l'Actualité du Solaire

Spain's Ingeteam generated sales of €637m in 2018, up 47% over 2016. Eighty-two per cent of the revenue is generated outside Spain, in 22 countries.

Known in the photovoltaic world for its inverters, this company has a variety of activities

in power generation: renewable energies (wind, photovoltaic, hydroelectric), production plants with gas and diesel engines, electric vehicle loading infrastructures, railways, marine, steel manufacturing, industry, mining and pumping.

At the end of 2018, the company provided operation and maintenance services for 6.1 GW of solar power plants worldwide.

It has invested €84m in research and development (without indicating whether this will be over 2018 only, which would mean a rate of 13.2% of turnover, or over the 2016-2018 plan, which would mean 3.3% of turnover).

For the period 2019-2021, revenue growth of 15% to €730m is expected.

Tecsol of 8 July

Editor's note If the company mentions a 47% growth in its activity over three years, it is because the growth in 2018 is modest or weak. This is due to the variety of activities which may present industrial complementarities but which make the divisions insufficiently important to be very profitable. They do not have enough weight in their market.

The rate of research and development is insufficiently precise: if it only concerns the year 2018, it is considerable and we can expect a strong expansion of the company within three to five years. If the amount of R&D is spread over three years (which is the most likely), it is very low. It is barely enough to keep the group competitive. This would then explain the growth rate of 15% over three years over the period 2019-2021, or 4% per year in actuarial terms. If we consider that the UPS business is growing by 20% to 30% a year, and that the operations and maintenance business could have the same rate of increase, there is not much growth left for the rest of the group. The other activities would then be almost stagnant!