Dear analysts, dear investors, good morning from Dortmund, and thank you for dialing in. This is Compleo results call for the third quarter of 2022. I am Carsten Fricke, Investor Relations Manager at Compleo, and I'm here together with Jörg Lohr, our CEO, and Peter Hamela, our CFO, who will take you through the results. After their presentation, Jörg and Peter will be happy to answer your questions. You can raise your questions either orally or via the chat button at the bottom of your screen. You will find all the documents on the IR section of our homepage as well as, with a short delay, the replay of this webcast. Therefore, please note that this session will be recorded. To our agenda, l et me start with a short overview of today's agenda.
Jörg will begin with a comprehensive presentation of our new strategic realignment, Compleo 3.0, which we have developed over the last weeks. Peter will take over and deep dive into Compleo's working capital and cash status before he provides an overview of the recent Q3 figures. On slide three, I have compiled a short overview of our new management board. I have the pleasure to be here with our newly formed management team. Most of you already know Jörg from his former position as the CEO of Compleo's software unit. Jörg is an industry veteran with huge experience from several leading positions in the e-mobility sector. Peter, you have been appointed to the executive board since the 1st of November. May you shortly introduce yourself before Jörg is heading towards our new strategic realignment.
Thank you, Carsten. Good morning, everyone. My name is Peter Hamela. I'm the new guy here. I joined Compleo recently, November 1st, as the new CFO, and I'm looking forward to taking you through figures for Q3.
Well, thank you very much, Peter. Thank you very much, Carsten. Just for technical reasons, we will switch off the camera and the video, but we will still be your host today, and walk you through our Q3 results and the strategy for Compleo 3.0. For me, as newly nominated awarded CEO, it is a pleasure to introduce you to the future of Compleo, while Peter will have a slight look back into the Q3 results of Compleo and Compleo's performance. Nevertheless, the important part of today's session for sure will be the outlook into the future.
As you may understand and you may confirm the turbulent times of the past weeks and months raised a lot of question marks on our investors, analysts, and also the outside world, where we think and we are heavily convinced that we have a very clear and very straightforward answer on those question marks, how and in which strategy Compleo will look into the future. Just a very brief recap of where we came from. All three companies which are now merged into the Compleo Group, former wallbe, former innogy eMobility Solutions, and Compleo itself, have a very long track record in e-mobility, each of them with a very dedicated knowledge and experience.
All of them started in the mid-2010s with very early success in AC and DC equipment manufacturing. First large projects, I remember myself as a former customer of Compleo with the so-called Berlin public project and 400 charging stations, which was the first public project in Germany, also supplied by Compleo. The EBG electro spinoff and the transition to the listed company in the IPO, which was a success, creating the foundation for growth of the company.
Let's not forget, regardless, all the turbulences and also the hiccups of the last couple of weeks in the former management board. It is also a pleasure and an honor for us to say that it's based on their work and their hard work that Compleo has a size which we have today and also the foundation for future growth with the IPO and the further growth development in 2021 and also earlier this year. The year 2021 of course was heavily impacted by the M&A deals for the expansion of the software segment but not just the software.
Also, the acquisition of wallbe was a significant milestone, generating a lot of experience and expertise in payment solutions, which is one of our USPs now. The carve-out of the software separate legal entity to unlock additional shareholder value was something I was personally driving as former CEO of the software. Because since the beginning I was convinced that the software and the hardware business need to be separated on the market. Well, what we started now as new management board, Peter and myself, is a very, very clear focus on the integration, cost management and consolidation, because that's something when we look back, we have to admit that the consolidation of those three companies was not executed successfully, which led to structural and also financial issues, as you know.
Looking into the future, Compleo 3.0 will be heavily driven by streamlining the product portfolio with a very strong focus on profitability. The repositioning of the company as a more customer-centric organization. Compleo was very busy focusing on itself and its structures and the M&A activities, slightly losing the focus on the customer. What we also drive forward is the focus on core competencies in charging stations and software, which is again our core business. This is where we came from and this is what we should focus on. Just a recap on where we came from and how we found Compleo as new management board since November 1st. There is a large scale of complexity in the company. We've had inefficient business processes.
The product portfolio is too diversified. When I started and when I was awarded as a member of the board of executives on September 1st, we found more than 500 different versions and article numbers of hardware portfolio, which is killing an organization like this. That is the reason why one of the first projects I initiated was to consequently shrink down the product portfolio of Compleo and especially the number of versions and varieties down to what we call the Big Five, which is five different products with maximum of five versions each. In terms of the structure, we are still three companies in one. There's a heterogeneous organization. Integration is ongoing, but was not taken into the focus.
That led to insufficient customer centricity and also customer satisfaction, which we clearly measure, and which is one of the focus areas for the upcoming month. In terms of quality, in some of our products, the product reliability is not really best in class. As a former operator, I've got a seven years track record as an operator of charging infrastructure now. Downtime means loss of revenue for a charge point operator. That is something which is critically reviewed by our customers, where we significantly have to improve. Also the after sales service is something where we get unsatisfactory feedback from our customers, which we've put on the radar. The strategy of Compleo 3.0, basically what Peter and myself initiated, is based on four major pillars.
Number one is again, the product management. We have taken the use cases of EV charging as the main driver for the restructuring of the company. Calling it the Big Five. Five products which will lead us to success. Number two is the value proposition of Compleo. Just to remind ourselves who we are and what we deliver. We are part of the charging experience on the point of charging, so to say. This can either be a negative experience or it can be a positive experience. Clearly, we will remain a B2B supplier, but still we are part of the experience the EV driver is gaining, when she or he is charging an electric vehicle. That's what we need to remember. The organizational setup is also something we clearly initiated to improve.
The focus will be on customer cash and profitability, where we did not perform well over the first three quarters. Then, one of the questions we repeatedly receive from our investors is, what is your geographical footprint looking like? There was no clear strategy yet. We clearly committed to a strategy to say our product portfolio will now also be sold and provided to the European market, but with all the consequences and along the entire life cycle, including spare part management, service partners, so that we really deserve the name to be a European player. With one footnote, so to say, our HPC charger, where we yesterday could luckily announce the first customer with a clear order and a binding order of the first HPC chargers.
With partners and a network of sales partnerships, we will clearly also bring that product across the Atlantic Ocean. In terms of the product portfolio, to reap efficiency gains, the status quo, as I said, a very large legacy product portfolio. 25 different products. Redundant products. We had, when we started as a management team, we found five different wallbox types, redundant, more than 500 versions. Technically overlapping product lines for the same use cases. Many small series. We had serial production of quantities of two-10. A lot of customizing models in a very low volume, where we also need a spare part concept, life cycle concept, and that is super inefficient and also not profitable.
Both the width and the breadth cause complexity through the entire value chain, including R&D, firmware updates, procurement, production, sales and service. That led to the effect that theoretically none of our products would have had the chance to become profitable because it was a legacy of a huge complex organization. In the wall box segment, the intensifying price and volume pressure is another driver for us to closely look at the one wall box product where we can commercially become successful. The future hardware portfolio is driven by the main use cases of EV charging. Of course, we decided for one AC wall box and in the product portfolio of Compleo, the eBOX, which we acquired with innogy eMobility Solutions, has the best chances to become competitive.
It is already a very successful product in terms of wallbox. We will slightly edit with the features of the other products which are needed to satisfy the use cases. In terms of the charging station, base-mounted charging stations, our Duo is best in class. It's a publicly available charging station, including calibration or conformity in Germany. That's also the best seller.
In terms of the DC and HPC portfolio, our R&D team did a tremendous job over the last couple of weeks under my management to merge the different DC and HPC versions to a platform of a scalable power from 60 to 400 kW, so that we have also scalability and scale effects in sourcing, in production and also in sales with a modular system and a modular HPC system, which also led to the first binding order of the customer Comfort Charge, which you might have seen yesterday. It will be a far more market-oriented portfolio with five products, five different versions covering more than 80% of all the demanded use cases.
A very strict product selection in terms of the scaling, standardization and profitability along the entire product life cycle. That brings us to a leaner cost structure and efficiency gains and of course, a reduction of the complexity in the Compleo organization, but also reduction of capital needs and cash burn. The SOLO wallbox, which was a former Compleo development and not a really successful story, as you know, and might recapture, will continue as white label, with technical features, that will be integrated into other products. It was technically a state-of-the-art product, but not profitable and commercially also not successful, so that we decided to shrink down our product portfolio and make use of the technical features in all our products, so to give the SOLO a second life.
What is really essential for us, again, myself coming from the customer side, being a former charge point operator, that we lost the customer centricity a little bit. Compleo as charging station manufacturer and also operator with our back-end systems is part of the customer experience as the center of all our activities. No matter whether we charge at home, in public or semi-public areas, or in public areas on a DC charger, we are always part of the experience. That is the reason why we have a customer centricity initiative also internally, and the entire structure is also built around that customer centricity approach, which we consequently will now put into the organization, as you can see on that slide.
Translated into the organization, that means that we have a strict focus on our core competencies in a leaner organization around the customer, which you can see on the right-hand side. Customers and markets, they gain a demand which is brought into our products and markets team, which is one VP, vice president, benchmarking it with market demands, standards, legal requirements, our business development strategy, our corporate strategy, bringing it into a concept which is done and executed by our R&D team as internal service center with the second vice president. Converting the concept into a prototype, which is then going into operations and operations selecting construction efficiency and construction improvement, production improvement, and also the location and the way of production.
Providing that product to sales and sales with a clear separation of sales Germany, sales international, and a clear international network is providing that experience to the customer again. What we've done is Peter and myself have consequently, as one of our first activities, shrink down our leadership team to four vice presidents along that cycle in order to make it a lean organization, which can also cope with the challenges of the next couple of weeks to transition the company, with very clear mandates, and a very lean structure. In terms of our charging station, the functional set up, our focus is on a huge quality increase to become best in class in R&D and sales, which we are already valued for. One of our core competencies is R&D.
The DUO and also the CITO family will continue to be produced in-house with clear partnerships to scale also outside the Compleo production factories. Strategic partners, well, are in a close negotiation with us for an industrial mass production of other products. Again, if we see that the demand for our CITO family will be beyond or will increase to a level which is exceeding our capabilities, we are already prepared and set up for industrial partnerships, which can help us to scale the volume of the production of the CITO family, especially the high power charger. In terms of the software, we continue separating the software to the market with strategic partnerships, which are designed to extract additional shareholder value.
In terms of focus of service, we will clearly focus on manufacturer's warranty service, increasing our product quality and customer satisfaction. We will also realign our project installation business, which is a valuable business, and we've got an outstanding team. Also there, we do not see ourselves as a general contractor for major projects. What we see ourselves and where we became successful over the last couple of months is project steering and project execution, where we've got a very experienced and very motivated team on board, which I got to know over the last couple of weeks. We will realign projects and installation, and we will clearly focus our service activities to provide our customers a satisfying service as hardware manufacturer and operator of charging infrastructure.
In terms of the geographical footprint, with our partners, we want to become a full service provider across Europe. We've got some entities already which we operate in Sweden, in the U.K., in Switzerland and Austria. Also there, one of our tasks over the next couple of weeks, together with our general managers in those countries, is that we clearly set up lean processes, steering mechanics, and intercompany processes and SLAs in order to harmonize the way of operation between the mother company, Compleo in Germany, and our subsidiaries in those countries in order to make them able to become profitable or to allow them to successfully sell those products. Also, a very clear and 100% international sales never has been executed.
That's something which was my focus over the last couple of weeks, to harmonize processes and to clearly set up an international sales network. If you look at the right-hand side, this is a bit of course looking into the future. We already initiated first very clear and binding negotiation with partners as we see a large potential of major CPOs to take the high power charger in those modular versions of 200-400 kW to North America as well. R&D and also construction already made sure that after the successful launch in Europe, the product is also available UL listed so that we clearly also comply with North American standards and would be able to sell the product to North America as well.
Again, bear with us a couple of months because this is nothing we can do overnight. Our clear strategy is our product portfolio will be fully sold across Europe, but with clear processes and a clear concept behind to really also satisfy customers in Spain and Denmark and Norway if something goes wrong. Plus, our high power charger family will be transitioned across the Atlantic Ocean and will be sold in North America as well. Just a few words to the software, which also was one of the topics since the Capital Markets Day in March.
In my former role as CEO of the software business, I was heavily driving the separation of the software, not just in terms of legal structure, but also in terms of market approach, to have two independent business units which are really independent from each other in terms of target groups, being hardware agnostic in the software and also software agnostic in the hardware segment. What we did is we successfully carved out the legal entity as of September 30th to make it a standalone entity with all the assets, customer contracts, employees, supplier contracts. To have a fully carved-out entity. We are in the branding and marketing and market positioning process. Within the next few weeks we will introduce the branding of the software being a standalone company as well.
The commercial and technical due diligence have been executed by Big Four consultancies, especially the technical due diligence was driven by a very well-known and well-established software auditing company which is globally acting. They validated that our back end structure, especially in terms of scalability and efficiency, is above market standard. The results of the due diligence has highlighted the excellent market positioning of the platform and also the platform performance, as I said. We are DD ready and we mandated a leading European investment bank to support us in finding the right partners with no pressure, but enabling us to scale the software business in a partnership to give it a European footprint and to allow our software business to scale and grow independently from the hardware business.
To have two different business units and two different options, each of them growing with the market and in terms of not just revenue, but also geographical footprint. That is basically to give you an outlook in the strategy. Of course, it's not just those few management summary slides. There's a whole strategy concept behind. We are in the execution of converting the organization and transitioning the organization into a very lean structure, starting at the vice presidents level, again, going into the future with only four vice presidents, and doing our utmost to converting the company into an efficient and also profitable company within the next 12-18 months. More about the numbers, now from Peter.
Thank you, Jörg. Okay. While the focus is clearly on the future, let's take a few minutes in order to look back at Q3. Looking at working capital and cash, while Q3 showed improvement in accounts receivables, which went down by EUR 3 million versus Q2, our receivables have still to go down much further. AP went down as well by EUR 3.8 million versus Q2, underlining the solid and stable relationship we have with our suppliers.
Inventories, on the other hand, went further up by more than a million, which can partly be explained by the production ramp-up for the HPC that Jörg mentioned and we'll mention later again, but the unsustainable high inventory level does also show that we have a lot to do on that front, which at the same time means that we have large reserves in terms of working capital that can be approached. We are consequently confident that we will be able to achieve our targeted ratio of net working capital to gross revenue of 35% by year-end. On the next page, this one illustrates our view on cash management.
With roughly EUR 18 million cash on hand at quarter end and a business that is not yet profitable, we do have to be, and obviously are, laser focused on how we manage our liquidity. Working capital management is crucial and is one way to generate an additional financial buffer. External funding is another option we have on hand and are pursuing. We see various ways to increase the financial leeway in the short term, for example, by monetizing our working capital buffer through factoring, debt financing or some sort of hybrid. Now that's an important one. We are playing to win. Our preferred option is to keep Compleo as an independent company, and maintain control of the company in order to fully reap the rewards of the restructuring we are currently undergoing.
In order to achieve that, we will need, however, additional financing, talking about low- to mid-single- to double-digit million figures. In order to get there, we want to use our software as a collateral. Jörg has already mentioned we have gotten quite far here. We are DD able. We have a valuation, we have an investment bank. In order to get to a process of maybe selling part of the software, that takes time. In order to get that time, we may use software as a collateral in order to get the additional funding we need in order to get there. Let's switch to the next slide.
On the next page, you get a view on our segments, where you can see that margin on charging stations suffered as we were not able to fully pass through price increases to our customers and as we started to sell our products that won't be part of our product family in the future. Software continued to perform exceptionally well, especially on the margin side, as scaling impacts as well as expense savings had a very positive effect. Now I'd like to turn back to Jörg.
Thank you very much, Peter. In terms of the future growth of our business in the segments, especially in the segment charging stations, we have a lot of homework, to be honest, and we have a lot to do in order to get the charging station business unit profitable. On the other side, we achieved some short-term and also mid-term successes in the software business, which we can also transition in terms of the structure and in terms of efficiency of operation, into our hardware business.
Some successes we could generate over the last couple of weeks, ChargeOne, a huge ChargeOne operator in southern Germany, to electrify 150 German locations of a leading economy hotel chain with 1,500 Compleo eBOXes, is one of the examples. There is a strong continued growth in Compleo's traditional core business of public AC charging stations with various municipal tenders, which we have won, and also recurring customers, but also new customers.
Of course, one of the biggest successes our former management also generated was the 9,000th charging station tender we've been awarded from Clever in Denmark, which shows that the trust of our customers in Compleo's technology and Compleo as a hardware/charging station manufacturer is ongoing and is not broken, which is the essential foundation for Peter and myself to turn the company into an efficient and profitable company. Remaining stocks of the wallbox wallbe products in warehouses are almost completely sold off at a profit. Big thank you to our sales team, which, since Peter and myself took over the management positions, did a tremendous job supporting us to sell off existing products, especially from wallbe products.
As you might have read in the news and got the information also in terms of that patent, which was an ongoing story with no clear picture behind. We clarified the conditions and the structure of that patent licensing model, and we could achieve a first agreement with the wallbox manufacturer KEBA. Of course, there is expectedly some headwind from the industry. On the other side, my clear view is that in other industries it is usual tradition since centuries to monetize patents, and we are entering a mature market with e-mobility. Also in the future we will see many more market players to monetize and to commercialize their IP and patents.
We are the first mover with all the pros and cons of that position, but we still think it's the right way to increase shareholder value by also monetizing the IP and the valuable intellectual work our R&D teams have done in the past. On the right-hand side, the biggest success story of the last couple of weeks with a very clear focus of my R&D team in terms of the high power charger. We got a much clearer picture now, and we also redesigned the high-power charger over the last couple of weeks from a one use case high power charging device only to a European/international high power charging modular system from 60 to 400 kW. Our base version with 200 kW will be introduced in Q1 next year.
In Q2 next year, we are highly convinced to maintain the SOP. This was also one of the reasons why the first order was placed yesterday from Comfort Charge, a 100% subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. We are currently carrying out all the tests and certifications, which gives us the confidence that we have a much clearer picture now, when SOP is gonna take place and when our market introduction can happen. The start of production is aimed for Q2 2023. It has given us granted that Peter and myself, but also a very valuable team and a very motivated team of our R&D department is doing its utmost to get that high-power charging system over the finish line now.
In terms of the software, I'm also proud to be part of the software still, in that we continue our growth in the installed base and marketed transactions in Q3. As you can see on the left-hand side, there's a strong increase in connected charge points of more than 1,000 charge points per month, which are directly connected and which are really under management, as we call them, so a direct contractual relation with us. We could increase our installed base within one year from 36,000 to 47,000 charging stations. Thereof, 12,900 marketed charging points where we have the aggregation and the transaction management via our so-called eMARKETPLACE.
As you can see on the right-hand side, big thanks to the software team, we increased efficiency, we made those software platforms open to the outside world and not just to existing, former innogy customers, where we could increase the number of marketed transactions and also the number of publicly marketed charge points by 50% and 63%, leading to 183,000 marketed transactions in September 2022. This is a huge success story. Again, much more to continue. What we also see is with a very clear and very focused international market approach of the software segment, in May, we could generate our first full service customer in France, where we also launched eMARKETPLACE.
We also launched eMARKETPLACE beyond German borders, now in Austria, the U.K., and soon to become successful in Switzerland, so that we expect even a higher growth of our transactions by increasing the geographical footprint. That's basically the performance of our segments. Again, a lot of homework to be done in the charging station segment, where we clearly know what to do. We just need a little time to successfully execute the transition. Looking at the financial results, handing over back to you, Peter.
Thank you. As another quick look at the figures. Q3 sales of EUR 28.4 million were at the same level as Q2, with EUR 20.6 million stemming from charging stations, EUR 5.8 million from software, and EUR 2 million from services and P&I. Year-to-date sales of EUR 80.3 million should enable us to achieve our annual sales target of EUR 105 million-EUR 110 million. Worth mentioning is the fact that sales of foreign markets, albeit still small, are increasing faster than domestic sales to now 8.5% of total sales. Looking at margins on the next slide, you see that gross profit margin, while improving versus last year, is still at an unsustainably low level, which leaves a huge potential for improvement in the months and years to come.
EBITDA picture is similar to the margin and overall picture. We are sequentially improving, at least in comparison with the two previous quarters, but we have a long way to go to become profitable, which is the bad news. A massive leeway for improvement, which is the good news. The outlook, consequently, as shown on the next slide, remains unchanged. Now the final words from.
Yeah. Looking into the outlook, I think we are on the last slide of the presentation, so the financial guidance or the outlook. We are fully aligned to achieve the updated revenue and Adjusted EBITDA guidance, which was one of my first tasks in September to convince the former management to adjust the guidance to become more realistic. This is also one of the cornerstones of the philosophy of Peter and myself, which we just wanted to express today. Our philosophy is under promise, over deliver, to be a bit more conservative.
If you look at the software numbers, that's exactly what we initiated at the beginning of the year, and we rather over-deliver our expectations and your expectations as shareholders and analysts, rather than adjusting our targets because they might have been too optimistic. The guidance for 2025 will remain unchanged for the moment. We will further deep dive into our business case the next couple of weeks because Peter and myself, bear with us, we are just at the steering wheel since two weeks now. It feels like years already, but this is something we will have a deep dive over the next couple of weeks. For 2022, as Peter said, we are pretty convinced that we can achieve the adjusted guidance, which we expressed mid-September.
Great. Thank you very much, Jörg and Peter, for leading us through the presentation. Dear analysts, dear investors, we are now approaching the Q&A session. On the bottom of your screen, you have the option to raise your hand. I will take the persons one after the other and will unmute them, then the participant must confirm the request to get unmuted. Alternatively, you can raise questions via the chat button, you'll also find at the bottom of the screen. The first question comes from Yasmin. Yasmin, I will now allow you to talk. Please, confirm the request to unmute and then go ahead.
Okay. Perfect. Hope you can hear me.
Yes.
Two questions, if I may. One on the strategy. I clearly welcome your strategic realignment. However, so far we mainly receive qualitative statements from you. Could you share any insights on the expected top-line effects or cost savings and potential one-offs in particular from the portfolio pruning, what we might expect also from potential write-offs or impairment? The second question is on your cash position. Cash preservation remains crucial, and you already stressed that you focus predominantly on the reduction of inventory, but also you might consider a higher level of factoring. Can you share your thoughts on the positive inventory impact from the portfolio pruning on the one hand, and could you also share the current level of factoring and where it could move to?
Thanks very much.
Yes. Thank you, Yasmin. Peter here. Yeah, the first questions, we are not there yet in order to be able to disclose figures for the near future. That's work in progress. We are obviously planning to grow at least in terms as with the market growth in order to maintain market share here. More than that, we cannot say at this stage.
With regards to working capital management, yes, we have inventories that are in range of EUR 44 million at the end of the quarter, but also receivables with more than EUR 17 million, so that's a ballpark of EUR 60 million, which gives us a leeway to pursue and to reap benefits and squeeze liquidity out of it and that's what we are working on that front. I cannot give you a complete number here, Yasmin. In terms of factoring, we are currently in discussion with various options. We are factored to some extent at the moment, but that is not that meaningful.
That's why we see further options here in order to gain liquidity through factoring. That's why I mentioned it and that's why it's in the slides. I cannot give you a complete figure here, Yasmin, but it will be enough in order to put us to the next level where we then think to get financing at an amount I mentioned before. That will then bring us into summer of 2023.
Thank you very much, Peter. Yasmin, I hope the answer is sufficient for you. The next question-
Yes, that's all fine.
Yeah. Okay. Very good. Thank you. I will unmute you again. The next question comes from Emmanuel. Please confirm to ask your question. You can unmute it.
Yes. Hi. Good morning, all.
Good morning.
A few questions. I will take them one by one. I didn't get understood very well the liquidity that you want to raise. Was that EUR 15 million or?
Emmanuel, I didn't give you a concrete number. That's work in progress. It depends on how efficient we are with our working capital management, how our sales generation will be, how soon we will be able to ramp up production of HPC and what the additional liquidity needs is in order to start that ramp up of the HPC. Various variables that we have in mind and are currently reviewing, but that will impact the need of capital we need. I cannot give you a number. I said low to mid-single double-digit figure.
That is what we aim to get until summer 2023 in order to fully fulfill our kind of promise in order to do what we want to do and plan to do, which is launch a new game changing product with the HPC in order to further accelerate sales in the software and hardware business and so on. In order to get all this done, we need enough financial liquidity, and we wanted to use our software business as a means to get that financial.
Maybe to add, Emmanuel, Peter still is in the mode to getting into the organization. What I can say is that with him being the CFO now, the entire organization experiences a very, very strict focus on our free cash flow now. We know our free cash flow, and with Peter we have a completely new level of cash flow management in the company, which also everybody and every associate in the company supports. That's something I can clearly say from looking from the sidelines, so to say, that our financial department
Is highly motivated to have a much closer look, and also a much more consequent cash flow management, than we had before.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Then the second question I have is on the gross profit margin with a focus on the charging points, because that is probably the number where you have disappointed the most versus peers. I'm curious if you could provide a bit more color on how you expect the gross profit margin to evolve having only five products versus the current. Yeah, I don't remember the number.
Well, I think one of the biggest levers we have to increase efficiency on the gross profit is that we professionalize construction and production, of course, and that we also create efficiencies along the manufacturing or the production process also in R&D. In the past as many startups, additional complexity was mainly compensated with additional headcount, but it doesn't need more people to get work done. This is one of the levers. You can expect more to come within the next few weeks on increasing the efficiency. Again, what we realized is for those more than 500 versions, you need an R&D concept. You need continuous R&D cycles, firmware updates, service concepts, spare part concepts.
You've got additional costs, and also for the production, very low quantities. Customization always lead to inefficiency, and that's clearly one of the biggest drivers I personally see shrinking down the product portfolio to five products. You've got way more scale effects also in procurement and purchasing to have volume efficiencies or volume effects we never could generate because we had very low quantities of various versions. Those are the biggest drivers where you definitely can generate efficiency.
In order to add that, yeah, Emmanuel, we are also here not able yet to give you a concrete number. If you look at the competition like Alfen and Zaptec, they show that you are able as a European supplier of hardware to generate significant profits. This gives us a target in where we want to go for. It takes time in order to change. We have to work on all fronts as you have mentioned. That takes time, but step by step, we are getting there. We asking you guys for the benefit of the doubt. We need some time in order to prove that we are able to get that done.
We won't be definitely profitable next year. That I can say. We are aiming to the cash burn. At the moment we are burning cash EUR 3 million or so. That's numbers, what you can read in that range, which is not. That's pretty much correct. We have to get down here. When we talk about our cost structure, we are working on that. This will help. The additional products we talked about, all that over time will come into play and lead to profitability increases starting latest Q3 onwards.
That's when we think that we should see the direction going forward towards the competition in terms of margin percentage.
The wallbox product, you will outsource the production of that. I assume that this is the product with the lowest gross profit margin. Is that a number that you could disclose for what was the last couple of quarters?
Well, number one, this is already produced outside, and number two, this is also the product with the highest volume. Please expect some more positive trends on that product. Letting or giving the production outside your own walls of production facilities doesn't necessarily mean that your gross profit is shrinking. There's a high efficiency program where we even did not complete the efficiency program on that product. There's some more positive news to come in the next couple of months.
Thank you very much.
Yeah. Can I ask one final question?
One final question, Emmanuel.
Yeah. The final question is on the software unit. Could you provide a bit more color on the kind of strategic options you see? Is it just selling a minority stake in the business, or do you see other options?
Yeah. Emmanuel, as I said before, we are playing to win. If we can choose the option, we would choose to just sell a minority stake, get the money we need, and then go for it. That would be our plan A. It could be that that's not always feasible. Maybe someone wants to have a majority stake. It depends on how our progress goes on, but we are open here. Important is to proceed in order to get the liquidity we need to manage everything we have in front of us.
Okay. Thank you.
To manage our fortune management. Yeah.
Thanks, Emmanuel. The next question comes from Fabien Le Disert , Kepler Cheuvreux . I will now unmute you. Please confirm and go ahead.
Uh...
Yes. Hello everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. Yes. The first one, do you plan to update the market at some point on your midterm guidance as you now promise to overdeliver rather than disappoint? These 2025 targets seem bullish.
The second one, what could you say about the main Q3 trends in charging stations? Will you be able to pass price increase in the coming months, if inflation remains at a elevated level? The final question, regarding the option to license market-relevant patents, what could we expect in terms of revenue stream in the next few years? Thank you very much.
Fabien, if I may. Price increase, yes, we try to pass it through, as we did in Q3. Step by step, we're getting there. It depends on the existing contracts. We're working, going through these. As of now, we are not able to fully offset the inflation effect. That's why margin decreased in Q3. Also here we expect to see improvement going forward. The midterm guidance, yes, it's too early to discuss that. You may have to understand. The third one was on IP, if I remember correctly.
Yeah.
Yes, as we said in previous announcements, idea is to think about high six-digit figures annually. This idea hasn't changed that far. We see that we are progressing here. We are getting first license payments from customers on that front, but it's too early to dig further into it at this stage.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Fabien. The next question comes from Aurélien Sivignon, Oddo BHF. Aurélien, please go ahead.
Yes. Can you hear me?
Yeah.
We can hear you well, Aurélien.
Okay. Great. Thank you. I have two questions, please. The first one on Q3 gross margin for the charging point segment. The Q3 already benefit from the price increase you mentioned during the presentation. Second question, can you give us more visibility maybe on the timing to reach this new product portfolio with only five. I mean, do you have also already maybe an estimate of the impairment costs that could generate? Thank you.
Yes, this is Jörg. To answer your first question, very successful in passing through the price increases to our customers, being relevant for Q3. We initiated, as you might remember, I was appointed as a member of the board of executives September 1st. That was one of the first activities. But of course it takes some time to adjust our prices to our customers. We will see the higher effects in the next upcoming month. The second one, the second question, could you repeat that just to have a bit of time. The five products. Yeah. Sorry.
In terms of the five products, it is also something we wanna change in the management of Compleo because we will terminate production and availability of existing products at a point in time where other products we decided to go into the future with. We'll cover those use cases when existing contractual obligations are fully executed so that we do not dissatisfy our customers. What does it mean in terms of timeline? There were a few low-hanging fruits, like the ex wallbe products where we have redundancy already, and we have backup products available. That was relatively clear and is a relatively short-term effect on shrinking down those products, including the closure of the two production plants, as you could read.
For the other products, it is a horizon we gave ourselves of three-seven months to clearly clean up the product portfolio, including existing obligations. Our R&D team now is doing its utmost to harmonize the features of those products in order to make them lean. This is nothing which is new. As you might remember, in the software, we started with the same challenge, that we had two redundant back-end systems, and we could do the merging and the especially efficiency program on the software side in an equal timeframe. Give us a few more months, and then we should see only five products available to our customers in maximum of 25 versions in total, satisfying again, the use cases which we reflect now as well.
Very clear. Thank you. Do you have some visibility on the impairments as well?
The impairments.
Impairments. You say impairments, Aurélien?
Yes, absolutely. Yeah.
Okay. We don't have the amount, but we come back to you. There will be some in Q4 to be expected, but we don't see the magnitude at this moment.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Aurélien. The next question comes from Filip Erhardt , ESGFIRE . Filip, please confirm and go ahead.
Thank you, Carsten. I only had two very short questions. First of all, just wanna reiterate, did I hear you say to Emmanuel before that you aim to be profitable by Q3 next year? I heard something. Maybe I misheard. I just wanna recap.
No, no, Filip, it was rather like to be less unprofitable starting Q3. Because in Q3, you have the HPC starting to sell goods in Q3. You should have the overhang in the wallbox business that we saw in Germany because of KfW funding, which stopped in Q3 2021. That had an overhang in our market that we're still suffering from. This will disappear. We think Q3 onwards we will see the normal sales volume in terms of wallbox. Then we also should have the benefits of our cost saving initiatives that we are undergoing. All that combined should lead to better profitability going from Q3 onwards.
Less, but that does not mean that we would become profitable, Filip, to be clear.
Okay, thank you. No, I think the market would appreciate some clarity on when you possibly would at least, you know, hit sort of a break-even status. If you can't answer that question today, maybe that's something you can investigate to get back on.
Yes. We anticipate improvement quarter by quarter, but we are not able to commit on anything concrete at this stage.
No, I know. It's just an advice for going forward.
Yeah. Yeah.
My final question was, I've noticed that the R&D costs have been very high this year as compared to before. Can we expect that cost to go down moving forward?
Yes. That is also one of the clear effects we see with shrinking down the product portfolio. Again, R&D is not just inventing new products and features. R&D is also responsible for maintaining products, and that's exactly what we mean by shrinking down the product portfolio and getting it lean to five products max, that your recurring R&D efforts to keep products alive is significantly reducing by harmonizing major components such as firmware, controllers, and streamlining the development of our products, similar to what the automotive industry is successfully executing with the platform thought. That's exactly why we've put our DC family on a platform so that we have maximum efficiency in R&D with various products. That's basically an ongoing program. Yes, you can expect better results in R&D.
Very good. My final question was, when can we expect some more clarity on the timing on the partial sale of the software division that we were talking about before?
We can't answer that question, frankly. The process has gotten started now, so we're up to speed. As we said, everything is arranged. It doesn't now fully depend on us. It depends on the third parties as well.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Filip. The next question come from Adrian Pehl, Stifel Europe.
Yes. Hi, good morning, everyone. I hope you can hear me well right now.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yes, we can.
Three questions from my side, actually. On using the software division as a collateral. Assuming that would fail, is there a plan B for the company? The second question is, did I get it correct? You said something like, cash burn is kind of EUR 3 million. You mean EUR 3 million per month, right? Which would be then matching actually what I saw, you burning cash in the third quarter.
Yeah.
So could you give us a liquidity level where you stand right now in the mid of November? The last question is congrats to the first order you received on HPC. But given the liquidity constraints and high working capital, are you in a position currently to assume further orders from your clients on HPC?
Let me answer the first and the last question, and pass over the middle question on the liquidity to Peter. First question, or let me start with the last question, which is the HPC order. Well, thank you very much for the congratulations. As you can assume, we made sure with the customers that we also are able to deliver and that they have clarity on the program, which is essential for our customers, especially talking about the subsidy of a major German telecommunications provider. There are very strict processes behind which should give us the confidence that we are definitely in a position also to receive further orders in a mechanism which allows us to complete the product. It is beyond prototype now. We are in a certification stage.
Yes, we are confident that the HPC charger is gonna be a game changer and that when we open the order books in Q1 next year, we will immediately also see a ramping demand for the HPC charger. Yes, we've got confidence that we can also serve the other customers. The first question again was-
Software.
... on this-
Whether we have an alternative.
Yes, exactly. On the software collateral. It is too early to disclose additional information, but as you can imagine, and this is also something we wanted to express today. Yes, there is a plan B and even a plan C, but we do not want to disclose too much, and then have the issue to steer back a little bit, which also has been happening in the past. We will continuously inform you in the capital market about our activities as soon as we can. There are various plans. We are aware of the situation. Our plan A clearly is the collateral of the software where we are convinced that we have very good chances, but of course, we are not naive just to bet on that one horse.
Yeah. Finally, yeah, the second question, you're right, Adrian, in your assumption. So EUR 3 million is the cash burn per month, and this will go down month by month. As we said, we will anticipate improvement going forward. But I cannot give you a complete number where we will stand as of now. This changes day by day based on how we collect our receivables and we pay our invoices, so that's a day-to-day business. But yeah, as you can do your math, if you calculate with EUR 3 million per month cash burn, you're not that far from where it should end somewhere. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
That answers. Yeah. Okay.
No, go ahead. Go ahead.
Thank you. The final questions come from Stefan Augustin, Warburg Research.
Yes. Hello. Can you hear me?
Yeah. Yes.
Great. I just, actually, two questions left here. First is on the sequence, with the, software business. Did I get that right? You first try to, use the software business as a collateral versus debt, and then we probably have an, let's say, a sale or a partial sale of, that stuff. Is that the right thinking of what you, told us?
That's exactly the case. Yeah.
Okay. The other one is if you, let's say, shrink the product portfolio. I assume that any legacy elements that arise from there, so that you still need to be able to serve products you sold, guarantees and stuff like that, they will be at the group level and they will be still with you for some time.
Well, yes, you can't ignore the legacy, but that's something we took into account, and we also have taken into account for our financial planning over the next couple of months. Of course, and that's also a very clear statement from us to the customers in the market. We have done that if customers buy one of our products today, then of course, they should have full warranty.
That's exactly one of the reasons why we have significantly changed the structure also in our service team, and why we also have terminated the cooperation with our Vice President in service to restructure the service in a way which allows us to have a very clear focus on the customer existing products and make sure that they got the warranty and also beyond warranty service as a hardware manufacturer they can expect and they also get from our peers. We have taken that into account, and customers who will buy or who just bought legacy products the last couple of months can be sure that the service is also of course provided.
Again, you need to start anywhere, and those effects, that's also the reason why cash burn rate will still continue a bit, as Peter said. This was one of the first activities to shrink down the product portfolio where we see effects, especially at the latest after the warranty period, where we can say we've got a clear sales concept for spare parts, for instance, but we do not have the need to maintain 500 different versions on our costs.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Stefan, and thanks to all of you for your participation Compleo's Q3 results call. If there are any questions arising after the call, please get in touch with Sebastian or myself directly. Last wishes from my side, stay healthy and looking forward to meeting many of you in person at the upcoming conferences. Have a good day. Thank you, and bye-bye.
Thank you very much.