May I now hand you over to Markus Lesser, CEO, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning everyone. Also from my side, thank you for joining us today in this conference call regarding the fiscal year numbers of 2020. Before I start the presentation, I would like to share with you an outline of the presentation and the procedure of today's call. As usual, I will start with an overview of the operational and strategic highlights of the fiscal year 2020. After that, I will comment on our financial figures. I will conclude my presentation with our outlook for the remainder of the year. As always, we will then open the line for the sell-side analysts only. All other participants will stay in listen-only mode, as it is our company's procedure for years. As usual, our slide that I will use can be found under our investor relations website. Having said this, I would like to draw your attention to slide three.
This year was both extraordinary and successful. Despite the difficult general conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we made significant operational progress in various markets. We're able to close the past fiscal year with a pleasing result and having consistently involved our business in accordance with the scale-up concept. Furthermore, the demand for sustainable investments has increased strongly. The share price has reflected this positive development with a price increase of around about 98% within one year, and thus almost doubling. The operating performance in 2020 was clearly marked by the expansion of our power generation portfolio and the progress in the markets and the business expansion. In total, PNE completed, sold, started construction of project with a capacity of approximately 461.2 MW during the reporting period. The prior year was for 450.8 MW. This means that the project realization is once again above the level of the previous year.
We also see that we have an expansion in our own generation portfolio. This makes progress. Approximately 100 MW had been under construction at the year-end period, and of which 70 MW could be already put into operation in this quarter. This means 83 MW are now under construction for portfolio independently from the projects we do for third parties in this year and will be finished this year or maybe beginning of last year. The scale-up implementation is fully on track. Investments are ongoing. We do PPAs. We do services additional like safe technology, on-demand nighttime marking, and this all start to pay off. PV is one new technology we put into place. The pipeline is strongly expanding to 548 MW within one year. For last year, we had 123 MW peaks. The number of employees increased to 455, and last year we had 427.
The pleasing development in operation business is reflected in the results. The group has operated profitably, although we have also invested in the expansion of our own generation portfolio and in the implementation of our expanded strategy via scale-up. According to the financial, I want to highlight that despite some negative impact from COVID-19, we were able to achieve regarding EBITDA, even exceed our guidance in the full year 2020 in the case of EBITDA by around about 30%. I also want to highlight the strong performance on the segment level. I will show you afterwards the details. We see that the growth compared to last year was significant in all segments. As indicated in the previous slide, the results 2020 were impacted by the investments we made in our portfolio.
The investment in our portfolio were also reflected in the non-realized earnings of EUR 50 million within one year. In the last year, it had been EUR 11.6 million. We also see that the milestone receivables, we could recognize for Gode Wind 4 and Atlantis I offshore projects, and this contributed to strong Q4 results. We are still on a high level with EUR 111.6 million as cash position, which is similar on the same level as last year. The dividends we would like to propose of EUR 0.04 per share is our target and will be part of the next AGM. The expansion of own generation portfolio continues. We can see that the target increase we would like to have in 2023 is 500 MW, roundabout. As mentioned, 100 MW we have had under construction at the year-end, whereby 17 MW already put into operation in this quarter.
In total, we see 134.8 MW we have in operation already, and we would like to have very soon, in this year, latest beginning of next year, 236 MW. I can say that at the last year end, we have a hidden reserves accumulated in the portfolio of EUR 80 million in total. That means, if we would have sold it according our calculation, we would have gotten EUR 80 million more EBIT. Next page. We see that our pipeline is growing. Even if we finalize the project, we also have a growing pipeline, which is remarkable. We have now 5,405 MW at the year-end. We had in our pipeline, the project pipeline, for the project development in the last year, we had 5,235. In German pipeline, the German pipeline increased as well, around 140 MW to 1,754 MW. I think remarkable, again, see the numbers.
We have 642 MW in Germany and France at that time, last year, in a permitting procedure. We have 106 MW under construction, and we have in services, another four MW for third parties, as well as 130 MW Malbergette project, which is under construction as well. As well as the 59 MW in Poland. You see, we have a lot of projects in front of or we are working on, and especially in the German and France market, this is a high volume. Put the numbers together, 134 MW we have already in our operating portfolio, 380 MW in Germany, plus in a permitting status, plus 106 MW we have already under construction or 100 MW for the portfolio. That means we have a high probability to get the 500 MW targets under control in 2023.
We finalized the projects, Babicko especially Jasna. Jasna is one of the biggest projects in Poland, with 132 MW, which was a very huge task to get this under control through pandemic times. There had been delays. In total, we hadn't had any and created any delays. We got it under control. This was a high-level technical project, and we got it under control and could finalize it to the year-end. We also have a rapid growth in the PV pipeline. If you see last year, 123 MW peak. Now we have 548 MW, and we think that we can increase our portfolio in this way as well, even in this year. The pipeline expanded to 184 MW in the year 2020, 2,090. We had 10 MW peak in Germany. In Italy, 0 to 42 MW last year.
End of last year, Romania stayed on the same level, but I can tell you that it will increase as well. In the U.S., 1 MW peak-210 MW peak. We look to numerous markets if we can expand it. For example, Poland, where we have a network already in place, through our wind business and other countries where it makes sense. We will stick mainly with Germany, France, Italy, Romania, U.S., and Poland. Nevertheless, we see a lot of other markets where we can maybe create additional growth of our PV pipeline. If we look to the financial results, we see a strong operating performance, which was driven by the project sales, Germany, France, Sweden, yeah, thermal project. In Germany, Erfurt Ost, which is 5.5 MW.
The milestone payments we got through our projects we could finalize, a milestone we could finalize in Germany, Poland and Sweden. Additionally, milestones payments, receivables for offshore projects, Gode Wind 4, Tude and Atlantis I. In Gode Wind 4, we look for EUR 14.7 million. We expect the payment end of 2022, and in Atlantis I, we think that the EUR 4.6 million, this is depending on the offshore tender which we expect in 2024. Due to the fact that the German government made progress in their spatial plans, we could recognize these numbers and had to recognize these numbers in our IFRS consideration. We had results from power generation and services and the expansion of our own power generation portfolio, again, reflected by the increased non-realized earnings. We met our targets and exceed them in the case of the EBITDA, as already mentioned.
I also want to highlight the strong performance of the segments level. Before consolidation, all these three segments showed growth compared to the last year. Project development output increases to EUR 186 million, which is +23%. EBITDA, it was an increase by 79% to EUR 56.5 million. Services, service output grows by 15%. The EBITDA decreases or stayed on the same level at EUR 2.2 million. This is mainly due to the international expansion. We opened markets in Poland and Sweden, where we built and constructed our projects and the COVID-related restrictions. You can imagine if we have to do trainings, if we have to go to locations, we couldn't do this in this amount we wanted to do. We had been an impact due to this pandemic. Electricity generation, power generation output increased to EUR 24.3 million, +26%, EBITDA +31%.
We put more projects into operation. We see that the investment service and power generation are paying off. The balance sheet remains rock solid is the headline and is exactly what we see. We see that the balance sheet is totally increasing from EUR 550 million to EUR 663 million, mainly driven because of the new projects in operation and due to the fact that the leasing contracts are now in IFRS increasing, the numbers are increasing, and these are the main effects that we have a higher number. This has effects on the equity. The equity ratio is solid, now at 30%. In the last year, we had 37%. Nevertheless, the liquidity is still very high on a level of EUR 111.6 million. The non-current debt is related to the corporate bond.
If we build up our portfolio, it's clear that the liabilities to banks are growing, mainly related to project finance, non-recourse project financing. You see that we have EUR 216.6 million in the non-current debt. If you see the current liabilities, EUR 22.7 million, related mainly to these non-recourse financings. The liabilities from leasing contracts increasing right-of-use to a level of EUR 70.4 million, if you see the non-current debt. If you see the current liabilities are at the level of EUR 4.6 million. We see the positive impact of our measurements in the scale-up procedure. We have now one organization in the whole PNE group. The processes are tools, and tools are in place, which really helps us through this pandemic. We are mainly in the home office, with some exceptions who do trainings or do services.
You see that we are still ongoing with the expansion of the generation power portfolio. We see we are not in the range of doing the first PPA, I think we are now on a level that we have done multiple of PPAs. Just right now, we are one of the big PPA signers in Germany for post-EEG wind farms. The completion of sale of the first developed project in new markets, we wanted to sell one project in Panama. This was not possible due to the fact that Panama was hit very heavily from the pandemic. The sale of the first hybrid project, there is a postponement due to natural heritage, but I'm sure we are working on this to get this under control. We are working on one of these projects. In 2021, we are on the way.
Furthermore, the expansion of our own portfolio is one main target, and we want to come up with new innovative products and services. We talk about different hybrid projects, hydrogen projects. Maybe we get the first one on board. The markets entrance, maybe in a third market. We will see if we really want to do this. We look very carefully to the markets, how they are affected and were affected by the pandemic. We look constantly on the market situation. We look to new projects and white spot regions. This is an ongoing task. Ladies and gentlemen, this leads me to the outlook. In 2021, we will have further upfront expenditure in the low single-digit million range for the strategic expansion of the business model.
We expect group EBITDA of EUR 24 million-EUR 32 million in respect of our guidance for the 2021 fiscal year. Due to the pandemic, you know as well in your business, it's not become easier to sell projects or that we get the wind turbines at the right time. The wind turbine manufacturer extended now the delivery times for another three months. You might expect there might be a postponement of project, but as usual, we consider a little delay, but we hope that will not be extended. It's always only a shift. It's not that we can't do the project. If we summarize it, we have a promising start of the year with the sale of the 59-megawatt project in Sweden. We have a high project activity number still under construction.
A lot of them in Germany for our own generation portfolio, 100 MW or 83 now. Well-filled growing project pipeline, 5,400 MW in total, and on onshore and 548 MW in PV. High volume of permitting phase core markets in Germany and France with 642 MW in permitting status. We expect a sale of projects in U.S., Poland, Romania, South Africa, Panama this year, depending sometimes on sale situation, pandemic and sale situation, but in mainly also due to tenders environment. We do ongoing investments and want to become more efficient and want to grow steadily in the product range so that we meet the market needs. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to conclude my presentation. Thanks for your attention, I'm ready to answer questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our question and answer session. One moment, please, for the first question. The first question received is from Carsten Frantz from Commerzbank of First Berlin Equity Research. Your line is now open, sir. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Markus. Good to hear that PNE, despite the pandemic, is doing well. My first question is regarding your own wind farm portfolio capacity. Could you tell us what you plan to have under own management at the end of 2021?
Yeah, if you look to the numbers, we have around about 83 MW, which we would like to finalize, which we have under construction just right now, beneath the 70 MW we finalized just right now. If you add 134 + 70 MW, it's a starting point, and then 83 MW from that. We have one project which might go in the next year with 17.5 MW, which you have to subtract or deviate from the 83 MW. In total, let me summarize, 83 minus 17.5, plus 17.
Okay.
Round about 83 MW, which you can add to the number we have just right now, 134 MW.
Perfect. Thanks for that. That is helpful. When I see your wind project pipeline, this did not grow much in 2020. In your annual report, you say that you do not expect a pipeline expansion in 2021. Could you elaborate on that?
The project pipeline, you mentioned, the project pipeline for the development project in wind, yes?
Yes.
Oh, I see. It's a slight increase, what we see. You have to recognize that we have around about 460 MW, which is a very high level, stepped mainly out of these numbers. We could increase, despite this fact, we could increase our numbers. It's always, I think, a good result.
All right. In your annual report, you say that you do not expect a wind pipeline expansion in 2021.
Yeah, I think this depends on all the time. If you have markets where you have projects with high numbers. I tell you an example, South Africa. You have 160 MW, 200 MW project. One project you sell, then you have immediately impact of 200 MW. Having in mind that the margins there are not that high. It depends all the time what goes in, what goes out. That's why we see just right now this year that a lot of projects, U.S., 160 MW, maybe more. In South Africa, above 200 MW. You see in total, the pipeline will be affected in the megawatt.
All right. Understood. A question regarding, well, quite a kind of special question. I don't know whether this can be answered so quickly, but I looked into your balance sheet, and what I found is that liabilities from leasing contracts, rose significantly from EUR 37 million to EUR 70 million.
Yeah.
I don't know whether I have to ask your colleague or whether you can answer that directly.
If you take projects over and put them into operation or you take them on board in your portfolio, then you immediately have to announce these leasing contracts, according IFRS, as a full financial obligation. This is the situation we have to face, and that means you see that we have EUR 50 million additional potential EBIT. We calculated a lot of projects which we put into our own portfolio or where we're working on our own portfolio, 100 MW in construction, as I mentioned before. Immediately when you take them over and start construction, you have to take a part of this, and later on when they are in operation, you have to take this IFRS measurement and have to put them as a liability in the balance sheet. This is why they are increasing.
Yeah, it's just a IFRS effect of your.
Exactly
successful transfer of projects into your own plant portfolio. Well understood. Thanks for that. You mentioned your offshore business and that you are looking at also doing business in the U.S. You have been active there. We have now the new Biden government, which seems to be very fond of offshore wind. How do you see your chances there? What we see in the market is that a lot of very large players are, of course, positioning.
Right.
I think it is not easy for a German Mittelstand company like PNE to get a hand there, but perhaps you could elaborate on your opportunities there.
Yeah, we're looking carefully to the market, nevertheless, we have to see that this is really a market which we think is a little bit overheated in the moment. The payments in advance for the big projects, with a lot of risks, you have to pay to get a tender on board. There's a lot of obligations. We see them more and more risky for us. You're absolutely right, there we have to pay attention and, for us it is, I would say, a market like Vietnam is more a market, is something for a midsize player like us. Yeah.
All right. That was very helpful, Markus. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
Thank you.
The next question received is from Jan Bauer of Warburg Research. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Mr. Lesser, and congrats to the results. I got a few questions. You're currently building or have several projects under construction for your own in-house portfolio, can you give us an idea of how much of the costs for those wind farms are already recognized in the 2020 figures?
How much of the costs? Yeah, that's what we have to pay attention according to milestone payments. We calculate the milestone payments. According to payments, we calculate it and take it into consideration. I can't tell you the cost in detail just right now. For that, you have to do per project. You have the development costs and you have other costs, which have to be related and up to the financing, and then you have furthermore the costs for the construction. I can't bring you the total number because this is depending on the project and the status of the project.
Maybe, Brian.
I have no surprise work on this. Yeah, sorry about that.
I totally understand, you write in your report that you expect a single-digit million value that you will need for the development of your own portfolio. Compared to currently, as you said, 83 MW under construction, that sounds a little bit low to me.
Yeah, I think that is a question of what do you mean with that? We talk about a pure scale-up issues, which means additional services, additional changes in tools where we want to be more efficient, maybe some parts of research on new markets and technologies. Nevertheless, we have our pure business looking for repowering projects or others are not involved in these numbers, yeah.
Can you give us an idea of what the expectations for the service segment, EBITDA, for 2021?
Related to 2021, I would be careful now to tell something about that because the pandemic issues are there. We have the first costs on now we start the business in Poland. We have effects of this. We start the process in Sweden. We have starting points. Related to the EBITDA, I wouldn't see the big growth. We see a good development in the PPA business, where we see effects. Maybe we get some contracts on board in the next couple of weeks. From that point, I see a slight change in a positive way in terms of EBITDA of services.
Okay. You said that you expect that this year several projects might be postponed to 2023, maybe 2022, due to delivery issues and the all-over COVID issues or delays. Can you give us an idea of what's that in MW?
Yeah, you see, just right now, we have to face the situation that we have three effects which leads to postponement, could lead to postponement. With some of them, we always thought maybe it's better to consider a three-month period. That's what we did in our planning. Nevertheless, we have now the pandemic, which caused to delays related to deliveries. We don't get the permit sometimes to get the cranes and big parts to the site. We also have in services, trainings, which we can't do or others. This is one point. Secondly, we have the issue that we have postponement of delivery times from the wind turbine manufacturers around three months.
Third of all, we have the situation that we have more and more lawsuits to consider in projects, mainly due to natural heritage and where we have to wait until something is coming back from the juridical point of view. Mainly, it's no issue related to the project itself, it's mainly related to time. That affects us, that's affecting the whole market. We are not alone. In this respect, we only want to be sure that it is understood that even if we have a permit, there might come up some postponements which we have to consider, and which we carefully consider. It may happen that this may give a shift to the project. Just right now, we have no bigger situation we have to face.
One project is affected, one is 100 MW project from 17.5 MW, where we think this will be a postponement into the next year, as I mentioned to the speaker before.
Okay, thank you. One last question. Where do you see possible project sales to external parties in 2021?
Yeah, as I mentioned before, we have projects in Germany, in Romania, wind and hopefully PV, which we can sell. We have one project in France, in South Africa. In Poland, we have two projects, which we have now under construction, which we would like to sell this year as well.
Okay, perfect. Thank you.
The next question is from Holger Steffen of SMC Research. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, all together.
Good morning.
I have only a few additional questions. First one, regarding the U.S. market. You didn't mention the sale of the Chilocco project, which couldn't be realized in 2020 once again. Do you see a chance to realize it in 2021?
Yeah, we are still in heavy negotiation, and we hope we get it done, but it is at the edge, I would say, in the moment. We will see. I hope, or it's a target to sell this project, in any case, this year.
Okay. One question about your PV pipeline. In your annual report, I've read that you've sold a 50-megawatt PV project located on Hawaii. Can you give us some details about this transaction?
Yeah. It was an initiative of one of our guys in the U.S., it was more a personal, family-owned area he sold to third parties, we got a right to extend this to 50 MW. It was one part. It's a really minor business and it was only a private initiative. We only want to get it done in the recent years, depending on the progress of the landscape permitting process.
Oh, okay. I've wondered, because I've never heard from this before, but okay, I understand. You've only written that you acquired four projects with 280 MW, and additionally, you developed projects with 150 MW in New Mexico. Why I can't see this in your PV pipeline?
Yeah. I can tell you this depends all the time on the phase where they are. You know that we are usually, if the projects are not in a situation that we are having phase one or two, then in a lot of cases, we don't take them on board. At that moment, I can only say that we are working on these projects and we see them upcoming, but they are in an early phase.
Okay, too early to put this on the PV pipeline.
They must be valuable, and then we put it in our portfolio pipeline overview.
Okay, thank you. Okay, last question from my side. You've decided to book receivables for outstanding milestone payments for the projects Gode Wind 4 and Atlantis I. You've mentioned that you expect payment for Atlantis I not before 2024. Isn't it too early for booking receivables?
Yeah, we are obliged, according to IFRS rules, to do this in this way because there have been coming up some development. First of all, we got information from our partner that they would like to progress. Nevertheless, it is also the main point is that the spatial plan had been finalized end of last year from the German government, this also lead us, according to IFRS rules, to consider this.
Okay. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
Thank you.
As there are no further questions at this time, I hand back to you, Mr. Lesser.
Thank you very much for your attention, and you'll see us very soon for the first quarter numbers. Thank you very much. See you.