Good morning, everybody here at the annual number presentation of Sif Holding for 2025. My name is Fred van Beers and with me are analysts from various banks and institutions, and everybody online also welcome.

For those here in the room, before we start, there's no safety drills planned for. If there is an emergency evacuation we need to go for, it will be a buzzer sounding and follow the green signs to the exit, please.

Before we continue and go into what is listed here at the first page as highlights, I like to introduce the people attending from the Sif side. On my right-hand side, for those here in the room, is Pepijn Timmermans, our new COO who started 1st of December.

Pepijn, maybe you can give a quick introduction of yourself?

Thank you, Fred. It's really exciting to be here.

First time in this presentation and also be part of the, let's say, Sif family with its very warm culture. As you might know or not, I have a strong background in automotive manufacturing, recent years in the VDL Group.

Within that organization, I was responsible for the supply chain and digitization. You can imagine that it's quite an interesting learning curve for me to get acquainted with the offshore and Sif business.

On the other hand, being here, there are quite some parallels. If you look, for example, at the new site at the Maasvlakte, then it's a really beautiful flow-driven manufacturing site which has quite some parallels with what automotive repetitive manufacturing is doing.

I'm very excited to be part of this team and help in the growth of the organization.

Thank you, Pepijn, for introducing yourself. We agreed for this session that Boudewijn and I will present, because on my left-hand side is Boudewijn, as CFO, known to all of you, I think, and he will take us all through the numbers.

Of course, Pepijn and I are available also for operational questions if they are there. Then last but not least, I'm here myself as well.

As you probably may or may not have seen, we also released a press release this morning that I will step down as CEO 1st of August this year. Koen Bogers, previous CEO of Stedin, will be appointed as the new CEO.

We have, of course, the annual meeting of shareholders in May where this will take place. Koen will then start in May in a sort of, call it, learning month training session to learn all about Sif until the 1st of August.

After the 1st of August, I will full-time continue as advisor till at least the 31st of January '27, in order to also help introduce Koen in the best possible way in all external contacts and do special projects for the board. That is good maybe to also announce to this meeting.

Enough about people. Let's go into the key messages we have brought across this morning in our press release.

I think again, safety remains our number one priority, and we'll come back to that a little bit later. We see the contribution margin materializing as we had planned for and as we have discussed many, many times in these meetings as well, which looks good.

Extremely happy that the production facility at Maasvlakte is more and more starting to deliver according to plan. We are on plan, as we announced in August last year.

We'll come back to that a little bit later. What is a real challenge at the moment, I think, is the market.

We'll come back on that as well. The short-term market, '27, '28, is seeing quite some delays in FID taking on customer side as for new wind farms.

Having said that, the longer-term perspective is extremely good. We'll show some data on that a little bit later as well.

I think the good news, the main topic here I'd like to bring across: Sif is ready to deliver now, with the factory running, with the capacity available, with the teams and organization in place to deliver on the North Sea Summit Declaration ambitions in Europe mainly. We have an order book and a performance that underpins the guidance that we have given some time ago: a minimum of €135 million EBITDA for 2026.

Of course, the question you all have is: how about 2027 and the 190 kiloton in exclusive negotiation? We'll come back to that a bit later and what's going to happen afterwards as well.

Some highlights, because you need to celebrate also a little bit what happened last year, that is that, as you all know, we delivered Empire Wind 1. The project is fully paid for, installed successfully in the seabed in the Atlantic close to New York.

Largest monopiles ever. Done.

It was tight, but we did it. We really following up, of course, what's happening now in the US with all the legal cases that are being brought forward locally.

I think I like to underline here again that whatever happens there will not affect at all Sif, because we have done our part of the job fully. The Maasvlakte facility is ramping up, as said before, and we are confident that we can deliver on the 2026 order book.

Ecowende is close to finished as we speak now, and we have the TP-less monopiles, 52 of them, all produced in the meantime according the plan that needs to be completed this month. Then, last but not least, a lot of attention is being paid from our side, but also from our colleagues in the EU and others in the offshore wind supply chain, to make sure that the offshore wind, which is essential for the energy independency, is considered strategic and is also working on the basis of a level playing field, competitive landscape.

Although there's a lot of skepticism on whether that will happen or not given the Chinese imports at low prices, I'm personally very confident that we are on exactly the track that we need to be to make this a level playing field business and a strategic business in Europe. I'll come back to that a little bit later as well.

Let's dive into the ramp-up plan for the Maasvlakte and the and the performance of Maasvlakte with it. Output significantly improves and is stabilizing on a level of three to four monopiles a week, depending on size, etc.

We actually will see in the first half of this year an average of five, maybe six monopiles, because we have a slightly different design per week, which is is the planning for the for the period ahead of us. That is, according plan, achieved in December, and after the the usual ramp-up issues that you see after a holiday break, Christmas, the week snow the snow week in the Netherlands didn't help either, because we couldn't get people back from all places in Europe, so that that caused a bit of a delay, but we have been able to ramp up quite quite quickly, I would say, and and controlled to the level I just announced.

We we always we also see that this approach of safety first, quality second, output third is paying off and is becoming more and more the standard in in a new team at Maasvlakte, which we will show also in the in the safety statistics a little bit later. We are now gradually moving from a ramp-up phase to a continuous improvement phase during the course of this year.

As you may remember, we announced in in August that by mid-2026 we should have reached a stabilized position. We're on track on that one.

We have passed successfully the milestone of four monopiles a week in in December, we have that behind us of us, we are more and more becoming a normal factory as planned for. Important role in this whole improvement is the fact that we have all senior and middle management now in place in in our operation, and that starts paying off quickly.

Pepijn, he entered more or less as the the latest, I think, 1st of December, from the team, and is more and more coming up to steam as well in this in this process. We are really happy with what we see happening here.

On the safety statistics, for the whole year of 2025, we cannot be satisfied and we're not. As you can see in the middle picture, the first half of 2025 saw seven lost time injuries on the basis of a normalized, I would say, 11 total recorded incidents.

In the second half, we saw still too many, two, but significantly less compared to the first half. We are on the right track there when it comes to safety.

Sickness leave: still high. We're not, although the industry standard in our business is higher, we see more normalized numbers of 9% to 10% in our business when it comes to sickness leave, we feel that our ambition to reach fifth 5.5% is necessary and doable.

As you can see in the bottom bullet, we having a bunch of activities varying from case management to more investments in working conditions and individual employee support to bring down the sickness leave significantly during this year. The trends are positive, but we're not there yet.

Good to mention here maybe as well is that we have agreed as an industry in Europe to join forces in attacking the safety issues in our industry, because they're quite typical for all of us. Through our Offshore Wind Foundation Alliance, we're now having a working group to also tackle this, and even certify the European foundation safety standard.

Let's make a move to the market. This picture is fresh, the ink is still wet.

It's coming from WoodMac, Wood Mackenzie, and it shows the gigawatts that are planned to be connected to the grid up till 2040 for offshore wind, excluding the US, which is not so difficult, because that's zero, although there is something coming to grid, of course, in the coming year still, as depending on all the court cases, but excluding China, excluding the US. Numbers cannot be listed, but what can be told is that when you look backwards, '25 backwards, the average is roughly 4 gigawatt that has been connected to the grid offshore wind.

You see a massive jump in '26 and '27. The jump basically comes from the fact that quite a few projects have been delayed when it comes to grid connection.

Remember, foundation production is about two years, 1.5 to two years in front of the grid connection. And '26 sees a major jump and that has to do with, for example, Dogger Bank, where they had turbine issues, installations.

Installation of monopiles has been done for all A, B, and C already, but turbine installation is coming. For A, has just been completed; B has just started, and they're all expected to come on the grid this year.

That's what the jump says. You also see that '28, '29, and '30 are expected to be significantly lower.

That is exactly the trend that we are experiencing now in our tender activity and FID taking for new projects. This also includes the 190-kiloton project that we have in exclusive status.

A little bit later I will come back to that. What I think is important to mention here is also that despite all hiccups in the industry, the geopolitical situation, the drive to go for energy independency in Europe is stronger than ever before.

What you see happening is this famous wave of projects coming to the grid in the future, but in a stable way, we would like to claim. We see that this demand is definitely going to happen or planned for, and it may face some delay, but it's going to happen.

Strong long-term market outlook. Competitive landscape is challenging.

It's challenging for all EU supply chain players, and in some extent I claim also for our Chinese new or relative new entrants, since the market that was being projected is delaying. We are facing aggressive Chinese import competition.

That's a fact. We see certain projects or developers deciding to go for Chinese imports.

What I think is important to state and reiterate from our point of view, we know, it's also the second bullet, we know for a fact that the EU supply chain is up to the task that is ahead of us. There's roughly €2 billion invested in a ramp-up of monopile facility in Europe and the UK.

We do see delays and challenges in the ramp-up of that capacity. We are an example of it.

We saw the same happening with Haizea. Everybody can read the papers on the SeAH investment in the UK.

All of them will succeed and will be there. This is one of the key points also in our discussions with the developers: that it's a fairy tale to believe that we need Chinese imports per se to make this ambition happen.

What we do need altogether is level playing field. We are not afraid, none of us in the EU supply chain, we are not afraid of any Chinese competition whatsoever, as long as it's based on level playing field.

Level playing field mainly relates to steel and duties on steel imports for not only raw materials or plates, but also for semi-finished and finished products. That's what we're working on quite intensively altogether, not only Sif, but the whole industry, with Brussels and all the member states individually: for Germany, Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium specifically; and the UK independently from the EU is doing the same, to make sure that this level playing field situation is created.

In this respect, I think it's worthwhile mentioning that yesterday, and we will come back to this later next week, yesterday we received a confirmation from EZK, the Ministry of Economic and Climate Affairs in the Netherlands, that Sif is one of the two companies now declared strategic in the Netherlands when it comes to industry, energy transition, yeah, and independency, a bit related to what is mentioned also in Draghi and the Van Eenennaam report. We now see actually happening, and we are going to dive into the effects and what does this mean for us.

We will come back to that later for sure in separate messages. You can all read the Dutch government, the new government, has a high ambition again to go for offshore wind.

We are in very close dialogue with the Dutch government on this road map for offshore wind. Without giving you all the details, also the exclusive deal that we have in our order book for 2027, we're not sure yet exactly when it will fall, but it's still definitely a exclusive deal.

The developer and the government that this relates to are in very intense contact, and we are also in that discussion to make sure that this deal is closed as soon as possible into a firm contract, because it's needed for the rollout of offshore wind in that country. I can't give you the country, I can't give you the name of the developer, but you all know what's available and how that's still in the market.

With that, I like to hand over to Boudewijn to take us a bit through the financials.

Sure. Thanks, Fred.

We'll dive into the numbers in a bit more detail. I think just some of the key takeaways on what we reported this morning is our contribution as an absolute value is up 28% from 2024 to 2025.

That mainly came in the second half of the year. When we did the half-year results, we were pretty much on par, '25 to '24.

We've seen a marked improvement in the second half year, which has to do with the stabilization and ramp-up on the Maasvlakte. You see that in the revenue as well.

Really pleased, August was not a nice announcement when we cut our guidance, but I think it was a very realistic decision we took at the time and pleased to see that we met the guidance certainly that we gave, again fully driven by the production improvement and ramp-up we've seen on the Maasvlakte. As we've said, Fred touched on it, we really are set up and ready for growth, realizing that '27, '28 are less secure and a bit more uncertain.

We have this exclusive project, but we still need that to become completely firm and in the order book in terms of when we're going to produce it. This is a typical project business.

Sif has gone through these periods in the past, and we have the resilience and the robustness to deal with this. All of our deliveries are in quality and in time for installation under our clients' installation windows.

Again, there, even though our struggles, what we've produced, we've produced on time, clients are installing them, and we've now moved on to the next project, Baltic, which is fully in production. Quite a significant increase in FTE.

I think, again, there, 2024 we were in construction, in the start of a production on the Maasvlakte, and still full in production in Roermond. '25 was a year of full production on both plants.

A significant increase in FTE relates to that increase in production. Moving on to the next slide, just showing it in some numbers.

Even though production in terms of total kilotons is on average on par with the last few years, what we see is a marked improvement in contribution in absolute terms, but also per week, and increase in EBITDA. That is because the contracts we have now are financially more attractive and more reflective of the complexity of the work.

We've discussed in the past that metrics per ton are becoming less relevant, because every ton of production is different. We do see that the financial returns on these tons are definitely improving with the order book that we have.

We discussed in August about how realizable is the growth in EBITDA that we're projecting and how confident are we in the numbers that we've given? I think here you see it as well is when at half year we were on par with 2024, both financially and in terms of production, but with the ramp-up we saw in the second half, you see a significant uptick both in terms of contribution and in EBITDA.

That's because that marginal increase is so high. The costs are there, the cost base is there, the installed base is there.

Every ton additional we produce has a significant impact on both contribution and EBITDA. We'll see that even more in 2026.

Working capital is still at a very high negative level. We recognize that.

Again, that is a nature of our business. We get a lot of advance payments from customers well in advance of us actually starting to do the work, and that's reported on our balance sheet as contract liabilities.

Also as these contracts get bigger, because this is a snapshot, a moment in time, which is 31 December, we also have invoices that we've received from customers that we haven't paid yet, and that's also sitting in our liabilities on our balance sheet. This number will continue to be volatile, but as we run through our order book, we will see it coming down in 2026.

Then obviously depending on new contracts that come in, whether we get advanced payments there under those, that will either increase or not result in increase in those liabilities. Then just a few ESG KPIs.

We've seen an increase in our CO2 emissions, again partly logical because of the significant ramp-up we've seen in the Maasvlakte, a lot more production, a lot more energy usage. Unfortunately, the Haliade, the wind turbine, hasn't produced the results that we expected.

That hasn't helped to bring down our CO2 emissions. We're actually in the process now, together with GE, to decommission it.

We don't believe that this turbine will deliver the results that it needs, and we're, together with one of our teams, looking at alternatives to substitute the Haliade. Fred already touched on safety.

On the lost time incidents we had in 2025, it was not a good performance, and you see that as well in the LTIF. Obviously, with more production, the LTIF is lower than it was in 2023, but in absolute numbers, our safety performance was not on par for 2025.

We've spoken about the order book. We see the 190 is in there.

It's the exclusive contract we have, and we still have 343 kilotons in the existing orders that will be producing in this year and into 2027. Strong contribution per ton, and I think also significantly there, the contribution per month, both important metrics also as we go forward into 2026 with the order book.

Our covenants: we had some challenges in the third quarter of the year where we were actually not able to calculate the leverage covenants, and that has to do with the methodology of calculating EBITDA for the covenants, which is a trailing number where we have to do IFRS adjustments. That was a negative number.

When you divide net debt by a negative number, it's either zero or N/A. Under the financing agreement, we had to ask for a waiver at the time, because we were in the ramp-up and we weren't entirely certain how the year would end up.

We asked for an amendment on both leverage and solvency to give us some headroom for Q4 in 2025. In hindsight, that wasn't necessary, but I'm still glad we did it.

It just gave us the headroom that we may have needed. Our performance was good enough that that wasn't needed, and we'll see the covenant levels returning back to normal mid-'26.

Just looking as a whole, we remain focused on accelerating energy transition with our monopile manufacturing, our TPs, and our pin pile business. The capacity that we have there was a significant investment, both in terms of people, in terms of capital.

The capacity is there. Fred touched on it.

The EU is ready to deliver on the plans. We need those plans to materialize.

Obviously, we're dependent on developers and the government on coming through with the projects, but we have every reason to believe that that is going to come, and we're ready for that. We're ready for Europe.

Sif is an enabler. The investment we did, we still believe was the right investment.

Our plant is in the sweet spot of the monopiles that we expect to come in the next few years. We really do expect a lot of activity.

As we've said a few times, '27 and '28 remain challenging. Clearly, the exclusive project we have will go a long way in filling our order book for that period.

There are other projects that are out there, maybe some opportunistic projects, maybe some developers who decide to capitalize on a constrained supply chain and move their projects earlier. We have a very active sales team, we have a very, very active pipeline of activities, and we're closely following the market.

We're ready to deliver. We certainly are, as it stands today, on track to deliver our EBITDA guidance for 2026.

Fred, any closing remarks?

I think the closing remark is: let's open the floor for questions on this, because there will definitely be questions. Who can I give the initiative to start the conversation?

Thijs?

Philip Vegter.

Philip Vegter from Kepler Cheuvreux. First question I have is actually on your cost base.

In the warm prospect of 2027-2028 order book, I also understood that you have quite a flexible FTE base, more than 30%. I was just wondering, in terms of numbers, what do you see in a situation where you might have no activity or if you can't have enough in a negative scenario, what would be your cash burn or your minimum costs that you actually would still have to expense or will be facing in a year?

Then

the other question is: how do you look at the balance sheet in such a situation, especially given that the working capital will be coming down, less negative? Are you already having talks with the banks on that, and what's the situation on that?

Okay. I'll also ask Fred to jump in to give a bit more flavor, but I'm not going to be able to tell you specifically what our cost base is in a scenario.

What I can say is, you touched on the most important point: we have quite a big flexible layer in our labor force. If there are periods where we have less work or where we consciously choose to slow down production where we have that space under our client contracts, we will, and that flexible layer is the first one that we'll focus on to bring those costs down.

At the moment, as it stands now, we have an order book which runs into 2027, and that could be early 2027, that could be later 2027 or first half 2027. We have that flexibility under delivery timeline with our clients.

That's one thing we're looking at: how do we want to optimize that? That is very much tied to when this exclusive contract starts.

Is there a period in between there where we might have no work? That's possible.

It's not something that concerns us, because there's a lot of things we can do in that time. The most important thing is that we need to maintain a level of skills and expertise within our production.

We can't say we just ramp down to zero and then the next time we have a project, we'll go out in the market and find people. We have to find that optimal balance of maintaining the right base within our knowledge of producing monopiles, both in Roermond and in the Maasvlakte, spreading that.

We can also slow down in one area, move people, and keep them occupied in the other area. All of these scenarios are things we're looking at at the moment on how we deal with certain scenarios and how we manage that within our labor force, within our cash, within our cost base, to stay ready to produce.

To add to that, I think it's important to remember that we have seen now four, five years of high activity in this market, but this is a market that follows a curve. We are in a project business and we have been in situations in this business before that we had to deal with some downturn in the market.

As you rightly say, this flexible workforce that we have is significant and we are used to work with that, and our people are used to deal with that. I think there's a few other things to remember here.

In our order book that we have for '26 and begin '27, we have still quite a bit of flexibility in when can we produce what. That's part of our scenario planning, and in the dialogue also with our customer to see, okay, what can we do or what should we do, and what do you want us to do in order to spread a bit production on one side.

Then there is, again, not to be underestimated, this 190 kiloton where there is a lot of activity in closing it, and all the discussions that are happening have nothing to do with us. It's not that we have a dialogue with our customer on uncertain items that are holding this up.

It all has to do with everything you can read about on a daily basis in the market: grid, power takeoff, all these elements play a role in this case. The third part, I think we shouldn't forget, is that when a market that is becoming tighter, also the horizon of having firm order books is becoming less long and shorter and shorter.

The last thing we are doing is getting nervous about such situation, because that is part of the dynamics of this business. We've seen spot opportunities also popping up.

I think all of you have read the news on what happened with Hornsea 3. Interestingly enough, that was news that was about one year old when it came in the news.

That was quite interesting to read. The spread of the order book on Hornsea 3 has happened already a year ago.

We, in all openness, were also approached. We have thanked for the interest because of the fact that we had a full order book and a factory that we were ramping up.

I've read news that there's concerns about the possibilities of Sif. We were a bit surprised with that, because it's first of all one year old, the news.

Secondly, we couldn't support given our order book. That's the dynamic of this business.

Coming back to your point, because that's the underlying question, I think: when you are in a downturn, can you manage it? Yes.

Do we do scenario planning, as Boudewijn explained? Yes.

Is it the right moment to shift gear, to say, and act on that? No, because there is still ample time left to deal with whatever scenario that we may face on our path.

It asks a bit from all of us when it comes to patience.

Martijn den Drijver, ODDO BHF. Maybe as a follow-up: when we look at what's more or less the latest delivery date for monopiles you have in your order book excluding the one which is not firm yet, talking about spreading production over time, what's the latest delivery date of

Exact date I can't give,

because

that's part of the discussion, but it will not be the end of '27.

Okay. Assuming, just assuming it will be mid-'27, and you say, okay, we're going to spread production equally over time, will you then still be able to meet your '26 guidance?

Yes. Okay.

Then

you mentioned you have been labeled strategic by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate. What does it actually mean?

Because normally when you're strategic, you're not allowed to be acquired by another company, but what will it mean for you? What do you

That's a good point. That is now, as the Net-Zero Industry Act is new, is being filled, and we will open now the talk with also Economic Affairs: what exactly does this mean?

Because

it's not nothing. It's not a marketing stamp, to say.

That's why I mention it, because it does mean that in Dutch tenders in decision-making, there's a certain element of preference for Dutch/European supply chain in the evaluation of tenders. To what extent that will work out and what exactly the percentage is that we can earmark because of this stamp is something where we come back on short.

Thanks. Then, secondly, you mentioned that you had won an order for projects Prysmian Baltic 1 and 2, the 48 pin piles.

How much kilotons does that involve?

40. 40 kilotons.

4-0.

4-0. Okay.

Then lastly for the moment, you are tendering for the first decommissioning orders. I know you're interested to recycle the steel, but in the decommissioning itself, what's your business model?

The business model is basically that first of all that we have teamed up with Ballast Nedam for the scrap steel with Dillinger. The business model is that we take a turnkey responsibility in the joint coalition with Ballast to completely sort of get the keys handed over to us, and we will then decommission the whole thing and deal with all the scrap streams flowing from out of it.

Whereby we specifically as Sif will take care of the steel part in such a way that it is cut and prepared in such a way that it can go directly into the electric arc furnaces of Dillinger that they are building as we speak. We get a true circularity of steel.

For Dillinger, it's important, because if you start producing in the electric arc process, it's very helpful that your scrap material is more or less compliant to the new steel that you need to produce. That's why input from Dillinger into the Dillinger production is so important.

That's the key in a nutshell.

Thijs Berkelder, ABN AMRO ODDO BHF. For meeting your minimum guidance, what kind of tonnage is needed there in terms of sales?

We didn't disclose that.

No, we

don't give a number.

No. If we give a number, I would say it's probably about 3/4 of the order book.

Yeah. 2/3 to 3/4 of the

The order book excluding the exclusive contract?

Correct. Yep.

Okay.

Yep. Okay.

Will the exclusive clients prepay or not? Is that clear?

No, we can't say anything about that. Yeah.

A lot happening in the world right now. What in your view is Middle East impact, meaning for you, and related to that energy prices now spiking?

You're missing the Haliade now, what kind of impact can we expect from energy prices on your P&L in '26?

Let's start with the market first,

yeah?

I think what we see, and you've seen also I guess the news on nuclear power plants in Europe, for example, is that the drive and the determination to speed up the energy independency in Europe is only increasing because of this. In our view, that means that everything that's available is needed to reach that point, meaning that I think we're actually supportive of the initiatives now being taken on nuclear power.

We're very much supportive on the North Sea Summit Declaration. What we clearly see, and that's where the industry actively needs to help and in joining forces in Europe with the public domain, is that our politicians for decades have not been thinking or been used on working on mechanisms that actually work against free trade, global free trade.

Now they have to actually protect markets and they're really struggling with how to do that. That's where we, Sif, but also as a branch, are taking very active initiatives to help them out in order to achieve that.

Because that's the biggest concern we have in this whole thing: that the time needed to turn all the ambitions into action could take too long for the industry to work on. Then on the energy price itself, I think for us it's minor.

Has always been minor also during Corona. We then saw some impact, you remember that discussion,

but

still it was not a showstopper.

Because we've moved to a large part of our energy usage to electricity with induction heating, for example. That is our biggest exposure.

Gas is a relatively small portion of our cost base. Then

last comment, the Haliade is predominantly contributing to our CO2 footprint and not because it's cheaper, because it's not directly going into our substation. It's going into the grid and we take it out from the grid, yeah.

Clear. Hornsea 3 is no longer potential for you?

It was already 1 year ago,

no potential. Yeah.

I agree. Now RWE is taking over Norfolk and won UK Round 7.

I would say with a clear preference to have the job done by SeAH in the UK, probably from a UK government perspective. On the Hornsea 3 the UK already needed Haizea, a second supplier.

Have talks already started there and yeah, that's a real competitive battle, because all your competitors also need volumes.

Normally we don't disclose on projects specifically, but what I can tell you is RWE is a customer from Sif. We will start producing or are producing, started production actually on Kaskasi, on OranjeWind, for RWE.

We are in very good talks with them both on commercial side and on the project side. We are definitely also looking at ways to continue our business when it comes to AR7, UK projects in general, like we always have been active on the UK projects.

Even if the SeAH factory is fully up and running, they simply cannot deliver the demand for AR7 from that site alone.

Looking at your expected factory utilization, is such order still possible for '27?

Maybe, but you never know. Remember the

If your exclusive client really shifts to second half '27, do you then still have capacity for

AR7 normally speaking is '28 and onwards.

Yeah.

Normally speaking. Yeah.

There's a marshaling site being developed in the port of Rotterdam where you

Daur? It's called.

Daur?

That's how it's called. Daur project.

You are interested to

We are one of the interested parties in part of that site. Yeah.

That's known.

Yeah. That will be then really your initiative or in a JV structure

or Too early to mention, Thijs. Yeah.

We're following that very closely. Please bear in mind that we have at the moment 85 hectares available there, which partly, 20 hectares, is served with factory.

We do already today have possibilities for marshaling logistics.

Maybe for now finally, your view on next-generation offshore wind turbine sizes. Mingyang is busy, factory in Scotland probably mega size.

They're all busy.

Probably is a good word. Let's put it this way: all the tenders we see going in well into the end of this decade are all based on the 15-megawatt platform from Vestas or Siemens Gamesa.

The overall consensus in the industry is that we should maybe for the coming decade, 10 years, stick to this standard in order to reach the level of industrialization and profitability for the whole supply chain and rollout of megawatts. That's purely

from a European perspective,

yeah. Also, you remember probably the German project where Mingyang was the preferred turbine that has switched to Siemens in the meantime.

I mentioned what I mentioned before for a reason: that there is a very strong push and action, especially in Brussels and member states, to now really protect the European supply chain. Question is: how quick can they do it?

In that sense, UK is seen as China. It's not Europe.

Jeremy Kincaid from Van Lanschot Kempen. First question on your order book: over the quarter, it went down by the same amount of kilotons that you produced, but obviously you've added this extra 40-kiloton project, and then obviously the 200 kiloton got scoped down to 190, I think.

Were there any other projects which got scoped down? Or is my

It's not a scoped down, as we have to deal with remeasurements and the designs change, can become a bit more or less. The 190 probably will not be 190.

It will be more or it will be a bit less, but it will be in the range of 190. We had an internal debate, to be honest, to be very open, if we should leave the 200 in or go to the 190.

Both numbers can be true. Okay.

Then

is there still something that I'm missing there? Because you've added 40 kilotons with this new projects.

Is this

The numbers don't add up in your calculation.

Yeah. Okay.

We have to crunch

I have to crunch. I can't give you an answer off the top of my head.

I'll come back to you on that exactly what the deviation is.

How many tons are you missing?

30, yeah. Okay.

Then on the now 190-kiloton project, can you provide a bit of color around what the developers need to reach FID? What are they looking for?

I can only repeat, I think, what I just mentioned in general terms. Why do we see this dip in the market today?

That is because there's a certain unbalance between power takeoff, power price, grid congestion, and CapEx price increases. The latter part is not the issue, because that's in our hands, where we have to deal with as a supply chain.

It has to do with the other elements and how to find a solution there is really up to the developer and the country involved.

Sure. Then the last one for me: in a scenario where that 190-kiloton project doesn't happen in 2027, do you think you can take enough steps so that you won't breach any covenants in 2027?

Good question. I can't say yes or no, because it really just depends on what are the implications of that project then shifting?

How far does it shift? What is the next project?

As I mentioned earlier, we're looking at multiple scenarios on what if, what if, what if? What does it mean from a cost base?

What does it mean from a liquidity base? What does it mean from a covenant base?

That's an ongoing analysis. I can't tell you we'll be fine on the covenants, I can't tell you we'll breach them.

We'll need to see, and particularly on how long is that period.

What you probably can say, Boudewijn, is that we are in a very proactive and good dialogue with all stakeholders involved in this to, how to say, go through whatever scenario we have. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Correct. Everybody from current lenders, other, let's say, interested parties on our balance sheet, everybody is aware of the situation.

They're aware of the market. Very constructive dialogue.

It's not a surprise to anybody that we're in these discussions and we're looking at these scenarios.

Luuk van

Beek, Degroof Petercam. Question on your remarks about the Chinese competition.

The market in China still it looks like they are going along with their plans on electricity and offshore wind in quite substantial gigawatt numbers. Are they entering, are they more aggressive?

How should we read this statement in terms of what has changed versus, let's say, one, two years ago?

Bit of deep dive into that. What we've seen happening is that three years ago or so, they were all fully focusing on the Chinese market.

Then the Chinese market saw a slowdown on one side, they had to go far further offshore, cost of installation were increasing, issues with fishermen, whatever. Even in China that happens.

They slowed down a little bit the rollout. The other thing what they saw happening was the massive ambition increase in Europe happening and the challenges at that time in the industry to have sufficient supplies to develop all these projects.

That's why we built this new factory, for example, based on those demands at that time. Then the Chinese entrepreneurial drive started kicking in.

They actually started building European or the rest of the world dedicated factories for that specific export market. Coming back to your point now, in China there is a supply chain for the Chinese market that is different from the factories delivering outside China.

That has to do with quality, safety requirements that the non-Chinese market is requiring for their products. Even though the Chinese market is ramping up again, and that basically has nothing to do with the competition coming in from China for the rest of the world.

Is that a clear answer? Yeah?

The other question I have is on what you said about maybe filling some gaps with projects. From my understanding, obviously you know what's happening in the market, but all monopiles are specifically designed.

The detailed designs should be

known and there. Then you need some preparation, ramp up your internal design departments and so on to prepare for any new project that would arrive at one point.

How should we see the timeline in these steps?

Very quickly. Maybe a good example from the past: 2020, we had this famous Vineyard Wind order that we booked.

We celebrated for 3 weeks, and then the whole thing went belly up. That left us with a 5-month empty production slot that we I think announced early mid-2019 at that time, 2020 happened.

Then we managed to fill that in, I think, three, two months' time with an opportunity from Japan, in that case: Akita Noshiro, you remember. Both of you.

You remember. That when you can act really quickly when a project that has been placed with a colleague of ours, but for whatever reason is not materializing there, that we can take over as long as the design indeed is known.

Because making it ready for fabrication and ordering the steel is then the bottleneck, but that's a matter of months only. Even a month, if need be.

Then it comes to monopiles. In that respect, I think your point is very valid, because the example I'm just mentioning is showing that we actually can do it and have done it in the past, that the horizon to decide on this can be very short to the gap you're facing, and that the opportunities are happening today as well.

We've talked about Hornsea 3, we talked about Norfolk as one. There have been some other examples in the market that have been shifting around.

This is a dynamic, project-driven market, and again we were spoiled in the last few years with very long order books because of the dynamics at that time in the market. These dynamics that we are facing today are not new and not exceptional.

We're ready for that.

Philip Vegter from Kepler. A few follow-ups.

The exceptional items: I see that they've continued to rise actually this year. What is driving this, and what's to expect for 2026 there?

The second question I have is, in terms of the European monopile capacity as a whole, can you indicate how much gigawatt it can roughly accommodate, the current capacity that's available? Just as an idea, especially towards the build-out, of course, towards 2030, how much more do we need to invest or not in it?

Then the last one I have is still on the level playing field that you discussed. Can you just give a little bit more details on where are we exactly with the current status?

I remember last time you sent a letter to the European Commission, it was accepted, but how far are we now? Because usually indeed these processes take time.

What would be a best-case scenario that you could see some measures being implemented?

That's three questions. Three

questions.

I'll try and keep it short. Basically, it purely has to do with the ramp-up of the plant, which started already late '24.

You see already in '24 quite a few exceptional items between adjusted and reported EBITDA. That continued into 2025 with the decision we took in the mid-year we ramped up our external support, we spent more time first of all training and working with staff.

We incurred a lot of costs around that. Then as we continued on the stabilization, we did a lot of overtime work, we did a lot of weekend work also with maintenance, but also to just make sure we continue in production to keep up with the requirements from our customers.

In the period between Christmas and New Year's, we did work that we hadn't anticipated. Everything that's related to the ramp-up and additional work is classified as kind of exceptional to be between adjusted and reported EBITDA.

Our expectation there: the question right now is the reason for implementing this was to say, look, we differentiate between normal costs and costs really related to ramp-up, really exceptional above what should be normal operating costs. The decision we need to make in 2026 is: are these costs still exceptional or are they just part of how are we going to operate our plant with such a full order book in 2026, for example?

Does working in the weekends become normal and no longer exceptional? That's why I can't say, do we expect that level to continue this year or will that change?

We as management need to decide, what is our philosophy around these exceptional costs and whether they've become embedded costs or whether we still consider them exceptional, and how we see those coming down as the production kind of normalizes from this ramp-up or stabilization phase.

If the plant is fully ramped up by Q2, you would actually expect theoretically that it goes to zero, right?

In a normalized situation you would, with the order book we have. Again, talking about the decisions we make: whether we extend projects, whether we try and execute them as quickly as possible, we can still take decisions on doing weekend work or not.

What do we do during the holiday period? Do we hire extra people to work shifts where our normal staff are on summer holidays?

It's all those kind of decisions which are pretty expensive decisions,

and

are always focused around output, delivery, and timing: when do we want to and when do we need to deliver our order book?

Regardless, they will be much lower.

Over time, they will be lower. Yes.

It's not that binary that we say 30 June, we've hit a certain target and these costs are gone. It's definitely not binary.

All intention is to bring them down.

The intention is to bring them down.

Yeah.

You

have to have a good reason to not to.

To not to.

Exactly.

Yeah. Then

on the European supply chain, and I think I've communicated this also in a LinkedIn post a few weeks back: the European supply chain is up to the task of 15 gigawatts a year. That depends, of course, on how many turbines you need for that.

Assume the 15 gigawatt, that's 1,000 foundations. Not all of them will be monopiles, but 80% for sure.

Some of them will be jackets, maybe some jackets need to come from Asia, I don't know, but from the monopile part of that, definitely the European supply chain is up to the task. As said before, we as an industry invested €2 billion, and I include UK in this, in monopile capacity in Germany, in Denmark, in Spain, in the UK, in the Netherlands, in Belgium, don't forget Smulders in this respect, they also have capacity in that.

We're up to the task. The message again that I also like to bring across here is: we did our bit as an industry, now it's up to the governments and the developers to actually live up to their performance and order stuff.

As simple as that. That's on the supply chain.

On the level playing field, that all focuses on steel. As monopiles are made of steel.

You need plates to make monopiles. If the Chinese steel manufacturers offer these plates at very, very low prices, up to 50% of the European market, dumping, these Chinese plates are facing import duties up to now in the new rules, 82% by heart.

That is and that brings those plates on par with the non-subsidized European steel manufacturers. However, if you bend that steel plate into a circle and weld them together and build a section or a monopile out of it, that steel is not facing any import duties.

That's where the thing goes wrong.

They can and

that outperforms, to say financially, the cost of transport. The thing that's happening now is that steel is protected again with new import duties and there is a commitment from Brussels that in the first evaluation of this new ruling, they will consider semi-finished and finished products for businesses like ours.

That is not confirmed, that's why it's not an official statement that we can make, but the intention there is to do it. The debate now is when to do it: will it be in 6 months' time or 2 years' time?

Normally the cycle is 2 years, every 2 years they evaluate. There's a strong push to do it in 6 months.

If they are then able to do it in the correct way, we have a level playing field situation. We are not afraid, and then we say: you're welcome to compete.

Please come, because that makes that's healthy. Our industry, we don't ask for protection.

We don't ask for industry politics or so, because that is only increasing the price. The only thing we ask is a level playing field in steel.

I've been in Berlin together with our steel producer, also because they are of course also seeing this as a very delicate issue. They are investing €5.5 billion now in electric arc furnace, and may see their complete business floating away because of steel imports of complete monopiles out of China.

We are joining forces there as an industry also, visiting Berlin, visiting The Hague, wherever is needed to bring this message across.

May I just ask one follow-up: how much would the duties have to be to get it to a level playing field, in your rough numbers of range? If you're talking about 80% for the plates and the

No, that's not fair. I think you talk about numbers like it is double-digit, in the 20% to

40% range.

Remember there's also a little bit lesser known impact of CBAM, which will also play a role in any imports coming outside of Europe. That's also going to play a role in this equation anyway.

CBAM is more one: who's going to pay for it, what is the impact? That's a little bit lesser known how that's going to play out over time.

Couple of follow-up questions. Thijs Berkelder again, ABN AMRO ODDO BHF.

I still have questions on your ramp-up, because the snow, the ski holiday, etc., but you said 5-6 monopiles per week in H1 '26?

End of H1. At the end of H1,

okay. Not in H1, but

No, because that order did not start yet, we couldn't.

Okay. Then

the question could be, Thijs, how come that it can go to 5-6? That has to do with this famous design, the standard design.

The reference design that we always communicate was four a week, TP-less, 2,500 tons each. The project that we're now have started building is a traditional monopile, not TP-less, traditional monopile, a bit shorter, big diameters, by the way.

That gives us possibility to build 5

to 6. How much weekend work, holiday work is then needed in H1?

Let's say that the principle that we want to work towards is going back to 24/5 with weekends as a buffer for preparing for the next week, finishing something from the previous week, doing maintenance, doing technical works. We never have had the ambition to do 24/7 production.

It's 24/5 plus some spillover in the weekend when it gets fair.

Can I add to

that?

I think what we have to bear in mind here is the fact that we faced in '25 a delay of nine months because of the setbacks in the ramp-up. We squeezed the whole order book into the end of '25, '26, and a bit in '27.

Since we want to deliver on time, I think it's fair to say that in H1 we'll need weekend work in order to live up to our promises to the customer.

Yeah.

You can put that in your Excel sheet. Yeah.

Great. Then, coming back on Asia more in general: we're talking only about Chinese, but CS Wind acquired Bladt, Titan is building factory in Germany, Sumitomo bought into EEW, SeAH of course has built factory in the UK.

It already is an Asian industry, no longer European industry. How about your Asian connections,

GS Entec?

Can we expect more work there and or more cooperation, partnership with GS Entec?

In the means of ownership?

Maybe.

That's more a question for our shareholders, I think. No, yes, there have been Asian partners and parties investing in in in in Europe.

We are a Dutch listed company, they can share buy shares as they want. We have a very solid and and and how to say, realistic main shareholder in in in our company that has this company has had this company for 25 years.

That's it.

Then Dajin is going for a Hong Kong IPO and reading some analyst reports there, they claim that Dajin can conquer 40% of the European market. If your next job from February 1 next year would be leading Dajin into European offshore wind, what would be the trick to avoid

That's quite a few assumptions there.

What is logical from Dajin's perspective to go around our new European legislation?

I think that's a question for Dajin's management, to be honest. I think it comes back to the point that I just mentioned: and what we discussed about what Dajin has invested in.

They invested heavily in a rest of the world offshore factory: not only monopiles, but also jackets and substations and floating and vessels to transport them. They're doing a great job there to conquer the world.

We're saying we are up to that task, because we believe, and have reasons to be convinced on that, that our production facility and abilities that we can offer to the market when it comes to design, weights, cost leadership are up to the task to compete with Dajin. We don't see them as a threat at all, as long as the steel is offered at a level playing field condition.

I think it's very healthy to say that we believe in our own strength and also the right things to do in order to maintain the right level of competition in the European market, and not let it dominate by players like Dajin. Again, we welcome them very much as a professional, strong competitor, as long as it's based on level playing field.

Martijn den Drijver, ODDO BHF. A bit puzzled about how EBITDA will develop in '26, because on one hand you say we go from ramping up to making the organization, the production more efficient, etc.

That means building up production through the year. On the other hand, you said, yeah, we have some delivery dates whereby we need to manufacture in H1.

More or less, could you share what your thoughts are about the EBITDA delivery during the year? Or H1, H2 will be similar or H1 higher than H2 or?

No, all we can really say about EBITDA, to answer your last part of the question, is the guidance we've given for the full year of at least €135 million. Yes, we have some delivery milestones with customers that we're working towards both in H1 and in H2.

Those we are working towards and we're managing those with our customers. Q3

actually.

Sorry? Q3

actually. Q3.

It's the first half, second half of the year. That's why, even though, to the point that was made at the beginning, we were a bit delayed in the beginning of the year, but those dates still stand.

We're working towards that. What I can say is it doesn't mean that things shift up further to the right.

We compress that period a bit, but we still plan to deliver. On a full-year basis that we expect that to result in at least €135 million EBITDA.

You're not going to give some guidance about if H1 or H2 will be bigger than the other one or?

No.

Okay. Then secondly, what about your advance payments?

Because this year you will mainly produce from those parties who have provided you money up front. How would that develop during this year?

That's a significant portion of the working capital. So €144 million of that is contract liabilities which are current.

That is really all payments that we've already received. They're called advance payments, they're called contract liabilities, but it's because we try and match the cash flows with when we order steel, pay for steel, pay our subcontractors, pay for things.

It's not that we've received the money, but we necessarily only going to spend all of the money this year. There is a mismatch in timing, which means it's a current liability.

It's all related to that project. That's going to run off during the course of this year.

Yeah.

If you make an EBITDA of €100 million, is that fair to estimate?

Yeah.

Okay. Then lastly, you always had the intention of paying back the perpetual before year-end 2025.

According to me, it's still there.

It is. Correct.

We had intentions.

That's just prudence. That is because the outlook for '27 and '28 remains uncertain, and obviously after that as well.

As Fred mentioned, we're very confident in the longer-term outlook. We think it's more important to manage our liquidity in a prudent way than to deleverage from an unsecured perpetual bond that we are under no obligation to repay.

It's an expensive tool.

That depends on how you look at it. You could say it's expensive debt, you could say it's cheap equity.

Thanks.

We have Pepijn now in the meeting, our new COO. What was the biggest eye-opener for you in your starting period in comparing what's happening at Sif versus VDL?

To be honest, what is the match? That's how it started.

Then we started talking and I was involved in what's going on at Sif, and then you see a lot of parallels. Maybe I can best say it: if you look at automotive, it's really repetitive manufacturing.

If you look at the really state-of-the-art, I would say excellent concept in Maasvlakte, then that's far away from a traditional job shop. That's really comparable with a repetitive manufacturing site.

That's a challenge to get that up and running, because everything is connected. It's basically a bufferless process, very efficient if you are in a good flow, but challenging to get it in that flow.

I think that's where I can bring my experience to help make step-by-step that to the optimum.

Your view on the Roermond site then?

The Roermond site has another dynamic. It runs more in parallel smaller projects.

That looks more like traditional job shop and it's way more flexible also in handle let's say issues in your process and stuff, and you have a lot more flexibility.

They are a good pair certainly.

Yeah.

Come to your next question.

I'm upgrading to outperform. Follow-up question on Roermond: I think it's now decided that the area is being protected from the water?

Yes.

Will that lead to hiccups on your site or when will that happen?

No. Yet, of course, yes, the quayside will be unavailable for a certain period of time, but that's being done in good cooperation with the Port of Rotterdam in a period where we said, okay, then we don't need to do any load-outs, then they can close the quayside and upgrade the foundations.

We took care of that in our planning.

We took care of that in our planning.

Because this year already some work will start

by

the

Yeah. Okay.

Took a while, but we're there.

Quite a

project.

Just one follow-up for me on cash flow in the fourth quarter. It looked quite strong, and I think I might get these numbers wrong, but I think €25 million operating and net cash of 15.

Obviously you're not receiving that much cash from the Ecowende project, because that's prepaid. Does that mean it all relates to Empire Wind, or was there actually some prepayments from Baltic in 2025?

Yeah. End of 2025, what you see, I have it open in front of me as well, I'm looking at my computer, we saw an increase in trade payables as well and an increase in cash.

That's really just timing of inflows from these customers for projects we're working on. It's a combination of Borssele, OranjeWind, Baltic, Ecowende.

Empire was already out of the books. Yeah.

Just coming back to your earlier question on the order book, I just realized and I should have answered the question straightaway: those pin pile orders are not actually in the order book for '25. With pin piles, we only put them in the order book when we sign the contracts.

We don't treat them the same as the monopiles. They'll come into the '26 order book, because we only signed those contracts in January.

Yes.

I just wanted to double-check before I said that, but that was

yeah.

Because obviously with monopiles, we have preferred and then exclusive and then contracted, we already show those earlier. With pin piles, we don't do the same.

Thanks.

Any questions online or not?

No.

No? Okay.

Any questions from this side? No more?

As usual, very good and intense dialogue.

That's

appreciated a lot. Thank you.

Then I officially close this meeting. Thank you for your attention and time to come here and dive into Sif.

Then we'll see each other in end of July, because we will do this earlier now this year, the presentation of the first half year numbers '26. Then we have Q1, of course, [unclear].

Sorry?

On Thursday.

Super Thursday.

Super Thursday.

We'll do it with our avatars. Good luck.

Take care. Q1 is the first touch point, I guess,

release of

the press release. Thank you very much.

We close the meeting.

Thank you.

Thanks, everyone.