Good morning, and welcome to Otovo's Q1 presentation. I'm Sondre, and I work with investor relations. Today's presenters are Andreas Thorsheim, Founder and CEO, our new Chief Business Officer, Pål Hauff Hvattum, Chief Financial Officer, Petter Ulset, and myself. First on the agenda is the quarterly highlights, which Andreas will take us through. Then we'll do a business update, financial results, and then a summary. At the end of the session, we'll do a Q&A, so please submit your questions in the chat during the presentation. Now, over to Andreas and the quarterly highlights.
Thank you. Yes, what a quarter this has been. The first quarter of 2022 is one where we've set records across the board. Revenue generated is coming in at NOK 135 million, up 260% from the same period last year. Our gross profit generated comes in at NOK 26 million, up 360% from the same period last year. The accumulated contracted subscription revenue that we've generated in the quarter is at NOK 121 million, up 350% from the same period last year. Looking at the individual markets, we're seeing strong performance everywhere. Norway sees record sales and customer interest. We had twice the number of installations in Q1 this year compared to the same quarter last year. We've had increasing markups that have resulted in increased gross margins.
Sweden has seen batteries launch this quarter and increasing ticket sizes. Higher subscription shares this quarter than in Q4, and we're rebounding from a bit of a soft period. France is also close to doubling its sales in the quarter, 80% growth from the year before, and has solid accuracy in installations. France is a country where we've had somewhat soft subscription sales, but that is going to be improved in coming quarters. Spain is doubling its sales and also has installations growing very steadily. In Spain, subscription and battery attachment rates are at all-time high. If you're looking at all these four markets where we were present at this period last year, they show that Otovo is growing even without adding new countries.
These four countries had a combined growth in units sold of 138%, and in units installed of 53%. We're adding countries. Poland, for example, where sales have been a bit soft this quarter, awaiting new regulations that came into effect on April first, but that has resulted in very strong installation numbers as the Poles have rushed to be on the old regulations. We're expecting sales to come back now in Q2. In Poland, more than a third of sales are on the subscription model. Italy is looking to be a very strong market for us. We've seen significant growth in both sales and installations, even as there's been lots of local bottlenecks in the Italian market. Italy also has higher battery attachment rates than we've ever seen.
Finally, Germany, that I know a lot of you have questions about, has a very promising start. Good sales figures in its first full quarter. That's gonna materialize into increasing numbers of installations in Q2 and increasingly into Q3. Germany is also a country where we have high quality in sales with battery attachment rates and subscription rates among the top countries in the group. Now, let's zoom in on the supply side, where I know a lot of you will have questions. Otovo has been successfully fighting supply chain irregularity that is likely to persist during this quarter. In Q1, we saw various supply chain constraints. In the supply chains, it was mostly about local bottlenecks, shortages in local markets, but we didn't really see pan-European shortages or global bottlenecks.
What we did see was labor shortages as there was still persisting COVID in multiple countries, and there was lead time to expand supply in various European markets. Our response in Otovo has been to increase the number of installer companies on the platform. Our network has increased from 500 installer companies on the network in December to more than 600 now coming out of March, an increase of more than 20% during the quarter. In addition, we've scaled up existing installers by leveraging the value of our platform and giving them soft incentives and bonuses. We've strengthened our supply chain organization with a new VP of Supply Chain, and we're leveraging our pan-European footprint to relieve local capacity constraints. For example, by shipping inverters that are plentiful in Poland to constrained markets like Sweden, Spain, and Germany.
This quarter, we've also decided to hold physical inventory when required to secure installation capacity. We've done bulk purchases of panels in Q1 for Scandinavia in order to relieve that constrained market. Now, looking into the future, we see heightened risk of global bottlenecks as equipment delivery is expected to come under strain either in Asia or in Europe. We're seeing on the positive side, lower pressures on labor markets as the installer networks are getting strengthened. Those were the highlights of the quarter. Now, let's reiterate a bit what we're trying to do here in Otovo. Otovo is a European marketplace for solar and battery installations.
We're on a mission to put solar panels on every roof and batteries in every home in Europe, being the easiest and most affordable way to do so. The Otovo platform consists of a demand side with homeowners who want a system they can trust. We're an e-commerce platform for solar and battery sales, the most convenient way to go solar with online sales, no home visits, and subscriptions available. There's a supply side that consists of installer companies that want good and recurring business. We've created a network of installer companies across Europe, ranging from the north of Norway to the south of Spain, from the east of Poland to the west of France. These installers, they bid online, they order inventory, and they complete projects within the Otovo marketplace platform. During this quarter, we've seen growth on both sides of the marketplace.
The homeowners have increased their demand for electrification of their homes for solar and for batteries in the face of an emerging energy crisis in Europe that was compounded by the invasion of Ukraine in February. Demand has been virtually vertical during Q1, as seen in the press, as seen in power prices, and we've had an exceptional quarter in terms of incoming interest. We responded to that by doing a lot of sales, but also by building up the supply side. We've added installer companies and fought turmoil on the supply side. We're ending this quarter with more than 600 installer companies after having added more than 100 during Q1.
Otovo's strategy is to build the number-one distributed energy company in Europe, and we're doing that by pulling three levers, building scale, adding batteries and new hardware, and developing the subscription platform. Number one, scale. Otovo is growing volumes in seven European countries. Our model is one with rapid low-risk expansion, where we will be adding three new countries this summer, the U.K., Austria, and Portugal, and then three more by the end of the year. At that time, we'll have an addressable market of 1.3 million installations per year, and we're filling that with an increasingly sizable company. On the battery and hardware side, we've been adding batteries increasingly to our sales. That increases our ticket size and improves the gross profit per combined customer.
We've launched batteries for consumers in Sweden, Poland, and France, and now only Norway remains to be added. We've also been successfully increasing gross margins in all countries through higher markups during this quarter, increasing our ticket size and the profitability of installations to come. On top of that, we're building this subscription generation engine. Subscriptions increase profitability per customer by 3x-4x . We're accelerating the deployment of leasing by the growth of the company, but also increasingly by improving the leasing rate of sales going forward. We see significant potential for debt financing to boost these margins, a model that's been proven in the US. To sum up the leasing plan, we're really building a huge subscription engine on top of the origination platform that is Otovo.
Let's have a look at how this is gonna scale. Otovo is on an accelerated pathway to continental scale. At the end of last year, we were established in six markets, and we had recently launched Germany. In the first half of this year, we're launching three new markets. We're launching the UK, Portugal, and Austria. In the second half of the year, we're launching three new markets, taking us to total addressable markets of 1.3 million solar installations all across Europe. How do we do this? How do we enter into the new markets? We do this by leveraging a country launch playbook proven multiple times. This playbook contains three different elements. Firstly, we hire world-class general managers. These general managers have a solid track record in building high-growth, leading marketplaces and platform businesses.
We search for entrepreneurial, high-paced, leaders with an ability to get things done. Secondly, we localize product and legal. We adapt the product to local markets together with a very lean central new markets team. We localize contracts and operational models to local regulations. Thirdly, building marketplaces. We start by building supply. We partner and onboard installer companies to the platform to reach, nationwide coverage. Then we build demand. We leverage PR, performance marketing, and SEO to drive traffic to our sites. This is how we launched Germany in the end of last year. Germany is now a well-established operation where we're now focusing on expanding the supply side. The market is strongly driven by a very solid demand side.
Our sales are ahead of budget, and it's actually the best first quarter after launch in any of our operations. On the installer network side, we already have our first installations up on roofs, and we're working on building out the network covering the entire country. Ramping up continues. Most important now is to build out the wholesaler and the supply chain. When it comes to team, we continue to build our local team. We're leveraging the playbook, and we see a very strong local pipeline. On the right hand, you see the growth of our installer network from November last year to April this year, and you also see a photo of the first installation outside Berlin. This week, we were very proud to announce our General Manager, Manuel Pina, in Portugal.
Manuel comes from Uber, where he's been for seven years. He was a general manager, a head of customer experience for Southern Europe, and he was also an operations manager. Manuel holds an MBA from the IE Business School, and he's one of the examples of the attractiveness of the Otovo model. We're very proud of attracting people like Manuel. In the U.K., we also have a new general manager. He comes from a tier-one marketplace as well, where he had leading commercial roles. He was a strategy director, and he also was a partnership manager. He holds an MBA from a top U.S. business school. In Austria, we're in the process of recruiting our general manager, similar profile, tier-one marketplace, general manager experience, proven commercial track record. Batteries.
We're very, very happy to see improving attachment rates in all our markets. We see growth, specifically in Germany, growing from 60% before Christmas to 85% attachment rate in Q1. In Italy, we see a similar growth up from 59% to 69%. Spain coming up from 14% to 27% in Q1. Very close to the average Otovo number, 12% up to 25% in this Q. In Q1, we also launched three new markets. We launched Sweden, Poland, and France. Although this is new, we see good numbers in Sweden, 6% attachment rate in Q1. How does this translate into installations? In Q3 last year, we had none of our installations with batteries.
The percentage was low also in the end of the year, 1%, while we see a 10% battery attachment rate on our installations in Q1 this year. What does this sum up to? It sums up to a very aggressive growth of a bit north of 100% in the years to come. We are already trending ahead of 2022 sales ambitions of around 10,000 sales and around 6,000 installations. This will take us in 2025 to somewhere close to our U.S. peers, 80,000-90,000 yearly solar installations.
I will now take you through our first quarter financial results and the outlook for the second quarter. Starting with our reported financials. On the P&L, we grew our total revenues 3x to NOK 112 million, and we reported - 54.8 in EBITDA, which is an improvement of 46 percentage points, showing the underlying operational leverage in the business. Turning to the balance sheet, we have now merged in EDEA, and this shows the full effect of EDEA for the first quarter. During the quarter, we increased our cash to NOK 445 million through a capital raise and a drawn loan from Nordea. However, reported financials does not reflect the underlying value creation in the business.
Following the merger with EDEA, Otovo has two primary segments, the direct purchase segment, which you can say reflects the historical Otovo, where revenue recognition and gross profit is relatively straightforward. However, in our subscription segment, we have chosen to show the contracted subscription revenue as a measure of the value generated per subscription customer. Here, we discount the subscription revenues over the full lifetime of the customer with 5%. Correspondingly, we adjust the gross subscription profit for the upfront COGS and in addition, the full O&M cost over the lifetime of the customer. The resulting group metrics for the Otovo Group is that revenue generated is the sum of direct purchase revenues and contracted subscription revenues. Correspondingly, gross profit generated is the sum of gross profit from the direct purchase segment and gross subscription profit from the subscription segment.
On revenue generated, we increased revenue generated by 3.6 x to NOK 135 million in the quarter. Gross profit generated expanded 4.6 x to NOK 26.3 million. Looking at margins, the margin in the subscription segment was 32.8%, and the margin in the direct purchase segment was 16.3%. The decline in margin in the subscription segment of 1.7 percentage points is due to country mix effects. If we zoom in on the subscription portfolio, we saw a strong performance over the last year. Since the first quarter last year, total subscribers have increased 330%, while annual recurring revenues from those subscribers increased 320%. The increase in accumulated contracted subscription revenue, which could represent our assets from the subscription segment, is 350%.
Turning over to our pipeline, we saw that the pipeline increased 58% in the quarter to NOK 442 million. We revise up the guidance for the first half to NOK 300 million-NOK 350 million, which implies second quarter revenues of NOK 165 million-NOK 250 million. We see an increase in delivery times across our markets. This is driven by sustained global supply chain challenges and the hardware shortages and bottlenecks across Europe. Turning to operating performance, we continue to make investments. However, operational leverage is becoming more and more clear in the numbers. On the left-hand side, if you zoom in on OpEx per sale, that has now reduced from 43.
53,000 in first quarter of last year to 30,000 in first quarter of this year, which is a reduction of 43%. On the right-hand side, EBITDA generated improved NOK 1 million from NOK -49 million to NOK -48 million in the quarter. In EBITDA, I would like to highlight that we have country launch and growth-related costs of NOK 3.8 million, non-recurring items of NOK 2.3 million, and also NOK 5.8 million from a share-based non-cash program. We went into the quarter with a cash position of NOK 224 million. In the quarter, we had operating activities of NOK -68 million. I will get back to that. Investing activities, which comprises investments in our software and in the EDEA portfolio of NOK 23 million.
Financing activities, where we increased our cash position by NOK 370 million from a private placement and net debt drawn from Nordea. A small FX adjustment of NOK -4 million. Turning over to the operating cash flow, we had an underlying cash EBITDA of NOK 49 million. However, the trend is much stronger as we could deliver the current installation volume with the OpEx based from second quarter last year. Trade working capital expanded by NOK 9.9 million. This is driven by a seasonal effect as well as receivable and inventory as a result of active measures taken to support installers. Non-trade working capital increased by NOK 9.8 million. This is driven by Italian tax credits, which we are expected to sell off in the second quarter. Turning to our effect on the environment. In the last quarters, we installed nine megawatt peaks of effect.
With an average energy yield of 988 kWh/kWp , that results in 95,000 tons of carbon saved for the planet.
Where does that leave us at the current moment? Well, Otovo is well on track to pan-European scale. We are currently present in seven European countries, and we'll add six in the remaining months of 2022. We have a run rate of 10,000 sales per year, backed up by a pipeline consisting of 3,600 projects already sold and signed. Our battery attachment rate is strong at 25%, expected to improve further in quarters ahead. Our subscription portfolio consists of 1,300 subscribers with an IRR of almost 12%. For the highlights of Q1 2022, it's a quarter of beating records on all fronts. Record quarter in sales, record quarter in installations, record quarter in revenue, and in gross margin.
Our sales coming in at 2,541 was a multiple of 3.1x up from the same period last year. Installations, a multiple of 2.2x up from last year. Our revenue generated, a multiple of 3.6x up from last year. Our gross profit generated up 4.6x from last year. In addition to that, the business health is up, with the battery attachment rate being the main highlight of this quarter. The country launches are on track and will be impacting the P&L increasingly during quarters to come, with Germany starting mostly in Q3, increasingly in Q4, and new markets coming in towards the turn of the year towards 2023. We're outgrowing our multiyear growth plan of 100% compounded annual growth rates, despite supply chain challenges.
In the supply chain, risks remain. We're recruiting installers fast and alleviating pressures as good as we can.
We have a very strong pipeline that we find manageable. With that, thank you very much.
Thank you for attending. We're now into the Q&A session. From what I understand, we have a couple of questions that have come in. You also still have room to leave questions in the chat or write an email to our investor relations. The first question here is: Have there been any significant changes to the competitive landscape lately? I think the short answer is no, not really, but we're gaining confidence in the marketplace model's agility and ability to adapt to a difficult environment. We've battled through a Q1 where, as we said in the presentation just now, there were challenges on the labor side to respond to high demand and local bottlenecks.
Our mode of play seems to have worked out well and we enter Q2 with confidence in our ability to utilize the Pan-European presence and the platform to our advantage.
Yes.
Yeah. Maybe you take number two there.
There's a second question around expectations on growth between the different countries in 2022. In general, we expect Germany to continue to grow in sales. We see a very strong demand side in Germany and a great team delivering above sales expectations. We're also expecting our southern European countries, Spain and Italy, to continue to grow. They've shown great execution and great trends so far this year, and we expect them to continue to deliver. I think those are the most important expectations.
Great. We have: You mentioned in the presentation that you have priced up during the quarter. Can you comment on how you see margins trending? Yes, we've done markup increases in all markets. In the appendix, we have illustrated this with the markup development in all markets. What this shows is that, as we enter new markets, we're able to extract more value from each project and the markups increase. You see that here the older markets, Norway, Sweden and Spain are at the top.
You can also see that the recent launches like Italy and Poland are increasing at a higher rate and are playing catch up really fast here. Germany also starting faster than previous markets, although those margins still weigh down the total. To the question on how we see margins trending, every single market is trending upwards. To the extent we see a sort of leveling off in margin expansion on the group numbers, it's due to mix effects where there's high growth in new countries. Of course, at the point we don't add so many countries, we'll see the full effect of the price up from all markets.
We have question number four here: Are you seeing that increased delivery times are leading to higher abandon rates? Perhaps you wanna do that.
Yeah
Pål.
We think and we see that this is mainly an issue of expectation management. It's about being very clear with our customers on when our panels are gonna be up on the roofs and our batteries into the houses. We also see that our customers and clients, they understand the situation we're living in. This is very atypical times, tough for everybody. Supply chain is a bit out of our control. COVID as well. We see very human and accepting clients. I think expectation management is key, and we have not seen any effect on our abandon rate.
No. People stay in the queue. That's good news. The pipeline will materialize. That's for sure. It says here: You said that almost 90% of German sales are with a battery. Why is this so high? Do you expect similar rates in other markets? In Germany, you have a combination of a market where it makes sense to have batteries for the consumer from an economic standpoint and a market that's slightly ahead of the rest in terms of market norms, where people expect to have batteries when they buy a solar system. We think the trend is for all countries to go in that direction. For the short and medium-term future, there will be three groups of countries.
You'll have Germany and Italy with very high attachment rates. Virtually all consumers will buy systems with batteries. You'll have a medium group where Spain is. Perhaps Poland can get up there. There'll be a lower group where we expect Norway and France to be. Sweden a bit could be in the lower or the medium group. There will be differences between the countries because a battery makes sense to consumers for different reasons. For in some countries, the purpose is to extend the solar power into the evening hours, like in Spain. For others, it's arbitraging between power you make and export to the grid. In some markets it will be arbitrage on price fluctuations intraday or grid charges.
If none of those are present, it's just emergency power. The more reasons you have to get the battery, the more batteries we'll sell. A question here. When do you expect to launch in the new markets? How quickly do you expect sales in these countries to pick up? Have you started recruiting installers in the UK, and what is the reception in the market? That's a handful, but perhaps, Pål, you wanna go first.
Yeah
on the launch in new markets.
The big news of last week was obviously the hire of our Portugal GM Manuel Pina from Uber and our U.K. general manager. Both of those countries are progressing really well. We're expecting first sales during the summer, June, July. The first installers are already onboarded. We already have some incoming leads, so very eager clients wanting their panels up on roofs in both U.K. and Portugal.
Tremendous news in Portugal. We got a very good reception in media there that resulted in candidates.
Yeah
Reaching out, installers reaching out, and even some clients, even if it's a bit early for us to deliver to them. I think that's quite promising in Portugal. Yes.
Yeah. Well, it is. It's I think it's fair to say that we've never seen such an interest in a country we're yet to be launched. Austria is also coming, so we're expecting to launch and have the first sales in by August. Great interest and hopefully we're gonna be able to confirm a great new general manager in Austria soon.
Good.
What was the second part of the question?
When do you expect sales in these countries to pick up? I think it's a bit early to guide on that. We're entering markets that have a sufficient population and sufficient addressable market to really replicate what we've done and in other markets. Of course, it's harder for a small country like Portugal or Austria to be at Italy or Spain levels, but we'll see where we get. The U.K. market is looking very promising with reduced value added tax for solar installations being implemented recently, a price hike on consumer electricity prices. I think it's promising, but we can't promise anything yet. Probably get back to you on that when we get a bit closer to the launches at the Q2 results.
Adding to that one. The timing has proven to be good in both of those markets. We have the VAT at zero in the U.K. and some boosting subsidies also in the making in Portugal and to be launched very soon. Those things we can see that will affect the demand and hopefully the sales.
Yes. The last part of the question was have you started recruiting installers in the U.K., and what is the reception? The answer is yes. In general, for these three countries, we've moved up installer recruitment in the playbooks priorities, and that is of course in response to a situation where we expect it to be more important to build the supply side early on than we did before where you could front-load sales and leave yourself a little bit of time to complete. Now it's the other way around. We want to build the supply side very early on in these markets. Another question here. Ticket sales in your pipeline is some 30% higher than it was on installations in Q1. Is this only driven by battery attachment rate or is underlying ticket size developing well too?
Maybe, Petter, you wanna do this one? Or do you wanna leave it to me?
I wanna leave it to you.
Well, of course, battery attachment rates that is now at 25% in sales contributes greatly to this. That's sort of 25% that adds on average now. I think it's 73% to the total ticket when including a battery. So that's obviously helpful, but this is a quarter where installers did not take down their costs as they typically do, and we marked up so underlying ticket sizes get lifted by that. We have also seen over the last year that especially many of our markets are seeing a move towards more powerful systems. We're selling more watts, we're selling them more expensively, and we're adding more product. All things are combining now to lead to higher ticket sizes. That's.
I think that there's green lights for us on all fronts on that.
Yeah.
How much do you expect OpEx to increase in Q2 following the three new country launches? That one I'll leave to you. Yes.
No, I think as we saw in the first quarter, our generated EBITDA was improved NOK 1 million, which showed that we were able to absorb the increase in OpEx. I believe you'll see the same trend in the second quarter, where our increased sales will absorb the increase in OpEx from new countries.
You added around 20% to your installer base in Q1. Could you comment on the geographic distribution of these 100 installers? Yes. Obviously, we add installers in new countries. Germany is contributing here, going from zero, close to zero at the turn of the year and has added here. But also Italy and Scandinavia, big contributors and we can say also for Q2 the move to add installers keeps going. We had a lot of activity that's materializing in more installers.
That's why we, on the supply side, commented that we expect the pressure on the workforce to ease during Q2 as both the general market recruits more workmen to answer the high demand we see in Europe and us both increasing the capacity of existing installers that we had before and getting more installers on board. I can tell you this is a major focus inside the company. We're moving people internally to help do the recruitments and scaling up. This is super important for us. We realize that this is where we have our advantage, and we reiterate that it's easier to recruit an installer company with 50 installers than to recruit 50 installers yourself.
I'm pressuring all the GMs to add installer companies and, of course, the pressure is highest on Germany that has the lowest starting point. The ticket size on leasing sales seems to be lower. Do you expect this to change moving forward? And is this because the battery attachment rate on leasing sales is lower? This one is a bit tricky one, but.
I think we-
Maybe you can shed some light on that, so they understand how this works. Yeah.
I think the ticket size on leasing sales seems to be lower due to country mix effects where we have not launched leasing in all markets, especially Italy, and you also have lower leasing shares in the Scandinavian market, which leads to lower ticket sizes. We don't see that our leasing sales are lower on battery attachment rates than our direct sales.
In terms of how they contribute to the P&L in revenue generated. This quarter was one where the Polish market was very strong in installations. That meant that there was more Poland and more Polish rates in the mix in Q1. Q4 sales in Spain were a bit lower on the leasing, as you could see in the leasing rate of sales in Q4. That materialized in Q1. Overall, there was a mix effect where Poland was higher share of installations and Spain. No sorry, Poland a bit higher and Spain a bit lower. That meant that the yields in the portfolio created in Q1 installations was somewhat lower.
Yeah, I think we'll be happy to, for people following this very closely, be happy to follow up on this in one-to-ones later on. Has lead time from sales to installations increased during the quarter? The answer to that is yes. You can see the pipeline is growing. I think the important things to retain there are, one, the pipeline will get installed. As Pål said, we're not seeing drop-offs in the pipeline. Second is, we're going from an environment where consumer norm was to get this installed in maybe three to four months on average, and now it's six months and above.
As long as the consumer is well informed about that, it seems to not affect rates, sorry, the drop-off rates.
Mm.
We're working to secure installation capacity and to ensure that our installers have hardware so that throughput keeps growing. What is the picture like for price charged by Otovo compared to competitors? Is there still a 5%-15% range below competitors as communicated earlier? I can say to that, pricing toward competitors is something we put less emphasis on during Q4 and Q1. We've more been managing this individually, just looking at what type of conversion rates we're looking at and what makes sense, what the consumers that we have in our pipeline can accept. This is an environment where there's extreme demand.
Lots of customers meeting us, lots of customers on the phone, on our websites, and we're looking at, okay, what do we do to this demand? We want to convert it. We want to give people a good experience, but also not be naive. We need to price up to manage the queue so that the most eager people pay to be first in the queue. That has enabled us to do some of the markups that you can see in the appendix translating into higher margins sold during this quarter. Couple of more questions before we round off here.
Yeah.
What is the main constraint to even more rapid growth? Installers, sales lead, equipment, internal people and capacity? I'd say, my view is that all problems with this company start with me and all problems can be solved if you have the right people and enough of them. Internal people and capacities are always sort of a starting point, but that's sort of something we keep working at. We have a great new hires during this quarter at my side here. Also a lot of specialists coming into the company to address specific issues or potentials that we want to work on.
If you're looking at sort of in the Q2 to Q3 outlook, what is holding us back, it's certainly not the customer acquisition cost. It's not the demand. That is a problem solved 2016 to 2020.
Mm.
It's the supply side. The bottlenecks are moving. As we said in Q1, it was about labor availability and the response in installers to get new guys in to be able to answer to demand that was more than twice as high. How do you do that when you need to get new guys in, right? In Q1, it was about getting people, getting hands. And then there were lots of local bottlenecks because we were experiencing these container freight frictions that I guess you've probably seen in other stocks and in and across the economy as a whole. And that led to inverters being sold out in Northern Italy or shortage of panels for some installers in Scandinavia. These type of things where there was not a global problem, but lots of local problems.
If you lose a week with a part of the installers, that's a week lost because they're operating with friction. Now, for Q2, I think the hands are really getting there. The risks are that things that we really can't control with the COVID outbreak in China and sort of the pileup effects of that.
Mm.
I don't really follow that closely. We follow what we can do on the ground to work with the wholesalers and the installers that order equipment and directing the pipeline towards the ones who have a good flow. I think now it's more on global bottlenecks, and it's good to be a marketplace where you have multiple options to source, multiple installers to play on. Not all usually will fail at the same time. I'd say sort of internal people, you always have to take responsibility that you could do better and do more. Then on the supply side, it's I guess this quarter it's gonna be more equipment than anything else.
Mm.
The bottlenecks move fast here. What are your main marketing vehicles? As a U.K. resident, I have not seen as much publicity as I would expect. No, so our main. Yeah, maybe you wanna go for that, Pål. It's just not me. Yeah. Go on.
Just to remind you of our launch book. The way we're launching a country is focusing on supply, making sure that we have a nationwide network of installers that is less marketing-heavy. That's probably why a U.K. resident hasn't seen big banners of Otovo in the beginning. We're working a bit in silence to make sure that we've covered the country with a network of great high-quality installers in all the boroughs or all the counties. How do we spend the marketing? We spend the marketing in acquiring leads, high-quality leads. They get filtered, qualified, and these leads result into sales. Luckily, we have a good conversion rate from these leads to sales.
We have traditionally spent a bit less in branding. Otovo's brand is strong, and it's strong due to word of mouth, happy customers speaking with their neighbors in the garden. You might see some publicity from Otovo in the future. We're launching as we've been launching in the other countries, starting with supply.
Yeah. We don't want to burn paid marketing before we have to. I think might add one last comment on our marketing vehicle. Traditionally, we've been relying on earned marketing like PR, word of mouth, and
Right
Referrals, and then search engine optimization, and paid marketing, especially on Google and Facebook. Now, we're seeing that that's good and the older countries have more of the cheap and marginally cheap marketing. We also want to develop partnerships where we have a broader marketing portfolio, where we have reliable traffic coming in. The partnership with EVESCO, the Italian utility that we signed earlier in this quarter, I think is indicative of things that we'll be doing more of. Getting partnerships because we are a trusted brand, because we have installers that are able to deliver, and then have someone else use the Otovo platform with their brand and their consumers coming in.
It's really wonderful for our customer acquisition cost and the mix in marketing going forward. Hopefully, we can make more announcements of that kind during 2022. I think with that, thanks to you guys. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you for showing up. Seems to be the end of the questions. Thank you for now, and see you all in mid-July for the Q2 results, if not before. Bye-bye.
Bye.