Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Otovo's quarterly presentation. My name is Anders Rønold, Head of Investor Relations. Today's presenters are Andreas Thorsheim, CEO; Lars Ekeland, CFO; and Cecilie Ellila Weltz, CEO of EDEA. Today's agenda, first, Andreas will walk through the quarterly highlights and business updates before Lars will present the financial results. Cecilie Ellila Weltz will present EDEA's H1 results before Andreas will provide an outlook for 2021. If you have questions during the presentation, please share them in the chat and we will answer them towards the end. I will now give the word to Andreas.
Thank you for the introduction, Anders Rønold. Let's start with reiterating what Otovo is. Otovo is a marketplace for solar installations. We're on a mission to put solar panels on every home in Europe, including batteries. We want to do this by creating the easiest and most affordable way to get solar panels on your roof. To the consumer, we're an easy e-commerce experience. Consumers will put in their address on their local Otovo site. Our software will identify the building, and will do what a person does on site in order to create a project description and match that project with the lowest bid from a local installer available in the area. We're making buying solar panels as easy as buying a shirt or a pair of shoes online. We're on the path of building Europe's leading residential solar company.
We have installers who cover an area from the north of Scandinavia to the south of Spain, from the east of Poland to the west of France. This is a green energy play that is happening now. We put solar panels on roofs in every country, every day. The demand for solar energy in households is fueled by rising energy prices. This quarter, we've seen headlines in all the countries in which we're present about electricity and gas prices increasing. One of the main drivers behind this is, in addition to a warm summer season that creates demand for energy, an overall increase in the European CO2 price that has lifted wholesale electricity prices, and that feeds through to consumers who now see that solar energy is getting more and more attractive compared to traditional electricity sources. Let's dive into this quarter's specifics.
This quarter, we're proud to say that we're delivering on our growth plan and we're moving up our entry into Germany. First, the growth plan. Our revenue is up by 51% to NOK 64 million. The number of projects sold is up 148% to 1,183 units. The pipeline value, the value of the projects we're taking into the next quarter, is up 152% year-over-year to NOK 103 million. Our gross profit is up 49% year-over-year to NOK 10.3 million. We maintain a margin at 16.1%, which we're also very happy with. This is also the occasion to give an update on our leasing product, and we're happy to say that we've deployed NOK 31 million out of this quarter, and the leasing share of new sales is about 25%.
We're seeing an increase in this number going into the H2 of the year. As a growth company, it's important that we add new capabilities, and we're constantly adding product capabilities, marketing capabilities, and new countries. In this quarter, we see attachment rates of batteries at 35%, well ahead of our internal expectations in the pilot in Italy. We're adding new partnerships, and that's important in order to lower our long-term customer acquisition cost. We're going to launch in Germany before the end of the year. Our sales are up 2.5x from 2020, and we're now selling at a sales pace of more than 5,000 installations per year, and that puts us in the top league of solar players in Europe. The sales are up 150% in terms of units sold, from 477- 1,183 in this quarter.
That comes from a significant increase in all markets. All markets in which we've been present in more than 12 months are seeing at least 2X sales growth. Then we're adding Italy and Poland, our most recent launches, and they're doing really well. They're on track to replicate the successful launch we had in Spain last year. Very happy with that, and the outlook here is strong for coming quarters. In order to fuel continued growth in sales, we need to attract customers, and partnerships is an important factor there. Partnerships are important for us to have profitable growth, and partnerships broaden our proprietary customer acquisition channels and increase brand awareness. To us, it's a way to drive down customer acquisition cost in the medium and long- term.
For the partners, it's a way to expand their product offering with solar panels and storage to their customers using our platform. We now have about 40 partnerships that cover electric equipment, electricity providers, building companies, and government agencies. We'll be looking to add more partnerships in the quarters to come. We're also upgrading our standard setup for panels. In the last 12 months, we've upgraded our standard panels power by 21%, our premium panel by 13%, and the highest performing panel, the performance panel, is up 7%. This provides the consumer with an improved product. They can have a more powerful system on their roof, and that's a big benefit. We've also added batteries, and Italy was the first country in which we put batteries on offer. A little reminder, Italy is a country we launched at about Easter this year.
We're off to a really good start on battery attachment rates. More than a third of customers who come to the otovo.it site now check out with a battery. Why is this important? It's because, of course, it makes the system more useful to the consumer. To us, it's also a way of increasing the ticket size and increasing the gross profit from each sale. It doesn't cost more to get the customer who buys two things than a customer who buys one thing, and we have similar gross margins on the battery product. It's highly beneficial to our medium and long-term profitability. We're running a platform of installers, and during this quarter we've added 81 installer companies, mostly in Italy and Poland. We now have 430 installer companies on the platform.
Means that already now at the halfway mark, we're ahead of our internal target of 400 installers on the platform by year- end. The addition of installers, of course, improves our geographical coverage, but it also improves the competitive pressures on the platform that are essential in order to create competitive prices to consumers. In the solar industry, there are some headwinds in terms of the supply chains, that's getting quite a lot of attention. We've also noticed the turmoil in international freight, in the availability of microchips, in the availability and price of PV modules. It's with quite a bit of pride that we can say that our cost levels are down compared to last year, even amid this period of global supply chain turmoil.
The overall cost for a system in Scandinavia is down 9%, and in Spain 15% compared to last year, with hardware and soft costs both nicely down in these markets. For an announcement, the piece of news we've been looking forward to, and it's adding Germany to our country map. Germany is a large, highly attractive market. It's the solar market in Europe with the best long-term prospects. It's a market that currently installs solar panels on rooftops, with a total value of about EUR 1.8 billion per year. Germans put 150,000 systems up on roofs every year, and these are quite large, valuable systems that often include batteries. It's a big price in this market, and it's expected to keep growing from its current levels. We will meet competition and there are some great companies in Germany that we'll be facing off against.
The German market is still quite fragmented, and we have a strong belief in our model, its ability to drive growth at acceptable marketing levels and having a product that is priced attractively to consumers. We think that's a growth formula that has served us well in new markets before, and we think we can repeat that going into Germany. The launch plan here is to have Germany launched before the end of the year. I'll leave it to Lars.
Thank you, Andreas. Looking at the key financials, revenue is up by 51% since last year, driven by strong growth in Spain, France, and Poland. We end the quarter at NOK 64.2 million, which is in the high end of our guidance from Q1 . The gross profit is up by 49% to NOK 10.3 million, while the gross margin is stable from last year. We have new countries keep diluting the gross margin overall, but still we're up by one percentage point from last quarter. On the EBITDA, we're up by NOK 2.4 million since last quarter. We continue to invest in growth, we have a solid cash position of NOK 256 million at the end of the quarter. Looking at the pipeline, when we talk about the pipeline, those are projects that are sold but not yet installed.
The pipeline is up by 152% since last year and 57% since Q1 this year. We end the quarter with a pipeline of NOK 103 million, which is a record pipeline for us. Bearing in mind that it's summer season in Europe, we expect to install between NOK 75 million and NOK 80 million out of this pipeline in Q3. The remainder will be rolled over to Q4 and be installed in the subsequent quarter. We've included a slide on our ESG metrics, which we're very proud of. We have more assets and higher-yielding installations that lead to more removal of CO2 and the replacement of fossil fuels in the energy grid. We have 7 MW peak installed so far this year, compared to 5.7 MW peak last year.
The energy output of these installations is higher than last year. That leads us over the lifetime of these installations to a CO2 removal of 74,000 tons of CO2. I'll leave the word now to Cecilie to talk about EDEA.
Thank you, Lars. European Distributed Energy Assets was established last year to finance Otovo's leasing offering. The company raised NOK 155 million in equity and secured an initial debt facility with Nordea. Otovo now holds 18.75% of EDEA, and the two companies have a strong partnership with an exclusivity for operations in the first three years. EDEA is the asset-owning company. EDEA buys assets, namely solar installations, from Otovo and receive cash flows from homeowners on 20-year leasing contracts. In addition, EDEA buys services from Otovo, such as billing, collections, customer contact, maintenance, and service of these assets, and that is paid for by a recurring fee from EDEA to Otovo. The end customer enters into a leasing contract with EDEA, and the customer interface is handled by Otovo. We introduced leasing because it enables more people to go solar.
The typical solar installation is about EUR 5,000-EUR 10,000, depending on whether you're in Spain or in Scandinavia. That's a significant investment for any household. The typical solar customer was previously those with a strong household economy. Now, by removing the financial hurdle, we're able to address a totally new customer segment of those with a normal household economy. The customer value proposition of leasing is strong. We offer customers predictable green power without any upfront investment. That's zero money down. In addition, customers save money from day one. The monthly leasing is cheaper than electricity from the grid in most of our markets. Leasing is more than just a financing option, it's convenience. Most solar buyers are first-time buyers and might find that a bit risky.
Leasing is worry-free, and it gives customers green power with the Otovo guarantee for 20 years, and it's predictable electricity bills for 20 years. We now have leasing live in five European markets, Spain, Norway, Sweden, France, and most recently, Poland, which we launched in Q2, and we're already seeing strong customer testimonials coming in. On the right-hand side of this slide, we show the customer business case, and this is a Spanish customer that used to have an electricity bill of EUR 130 a month. That bill is reduced to EUR 50 a month with solar leasing. You get the additional leasing cost of EUR 56 and free up EUR 24 a month. We will be looking to launch leasing in all of the markets that Otovo enters, and next market up will be Germany.
We're building a subscription business. There are four success criteria to that type of business. You want low churn. EDEA delivers close to 0% so far. Price up mechanism. All of our leasing contracts have a CPI adjustment annually. Growth. Otovo delivers leasing assets to EDEA's balance sheet every day from across Europe. New markets are just around the corner. Once you locked in your customer, you want to make the most out of that customer relationship with new hardware, and we're looking to launch leasing of batteries during this year. EDEA is set up to generate significant free cash flows. The most important thing now is to generate deployment, and we've just gotten started. We've deployed roughly NOK 30 million since initiation, and our ambition is to reach a portfolio and total investment of NOK 1 billion by the end of 2024.
20% of that deployment will come just from maintaining our current deployment speed of NOK 15 million per quarter. 60% of that will come from Otovo continuing on its 2021 growth trajectory and maintaining the current leasing share of 25%. If we addition to that assume that Otovo is able to increase that leasing share from 25%-35% in the planning period, we'll reach a total of NOK 1 billion deployed by the end of 2024. That is the portfolio that generates a net yield significantly above the financing cost, and the structure is set up with limited overheads. We aim to deliver a 10% return on equity annually, and that is assuming a 50% debt in the structure.
If we're able to increase that increased leverage, reduce funding terms, and potentially increase deployment earlier, either through accelerated Otovo growth or new partnerships or portfolio purchases, that will have a positive impact on returns. We've grown our customer base three times to above 500 customers, and we're now seeing that the portfolio we have of NOK 31 million deployed will generate an annual recurring revenue of NOK 3 million for the next 12 months. To summarize, we've proven that the customer value proposition of solar leasing is strong. We're building a subscription business that is solid and that offers customers predictable green power without any upfront investment, in addition to generating stable cash flows on 20-year contracts to our investors. Now it's all about volume, and we're set up to deliver strong deployment growth in the following years. I now hand back to Andreas.
What's the outlook for the rest of the year? Well, I think the headlines are we're delivering on growth, and Germany is next up. The pipeline that we have and the sales that we're delivering are on track to reach the full- year revenue guidance of EUR 29 million. That is underpinned by our new countries, Italy and Poland, that are launching on par with a successful entry into Spain a year ago. Spain and France are now big contributors to our growth in Q2. Scandinavia has rebounded strongly in sale. That means that it's looking good for Q3 and Q4.
The uncertainty lies in our installation pace in new countries. We are not currently certain about how the European summer season will impact our ability to deliver projects in the upcoming quarter. There is some installation insecurity there, but all our sales will of course eventually be installed. Our gross margin targets remain above 18% as exit speed from 2021. We expect leasing share of sales to continue growing. We have confidence in our ability to take a market share in Europe. We are growing in existing markets. We are entering new markets successfully, and we are moving up our launch into Germany. Until next time, I will say "Auf Wiedersehen" and take some questions.
Thank you, Andreas. Now over to the Q&A. Could you please elaborate on how the margin on battery sales compares with PV systems?
Yeah. Our view there is that we can take the same margin percentage of the battery ticket as we're doing on the solar ticket. That means you can quite linearly just take the same gross margin percentage of a bigger ticket that you did on a smaller one. Now, the net contribution of those projects will be higher since the marketing cost in order to get the customer who buys two things is the same as one who is buying one thing. Its net contribution will be stronger while the gross margin will be equivalent at the higher ticket.
Thank you. Could you give us some more insight on your M&A strategy? Will you enter markets via M&A, for instance, in Germany?
I think our main plan is to enter countries organically. We're extremely fast, right? I think we launched in Italy in April. We launched in Poland at the start of the year. They're already contributors to the P&L. I think it's extremely fast, and we get a system that works well for us. Organic is our main method. We're open for M&A, and we'll be scouting opportunities, in our current markets and in markets that we still haven't entered. We believe there is opportunity for M&A in the short and medium term.
Thanks. Do you expect additional revenue from projects sold during Q3 on top of the NOK 75 million-NOK 80 million from the incoming pipeline, or is this already included in the guidance?
It's already included in the guidance. The way we talk about this is the deliveries inside the quarter will come partly from sales the previous quarter and partly from sales intra-quarter. The true development of the pipeline is that a little bit more than 25% will flow over to Q4, but there will also be intra-quarter sales. Don't add numbers on top of our guidance because the guidance is what we're expecting to install, both from pipeline and from intra-quarter sales. Of course, the sales in the quarter that don't get installed in Q3 will become an additional pipeline for Q4. These numbers will take some getting used to because there's a big difference in the Polish market, for example, where installations are extremely quick. There's little paperwork related to solar installations in Poland, we can typically install in a month.
You'll have Spain, where installation times can be four months on average, and certain regions of Spain have even longer waiting times. The delivery times are quite sensitive to which countries are growing the most.
Thanks. Moving to questions on EDEA for Cecilie Ellila Weltz. Why is not Italy the next market for leasing launch?
In Italy, we're developing solar leasing as a product, and it's completely new. No one has done that before. That is taking some time. We want to ensure that our customers will receive the very favorable subsidies. In Germany, this is already a product that is available, and that's why we see that the runway or the lead time to actually being able to provide this product in the market is shorter.
Thanks. Is EDEA financed equity-wise to reach 2024 deployment targets?
We have ample room to grow, but we will need to raise more equity funds in order to reach the NOK 1 billion in total deployment.
Thank you. That concludes the Q&A. Thank you very much, everyone. Have a great summer.