net debt situation. Again, this is mainly driven by the working capital development. I think we will have enough time in the second half to remedy that situation. If we look at our balance sheet situation, it remains at a very comparable level. Our equity ratio is well above the target figure of 40%. As you may recall, we restructured the group's funding in May. We still have unused trade lines totaling EUR 155 million at the moment at our disposal. Plus, we have sufficient financial headroom for any growth acquisitions that we may want to do. Finally, a quick glance at our two segments. I'll start it off with the classic segment. Here you can see that the group development is mainly reflected here. We had a growth in new orders of more than 6%.
Unit sales were up significantly more with almost 20% to 90,000 units after six months. The revenue development was even better than the unit sales development. As I said before, we had an increase in our average price per engine, due to positive price mix effects. Especially positive, of course, is the development of our adjusted EBIT margin, which came in at 6.8% after six months. If you look at the quarter alone with 7.7% in Q2, we had a very positive development there, again, driven by economies of scale, the price increases we implemented in the first quarter of the year, also our cost effects. We also had some positive FX effects included in here. Please take that into account. A quick glance at our green segment.
Here, as I already said, we had some slowdown in new orders as the leisure segment for the boat engines is slowing down. Unit sales, nevertheless, were slightly up due to the order backlog. Revenues were up even more as we also had some positive price mix effects here. We are now able to sell some more larger project business here on the engine side where we go into ferries, and small transport and stuff like that, which are, of course, has a higher value than the usual leisure boat engines we have. On the margin side, similar picture as we had in Q1. Due to the ramp-up cost, we're investing a lot into electrification of drives and also our hydrogen drives. We still have a major upfront cost that we have to digest.
This is something we'll continue also for the remainder of the year and probably also for a couple of years to come until we see break even for the green segment. I don't have it here for you right now. We'll keep you posted as we move along. With that, I'll hand back to Sebastian.
Thank you very much, Christian. As you hear, first proof points of performance initiatives, measures paying off, so good results. Again, an outlook, which is impacted or which is influenced at least by the uncertainty we see globally from the environment. This brings me to one of the topics which we'll look at with concern, I guess, as most of the companies, most of the players in the industry, is the situation of gas supply.
Something which overall, obviously, we cannot influence. What we are doing is to do our bit in order to, you know, make us as a company more resilient. In particular, for our main production site in Cologne ports, we have prepared the facility that, if needed, we are able to switch the heating supply. It is mainly for the painting, from gas to heating oil in the short term. That is 400%. When we use it, or when we look at our gas consumption, that is the main gas consumer there. We are talking about roughly 20,000 MWh . We are also examining different, different or similar, actually, measures at the other site, particularly in Ulm. They had a procurement market, not for the gas, but particularly equipment is a little more, a little more tense right now.
On the other hand, the demand for gas is very low at Ulm. We are here well prepared for our own production. Obviously, in assessing this situation, we need to monitor particularly our large suppliers closely, which we do, particularly for our tier one suppliers. Obviously, when we move to sub-suppliers or sub-sub-suppliers, the visibility becomes rather limited. Yes, that's something we are preparing. You know, it's obviously one rationale for doing that, yeah, sure, to make us more resilient in terms of safety of supply. We also contribute here as DEUTZ for the situation that might occur. We hope it will not occur when there is a rationing in the country. You know, then we have done our contribution to ease the situation within what we can influence.
That's one of the measures we're doing here. In a similar fashion, when we look at energy, other energy, electricity in particular, we are already using green electricity at all our DEUTZ AG sites since 2021. On top of that, we now installed the first photovoltaic system at our Cologne site on the new fire station. We are currently initiating further installations on some of the production buildings. That will not cover the entire need for electricity, but again, we will do a contribution both in terms of mitigating costs, mitigating cost volatility, but also, as I said, contributing. With our company, with our subsidiary in Morocco, Magideutz has been using, already since earlier this year, green electricity, which is produced entirely in-house with solar and wind energy to serve their industrial energy needs.
Yeah, as I said at the beginning of the year, we're making here a contribution to combat climate change, yes, on the grand scheme of things, but also on our company individual thing in terms of resilience against that difficult situation. Looking at the global market development here, our main customer areas across the regions, compare the sales, the unit sales from July to January. We still see in construction equipment, material handling, agricultural machinery, these are the big segments for Europe and North America. An uptick also representing here in the book-to-bill, which we said earlier. China is a bit of a mixed picture. Visibility is still not great. Obviously, a lot of uncertainty still. What is the political development yet to the year? Also, how are we, how they, how they're dealing there with COVID?
That's a little bit of a mixed bag, so to speak. It makes us positive in a way. You know, our exposure to China is, as of today, rather limited. We still see the potential the country has also for us. We are, depending, currently in the years to come, much, much more on Europe and North America, where we're actually participating pretty well in the growth. Here we are, rather good positions, positioned with not having too big exposure to the Chinese market. Yeah, guidance. One of the big topics, what's the outlook of the rest of the year for the rest of the year? You remember from the last calls, we put the guidance, we developed the guidance in February 2022, and we put that down on hold such to change.
We'll keep that narrative for now. If you go through it item by item, unit sales, we set in February was 165,000-180,000. After one half, we had 90,000, 90,000 units. Here, well on track, I would say. Also revenue, we developed at EUR 1.7 billion-EUR 1.85 billion, six months, EUR 930 million. I would say rather well on track, with still some positive potential to come, in terms of volumes, but also pricing. The EBIT margin, the range 3.5%-5.5%, with a half one now 4.6%, with a positive development from Q2 as compared to Q1.
Here, also in the middle of the pack, free cash flow, Christian mentioned it earlier, driven by the inventories, high transit times of the equipment, but also, you know, safety stock because we want to really support here our customers in that difficult situation and certainly not optimize working capital at the cost of closing the production in our customer side. Again, it's something we need to closely monitor, particularly in the second half of the year. Until all right, looking all right going forward. The visibility is still low. As that, and in this in that sense, we are still a key subject to change. We'll update you, whenever we have information that are sufficient to put a proper guidance out on the market.
That is going to be then, the next step, one of the next steps in our capital market communication. In that sense, would like to thank you very much for your attention, and as usual, open for your questions on our presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Sebastian. Operator, please open the lines for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their phone. Excuse me. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from Jorge González Sadornil from Hauck Aufhäuser Investment Banking. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning, Sebastian and Christian.
Thank you very much for taking my questions and congratulations on this strong set of results. I have two questions. Apologies if something has been already commented. There are like three or four calls at the same time. My first question will be regarding China. Can you update us, how was the evolution of the new inventory with SANY during the quarter and your expectations for the rest of the year? My second question will be around the view for the rest of the year and maybe 2023. With these results, you are in a very, very good position for even beating the upper guidance of the initial guidance, no, that you abandoned before publishing it. I was wondering what is making you to be conservative at this point.
Is it because you have any expectation of cancellations last minute in the last quarter? What is the reason for not confirming the guidance or even increasing the guidance? Regarding next year, I know it is very difficult to have a view on 2023. Can you give us your first vision on how next year could be in terms of the mix of the products that you have, if you expect to sell more bigger engines, for instance, less material handling, more agriculture? I do not know. Is there any trend there that is going to help you to absorb any economic slowdown? Thank you very much.
Good, thanks for your question. Let me start with China, regarding the joint venture with SANY.
We reported last quarter already that we had a slight loss in the first quarter with the joint venture on our net income basis, you know, on the equity investment. The second quarter was pretty much break even. It is stabilizing on a very low level, I have to say that. Last indications we got from China, from SANY, were positive, but they have not really materialized yet into numbers, yeah. That is for SANY. Our other operation in China, Tianjin, we had a couple of months where production went up, but still not on the level we want to achieve because here, the limitations from the supply chain were actually massive.
But since the lockdowns in the country have recently been relaxed a little bit, we see now it normalizing, at least we are now on the supply chain side. The question of demand is still a bit of a mixed picture. Although the signals we get from SANY are rather positive than negative, here we are a little bit cautious and conservative. It is pretty much the same story like what we talked also in our last equity or roadshows and conferences. We look at it cautiously optimistic. That is China. Second half outlook, you know, sure, from the numbers, right, particularly the order intake, order backlog, that is solid. That is clear. There are very high numbers.
We also do not expect short-term cancellations right now because we talk to our customers on a regular basis. The majority of them, particularly agricultural, but also material handling, still have a long order pipeline themselves with their end customers. That looks all very positive. When we look at the rest of the year, let me start with that before going into 2023. For the rest of the year, I do not see so much of a risk of demand. I rather see the risk of supply. It is like, you know, if we see a recession coming in, it is not going to be demand forced. It is going to be supply forced. That just makes us very conservative, in a way, or cautious, I think, is the better way. That is for 2022.
Ingredients are clearly there with a high order backlog, in terms of volume. Risks on the supply side, you know, we see a significant, adverse development on the electricity side, for example. We have now daily rates of like more than EUR 400 per MWh . That is something we have not seen for a long, long time. Also, some of the suppliers, you know, they are facing very difficult, very stormy waters. That is why we are here, rather concerned on the cost side. At least on the price side with our most reliable customers, we have already reached agreement. We still have some issues here with some other remaining accounts.
We are confident that we'll also solve that because in the end, as I said at the beginning of the presentation, it has to be a partnership approach. We are going to be out there for the customers. We expect them to be there for us as well. In 2023, that is, yeah, also a very interesting question, a very good question. We see at the moment what we, you know, the signals we're getting from our customers are fairly positive in the smaller engines still. In the larger engines, it's an all right picture, no significant slowdown of demand. This is all very early, very early stages. We are very cautious to make any statements on 2023. It's too early for that.
I suppose we're just going to guide us through the third quarter. By the end of the third quarter, we'll probably have more clarity on that. So far, the individual situation, sort of the signals we as DEUTZ receive from our customers are certainly not as negative as what the general markets keep telling. That is something we need to be cautious about. I hope that helps a little bit. As I said, it's a very difficult point in time to make predictions for 2023.
No, very helpful, Sebastian. Maybe a follow-up.
If I understood well, the main risk that is making you prefer to be cautious for now is that we can see maybe not cancellations, but postponements maybe in Q4 because of the situation of your suppliers, combination of the supply chain and the new issues we are seeing with electricity and all of this?
That is going to be rather postponement from our side and to the customers, right? The customers are very keen in reserving capacities, you know. And that is also a statement for next year already. I mean, first customers are asking us to reserve capacities.
We are now carefully evaluating how we do that in the best way without, you know, harming one or two customers in particular, because there might be, in certain engines, there might be more demand than supply. Yes. For Q4, there could be postponements due to restrictions in the supply chain. That's very clear. Let's see how it goes. Keep you posted on that.
Thank you very much. That's all from my side.
The next question is from Charlotte Friedrichs from Berenberg. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Hello. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one would be around pricing. I'm sorry if I've missed this off at the same, rather than this whole, has too many calls at the same time. But can you talk about how the price adjustments for your backlog have been going?
What's the customer feedback here? And then on the green segment, I'm guessing break even for this one is not a possibility this year, right? And on the order intake for the green segment as well, can you give us an idea of how much of that is related to boats, versus non-boats, slash machinery? Thank you.
Oh, sorry. Now we've muted. Now here we are. Thanks for your questions, Charlotte. On the price increase, let me start with that. Obviously, these are difficult discussions. That's very clear. I mean, no one likes to accept increased prices. That holds true for our customers as well as for us when we discuss with our suppliers. What has happened in the last months is that this situation, the inflation development, that's not a secret. That's known to all of us.
It is not like it used to be in the past, a discussion, you know, about if there is a price increase, it is more like what is the price increase. We went, in the first round last year already, on a very low level, roughly 2%. Now we are going in significantly higher numbers, as said in the presentation, you know. We are going indifferentiated. It is because obviously the cost impacts on the different engine types are also differing depending on what engines we are, we have, we sell. What we observe is that with the majority, the vast majority actually of customers we have, in the end, we achieve good agreements, because for them it is also very important, you know, to continue the business with us. Same as it is for us.
We find good solutions. Some of the discussions are a bit rougher, but I'm very confident that we'll also conclude them shortly. I don't want to mention here particular customers for obvious reasons. In principle, tough time, but oriented for results. Customers will continue a bit on the green question.
Yeah. Charlotte, on your question of the green break even, it's definitely not going to happen this year. I'm not going to give you a year here when we will finally break even because it really depends a lot on what our customers are going to. As we said in calls before, at the moment for the alternative drivetrains, we're putting a lot of money down to be ready when the market demands pick up. We're not seeing really the pull from our customers just yet.
The hydrogen engine will go into serial production by 2024. That is also still two years out. We do not have a lot of volume at the moment to offset our R&D costs that we are pouring into that. For the next two to three years to come at least, I guess we will still be investing there to be ready when the market is ready for our alternative drivetrains.
Okay. Understood. One follow-up, on the performance initiative. I missed the section of your presentation where you want to reduce the number of, or the variation of units that you do. Over what time frame are you planning to do this? When can we expect an impact on your P&L and how big could that potentially be?
The time frame is two to three years, until we have achieved the reduction because, you know, you have to obviously do that together with the customers and also time that with the points in time when their end applications are being overhauled. That has to be a continuous process. Also, we will see the impact in the course of those three years on the sort of provider balance in the P&L. We'll give an update on that as soon as we have something measurable. We expect indeed quite good efficiency gains, particularly in production and in purchasing because some of the parts we need to procure are then also very low runner products from our suppliers.
They are facing exactly the same situation like us. You know, they also want to enjoy economies of scale as largely as possible. It does not help anyone if he delivers to us like 10 parts per year. In that sense, it is also like a hand-in-hand activity between our suppliers and the customers.
Understood. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone. There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to Christian Ludwig for closing comments.
Thank you very much. Thank you all for listening. Thank you for your questions. If any additional questions should come up, please contact us at the IR team. We will be happy to help you out.
For the rest of you, I wish you a nice rest of the summer vacation and talk to you at the latest with our Q3 results in November. Goodbye.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.