Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call of SFC Energy AG. As our customers request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in listen-only mode. After this presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has difficulties hearing the conference, please press star key followed by zero on your telephone for operator assistance. I may now hand you over to Dr. Peter Podesser, CEO, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Laurent, for the introduction. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thanks for joining us this morning to our presentation of the first quarter results and also for a look into the market and technology developments in the first couple of months of this year. Together with Daniel Saxena, our CFO, we will be happy to give you an accurate and good picture of the business results as such, but also naturally on the outlook. If we start off with a summary on where we are, I think it is absolutely fair to say that there is dynamic and consistent demand throughout the first couple of months, and not only throughout the first quarter of this year. That is the continuous driver here on our growth path.
Looking into some of the numbers, I think we will see, especially, when we look at the development of the order book. Also on the sales revenue side in the first quarter. Although with 5.4%, we show a decent growth, but naturally not contented with this level of growth. We also have to say that there was more shipment to be done based on the order backlog, but some of the delays in the supply chain and some of the constraints there left us with an approximate 10% of potential additional revenues not being shipped, but they're for shipment now in the upcoming month.
We have some factors also weighing and laying on our profitability and burdening our profitability, which are, I think, not a specific situation here for SFC. We see higher prices for intermediate goods than we see significant increase in expenses here for transport and logistics, and therefore we see a decrease in the EBITDA margin. I think that the good news here is pretty early on, we've started to implement countermeasures, which we will elaborate on in more details to give you a good understanding. All this, I think with those risk factors mentioned, but also with still the uncertainties are potentially driven by COVID impacts regionally on a global level.
also with the potential impact of the terrible happenings here in Ukraine. Overall, we still remain very confident looking at our full year plan in terms of growth, but in terms also of profitability. Going into more details on this will be the last part of our presentation. Let me start off now with the market and the demand. We have been seeing a consistent change in the macro environment and a big drive for sustainable, efficient, environmentally friendly energy solutions now over the last, more or less two years. We see this not only from a single region, we don't see it from a single market and application and not so from single customers.
We see this really consistently broad here on a very international basis. Based on this, it is one of the pillars here of our growth to see or to look at a record order book, with which we entered into the year. At that time, it was EUR 30.5 million, and within the first three months, we could increase this up to EUR 57.1 million. This is reflecting, I think, the overall demand, but also reflecting that we are well-positioned with a focus on industrially mature, industrially performing products over the last 15 years, but at the same time also developing market channels here on a worldwide level.
We are, and I mentioned a reference to this, I think, experiencing now another macro factor that might change the picture even more, and in this case, really also in favor of technologies like ours. It is not only important to achieve long-term climate goals and replace fossil fuels out of this perspective, which I think is already, I would even say, consensus in most of the world, not only developed societies, but with the unfortunate war and the aggression here from Russia to Ukraine, we also see a need to accelerate this process to be independent faster from fossil sources here. Naturally, this is what we expect to be another macro driver further propelling the business going forward.
At the same time, I think we don't neglect it, we don't forget the limiting factors. As mentioned before, we have a strain on supply chains. We have been seeing this now over the last almost two years. We see the logistics situation and increasing prices here, precursors, raw materials, transportation costs. With the temporary effect on our results, we are naturally not happy. We see that as a temporary situation because we have been putting measures in place early on. Most of you will recall, we started to do a very simplistic exercise, just lifting up our stock levels.
We just rent more space here in the vicinity of our headquarters in Munich to do this further and further increase, maybe not helping our working capital, as you all can see, but at the same time, it keeps us here, or it guarantees the availability of products, of components, and therefore our ability to ship products on a continuous basis. We didn't have any single disruption on our supply of products to our customers so far. At the same time, we started this also back in 2020, nearshoring, replacing some of our Asian suppliers here by European suppliers, and consistently going forward to this.
I think long term, this is a regionalization of supply chains, which will be not a specific exercise for SFC, but I think this is a general trend that's pretty healthy. Well, at the same time, yeah, the cost side, we cannot digest all the cost increases that there are, and we communicated this very openly and in a fair way with our customers. We increased the prices across the whole offering on the fuel cell side for all the products here, even twice. The first time on January 1, 8%, the second time now on May 5th, another 8.75%. With this, we expect a visible improvement here in the next couple of quarters, and Daniel will go into this here on the margin side.
Besides this, I think we must also not forget that we are here on a long-term plan. We are here on a strategic and midterm plan. We have achieved some or set some key milestones again in the past couple of months. Regional expansion of the business is one of our key undertakings, is one of the key elements here of the further growth. We just recently strengthened our presence in India. We signed the term sheet here for a Make in India agreement with our partner, FC TecNrgy, and also including naturally Bharat Electronics here on the sales side. We expect with this simply a broader and better access to a fast-growing market. We launched our hydrogen products there before Easter.
As of today, we can say we have the first RFQs in also from local telecom companies for hydrogen products. So there is a momentum there. We did a similar thing in Singapore just a week ago. I have the pleasure together with our team to present our hydrogen offering here to the Minister of Telecommunications and Science. Together with our partner, Oneberry, yeah, I think we can expect some direct and indirect support here also by significant government spending in the works. So on the regional side, I think complementing this also with the first visit in two years to meet our partners here at Toyota Tsusho in Japan last week, together with our team, we just came back over the weekend.
Important to get together again. Two main topics, further regional expansion of the business here to Southeast Asia, out of Japan, where we have to acknowledge within the last two years we saw some delays, and not all the milestones have been met due to travel restrictions here through COVID. If I quote our partners there, well, at the end, no change in plan, and we have to accelerate now, and our teams are as we speak here already in Southeast Asia here, driving the business development. Second topic with our partners in Japan, higher power fuel cells, hydrogen solutions, where we were allowed and able to visit the largest stack manufacturing plant worldwide here for fuel cell stacks here from Toyota used in their vehicles.
Naturally, it is a logical thought process here to test and see whether we can use some of those components also for our higher power products than going beyond the 100 KW over time, where we intend to have the first prototypes and pilots available by end of the year. The regional side, I think, real strong momentum, and it helps to be able to travel again. As much as we all appreciate the efficiency of digital and virtual formats of meeting, I think for the implementation, decision-making, especially for also technical products like ours, it is then again good to sit across the table, put the hands on the product and get decisions done.
Further steps and further partnerships with Wolftank out of Austria, we implemented in a very fast way the first pilot product here for one of the largest European mobile carriers for TIM in Italy. The pilot station is running and for the time being, I think we have, let's say, a very smooth project implementation. This is naturally a significant project here contributing to our hydrogen product development roadmap and opening up the telecom sector beyond the government part that we have successfully entered here in Germany over the last two years.
Last but not least, we launched a green hydrogen generator, trailer-based, vehicle pulled system, one-to-one replacement for diesel generators together with two partners, Test-Fuchs from Austria and Otten AG from Switzerland. The first pilots are on a, not a virtual, but a physical roadshow right now, shown to interested customers from, well, construction sites to airports to events. We are working on putting them into some significant sports events here over summertime. Same idea, consistent, replace the diesel genset in all those areas. I think we are one of the first ones, if not the first ones, to put such a green generator out there.
To be able then to supply the demand that we are seeing not only in our books, but also foreseeing here, we have kicked off the largest investment plan here in our history so far, doubling the production here in Munich, setting up a production line for fuel cells in Romania, in Cluj, our facility, ending up with a 3x production capacity beginning of next year compared to last year. Those projects are well on their way. We are, as we speak, implementing this.
Other areas of investment, and Daniel will go into this, and I alluded to it, is naturally the product side, consistently now further developing the next generation of the existing hydrogen offering here with IoT and cloud functionalities, higher power systems beyond 100 kilowatts as said. Not to forget, important to mention, our activities here combining fuel cells and electrolyzers. We are really consistently working on those three lines. We realized that our capacity on R&D is limited.
We realized that although hiring is going on, and we've been hiring almost 30 people since first of January, which is about a 10% increase in workforce, still, what we did is we contracted some long-term players, pioneers in the fuel cell space here on the R&D side to simply help us to accelerate our product development, especially on the hydrogen side. At the end, as you can see, we are taking a very active role here, not only on the market side, but also on the technology front.
I think we are taking the right and cautious measures on profitability as well as cost development in order to make sure, with all the constraints we're seeing out there, we're keeping on track here for hitting our targets this year. Looking into the development of the segments and the overall business, I think, yeah, we see the momentum here. In the order book, I mentioned this already, so it's maybe another fact that is important. We almost tripled the order intake in the first quarter here compared to last year. We can say as of, I would say yesterday, we are seeing our backlog consistently soaring, and we are well beyond EUR 60 million backlog as we look at it today.
Revenue side, I mentioned this already, our targets are definitely higher than a 5% growth. We also show it in our guidance. We want to grow between 17% and 29% overall. If we look at the growth in the first quarter, we are fully on track in the Clean Energy segment with a 22% increase. We are lagging behind on the Clean Power Management side. Overall, I think we had 10% additional potential revenue, and so to speak, orders that could not be shipped simply due to delays in the supply chain. If we look into the Clean Power Management side, yeah, we see there a decrease in sales. This is not driven because of missing order.
This is really the supply chain play that we are addressing as explained before. Just for reference and number here, if we look at the order book today, roughly half of it is coming out and maybe even a little bit more from the clean power segment. There's no difficulty and there's no issue on the demand side. There is a strong demand there, and I think we are doing the right thing with stocking the materials here to catch up over the next couple of quarters and get into a significant growth mode here again.
Clean Energy side, if we look into, let's say, the end market, as said before, there's not a single one that is, let's say, the overall driver here for the development. Still, and more so than before, the industrial part of the business is the largest part of the business. We saw a significant rebound here from government customers, public security, defense business, but also we have to say that last year's reference numbers were unusually low. We still see a consistent demand on the end consumer business here from our recreational vehicle as well as marine customers. Regionally, nice start here in Asia, Singapore contributing heavily, but also Japan kicking off very well. A consistent performance here in North America.
The fuel cell business growing more than 100% year-on-year, and one major driver also our successful customer partnership here with LiquidView. Significant orders last year, but also in Q1. We are looking at, let's say, a continuation here with a significant contract still coming our way in the upcoming days. Overall, with the, I would say, weak point in execution and revenue or shipment here on the Clean Power Management side of which we are fully aware, we are extremely well on track to hit our targets here at the end of the year. With this, I would like to hand over to Daniel to look into the development of the earnings side and the financial results.
Thank you, Peter. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining our call. Let me start with the gross margin, the gross profit. As Peter already mentioned, our gross profit or gross margin went down in the first quarter unfortunately. We're looking at a gross profit about EUR 5.6 million, which is EUR 600,000 lower than in the previous year's first quarter in spite of the sales increase. That translates into a gross margin of about 31.3%, which is also a decrease from, you know, the very strong gross margin we had in the first quarter 2021. It was at 36.5%, but also a decrease from the gross margin for the full year of 2021, which was about at 35%.
What's been really driving that decline in the gross margin, and Peter already mentioned it, of course. First of all, it's really the supply chain challenges and the higher logistic and transportation costs for incoming goods mainly. We always observed that in the last quarter in 2021. It has continued, especially cost for logistic and transport for all the incoming goods has increased. We got rush orders for material we need to get in for our production. In this context, logistic costs tend to be higher. Obviously, the Ukraine war has not helped with the global supply chain and logistic chains. Also, we saw, you know, an increase initially when the war broke out in transportation costs.
It has leveled out a bit. Overall, we can say that the impact of these expenses have increased in the first quarter. As Peter mentioned, you know, we have also increased our prices. The effect of the price increase on the gross margin will most likely show towards the end of the second quarter, and then in the third and the fourth quarter. We do have a certain time lag in this transfer mechanism as our higher prices setting off the higher material cost. We still take a great effort in really, you know, increasing our gross margin.
It's the same measures we have taken the last years and the last quarters. It's really, you know, ensuring price stability, and price stability in this context means, I mean, some increase in it. We're still looking at optimizing our bill of material, looking how we may or can replace certain components, which may be shortage in the market with other components, but all these measures takes time. Once again, we are looking at the markets, we are targeting, making sure that we target and go into those markets where we can realize decent margins. All in all, we're still looking at our mid and long-term targets for the gross margin, which for the group is above 40%.
Clean Energy, you know, around 44+% . Clean Power Management tends to be a bit lower, looking at 32% . We also believe that the challenges that we're having with the supply chain and the transport costs, you know, are short-term or, you know, going on for the next quarters, but eventually will also disappear. If you look at the gross margin on segment level, the gross margin for the Clean Energy segment was 34.3%, which is significantly down from the 40.7% we had in the first quarter 2021, which once again, was a very strong quarter in terms of gross margin. It's a mix of various factors.
One of them, of course, being the COGS, as I mentioned before. The other one, obviously our product mix. We have a slightly higher contribution of consumer application. We love to sell to our consumer customers, but the margins in that segment tends to be slightly lower than for industrial application as well as public sector applications. If you look at the Clean Power Management, we took a hit in the gross margin, going down to 25% or EUR 1.4 million. The impact of material expenses in the Clean Power Management sector is a bit higher than in the Clean Energy sector, simply because we're using much more electronic components in there in the segment.
The logistical and expenses or increase in those expenses were much higher than in the Clean Energy segment. What does it mean for group EBITDA? The group reported EBITDA was EUR 161,000, so, a 1% margin, compared however to the negative margin of the first quarter in 2021, which was minus 14.5%. As always, the reported EBITDA has limited informative value 'cause we got those adjustments, especially provisions for LTI programs, in it. Let me just get you over to the group adjusted EBITDA.
The adjusted EBITDA, we're looking at the expenses for the SARs program, which were EUR 223 thousand in the first quarter, compared to EUR 4.8 million in the first quarter 2021. The group adjusted EBITDA was EUR 800 thousand, translating into an adjusted EBITDA margin of 4.5%. That compares to an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 2.3 million in 2021, and a very strong margin of 40%. The group adjusted EBITDA margins for the full year in 2021 was about 9.8%. The lower margins, what are the result from? First of all, obviously, as I discussed, the lower gross margin. Then again, we have relatively higher adjusted G&A expenses.
Part of it was planned. There were some items in there that were unplanned. I will discuss them later. Remember, we also said in our last call that the G&A costs tend to go up. I'll touch on these things later. Depreciation, EUR 1.3 million. Major part, as always, is R&D related, about EUR 436 ,000 36%. Nothing much has changed to the previous quarter. Then again, IFRS 16 related expenses in the G&A is about EUR 506,000 . Taking the G&A away and looking at the group adjusted EBIT, we're looking at a negative number for EUR 480,000 compared to EUR 1.4 million in the first quarter 2021.
Let me quickly touch on our functional expenses and the development in the first quarter. Looking at the sales and marketing expenses, and let me also dig into the adjusted sales and marketing expenses. Adjusted is the same adjustments that we have at the EBITDA. We'll take the provision expenses for the long-term incentive programs out. We're looking at a 7% increase of our adjusted sales and marketing expenses year-over-year, going to EUR 2.7 million versus EUR 2.5 million in the previous year. That corresponds to 15% of our revenues, a bit lower in the ratio than in the last year, given the revenue growth that we have.
Our medium-term target range for sales and marketing expenses as percentage of revenues is still 12%-13%. The increase is mainly due to personnel expense. We have hired or we are increasing our sales and marketing staff for a lot of business development activities and then taking advantage of the ample opportunities that the market is offering. Also, what we have seen in the first quarter is that travel and further expenses are increasing. We are going back visiting customer. It's good. We need to go back. We need to see him. Peter just mentioned visiting our friends in Singapore as well as in Japan is important. This is another reason why sales and marketing expenses have increased. R&D expenses.
R&D is basically the basis for our future revenue. What are we looking at? We're looking at new product development, but we're also looking at next generation development. Next generation more features in our product. Peter also mentioned looking at electrolysis capabilities and combining with our fuel cells. Really R&D is something that we want to spend and we keep on spending. The total R&D spend is a combination of the R&D expense you will see in our profit and loss account, plus the R&D expense that we capitalize, plus to a very minor part R&D expenses for our joint development agreements.
Total R&D spend was EUR 1.8 million, about EUR 200,000 up from last year. The R&D capitalized pretty much the same level, EUR 604,000, and the R&D expense a bit higher, EUR 1.1 million, compared to the first quarter in the last year. That corresponds to about 10% of our revenues, and it's in line with our planning. In the long term, as we grow in revenues, nothing has changed. We're looking at 6%-7% of R&D spend in percentage of revenue. Most of the expenses are really project-driven. G&A expenses, I've mentioned that earlier, the G&A expenses have increased. What are the main drivers of our G&A expenses?
First of all, it's really corporate development. We are moving into new regions. We are moving into new markets. Peter already mentioned that. That really increases also our G&A expenses, not only in headcount, but for various services we need in this context. The other thing that really keeps on increasing G&A expenses is the, you know, the regulatory environment that increases. We're looking at ESG reports. We're looking at compliance issues where we really want and need to make a step up, and we're doing that. Last but not least, also audit and financial review services, mentioning here as an example the remuneration report that we published or had to publish for the first time this year.
All this is connected with some more expenses. To make a long story short, total G&A expenses, adjusted once again for the LTI expenses, went up by EUR 1 million, EUR 2.5 million compared to EUR 1.5 million the previous year. We have planned an increase in those expenses. Really the cost with the annual reporting, the cost also with the HV, it's all reflected in there, but also a large part corporate development and building up the future for our company. We also have some higher IT expenses. We mentioned that during annual call.
We are upgrading our entire IT landscape, preparing ourselves for the growth that to some extent has already happened, but of course, most of the growth that we still expect to happen. All in all, it compares to 40% of revenue. The medium-term target, G&A expenses in percentage of revenue is still about 12%-13% as our revenues are growing. Some ratios on our balance sheet, real quick. Fixed assets are PP&E. Tangible assets went up by EUR 2.7 million. Most of this is really, as I mentioned, capitalized R&D.
Freely available cash at the end of the quarter was EUR 20 million compared to EUR 5 million at the end of the year. Our financial debt increased slightly to EUR 3.1 million euros compared to EUR 2.7 million at the end of the year. Our financial debt is all short-term, as at the end of the year. It's working capital lines, which we have in with our companies, SFC Canada and SFC Netherlands/Romania. That leads to a net cash position that went down to EUR 70 million compared to EUR 22 million at the end of the year. Equity ratio hasn't changed. It's at 47%. Cash flow, where is our money going?
The operating cash flow before change in net working capital amounted to EUR 213,000 , lower than in the previous year, given the development of the gross profit as well as the functional cost. We had a net working capital changed. We had an inventory increase, cash impacted of about EUR 900,000 . We're just getting goods in as we can. You know, we keep on, you know, increasing our stock level to make sure that we can produce on the demand side. As Peter mentioned, sales, you know, we are well-positioned excellently. We just need to make sure that we can deliver our products. That's why we keep on increasing our inventory.
Accounts receivable decreased, impacting cash by EUR 109,000. Accounts payable also decreased, impacting cash by EUR 2,008. A big portion has a carryover effect, other short-term receivables, which increased by EUR 1.5 million. That's a substantial number. We're looking here at prepayments for certain suppliers who are getting certain goods in, but also there's, you know, increased taxes where we had to make certain accruals and payments. After taxes result in a negative cash flow from operating activities at EUR 3.4 million. Cash flow from investing activities is about EUR 1 million, larger part, as mentioned, EUR 604,000 is capitalized R&D.
In terms of software and PP&E, when we're looking at EUR 400,000 , as Peter mentioned before, you know, we're building up here our PP&E. We are still an asset-light company, so when we expand our production line, it doesn't mean that we get a whole bunch of machinery, but we need tools and certain devices to ramp up production. Cash flow from financing activities, negative EUR 261 thousand. Basically, this is driven by IFRS 16-related lease cost. This included with EUR 460,000 in the financial cash flow. Total change in cash then results into EUR 4.6 million for the first quarter. I think that is it for the time being from my side.
I will pass it back to Peter.
Well, thanks, Daniel. In summarizing it all and looking into 2022, I think you can see that we are not neglecting the macroeconomic uncertainties here from supply chain and the soaring cost base, where I think we have some appropriate measures already put in place, and we continue to put further measures in place, and also not neglecting the geopolitical uncertainties that naturally have worsened with the terrible situation here in Ukraine, where we can say from today's point of view, no significant direct impact on our business. We had a handful of projects in Russia, which we stopped early on, when this started, and we unfortunately had to replace the single or the one single supplier we had in Ukraine at the point when the war started.
Whether there is a further impact if this situation should worsen, which we all don't hope it will, I think we all cannot judge for the time being. In what I would call a Tetris view on it, I think we are very confidently confirming our full year forecast here. Not only for the revenue, where we have still the range from EUR 75 million- EUR 83 million there. Main fluctuation factor here is definitely supply chain. It's not the order backlog.
Also on the profitability side, where we are firmly convinced that all the measures implemented and explained again today will make sure that we hit the range here from EUR 6 million-EUR 9.1 million on the underlying EBITDA side, and from EUR 1.6 million-EUR 2.9 million on the respective underlying EBIT line.
Overall, I would say, very realistic view on where we are on cost and supply chain side, and a very optimistic picture that is driven here on the market side by the underlying change of the energy environment, where the need for clean and sustainable solutions, hydrogen or methanol as hydrogen carriers converted into in an efficient way into clean energy, getting an acceleration now in terms of the need to replace some of the existing supplies on fossil fuels. I think looking at the overall position, having products readily available and fully industrially functioning, and at the same time, having spent the last 15 years in building up those trustful relationships for market access, this is definitely the competitive advantage we are seeing right now.
Well, we continue to work on to expand this. With this, we would like to close the presentation and hand over to Laurent, and look forward to your questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will now begin our question and answer session. If you have a question for our speakers, please dial zero and one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it is your turn to speak, you can dial zero-two to cancel your question. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. One moment, please, for the first question. We have a first question from Usama Tariq from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. My first question is on you reiterating your guidance for the year, basically. I have a question there on why you're confident that you can still reach, let's say, the revenue guidance and the profitability guidance. Because if you look at the revenue side, I understand you're on track with Clean Energy, but for Clean Power Management that's related to the supply chain, and of course, the war in the Ukraine is still ongoing. China is still in lockdown.
I would like to know why you think on the Clean Power Management side that you can deliver there, and why that will change in the next few quarters? Then on the profitability side, you said that the price increases will only be visible at the end of Q2 or later during the year, so next quarter will probably be still weak in terms of profitability. Also there, why do you think that you can still make the guidance?
Johannes, good morning. Peter, thanks for the question. On the revenue side, I think especially also on Clean Power Management, we acknowledge those delays here in the first couple of months. As said, it's not a question of the order book. There is, let's say, approximately a EUR 30 million order book there with clear shipment schedules. What really helps us is what we have been further doing here in terms of, again, onshoring, bringing supply back to Europe here, especially also from Asia and China. The second one is this simplistic approach of not only ordering components, but purchasing them and getting them delivered. We are very diligently here working with our supply base.
If I look where we stand today, it's the 17th of May, we are on a good catch-up here and the orders are in-house, so it's a question of, yeah, getting the materials in and get them in-house. In terms of price increases, yeah, naturally, the downside of the big order book has now been that most of them were contracted under old pricing, yes. This is the trade-off between, I would say, stability and again price adjustments. It's also just a question of then mathematics.
We know that, let's say, what has been now contracted already on new pricing as of January 1 and what will be now contracted as of new pricing as of May 5th, you can simply also calculate the price increase. On the cost side, maybe Daniel wants to complement here. Overall, there is a gap to close, but with the orders in-house and the measures implemented, we feel really on a very realistic and practical path here of implementation.
Yes. If we look also at the gross margin, as I mentioned, a larger part really of the costs in the first quarter, the increase was really logistics and transportation costs. Also to some extent, materials, especially also in the Clean Energy segment, it was not so much the materials. It has to do, of course, the Ukraine war and crisis caught quite a few by surprise, and we had a really a very extreme situation for a couple of weeks in terms of, you know, getting products from A to B, or getting our goods from A to B. It also included, for example, getting our products from here to North America, to SFC Canada.
That also had an impact on really how you can make product planning. You need to be much more flexible, and you had to switch and change a couple of times, including over hours. All of these things, really, what we saw in Q1, I'm not talking only about material expenses, but you know, any other expenses allocated, associated with producing our products. We expect those at least to level out and ideally also to decrease in the second quarter, third and fourth quarter, mostly in the third and the fourth quarter, frankly speaking. That will take away some of the pressure.
If you look at the functional cost, as I mentioned, we are pretty much on track and ahead of track with our sales and marketing expenses. As I mentioned, you know, we were looking at an increase compared to last year, but we're fully in line with what we have planned for ourselves. The same applies for R&D expenses. As I mentioned, in G&A overall, we are a bit higher than expected, but most of these expenses really were expensed in the first quarter.
I mentioned, you know, the audit, the financial expenses, that we had also legal advice or legal services in connection with not only the AGM, but also the wonderful remuneration report. All these expenses are really, you know, first quarter expenses, which, you know, will not move on in the second, third and fourth quarter. That's basically the reason why on the expense side, we are rather confident that we, first of all, can keep our expenses in line, and secondly, seeing the positive effects from the price increases.
All right. Thanks for answering that. Just one more question from my end. Different topic, the Make in India agreement that you signed. Yeah, I read the details, of course, but you've been collaborating, let's say, with these Indian partners for some time and have had, yeah, orders in India before. What exactly changed? And what does it mean that you signed this agreement, and what's the, let's say, the longer-term strategy behind it? Because I don't really understand what changed by you signing the agreement now.
I think the key element here is the protectionist regulatory system that is in place. For large, especially government orders, you are expected and the prerequisite is to have about 50% local content, depending, still differing from contract to contract. That means we have to have local value add up to 50% to get the access to those larger contracts. As hydrogen and fuel cells are put on the government agenda here and spending is specified also what they call their hydrogen mission, we expect simply a much larger market access here that we could not serve with just exporting the entire value add from Europe. A continuation of the partnership, trustful, very well established, with local assembly being established.
Our team is heading to Delhi tomorrow for the next couple of days to put the next steps in place. I think we expect in Q3 to get really into full execution.
All right. That means that you will basically have a local assembly then together with your Indian partners in India at some-
Exactly. Exactly.
All right. Thank you. That's it from my end.
Thank you.
We have another question from Karsten von Blumenthal from First Berlin Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Peter. Good morning, Daniel. You have a very high order backlog, very impressive. My question is, do you plan to convert this EUR 57 million into sales completely this year?
Karsten, good morning. This is Peter. No, part of it reaches into also the upcoming year. If we look at the clean power management side, we did this large contract here with our largest customer, Thermo Fisher. This goes far into also next year. We have some other customers here on the fuel cell side, but I would say, I'd say the vast majority goes into 2022 simply based on business cycle. As I mentioned before, the order intake did fortunately not stop on the first of April even. Well, since then, we see same activity in the market, so it is soaring. It is increasing constantly further on, which is, I think, the underlying assumption here too.
Could you roughly quantify vast majority of this EUR 57 million?
If you look into this, I think, you take out between, let's say, EUR 12 million and maybe EUR 14 million, that goes then into 2023. That's, I would say, a fair assumption. Even with this, we see with some of our customers that they're planning to execute on some of the delivery schedules is shortening, means the demand is higher than the original planning. We would expect this to be the maximum that shifts into next year.
Okay. Thank you. Regarding the mentioned supply chain restrictions in Q1, how has it so far developed in Q2? Do you still have supply chain restrictions that will restrict your shipment of product in Q2?
Well, there is an ongoing challenge out there. I think it would be unrealistic now to assume that this goes away within the running quarter. Again, two measures that definitely help us and therefore easing the situation to a certain extent is this mentioned onshoring, but also simply the higher stock level. It doesn't go away, but I think we are addressing it the right way.
Okay. At the end of the day, this means that if you have more inventory at some point you will ship much more in Q3 and Q4. Do you have the personal resources and technical resources for that to do that in the second half of the year?
Yes. Yeah. I think that's exactly the mechanic that comes in. We expect to do significantly higher shipments already in Q2 to start with the first one, and naturally the same applies for Q3 and Q4 based on the backlog we have. As mentioned, production capacity increase here in Brunnthal, but at the same time in Cluj. This is a program we are really executing on as we speak. If we talk about personnel, I think with the end of this month, we should have almost everybody on board on the manufacturing side that was planned here for this increase. We are already in the training schedules. We have people from Romania here being trained. We are hiring additional people in Romania as well as in Germany.
we also expect to have an initial capability of assembly, as mentioned before, in regards to India, also end of the year.
Right. That sounds pretty promising. Thanks for that. You mentioned the onshoring of your supply chain. Could you give us a rough idea how much of your supply so far has come from Asia?
Well, here, again, mostly on the component side. If you then go into, let's say, the individual and single components down to the microcontrollers, still naturally there's a major supply base out of Asia. Then having this and doing then the module-based assembly here for our electronics, for the product side on power management and also on the fuel cell side, this second step is the one that we did the onshoring with. There is still a dependency naturally on the overall supply here on the individual single component here on electronics and also semiconductors.
What we do and what we have been doing is purchase those single components and put them on stock and do, let's say, a lot of the assembly here in Europe. At the same time, I think this is naturally alongside some of our R&D programs. We are using our technical and our hardware and software teams to qualify alternative components on an ongoing basis to A, ensure availability, but also over time also again reduce costs, meaning replacement of scarce modules is ongoing. This might delay some of our development programs here and there, but helps us A, a bit on the availability side, but B, also over time on the cost side. It's a very practical approach.
Indeed. All right, one last question from my side. What I think is very interesting is that despite the global supply chain issues, if I look into your regional development, you were +22% in the U.S., you were +300% in Asia. Obviously, you as a CEO were very well capable of sending your product into Asia and the U.S. On the other hand, Europe and Germany were much weaker. Is my interpretation right that it is simply a problem of your Clean Power Management business that is probably much more in Europe than elsewhere?
This is only to a partial extent, right. Yeah. There is naturally an absolute impact of Clean Power being, I'd say, lower than last year in terms of the product shipment. At the same time, we simply had a very dynamic development, especially in the U.S., but also in Canada. Singapore and Japan coming back online where we had quite a relatively weak second half of last year. With this, it is maybe more extreme, the picture that we show 31st of March. It's not, I'd say, the causes are multiple, so it's not this single cause with the absolute decrease here of shipments in the one segment.
I think as I always mention, you have to look if you look at the regional distribution. It always depends a bit on those larger customers we have in the industrial, but also public sector who tend to order in batches. You know, that and depending on where this order is coming from, that has an impact on the regional distribution. It's not really. You can say Clean Power Management is more in Europe and Germany. It really has to do if you look just isolated on the quarter, with which customer orders. You'll get a better view if you look at two or three quarters among the regional distribution.
All right. That means that you were very well capable of sending your product to Asia and to the U.S. despite logistical challenges.
No, absolutely. At the same time, also naturally incurring here and there higher costs.
Yeah, indeed. All right.
We had no disruption of shipment, no single disruption, which I think is important also for a novel product like ours. At the end, if the customer decides for it, they also want to get it and we were able to satisfy this need.
Yeah. Perfect. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
Well, thank you, Karsten.
There are no further questions, gentlemen.
Maybe we wait for half a minute, and then we look at it. We have some further last-minute questions coming in.
Yes. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial zero one one on your telephone keypad. We have another question, but introduce yourself and ask your question.
Good morning. It is Fabrice Stéphan from Luxcara. First question is, are we seeing a change in the overall environment due to the strong pressures we are seeing because of Ukraine, Russia, so some incentive towards the faster adoption of clean technologies? Are you starting to measure that? Do you think you could also help to reduce the risk of power shortages in the coming winter, notably in Germany and in some countries where there might be some issues? Thank you.
Fabrice, good morning. This is Peter.
Good day.
Good day. I think, if we look at the German perspective, one would immediately be tempted to jump to the conclusion, yeah, there's more spending on the German army, on the Bundeswehr, so this is the immediate change in procurement. We do expect naturally a positive impact here in this specific part of the business, but this is going over time, as we all know. There is a process behind it that takes its time. As of the moment, the parliament finally signs off on it, which has not happened yet. No. So there's no clearance yet from the parliament on those additional EUR 100 billion here for the next 10 years. There's more funds available, and there's also a need for sustainable and clean energy sources.
Overall, what we experience is simply the number of requests that are coming in, and those are coming in from utility companies, from telecom, from waterworks. A lot of, let's say, municipal services where people are looking for generator replacements that are at the end and not using fossil fuels. Overall, yes. Is this already leading now to a significant business until, let's say, the end of the year and the next wintertime? Here we really have to be also realistic. We look at, let's say, the decision-making schedule, and then naturally we look at our delivery schedules. The overall trend, yes, absolutely in our favor. Well, hitting our guidance, I think, does not depend from those two developments.
The macro environment for us is even better than it was before because it's an acceleration. People want to change faster, and we are one of the first ones having a product available. We have customers coming in saying, "Do you have this right now? Can you ship it?" Not the first question being what is the price? The first question is, do you have something? That's the major change, I would say.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
We have no more questions, gentlemen.
Well then, with this, we can conclude for today. We thank you very much for your time, your interest and your attention to what we are doing. As always, there's the offer to all of you. Contact us in a direct way. Daniel, myself, and Susan are happy to set up a call, a conversation, and to address your questions. Thanks very much for your time today, and looking forward to catching up over the next couple of quarters. Thanks.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may now disconnect.