German inverter manufacturer SMA Solar has posted losses of €65.4 million (US$75.5 million) in 2025, which it attributed to a series of “one-time items”, including falling inverter prices, muted market demand and the “general macroeconomic circumstances”.
The latest financial report, covering the company’s 2025 performance, largely confirms the preliminary results announced at the start of this month. At the start of March, SMA Solar anticipated end-of-2025 sales to hit €1,516 million, down 0.9% from the €1,530 million reported in 2024; today, the company confirmed that the figure.
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This delivered earnings before interest, taxes depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of €106.6 million, falling within the range of €50-180 million forecast at the beginning of March, but this does not include the “one-time items” that include macroeconomic challenges; including these figures, the company’s earnings fall below zero.
This means that SMA’s losses are in line with forecast losses of €30-80 million made last September, which was itself a revision downwards from an earlier forecast of earnings of as much as €80 million. Last year, the company also announced plans to cut 350 jobs to save money as it adapts to what it called at the time a “weak” market for residential PV inverters; this ‘weakness’ is reflected in the fact that the contributions of the small-scale sector to the company’s overall revenue has shrunk over the past year.
In 2025, the company’s ‘large scale and project solutions’ division delivered revenue of €1,268.8 million, up 7.9% from the year before and accounting for 83.7% of SMA’s total revenue. The ‘home and business solutions’ division, meanwhile, delivered €247.2 million in sales, down from €354.1 million the previous year; the contribution of the small-scale sector to the company’s final balance sheet has therefore fallen from 23.1% in 2024 to 16.3% last year.
This is reflective of a broader decline in Europe’s residential solar sector. At the end of 2025, SolarPower Europe reported that 19 European markets saw a contraction in residential solar installations that year, and that residential solar accounted for just 14% of the continent’s total operational solar capacity. This is half of the 28% for which residential solar accounted as recently as 2023.
The trade body attributed this decline to the withdrawal of government incentives for rooftop solar installations and a reversal of the high energy prices following the Russian invasion of Ukraine that first encouraged many homeowners to invest in residential solar.
SMA plans to transition away from relying on system integrators, at least for its battery energy storage system (BESS) inverters. While the company did not provide further details on this transition, the presentation accompanying its results included a graph showing integrators accounting for the entirety of its customer base in the past; between 2025 and 2030, SMA plans for BESS companies to account for the majority of its customers, while independent power producers (IPPs) will account for a significant minority.
“SMA’s large-scale business is transitioning from a transaction-driven integrator model toward a more asset-owner-driven model with IPPs and storage players, which should fundamentally change both margin structure and competitive positioning,” reads the company’s results presentation. “The effect will be longer sales cycles, higher technical requirements, but also potentially more recurring service and software revenue.”
Leaders in the European solar sector are turning their attention to this year’s SolarPlus Europe event, to be held in Italy on 15-16 April by PV Tech publisher Solar Media. Information about the event, including the full agenda and options to purchase tickets are available on the official website.
