Dear investors, dear analysts, ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome. Good morning, good afternoon from wherever you have joined us for our Fiscal Year 2021 Media Conference. I'm Gunter Erfurt, the CEO of Meyer Burger.
I'm Moritz Borgmann, Chief Commercial Officer of Meyer Burger.
We are welcoming you here live from our solar cell manufacturing in Thalheim. If you hear noises, then don't be afraid. That's a manufacturing site, and we are working here 24/7 every day. Maybe in the background, you once in a while see people walking through, but that's not in that room, but in our factory hall. We would like to give you today a business review of 2021 and also of what has happened in 2022 until today and, of course, the financial figures, an update from sales and marketing, as well as an outlook. 2021 has been a very important and exciting year for us.
We completed our strategic transformation, and we have achieved all our milestones along the strategic targets we had set for the year, which included the installation and the establishment of our production of currently 0.4 GW or 400 MW of nominal nameplate capacity for solar cells and solar modules. We very successfully started sales of our three product variants that we provided to the market from day one. We completed the financing for our accelerated growth initiative, and we of course prepared our factories for the next expansion to reach the target of 1.4 GW of nominal nameplate capacity for solar cells in our site in Thalheim, here where we are, and
1 GW of module production in our factory in Freiberg and initial 0.4 GW of module capacity in our Goodyear, Arizona site. We also continued to restructure our legacy business. We closed our sites in Malaysia, in Taiwan, in Korea, and we have reduced also costs that came with these old legacy businesses. That's most important for us. We have to prove now that our business model is working, our new business model is working, and that we are also having a very scalable business model, and we will speak about growth today. Of course, we are also not fully satisfied with 2021. Even though we can very proudly say that we achieved the strategic targets, we are not satisfied with our operational achievements.
The year has been very demanding for various reasons, and many challenges had to be mastered. We've seen a very material impact from the COVID pandemic. We had informed the market already in August that we were facing or had been facing a delay in the start of our ramp up because of missing components we needed for the factory ramp to switch on the line entirely. That has held us back for some time. Moreover, we were hit by the Delta wave of the COVID pandemic very badly in the fourth quarter of 2021, with a very high rate of absent people in our, especially our module factory in Freiberg.
Even though our factories are highly automated, there are still people needed who run the equipment to do the quality checks, and if they are not available because they are on sick leave, then we had to take actions and close one part of the factory line, and that also resulted in a much lower output of product compared to our original plan. Nevertheless, that is very important for us to say that we have not been facing any strategic hurdles along our way. It's just been more challenging than we had originally expected it to be to get the factories up and running. We are very hopeful that the pandemic now is over.
We have also mastered the debottlenecking of our line and are now going to implement new factory equipment in order to do the ramp up to reach 1 GW of production for the year's end. In terms of our positioning in the market, we've been speaking a lot about technology. Meyer Burger has a very unique positioning with our proprietary heterojunction SmartWire technology, and there have been many doubts also in the market as far as competitors are concerned and also their activities in new technology fields. What we can see and say is that today's world is still a PERC world.
PERC is the standard product which is the basis for more than 90% of the global volume of solar modules produced and only very little 2% are heterojunction, and that's all nameplate capacity, not even a product that we see in our markets, and 5% is nameplate capacity for so-called TOPCon technology. That's today. It's more important to understand and to analyze what's going to happen in future. Is Meyer Burger still having a uniqueness with our technology or also other companies doing steps towards implementing new technologies? What you can see on that slide is that even adding in the announced additional capacities currently being built or announced to be built in future, we do not really see that the picture is changing not at all.
If we stay in heterojunction and according to announcement, there is some addition of TOPCon technology, but the majority of the expansion plans announced is on PERC. Why is that? For TOPCon, what we clearly can observe is that the technology is not yet mature enough to be fully deployed in the industry because of industrially feasible equipment that's not available, yields being too low, and also gains from efficiency achievements also too low on the end product. For heterojunction, it's very similar. Despite many gigawatt announcements that we've already seen years ago, not much really has been implemented. We believe the reason is clearly also the lack of the technology and the equipment needed for that. We believe we have a very unique position here.
Of course, we are also not standing still besides our very ambitious expansion plans. We have continued to work on the next technology steps and have been pretty successful also on the development of next gen heterojunction IBC technology and expect this to be tested in a smaller pilot line size soon and fully deployed industrially also in the years to come. In terms of the ramp up, I already explained that we were not happy with the speed of our ramp up in the last year. I also do understand that there are some disappointment in the market that this has not been more obvious to the market, to investors, to analysts.
We have on purpose not provided any guidance for the year 2021, since it has been such a transformational year and since we had to master all these challenges. We did our job, and in the meantime also pretty successfully in terms of the run rates achieved. For last year, the volume that we could ship into the market has been very, very low. To explain that a bit better, what I can show here is the volume produced, not the volume sold until so far, and also not until the year's end of 2021. We've been producing a total of 18 MW of our Meyer Burger White product and 13 MW of our Meyer Burger Black product, a total of 30. We've been selling 20 only.
There are inventory effects that have to be factored in, and this is explaining the low number of volume shipped. What is more important to us, and Moritz will speak about it, is the ASPs we could achieve, because we also did provide today the sales volume, the portion in our annual result for 2021. We are very, very happy with the achieved ASPs in the market in the last year, but also in this year. This year until today, and this is exactly last night midnight, the number 41 MW produced, including now the three products White, Black and Glass. What's important also for us to mention here, Meyer Burger is not new in PV.
We are doing this since 40 years, but we are in our first year of module production, and there have been doubts in the market. Is Meyer Burger even able to achieve the high quality needed? Yes or no? The answer is shown here. We have now the first customer return or customer claims report, and the number is ultra-low. The reasons for customer claims in most of the cases could be resolved without even full replacement of the product. Some stuff that went wrong in logistics with damaged pallets and things like this. But we are very, very proud of our product quality we've achieved, and this has been a focus area for us, clearly, when we started the ramp up.
Very much rewarded in the market is the fact that we started with three product variants from day one in our cell process. From an operational point of view, that has been a challenge. I can honestly say that because we currently only operate one line, and solar module production is not that you do a black product and a white product and then a glass product, but you do run sequential campaigns. You run, for instance, four weeks white, three weeks black, and so on and so forth. Any time you change the product, you have to also change the line. You have to adjust a few things. Production processes are not the same entirely, and this is also slowing down the throughput.
We believe that's gonna ease in future because we are then taking more lines into operations and will become more flexible. Any of these bottlenecks that we are still facing with only one line available, I think we can remove, and that will also help us in future to be more faster when we do the ramp ups. Of course, any lesson learned from the first ramp-up is gonna be included in the next, and so we believe that we can shorten the ramp-up periods. We have a very, very new situation, I would say, since already two years due to the COVID pandemic in supply chains, and now even more challenging since exactly a month ago, since the Russian invasion started on Ukraine and the world is different. Supply chains are shifting.
Nevertheless, I can happily say that Meyer Burger is, for the time being, or has not suffered from any major impacts from the lack of availability of any material for our ongoing production. That's very important. We've been able to manage this very well. What I can also say is that of course management attention has been increasing in the last weeks and months, so there is a lot of topics being escalated to the management for us to take care of items which we in the past would not have to take care of because it was simply a procurement topic. We are pretty optimistic that we can also manage that in future. We've started early with our process.
We also started two years ago to restructure supply chains, when we withdrew from China, and so that has helped us. On the other hand, also input costs have gone up quite remarkably. To mention a few, polysilicon, +280%, transportation, +350%, copper, aluminum, more than 100% price increase, silver, 80% price increase since we first announced the change in business model. There are these challenges that we have to master. Of course, it also has an impact on global module pricing. Our competitors have increased prices. We also did after competitors because we wanted to implement our business and develop relationships with our customers, but we also have now increased prices effective beginning of this year.
It's also very clear that the European supply chains, specifically for us, being a producer in Europe, are very important for us to be developed, and we have started initiatives with partners to at least have a critical amount of product and volume available that we need for our manufacturing in Europe. On the other hand, I spoke about transportation costs plus 350%. It's a competitive advantage for us that we are producing very close to our customers and transportation is not so much an issue for us as it is for our Asian competitors. To give you one example, I believe that's very important and illustrates the challenges in photovoltaics.
We've seen that very remarkable price increase in polysilicon, plus 280%, as I said. The expectation in the market and the consensus is that this will remain stable throughout the entire year. We also don't have a crystal ball. It's hard to say what's going to happen in 2023. Probably likely that the situation will ease because more capacities are becoming available. What we can also derive from this is that module prices also will stay very likely higher than we and others have originally expected it. This is also pretty important for us looking forward.
Now I'm ending with the review, and will quickly guide you through the financial statement, and I will focus on the most important elements here in order to also give Moritz enough time to educate you about the sales and marketing situation. From a net sales perspective, that's very clear that we see a more stronger effect in 2021 from basically the full stop of the old legacy business model of selling equipment. We have a decline of CHF 59 million compared to 2020. Of course, the first but small contribution of CHF 9 million from the initial module sales resulting in the 40. Of course, the result is according to the lower net sales. All right.
FTEs of course have increased, so we have seen a decline, of course, from our restructuring of the legacy business. On the other hand, we have also increased FTEs because of the new factories. That's pretty obvious. Cash and cash equivalents, even though we've been spending a lot, we have higher cash end of year 2021 due to our financial measures in 2021, the capital increase and the bond and of course also our debt financing. PP&E of course has also increased due to the investment and on the other hand because of the debt financing and the bond, we have a lower equity ratio.
The cash bridge, it's also very important to see here that from when we look beyond 2021, that we have still the second tranche of our debt financing not drawn. That's going to happen in 2022, and the same also for the factoring facility and a little bit is to be expected also from government subsidies. This is coming from the announced CHF 25 million, pretty much 50% of it we realized in 2021, and the remaining portion is coming in 2022. The investment, I also would like to draw your attention to one aspect that also shows how we improve performance here.
The investment for the 400 MW is shown here with CHF 116 million, and now going to the 1.4 GW nameplate capacity, we are adding another 202, which is comparing the volume that we are implementing much more effective in terms of how we spend CapEx. The financial liabilities have come from zero pretty much, and now we have a different picture because of the bond, the debt financing standing at CHF 180 million. Also interesting to see and important, we put our share price performance next to the RENIXX, showing this relatively and pretty much follows also the performance of this important index.
With this, I would like to hand over to Moritz to educate us on the most important part, which is the sales and marketing.
Thank you, Gunter. I would like to spend a few minutes to talk about where we stand in the commercial part of the operations, i.e., sales marketing. Of course, the most important question that is on our mind on a daily basis is how is sales actually performing. I am very happy to say that we are very confident about the strong performance of our sales. What we're showing here is the cumulative order intake over time. As we've communicated before, we started selling our products way before we even started producing. Due, of course, to the unfortunate delay in the ramp up, we were basically held back in sales and could not sell as much as we would have liked to at the time.
Still, we have built up a very substantial order book over time. You see this here. In 2021, we took in more than 100 MW of orders. At this time now, in March, we are sold out almost entirely for the first half of 2022. This is of course reflecting our current main business model, which is selling our product to the residential market through our distribution partners. The typical model there is that our partners order product around 1 to 2 quarters ahead. Given that we're now sold out almost entirely for the first half of the year, we are well ahead of our targets in terms of order book depth. How do we do this?
We have started already back in 2020 building up our sales and marketing organization, and by now we're serving around 30 direct customers. We have listed more than 500 installers who are installing Meyer Burger products. You can all find them on our website if you're interested in an installer in your region. We are covering more than 17 countries. This is all executed by a staff of more than 45 in sales and marketing, of course, highly distributed in the market. What Gunter already mentioned, not only the quantity is important, but also price, and we're very happy and very satisfied with the prices that we're achieving in the market.
At the beginning of 2022, we were also successful in passing through cost increases that we unfortunately suffered on the procurement side. Next slide. With respect to regional coverage, we, through our distributor network, are covering all of the relevant European markets plus the U.S. We have already established a local presence in most of the European markets and the U.S., with the exception of Great Britain and the Nordics at this time, but this is in preparation, and we'll have staff on the ground there later this year as well. At this time, given the relatively low production volume in 2021 so far, we have deferred the shipment of product to the U.S., but we are now starting to also ship product there.
It will of course then show up at our customers in the U.S. with a shipment delay within the second quarter of this year. We are also currently investigating market entry in Japan and Australia and are quite confident that these will also be attractive markets for us. Next one. In terms of our segments, our segment strategy remains largely the same and has been further differentiated in the meantime. We are executing a value centric strategy, i.e., we always sell our product in the highest value segment first, which obviously is the premium residential rooftop sector. This is currently the dominating market segment.
As we grow the availability of product and our production capacity, we will gradually also enter the small and large commercial industrial rooftop segment and eventually also the utility scale segment. On a selective basis, we are already pursuing commercial industrial projects at this time, and we communicated earlier, for example, that we won the highly iconic soccer stadium project for SC Freiburg in Germany. On the utility scale sector, we have already won pilot projects and are currently in discussions with strategic partners on a long-term offtake relationship. Coming to the last slide. So far we are, as I said, very happy with our performance and sales. This is primarily due to, of course, our strengths.
First and foremost, we have a very attractive product, and we have by now established very strong relationships to our partners, i.e. the distribution partners and the installers. There's also currently a lot of tailwinds coming from the market. First of all, of course, the market keeps growing, and every time we update our numbers, the market keeps surprising us with even higher growth rates. Given the high demand and still relatively limited supply, there are continued shortages of modules, in particular in Europe and the U.S.,
which of course benefits us. Also very important for us in the residential premium segment, some of the key competitors there have been struggling or even left the market, and the most prominent example, of course, is LG, which used to be one of our main competitors, but they have announced that they will leave the market by the middle of this year. With this, I'd like to conclude and hand over back to Gunter.
Thank you, Moritz. Outlook. Moritz already mentioned it. We are seeing a pretty strong demand and even a faster trend towards sustainability. All of you who have followed us in the last two years are now seeing me presenting the fourth update on the CAGRs we are taking from analysts with plus 17.5%. That's pretty fresh numbers from the fourth quarter of 2021, shown here. I remember when we first explained our new business strategy to the market two years ago. We've been starting with 8%, and that is already or has been already a lot.
I'm also convinced that this number is going to increase when we meet again, because of the tailwinds Moritz described and the political environment we are currently seeing. Again, why is that? We are still seeing many question marks in the market, and it's clearly the fact that solar energy is among the cheapest sources of electrical energy generation. It's going to be the future also for providing fuel to mobility and other new applications which are currently being fossil fueled. Also to put things in perspective, there's always the misperception that solar energy, even in pretty cloudy regions like maybe Germany or the U.K., is not providing enough energy.
If you do on a pure energy balance basis, that does not include the necessity for storage and all the other technologies needed for a successful transformation, only about 5% of Germany's country size would be required to convert the country completely to solar in terms of the primary energy use. Anything we are consuming today, you can basically harvest the electrical energy from solar energy from only 5% of the country's size, which is about 17,000 square kilometers. That's probably true for all industrial countries. The same is also correct for Switzerland and for France and other nations. Solar has an enormous potential and the area available is definitely there.
Another important aspect when we speak about availability of material needed, there is hardly any limitations in terms of rare materials needed for module production. Of course, there are a few critical materials which needs to be substituted, but this is what we are working on, what others are working on, so we believe there is no limitation for growth there. Last but not least, this became even more obvious since a month ago, solar energy is going to make a very, very decisive contribution when it comes to energy supply independence. This is not only true for the deployment of solar, but also for the question, where does the product actually come from? Again, I can only emphasize what I already said.
Meyer Burger is uniquely positioned in that because we are, for the time being, the only scalable technology autonomous PV specialist for crystalline silicon-based c-Si solar cells and modules outside of Asia and primarily outside of China. That puts us in a pretty unique position now, in our opinion. The production plans, in order to avoid, I would say, the disappointment that we probably have created with the pretty low volume we've been able to produce and to sell in the last year. We would like to give you a little bit of guidance here when it comes to production volume for the next two years. Starting again or recapturing the 2021 year, 400 MW nameplate capacity was completely installed end of August 2021.
The nameplate capacity, nominal capacity, all tools in place, all tools being tested, and they needed to be ramped up together. We had to basically bring a factory organism to life, and that has, as we explained, took longer than we originally had planned for, leading to the 30 MW produced and 20 MW sales recognized. What we are doing this year is well on track in this factory where we are right now, achieving nameplate capacity of 1 GW. Meyer Burger is gonna be a gigawatt factory in a gigawatt company in 2021. End of year, the nameplate capacity will clearly be 1 GW and also fully ramped up. Since this is nothing where you just switch on and then you have the 1 GW, it takes time to get there.
I explained already that we are embedding the additional capacities within an existing factories, which is providing us or giving us some operational challenges. We are expecting a total volume produced this year of 0.5 GW. For 2023, the nameplate capacity will be 1.4 GW, and volume produced will be slightly below 1,350 MW or 1.35 GW we are expecting to be able to produce in the year of 2023. What we have also announced today in our press release is that we believe the time is ripe to consider faster growth, to scale up faster. I showed to you how analysts see the market growth in solar. For this year, the market is expecting a total installation of around 210 GW, plus or minus.
Meyer Burger was producing, as I explained, 0.5 GW, which is very homeopathic, I would say. There's much to win and much to gain for us, and this is why we would like to participate on or in the pretty much result of a general consensus that we need more renewable energy, and this needs to be independently made, and again, Meyer Burger is uniquely positioned in that. In order to grow faster, we are considering to accelerate the capacity expansion beyond the 1.4 GW already in 2023 with a focus on the utility scale sector. Moritz explained the segments to you. Utility scale or utility sector is the largest segment globally and provides the biggest growth opportunities and scale up opportunities.
This is why we have started discussions for offtake agreements with partners. With one partner which is unnamed for the time being, a large, major utility company in the United States. We have signed a memorandum of understanding and are working on the terms with this party now. The combination or the utility customer is not only going to offtake the product, but in order to grow faster, we are discussing a financial contribution for the necessary investment, such that it is not at the expense of existing shareholders. That's the concept here. Also, of course, for us to reduce the capital intensity. This is as I said being discussed with many parties.
There is growing demand for various reasons. One is, of course, availability of the product in general. One is proximity to the customer. Another one is clearly the independence from a supply chain point of view. Last but not least, that's also important, customers are understanding that our product is something special and better and definitely better performing than the standard. This bunch of reasons we believe is fueling this initiative. Of course, even though we have never built our new business case on subsidies and policies and things like this, we clearly see a political urgency now growing in Europe and in the U.S. for a solar industry, a strong solar industry to be rebuilt.
We believe, again, we are uniquely positioned because we are already there, and we are ready to grow and ideally faster than we had originally expected. With this, I'm coming to the end of our presentation, and we are very happy to take your questions. Thank you. As for the questions, like in the last 2 press conferences, please use the chat function or the Q&A tool. That's better. We are trying to answer all of them. If we can't answer all of them, then we'll give you the answer by email. I'm going to start with a question on supply chain. Fair to assume that the 500 MW to be produced in 2022 will be back-end weighted.
How much of the required inputs, components, do you already have in stock or is being shipped? The first part of the question, I think I will pass on to Moritz, and the second I can take.
Yes. Given that we are currently operating approximately the first half of our cell module capacity and will only add the second half of that capacity in the second half of the year, your assumption is right. Yes, the 500 MW will be back-end weighted.
The second part, regarding the inputs and components, we have, of course, long-term framework agreements in place with our suppliers. So from that point of view, it's fair to say that it's all secured. Nevertheless, there's a remaining risk that the current situation out there is giving us some headaches here and there in terms of the supply of the material. But until today, I can clearly say this is very well risk managed. A question is asking here which module price increase is realistic in 2022.
I would say that, as I said, we are very happy with the pricing level currently, and of course we are, given that we are a premium brand, we are also asking for premium pricing. At this time, there is no intention to further raise prices. At the end of the day, of course, our pricing is always a function of overall market price environment and of course also to some extent the input cost, which again drives the market price level. I guess there's, you know, in the solar industry it's always been a very dynamic environment, but there is,
I think, never been a market environment that's been as dynamic as it has been in the past year or so, given the global supply chain, you know, distressed situation. It requires a excellent crystal ball to predict this, and we cannot make any further statements beyond what we've made.
Thank you. Next one here is, can you give us some color on the 2023 guidance with the delay of the U.S. factory ramp up, is this at risk? We have also informed the market today that we are currently in a process of a guidance revision. First of all, due to the fact that we are currently working on a potential faster growth in 2023, and secondly, to digest the current situation out there in terms of the supply chain and potential price developments. I think we could show that the volume produced in 2023 is expected to be pretty close to the nameplate capacity with 1.35 GW
From a pure production and volume point of view, I believe there is no real change to be expected, except for, or in terms of the net sales to be expected, comparing to the guidance, the previous guidance of EUR 500 million at 1.4 GW nameplate capacity. If we would assume that's also the sales volume, then the ASP would be somewhere between EUR 0.35-EUR 0.36 per Wp blended all throughout all segments. It's gonna be exactly the question that Moritz tried to elaborate on, what's the pricing at that time.
It's also very likely from our point of view, but you know, again, no one got the crystal ball to exactly say that. There's a likelihood that prices will be higher. Even the net sales guidance could be higher and any level below we are currently analyzing. Yes, maybe continuing on the 2023 volume produced or the volume guidance, you're indicating 50 MW lower production in 2023 than originally planned. Can you talk through which exact things for 2023 will have been delayed? This has nothing to do with the delay.
We have to differentiate or distinguish here between nominal nameplate capacity, so that's the equipment installed that's capable of 1.4 GW and what at the end of the day we produce. There could be multiple effects that the overall volume is slightly lower than the installed capacity, which could be, for instance, that you have a preventive maintenance window that you have to do, you know, take the factory down for a day or two in order to do some preventive maintenance. This could affect it. It's never true that a nominal nameplate capacity equals exactly the volume produced, and also the volume produced does not equal the volume sold because of inventory effects.
That's hopefully giving you an answer here. Another question is related to, again, what I believe we explained already, why we have only produced 20 MW. I think that's this we explained. Another one is asking, you already received over CHF 22 million in grants a year ago. Knowing that, EU needs to push for solar PV adoption, could it be expected that it provides some level of support on the supply side, loan guarantees, further grants, incentives, further tax breaks? Has there been an approach with EU or local governments to discuss mutual interest? What's correct is that we've been awarded to receive these grants in 2021, but we did not realize the intake of these grants.
That's the difference here. That happened partly in 2021, and still we have CHF 12 million outstanding, what I explained. Yes, there is a growing political urgency, as we explained, to do something for the EU solar industry. There are many initiatives currently being on the way at the EU level, at the national levels. Even the Swiss parliament last week endorsed the rebuild of a strong European solar industry, which I believe is very remarkable. I think you can also expect from us that, of course, we are sitting front row discussing any of these concepts and how Meyer Burger can contribute. I'm continuing here.
What is the level of capacity you think is required to reach the utility scale market? I'm assuming this is talking about the production capacity. That's a very good one, because the utility segment is clearly the more competitive segment in terms of pricing. You exactly need to be very clear about the input costs and the cost structures, so it requires a certain scale. That's also why we did not do this in the first place, but are now preparing to enter. Running above a gigawatt and then reaching 1.5 GW is already providing us a good level of scale in order to produce the products at a competitive cost.
To add to that answer, as I elaborated before, we have a value optimizing strategy, i.e., we of course sell our product into the highest value segments first. Even at the low gigawatt production level, there is still a high demand for our product in the residential and small commercial segment. You can assume that of the 1.4 GW capacity, we will still sell a very large share into the residential and commercial sector, both in Europe and the U.S.
Continuing with the question here, the question is on the rollout capacity and the biggest bottlenecks for our expansion. As Moritz, I think, very clearly explained, the market is not our problem. We are selling. We have very successfully established our ASPs in the market and also worked very successfully on reestablishing Meyer Burger as a very trustworthy brand in the residential segment, but also starting in the commercial industrial. I think our biggest challenges are definitely to tackle all the operational challenges. We need to hire personnel, we need to train personnel. Starting a factory is nothing easy. It's a lot of disciplines that you need to combine.
If that is also hitting a pandemic, then this can create a lot of trouble that you have to work through. But what I can also clearly tell you is that with every day going by, we are gaining more experience and all that will be put into the next expansions as a lesson learned. We believe we can continuously and gradually improve also the rate of implementation or the pace of the implementation rate to increase it. That's the expectation. That's what we are working on. But I believe all eyes on operations, that's what I'm always saying. We need to get there faster than we did in 2021, which has been a disappointment for you as well as for us.
I think the next one goes to Moritz. To what extent are we able to pass through higher input costs?
Yes. As I said before, we have raised our prices at the beginning of 2022, and it is hard to tell with scientific precision, but it is safe to say that at this time, we were able to pass on the majority of our input cost increase to our customers.
Okay. Another one did ask the same question. Can you provide an indication of pricing levels in 2021 and 2022, and how much of the cost increases was successfully passed on? It continues, please update us on the competitive landscape. I think I did that. The world is still PERC dominated, and anything we had pretty much expected to happen in the market with competitors not being definitely not being faster than we are because of our head start in the market, because of our unique profile of being a technology developer with in-house equipment industrialization, I think, has proven correct. As long as we continue investing in R&D, we believe at the module level, we can compete.
The question continues here, how are players providing complete home solutions and if that's impacting the growth of our business with solar storage, EV charging, and probably also it's not being asked here, but I think it's fair to answer, is that something we are also considering?
Let me complement the answer on the competitive landscape. What's of course most relevant for us is not the mainstream Asian competition, but the premium competition. That's the market segment where we are playing. When we started the transformation of our business model, there were essentially key competitors, LG, REC, Panasonic, and SunPower. The number one competitor, LG, has just announced that they are leaving the market this year. Panasonic has already left the market last year. The reception for us stepping in at the same time has been very, very positive. On the aspects regarding system components, for example, batteries, EV charging, etc. Yes, of course, that's all tailwinds for us as well.
We are consistently executing a three-stage business model, i.e., we are selling the modules to distributors, and the distributors are then complementing the kits, i.e., are adding the inverters, the mounting systems, the EV charging solution, the battery if needed. That way the customer has full flexibility, the end customer has full flexibility to get what they want, and we don't have to manage that additional complexity at the system level. The question here is, can you also share the level of order intake year to date? What portion of the 500 MW guidance is already covered by your order intake? I do not want to go into specific quantitative detail. However, we have said that we are almost entirely sold out for the first half of the year.
as I also said before, we are very closely monitoring the metric of how far in advance we are sold out. So far, we are very happy with that, including also taking into account the additional capacity that will come online in the second half of the year, which means that we're now also looking, of course, to already pre-sell portions of that additional capacity in the second half of the year.
We are switching topics here. Can you please share info on the CFO leaving after very short term? When will you announce a new CFO? I think what we communicated in February already explained the reasoning why our CFO, Nathalie Benedikt, has left the company after a very short term. As for the announcement of the new CFO, we are taking the time it needs to identify the right individual taking that very important position. We are in that process. Another question is about our announced solar tile business, the capacity and the volume. We are currently in the process of optimizing the product and making it ready for manufacturing in terms of expected manufacturing costs and also product performance.
We do this hand in hand also with the roofing industry, if we will. We are also learning a lot what the necessities are from a technical perspective, and also making up our minds as far as the perfect sales approach is concerned. For this year, we have never communicated a capacity. But what we did and what we also can reconfirm is that we, this year, are going to start to execute first pilot customer projects. We will install product on customers' roofs. This is in the pilot stage, and then once we are very clear about the go-to-market strategy and how we wanna enter it, then I believe that will be the right time to also speak about capacities.
The totally addressable market or the theoretical addressable market, alone in the DACH region, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, is reaching multi-gigawatt levels, and the question for us to clarify is how much of it we can tackle with what sales and go-to-market strategy. That's currently in progress. There's a question. You said you want to have a module capacity of 1 GW by the end of 2022. You also say that in Freiberg, you want to reach 1 GW module capacity in Q4 2022. Does this mean that you don't intend to start with the ramp-up of production in the U.S., or how should we think about it?
The total capacity we are currently installing is 1.4 GW, and we produce the solar cells entirely in our beautiful factory here in Thalheim. We ship 1 GW of cells to the Freiberg site. The Freiberg current building is completely filled up with equipment after this expansion, so there is no more space available in that building, at least for additional growth. The missing 0.4 GW will be installed in the Goodyear facility in Arizona. When we speak about this year's capacity ramp, then it's in Freiberg, and the volume from the Arizona factory is becoming effective in 2023. That is the plan. Another question on the ASP.
Yes. The question is, can you provide more insights about your ASP? Is EUR 0.45 per watt peak a reasonable assumption for 2022, or do you believe you could ask for higher prices? In general, we are not going into specifics on our pricing. However, what you can also see in our presentation, we made a comment on slide 18 of our presentation about the backlog that we went into 2022 with in terms of both volume and order value. You can deduct from those metrics that at that point we were materially north of the EUR 0.45 per watt peak.
The next one, did I understand correctly that there will be no joint venture with the U.S. utility and therefore no income flow out or have to be divided? The answer is, if I'm understanding this correctly here, that you understood correctly. There will be no joint venture. This one we covered already. There's another one on the CFO. When can we expect the appointment of the new CFO? You know, as soon as we have identified the ideal individual, if you will, and we are in the middle of the process. I think the next one, Moritz, goes to you.
Yes. How are the installers incentivized to sell Meyer Burger products to the end customers? How do you make sure that your products are sold to the end customers? Are the installers educated enough to explain the differences in terms of efficiency, et cetera, of your modules compared to other modules? That's an excellent question, and it relates back to our business model. We sell our product to distributors, and then those distributors sell on to installers. At the same time, however, we have a local field sales team that is embedded in the markets and is not only engaging with our distribution partners, but is actually spending most of their time engaging with the installers themselves.
That is really key to making sure that the installers understand the advantages of the Meyer Burger product and are then also able to convey those advantages of the Meyer Burger product to the end customer and then affect the purchase decision. I'm very happy to report that this model is proving to be very successful and the sales team, as I said, the overall team in sales and marketing is now over 45 people, is highly active every single day. We're visiting one installer after another and making sure that the Meyer Burger message is well understood and can then also be sold to the end customer.
The next one.
Yeah.
You can also take.
The next question is pricing power. The latest research from BNEF, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, shows a continuing price decrease in price, also adjusted by inflation. Since silicon supply is expected to increase by 40% in 2022, while demand is set to rise by an estimated 33%. As a result, module prices are projected to fall only slightly over the year, hitting $0.24-$0.25 per watt at the end of the year. Does this not affect your pricing power? Again, I'm not sure that we have the crystal ball, especially in the turmoil that the markets are in, to make a high confidence statement on market pricing in 2022. My personal expectation would be that we will not see a material decrease of prices, but future will tell.
Thank you. I think.
Concentrate.
Yeah. Are you in the position to say anything about your relationship with Oxford PV and also anything about your R&D strategy? Yes, we can. We had announced in July when we received the termination letter for the joint development agreement. We had responded that we are looking into legal or that we are checking legal options. We have not communicated any since the announcement, so you can rest assured that discussions are continuing with Oxford PV. The collaboration has ended, so we are not working together on R&D anymore. Meyer Burger is currently bringing up another consortium of leading R&D partners up to speed.
We have the very unique position now that the production solutions developed are Meyer Burger's IP, so i.e. equipment, specific equipment needed for the perovskite evaporation part is or has been developed already and also built. We have, I think a strong basis to continue this. There are many R&D institutes in Europe which have picked up speed in terms of record efficiencies, champion solar cells, and those champion solar cells usually are as large as your thumbnail. One square centimeter is a typical laboratory solar cell size, which is of course nothing that we can work with. Now it's all about the industrialization. That's again definitely our expertise. We will put effort into this.
As we've always communicated, perovskite tandem is nothing that we need immediately and urgently. There's a very broad consensus in the industry that this is taking another at least five years until we see product entering the market. Even though there is an ability probably already today to produce a few modules at standard sizes, those are not being able to be produced competitively for the time being. There's much to be done, and we are working on it. In between, that's more important, we are executing our heterojunction next gen roadmap. I spoke about it. We believe, we strongly believe in our so-called IBC technology, interdigitated back contact. That's a fully back contacted solar cell, so it looks cosmetically even better than our product today.
It's still a SmartWire interconnected type of technology. We have completed the in-house development of many of the required equipment already. Some need to be completed within this year. Then we are very likely making a decision how we continue with this technology, if it's being implemented in mass manufacturing, yes or no. I'm pretty optimistic on that one. This will give us more headroom with regards to cell and module efficiencies in the future. So can you comment on the expected FTE increases in 2022 and 2023 required to achieve the targeted nameplate capacity?
We also won't give any specifics, but I believe what I can say though is we will already see as part of the ongoing expansion that we are benefiting from more or
Economies of scale.
Economies of scale, efficiencies, and these effects also to improve the specific CapEx requirement as we grow. We will not double the FTEs as we double the production. This is not going to happen. We'll see these efficiencies, yeah. Do you expect the new German political environment to have an actual effect on the number of orders and sold volume this year and beyond?
Yeah.
A clear yes, so.
Well, I mean, the technical, pragmatic answer is we will be constrained by our produced volume anyways. We firmly believe that demand is not the problem. Yes, of course, the overall political environment and the pure demand by end customers for solar and in particular solar made in Europe, and high performance products is very, very high. These are great tailwinds for us in the future.
The next one is asking about the material cost per megawatt. That's our sweet secret in Meyer Burger. How will the personnel costs develop? What we have said, though, also in our statement today, is that we expect the run rate basis already with the 1 GW within this year to be in the operating result positive. Another one is speaking about the 400 MW capacity installed end of last year. You produced only 43 MW till the 23rd of March. Would you scale up that to 500 MW to be produced this year? Have you done any changes on your supply chain to secure materials?
Again, the supply side for materials, input materials for the cell module production is not restricting us. It's challenging, but as I explained, we've been working through this pretty successfully. Yes, if you would assume that the 43 MW until yesterday is the run rate, then we would probably not reach the 500 MW. But we are in an ongoing ramp-up process. I explained this, the 400 MW module factory is not a stand-alone capacity that sits there and produces. It's going to be embedded in the 1 GW manufacturing line and we will see a continuous ramp-up of the factory capacities, and that will go steeper month by month as we are taking the new capacities into operations.
There's another one. It's not a question, it's just a comment. Thank you. He just wanted to say that you seem to be a great team. Thank you very much for your work. Thanks a lot. Much appreciated. In a statement in AWP, you said that you could break even on the EBIT line in 2022. I did not say that. Clearly not. If this was in AWP, then it's a misperception. What I said is what I just mentioned, that we believe we will be able to generate a positive operative result in 2022 on a run rate basis of 1 GW . How does your CapEx planning for 2022 and 2023 look like?
Do you expect your potential large-scale partners in the U.S. to finance more than 50% of the needed CapEx for their lines? The CapEx planning for 2023, that's exactly the point. Until today, we have not assumed any growth in 2023. We assumed that we would stay flat in 2022 with our capacities in 2022, which, you know, in light of the enormous market potential, it doesn't really make sense. That's exactly why we wanted to accelerate. That's why I cannot yet comment on the exact CapEx planning for 2023, because until today we did not really plan for it. 2022, I think I showed to you in the presentation. It's in there in detail, and you can look it up.
Do you expect your potential large-scale partner to finance more than 50% if needed?
Discussions are ongoing, so we cannot comment specifically. However, it is safe to assume that we will only pursue these kind of relationships if there is a material contribution to our investments required.
Another one on the segment split and the question how we can, if we want to accelerate into utility scale, how can we produce enough rooftop to make a big enough entry into market for our 500 installers to notice and use the product? If a lot of 2023 goes to utility scale, won't you have to choose one market or the other?
Yeah, this is an excellent question and also very important. As I said before, we are pursuing a value optimized strategy, i.e., we will always sell into residential first. We have even heard some concerns from our customers, for example, as we announced the SC Freiburg project, that we would basically allocate product to the commercial industrial market before the residential market. That's not the case. However, we will always prioritize the residential market and will only start selling into utility once we have saturated the higher value market segments.
Are you sending any interest from Denmark government, private companies?
As I said, we do not have a sales team on the ground in the Nordics yet. However, yes, through our distribution partners, we are already experiencing demand from Sweden specifically, but also from Denmark. The question is, what is inventory? Could you shortly elaborate on that 30 MW were produced in 2021 vis-à-vis of course, the 20 MW that we sold. The question here is what happened to the 10 MW not sold? The answer is very simple. Those 10 MW are set in our warehouse over Christmas and New Year. First of all, we always need to keep a certain tactical level of inventory of finished goods because we need certain flexibility in reacting to short-term customer requests.
Also need to have a certain buffer after the production, even though it's pretty much hand-to-mouth currently. Secondly, there are simply technical delays in logistics, and especially over the holidays at the end of the year, that led to this 10 MW of inventory at the end of the year, which is still very small.
I think we are through with the questions. Thank you so much. We have exceeded a little bit our original plan of one hour, and I'm hoping that we could give you enough insights and also data to better understand the Meyer Burger case. I hope that we could also explain to you why we are as well not happy with the production volume of 2021 and what the reasons were. That we believe we are looking into a bright future. I say thank you again. Stay healthy, and we'll hope to see you soon again, and hopefully also personally.