Dear investors, dear analysts, dear media representatives, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Meyer Burger's annual media conference for the fiscal year 2022. My name is Gunter Erfurt. I'm the CEO of the company. With me today are my esteemed management colleagues, Markus Nikles, Chief Financial Officer, and Moritz Borgmann, Chief Commercial Officer. I would like to start off with an business review about a few selected topics. We continue with the presentation of the financial figures. I will explain the situation in sales and marketing and provide you also with an outlook. I would like to start giving you an update on the global solar industry where we are standing.
Solar energy has been crowned the new king of electrical energy generation, already two years ago by the International Energy Agency, for the reason that solar energy is easily deployable, it is very affordable and can help tremendously to decarbonize our energy generation, of course, also the consumption. This is a trend that has been understood by one country in particular, that is China, already 15 years ago, and industry policies have been put in place in order to help the industry growing to the size that we are seeing today. This has resulted in a situation where solar energy production, the infrastructure for this solar module, solar cells, wafers, and polysilicon, is almost entirely located today in China, with levels exceeding up to 98% in the case of wafer production.
Meyer Burger has three years ago made a very bold decision, a brave decision, to change a business model that we did for more than 20 years in solar energy, developing technology, building equipment, and providing the industry with state-of-the-art and leading production technology, which has, to a large extent, enabled that growth also in the industry. Yes, many of our customers in the past have been in China. We have decided two years ago that we will stop this, that we will use the results of our ongoing R&D efforts for own production. Because of also brave investors and convinced investors, we were able to secure the funding for our initial growth. We implemented first gigawatt capacities in our cell and module line and are now tackling the next milestones.
We could do this because of a technology leadership situation, and also because of our combined business model, where we integrate leading R&D development into developing and building our manufacturing equipment that is captively used in our own manufacturing. We believe that Meyer Burger is perfectly positioned to benefit from the currently established new geopolitical reality, which means that what has been understood in China already more than 10 years ago is now growingly being understood also in other regions of the world, for instance, in the United States, but also in Europe.
It is understood that solar energy is a matter of national security, of energy sovereignty, and that the nations of the world have to set new regulations in place in order to make sure that at least to a critical amount, this important infrastructure for the future is being produced in the respective regions. We believe Meyer Burger is perfectly set up to benefit from that growth and to helping to regain some sovereignty also when it comes to the production of solar modules and solar cells. Back to Meyer Burger. We are still a small player in the field, but we have shown a tremendous growth from small numbers to slightly bigger numbers, and we are on our way to grow to more gigawatt volumes in the near future.
If we look into 2022, we have achieved the lower limit of the production guidance we had provided. We had a communication published to reach minimum 320 MW. We achieved this in a very challenging time because as much as the supply chains for direct materials, i.e. wafers, glass, frames, and other components we need for the manufacturing of our products are stable, we see still some instabilities in the supply chains for industrial electronics, for instance, that hit us hard last year, and we also had to correct our production guidance for this year, also primarily due to this reason.
We are hoping and doing our utmost to improve the situation and we are in very intensive talks with our suppliers, and we are hopeful that we can resolve these issues in our future expansion projects. We've achieved the lower limit of our production guidance, and for this year, we are strongly convinced and optimistic that we can reach the 800, approximately 800 MW of production volume in our factories. As of today, we have produced about 120 MW already. I can also report that the ongoing expansion for the solar cell 1.4 GW, which ends our phase one expansion, is well on track. What's lagging behind, due to the reasons I mentioned already, is the module factory only.
With the data we have available from our suppliers, as of today, we are optimistic that we can keep the 800 MW production target for this year. We have Phase II expansion kicked off already. Equipments were ordered and closely tracked by our project management team in order to reach the approximately 3 GW capacity towards the end of next year. With the information we could provide to you today, with the additional two offtake agreements in the U.S., we have immediately kicked off the project that we call Phase II Plus, which provides us another 400 MW of capacity, both for cell and module. Many questions are being asked, and there's a lot of curiosity, of course, with regards to Meyer Burger's profitability.
What we would like to present to you is an indication for where we stand in our COCs for the module production. We show a comparison of the just closed months of February 2023, and where we have set the target to reach for December 2023. We show a split here for direct materials for the cell and module production, i.e., the most dominant part in it is, of course, the wafer, because polysilicon is by far the most expensive material used in solar energy or solar module production supply chain. Also direct labor and other OpEx, including ramp-up cost and also depreciation.
What we can clearly say is that it is super important that we achieve a fully loaded manufacturing as this brings us onto the path of sustained profitability also for the year 2023. The February costs that we show here as an indication are still burdened by the ongoing ramp up costs, and that is a situation which we very likely see continuing with all the upcoming expansions we have in the works and more to come as communicated today. These additional costs from the ramp up, they contain under absorption effects in manufacturing, production variances, and also costs in many occasions.
One of costs also attributed to the commissioning of the third line in Germany, which we plan to take into operations in the second quarter of this year, so within the next weeks and months. Of course, also the ongoing build-up of the U.S. facility in Goodyear, Arizona. The main drivers that we are working on in order to achieve the target costs and with the target costs, of course, also the way to profitability, is the production volume, as I already elaborated. The fully loading of the factory as quick as possible, completing the ramp ups as quick as possible is key. I already mentioned it, the most expensive item in our bill of materials and cost structure is clearly the silicon.
Module production costs really depend on the wafer price, whereas we are also able to take volatile wafer prices and translate it also into our sales prices. it's super important also to keep an close eye on the wafer prices in the future. The polysilicon markets have seen some ups and downs, not easily foreseeable, also not for us foreseeable. After a hike in 2022 towards the end of the year, around Christmas, we saw a very sharp drop in polysilicon prices. within the next couple of weeks, polysilicon prices went up again, even though the conditions for the drop in polysilicon prices had not necessarily changed.
We are very carefully observing the situation, we are expecting that polysilicon prices will come down throughout this year, but also to be seen if that's happening as expected. Clearly, that list that I show here might be in order of, or shows the order of the items. Yield is also something that engineers and production, our production team, continues improving day by day, and that will continue also in the future. We also see, of course, steps to be taken there, but are already pretty happy with the yields achieved. Another element in our cost structure that I explicitly put into that presentation in order to also maybe clean up some wrong narratives is the fact of direct labor.
We are hearing arguments sometimes that the production that we do is not cost-effective and can't be done in a country like Germany because of high labor costs. As you can see in that indication here, that's not the case. Our direct labor cost in our COCs is way below 10% and will further go down as the lines are being fully loaded in the future. What I also can explain here is the fact, what's the impact also for the EBITDA achievement for 2023. We had communicated last year that with the achievement of the production guidance, we would be EBITDA positive around year-end. That was what we communicated. We hit the lower part of the guidance.
We were not exactly where we wanted to be, and lower than expected, and that also had an impact on achieving the EBITDA on a run rate basis as we communicated. With a slightly higher volume achieved, we would have met it. It's nothing that we believe is super critical. It's coming with a slight delay, but I simply wanted to say that it is a function of the volume, and we are doing our utmost to bring the volumes up as soon as we can. Of course, together with the 1 C line that is being ramped up in the second quarter of this year.
We remain confident that achieving EBITDA positive for the entire year 2023 is absolutely achievable. The last slide elaborating a bit on where we stand in our tech-technology developments, as this has maybe not so much been in the focus in our communication in the last year. We do a lot of work in the background. We continue investing heavily in R&D. We are growing our team. We have continued our longstanding relationships with leading European R&D institutes. We have started new collaborations, what you see on that photo is an example of the module that we are going to build and sell as effective mid-2024 in the U.S.
That's our utility module, which we are selling and supplying to DESRI, but also to the other two parties which we have communicated today. This is in the works, and we believe that because of the captive business model and the closed loop development of technology and equipment, we can keep the competitive edge here. We also, as one highlight, I would like to mention our IBC development. We could show in our joint collaboration with Switzerland-based CSEM Institute that the new technology shows almost no degradation anymore, and now we are doing our level best to take that into manufacturing as soon as possible. With this, I would like to hand over to Markus to give us the insights on the key financial figures of 2022.
Thank you, Gunter. Hello, everyone, and [Foreign language] . Let me give you a quick synopsis and overview about key financials of 2022. If we have a look here at the P&L, the key figures what we have achieved last year, you see on the left-hand side, the net sales. Net sales, obviously, we could almost quadruple from CHF 40 million in 2021 to CHF 147 million in 2022. Obviously, the most of importance is we could increase the module sales from CHF 9 million in 2021 to CHF 125 million last year. Obviously, they're a big increase that equaled to about 250 MW or almost 700,000 of modules which we have sold to our valuable customers.
If you go to the right on the EBITDA, there we could cut that almost in half with minus CHF 35 million for 2022. After deducting the depreciation and the amortization, we see the EBIT with about CHF 54 million. If we still deduct the interest and the taxes, we ended up at about CHF 70 million for last year as a net result. We have a look here at the key metrics for this year for 2022, we have on the FTEs, we had overall, we have almost hired more than 400 new employees, and we had a headcount by end of 2022 of more than 1,000 colleagues.
Next to it, we see the cash and the cash equivalent, there by end of 2022, we had a cash position of almost CHF 300 million. Next to it, we see also the sharp increase of our sales with in the inventories as well, where we have tripled our inventory value from almost CHF 40 million to about CHF 120 million for 2022. Obviously, we manufacture our own equipment with the ramp-up of our own lines, we have significantly increased also our fixed assets, where we could increase there the value from about CHF 124 million in 2021 to CHF 211 million in 2022.
Ultimately, on the right-hand side, we see the equity, which is shown there. Thanks to the capital raise, which we have successfully realized in November 2022, we could increase there the equity ratio to almost 60% by end of last year or an equivalent of almost CHF 430 million. This is in a nutshell, the key financials for 2022, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Moritz Borgmann, Chief Commercial Officer. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Markus. I would like to spend a few minutes and give you an update on our sales and marketing activities. Let us start with the market environment. On this slide, you see our view on the market growth in our key target markets, i.e. Europe on the left side and U.S. on the right side. Both markets overall in our expectation, and this is universal consensus, will continue to grow rapidly with the European market being approximately twice as large as the U.S. market overall. Within these markets, of course, our current focus is on the residential and also to some extent, small C&I markets. Here within Europe, we still see very strong growth also in the residential sector.
Of course, especially here in Europe, the growth has been driven and continues to be driven by the European energy crisis and high electricity tariffs for our end customers. This is why the EU or European residential market continues to grow strongly. In the U.S., we also have a very strong residential market, but this year we expect a rather flat development in terms of market size. Overall, of course, we allocate our volumes in line with the overall market sizes. Let us go to the next slide and look specifically at our positioning in the residential market. First of all, as I said, the primary driver for end customers these days is the desire to replace expensive electricity from the grid, and solar is a very attractive option for doing that.
In result, we see in particular here in Europe, driven by the very, very high energy prices, a high willingness to pay on the part of the end customers for solar solutions. We at Meyer Burger have introduced a product into the market that has a very strong differentiation from mainstream products. We have a strong top-of-the-market performance, which means that our customers generate more electricity than with the competition. This in itself justifies, basically generates higher economic value for our customers and in itself justifies the price premium. On top of that, we also deliver a superior product in terms of quality, longevity, sustainability, and our customers do appreciate the fact that we make the product locally.
In result, we have managed to establish ourselves from the beginning at the top end of the market as a premium player, and accordingly, we also have realized and continue to realize premium pricing. To the extent that we have suffered from higher input costs, we have been able so far to effectively pass through those additional costs. What has also happened since we entered the market is that some of our key competitors in the premium segment have left the market. This includes, foremost, LG Electronics and Panasonic. Currently, we primarily see SunPower and REC as our main competitors in this segment. Meyer Burger's role is becoming increasingly to actually define this very segment.
This is, of course, it comes with a certain responsibility, but also means that in a very short amount of time, we have managed to build a very high credibility in the market. In terms of overall pricing environment, we see that there is some price pressure in the market in the mainstream segment, but so far, Meyer Burger has been able to insulate itself from this pricing pressure. We expect, however, and we plan in the course of this year to also moderately lower our prices to stay within the overall market pricing environment. Going to the next slide, I would like to talk specifically about some of the achievements that we've reached last year and the outlook for next year. We have achieved very broad geographical coverage.
It was even too broad last year when we didn't even have the product to satisfy all the customer demand. Overall, we managed to sell about 250 MW of solar modules. To put this into perspective, this means that we sold approximately 700,000 modules already in our second year in the market. There is, of course, a somewhat of a difference to the 321 MW that we produced, and this is primarily due to the relatively large amount of product that at any point in time is being shipped to the U.S., where we have quite a long shipment delay, and also a seasonal increase of inventories around the Christmas holidays. We have also very successfully launched our partner program for our effective indirect customers, the installers.
We believe that this is a key instrument to further cement the loyalty of our customers and to strategically grow the attachment to the Meyer Burger brand going forward. What you see here is the launch event that we had earlier this year. It was perceived very well, and we believe that we can really tie installers into the Meyer Burger brand. We have also successfully entered the U.S., which of course, given that we had very limited volume last year, was lagging behind in terms of markets built up compared to Europe. The outlook for this year isn't, I'm very happy to report that since last year, we were heavily constrained by product availability, and we had to also disappoint many customers because we didn't give them the products that they wanted.
We're now getting out of the weeds or having gotten out of the weeds, and are very happy that Meyer Burger modules are now broadly available. Our customers have stock, and this means that we can now also scale the take-up of Meyer Burger module installations in the broader market. Our sales team is working with the installers to broaden the installer base. We are currently working on agreeing on the volumes for the second half of this year. Even though now, of course, the product is broadly available, we still want to work on a long-term basis with our customers to create mutual security about availability and offtake of product. Next slide.
An announcement that we made a couple of weeks ago, is very important, on terms of our product lineup for the future. As you know, currently, we have essentially two different products, in our lineup. One is a glass backsheet product, which has a polymer film on the, on the back, and we have a glass-glass product, which has glass on both sides of the module. We have decided, to unify our product approach and, to build all products going forward with the glass-glass, architecture, i.e. glass on the, on the backsheet.
However, we will maintain the differentiation between a white product, black product, and a bifacial transparent product, which means that we will basically need to color the back glass, and so that the module then is either uniformly black or has the white grid between the cells as we have it today. This new product platform has very significant advantages for our customers. For one, of course, the glass-glass architecture delivers the best longevity and lowest degradation possible since glass is effectively indestructible and impermeable. We have unified product dimensions going forward, which we currently don't have. We've also delivered an approximately equivalent weight compared to the current product. It also brings very significant advantages for ourselves.
First of all, what we've also learned in the past two years is that product variations are very cumbersome. By reducing the different product variation, we will simplify all of our processes, spanning from production to procurement to logistics, and also engineering and product management. We will be able to also increase our overall throughput. Overall, we will have a more coherent strategic positioning as a quality leader with a unified glass-glass product platform. Last but not least, I want to talk about a major development in the U.S. Last year, we announced that we had secured a major offtaker for about two-thirds of our capacity, coming from the future Goodyear module facility. We have now effectively managed to increase the output from the Goodyear facility with absolutely minimal additional CapEx.
Effectively, it will be debottlenecking so that we will only need to moderately increase our cell capacity by adding a bit of additional equipment to effectively squeeze out about 400 MW of additional annual capacity from the U.S. facility. For this additional volume, which will be, we will build utility scale modules, we have managed to secure two new major offtakers and have agreed on long-term offtakes. This offtake model closely follows the proven DESRI model with the addition now that these new customers are also making a significant earlier prepayment that effectively allows us to finance the incremental CapEx to a large extent. We, of course, also managed to realize further economies of scale, again, continuing to drive down our cost base. We realized additional IRA tax credits.
Overall, of course, we strengthened the Meyer Burger footprint in the U.S., where we see a very conducive political support environment. At this point, we can also say that discussions continue with a number of offtake, additional offtake going forward. Here in particular in Europe, of course, it depends on the overall political support environment. With this, I would like to conclude and hand back to Gunter.
Thank you. Thank you, Moritz. We are coming to the outlook. Before I start, I would like to draw your attention to the photo on that slide. This will be or is our new solar cell manufacturing in Thalheim, in the Solar Valley, where we are implementing the factory that Moritz was just speaking about. The incremental additional 400 MW will exactly go into that building on top of the already under execution project 1.6 GW for our Phase II . I like this slide, as many of you who know, who follow us know, because of the fact that the expected solar market growth on the bright side continues changing to the better, increasing every time we present it.
This is a very recent update that we received, actually within this week, with additional growth expected in the U.S. and in Europe, and Moritz spoke about it also for the different segments. Solar continues booming. It's becoming more and more strategic. I spoke about it. The nations in the Western Hemisphere are waking up and we strongly believe that Meyer Burger is very, very well-positioned within this potential renaissance of the solar industry in Europe and in the U.S.
I t has hit front pages of newspapers very recently when China had announced a potential ban on the export of polysilicon, crystal growing and wafer technology, essentially trying to hinder other nations from regrowing their industry, to become a bit more sovereign in solar energy infrastructure production. For Meyer Burger, that's not affecting us because we have gained strategic independence in our segments in cell and module manufacturing because of our captive business model and because we drive technology also into next generations of products. The overall market growth continues to look very, very sunny and with the right setup within that strong market growth, we feel very, very well-positioned.
A super important topic, and we also understand that this is currently creating a lot of questions, is how does the European Union potentially respond to the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S.? I have to admit that the overall scheme is not so easy to be understood, as it consists of many different elements, which I'm trying to explain to you in brief. First of all, we have to differentiate between measures which are in the sole discretion of the European Commission and other elements which need to be decided by the European Parliaments. I start with the ones which are solely controlled by the European Commission and are, in fact, already effective.
This is the so-called TCTF, the Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework, which is a tool allowing where the European Commission is allowing the member states to lift some of the very restrictive state aid restrictions in the member states in the single European market. This is already effective, and it allows the member states under a so-called General Block Exemption Regulation to provide, for instance, CapEx subsidies, depending on region, at or with amounts or support ratios of 20%-35%. This is already possible as we speak.
What's also very interesting is that there has been under the revision of the TCTF, which was communicated early on March, there's a new clause in it, paragraph 86, which allows the European Union to support up to 100% of an investment. What does it mean? You can apply under this matching clause that your specific project is being analyzed and considered for matching funding in order to match support you might receive in, as the European Commission puts it, in different regions of the world. Of course, what's meant is, of course, the United States. This is a very important instrument. Of course, as I said, you have to apply for.
It's not easy to be implemented, you need to present your project and make sure that you can prove that in different regions you would be able to access additional funding, and then you might become eligible for a matching up. What's also in the strong interest of the European Commission is that by meeting a number of conditions, for instance, locations within the European Union, that not an imbalance between different regions and member states is created. What does it mean? The industry has to make sure that if we are applying for projects, for instance, we, Meyer Burger, in the Meyer Burger case, we would expand our existing solar cell factory in the Solar Valley.
As we have secured the infrastructure already for further growth, there would have to be another factory, in a different country, or that would at least help the situation and the matching up would probably be easier. What's also important to understand, the money is not coming from the European Commission, it's coming from the member states. That's a topic where the member states are now having the individual programs in their countries in the works.
We know that from Germany in particular, but also from other nations, that currently the ministries are working on the detailed responses, and there are also timelines communicated by the European Commission by when the responses are expected to be back in process. It would, of course, also since this is at the discretion of the European Commission, it needs to be approved and notified by the European Commission. It is effectively applicable. That's important. What's required now is the detailed programs provided and at the end of the day, of course, also the financial, the Europe financial amounts by the member states which are supporting the renaissance of the solar industry. What has been announced last week is the so-called Net-Zero Industry Act.
The difference between the TCTF and the GBER is that this has to be decided by the European Parliament. This is not yet in place. It is expected that the approval by the European Parliament comes before the end of 2023, as the European Parliament is having another election next year, and it has to be agreed and approved and decided way before. This is in our expectation, also coming within this year. What it does, in addition to the TCTF, is providing additional support to what I already explained. There are elements suggested and put forward, which are called net zero resilience premium, which would benefit European manufacturers with their products.
The idea here is that at the end of the day, all the programs that the European Commission is putting forward are, at the end of the day, not just a program to boost manufacturing as we are on the planet, but in Europe. That's the concept. There are more elements in it that also for instance, offtakers of European solar modules could apply for additional premiums or something similar, like under the TCTF, something like a matching clause.
If you go into a public tendering for solar parks and there's a competitive bid from other regions, companies with their products and it doesn't match, in order to reach the target of the European Union, that 30% of the solar modules deployed in the European Union in 2030 have to come from the European Union, that tool can also help to match up. What else did I forget here? I think that's pretty much it. What we've also learned is that OpEx support in the European Union is thinkable. It's a new instrument that the European Union is not yet used to.
T hat's something that goes to, we would say, a bit of a transition in how this entire industry policy concept is being approached. As I said, the member states are currently very, very active in the background, trying to provide concrete programs for the TCTF, the GBER, and the European Commission has started consultations for a fast and quick decision of the Net-Zero Industry Act by the European Parliament. That brings me to the last slide. What we see as an as a clear outlook for this year is the expansion project, which by as of today, we have increased from 3 GW to 3.4 GW to be achieved at least nameplate capacity towards or around the end of 2024.
That makes us very happy. Moritz described the concept and the now on the back of three offtake agreements with binding offtakes of our modules that makes our business more plannable in various elements for production, for supply chain, and anything that is required. As for the 2023 targets, we stick to the guided approximately 800 MW of production. We stick to the positive EBITDA. I have tried to explain where we stand in our cost structure. I have tried to explain that our cost structure is of course burdened by the ongoing ramp-ups.
That's a different situation compared to what we had announced three years ago, where we presented the 1.4 GW case for 2023 as pretty much a standalone case with no additional expansions ongoing. That's a, in terms of our operations, a completely different setup now and it has an impact, but we stick to the positive EBITDA and we are on the path to profitability as a company. As elaborated on the slide before, I would summarize this year's activities in the political arena as very decisive. Europe is or has to make a decision as to whether Europe wants to participate in the potential renaissance of the solar industry or if the business primarily or the industry moves to the United States.
Meyer Burger has now, with the decision communicated today, already presented a concept where we as soon as we start the manufacturing in Goodyear, we'll produce more modules in the U.S. than in Germany. That's something that also reflects a bit where the battle political environment nowadays is. We remain very hopeful and optimistic that the European Union will also come up with very attractive industry policy schemes that help the industry regaining strength. Terms of a production capacity, a nominal production capacity outlook. As I said, we are revising the target for around year end 2024. Expectation is now to achieve the 3.4 GW, as explained. Under the project we have submitted for the European Union Innovation Fund, as communicated also today.
If in this scenario, the funding would be accessible and also the overall industry policy scheme would look favorable for an expansion in Europe, then a potential growth could look like as we've shown here, which also brings us faster to the expected 7 GW, which we had announced already in 2020. With this, we are coming to the end of our presentation. Thank you very much for your kind attention. We are sure there will be many questions which we will be happy to take now.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making a selection. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from Constantin from Jefferies . Please go ahead.
Hi there. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Hello? Hello? Hello.
Yes. Constantin, your line is open. The speakers can hear you.
Can you hear me now? Hello?
We can hear you.
We can hear you, Constantin.
Oh, great. Sorry, I didn't get an answer. All right. Good stuff. First question, Gunter, over to you. Just with regards to these projects that you've applied, at the European Innovation Fund, you know, clearly we're talking about a triple-digit million figure, so quite substantial amounts. I guess you kind of answered the question with your latest comments on future capacity expansion here. If you could maybe discuss a little bit potentially on the magnitude of the projects that were applied at the innovation fund, and if these, let's assume this gets approved and these projects come through, will these be covered by offtake agreements? That's the first question. Thanks.
Mm-hmm. Thank you. Thank you for the question. The project application was submitted in February. The call is now closed. No further applications anymore possible. The overall third call of the European Union Innovation Fund has a budget of more than EUR 3 billion. We are expecting a decision to be awarded or not awarded around summer. That being said, of course, until we have a firm decision, it's all speculation.
What I can, what I can say is that the project approach consists of multiple European factories, which would not all be located in Germany, which maybe answers a bit also or shows a bit of what I explained already under the under the slide of potential European Union state aid support. Where the European Union tries to make sure that we don't create an imbalance within the European Union and make sure that if the industry comes back, then we have a chance that it grows everywhere. That's one element.
Together with the application, we were required to also submit, let's say, potential industry offtake or interest, and we were able to secure letters of intent of close to 5 GW.
Per annum.
Per annum. Per annum. Thank you. Per annum. Which of course, are unbinding because the project is not yet awarded and there are also not yet commercial agreements behind. We are happy to report that because the LOI companies are entirely European, which also shows that there's a strong interest from the offtake or base. Of course, since the state aid schemes are way more favorable in the U.S., the U.S. Has a head start in all of this, as we could prove also with our another two offtake agreements. Yes, strong support. We also have endorsement letters from official or from politicians, of course, which also want to have the industry back.
Maybe another important element, if being awarded, then there is very likely, as I explained, a possibility to also combine the Innovation Fund award with other state aid schemes, which does help the Meyer Burger business case in the sense that we are becoming less CapEx heavy in what we have to provide in terms of cash for further investments. If that answers the question, Constantin.
It does. That's extremely interesting. Thank you very much. Second question, over to you, Gunter. U.S. production. I mean, we've gone through a couple of downgrades now because of supply chain issues. How comfortable are you with, you know, with your U.S. schedule now in terms of the production ramp up there? Have you given yourself a bit of a cushion for potential delays? Is there risk of delay? Could something like that happen in the U.S., or are you rather comfortable with the timing there when you say mid-2024?
Yeah. Very important question, and we know that we have a very high responsibility here to make sure and do our level best that we don't see delays in this project. I would say the difference between the U.S. project and the projects in Germany is that the overall project duration is longer. We kicked it off already a couple of months ago, and we have pretty much like 18 months- 20 months until we will or are starting production. That's the overall project duration, which is a bit more, there's a bit more cushion in it, compared to the project in Europe.
Also let me maybe comment on what we unfortunately had to communicate on March the second, which we know has disappointed many investors for good reasons. The delay, the primary cause for the reduction of the volume and the delay behind the industrial electronics. What we mean by industrial electronics are hundreds, if not thousands, of components, which we are primarily buying from a few companies only, large corporations in Europe, which are also trying to make sure that Meyer Burger gets the best conditions in the markets, in the market that we get the supplies first before others, and still they cannot meet our requirements, even though the volumes we procured were all order confirmed. This is nothing where we forgot to order elements or pro-products and then had to send additional orders.
A very unfortunate situation. As we have explained in 2022, when we had to announce something similar in 2021, excuse me, it's unlike for direct material for wafers and glass. If we only would have 80% of the wafer volume, we would produce 80% of the modules. If we are not having all the components, frequency, inverters, drives, standard components for electrical cabinets, then you simply don't switch on the line. That's the challenge that we need to tackle. Unfortunately enough, these supply chain constraints are not yet over, but we are doing our level best to make sure that we secure these critical items.
We see light at the end of the tunnel that the situation is easing within this year and very or hopefully for the upcoming projects and maybe even steeper growth, we don't have these problems.
That's great. Thanks, Gunter. A couple of questions very quickly to Markus. Markus, if you could maybe elaborate a little bit or talk a little bit about the bankability of the company today, and also just a very quick comment on capitalized goods and services. It was a bit low in the second half. I was expecting a higher number. Can we expect that number to be higher in 2023? Thanks.
Well, with the capitalization of goods and services, there we have, as you could read in the annual report, we had a number of about CHF 41 million. With our P&L by nature, all what we did is due to, since we do not want to hand out our intellectual property and we want to manufacture our own equipment, basically we have in the P&L then the costs, the material costs, where we purchase all the goods from the outside, from third-party vendors. Then we have our great team. In Hohenstein, we have there a group of people who are responsible for the assembly of our machines, of our key equipment. There also, obviously, some personnel costs occur.
From a P&L by nature perspective, all what happens is, we purchase the material, we have the costs from our people who are assembling the machines, and then once we capitalize the equipment, obviously we make the correction for the costs which we had in the P&L. For the capitalization, we have the correction entry. Once we also capitalize our equipment, ultimately, we just cannot capitalize it. We let it review by our auditors, ultimately, we can finish here the process. What was the other question again, Constantin?
Just on bankability.
Bankability. The bankability. Yes. From the bankability side, yes, again, we are, as you as the attentive reader also of the prospectus, we are, of course, in view of our growth mode which we are following. We are exploring all kinds of financial options and how we can fund our business. From a bankability perspective, obviously we are working very closely with our bank partners, and we have their numerous tools which we are assessing right now to make the first step i n order to be bankable in the midterm realm.
That's great. Thank you, Markus. The last two questions, then over to Moritz. Moritz, if you could comment a little bit on the partner program. Quite interested, quite interested to hear on what kind of benefits this is giving installers, basically, and how does this give you any kind of competitive advantage over your competitors. Lastly, just, if you can just give us a quick update on the allocation load, what kind of visibility do you currently have for the year? Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, Constantin. What I talked about before is that there is a high willingness to pay for solar in the markets. What is really crucial for us is that we communicate the value of our product to the end customers and also to the installer. We have a absolutely unique product currently in the market. We also think that for years to come, we will remain unchallenged in many dimensions. For us, it remains a basically a key communication challenge that this message is being transported to installers and end customers.
This is why we have established this partner program, by which we will, for one, make sure that basically we create a brand experience and we communicate the advantages and the USPs of our brand well. Also, and this is going to be a key strategic focus, starting this year, that we listen more to our installers and help them to address their pain points. The installer is currently more or less the bottleneck in the industry. What we want to do going forward is that we want to work with the currently still very fragmented installer base and enable them to remain viable and competitive in a changing market environment.
We want to work collaboratively with them and help them as a, of course, much bigger players, help these typically relatively small businesses to thrive and to improve their processes to address all kinds of concerns and pain points that they have. Essentially, the partner program is going to be the platform for those efforts. That's really a cornerstone in our strategic approach to sales going forward. Your second question, I believe, was around the sort of sales planning for a second half. As I said, So first of all, of course, what we're very happy about is that there's now broad availability of our Meyer Burger product in the market.
It's no longer a kind of communist regime that we need to run here. Meyer Burger product is available. Yet we want to work and we want to establish a more long-term approach to procurement, and that's also why we are already being in discussions with our partners now about deliveries going all the way to the end of 2023. Yeah, with that, I believe that both parties to the relationship will have the advantage of increased security and visibility, which is going to be highly beneficial in this dynamic industry.
Thank you very much, Moritz.
We do have another question. The next question comes from Sebastian Growe from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. I promise to stick it to three or so. On the margin side, if I may start there, Dr. Erfurt, you stressed that production volume is key to reach target costs. Obviously, you are ahead of a very strong capacity ramp up over time, and with that, also much higher production volumes. Already you had, however, a gross profit margin of 50% in the last year despite the ramp-up costs, et c. Question then is, can you share with us what you regard as a realistic gross profit margin over time? As a follow-up to the prior question, how should we think of the R&D capitalization going forward? If you could put a number behind it, that would be very helpful.
If I may, Sebastian, luckily enough, I have the CFO sitting next to me, I would like to give the answer to Moritz.
Sebastian, I apologize, can you just in short again, repeat the question? I did not understand 100% from a technical perspective.
No problem. I'll try to slow a bit. The very simple narrow question on capitalization would just be if you could provide a guidance on how much we should and could probably assume in terms of absolute R&D capitalization over the coming years, especially in light of the further capacity build-out. That would be then the question to you, Markus. To Gunter, probably the other part of the question is more from the operational point of view. The gross profit margin was already pretty strong, I think at 50%. Yes, some tailwinds from R&D capitalization, but can you just kind of give us a sense of where that gross profit margin should sit over time? I do remember that you once said 40% plus, so any indication in that regard would be much appreciated.
Okay. From a R&D capitalization perspective, I mean.
The number really what we are capitalizing is predominantly our own equipment, and which we manufacture. So the R&D part which we capitalize is of course, the smaller fraction. The biggest part which we are capitalizing is obviously are the third-party goods which we are purchasing from the outside. With these goods, obviously we are assembling our key components and our key machines together. So to your point, from R&D perspective, the not too many R&D costs are capitalized.
Okay. On.
Let me ask a question then probably the other way around. Can you just say that CHF 40 million is sort of the maximum of R&D capitalization, what you would currently think is a realistic yardstick for the outer years, or should that rather come down? Maybe we keep it that simple.
Well, overall, most of the amount which we are capitalizing are the material costs. In the future, it of course, depends all of how much we are, how many additional lines we are ramping up. As we have heard with our expansion plan, of course, we're gonna pursue this path since we are not handing out our intellectual property, and we're gonna continue to manufacture our own equipment and our own processes. In the future, we will also have own capitalized costs also in the years to come.
On the margin question, on the gross profit margin question. First of all, we are not providing a gross profit margin guidance, but the way I could indicate here is we've seen from Moritz how strong we could set our pricing in the market because of the performance of the product, because of all the other unique selling points Meyer Burger is bringing to the table. That's one element on the pricing side, where we feel very strong and confident that we also can sustain in the next period, in the coming years.
For the cost side of things, what I can explain is for the direct materials, as we have also indicated here, what we are doing is we buy wafers in the market like everyone else. There's no such thing that a company like Meyer Burger necessarily pays a super premium on wafers compared to rivals in Asia. Of course, we have shipment costs, they don't, but they have shipment costs on the module itself, which is more, by the way. We have some additional elements in our BOM, which can be attributed to higher quality. We buy materials which are a bit more costly in order to enable the high performance of the product. That's also important, and we do that on purpose.
That being said, the challenges we are having do not lie necessarily in the direct labor costs in these items, which does not mean that we are not continuously improving and also evaluating new materials in order to source them more cheaply. They have to meet our quality criteria. Thus, there will be no compromise on quality. That's one aspect. Our cost structure is primarily burdened, if we will, by ongoing ramp ups, by not yet fully loaded lines. This is the way to go for us to make sure we reach these levels of full loading.
Once we are there, I believe, we can have a very, very strong position also in terms of the achievable margin, which we then will report in terms of EBITDA, at EBITDA result and of course below level.
Okay, that's clear. Thank you for that. If I may move on to mix, and following the launch of the glass-glass platform concept and the apparent unlocking of potential in regards to the main plate capacity and the 2 GW compared to the 1.6 that you had earmarked before. How should we think of mix going forward? Does the uplift in output and prepayment overcompensate eventually the lower ASPs, or simply put, the margins that you are striving for in the utility panel segment, would that be at least as good as for the resi products?
Yeah, that's a very good question. We have of course, a trade-off between the two segments. The ASP in utility is lower, that's clear. We have a larger product, so COGS is also slightly lower, but the end result still remains that the gross margin in the utility sector is going to be quite a bit lower than in the residential sector. That's just the nature of things. On the other hand, the trade-off is that in the utility sector, we have managed and are confident that we will continue to manage to gain these, to achieve these very high prepayments. Which of course means that our working capital position is effectively much, much better in the utility segment. From a cash perspective, that's of course, that's of course very beneficial for the company.
The way we see it overall is that our strategic imperative is to grow and to achieve economies of scale.
Of course, the market is not 100% resi with these very high margins, so we always need to run for a blend. What effectively happens is that the utility scale segments gives us the scale at a not super high margin, but still an attractive margin. In resi, of course, we have smaller volume, but we make very attractive margins. At the end of the day, the utility segment is more scalable because it's larger, and it also comes, as I said, with the huge advantage that the working capital position is so attractive through the prepayments.
Fair enough. Thanks for that. Just very quick follow on to that one. For the planned build out across Europe, would that all be then more leaning towards utility, if I interpret your prior statements correctly? Or is there still a chance for having sort of, whatever, a 50/50 mix or so between resi and utility?
A very good question. We continuously evaluate effectively the capacity of the market to absorb a premium residential product. Of course, a key success factor for us is to remain disciplined in our capacity expansion in the residential sector. We will grow accordingly to the extent that the market can absorb this premium residential product. At the same time, as I said before, use the utility sector to grow more aggressively and to scale our overall cost base and production bases. Having said that, the current application for the EU Innovation Fund is on the basis of 100% utility.
This is also why we now have already and one of the key elements there is, of course also that we want the offtake visibility, which we have secured, or at least we have a strong indication through these LOIs, which actually exceeds the foreseen capacity under this application. Of course, we continue evaluating, also, to build further residential capacity in Europe and in the U.S.
Okay, good. The very last one, and just briefly as a follow-on to the IRA impact. I think last time it was kind of out of the press when you hosted your H1 conference call. In the meantime, obviously, we have seen a bit more clarity coming through. The question that I do have here is, if you could provide more color, how we should think of the tax incentives that come along with it, and to what extent your 2 GW capacity will be eligible to those very, very tax incentives.
Yes, thank you for the question. Well, when it comes to the U.S. 45X tax credit, there, of course the final procedure has not been released by the IRS, but we are already into contact with financial partners in order to use this tax credit as a collateral and in order to monetize it ahead of the game, in order to use it for the next growth phase as an additional source of finance.
Okay. Quickly to that, if you compare then the first announced offtake agreement to those that you have announced just today, has there a change because of the market has become hotter and hotter in a way that you can just kind of dictate even more so your terms and conditions which might have changed even to the better? At least any directional comment would be much appreciated.
Yeah. Well, what we have said is that the new offtakes follow the proven DESRI approach, with the addition that we have even that we have prepayments that now also cover a substantial part of the CapEx for the incremental volume. Overall we can say that we're very satisfied with the commercial conditions that we were able to negotiate. Of course, they are commensurate with relatively smaller volume compared to the DESRI deal.
Okay, thanks. I go back into the queue, and sorry for having kind of overrun on the three initially indicated questions. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Ajay Patel from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for the presentation. I guess mine are surrounded by a few things. Firstly, the incentives that you're getting in the U.S., you have the contracts which you have offtake agreements with, what proportion is shared? Is it 50%? Is it 25%? As in, just to get an understanding of what potential benefit you have to your existing EBITDA margins from this incentive, and what kind of opportunity it could present in regards to monetizing for future growth in the U.S. Then I just wanted to make sure I understood this correctly.
In Europe, as far as you envisage it, if you benefit from the innovation fund in terms of the submissions that you've made, the prepayments that you would get from the utility contracts that you believe you'll get, and maybe some additional sources of funding that may be available to you, over the coming months, are you effectively saying all of that capacity would effectively not need any equity to finance, i.e., that you wouldn't need to come back to the market for any of that European capacity over the coming years? I just want to make sure. There was lots of hints there. I just want to make sure I'm putting that together and it makes full sense that I'm not going away with the wrong message.
Thank you for the questions. I'm answering the first one, maybe not satisfying you because the exact split was agreed upon to be kept secret. What I can say, though, is we are now doing the 2 GW in the U.S., out of which 1.5 GW will be utility, and 500 MW will be residential. The residential part is, there's no share of potential IRA tax credit, so that has to be taken into consideration when trying to model it. The potential monetization of the tax credits in the U.S., if I understood you correctly, I think that has been answered by Markus already.
We are very actively looking into options, and we also see that many financial providers in the U.S. are going to offer products to access it. To what extent we can monetize what fraction of it, I think we don't know yet exactly, but I think it won't be $50 million only. It's there's a good potential that this also helps taking weight from our CapEx-heavy business. That's what we are trying to tackle in order to expedite potential growth as opportunities are coming in.
As to your question on the financing for future capacity expansion, that is still too premature to tell. Of course, we continue evaluating the mix of funding sources, and we'll report on that once we know more.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Emrah Basic from Baader Helvea AG. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. Good afternoon. Thank you very much. just 2, 3 questions left. on the topic of underutilization. one of your peers in the U.S. has quantified underutilization costs for the ramp up. Are you able to quantify that as well? For example, like how much of costs are you facing for one additional line of 400 MW, for example?
I think, the answer, are we able? Of course, we are able to quantify this. Even though, in the current setup, we are in a situation where two lines out of three in Germany are already running, while we are building up another three lines in the U.S. We are still in the works of splitting that all up in order to get a bit more visibility into it, but that's clearly the target. At the point in time, I think it's not being reported.
No. Of course, you can triangulate from the cost structure and by looking at the fixed part of the cost structure, which of course, is basically a step function, more or less. There's an absorption effect as we scale up. Then, of course, there's also the yield losses that are elevated in the initial couple of months of ramp up. We're not reporting those figures specifically, but I think you can probably triangulate a ballpark figure.
Okay. Do you plan to maybe show a figure in the future in order to maybe show an underlying EPA or something like that?
We continuously look at how we can create more transparency, but cannot say what exactly we're going to report in the future.
Okay. Thank you. Just one follow-up clarification question. For your new off-take agreement, so the CapEx is kind of is pre-financed. Like, what else is in there for them? Or is the sharing of the U.S. IRA incentives part kind of like compensating for these upfront payments? Is that understood correctly?
Yeah. Think of it very much as, you know, I think we explained the DESRI structure quite at length. It's essentially a replica of that with an additional CapEx prepayment portion.
Okay, perfect. Then so in terms of pricing agreement, is those are similar with DESRI or can we? Like, is the wafer kind of like being passed on upwards and downwards?
Emrah, you're asking for the wafer price indexing? Is that correct?
Input costs, yeah. Then prices. Exactly, yeah.
As Markus elaborated, it's. As we have communicated earlier on, we are viewing the DESRI agreement as the benchmark, and that's what we've been following on when negotiating these two additional deals.
Okay, perfect. Thank you for clarifying that. Just the last one on that. Is the more than wafer part of that agreement as well, of the clause or also like, for example, silver?
Very similar structure to the DESRI deal.
All right. Perfect.
Let's say we don't want to overcomplicate things.
Yeah. It maybe, you know, as now having the third proof that this setup works, it makes a total lot of sense for both parties, for the offtaker and for us as the manufacturer. Obviously enough, it is more and more broadly accepted in the market.
Great. Thank you for that.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one. There are currently no more questions, so I hand back to Gunter Erfurt for closing comments.
Thank you very much, and thank you to all participants. Thank you for attending this webcast and also for your trust in the company, and we look forward to meeting you in person or virtually, many of you probably within the next couple of days when we are doing our virtual roadshow meetings tomorrow and next week in London, physically at the Jefferies conference. Thank you very much and thank you.