Okay. Good morning and welcome to the presentation of the 2022 annual report. I'm here with Peter Brogaard, our CFO, and myself, Mikkel Gleerup from Cadeler. Happy to be here and happy to present live in Oslo for the first time. That's a milestone for us. We will talk a little bit about the company, what has happened during 2022, and Peter will talk about the financial results. Then we will also try to look a little bit ahead in 2023 and beyond and some of the decisions we have made in 2022 and how that potentially could impact the future. The necessary disclaimer, and then 2022 in highlights.
I think in highlights, a very eventful year for us, 2022, where we in May, executed a private placement, on the back of a discussion we had with a major developer in the industry, around, also potentially servicing the foundation, side of the industry, so a horizontal expansion. We did that private placement and ordered our first F-class vessel, from COSCO Shipyard in China. In June, Peter joined the team, something we're really happy for, a very experienced CFO. In July was a very busy month for us. We signed contracts in July and across the summer, which is a very normal season for this industry to sign contracts.
I think that we were pretty busy with the commercial side, especially towards the mid of the year. We have another slide that shows actually how busy. Again, in August, we signed the agreements with Ørsted for Hornsea 3, and widening the business scope also to include the T&I side for the foundation business. For those of you that stay in the room after the presentation, there's a follow presentation on the T&I for foundation that will not be streamed. In October, we successfully executed another private placement in what I would say was probably a pretty difficult market. For us, we executed that private placement pretty quickly with lots of support from our ex-investors. That's something that we were very happy with.
Also to see that cooperation between us and the investors, that was really good. In November, we expanded the senior management team from four to seven members. In total, we are now seven, and there's a small presentation on that a little bit later, how that senior management team looks like now and who will take this company forward. Again, in November, in total, a tripling of the fleet with the second F-class order. That was an option we had with COSCO Shipyard, and we decided that it was the right time to execute that because the option we had on hand was very attractively priced. We executed that.
I would say today we have clients standing in line for that second F-class vessel, but we are trying to understand now what is actually the best decision for us to make with that vessel. You can say at the end of December, we knew what the revenue were. We made an upwards adjustment in November based on a delay on a project that we were executing. In total, we were able to increase the revenue in 2022 compared to 2021 with 74%. On current projects, actually, this is not CapEx projects, this is on our ex-execution projects. We are ahead of our contractual obligations on both Seagreen and on Hollandse Kust Zuid.
I would say that we have built up so much in the bank at the moment on both projects that there are delays on both projects, but it's not due to the fault of Cadeler. On both projects, there will be a degree of extra income for Cadeler. We are very satisfied with how we have executed on the projects, and that's of course what's important for us because when you sell the next project, your ability to deliver, that is really what matters for the client. This is on the other hand, a CapEx project and something that is very, very important for us to emphasize also to all our investors, that this is where we have a key focus area at the moment. It is really executing these CapEx projects that we have committed to.
Here you see a picture from our yard in Korea where we are currently building the new cranes for the O-class vessels. We have our own team out there. I'm happy to say that we are on track with the new cranes. We are also preparing for the first shipment of the first crane. The first shipment has actually also been booked. We have made a decision to take a geared vessel that can offload itself in the Netherlands because we wanted to mitigate all potential risks in that timeline for the project. We are planning to have the vessels ready, both of them, in Q1 2024 before they head out on projects that they're already committed to.
Happy to say that the cranes are on track and where we want them to be. A few pictures from that outbuild out there in Korea. Obviously, it's good to talk about and also to put words on what we are doing, but picture speaks more than 1,000 words, as you say. Here is some reality on what is actually going on out there. Also on our newbuild vessels, this is the actual S-curve from the first X-class vessel. I'm happy to say that we are ahead of schedule on the first X-class vessel. We have already started the steel cutting for the second X-class vessel, 22nd of February as per the plan.
Overall, the cooperation we have with COSCO Qidong and with us is better than what we expected even when we did the contract negotiation. We are in a very, very good position at the moment in terms of delivering the vessels. Also, our general discussions with the yard in terms of things that where we would like to see small tweaks here and there. This is something where we have a very constructive debate with the yard to ensure that the vessels that we deliver are really best in class. Happy to say ahead of schedule. Also some pictures from that, building the new cranes. This is massive equipment.
Compared to what we are building at the moment for the O-class vessels, the X-class cranes are just fundamentally totally different and much, much, much bigger. We are looking at a really new degree of equipment here for the industry. Also here in terms of the block fabrication, we are actually just about to start the block assembly to make our blocks in the yard in COSCO Qidong for X1. Around summer, we will be able to really see something that looks like a ship in the dry dock. Also, the leg fabrication. It's important to say we actually work on different locations in China, a different location for the leg fabrication, different location for the blocks, and a different location for the crane and so on and so forth.
We have a team out there, a very, let's say, big team, and we have decided to scale that up also to try to mitigate potential impacts from something like coronavirus or something like that, to ensure that we can continue to operate also if we have certain individuals out of the equation. I think that has worked so far. In terms of quality, we are very, very happy with what we see. There was, of course, in the beginning, the natural steering of what is the expectation versus what's being delivered. I think what we see today is really, very, very, very good quality and something we're very happy with. In terms of the new F-class vessel, we oftentimes get asked, "What is the F-class?
Is it just a copy of the X-class?" I can say, no, it's not. It is based on the same hull dimensions, but from then on, there's a lot of changes. The legs are fundamentally different, and also the crane is fundamentally different. It is, what we'd refer to as a hybrid vessel, so we can do both the turbine side and the foundation side. In turbine configuration, it adds a lot of benefits to the company also because of the different legs, where we get some ability to handle a different type of site. That really gives us an opportunity to bid for different site types with our fleet. That has been the strategy for us also to have a diversification in the fleet.
Important to say is also that the crane can be shifted from foundation to VTG mode in around about a couple of weeks in port. We don't need a dry dock or something like that. We just need a small mobile crane, then we can do it. At the moment, we only say that the crane is above 3,000 tons. We don't want to specify it further than that. That's because that could create a degree of arms race in terms of who has the biggest crane and all of that. We just say above 3,000 tons at the moment. The slide I mentioned earlier in terms of what we have been securing in 2022, I think that this shows a significant picture of our commercial activity.
It's fair to say that we have been winning every single project that we wanted to win. Over the summer especially, we were very busy with signing contracts with our clients. I think that in order to understand how this industry works, normally the first months of the year, this is where you build up to it, and then you start signing from Q2 and forward. This is a little bit how it works. I cannot explain why it's like that's how it has always been that in the summertime, this is where it's the most busy for signing. I think this year will probably be similar to that as well. A very strong backlog now.
Very happy with these projects that we have been signing and also the agreements we have been made. There's a lot of things here that are still under negotiation with our clients. We believe we are in a very good position with our clients to also convert this from negotiations to firm orders. A picture, how we see the world at the moment in the commercial space. I think if you start on the right side of this slide, we had an order backlog of $310 million when we did the IPO back in 2020. Today, we have an order backlog of $907 million, including all the options.
Here it's important to differ from what the annual report we have published today, because there we only include 50% of the options in the number we give you. Here there's all the options included, and there we have $ 907 million in backlog. If we then look at the left side of the slide, start to focus on the lightest colored boxes, those were the projects that we were bidding when we did the IPO. At that time, we were bidding seven projects of various size, we thought that we were actually very busy with our bidding activity. When we ordered the two X-class vessels in June 2021, we were bidding the green boxes here, the slightly darker green there.
At that point in time, we said that this is probably maximum capacity of what we can bid. Fast-forward to 2022 March, where we had the same presentation as we have now, where we presented the 2021 accounts, we were bidding the light blue boxes. Also again, very busy. Where we were in February 23 is this view instead, where we are bidding the dark blue boxes, and it is totally different from what we were used to just a couple of years ago. This is two and a half years of development from the light boxes to the dark blue boxes. An important thing to say here is that our clients, they are starting to pack these projects together. We see that they go with a portfolio view now.
They could take these projects here and maybe five or six or seven of these boxes and put into one and say, "This is a block of projects we would like you to execute. We are offering you a four or a seven-year contract if you want to execute these projects for us." This is more and more the norm in the industry and also something that sits very well with the strategy we have, where we want our vessels to really be efficient out there, utilize the same equipment again and again and again, both to be efficient on the installation, but also to minimize the carbon footprint when we do the installation.
I'm sure that this will continue to expand because the growth numbers we have seen in the industry have not baked in a lot of the development we see even in a, in a region like North America, but certainly South America and some of the new countries in the Asian region as well. This is just a quick view on 2022 from an operational point of view, and here I will hand over to Peter, who will talk about the financial results for 22.
Thank you, Mikkel. Yes. 2022 was a year with a continued profitable growth. We saw revenue of EUR 106 million, as compared to EUR 61 million in 2021. A healthy increase of 75%. Both revenue and EBITDA were in line with the guidance that we issued in November. It is also testimony to the strength of our contracts, because in 2022 we saw a delay on our contracts, but we were able, you know, to increase our outlook in November when we saw a delay and were able to sign variation orders on the existing projects. EBITDA is EUR 64 million against EUR 28 million last year, increases with EUR 36 million.
What is worth mentioning is also the administrative expenses, they are increasing, but that is due to the investment that we do in our organization to be able to handle the future growth. If we look at the balance sheet, we can see that assets are increasing by the investments that we are doing in the new buildings, the two F-class, the down payments on that, and the upgrade of the O-class cranes. It's a strong balance sheet with an equity ratio of 80%. Equity is increasing with the strong support that we see from our shareholders. We did two private placement in 2022, one in May and one in October, raising in total EUR 187 million.
Further, we also secured a new credit facility of EUR 150 million in July 2022. With the investments in the new vessels, there are also coming a CapEx investment for Cadeler. We have in total as of end of December 2022. We have total remaining CapEx in total approximately EUR 1 billion million, and hereof is $816 million in US dollars. In line with the hedging policy that we have in the group, we have hedged 50% of the US dollar exposure. We have used forward rate agreements and zero-cost collars.
Further we have hedged 50% of the interest exposure, and that is done in the way that we, for each of the facilities, we do forward fixes 5 years from the facility is expected to start. We are in dialogue with banks where we see a huge interest to fund it. The first step in this is to secure the senior debt, and we are in dialogue with a group of banks to syndicate a loan on the X-class vessels that we can use also for the F-class vessels. If we look at the guidance, we guide a revenue of EUR 84 million-EUR 94 million as compared to EUR 106 million in 2022.
Here it is important to remember that we have the O-class crane upgrade in Q4. 25% of the capacity goes out of the revenue in 2023. If you look at the EBITDA, we guide EUR 32 million-EUR 42 million as compared to the EUR 64 million that we saw in 2022. You can see the EBITDA is decreasing more than the revenue, and that is due to two things. One is the organizational build-up that we have a slide on next slide. It's also that we are doing some planned replacement of equipment in Q4 when we are off hire, and also some maintenance and post project repair.
Hence we see some non-recurring OpEx in 2023, which also explains the decrease in the EBITDA as compared to the revenue.
Yes. I think, just to talk about this, since we made this decision to go into the T&I for the foundation delivery as well, that does require a significant outbuild of our organization capabilities because it is much more intensive in terms of what we need to do from the office side because we will be handling a much, much bigger scope. That is of course an explanation for why we are growing the headcount onshore at the moment significantly. It's also to handle other growth that we are currently looking at, where we have not talked openly to the market yet about what that potentially could be.
We have always said that we want to grow with the industry, and we want to be a, we want to be playing a role in the more complicated aspects of the role, because we believe that that's where our capabilities best match, what the industry has to offer in terms of commercial opportunities. Obviously, we are also growing, the offshore-based, employees, and that comes in line with the delivery of the new assets, where we will be further growing, the offshore crew as well, in order to man these new vessels that we are taking on. Already from 15, 16 months from now, the first X-class will be hitting the water.
The good thing is that we see a lot of applications at the moment to Cadeler to come and work for us, and this is both onshore and offshore. We are confident that we are also able to match this plan that we currently have in terms of delivering this because in our industry, really the people is the barrier to entry, and that's also why it's important to have the right skills in both offshore and onshore. In terms of market outlook, we briefly touched on this slide here. I think it's a fact that we see incredible growth in the industry.
Even when we look at slides like this, that talks about that the industry is basically doubling every fourth year or less than fourth year at the moment. We don't believe that these numbers are actually displaying the reality out there. We think that they are bigger. That's because a lot of the growth that we see in the market has not been baked into this. So there's not a single South American project in this, for example. If you read the Finansavisen in Norway, you saw that Equinor is currently developing more than five projects in Brazil alone, for example. There is a really a very steep growth in areas where it has not been baked into the numbers.
I think as a fundamental, we can say that the industry is growing very, very fast. Obviously, it's because of commitments to various climate agreements and all of that, but it is certainly also because of the whole energy security debate that especially goes on in Europe at the moment. That's for us also an evaluation that we go through all the time because where are Cadeler present and where do we want to work? We can say if we only wanted to remain in Europe, we could deploy all our assets in Europe. There's enough work here to just remain in Europe with our current plans.
It is very, very busy at the moment. We do see projects coming faster, being contracted earlier, and also clients having a wish to really lock in the capacity in the outer years as well. As the turbines there continue to grow, it's a little bit hard to see the slides, but really the equipment continues to grow. There is this debate around where does it plateau or does it plateau? Our current view is that the turbine out here is the 11 megawatt that we currently install on Hollandse Kust Zuid. This is the biggest ever installed commercial turbine at the moment. This one here that's significantly bigger is the 15 megawatt we will be installing just after the crane upgrade in 2024.
This is a turbine that we're currently bidding, this one here, and this is what we think will happen towards the end of the decade or maybe the beginning of the next decade. Here for reference, we have put two Airbus A380s in the radius of the rotor just to show you how big it is. This is good for us because all our vessels can handle this kind of equipment. We do see that the supply of these assets that can handle equipment like the number three and number four is coming down very quickly. Then you cannot do efficient installation anymore. This is where it starts to matter whether your asset can do that because the economical rationale in taking the most capable vessel is very simple when you are installing equipment like that.
You can say that for us, we believe that it will plateau at some point, but we don't believe that it will plateau at what we are looking at today. We believe that it will be one or two steps more before it will plateau. Probably towards the end of the decade, we will see that there is a degree of plateau on what we are seeing out there. This turbine here has already been publicly announced in terms of how big it is, and GE has already said that they're working on an 18 megawatt. So that is certainly beyond what we see here. I can say the X-class vessels are designed for a theoretical turbine around 35 megawatt.
We're actually pretty pleased to see this growth in the equipment because it fits our strategy completely. As we have said from the day, the 26th of November, the day in 2020 when we listed the company here on the Oslo Stock Exchange, which was a very good decision, it has been a fantastic journey for us, and I think the cooperation we have built up with investors and with you guys, the analysts and the banks and all of that has really been remarkable. We have said from the outset that Cadeler is a company that wants to grow. We want to be a significant player in the offshore wind industry, and we want to be the preferred contractor in our industry.
It is a continuing growth journey, and you can also see that with what we tell you today and the numbers we report today, we are gearing up for further growth. I can also say that we are constantly working on between three and seven different strategic opportunities, because it is clear, the mandate we have been given by the board is also we need to do sustainable growth in this industry, but we need to follow the industry. In an industry that grows 29% year on year or maybe even more, it's a pretty big task to continue just following the industry. What we have done, and where we are today, we have installed more than seven gigawatts, meaning that we have freed seven million households from their carbon footprint.
We have six Jack-ups vessels four being built at the moment. We have done 528 foundations already, so the foundation space is not new to us. We will just be now doing the T&I scope for the foundation, which you can say is new to us for the foundations. We have done it for the turbines, and I agree that it's different. We do believe that we are approaching it in the right way in a strategic partnership with a couple of the biggest developers out there who want us to play a role in this space. We have done more than 560 turbines, and this is a number that continues to grow because we work on two projects at the moment where we do turbines.
If you remember in the IPO, the turbine number was half of the foundation number. Now we are almost at the same level or even above. We are today 250 employees on and offshore. We are reporting to you today a revenue in 2022 of EUR 106 million, and an order backlog today of EUR 907 million, which will continue to grow in the coming days, weeks, and months. We believe that we are starting from a very, very solid foundation. Milestones we have achieved since the IPO, there's a legacy down here with a startup in Denmark and an ownership from Swire.
Really the journey we look at with Cadeler is the start was the IPO here two and a half years ago. Since then, it has really been solid growth with three private placements, four new vessels coming, two new cranes coming. Really, it's almost two years ago, we ordered the two X-class vessels, so we are close to the delivery now of the first one. That is for us remarkable and also something that you sometimes have to pinch yourself a little bit because it is now going very, very fast, and these vessels will come out and work.
I can also say, if you follow our pipeline of work and the delivery schedule of the vessels, you can see that X1 is going on Sofia as the first project. We already have clients that are asking for the period before Sofia as well. Of course, we are careful not to make a mistake and just run straight into LDs with a client. We want to do it in the right way. I would say the demand for the vessel, also from new markets, are at an all-time high. As I said, we have expanded the senior management team from four to seven members, and this is the team that we have running the company today.
Seven members in the senior team, and we believe that we present a diversity both in terms of experience and what we have done, and knowledge and capabilities, and feel really positive and good about this team delivering what the future of the company will require. On top of this, of course, there's a team in the company that is doing all the execution. That's of course the fundamental part of running this company to have the right skills. As I have said several times, the real barrier to entry in this industry, that is the people.
That is the people on this slide here, because without these people, the assets are just big pieces of steel that can do nothing. Updates on the vessels, we have already touched upon it. Crane upgrades starting in Q4 this year, sorry. We are taking one quarter out this year on the vessels and most of the first quarter next year. That is really to fit them for the future. It's not randomly selected this period where we're taking them out. We're also taking them out where the industry had the least to offer. If we had delayed it a year, you can say the opportunity cost would have been much higher because it's a different reality just a year further out.
We selected this period very, very diligently and believe that this is where we will have the lowest cost of doing this in terms of lost opportunity. The two X-class vessels, they have already been awarded their maiden contracts, and we are looking forward to deliver them. First vessel, 15, 16 months out. Then the two F-class vessels, which is really a new reality. As you know, the first F-class already has five years of commitment. The second F-class, I think it's fair to say that the clients are really taking numbers in the line at the moment to make themselves attractive for the second F-class. It is a very, very attractive product. We are at the moment evaluating what is the best opportunity for Cadeler.
Also because we are in an industry where we see a lot of new clients, that we haven't met before and haven't, you know, negotiated with before. It is a bit of a new reality, new markets, new products, new clients, so we have to make the right decisions. We say we are specialized in transportation and installation of VTGs and foundations. We support our clients with project development to get the most efficient installation. Our high-level target in the company is really to install as much renewable energy on time and on budget because this industry needs successes and not failures. That is also why this is really our target. We integrate deeply with our clients early on to ensure that we have the best project execution possibly.
This is also one of the reasons why we are manning up significantly now because we need to interact with our clients three four years before a project goes into execution. It will make the profits when we execute them better and more profitable because we have already done a lot of the planning in terms of how we will do the project and the efficient way of doing it. Operations and maintenance will also be an integral part of the company. We believe it's important to keep the turbines out there spinning and not just installing the equipment. As we move forward as a company, there will be a clear focus also on the operations and maintenance side.
Decommissioning, we are happy to engage in that, at the moment it's not for us because it starts from the bottom of the food chain with the smallest equipment and the lowest water depths and all of that. As and when, then we are ready to play a role. We talk about this ecosystem down here at the bottom a lot, and we have a lot of good stories about how that has also meant a lot for us, both on clients, on business enablers and component suppliers. It is an ecosystem that we see ourselves in, and it's an ecosystem where we take care of, both the people that pay us money, but also the people that we pay money to ensure that we are able to get the best deals out there.
That's also one of the fundamental parts of being a leader in an industry. As you know, headquartered in Copenhagen, we have an office in Vejle close to the turbine OEMs. We are currently planning an office in Gdansk in Poland as well. That is also partly because of some of the technical competencies that we require at a greater scale than what we have it today in terms of delivering some of the projects we see out in the future. We have a sales office in Taipei in Taiwan, and we are also planning an operational presence in the Asian region. We are very intensively at the moment evaluating the South American region.
We believe that there are certain attraction factors to the South American region, that for us makes it an attractive place to be. I think it's, we also see that the clients are asking us to come and work with them in this region, at attractive conditions, I would say. Also, we have booked our new headquarter in Copenhagen, we will be moving into that in February 2024. That is also a sign of the expansion we have. We are currently having to utilize hot desks and all of that in our office because we are cramping together on too little space at the moment.
It's a sign of the growth, and it's a good sign in our view because it means that we are executing on the plan we laid out even when we talked IPO before we did the actual IPO. Where we want to play a role, we want to play a role in where we have the red dotted line around the value chain in the offshore wind industry. We want to play a role in transport and installation and operations and maintenance. In those boxes, we are happy to engage in everything that has a certain complication factor into it. You will not be seeing us announcing that we will be doing crew transfer vessels, for example. That's not our game. The barrier to entry is too low.
We are evaluating across the board other things, and I can say that cabling, for example, that fits the bill for us, and that's something that we potentially could be evaluating. And also as we have done, moving horizontally into the T&I for foundations, that was a clear decision, and it fitted really the bill of what we wanted to do as a company. High barriers to entry, complicated, and really fitting the asset landscape that we have in the company. Going forward, what we can say to you guys, the analysts, but also to our investors, is we are open to both vertical and horizontal expansion.
Really opening up where we are more and take more scope for our clients there, but also to do the horizontal areas that are meeting these barrier to entry requirements and also the yield in these areas, so to speak. We are open to both organic and non-organic growth, so M&A opportunities are certainly something that we will consider. Regional expansion is evident with what I just told you. We are looking both at Asia and South America at the moment. Also strategic partnerships like what we have done for the T&I for foundations, because these are true strategic partnerships with some of the biggest developers in the industry, where we cooperate, we sit together, and we execute these projects together to really ensure that we build up the capabilities.
I think when we announce our first T&I project for foundations, I think that it will also be evident for everybody how solid that strategic partnership actually is with how we have been handling costs and stuff like that, for example, on these projects, which is a new normal for the industry. In general, an increased portfolio of services and then also floating wind, we are oftentimes asked about, is floating wind a threat or is an opportunity? We see it as an opportunity. We want to play a role in the offshore floating wind space. We think it's the same clients, it's the same equipment, and it happens offshore. It's on a different foundations.
We are already involved in two different projects in floating wind, and it's something where we are aiming to play a significant role as well. And also an area where we are willing to invest, when and, you say, when the industry is right to take floating wind to utility scale. At the moment, it's still too much test and trial, but when we are ready to take it to commercial scale and utility scale, that's also the point where Cadeler will be ready to play a real role in that industry. With that said, we are happy to open up to questions from both the audience here in Oslo, but also from online. I promised our marketing department to shift to this slide as well.
Any inquiries can come to us. With that said, happy to take questions if there are any. Yes.
Roald Hartvigsen from Clarksons Securities. I wanna start by asking you how you think about the risk of time and cost overruns on crane upgrades. Where do you see the biggest risk, and how are you working to mitigate those?
That's a good question because whenever you execute a project, there's a risk for both cost and time overrun. We have tried to mitigate. Let's say the biggest risk is, of course, the whole taking off old cranes and putting on new cranes. That is the biggest risk because that's really the big two milestones you have to execute. We are doing as much preparatory work as we can on the vessels before we even arrive in the Netherlands. One of the mitigations we have done, for example, as I told you in the presentation, we have booked geared vessels. The vessels that arrive in the Netherlands with the new cranes are not depending on the ringer crane being ready for offloading. They can offload the new cranes themselves.
That is a mitigation for us, so we don't need to sit and wait for the ringer crane because we have booked a massive ringer crane to take off the old cranes and put on the new cranes. That's also why we do it back to back because that ringer crane, I think there are four or five of them available in the world today. To have that for an extended period of time is actually very, very difficult. That's another mitigation for us.
We have gone through many, many different iterations of how to take off the old cranes and put on the new cranes because one of the real complexities is we have 105 meter long legs where the crane has to come over, and that either requires a very, very high lift or a crane on the deck of the vessel where you jack the vessel out of the water completely, so you don't have to lift over the legs. That is very complicated. Our mitigation to that was to simply book one of the biggest cranes in the world to lift over the leg. Some of our competitors have even chopped off a leg in order to handle that challenge. There are many different ways, but that's two examples of mitigations.
Of course, we have a very big team working on this to make it a success. We have also clearly communicated it has to be a success. We know that a lot of people are cheering for us to make it a success, and we certainly also want to make it a success ourself.
I wanna touch a bit upon a bit more upon the current bidding environment. Obviously, very hot, a lot of activity, and we have seen developers looking to secure demand further out in time and even beyond specific projects. Are there any other such trends we should be aware of or any other material observations that you have made that you would like to share with us?
Yes. I think that what we have said throughout 2023 so far is that we see in general an improving market environment for us, both in terms of terms and conditions. We also see that, for example, the foundation T&I contracts, they are working on new terms and conditions. The terms and conditions are not as onerous as they used to be for the contractors. That's of course a benefit. The pricing is going up as well, I would say. We know already now that we will be announcing contracts in the not-so-distant future with new normals on rates.
And I think also in terms of utilization, both for O&X and F-class, we are looking into a picture where we think the challenge will be not to have overlaps rather than two big gaps, so to speak. I think higher utilization than expected, better rates than expected, and better terms and conditions than expected. I would also like to say that I think that our guidance today reflects that 2023 is actually a slightly complicated year because there's a lot of things happening and there are things that are not signed yet. I would also say that there are probably more upside potential than downside risk in our guidance.
We also have a question online that actually lines up with this very well. Here's the question: Obviously, you're tendering some projects at the moment, and just curious, how do you see the payback on these contracts, and still an upwards trends, and how can we potentially see below 4-5 years in payback on these contracts?
On the vessels.
Yeah. On the vessels.
Yeah. Yeah. I think we are there already. I think we are there, and I think even in some cases, we are beyond that as well. I think that we are there, and I think that one of the challenges that we see is that it's a little bit a generalist view when it's reported in the analyst reports, what is the day rate, because most analysts, they just divide by three days per turbine. That's probably too generalistic for every project because different project have different conditions and that's also why we don't like so much to operate in day rates because you cannot really use that. Some projects, it's less, some projects, it's more.
That day rate can be faulty if you don't have the right input conditions.
If I can just continue on that, with the pace of installation that you're talking about. Over the last 10 years or so, the average time of installing a turbine has dropped by like 40%, I believe.
Mm-hmm.
How much further do you think installation time can drop? Could that learning rate we've seen the last 10 years sort of be offset by more complexity surrounding larger turbines and larger foundations? How do you see that?
You can say, just because the turbine grows, it doesn't take more time per se, because it's still the same amount of lifts you have to execute. Actually we will see that continue to drop, especially with the efficiency of the new vessels. If you compare an X-class vessel to a vessel that can do 21 5 megawatt turbine per load out, then on a project like Sofia, where you have 200 kilometers to site, the X-class is just incredibly much more efficient because you don't have to do the transit again and again and again. On a 100 turbine project, they have to do 50 transits, we have to do 15, right? It's. You have this massive transit.
You have to wait for tidal restrictions and pilotage and weather and all of that. That will all be baked into the number of days you use for installation. That's also why I'm cautioning that 3 days per turbine. I know we have talked about it ourselves to give something at least, right? It is probably too generalistic. Projects that we see currently in the Netherlands, it's less because you are basically just out of the port, then you are installing in sandy conditions, very simple jacking conditions. On the other hand, a market like Korea, where you are looking at 30 meter soil penetration in mud, that will be very challenging on time because you need a lot of preloading on the vessel and all of that. Different markets, different conditions.
I do believe that the efficiency for some will continue to improve, and that's a selling factor. For us, we have looked at projects with 100 turbines where we as much as 70 to 80 days faster to legacy assets.
Thank you. Andreas Nygaard from Kepler Cheuvreux. I just wonder a bit about prices for your vessels. Could you give some flavor on where we are today if you were to order a new vessel?
It's actually a question where we don't know the answer. We hear the speculation, and I can say that I think an X-class today would be between $400 million-$450 million, and I think an F-class would be between $425 million-$475 million. I don't know the exact, so it's with all the disclaimers that we don't have a current price. The way it works is when we, when we quote for a vessel, we need first all the components, suppliers, the big component suppliers like jacking system, crane, and engine package, and electrical package, and all that. They need to quote first, then it's mixed into the yard offer, and then the yard takes the EPCI delivery.
We are also careful of not asking pricing because it could indicate that we are ordering and, you know, so we don't go out without a real mission because that can be challenging to get the best price.
Okay. That's clear.
Yeah.
The second one on your contracts further out in time, there will always be some discussions and people wondering what happens if a contract gets canceled or delayed or anything. Could you give some flavor on where we are on that?
Yes.
What would happen for you guys if your contracts get canceled?
Yeah. That's a very real example. I'm happy actually you mentioned that because there was some talks about Hornsea 3, right? Whether that's canceled. The Danish media said that, "Yeah, now it's canceled, and it's hanging in a very thin thread, that project." Ørsted contracted Havfram for half of the turbines, right? It was like, okay, either you would believe that Ørsted like to pay termination fees or actually that the project is still on track. I will leave it up to you what you believe. But I think that the termination fees are following the lines of that the terms and conditions are improving. It is expensive for developers to cancel projects because we do not allow reservations on our vessels at the moment. It has to come with a penalty if you cancel.
I would go so far to say that in certain years, if clients were to terminate, it would be a benefit for us as a company. That's it. I hope that's clear enough.
Okay. Are there other questions in the room? I think there are no other questions online. That must mean that we came basically around every question that is out there. Obviously, we have the email address here and also we are available at any time for anybody who's interested in the company. That's important for us to say. We want to integrate with everybody who has something they want to learn about Cadeler. Please reach out to us if there are any questions that you want to do bilaterally. Obviously, we are also in the room after we switch off the online presentation.
With that said, thank you.