Thank you very much. To you all, welcome very much to Our Nine-Month Results Call. Please note that this call is being recorded, and a 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 CFO, Timo Krutoff. As usual, Sebastian will walk you through the highlights of the performance of the group, and then hand over to Timo, who 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'll 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 annual report and this presentation. All documents relating to Our Nine-Month 2023 reporting are available on our website. Without much further ado, I hand over to Sebastian.
Thank you very much, Christian, and also from my side, good morning to everyone who dialed in for our Q3, Our First Nine-Month Result, 2023. It's a pleasure to have you on the call, and it's a pleasure for us to walk you through what we achieved over the last nine months, and to also give you a bit of an outlook, how we see the future, for us as a company. As usual, I would like to start with looking back on the key operational and strategic developments, which we achieved. And, as usual, I would start with some numbers, which, also, as usual, Timo will later elaborate a bit more in detail upon. Looking at starting at top line. So new orders went down a little bit if we compare it to the previous nine-month period.
It went down by 5.5% to a level of EUR 1.4358 billion. That equals the book-to-bill ratio of 0.93. So what we can see is obviously that very strong growth trajectory is slowing down a little bit, but, and you will see that in a couple of minutes, we're gonna spend a bit more time on the development of new orders as well as order backlog, because we believe there's some more to be understood behind that KPI than just looking at the KPI. But I'll come back to that in a few minutes. If you look at unit sales, here, again, as usual on the DEUTZ engine, so we increased unit sales by a bit more than 5% to almost 138,000 engines. So that's a positive development.
Still benefiting, obviously, from the strong demand, we experienced in the last couple of years. We increased revenue even more by a bit more than 10% to EUR 1.54 billion, and that's another proof point, of our successful pricing policy, that we implemented early last year. This, of course, also translates into another growth in EBIT. We grew EBIT further by almost EUR 27 million, to now a level of EUR 92.7 million after 9 months. We pretty much equaled the full year results from last year. That means in terms of margin on the group level, we yielded an EBIT margin of 6%, so up 1.3 percentage points.
But, even more importantly for us, you know, to also see what is the long-term comparison in our classic business, we are now stable at a level of 8.8%. Stable when I compared with previous quarters, and up almost two percentage points compared to previous year. Free cash flow, we're still a little negative after nine months, minus EUR 13.4 million, but comparing to the nine months of last year, EUR 56 million better, so that's also a positive sign. And based on that, and obviously also based on the much, much better visibility for the last quarter now, we were able to rise, to raise the earnings guidance for 2023 a little bit. Revenue, we keep it constant.
Our expectation for the year on the level of approximately EUR 2.1 billion, and the margin where we previously assessed it to be at 5%, we raised it up to a range between 5.3 to 5.8 percentage points. We're particularly fond of being able to announce an important milestone when it comes to our green business. So what we achieved earlier this week, we received the first small-scale serial order for 100 units of a genset, power generation set using our DEUTZ hydrogen combustion engine. We received this order from China, and I'll elaborate a little bit later on that, later in the course of this presentation.
As most of you know, because many of you were part of that presentation, of that event, earlier this year in September, we did present our Dual+ strategy at the DEUTZ Event Week, both to investors and analysts, but also, as part of our business partner meeting or business partner day to our numerous European and American partners, which work together with us. But let me start with a bit of a deep dive in our classic segment. So first of all, the margin, as I showed earlier, remain on a high level, and that's due to the success of our various performance initiatives. To name a few, we have established our new logistic concept here at the headquarters in Cologne.
You know, it's about consolidating the different warehouses, so our multifunction warehouse is up and running. So that's a very positive news for us, makes our process much, much more stable. Supply chain, production processes in that sense, have stabilized significantly. Also, you know, the supply chain situation from our suppliers, has calmed down, has become more stable, so delivery performance, of us towards our customer is growing rapidly. And what, was a particular challenge initially, was that we implemented, by the end of July, we implemented a third shift for the production of our compact engines, our sub-four liter engine. That ramp-up has worked out successfully. So over the last months, as we are-...
Working here with a higher capacity, more efficient way of working for sub-four liter, so that we are able to fulfill the strong demand and to work up, to work on our high order backlog. So that means, and that's exactly in line with our strategy, that our classic business now provides really the strong foundation also for the implementation of the green strategy in terms of our cross-financing strategy. But let me spend a few words on our outlook for 2024. I mean, it's a mixed picture here. You see a lot of yellow, you see a bit of green. Fortunately, we do not really see a decline in any of our segments, in our regions, always comparing with the current utilization, with the current view.
We need to be a little careful because obviously, looking at APAC, you see these three green arrows, so which indicate an improvement. But to be also fair, that is an improvement compared with a fairly low level, because China has been fairly difficult this year after the initial sort of pickup after relaxation of COVID rules. But now, you know, we saw a difficult development. So we see a positive outlook going forward, but still based on a relatively low level. But our bigger markets, as you know, in terms of geography, are Europe and the Americas. And in Europe, across all segments, we see a fairly flattish picture, agri, construction, equipment, material handling and stationary systems. So fairly flattish. America is a little more positive.
Agricultural machinery is definitely positive, so, but, also, let's say, material handling, even though we show it as flat, it's flat on a very, very high level. And, we are here represented with two major customers. Both of them, benefit, or their customers benefit also from many, many of the initiatives under the Inflation Reduction Act, and, that still shows some boost performance and boost market, development here for us. So let's say, it is a stable outlook, which we see. And, we came from a very, very hot market, and now it's still a good market, but obviously, the growth, speed, is going, down a little bit. When we look at order backlog, you know, and, order backlog, of course, as you know, is a function also of order intake.
Over the last weeks and months, we have reported a slight decrease in order backlog because order intake also has not been on that level that we've seen over the last 18 months, indicated also by book-to-bill below one. So that's clear. But if you look at that picture, and I think it's fairly important, in order to understand this KPI for our business, to look a bit further back. So we show here a 5 years perspective or 6 years perspective, but we've taken out 2020 because due to that, the pandemic situation, the numbers were all over the place. But if you look at 2018, where, as DEUTZ, we sold some 200,000 engines, in 2019, we sold some 190,000 engines. So levels actually slightly below what we do today.
But back in those two years, we had an order backlog in the range of EUR 400 million-EUR 500 million, dominated by the Americas, of course, by Europe, of course, because it's our biggest market, biggest market. And then in 2021, customers, because of the shortage of supply, ordered longer, ordered more, sometimes even ordered more than they actually needed to secure the limited capacities. That's a behavior which we observed through all areas, through all steps of the value chain. And that behavior continued in 2022. And in 2022, as you see on that chart, our order backlog reached a record of almost EUR 800 million for the same number or even less, even lower number of units sold than what we had in 2018 and 2019.
Now, the arrow going a bit downhill indicates that this behavior normalizes again, because supply chain is much more better under control, and demand is approaching supply, both because demand is going down a little bit, but also supply, as in our case, with increasing capacity on the sub-four, in the sub-four liter field, it is being ramped up, so we are moving more towards an equilibrium. That means, in other words, that the behavior normalizes, and it also shows, particular based on historic comparison, our order backlog is still in a very high level. If we look at that in a different format here on this chart, you know, the left bar indicates what was our outlook at the end of 2022 for 2023.
You see here, this bar chart, you see, you see that, let's say some 39% were at that point, fixed orders, whereas 38% were contractual orders. So orders for particular, for our larger customer who have a long-term contract with us in place, and only 23% were planned. So that doesn't mean it's just invention by our salespeople, not at all, but these are just assessment by mutual assessments between our salesforce and our customers. And the picture now at the end of 2023 is different, so we don't have that high share of fixed orders. We have fixed orders of some 20% and contractual orders of 45%, and there's a bit more open in the gray at 36%.
Going in line with what we see earlier, let me give you a couple of examples. We have a few particular, our large customers who give us forecast for the next 12-18 months, but they only order, they only place fixed orders for the next 3 weeks, right? That's the normal behavior, and particularly our largest customer in construction equipment, that's exactly the way he does it... You know, if this customer, we have a good visibility for the next 12-18 months, places an order, you only see an order reach of 3 weeks, right? And that you only see in the red-colored part of the column.
Then we have other customers, one of our big American customers, who in principle places orders with a period of 3-4 months before delivery, right? That's the way we see them also in the red bar. But these customers. You will remember, we introduced the so-called fixed volume program last year, where we pre-sold, in the end, 70-75% of our capacity for sub-4-liter for the entire year of 2023. So these customers who typically only place orders for 2-4 months, in that case, have placed actually fixed orders for the entire year.
So that sort of reduction in the fixed order share of 39%-90% is mainly explained by the fact that we're going back to the sort of normal order behavior that we had before we used this fixed volume program to meet this extraordinary situation in 2023. So that means we have a stable outlook, just with different order behavior. If you move on to our green segment, our project pipeline is being added all the time. You know, currently, we are pursuing 10 battery electric system projects with sometimes really big names, big OEM partners. We placed or we, we received a first small order for battery systems with Cassia.
We are currently pursuing 5 H2 projects, and I will talk about that in a bit more detail in a few minutes. We received earlier this week a firm order for 100 gensets from China. We have earlier already this year established an ongoing process to evaluate new business models and potential partnerships. We have initiated the establishment of a separate green organization. More information to come as soon as we are able to also announce respective names who are leading this organization. We have initiated earlier this year a process to sell our Torqeedo business, and that process is progressing well. We'd make no changes in our ambition and our plan to invest over EUR 100 million in green business between now and 2025.
When I say green business, I mean, not only investment in assets or in M&A, but also investment in research or development. It's really great that the high investments we've placed, particularly in the hydrogen combustion engine over the last years, begin to pay off by having received that first order from China, and it's in this case, for H2 Gensets. Let me talk a little bit about that China order for H2 Gensets. So, as mentioned earlier, we received this first order. We're talking about 100 hydrogen-powered gensets for the Zhongguancun Summit Environmental Protection Company, which is often referred to as the Chinese Silicon Valley. Obviously, you can't really compare it with the Silicon Valley in the US, because it's not a private company.
But what are they doing with these products? So there is an area in Yulin Province in China that's located in Inner Mongolia, so the western part of China and the eastern part of Mongolia. And that's an area where over the last decades a lot of heavy industry has been located to, particularly for coke production. So there's an area of more than 40 square kilometers, where more than 100 coke plants are. And one of the aspects of coke plant is that they produce gas as a byproduct, coke oven gases, which consists about 25% of hydrogen. And this hydrogen is currently they're not used, or these gases are not used.
And the concept which is being pursued here, with the strong support of the Chinese government, is that they will install gensets, which use the hydrogen, which is being taken out of that coke oven gas, to produce electricity. It is obviously not green hydrogen which is being used. It's fairly the opposite of that, but it's hydrogen, which normally would not be used at all, so would normally be put directly in the atmosphere. And that's even more important, you know, it's a starting point for then the subsequent development of a climate-neutral hydrogen infrastructure in China. So the infrastructure is being installed, and over the next years, they will also roll out here the use of green hydrogen, and then, as I said, the infrastructure there.
So these engines, we produced the first 4 or 5, we produced already here in our site in Cologne, and the next 95 will be produced in the course of next year. And of course, it's, this should not be the end, the 100, this is a starting order, and we see much more potential going forward. Why are we particularly proud of that? Because traditionally, DEUTZ is an engine company, and we produce engines traditionally for mobility solutions. But here we show clearly that with our technology, we are also able to offer suitable solutions beyond just the classic drive portfolio, in this case, for the field of power generation. Let me move on with service. Service has been a really, really successful stronghold of DEUTZ.
We managed to grow it significantly over the last years, but with the implementation, with the initiation of the Dual+ strategy, we clearly increased the pace of building up, of further sharpening our service business. And if we look back at the first nine months, we can look back on a really strong period. We further increased revenues by 7.2% to EUR 360.5 million. New orders climbed to exactly the same level, so that shows also that business is healthily. And the growth of that business came pretty much across everything we're doing in service, both parts and also our exchange business. That's great. We managed to further expand our in-house service network by also pursuing two acquisitions.
One acquisition is the long-term DEUTZ dealer, DEUTZ partner in South America, a company called Mauricio Hochschild, which is located in Chile as well as in Peru. The second acquisition we completed in the last month, this was the acquisition of Diesel Motor Nordic, which is also a long-term DEUTZ partner and dealer in the Scandinavian countries. In that sense, we were able to further expand our presence here. This again should not be the end. We have further acquisition targets in the pipeline. We're pursuing them in a structured process so that we can continue this buy and build strategy for service over the next quarters as well.
Meaning in terms of service, we are clearly here on track to achieve our target for the service business, EUR 600 million by 2025. And with that first glance in our strategic progress, I would hand over to Timo, who would translate what I just said into numbers and provide more detailed explanations.
Yes. Thank you very much, Sebastian, and good morning to all of you. I'm very happy to now have the chance to give you some more details on the financial numbers, but let me start with some key messages. We can report significant increases in revenue and earnings in the first nine months, and again, had a very strong third quarter. We are therefore very happy with the progress we are making in implementing our Dual+ strategy, as well as our cost and efficiency programs. And therefore, we will now see, I think, a fairly good and stable outlook for the rest of the year. Let me look into some of the details. So Sebastian has already talked quite a little bit about the order intake.
Yes, it is down compared to the year before, but what we saw on the graph, we can also now see here in precise numbers. So, orders on hand remain at a high level at EUR 666 million. Yes, compared to September 30, 2022, where we had almost EUR 830 million. That's of course a reduction, but as was shown on the graph earlier, I would say a normal time for this amount of sales we are making would be in the area of EUR 500 million. So we still have a significant order backlog there, which should give us a fairly stable outlook, at least for the near future. So, that is from my perspective is still a fairly okay situation for the difficult markets we see in general.
If we look at unit sales, well, if we look at all of the DEUTZ, then the number has gone down by 2.5%. But it's important to note here where this comes from, and this is why we broke it down here to the normal DEUTZ engine sales, and then the Torqeedo sales numbers. So the units in the Torqeedo area went down from 38,000 to 27,000. There is where the reduction comes from. Luckily, of course, these are much cheaper engines than the one we see in our classic business. But if we look at the numbers in the classic engine business, then we can again report an increase from 130,800 to 137,000.
So that is still going in the right direction. And this is also what we see then in the revenue growth. We again grew the sales volume by 10.3%, coming from little shy of EUR 1.4 billion to EUR 1.54 billion now for the first nine months of this quarter. If we break this down a little more into how it happened in the regions and in the different application segments, then here, really looking at the regions, the key message is that all regions grew. And I think that is again, we've seen that for quite some while now. That is a very important message. Of course, not all the regions grew in the same level.
The Americas, by far, were again the strongest area with an increase of 19.2%. And this is also something which gives us some confidence for the future, because as we heard earlier, the Inflation Reduction Act, for sure, and some other initiatives in the U.S. help us in this market, and this still is a fairly good outlook. Asia Pacific in total, still, yeah, 16% of our sales volume is also up 3.3%. Yes, China is unfortunately not giving us as much tailwind as we might have hoped at the beginning of the year, but in general, we are still growing.
The same is true for Europe, and Germany as part of Europe, of course. We show this year in two separate parts in the area of 8% up, which is still strong growth. Looking at the application segments, here we see a little more of a mixed picture. Some of them have gone down, not significantly down, especially the agricultural machinery, 1.7% down, so a little smaller. But, if we look at material handling on the other side, this is really the area that's been growing tremendously this year, almost 34% up. So, that is very good for us.
The one other part that makes us very happy and also from a finance perspective helps me a lot with the outlook is that the service segment has grown again by 7.2% and now is almost a quarter of our sales volume. This is very important to us from two sides. First of all, even if we might see some difficulties in the market in general, on the engine side, the service segment is something that's not as volatile normally as other businesses might be, and so therefore, we do have some stable revenue here, but also that is, of course, for us, a very profitable segment and helps us therefore with the EBIT. EBIT is the next thing we are looking at.
So, here, first of all, it is to mention that, now, after three quarters, we have already reached a higher EBIT level than in all of the year of 2022. And 2022, of course, was already a record year for us. So having now achieved that after three quarters, I think is a tremendous achievement. And also, if we look now at the different quarters, we can see that each quarter we were a little above EUR 30 million in EBIT, so it is a really very, very stable operational situation, I would say, if each of the quarters looks so similar. Where does it come from? Of course, higher revenues in the classic segment. Also some positive product mix.
Then the things we've already talked about in the beginning of the year, the market-oriented pricing policy still helps here. Service business, we've talked about, but also, and this is very important, all the cost and efficiency measures we've implemented here in the company, they really bear fruit and help us with the EBIT. So having said that, we can now look at an EBIT margin of 6.0% after nine months, compared to 4.7% in the last year, so up 1.3 percentage points, and we also see that in the net income, which is now EUR 66.5 million compared to EUR 52 million last year. Earnings per share before are up to EUR 0.53 compared to EUR 0.43, so also a nice achievement.
So, where did we spend money, though? That's always the other side. Making money is great, but there's also some investments we, of course, do to invest in the future of our company. The first part of that is always here, the R&D part. If we look at percentages, we've gone down slightly because of the increase in sales. But for me, more important is that if we look here at the absolute numbers, we've spent EUR 73 million compared to EUR 70 million the year before. Some of you might remember, the EUR 70 million last year were already quite a big increase from the year before that, so we are continuously investing more and more in R&D.
One thing that is very important to us, it's here, not all, not all of it goes into the classic segment, but also a significant portion goes into green here, and this is our biggest project now on the R&D side. If we talk about the hydrogen development, which is also part of then the development for the gensets that we've just heard, where we got the 100 orders from China. So that is all going well. Looking at capital expenditure, that was, of course, a special year now. If we've talked about that after the first quarter call, that we had the acquisition of the IP and License Rights from Daimler Truck.
That is a big portion of that, but also, if we look at classical investments here, then we can see that we're at roughly EUR 48 million compared to EUR 42 million in the year before. So also on the normal CapEx investment. We are spending well for improving our future. Some of the biggest projects here are also investments in a new line here in Cologne for the bigger engines, which will therefore then make the production even more efficient. Working capital, of course, this might look like a very big buildup, and some of you might wonder why that happened.
But of course, we are now here exactly in the transition phase, in the third quarter, because we started our third shift, beginning of August, so we therefore had to build up the components to produce these engines, but also there was some buildup in the final engine itself. That's the main reason for the working capital buildup. Looking at the effects all this has on the cash flow side, then the operational cash flow has a very, very big increase compared to the year before. That is mainly due to the much, much more profitable business we are making, and therefore, higher EBITDA that goes into this. And then, of course, this is also translates into free cash flow.
Even though, we did spend more on the investment side, free cash flow has improved tremendously. We also know that, of course, there was a very big buildup last year in the first three quarters, especially in the third quarter, because of all the problems we had in the supply chain. That's of course now normalized, as Sebastian said early on, and therefore, we are now at EUR -13.4 million. If we look at and you, uh, will see that later on in our guidance.
Of course, we have quite a bit way to go, but we are very sure that after now the production has normalized some and the third shift is up and running, that we are going to reduce the net working capital, especially on the inventory side, which is going to help us with the keep free cash flow for the year-end closing then. Net financial position has at least been bigger now on the negative side. This is mainly due to, of course, free cash flow is still negative. It's only slightly negative, but it is negative, and then, of course, the dividend payment we did. Therefore, of course, it's always important to look how our financing situation looks like.
Equity ratio is, again, we're always on a very comfortable level here, but it's even gone up a little to 45.7%. So this is really a very comfortable situation, I would say. Anyways, though, even since there is a lot of volatility in the market and the economic outlook is not 100% stable, we looked at our different credit lines. Right now, there are still EUR 185 million available, which we are not using, but we decided that we would even increase these credit lines with two bilateral credit lines of EUR 10 million each and prolong the other ones, so that we are very, very well financed.
First of all, of course, for whatever we are up to on our Dual+ Strategy, but also if the market at some point might go down, that there is enough cash available. Let me now give you some very quick details, looks into the classic and the green segment. I think the classic segment, we don't need to talk too much about, because if we looked at our overall numbers, most of these are very similar because the classic segment is still the biggest portion, especially on the new orders, the unit sales, and the revenue part. So the part that is worth looking at here is the EBIT and especially the EBIT margin.
So we reached an EBIT margin after 9 months of 8.8%, which is, I think, also, compared to competitors, fairly good, number, which we are, quite proud of. Looking at the green side, most of you know that by now, but this is always a little difficult to explain. If you just, look at the numbers, the EBIT here, but with almost -EUR 40 million, is significant. But we need to separate this, separate this into two different parts. One is the Torqeedo business. We see that here on the sales, side, on the revenue side, as well as on the, on the unit sales side. We've seen almost 30%, here, a decrease in these numbers.
That, of course, also has an effect on the EBIT, and therefore, the number here is more negative. But the other big portion of the green segment, EBIT, is always the investments we are doing here, especially in R&D, because we are not capitalizing those, and they go directly into the EBIT, and therefore, a bigger portion of this result here is really an investment into our future. So that's all from my side for now, and I'd like to hand over to Sebastian.
Yeah, thank you very much, Timo, for those insights in our numbers. And I will continue with a few numbers that mainly represent the outlook, the guidance for the year 2023. So yeah, of course, at the end of the year, beginning of November, we have high visibility on what ahead of us for the last, not even two months. So what we expect now, our unit sales range between 185,000 and 190,000 engines. So a lot obviously depends on how exactly are, you know, the deliveries around the year-end. Revenue, that translated in revenue, expect to be approximately EUR 2.1 billion, so, so constant with what we've told earlier.
In terms of margin, as said, initially, we, we upped it slightly from 5% to a range between 5.3%-5.8%. And free cash flow, we do now expect a mid-double-digit positive, of course, EUR million amount. So raise the guidance, so brings us, like, feeling comfortable or with confidence, let's put it that way, towards the end of the year. Midterm targets, medium-term targets remain unchanged. We do expect for 2025, the revenue to continue to grow to EUR 2.5 billion or above, and part of that growth path is the service business, which we continue to grow by roughly EUR 50 million on an annual basis, to a level of EUR 600 million by 2025. And the margin, we wanna bring it up another notch to a range between 6%-7%.
Also implying, yes, that the green business will start growing in top line, but will not in the next couple of years become positive on bottom line. So that's still a bit of a cross-financing from the classic and the service business. So we do confirm our midterm targets for 2025. But before finalizing and before being available for your questions, I mean, let me really summarize along classic green service our view on after the nine months of this year. So earlier this year, we started a journey. We started a journey with our Dual+ Strategy. We'll define the long-term targets, we'll define our mission and vision, and we'll define certain milestones.
And what I can say now is that we are well on track, and particularly the numbers in classic and service underline that clearly the classic business is now as successful as, and as profitable as it's never been before. And that's great. That's really great. That's not the end of the journey, very clearly, but we really made progress both on the sales side, as well as on the operation side. Also, thanks to the new team we put in place here. And green, yes, that's a bit of an upfront investment, all right? But we clarified here our strategy, we clarified our journey.
We decided that Torqeedo in the future will not no longer be part of DEUTZ, that we focus really on our core business, our core customers, but with products which go beyond just the engine. And we were, like, waiting until we can see the first milestone, and with that serial order for the genset based on our H2ICE to China, which we did today. That's certainly a milestone which is both important for us, and we are incredibly proud of. And last but not least, the service business continuing to grow in a profitable manner with inorganic parts as well, like the acquisitions in Chile as well as in Northern Europe. So we're good. We're well on track, and thanks for listening. And now we are ready for questions. I hand over to Christian.
Yes, thank you very much, Sebastian. Operator, we would now be ready to take the questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. If you are using speaker equipment today, please leave the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star, followed by one at this time. Our first question comes from Jorge González with Hauck & Aufhäuser Investment Banking. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning, Stefan. Thank you for taking my questions. I would like to start a little bit with the outlook for next year. You were mentioning that at this point you see a stable development, let's say flattish development, that in fact looks quite good, not taking into account the weaker demand. I was wondering, this is your optimistic best case scenario, and you still think that it might fall slightly next year?
Or, what are the fundamental drivers for this view, taking into account that if we look to, in general, to the agriculture sector or construction, there are some regions now, like, especially with Europe and/or Germany, now that are drawing a quite negative scenario for next year. What are the strengths that you have to see this development for next year? Well, maybe we can start with that, if you don't mind.
Yeah. Good morning, Jorge. Let me start with that. And, yeah, typically, we don't, we don't really give a specific outlook for 2024 at this time of the year because we're still compiling here our internally, also our, our plan and budget for next year. But you can imagine, and that's why your question is, is very, very relevant and, and very expected also. You can imagine that this drives us a lot because obviously we also observe, what other customers, and other players announce, when it comes to the outlook. I mean, there have been a lot of, news where we said, "Hmm, are we maybe too optimistic?" We have to, we have to ask ourselves the question: What does help us in, in, in making this sort of flattish outlook? You know, I would not say a bullish outlook.
It's not a bullish outlook, it's a flattish outlook, but probably we look at it a bit more optimistic than others at the moment. That is true. But what helps us here is particularly our exposure in North America. Because if you look at the mix, just the view we currently have, we see at the moment a bit of a stronger demand in sub-four liter than what we have next year, but a weaker demand in larger than four liter. And that is not surprising, because particularly the larger equipment and construction equipment, where we see a bit of a cautious development, particularly in Europe. I mean, these are typically the customers which actually source the larger engines from us.
So there we see a bit of a, let's say, less optimistic outlook, but this is compensated by the sub-four liter, particularly from the US. So, Jorge, I would expect... I would suggest that, you know, as we speak often in terms of the various calls or conferences, let us stay in contact on that and, you know, we'll share always the update with you. But at the moment, we really think that it is a stable outlook. And whether that's gonna be a bit too, a bit on the optimistic end or on the realistic end, that will work out over the next couple of weeks.
Yeah. Okay, that sounds interesting. So are there any in U.S. you are seeing some market share gains in general, I understand, no? That's also helping you a little bit.
Yeah, you know, we have those two customers, I mean, JLG and Terex, these are the major customers in the U.S. And we talk to them, and we talk also to their end customers, the rental companies, and they look with confidence to 2024, and we'll benefit from that. And on the other hand, we have others, particularly in Europe, where the confidence is maybe not as high. But luckily we have a well-structured and well-balanced portfolio here across regions and industry. So yeah, but it's driven by the U.S., and it's been certainly a good decision over the last years to increase the business in the U.S., because that's at the moment, the business which is booming now.
Okay, thank you. My second question will be around your pricing power and also that in context with the service expectations. So do you think you can keep these prices next year? Well, I know that cost materials are starting to go down, so obviously that should be also put in context. How you feel about your pricing for next year, and also in terms in regards to the product mix, you commented in the results that the product mix helped you also in the quarter. It will be also interesting to have some color on this as we were expecting in general that you were pushing more compact engines.
So, how come now that you have this better mix? Yeah.
... Yes. Okay, let me start with an answer on your question on pricing power. Well, last 2022 and 2023, we have increased prices significantly. That is true, and we don't-- we do not expect that 2024 will be a year of strong price increases again. I think that's clear. So, because the market moves to more towards an equilibrium between supply and demand. So, what we expect still to be able to adjust prices positively, but on a smaller scale, much smaller scale, that's still possible. We do not expect that we will reduce prices, very clearly so.
We know that there may be some players on the market who think about that, but I, we are well positioned in our customers' applications, and we are reliable, so I do not expect that this is an issue for us. So we will keep prices or slowly rise prices, but with the slower pace than in the last years. What will be important? Yeah, that's true, and that's something we also identified as one of the priorities for next year. The landscape, the supplier landscape, because as you said, some indices, some prices are going down.
So, it will be, the focus will move more on cost reduction, and that's certainly an aspect which with our, purchasing and supply chain, teams, we are intensifying again. I mean, we've always been over the last years at least, we've always looked at, at keeping costs under control and reducing where possible, but clear is also that in the last year, the same way, like we were able to increase prices towards our customers, some of our suppliers, were able to do that towards us, but that equilibrium can change a little bit. And for us, it's important, that we are ahead of the wave, or at least on the front part of the wave.
That made us successful in 2022 and 2023 with being quicker on the price side, and I'm convinced now with being a little quicker than others on the cost side, we'll able to keep that edge. Your second question was focused on the mix, and here we have we are enjoying or experiencing a positive effect that some of the older engines are not being discontinued, but the demand is slowing down, and the older engines are at some aspects at least the engines where our profitability levels were not as high as the newer ones because the level of competition is also different one. So there, for example, pricing power is not that great when we look at older engines into power gen, for example.
So that's something which is growing a bit in a healthy way for us.
Okay, thank you, Sebastian. I go back to the line and maybe ask some questions later. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, you may press star and one. Our next question comes from Stefan Augustin from Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello, gentlemen. Thank you for taking the question. Actually, I'm looking a little bit first on the third shift, which you introduced. So when demand becomes more uncertain, there is obviously the risk that you need to reduce that. So when you look currently at the software data pipeline, do you think it will be possible to keep the third shift over the full year, 2024? That would be my first question.
Yeah. On the question of the third shift, so we introduced it by the end of July. It's running stable, in a stable way now. At the moment, I mean, when I say we are looking at a flat development of our order book, of our sales and production revenue, that means in purely by mathematics, we would not need the third shift for the full year, because when we are on the same level, roughly or a bit below, maybe, like current year, I mean, we did not run the year 2023 with three shifts on 12 months. So what we do expect at the moment is that at some point in the course of 2024, we will not need the third shift in full force anymore.
Whether this is gonna be in the second half, a bit earlier, a bit later, that will depend then on the exact mix of engines. But in any case, that is not so much of a concern for us, because what we managed when we building up the third shift, I mean, operationally it has two main implications. First of all, we need to source more material to meet the increased demand, and secondly, we need to source more staff to operate the assembly lines. And yes, the material planning is directly connected, by the way, through an optimized and, well, completely redone S&OP process now to the sales signal. So here we are now in a better position to react more quickly than we've ever been before, so that's a positive sign.
On the HR side, we were able to ramp up the capacity needed for the third shift. We talk about roughly 200 FTEs. So we did that completely based on temporary workers. That doesn't mean that the third shift runs totally with temp workers. It means we use temp workers to then blend them with fixed contract workers in the two existing shifts. But the advantage here of the temp workers is that if needed, we can reduce with a very, very short announcement time.
Is it right to conclude from everything you said so far that we should expect rather you to go with a more efficient, more loaded production into the beginning of 2024, and then it will be, say the nature takes its course. Is that, is that a way of thinking?
It is right to assume, but it's also right, based on, let's say, our long-term experience. Because typically the first couple of quarters are the stronger quarters, in particular, the second quarter. When you look at our numbers in the long run, you always see the second quarter is the strongest, and then the first quarter starts a bit slowly, in January until everyone's up and running again, and the fourth quarter is typically due to the Christmas period, a little weaker in terms of occupation, right? So yeah, that's why it's fair to assume what you did.
We have to say that in the last couple of years, this was a little out of order because the limitations were on capacity, and you know, and supply chain. So that's why this golden rule didn't really apply in the years of the supply chain crisis, 2021, 2022 up to including 2023. But at the moment, we would say, yeah, it's fair to assume that the first half would be a bit stronger in terms of volume than the second half. But we'll see what the... How the economy develops throughout the next year, of course.
Okay, thank you. And the next one is actually on the green business or Torqeedo. So we have expanded the loss in Q3, and that part of that is Torqeedo. So when we would be successful in selling that business in 2024, obviously, the, let's say, losses in green would reduce, and you, let's say, outlined your conference calls a general expectation about, let's say, low level, low double digit, loss as a, as a normal run rate, and to be in perspective with a EUR 100 million investment into the green business. So, let's say if you sell Torqeedo, we would be back around that investment level. Is that a fair conclusion?
The second connected to that, if you would be selling Torqeedo, you ruled out so far that there would be an asset write down, or something like that. The next question is, can you also make a statement about if, if Torqeedo could lead to a cash drain? The sale of Torqeedo.
Sorry, the last bit was cut down. If Torqeedo would lead to a cash, and then I didn't get it.
If you sell Torqeedo, if that could lead to a cash drain.
Drain.
Cash drain? Oh, no, quite the opposite.
Yeah.
No, quite the opposite. So let me start with the last question. So, I, as we said before, sale of Torqeedo, according to what we currently see in the process, would neither lead to a cash drain nor to an asset write down. You will understand that we will not provide more information on that because it's a competitive, but also highly confidential process, but that is clearly the current view. And why is that? Because a buyer or potential buyer for Torqeedo probably sees more potential in it than what we could easily do, given our positioning in the market, and also our size. So, that would be one aspect.
The other aspect, yes, of course, if Torqeedo is out of our portfolio, that would change, that would change both top line and bottom line. That's very clear. Bottom line, I mean, we do not as when I said earlier, we expect a conclusion of that process throughout 2024, we would, we would not expect the closing to happen, let's say, early 2024. It'll take some time. Even if we have an agreement and a signed contract and everything, it'll, it'll take a couple of months to, to run through governmental approvals, et cetera. So, we will not see the full effect, fairly early in the year. We will then evaluate when, if and when we, disclose the discontinued operations, but that's questions to be answered, not at this point in time.
So, then you mentioned, I'm not 100% sure I understood, but I think you raised a question on the EUR 100 million investment in green, and we continue to invest EUR 100 million in green, very clearly. I mean, if you look at where this number comes from, in our heads, in our minds, in our plans, we are spending a certain share of R&D. Timo mentioned it earlier in our green, in our green fields, both related to hydrogen as well as to electrification. We'll talk about EUR 30 million-EUR 35 million on the full year basis right now, and we do not plan to reduce that. Quite the opposite, right?
We have to allocate capital going forward, obviously, bit by bit more towards green in order to front load here the development of green. And as I said earlier, I'm actually particularly proud and fond of the situation that our large investment in the hydrogen combustion and then begin to pay off by securing that first serial order. So yeah, Torqeedo, it's a strategic sort of readjustment, but more sharpening of our green strategy. By no means, by no means a stop or a slowing down. We expect actually that after we divest it off Torqeedo, we can even increase the pace by allocating the limited resources in a much more meaningful way than what we've done over the last years.
Mm-hmm. Is it fair to assume a positive contribution margin from the order in China, or likewise, orders that you might achieve in the near future?
Yes, that is fair.
All right. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Roland Könen from Value- Holdings. Please go ahead. Mr. Conan, your line is open. Looks like we don't have Mr. Conan. We move with another follow-up from Jorge González. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you, again. Yeah, I wanted to ask again about service. So your target for 2025 is quite a strong EUR 600 million. And I was wondering how you see 2024 in this regard. You acquired a couple of businesses this year that in my numbers are adding around EUR 20 million, something like that. So I was wondering if we should expect a slight growth for service next year, or if there is any driver that we should take into account for faster growth. And obviously, in this regard, how you see the service sales jumping to the EUR 600 million until 2025? Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, as you... next, in 2025, we wanna target the 600. This year, we're gonna be shy of 500, maybe 490, something around that. I think it's fair to assume that next year we're gonna be somewhere halfway, maybe a little below, but not much. So, yeah, it's always, it's a combination of organic growth and one or other M&A. The two M&As we did this year, it's not 100 the revenue numbers you mentioned were quite correct, but it's not 100% service because there's some trade, some engine sales as well, but majority is service.
Obviously this year, they didn't hit the P&L on a full year basis, but only on a couple of quarters, or in the case of Diesel Motor Nordic, only on the last quarter. So obviously, we'll enjoy the full run rate next year. And there's gonna be a couple or three more acquisitions to come. Not all of them we know already of, but we're working on that. So that's, yeah, I would safely assume something around halfway.
I remember you mentioned in the second quarter that U.S. services around EUR 50 million per year. And you were opening new retail workshops. Should we expect faster growth in North America than in other regions for service?
No, I would not say that. We would not say that. I mean, as you correctly said, we have opened a ninth DPC in the U.S. this year. By the way, we're gonna open a tenth in the course of next year. So, the growth is on a comparable, on a comparable basis yet. But if you really look at the number for 2024, I would assume a good halfway between the numbers, 2023 and the guidance of 2025.
Thank you, Sebastian. And my last question, regarding green, we learned this week that Cummins and is together with Daimler Truck and other players, developing some batteries in the U.S. in the future. I was wondering if this is not a good solution for you to join Daimler Truck or Volvo, some of your clients, to continue developing your green business and especially for the electrification.
Yeah, we are, of course, we also saw the development of Cummins and, we have a very good, and very, sort of amicable, constructive relationship with Daimler Truck. We are, obviously, always in talks what we can do together, focusing both on, on hydrogen, because as you know, with our partnership on the medium-duty and the heavy-duty engines, which we concluded earlier this year, our engineers are, pretty much working on a daily basis with Daimler. So on the field of hydrogen is certainly of interest for both parties, but also in terms of battery.
I mean, I'm not talking specifically about Daimler Truck right now, but in principle, one challenge in the field of battery electric vehicles in our area of highway, where you don't have the huge scale effects of use, you do scale potential, like in the on-highway businesses, that you get access to competitive to competitively priced batteries. And certainly they're partnering up with a large-scale producer is helpful. So let me keep it like that. More, I'm unable to say right now.
Thank you very much. I go back to the line.
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 and for your questions. If there are any additional questions after the call, please contact the DEUTZ IR department. We will be at your service. For all the rest, if we do not see you during one of our roadshows or conference in the next couple of weeks and months, the latest, we'll talk to you again on March 19, when we'll present our full year figures and the outlook for our 2024. Have a great day and goodbye.