Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q1 2021 results presentation. At this time, all participants have been placed on listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Georg Griesemann.
Hello. Good morning, everybody, ladies and gentlemen. Ulrike, thanks a lot for the introduction. This is a Q1 call of Compleo Group. I'm here together with Peter and Sebastian, our finance team, and I'm happy to walk you through the results of our first quarter. On slide five, which you can see on the screen. Slide six, sorry. On slide six, we have presented to you the overall sector trends. For all of you who are dialed in through telephone, our quarterly presentation is available on our website, as usual. Before we dive into the numbers of the company and what happened in the first quarter, we would like to give you an overview of what's happening in the sector and some most recent developments. The first one is a changing in the German law regarding charging infrastructure regulation.
In German, that's the Ladesäulenverordnung. In this regulation, there's a requirement for public charging infrastructure to have either a debit card or a credit card payment possibility included. This is a quite disruption in the sector, as this legal requirement will be effective in two years from now, and all charging stations that are installed in the public space must offer a debit/credit card payment option. At Compleo, we have implemented some four years ago already, payment with debit cards and our subsidiary, wallbe, has also a lot of experience in the payment sector, especially with credit card payment, and has already delivered 100 public chargers with credit card options.
Unlike many of our competitors who does not have such an option, we have now a leading position, and this is a clear differentiation, and this will lead to a strong barrier for other competitors in the market. There are other players trying to influence this law and are claiming that this is a lead time of at least two years for other players until they have developed credit card competence, have installed that in their hardware and charging infrastructure, and then got the certification of the calibration law authorities. This new charging regulation massively helps us to strengthen our market position in the public area. That was just recently announced last week and will become effective in 2023. The second on subsidies, we have highlighted this in the last call as well.
End of last year, KfW, which is a German subsidy bank, state-owned, state-backed, has opened a subsidy program for private wall boxes, where each person who buy the wall box gets the first EUR 900 for free from KfW. This was now 3x increased. It was in two steps increased to EUR 400 million. In May, it was increased to EUR 500 million, and already more than 385,000 applications were registered. We expect that this program is going to be continued. This helps us with our new wall box at Compleo that we just recently launched, and also the wallbe wall boxes, which are already in the market for quite some time. Number three, there are strong messages from the VDA, which is the Verband der Deutschen Automobilindustrie, which is the German Automotive Association. They are strongly asking to increase the share of public charging infrastructure.
The target that the German government has set is 1:1 0, i.e., for 10 EVs on the street, we need at least one public charger, one public charge point. Currently, we are at a ratio 1: 17, so 17 cars and only one public charger on the street. There is a strong ask from the automotive industry to decrease this ratio and therefore to increase the public infrastructure. This also helps us as now the automotive industry are ramping up their product portfolio. Many new and attractive cars are coming to the market in this year from Volkswagen, from Porsche, from Mercedes, from Renault. They are all launching new series from the top end, like the EQS from Mercedes, but also to the mid-price segment, like the ID.4 from Volkswagen. We expect that they will fulfill the increasing demand in the market.
As these automotive players are bringing the cars to the market, we hope that this will also pull the charging infrastructure massively. Number four is on our Austrian expansion. We have just opened an office in Austria, beginning of May. We have recruited an experienced manager as the country manager in Vienna, who will help us to build organically the Austrian business. We have started with a partnership with KSW. We have also increased our workforces to internal management, and we just received, last week, the confirmation that our chargers are in line with the Austrian Calibration Law. Calibration law, as we have highlighted in previous calls, is a requirement that was initially set up by the German government, that each kilowatt-hour that you charge in your charger is properly measured, and this is controlled by the calibration law authorities.
A similar regulation that we have right now in Germany was rolled out to Austria, and we received the confirmation that we can sell now AC and DC charger also in line with this calibration law, which also give us a competitive advantage. These were the four highlights, and now I'm moving to the next slide, on slide seven, which is probably not directly related to the quarterly results, but I would like to spend a few minutes talking about hydrogen. We were quite frequently asked whether there's a threat, whether hydrogen will be a risk for our business, and whether in 10- 20 years, probably, hydrogen cars will replace electric cars. Here are some scientific numbers we would like to present to you, which are quite important to understand.
On the top side of this chart, you see how much energy is still left from 100% of energy that is put into a hydrogen car. For those of you who are not familiar with a hydrogen car, what is a hydrogen car? This is the electric car where hydrogen is converted into energy. The energy is not stored in the battery, but it's stored in a tank, in fluid hydrogen. Effectively, the electric motor is more or less the same. It's just the way how you store the energy. It's not the battery, it's the hydrogen. The process is as follows. The energy and water is produced into hydrogen. To transport hydrogen, you have to liquefy it and keep it with very, very much pressure or at very, very low temperature.
There's a massive energy loss while converting energy into hydrogen and to transport and to process it. This is probably something that is completely underestimated also when talking about hydrogen gas stations. Yes, if you fuel up your car at your hydrogen gas station, this goes much faster than charging up an EV probably. To come back and to refill the hydrogen gas station, it will take roughly half an hour until the pressure that you need to fuel the car or the temperature that you need to fuel the car is reworked to the 250 bar.
It takes 20-30 minutes and in some of the hydrogen gas stations in the States, there are long queues because the hydrogen car drivers, and there are only very few luckily, have to wait until 20-30 minutes until the pressure for hydrogen is back in the gas station, the hydrogen in the car can be fueled up. You're losing already roughly 50% of the energy in the production and the processing process. Later on, there must be a conversion back to the electric motor, and again, you lose again 50% of the overall energy. Only 15%-18% of the total energy that initially went into the process is left for the electric motor. On the lower end, you can see the battery process.
You'll probably lose a little bit of energy in the transportation through the grid, and then there are some losses in the battery while charging in and charging out of the battery. Effectively, we are at about 70% usage of energy, i.e., you need 4x more energy to run the same distance with the hydrogen car compared to an electric vehicle. Hydrogen technology is in the market for decades already. There will not be many improvements going forward. The EV technology and the battery technology is still in, I wouldn't say baby steps, but in the teenager steps, and there will be more and more improvement, especially on the battery side. The ratio of 70% unit of battery cars will significantly improve going forward.
We don't see any threat from hydrogen cars, and the same views comes from major automotive player like Volkswagen as well, who are completely committed to electric cars and, by the way, also electric trucks. The Volkswagen subsidiary, TRATON, which is the truck segment, also is pushing the heavy truck, the electrification of heavy trucks, and they expect also going forward in the midterm that hydrogen trucks will be replaced by electrified trucks. What does it mean for our business and the overall EV business on slide eight? On slide eight, you see the share of EV registrations to the overall car registrations. What we have mentioned is the share is massively increasing. In Germany, that was roughly at 20%, beginning of the year, already at 25%. That means every fourth, every fifth car is already an electrified vehicle.
Still, we have a large proportion of plug-in hybrids. We believe that in the next years, the plug-in hybrid share will decrease and the share of fully electrified pure battery electric vehicle will increase. This is in line with the mission statement of many of the major players, whether it's General Motors or Volkswagen. They either plan to completely cut the production of ICE and the R&D of ICE, or they will significantly increase the share of EV. The disruption has just started and will continue for the next decade. Now, after this view on some macro trends, I am now happy to walk you through the major topics that happened at our company, Compleo, on slide nine. First of all, the wallbe acquisition that was closed in Q2, but we have negotiated the deal in Q1, so that was a successful deal.
We have closed the deal end of April. First-time consolidation of the company will be 1st of May. We are fully on track with the post-merger integration. We plan to integrate wallbe to have one firm, one sales force, and one integrated platform. That's going quite smoothly. We are reviewing right now other M&A options to further strengthen also our European footprint. In terms of top line, and Peter will highlight on the financials later on in the financial section, just to mention that we're growing roughly 43% year-on-year, and we have a properly filled pipeline for the year to go. On the European expansion, I mentioned already the Austrian expansion and that we have set up an office in Vienna and going to establish a subsidiary now in Vienna, and that the calibration law will help us to roll out our products to Austria.
We are also expanding our activities in Poland and Switzerland. We have established in the first quarter, relationships with partners there, and the next step is to analyze whether we will establish our own workforces in Poland and Switzerland. The next one I would like to highlight is the e-commerce team. Despite the fact that we are not a B2C business, but a pure B2B business, we're not selling directly to end customers, we think it makes sense to sell through an e-commerce channel. We have built up an e-commerce team, and this e-commerce team includes the training and partnership and the technical team to tackle the installers and electricity market. In Germany, there are more than 40,000 electricians and installing companies, and they will help to roll out e-mobility overall in the country.
The two natural partners you locally need to charge your w allbox is either your utility company or your electro installation company. We have started this webshop in Q1. We have hired an experienced digital manager, and we have launched this webshop, and we have already some six-digit sales numbers. The idea is that there's a direct sales channel from Compleo as a producer of charging station to the electro installation company. This is a complete different approach than many of our competitors go. Many of our competitors like MENNEKES and ABL, they all sell through wholesalers. They sell to wholesalers. They never sell directly to the electro installation companies.
Of course, they lose some margin, and we believe in times of Amazon and Google and all the digital experience that consumers have, also electro installers will order online their charger, whether it's a wallbox, whether it's AC and the DC chargers. We also already sold DC chargers through our web shop. We believe this is also a great add-on in our sales strategy to grow through these e-commerce platforms. Next one is the production of our wallbox. We are ramping up right now the production. The first 100+ pieces are produced and sold, and we already won a four-digit order from a large international utility player. Despite the fact that we are just ramping up the production and we received this order, which will kick in at the remainder of the year and then the year after.
We convinced with the functionality, the technology that we built into our new wallbox, this major customer. That was a huge success, and we expect to further grow wallbox revenue not only at wallbe but also at Compleo going forward, which will help on the top line. The last one is the investment into growth, and we have massively ramped up our R&D team, which was grown for more than 124%, and we will continue to invest into R&D. This is part of our strategic DNA. The same as for the production capacity. We have rented out a new production site in Dortmund. This is an interim production site. We are in negotiation process for our new Compleo Campus.
We want to merge our, actually split site to one site and to merge in one headquarter, R&D lab, and production site, all our Compleo forces. We think we can close this deal in Q3 and then start with the construction process. We have invested into R&D. We have invested into the sales team, like the e-commerce team. We'll continue to do so, and are looking forward. We're very optimistic into the year going forward. Now I would like to hand over to Peter, and he will continue on the next slide on the financials.
Thank you, Georg. Good morning, everybody, from my end. On the financials, as Georg already pointed out, we've grown nicely by 43% year-over-year. That is about in line with our expectations. We had some delays in the call-offs of a large contract with a customer where we had expected the call-offs to start a little bit earlier. That has no impact on the total volumes that they have placed for the full year, but just the pattern is slightly different from what we initially expected. Where did the growth come from? Our DC product sold pretty well. They've grown 162% year-on-year, which is mainly driven by the fact that we just introduced the DC charging stations in the second half of the first quarter last year.
Second part is our project and installation business that has grown by some 54% to EUR 1.7 million, and that is mainly driven by a large order with the German automotive, the sports car manufacturer that we have acquired in the second half of 2020. As Georg already pointed out, the group-wide sales pipeline looks nicely filled. We are working on a couple of large tenders at the moment, and we're very positive with the functionality that we at least can get through that. As mentioned, we are ramping up our wallbox production, and we will start selling it through the web shop any minute. The recently acquired wallbe pipeline as well is nicely filled, especially with the OEM business of wallbe. Next page. Looking at gross profit, year-on-year, we've grown our gross profit by some 27%.
However, gross profit margin is only at 23%, and there are two main impacts in this quarter. One is that we have ramped up our production capability and the capacity by hiring further people to be prepared for, A, the wallbox production, and B, the growth that we are expecting in the second half or in the remainder of the year. That has about an impact from the, let's call it under absorption of that personal capacity of roughly 220 basis points. The second impact is, and we've already seen that in the last quarter of 2020, that the accounting on the projects in the P&I business have a little drain on the margin, as long as they're still running projects. That will then flip when we're kind of finalizing the projects.
And that, kind of really accounting for that. With the profit margin. According to IFRS, we are not allowed to account on any profits while we are in the project phase, and that has about an impact of EUR 120,000, EUR 130,000 in this quarter, which translates into 150 basis points. On top of that, as you know, we have a large order with the German automotive customer on the DC charging stations and, as usual, when you work with OEMs and as usual when you're working with large contracts, we have a little higher price concessions that we have to make in order to win those. That's ordinary part of the business. Excluding those effects mentioned, gross profit margin would be in the range of 25%. In line with prior year, and in line with what we expect going forward.
On the OpEx side, I think the overall message is that the OpEx increase that we're seeing across all functions is purely driven, or mainly driven by the increase in FTE. We have some step-fixed costs that were not fully utilized by the increase of the top line, and that is our investment in the future growth. Total personal costs grew by some EUR 2.1 million, across all functions, including COGS, for the whole business in the quarter. As a percentage of sales, this means that, compared to prior year's quarter, where we had 33% of our sales being personal costs, in this quarter, we had some 47%, which is our investment in the future, and that is about a EUR 1.2 million impact on the overall profitability that we have invested in the future. Next page. The impact on the EBITDA follows what we explained earlier.
It is mainly driven by the investment in people and in capacity in the second facility that we've just opened. Those investments, we believe, are key for our future success and for generating the growth and the top line and the profitability going forward. We have some minor one-off costs had in the quarter that mainly relates to the real estate agent costs for the new facility and some advisors. We're expecting the one-off costs, at least excluding M&A related costs, to come down on the long run. Just to re-mention that, you might become bored from that, but just to point out, we still don't capitalize any own R&D expenses. Net of the EUR 1.3 million, our EBITDA prior to R&D would be in the range of EUR 1.1 million. Closing with the cash flow.
I think the cash flow is a good summary of what happened in the quarter. We've invested in people in our operation and in R&D. That cost us some EUR 2 million in cash, with the net profit or the net loss that we've made. We've invested into working capital around EUR 4 million. The majority of that, EUR 2.6 million, is a planned increase in inventories in order to be prepared for, A, future growth, and B, to be prepared for some expected prolonged delivery times that we at least get a feeling that happened in the remainder of the year. Part of that is semiconductors, where we have acquired already a large part of the numbers that we need and have them sitting on stock. This is investment of EUR 2.6 million.
The remainder in the working capital increase is mainly driven by the increase in receivables on the back of the sales pattern in the quarter. On the CapEx side, we are still continue to be disciplined. The EUR 1 million that we've invested here is mainly based on software and investments in the new facility. All in all, that is the EUR 7 million of cash that we've invested in the quarter. Back to Georg.
Thanks, Peter. I'm moving now to slide 17 to reiterate our strategic agenda. Just reminding you on the four main pillars that we have. First of all, the European expansion. We are still very much Germany-focused, but we want to become, and we will become, a European player and with further investment to European expansion. Number two, we are an R&D-driven company. We're a tech company, a green tech company, and we'll continue to invest into R&D to have all in-house competence for all kind of charging infrastructure, AC, DC, but also all the software, including back-end competence. Number three, as we just mentioned, we have some interim production sites, but hopefully in two, two and a half years, we will have our own headquarter and including new production facilities, R&D lab.
Number four, this is the new add-on to our strategy, which we announced after the wallbe acquisition. We will continue to non-organically grow with a focus outside of Germany for further add-ons that fit our strategy, we will be very conservative. That must be an accretive deal, very cautious. There are a couple of deals that we're reviewing right now, but only if it completely fits into culture and strategy, we will go for a further deal. Closing with the guidance for the year. wallbe will be consolidated starting 1st of May, and we want to be one company. There might be a rebranding, but we want to keep the wallbe brand for their software technology parts and their back-end products.
Going forward, we see that we jointly will have a strong position in the German market and will achieve on a consolidated basis between EUR 68 million and EUR 78 million. We have narrowed the range a little bit compared to the last guidance that we have given. We confirm the break even on the adjusted EBITDA level on group level for 2021. This is all in line with the conservative accounting policy, i.e., not to capitalize any R&D, but this adjusted EBITDA number includes the completely expensed R&D investment and the R&D cost from our side. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks a lot for your attention. We are now moving to the Q&A part. We are looking forward to your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question now, please press nine followed by the star key on your telephone keypad only once. If you wish to cancel the question, please press nine followed by the star key again. Please press nine and star now to state a question. The first question comes from Michael Junghans, Commerzbank. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, gentlemen. First question, I want to touch on your M&A pipeline. Karsten has recently mentioned that you are reviewing other M&A options in Europe. Could you please explain a bit on the timing if everything went according to your plan, and in which regions you ideally want to gain further footprint, and how such a deal could further complement your current product portfolio? Would you consider financing such a deal from internal sources, given that you have about EUR 30 million cash on hand, or was your aim to undertake an external funding process like in the case of your wallbe acquisition? Would be my first question.
Yeah, Michael, thanks for your question. Regarding M&A pipeline, as always with M&A deals, that can come quickly, this can take some time and might disappear. We are positive that we will close at least a deal this year. They should be most probably outside of German deal. We have mentioned what are the key countries where we will go to, Austria, Switzerland, the Nordics, France. Therefore it might be in one of these countries, and this should be something with technology and market, which is a good add-on on the technology side and the market add-on. Again, these are some early talks and negotiation that we are in, and we will see. When it comes to financing, we have to consider all options. It's depending on the price.
If it comes with a smaller price tag, we could finance this with our internal sources or with some leverage on it. If it's a bigger deal where we should need external financing, we would review whether we go for a capital increase or we would find some other financial option. Please, I cannot give you more details as it's still an ongoing negotiation. Our target is to continue the contribution in kind deals. We want to have deals where we can pay with our complete share at the currency, and therefore issuing shares with long lock-up periods to have an alignment of the interest of the selling parties. Therefore, my perfect deal would be to pay 100% in shares. This probably will not work, but this would be my perfect deal where we try to negotiate to M&A deals.
Okay, thank you. Fully clear. My next question is on the current trading environment in Q1 and beyond that. Though you do not report order intake, but could you nonetheless give us an indication where your book-to-bill ratio stood at the end of Q1 this year? Furthermore, could you elaborate on the demand environment since the beginning of Q2 this year? Have you seen any particular slowdown or acceleration of bookings as compared to Q1 this year?
Yeah. In terms of order forecast, this is still unchanged like the last year, the industry has not changed. We have a view for the next two to three months. We have a clear view on the order for the next two to three months, which is in line what we have expected and in line what we have guided. We will see an increase c oming from market growth, also from the launching, the ramping up of the wallbox, so we would see an acceleration of growth going forward compared to this quarter.
Again, if you want to install a huge EV charging park, you need approvals, you need permission from the grid operator. We see this at many major projects, that there might be delays of three, four, or five months. Even if our clients plan to order and plan to install, there are other instances around, especially from the grid operator side, that will delay projects and therefore delay our revenue.
Okay, understood. I believe it would also be a fair assumption that growth in your AC business should also improve in the quarters ahead, right? There was a specific low growth in Q1, but as your colleague referred back to it, so it was driven by somewhat postponement with regards to a major customer, right? Which you recently mentioned.
That delay referred to both the AC and DC. It's a customer that is ordering both product lines. The AC business grew by some 17% year on year, and we expect that to pick up in the remainder of the year to be in line with the others. Especially, the wallbox business will be part of the AC revenue. This is going into that bucket.
Yeah. Understood. Another question I have is on the new charging regulation, what you touched on, which requires that either a debit or credit card payment system must be attached to the station. Do you see any short-term growth headwinds for your new equipment business from this new policy? Maybe because, I could think about public sector customers would now be in the need to make some retooling with their existing install base, which might induce them to postpone new tender processes by a few months or quarters. Would you clearly see this new policy adoption as a clear growth booster for your public sector business in the upcoming months? What are your thoughts on this?
We see this as a competitive edge that we have and a competitive advantage. As this regulation was just launched last week, I think the industry will take some time. It will take some time until this is reflected in tender processes, until this is reflected, what does it mean for refurbishment of existing charging stations. We expect that this is a more strong midterm impact than a short-term impact in the next weeks or months. The industry has to adopt, they have to understand, update their tender documents, understand requirements, and we have to position ourselves in this market. This will be a boost, but we see this more as a midterm boost.
MENNEKES, one of our largest competitors, has stated they will need probably two years until they have adopted and they are on the same level that we are right now with our debit and credit card competence. Whether this will boost probably some of the existing tenders, yes, maybe, but I would rather be a little bit conservative on this one, but very bullish on the midterm development.
Understood. In the short- term, say in the next few months, it would be neutral. There would be no significant headwind from the policy.
Yeah. Normally, all these tender processes, all the large orders they have, let's say six months, plus, minus planning time. It is only going to be effective in 2023. If you install right now a public charger, you have no need to fulfill this regulation. Probably existing tenders will continue with the old regulation. In a couple of months from now, this new regulation will affect tenders and then hopefully positively our business.
Good. Understood. The last question I have before I go back to the Q&A relates to your gross margin development in Q1. As you outlined, it dipped below last year's level, and I understand that there were significant ramp-up costs associated with the capacity expansion. However, in view of current discussions on a tightening supply chain environment with rising inflation expectations for key raw materials for semiconductors, I'm wondering whether you saw any additional headwinds in Q1 on your gross margin coming from these discussions from this topic. And in addition, it would be helpful if you could elaborate on this potential gross margin headwind for the remainder of the year, as we are now in the middle of Q2.
As per today, we see relatively little negative impact from the shortage in semiconductors. The main headwind that we see is that prices have increased from roughly $0.80 to $15-$20. We have one to two of those computer chips in our charging station, so the overall impact is quite limited for each charging station. We're talking about a EUR 30-EUR 40 per station lower margin that we're going to make on those products. We are in discussions with the producers. Not only with the resellers. We try to get that solved pretty soon, hopefully. If there's any further shortage coming in the market or if there's again a ship getting stuck in the Suez Canal, we just don't know. That's out of our control.
For now, as for today, also as for in the second quarter visibility, the financial impact seems to be quite limited. It could change, but as for today, it's a couple of hundred thousand euros on the year that we might invest into higher prices of semiconductors.
Great. Thanks, Mr. I'll go back to the queue for now.
The next question comes from Emmanuel Carlier, Kempen . Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning all. The first question I have is a follow-up on the regulation in Germany with respect to payment. We know that MENNEKES does not have the debit and credit card option. Would you provide maybe an overview of some other competitors who do not have that option?
The majority of players do not have. It's ABL, it's MENNEKES, I think it's Schneider Electric. ABB has for some extent, I know. Alfen does not have. EVBox, I'm not pretty sure. I think they have on the DC side, but probably not on the AC side. The major Dutch and German competitors on the AC side, ABL, MENNEKES, EVBox, and Alfen, they do not have. The question is whether they have it in their R&D pipeline, and they will solve it sooner or later. On the AC side, I think we have at least one to two years competitive advantage with wallbe and the Compleo technology. On the DC side, I think it's ABB. For the other ones, I'm not pretty sure. We know that Delta does not have, Tritium does not have, and Alpitronic is right now working on it.
Maybe one remark. Alfen has just launched for the German charging stations in Germany. They've launched the same solution that we have developed together with the DZ BANK some two years ago.
Only on the debit card side?
Only on the debit card side. They basically bought our system for their German market product. There still is a difference between debit cards and credit cards, and the credit card technology is advanced and more complex. At Compleo, we were working, as you might know, also on the credit card technology. Luckily with the acquisition of wallbe , we have a super experienced payments, credit cards team, and also technology which they have already implemented into their charging stations. Of course, the industry will not hurry up and will try to develop also credit card options.
Yeah. Understood. Thank you for that answer. Another one on regulation, but moving from Germany to Europe. What is your current thinking about European regulation? Could European regulation move closer towards German regulation? From that point, could that be an advantage for Compleo to do European expansion?
We are part of ChargeUp Europe, which is the association of the charging players in Europe, so we are quite close, and we are the PPR representative company in that association. We are quite well aware of what's happening on the European level. One topic that we follow is the calibration law regulation. We expect that this is something that will come on the European level as well. Overall, there's a need for standardization. Europe is still a quite fragmented industry with different local regulations, whether in the U.K., whether in France. We expect it will probably take two to three years from now until we have a more harmonized level.
Do you believe that the moats of Compleo could increase going forward driven by European regulation? Or is that just too early?
We see the complexity that we have coming from the German politicians, the German regulations, the German grid operators, this will be rolled out to other countries, whether this is the credit card requirement, the calibration or conformity and other regulations. We see Germany as one of the, let's say, most complex, most regulated countries, in terms of regulations, and this will positively influence our European rollout.
Yeah. Could Europe also not choose to make things more easy, or is that impossible to do if you want to have things standardized?
What do you mean with easy?
Well, you see this as an advantage, but could it not be the case that Germany remains more regulated versus other European countries, and from that point that it's not really a benefit?
That's a difficult question. There are still industries who try to protect their players and have set up also local regulations. For example, in France, where local regulators on shutters, on plugs, which are unlike the German ones, which will need to harmonize the product portfolio. I think the overall message must be to harmonize our product portfolio going forward for European rollout, but this is a complex topic. The passporting of regulation, like it now happened to Austria, this is something that we would expect, so that the regulation and the consumer regulation will lead to a passporting in other countries.
Yeah. All right. Moving to organic sales growth. In Q1, that was around 43%. I think if I look at the standalone guidance for Compleo was closer to 66%, I think. The acceleration that you need to see in the organic growth rate, is that coming from the delay in the order and from the wallbox product that will be added, or are there other drivers that you believe will help to accelerate the organic sales growth in the coming quarters?
Yes. If you compare the, and I don't want to call it a pattern because kind of the history that we have is too early to call it a pattern, but last year we had about 16% of Q1 sales compared to the total year. If you compare Q1 with the guidance that we've given, we're about in the same range. Similar to last year, there will be a significantly positive effect from the wallbox coming. Yes, we believe that likely it will look like in the last year that a higher share of the sales growth is coming in the later part of the year.
Beside the product mix, it's also the sales channel and the market mix. As we are building now up new country sales teams, like in Austria, this will have an impact. It's the product, the increase in the product portfolio, it's the increase in the markets, i.e., having new markets we're going to sell. Number three, these are the sales channels, as we are tackling now electro installation companies, which we haven't done before, and with the e-commerce shop, this is also a new sales channel. These are the three driver, new product, new markets, new sales channels that will help.
Yeah. That's very clear. Thank you. On EBITDA. You guide for breakeven on EBITDA in 2021. Could you maybe provide a little bit color how you expect the ramp-up in adjusted EBITDA over the next three quarters? Because to get towards breakeven, you need to have some quarters that are already positive. Will that be a gradual evolution driven by the growing top line, or are there other elements that will play a role here?
Yeah, I think one thing you just answered yourself. With the growing top line and the higher absorption of fixed costs, we will have a natural effect just from the operating performance, and that will offset the slightly weaker numbers in Q1. The second effect is the consolidation of wallbe, where we will have for sure some consolidation effects starting in May. I think that it is. We have a different product mix. We have the wallbox out. We have a different sales channel, which will shift our sales expenses quite a bit. From that perspective, we still are confident that the guidance that we've given is still valid.
Yeah. All right. That means that one quarter, yeah, you would gradually move towards breakeven. Could we already expect close to breakeven in Q2?
No. We will have a one-off impact from the M&A cost and the cost for the capital increase that we have in Q2. This will have an impact on the organization, on the setup, and not for Q2. We have so far issued now for the first time a guidance at all. I know you gentlemen from the analyst side love to have more details, more guidance, more numbers. This is still a young, growing company, so we are comfortable and happy, have a guidance for the full year, but I wouldn't break this down to quarters.
Yeah. All right. Thanks a lot.
Yeah. With pleasure. Thanks for your questions, Emmanuel.
At the moment, there are no further questions. If you would still like to raise a question now, please press nine followed by the star key. There seems to be one follow-up question coming from Michael Junghans. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thanks for one more follow-up question. I want to touch on working capital development. You mentioned that you increased inventories to be prepared for long delivery times. Could you explain for which kind of inventories or raw materials you are currently seeing extended delivery times? Have you seen any relaxation of this since the beginning of Q2, or has this topic become even tougher as we are speaking?
Main components that we have at least invested in is the casings for the DC charging station. It is cables, it is semiconductors, as mentioned. I think that's most.
Power electronics.
Power electronics, that we have invested quite a bit into to have enough capacity on stock, and I think that's basically it.
Okay. Thank you. With regards to your new sales regions, you have just recently entered the market in Switzerland, Austria, and Poland. Could you give us a rough picture about your current trading in these new regions as of we are speaking right now?
I didn't get that question on the new region. Can you please repeat that, Michael?
Yeah. With regards to your new sales regions, what you have just recently entered, so Switzerland, Austria, Poland. What is the current trading environment here? Could you give us an update with regards to these three regions, what you have now just recently entered?
In terms of sales revenue or in terms of market development?
Yeah. In terms of market development. Yeah, and discussions with your sales team about it.
Yeah. The market development is comparable to the overall sales car EV registration rate development in Germany, which you can see on the slide at the beginning. The markets are equally increasing in Germany as they are increasing in Austria and Switzerland. As we're just ramping up our partnerships and our own sales team, it will take some time until we gain some market share there. Please allow us to give us some chance to work on these expansion plans. Overall, markets are more or less behaving the same in Germany as in Austria and Switzerland.
Okay. Understood. Just the last question, a very short one. On your calibration or conformity on the DC side. Are you currently still the only provider of calibration law conformed DC charging stations in Europe? If yes, how long would you likely be able to maintain this position?
No, there are other players announcing that they will be in line with DC conformity. We know that Alpitronic just has announced it, that they're going to rework their chargers in the second half of the year. They are offering non-conformed DC chargers and offering them to upgrade the stations in the second half of the year. At least the competition is coming now in the second half of the year.
Okay, understood. As we speak right now, are you still the only one with this calibration or conformity?
As far as I know, we are the only one, but that might change.
Yes, understood. Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome.
The next question comes from Thomas Schindler, Equita. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. This is Thomas Schindler from Equita in Frankfurt. I would like to touch upon your CapEx development. In the first quarter, there had been a decrease. In light of your headquarter, you would like to erect at the end of the year, how will the CapEx evolve in the coming quarters, and will the CapEx increase in the coming year? This is the one question. The other would be on the R&D activity. How many FTEs are within this segment or within this activity, and will you increase the number of employees at this segment? Thank you.
If we start with the second question, on the OpEx slide in the financial section, there's the headcounts for each division. We've ramped up R&D from 21 people last year to 65, and we're continuing to hire, especially on the software side. On top of that, we have, let's call it acquired an R&D team from wallbe, which we now will integrate into our team as we speak. We will continue to further invest into our R&D capacities. On your first question on CapEx, we are a CapEx lean company. The investment that we have are rather limited to some equipment and some technology in the production. We have leased the two production sites that we have so far. The CapEx into the real estate and the new production sites, the construction will take place in 2022, only then the next year.
For this year, there won't be any construction cost. We will start to acquire a land slot, probably. Yeah, if we would buy and not rent it out. There might be an investment into a land slot, but all the construction costs of EUR 20 million, EUR 30 million, whatever, we will have in the next two years only, not the next quarters.
Mm-hmm. Construction will start in next year, and you will have to move, I guess, after six or nine months, you will move into the new buildings?
Yeah. I assume we will be quicker in the construction process than airports in Berlin or operas in Hamburg, and therefore, I hope that after one year construction, we can move into the new building. This is something that we have to consider carefully, and as always, construction can take some time and can be delayed.
On top of that, we're in the process of launching a new ERP system as we speak. I think we're starting with a project in two weeks' time. There will be some CapEx related to that, and then there will be already now CapEx in R&D technology that we will build up in the current facility already now. Testing lab and some test equipment that we have rented at the moment, we will now invest into our own facility. We will buy parts of that already now, and then move it to the new facility once it's ready. We will see CapEx ramping up a bit in the second half of the year.
Okay. Thank you, gentlemen.
There are no further questions. Back to you, Mr. Griesemann.
Yeah, Ulrike, thanks a lot for managing the call. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks a lot for your time and your interest. All the good and good luck for the rest of the week, and we are available for any additional questions that you might have. Thanks a lot for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.