Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to this presentation of Otovo's second quarter results. My name is Andreas Thorsheim. I'm Founder and CEO, and I will be presenting a business update before leaving the floor to Petter Ulset, our Chief Financial Officer, who will give you the financial results. I'll return for a summary and outlook. At the end, we'll have questions and answers, so don't hesitate to leave your questions in the chat function. Now, let's dive into the numbers. This quarter, we installed 1,627 projects. That's up 5%, sorry, that's up 13% sequentially from Q1, and down 43% from the same quarter last year, which was the peak of our installation pipeline following the energy crisis in 2022, 2023.
Revenues generated came in at NOK 240 million, up 5% sequentially. As you well know, our revenue recognitions happen at the time of installation, and these two numbers, installations and revenues generated, will follow each other. Our ability to increase gross margin is visible once more in these numbers. Gross margin generated is up four percentage points from the same period last year, and is once again at an all-time high of 28%, some decimal points above where we were in the previous quarter.
Our ability to expand the gross margin, it shows the strength of the marketplace in an environment where the cost of solar installations, solar equipment, battery installations, and battery equipment makes the product more attractive and the marketplace is able to move some of that into gross margin for us, a trend that we believe will continue in quarters to come. Gross profit generated came in at NOK 67 million, blended gross margin generated at 28%, made up of 41% margin in the subscription segment and the 22% margin in the direct sale gross profit under IFRS. In terms of new sales, we remain flat on the same trend that we've seen in the fourth and first quarters recently.
This is a number that we're not satisfied with, and that we hope we can move both with internal measures and a more positive policy environment that I'll get back to later in the presentation. We sell below capacity, and that's a challenge for us, so we need to work with both the capacity side and, of course, capacity utilization in getting sales up. Our quality numbers are, in general, on the upside. Battery attachment rates come in very strong. We installed 42% of our systems in the second quarter with batteries. In terms of new sales, we were at 48%, and the 50% mark seems within a very short reach.
I think we're in an environment where batteries are about to be commonplace, not only in all installations, but also in all homes, and that's a big factor in the change of this solar market. The ticket size is at NOK 118,000, lower than it has been in previous quarters, as the cost of solar equipment and cost of installation keeps coming down. Overall, this is good news for stimulating demand. When solar equipment and solar installations get cheaper, it means the business case for solar and batteries gets better across Europe. Now, the decline we're seeing is part of that we're selling cheaper stuff, but also that we're selling more in countries that have smaller systems.
We think we can see an increase in this ticket size number towards the third and fourth quarter and into next year as the battery attachment rate keeps coming up and as sales come in more in large ticket countries towards the end of the year. We're making conscious efforts to add more EV chargers, more heat pumps, more batteries to our systems, as well as getting help from the fact that when people buy electric vehicles, they often like to put more panels into the system because they have a higher electricity need. That's a positive and a driver for bigger ticket sizes. That's important for our revenue metrics going forward.
In terms of the percentage of our customers that choose subscriptions, that number is hovering around 33%, have been stable over some time. We think that our medium term aim of 50% is well within reach, and that number will tick upwards in the remaining months of the year and into next year. As I said, the previous gross margins will keep expanding and the gross margin generated should keep coming up in quarters ahead. Now, getting sales up is a key concern of us, of course, and we have both internal measures and external triggers that can and will help on that metric.
In June, we signed two major partnerships in the automotive sector affecting our DACH region, and that's part of a drive to reduce customer acquisition cost, creating and using proprietary digital sources of traffic, and this is important because, of course, if you have ways of creating traffic and attention that are owned to you, where there's less competition, that means it usually has a lower cost, and it also has a higher likelihood of converting the interested consumers into actual owners of solar systems and batteries. Now, spearheading that partnership effort were two automotive partnerships in Germany. ADAC is the German Car Owners Association.
It has 20 million members and is a useful platform for those members to get advice on everything from maintenance to insurance, to how to fuel their cars and their homes with clean renewable energy. And we're one of three partners on that platform that provide home energy solutions to car owners. In addition, we signed a major partnership with the Volkswagen Group's electric charging unit, Elli. That is exclusive access to Elli's customers who want to fuel their new electric cars with solar power. And it's now valid for Germany and the brands Volkswagen, Cupra and Škoda. But we have the intention to expand that to, of course, more of the Volkswagen Group's brands and to the rest of their footprint across Europe. And this is interesting.
We believe the automotive space is a big driver and of demand for solar panels, and that the automotive space and home energy is increasingly melting together, and we hope to be able to announce more automotive partnerships in months to come. In addition to the traffic sources, we're working on what to do with the customers we're in interaction with. And as is often the case, we use our Italian team to spearhead new initiatives. The Italian team were the ones who found a way for us to sell batteries.
They were the vanguard in heat pump sales, and they're now working with a new sales methodology that I think will move Otovo once again to the front of the European home consumer energy space, like we were the first to introduce online pricing and an online sales tool. The results from the Italian market are promising. We see a positive effect on conversion and the cost per sale. And if these numbers continue throughout Q3, we think it will give a positive lift on the final months of the year, and not only that, but also the speed going into next year.
What we've seen is that these efforts combine to have the marketing cost per net sale peak in Q1 and come down 24% in Q2, and our ambition is to keep working on this metric so we get more customers for less expenditure, and more customers overall. And the ADAC partnership is coming in now in Q3. The Elli Volkswagen is materializing in sales in September. And this, together with the new sales methodology, we think is something that holds promise for the final months of the year and the speed going into 2025. In terms of the macro environment, the space remains, in the short term, pretty much the same, but the policy outlook has tilted slightly towards the better.
Southern Europe in general has the most favorable outlook, while our old core markets of Northern Europe and Spain remain challenging. Double-clicking on each of these regions, the Nordics, Benelux and Spain have a challenging outlook. In general, we see a more stressed household economy and lower electricity prices. There's limited policy support or even policy support going in the opposite direction. And even if some countries, like Sweden, have introduced some improvements to their battery aid, it's not enough to create strong stimulus for the Otovo product in these markets in the near term. That remains challenging. Now, Central Europe and the U.K. is a different story.
These are large solar markets with a stable growth outlook, and we've seen some positive policy triggers now, particularly in the U.K., where the new Labour government is talking big about a rooftop revolution. Let's see how much of that materializes into policy this year. But certainly, it's a different story from the U.K. than we've seen in the years past. And then France, Italy, Portugal and Poland are key markets, have a positive outlook. The Poles have announced a sixth edition of their home energy stimulus program. That starts on September second, if I'm not mistaken. Italy is also regionalized subsidies active now in the third quarter.
And overall, we're seeing that these green economies are getting the best alignment between lower cost of solar, lower cost of batteries, and relatively high electricity prices that buoy these markets and make their outlook positive for the rest of the year, and particularly into 2025. Now, with that, I'll leave the floor to Petter Ulset for our financial results.
Thank you, Andreas. I will now take you through our financials. Total operating income came in at NOK 183 million, which is down year over year due to lower installation activity. COGS decreased even more as we have improved margins with two percentage point year over year and one percentage point quarter over quarter. OpEx reduced by 16% year over year and 8% quarter over quarter to 177 million. Looking at our balance sheet, it contracted year over year as a result of the portfolio sale that we announced in Q4 last year. Cash came in at NOK 334 million. Zooming in on that, we started the quarter with NOK 434 million of cash. Then we had NOK 85 million of operational negative cash flow.
That includes an adverse working capital effect of NOK 14 million. Then in addition, we had neutral investments in the SPV, as we invested as much as we drew on the debt facility, and other items were down NOK 50 million, bringing us to a closing cash balance of NOK 334 million. Going over to OpEx, both group and market OpEx continues the downward trend, and in the quarter we had OpEx of NOK 127 million. That includes NOK 4 million of restructuring costs due to a reorganization of group management. In last year, we announced a cost program that will be completed in Q3 with an effect of NOK 90 million.
We maintain a rigorous control of both our marketing spend and our payroll, and we expect that we will see a continued downward trend, both in payroll from fewer FTEs, and that those FTEs will be in lower cost locations. We are also ready to initiate further cost efficiency measures, which will align our cost base to the activity levels we have seen over the last three quarters. At our Q1 quarterly presentation, we announced that we had initiated a sales process of our continental subscription portfolio. In that process, we have retained SpareBank 1 Markets and DNB Markets as advisors. The process is ongoing. However, we are in concrete discussions with several parties, and we see that recent market activity shows the transactability of our portfolio. With that, I turn it over to Andreas for the summary and outlook.
Okay, so let's start rounding things off and look at management's priorities for the second half of 2024. Now, first, it's closing the portfolio sale. That's a process that we announced that we initiated in May of this year. We're now in concrete discussions with several parties about terms and conditions, and once completed, the portfolio sale will free up cash that is latent in the portfolio, supplementing the cash that we have on hand. Second is cost. We have to remain vigilant on hiring and our cost levels to make sure that the cost program that we initiated last year comes in as expected or better than expected. On top of that, we are ready to implement efficiency measures to take down our cost base to align with the activity levels that we've seen over the last few quarters.
Third, increase sales. We've had a conscious shift towards proprietary lead sources that have lower customer acquisition cost and relatively higher conversion rates. Combining that with the implementation of a stronger sales methodology that has yielded results in Italy and can be rolled out across Europe to improve the amount of sales you get out of the same amount of traffic, will be important. Third, as a platform present across 13 European markets, with a backbone in Madrid, and a digital base, we are able to shift resources in marketing and sales to the markets that are hotter, away from those that are not.
And combining those three things, selling the portfolio, reducing cost, and improving our sales through a move to better lead sources and a better handling of those, we believe that we will stay in charge of our own destiny and end 2024 on a stronger note, and enter 2025 in a position to take the best out of a year that is promising in European solar and battery markets. And with that, I'll leave the floor to a Q&A session. Okay, so let's see what we have here in terms of questions. So, let's start with this one. Did you say that you will break even at current sales levels, so 1,622 per quarter?
No, no, I didn't say that, but I said that we would implement efficiency measures to bring costs into alignment with activity levels. The exact details of that will be fleshed out with our employee representatives and the board of directors, and then, of course, presented to the markets and the shareholders. What is this new sales method that you mentioned you tried in Italy? Okay, so, when we started Otovo, we were pioneering online sales, online pricing, and we've had a lot of success with that. But I think it's, over time, created the standard in the industry, and we want to push that forward.
So, bringing more trust and intimacy into the advice and sales situation by combining our online tools, our physical sales consultants, and the network of installers that we have to improve the likelihood that the person who's interested in solar, who contacts Otovo, comes out as a buying customer. And we've had good initial success with this in Italy. They often are the vanguard in trying out new things for us, and are validating those results, and now implementing that in several of the other markets, with hopefully an impact towards the end of this quarter. Then, how is the heat pump launch going? What percentage of your revenue is from heat pumps this quarter? So, heat pumps are for sale in the Italian market.
In Italy, they represent 13% of sales in the quarter. That is a good start. For comparison, batteries were at 25% in the first quarter. We did heat pump... No, sorry, battery sales in Italy two years ago. And shows that it's possible to combine solar and heat pump on the same platform. It is more complicated to launch heat pumps, though, than batteries that are an integral part of the solar offering. But it shows that it's possible, and we will be rolling this out across more countries later on. Then four, why didn't you just cut more in the previous round? Why not cut to break even? So in December, January of last year, we decided to reduce costs.
That cost program was based on what we had observed as our performance over the last few quarters. We had recently launched new markets, and we'd come out of a period with high sales after the energy crisis, and we optimized for sales levels at 3,000 to 3,000+ back then. Now we've had three consecutive quarters with flat sales and see that it's both needed and possible to address the cost base. The opportunity there lies, of course, in the fact that now we're used to operating at these levels, and we're also, I think, more importantly, used to operating this machine that consists of both systems and people across Europe.
We think there is an opportunity to run this more efficiently, or else we wouldn't, of course, have initiated this. If the portfolio sale does not succeed, how long will your cash reserves take you before you need a new raise? Maybe you can take that one, Petter.
Yes. So we announced at the Q1 presentation that we had initiated the sales process of the continental subscription portfolio. While that process is ongoing, it's difficult to be more precise than we are today. However, in all realistic scenarios, there is preserved latent cash reserves in that portfolio. We stay on top of this situation by combining the cash that we have on the balance sheet, the latent cash in that portfolio, with the cost cuts that Andreas just commented on.
Can you give some more color on the changes in battery attachment and leasing share? Are the changes driven by country mix? Okay, so, maybe I'll take the batteries, and you take the leasing.
So, on the batteries, it's quite astounding what's happening. We see the appetite for batteries quite uniformly increasing across Europe. Keep in mind that... I can't remember the exact Q2 numbers from last year, but I remember Q1 was at 19% battery attachment rate. Now we're at 48% of new sold systems that contain a battery. I think it's a certainty that we'll be at 50% plus for the rest of the year, and later on, this is- you know, it's melting into an integral part of solar systems. So that's great. We get to put more stuff into the shopping cart of consumers. And that's...
The systems get more useful for consumers in that they can save more money, get more independent from unpredictable power prices. I'm losing the thread a bit here. The battery attachment rates is driven by country mix. No, it's uniform across countries. I think the country mixes are quite neutral here, in fact. So very sort of strong momentum across Europe.
I'll try to give a shorter answer.
Yeah, please do. Yeah.
Leasing shares are up, but they are weighted down by country mix, so the trends within the individual countries are positive.
Yeah, so Italy is a non-leasing country, so whenever Italy does well, and it was green on the map- then, the leasing share is challenged by that.... Okay, are you rolling out heat pumps and EV chargers to all markets? How is progress so far? So, I commented on heat pumps. Italy is leading the charge there. Poland is next in line. And then we'll take it step by step, depending on progress and learnings from those two markets. But on-
But the potential for heat pumps is as big as the potential for solar in Europe?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's an extreme energy saver that fits well into an ecosystem where you have chargers, solar batteries, and then, of course, the heat pump. It's going to be a big driver of energy independence for consumers. On the EV charger side, this, I think you can sense from this presentation, we're emphasizing the melding together of the vehicle and home energy systems. Well, this week, in fact, we crossed the line where we've sold EV chargers in all markets. We're seeing the EV sales are coming up across Europe.
That's making it more interesting for people to get EV chargers through us, and also, of course, to get bigger systems with more panels because an EV will need 5,000 kilowatt hours or something like that per year. That's a big increase to European households' electricity consumption. Overall, good news in our ability to get more into the shopping cart for all consumers. Okay, next one: When will batteries be economically feasible for customers in Norway? Are subsidies needed? I think we're about to cross that line. If you look at batteries that cost 100,000 NOK, that's, I think, EUR 9,000 or thereabout.
If they do 10,000 cycles, and can carry 10 kilowatt hours, then you're down to about NOK 1 per kilowatt hour. And that it starts to look like intraday swings can be as much as NOK 1. But of course, every 10% drop from there or 10% increase in the amount of cycles, that puts you more into the money. So we're just on the cusp of this. I think consumers in Norway are now getting an extreme subsidy for consuming electricity, not taking the right moves in terms of insulation, heat pumps, solar, and battery also hurts from that. So the Norwegian government is full speed ahead against the energy transition, and that's just how it is.
If they want the solar market and batteries to get back up, they're going to need to put also energy in the other direction and subsidize solar and batteries more. That's just how it is, so something has to give, and Norway is falling behind. That's the market in Europe with the lowest battery attachment rate.
And the highest prices.
Yeah, and it's a problem in that as long as batteries aren't stimulated in the subsidy program, what is going to be a normal part of solar systems is not included, and that means we're getting old-fashioned systems in Norway. It's a pity, but then luckily, Otovo is in 12 other countries, and we're happy to sell to the consumers that have their homes in those markets instead. Would it be wiser to enter a closer cooperation with businesses like Tibber or Enode, et cetera? A good question. Rather than not comment on exactly those companies' names, but we saw during the winter, autumn of last year and winter of this year, that consumers were increasingly asking for smartness in their systems.
It seemed like there's been a shift where people expect the systems not only to produce when the sun shines, but to optimize towards when they're charging their car, or when electricity consumption is high in the house, or when energy prices make it advantageous to either store or consume energy. So smartness is definitely a topic that's getting more important. We address this by partnering with companies like Tibber and equivalent across Europe, so that consumers get smartness. Some of this comes out of the box from the manufacturers, and some of it you need an app or an extra device to optimize for that particular country. But it's very much a country-by-country thing.
But smartness is definitely a thing, and we cooperate closely with several of these type of companies. Okay, there seems to be no further questions. Thank you for listening. See you again for Q3.