Gentlemen, welcome to this presentation of Otovo's Fourth Quarter Results for 2024. Today's presenters are my friend Petter Ulset, CFO, and myself, Andreas Thorsheim. I'm Founder and CEO. On today's agenda, we have the financial results, the business highlights, a summary, and outlook before we open up for your questions and our answers at the end. Let's turn to the financial results and look first at the installation numbers. In the fourth quarter, we installed approximately 1,200 installations. That led to a revenue-generated number just above NOK 160 million, split roughly two-thirds on direct sales and one-third on contracted subscription revenues.
When including the purchase of an Austrian leasing portfolio that we did in the quarter, containing 400 systems that are similar both in content and in profitability of what we create organically, the installation numbers are about 1,600, and you can add more than NOK 60 million to contracted subscription revenue created in the quarter. Looking at the quality metrics, this was another strong quarter for battery installations, coming in at 59%.
That is not the end of that. We will double-click on battery sales later in the presentation. Ticket size is holding up well and even increasing a bit. We are positive about the ability to influence this in 2025 to our advantage. The subscription share is down a bit in Q4, but with the transaction that we announced on Friday and the strong profitability and cash flow effects that we see in this segment, we will definitely lean into it.
We believe we can increase that share to 50% and beyond in the medium term. In terms of profitability, gross margin keeps expanding. It is another record quarter for us. We are proud of that and also feel capable of expanding gross margins on the trend going forward. Looking at the sales numbers, the organic sales came in at just above 1,000. Here we should also add the about 400 systems acquired through the Austrian transaction, bringing the total to about 1,400. What is going to trigger future sales growth in 2025? Let us look at this a bit country group by country group. We have the solid performers that we have seen strong throughout 2024, even as the European market was in turmoil and decline. That is Portugal, Poland, and Italy. We believe in our ability and these markets' strength in 2025.
We also see potential in German-speaking Europe markets in which we traditionally have had quite low market share, but where we can gain market share in even a difficult market. We have strong belief in this market now in 2025. There are markets where we have strong market shares, but where the macro environment is disadvantageous. That's Scandinavia, France, and Spain. Here we believe that triggers can really boost sales and a stronger consumer environment or boosts in electricity prices can be positives that lift our sales. We have three paused markets where we're not currently investing. That's Netherlands, Belgium, and the U.K. We maintain the presence and are able to go back quickly to these markets when we see that as advantageous for us. Lastly, batteries is an increasing growth vector for us. We'll also double-click on that later in the presentation.
Lower battery costs, stronger battery capabilities are boosting consumer demand, and we can sell to our own existing customers, to new customer segments, to solar buyers, and to the about 10 million homes in Europe that have solar panels but do not have a battery and should have one. Those are the growth vectors. Now over to my—no, I have one more slide, and that is the products that we sell to customers. In the quarter, we sold just above 1,800 products, and you can see the share of products that are batteries or smart content is increasing, showing that we are helping consumers doing more in their home in terms of electrifying heating, cooking, or their transport. This is something that we will expand also in the year ahead. Now over to Petter.
Looking at income statement, total operating income decreased to NOK 155 million year-over-year. The decrease is in line with installation activity, while sequentially quarter-over-quarter, it's flat as we get the benefit from the acquisition of the Austrian subscription portfolio. COGS is down more than installations or revenue, and the reason for that is that we keep expanding our gross margins. Gross margins are up 6 percentage points year-over-year, 3 percentage points quarter-over-quarter. Please note that roughly 2 percentage points of this increase is due to one-time effects. OpEx reduced significantly as the impact of the cost program materialized. We see that the costs have come down from NOK 180 million one year ago to NOK 97 million in this quarter, a reduction of 46%. Payroll is driving the majority of the decrease, but we also see marketing decreasing.
We expect that the trend in cost declines in payroll will continue into the first quarter, and we will focus on also driving down other cost elements. That results in an EBITDA of negative NOK 34 million, which is record best in recent Otovo history. We are working on plugging the hole to get EBITDA to be positive. Turning over to the balance sheet, non-current assets came in at NOK 825 million. That increase is due to more subscription customers and also the acquisition of the Austrian subscription portfolio. Working capital, both on the asset and liability side, contracted. That had an adverse effect and tied up NOK 24 million in cash. Cash stood at NOK 183 million at the end of the quarter. It started at NOK 270 million. The negative operational cash flow was NOK 79 million.
Investments in SPV had a positive effect of NOK 2 million as we drew more on the credit facility than we invested. The acquisition of the Austrian subscription assets was also financed with that, so neutral on cash. We had other items reducing cash with NOK 10 million, leading to an exit cash of NOK 183 million. Last Friday, we also announced that we have entered into a definitive agreement to sell our portfolio of Continental subscription assets, and that will free up around NOK 155 million in cash in the first quarter. Turning over to Andreas for a business update about the new Otovo.
Yes, and as we dive into the new Otovo, let's look at how we came to where we are now. Otovo's history has been through three phases, and we're now starting a fourth. The first phase was about inventing the product, making sure it worked, and that our hypothesis that solar panels and batteries should be sold online could work. We proved that in Norway in 2016-2 018, and then we took the show on the road, expanding to 13 countries across Europe in rapid scaling into multiple geographies. That period peaked at the high of the energy crisis, after which we saw all markets in Europe going into a synchronized decline in 2023 and 2024. That led to a period of consolidation, bankruptcies, and cost cutting affecting the whole industry, and we had to adapt to a new environment.
What does that new Otovo look like in a new environment? This is an Otovo that is the leanest pan-European originator of solar and battery assets for the home. We have reduced cost by about NOK 200 million, taking down the cost of operating in a new environment. We have monetized our leasing portfolio, moving from an investment phase to a harvest phase in terms of the subscription assets. We now work on growing sales, both in volumes, number of customers, and the value per customer, the ticket size. Those things combine to becoming profitable on a running basis. Now, let's have a look at the individual components here. First, what do we do in terms of adjusting the organization? First of all, we reduced the number of offices from 13 to 8.
We co-located our marketing, operations, and accounting staff in Madrid, creating a stronger environment, a good talent pool, and a more efficient operating base. We cut approximately 200 positions and rehired in the desired locations. Since the offices we withdrew from were in locations with higher taxes and higher payroll, this also helped to reduce average cost per FTE. Today, we have approximately 40% of Otovo's employees located in Madrid on Spanish taxation and Spanish terms. We are working with this group and the other offices across Europe to improve efficiency. That means that we can grow volumes both in sales and installations without growing the number of employees. That will be a focus of ours in 2025. Now, Petter, if you could take us through the transaction that we announced on Friday, what happened?
Happy to do that. On Friday, we announced a definitive agreement to sell our portfolio of Continental subscription customers to Swiss Life Asset Managers. That is the same buyer who also bought our subscription portfolios in Norway and Sweden in 2023. We, of course, see that as a testament to the quality of the portfolios that we have built that we are able to sell again to the same buyer. The portfolio has the transaction has two components. It is a first clause that will happen now, which is a sale of the vintages built between 2020 and 2024. That has a transaction value of around NOK 50 million. We will repay that of NOK 31 million. We will have a retained equity component to align interests with the buyer, leading to a net cash effect of NOK 13 million.
We will continue to sell new subscription customers as we have done in the last couple of years, and we will sell them to Swiss Life. The volume expected until third quarter 2026 is around NOK 55 million. Those customers will have an average gross margin today of 32%. What is new from before is that revenue recognition will be instant as we sell day one, recognize day one instead of recognizing over the lifetime of the customer's contract.
Basically, it's a cash release and profit taking from the leasing portfolio here and now, and it's a continuous positive cash flow on sales of leasing assets to Swiss Life in 2025 and 2026. This leaves Otovo with essentially two customer segments. It's the simple direct sales customer where the customer pays us and we pay the installer, taking a margin in between. That represents about 76% of our sales in the fourth quarter, a percentage that we see declining going into 2025. It's a segment that has a margin of about 23% in this quarter. Then it's the subscription segment, essentially a B2B2C segment where Swiss Life sits at the ultimate end of contracts that we create towards consumers across Europe, homeowners across Europe.
It has two components, a Scandinavian component that we transacted on in 2023, and then the European assets that are part of this new agreement that Petter just described. As you can see, these new contracts have now the strongest margin of all our segments at 32%. Obviously, as a management, we'll lean into that and make the share of sales happening in that segment grow in the year ahead. You'll hear us talk a lot about being able to sell more to existing customers. One strong driver of that is the fantastic development that's happening with batteries currently. Now, almost every month, we see costs coming down on batteries. It's a tremendous trend that's probably stronger than what we've seen on solar and on wind until now. That puts batteries into a profitable state to do more interesting things for the customer.
It can power their home through outages. It can move their solar production in daytime to the evening time, or it can help them arbitrage on fluctuations in the grid, day-ahead prices, et cetera. Although this boosts consumer demand, and that is a powerful force that drives our ability to sell batteries to more consumers. In the fourth quarter, 65% of customers chose to add a battery to their purchase. It's a number we see increasing towards 100 in the medium term. As a CEO, sometimes you need to push the KPIs. Other times, they come by themselves. These battery numbers really have very, very strong momentum. It's a segment that is turning into the main character in the renewable transition. Very, very positive about that. We love batteries. We do love batteries. Now, let's close the bag and look at how these things combine.
Now, as a management, we've been focused on improving the financial health of Otovo and its profitability. We've created a plan with multiple tracks. The first parts of that was to reduce cost and to transact the portfolio through this portfolio sale with a forward flow. If you look at the top part of this slide, you'll see that initiatives from these two elements combined to almost NOK 200 million in EBITDA improvements compared to the full year 2024. We'll carry that with us into 2025, but we're not done. We will work on increasing the leasing share, a segment that is now more profitable than the direct sales. That has potential for further improvements. We'll work on reducing our marketing cost per sale through more cheap sources of marketing and converting those in a better way. We also know that we can influence the ticket size.
That's a revenue per user by adding more panels, more batteries, more equipment to each consumer. You can see our excitement about that. Finally, there is certainly room for improvement in sales volumes. We see a set of markets that are becoming more healthy. We see growth potential in markets where we've had weaker market shares in the past. Overall, we see consumer confidence increasing in our category as people see interest rates coming down and their mortgages being more affordable. They can again invest in electrifying their homes. These things combine to a plan that can yield between NOK 300 million and almost NOK 500 million in EBITDA improvements in the medium term. We'll be rolling up our sleeves to do that. What will you be left with as shareholders and investors? It is exposure to really the mega trends in the huge markets.
Otovo is still solving the defining problems of our generation. We're doing it on the basis of the best online infrastructure combined with a really lean cost structure. We have a unique ability to create pan-European leasing assets for solar, for battery, for EV chargers, and for heat pumps. We're really one of a kind that are able to do that. That creates a positive asymmetric risk into really transformative years in the European energy transition. With that, our prepared remarks are done, and we'll open up for your questions in the chat. Okay, looking at the chat here, looks like you're letting us off the hook early. I guess, Petter, it's just for us to roll up our sleeves and get into the business of growing this shop in 2025. Thank you for listening.