Marcus, you have just released your, 2022 figures, this morning. I think, let's go through some of the highlights and maybe a look into 2023 and what your expectations are there.
Thank you, Michael, thank you for the audience listening in today. I have a short presentation on the figures, both on the performance for 2022, also one slide on forward-looking into 2023, also events that has happened after the close of Q4 last year. Jumping into it, the highlight for Q4 last year was a fourth quarter order intake of SEK 1.2 million, leading to an overall yearly intake of SEK 18.1 million. The Q4 order intake was lower than expected primarily because of the delay in decision from two large mobile orders. I'll come back to those in events happening after the closure of Q4.
We saw also that the gross profit, as announced, is growing, and we closed the year with a 17.1% in gross profit. sorry, gross profit, and that is towards the 20% that we have promised that we will deliver on our ship solutions. As the year was primarily affected by ship solutions sales, we believe, and we can see, that we are headed toward the 20%, and we will reach that goal. Our commercial activities from the quoting point of view is growing also in Q4 and has been growing all year in 2022, and we closed the quarter quoting more than SEK 75 million in new quotes. The increase is actually reflected across all our three business activity legs.
I'll just come back to those in a, in a second. From an operational point of view, all the ship systems that we put into commissions was done in a smooth and very predictable manner. Please recall, as of first of June last year, also a biological independent test has to be done in order for the ships to be compliant, and all systems installed with Bawat have always passed this biological test. That is once again, a proof of the technology and the quality of the technology that we are delivering. Please recall, as the last point here on this slide, that we are active in three segments: retrofit and new build for ships. There's a big retrofit push right now, but there will be an ongoing new build market going forward year -on -year.
Also we are very active in mobile installations, and also we are selling Ballast Water as a Service. The last two business leg, we are almost standalone in the world, and we are growing in those businesses. If we are looking forward, and what have we have seen after the closing events, we can see that one of the two mobile systems that was delayed in decision, we have confirmed the order for one of them here in February. The interesting part of that, besides the volume, and the nice thing about confirming the order, is also that this is for our service partner in the U.S., Freedom Ballast, where they, on the backside of this order, have already achieved and confirmed a service order for a longer period starting this summer in the U.S.
This is, of course, very nice for us as it confirms the two business legs, one on the mobile systems, but also the second one, ballast as a service. Please recall, Bawat is an equity owner into Freedom Ballast, so we will receive part of the cash flow that this service order is generating. Secondly, we are also now confirming what we released in January, which is our forward-looking statement and guidance for the year. We are still saying SEK 40 million-SEK 60 million in order intake for the year, but we are also now, as we did in January, saying that we expect to be EBITDA break even in the second half of 2024.
This is, of course, depending on the projected revenue and the cost, but especially also the margin structure, because the difference between our mobile systems and our ships systems are 20% for ships, as earlier reported, and 40% for our mobile systems. We have long-term reported approximately 30% gross profit, and that, with our projections on volume, will bring us into EBITDA break even in the second half of next year. Overall, we are positively looking into 2023. We have also closed orders on ship solutions. We expect also a more evenly distribution of order intake across the year. Again, that is very difficult to predict. That we saw already in Q4. We are, based on what we are seeing already now, saying that we are predicting a more even order intake over the year.
Again, difficult to predict.
Right.
Over to you, Michael.
Just regarding that, you don't guide on revenue, and I know that can be very lumpy, so I know that that's hard. Is it still the time when you have an order to deploy that order, is that still the six months you mentioned earlier, or is there anything in supply chain that should change that view?
No, that is still the case. We have an average of 6 months from order intake to full revenue recognition. What we see in the first half is converted in the second half, and for our budget point of view, we are budgeting that half of what we are seeing in the second half is also converted in the second half. That is what we have seen when we did the backlog close in 2021, and what we have seen that we have been able to convert in 2022. The sales recognition for 2022 is actually reflecting that very much.
Perfect. Can you talk a little bit about challenges, maybe the two, three challenges you're seeing in your market right now? Your order quote is going up, and I can see you would have reached guidance if you had reached the two mobile orders, which is looks like be coming now, but it looks like there's a little bit drag. Is that your challenge, the drag in market, or are you seeing some other challenges in the market right now?
No, I think our challenge is the conversion of the very nice quoting activity that we're seeing into orders that we can then book. This is all a matter about how mature we are as a company, how much our agent network is active into the market, and how much we are still active from our sales point of view into the market. A growing quoting pipeline should, as we are today, also reflect in a growing order intake. I would say that is primarily our biggest, let's say, work that has to be done in 2023, and that is that conversion. We see that we have a very nice product. It's easy to install, it's easy to prove for the customer.
It goes through all tests, and we now have a very nice reference list. Our name is now getting more and more known in the market. Our challenge, our work for 2023 is that conversion. What we are nice to see is that we are building on a growing quote pipeline, so there is much more commercial attractiveness for us to work with. The quote is actually both on the Ship BWMS, both for retrofit and new build, also for Mobile BWMS. We are actually also seeing much increasing activity also on the service part, where we are very active in the US, and we are also now starting to see quite some activity in Western Europe and in Asia, Singapore specifically.
Saying very shortly, It's not the market that is posing any threats, it's not the market opportunities, it's your execution, if I should understand you just by one word.
Absolutely. There is plenty of market for us. It's us that needs to run out and make ourselves known. With a nice quoting pipeline and a good reference list now, we believe that 2023, it will be much easier than 2022.
Looking a little bit about your situation on the capital side, you mentioned that you are now expecting to be cash flow or operation profitable second half of 2024, but I guess the bridge to there, how is that going to be closed, capital-wise?
We will report on that in our Q1, reporting or potentially earlier.
As an ending question, you know, I think you started mentioning it, but when you talk to your customers, what are that they are buying into in your technology, if you should mention two or three things? What is it that sets you apart? What is it that they are buying into when they decide to book with you?
What we are seeing with customers, what they really like is the simplicity about our system. It's, it's rugged, it proof marine components. They like that. There is no mechanical filtration. The fact that they get a green system, no chemicals, and they can run it on excess heat from the main engine or from genset normally, that gives the customer, now with very good references in the back, you know, a really, really good opportunity to make their systems more green, but at the same time, more rugged and reduce their energy consumption.
Thank you.