Cloudberry Clean Energy ASA

Cloudberry Clean Energy ASA

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Q1 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptMay 12, 2026

Anders Lenborg

Hi, and welcome to Cloudberry Clean Energy's first quarter presentation. My name is Anders Lenborg, I'm the CEO of Cloudberry, and I'm joined here today by Olav Ole-Kristofer Bragnes, our CFO.

We have prepared a presentation for you that we will go through shortly. Please also use the opportunity to ask questions, and we will try to answer as many of the questions as possible after the presentation.

The agenda today: I will start off with giving some highlights and an introduction to Cloudberry. Olav Ole-Kristofer will then take you through the numbers, and I will sum up with some comments on the market and price curves going forward.

Let's dive into the presentation. We are very pleased to see that we have increased both the revenue and EBITDA from the first quarter 2025 to first quarter 2026.

That's mainly due to a higher power price. We have a realized power price of 1 kroner per kilowatt-hour or approximately €100 per megawatt-hour.

That is historically a very high power price in the Nordics. That has in combination with the increased production given a very strong result for the first quarter 2026.

As you can see here on the right-hand side, we have also then increased the capacity, installed capacity, and including our projects under construction, we are closing in on 500 MW in total on production in our production portfolio. In addition to a strong quarter when it comes to the revenue and EBITDA, we have also continued to grow the platform, continued to grow Cloudberry with an entrance into Finland.

Very happy, we have followed Finland and the opportunities there over the last couple of years, but we have now entered into the Finnish market with acquiring 50% of the wind farm MLK. We will get back to that in more detail.

In addition to that, we have also entered into the powered land sector. We have started off with a project in Norway, but we are also looking at projects throughout the Nordics.

We will also go into that in more detail later in the presentation. Before going to the details and numbers, I want to give you an introduction to Cloudberry.

We have, over the years, developed a profitable independent power producer, a profitable IPP. As you can see here, we focus on the Nordics.

We have created a platform that covers the full life cycle of our projects from early phase greenfield development until they are in production, and we also have operation and management of our assets. This is according to our develop, own, and operate strategy.

We want to be able to both develop, but also to own the projects that we develop to secure a production portfolio yielding long-term cash flow to the company. As you can see here, we have now approximately 1.3 TWh in production, but we have also a backlog of projects.

The backlog is exclusive projects. We have projects that is permitted, and we have projects under construction.

Today, we are constructing a BESS project in Sweden, battery storage project in Sweden, and hydro power plants in Norway. We are in four different countries, covering four proven technologies.

We have hydropower, we have wind, we have solar, and BESS in our portfolio. All this giving Cloudberry a very important flexibility, we can always focus on where we see the best returns.

We have also managed to establish us in nine different price areas, giving us a very strong power price historically compared to the system price in the Nordics. As you can see, we have developed most of our projects in the south of Norway and Sweden, and also in Jylland in Denmark, and now entering Finland also this last quarter.

All in all, flexibility has been very important to stay profitable. We have seen that CapEx and regulations have affected us up through the years, and then we have always been able to focus where we see the best returns.

I think going forward, you will see just more of the same, that we will continue to stay focused, continue to stay Nordic and with proven technologies, and try to combine the different technologies to create a baseload profile, a production portfolio to optimize the production and also the profile throughout the year. Flexibility is key.

To be diversified is also key. As you can see here, we have started out with a small hydro portfolio in Norway 5, 6 years back and over the years developed this and entered into Sweden, to Denmark, and now Finland with other technologies.

Just if you look at the development from 2025 to 2026, it has been quite substantial with these new developments, hydro in Norway and entering into Finland in the last quarter. These are attractive assets.

We have also attractive M&A market. We see a lot of opportunities, and we are quite confident that we can continue this growth, continue to develop these assets both in-house, but also in the M&A market over the next year.

Approximately 90% of our portfolio is merchant, and we have secured some PPAs. We had a new PPA last quarter where we entered into a 2027 PPA in Denmark on approximately €85 per megawatt-hour.

This is also what we have focused on: develop a diversified portfolio and continue to grow it. That's also important over the next years to continue to grow the production portfolio.

I'm very happy to finally manage to be a cross-Nordic platform. As I said, we have been following Finland up through the last couple of years to see what's the right timing to enter the market, where can we find the right assets and projects for us to enter the market.

When we got the opportunity on MLK, and at a level below CapEx, we found that this is both the right timing and the right entry into Finland. We're also very happy that we are now partnering with Å Energi, that is owning the other 50% on MLK.

We have already started to look at developing the asset further with a BESS battery storage system in connection with the wind farm. We're also looking at other opportunities in Finland.

It's a natural development of us entering the Finnish market that we will also continue to grow the portfolio in Finland over the next couple of years. This is also a very natural development of the Cloudberry strategy and the Cloudberry competence.

We have, over the years, built an experienced team and a lot of experience with local stakeholder management, securing land, securing grid capacity. We have seen that this powered land market is quite attractive.

We have the competence in-house now, both on developing the projects, but also on the market and how the customers are looking at powered land opportunities. Over the last quarters, we have developed a portfolio.

We have started out in Norway, securing the first site, 160 MW site in just south of Oslo in NO2. We are continuing to develop other opportunities in Norway, and Denmark, and Sweden.

We're looking at the pipeline, I think, of around a gigawatt of opportunities, but it's just too early to say how much this will be. We see that this is attractive, and also it's attractive for some of the data center players to have a gateway to the Nordics and have a Nordic portfolio.

This is something we find very interesting, and we will continue to develop, and we will continue to also update the market when we have the next deadlines. Just a couple of comments on the strategy.

We continue to focus on being a profitable IPP. We continue to develop projects and acquire through M&A projects that are accretive.

We want to stay fully financed with a strong balance sheet. As you saw here in Finland, we have used our share, and that's a currency that is getting more and more popular, I will also think that this is one way to finance the opportunities also in the future.

We have cash, and we have a facility that we can use, but we think it's in a combination with the shares, this gives us a lot of flexibility. Also to continue to develop our platform, we have right-sized the platform last quarter, taking down our greenfield development capabilities, and now we have focused more on the M&A, short-term brownfield opportunities, and strengthened our team now on the M&A side and strategy side.

The strategy is pretty much the same as it has been earlier, but adding powered land to the mix. Of course, we are focusing on the ESG and safety.

We have zero incidents last quarter, and we are continuing to reporting and continuing to focus on the footprint and ESG focusing in Cloudberry. We are also very pleased to see that we get recognized by the banks on how we are performing on the ESG side.

With that, I think I will just finish off and give the word to Olav Ole-Kristofer, and he will take you through the numbers. Thank you.

Ole-Kristofer Bragnes

Thank you so much, Anders. My name is Olav Ole-Kristofer Bragnes.

I am the CFO of Cloudberry, and very happy to take you through the financial story of this quarter. We've had a very strong growth in our balance sheet since inception and the Cloudberry listing in in 2020.

We raised some equity over the years, and and that has enabled a lot of growth within the production volumes, the platform, situating Cloudberry as a strong Nordic IPP. We have, in turn, increased our asset base, our producing portfolio, creating long-term cash flow that yields growth within the project segments and and the remaining of the platform, but also done some capital recycling throughout the years to showcase the value of the platform that we have built and also realize development gains.

You see this all through the the balance sheet development through equity to the increase in total assets. We've also been very cautious with that throughout the years.

Capital discipline has been a foundation for growth. We've raised some equity, as mentioned, and now also started to utilize our share a bit for consolidation purposes and increasing our production base, which we believe is very important to have a sufficient size to to further capitalize on the on the platform and and the synergies within that.

Going into the beginning of Q1 '26, we see that we have increased the balance sheet size, as I've mentioned, year-over-year. This is predominantly from the transactions that we've done in the last 12 months.

For those of you who remember, we entered into new hydro platform with Swiss Life in Q3 where we injected all our hydro assets as contribution in kind into Forte Vannkraft at over 2 times book value, and also increased our ownership in Forte Energy Norway, the producing small-scale hydro platform we already owned with Swiss Life, but now up to above 50% where we now consolidate both assets, and then also then increased our hydro exposure. That is the majority of the growth, but also then the inclusion of MLK, the entry into Finland, as Anders talked about earlier in in Q1, which increases the assets, but also the total equity, where the vast majority of the of the transaction was settled in in Cloudberry shares, which is again, as Anders talked about, is a good currency to use to consolidate and get the scale effects of the Cloudberry platform within Cloudberry.

As mentioned, been cautious with that, but we also, from a risk management perspective, prioritized to hedge our interest rate exposure given that we're merchant exposed on the power price. We still have over 70% of our proportionate interest-bearing debt fixed at long-term agreements at around 4%.

That's that's important now in this volatile interest rate environment. Exiting Q1 with a strong cash position that enables growth, and we can continue to build the Cloudberry platform into what we believe is next.

On the P&L side, as I mentioned, it's the of course, the power sale that's the the backbone of the profitability within the Cloudberry platform, selling power at prevailing market price, but also capital recycling and development gains has been very important for the profitability in Cloudberry, especially evident in '22 to '24, where we've done, as mentioned, capital recycling, selling down hydro assets at at historically high levels, showcasing the value of the platform and asset appreciation that's been within the platform at over 2 times book values and realizing strong IRRs with some development gains for completing Hån, Sundby, Munkhyttan, the wind farms in SE3, but also some development activities within the hydro assets that we did divest, whereas the the gain is recorded within the commercial segment. Throughout the years, of course, increasing our our production volumes from 268 GWh in '22, and now reporting almost 800 GWh in '25, or or in LTM Q1 '26.

We have now a strong asset base of 1.3 TWh, including under construction, that yields long-term cash flow to to fund the platform going forward. Diving into to this quarter, we see we have strong growth year-over-year in both revenue and EBITDA at also increasing EBITDA margins.

We do show a strong realized power price that's driving this and slight increase in power volumes. I'll I'll come back to those two factors on on on the next slide when we go through the commercial segment.

I also wanted to just quickly highlight the the IFRS gain that we have now in in relation to the MLK transaction. When we when we acquired MLK, and this is completely the same as we've done for all transactions, just end result is a little bit different for this transaction, when we acquired MLK, this is a business combination, and then according to IFRS, you need to include MLK at fair market value.

Fair market value is not what you acquired it for, it's it's based on a market-based perspective, on weighted average cost of capital, updated power curves, and and so forth, it's a more technical approach. This is, as mentioned, like we've done for previous transactions, but combining this with the fact that we acquired these assets below book values, this has resulted in badwill over the through the purchase price allocation, and badwill you need to recognize through the P&L.

Same as we've done for other transactions, but then there has been some goodwill or other effects, which you do not have to take through the P&L. The badwill need to go through the P&L, and that results in a gain of 66 million, which is evident in the consolidated EBITDA or the proportionate revenue and hence the EBITDA.

Sum up, a more technical IFRS adjustment that we need to take in this quarter in combination with the acquisition. Looking into the commercial segment, this is also where the gain is recognized.

Stripping this out, we have a growth in in both revenue and EBITDA, and also increasing EBITDA margins within the segment. That's that's good to see.

We are realizing an average power price of 1 NOK per kilowatt-hour, which is one historical high power price for us in in the Nordics, and and a growth compared to Q1 '25 of 0.71 NOK per kilowatt-hour. We see here in this quarter that we have a power price that's much more close to the system price, whereas we have been for previous quarters much higher, and that has to do with our all the Nordic price regions have been at very high power prices over this quarter, including where we produced.

Relating this to the actual area prices when where we produced and when we produced, we see the capture price we achieve for this quarter is is very strong compared to previous estimates. On the other hand, we have production volumes which is which is lower.

There's been a lot less wind in the Nordics, especially in Norway and Sweden. Here you really start to see the diversification effects of of the Danish wind portfolio, because in Denmark there was a lot of wind.

That's the driver for the production for this quarter. It's it's good to see when we do have a little bit less production, the power price is a lot higher.

These these effects are a little bit more correlated. Also, I wanted to highlight that this is that it's obviously a prioritized for us to achieve higher revenues and not production volumes.

When power prices are are negative or or around zero, we do curtail our production volumes as we, of course, want to increase revenues and and not production. This will increase the achieved power price, and this will be more evident when we start to see, or if we see, more negative pricing towards the summer and so forth.

It's, of course, more important for us to increase revenue, and we're also now participating a lot more balancing markets, that we talk a little bit about in the quarterly report, that will be also a contributor to to revenue at volatile power prices or or low volatile power prices. Looking at the other segments, our project segment is more or less in line with the year last same quarter last year.

The project segment main profitability driver is realizing projects. We've done so in the past.

For this quarter, we are developing our projects further, but we do have some very interesting opportunities with the with the data center activities like Anders talked about earlier. We have BESS initiatives on our current assets, which we talked about last quarter, how that drives profitability, and also driving our backlog forward and working on our permitted projects is of importance, but you won't see it in the P&L until we actually realize some of these effects.

For instance, completing the the Duvhällen project is is an important development game that we're looking forward to see. Asset management side, we're very happy to see that we're realizing the improvement program that we talked about over the last quarters.

We have showcasing cost reduction and improved revenue in the same time, and that's driving profitability. EBITDA is up year-on-year, and now in the positive side, which is very good.

Of course, the main importance of asset management is not the EBITDA contribution, although it needs to be positive and increasing, it's it's all the effects and the synergies between the other segments and the expertise that that drives into our platform, ranging from increasing availability on our current assets to to networks, M&A opportunities, M&A capabilities, and so forth. Our corporate segment lastly is is more or less in line with the same quarter, actually a minor drop, which is, again, good to see.

Lastly, I wanted to highlight that we did in the last quarter initiate, or in the last quarterly report, initiated cost reduction program, predominantly in relation to a refocused development strategy, focusing more on late-stage development or development in combination with our current assets, much closer to a cash flow instead of creating a backlog in early-stage greenfield opportunities that we have done in the past. There's more on that in the last report.

We targeted about 30 million NOK in annual savings that would be evident throughout the year. We've already now completed all reduction in FTEs, around 20% reduction.

In combination with some overhead reduction, we are at around 25 million NOK in cost reduction now, and the remaining up to at least 30 million NOK will be increased reduction in operational expenditures and reduced dev expending compared to our initial estimates before we started to divert our project strategy. We are also evaluating more simplified reporting to reduce reporting costs, and that will be most evident in the in the third quarter report if we do any large adjustments, which is not subject to mandatory half-year reporting requirements.

That's all from me on the financial side, and I'll hand it all back over to Anders for market and summary before we divert over to Q&A. Thank you so much.

Anders Lenborg

Thank you, Olav Ole-Kristofer. As Olav Ole-Kristofer mentioned, we have delivered a strong quarter driven by higher power prices.

Here you see the power price historically, how Cloudberry has delivered on the achieved power price compared to the system price. Then you will see a hike here in the curve going forward.

For 2026, this is the forward power price curve. This is the forward power price curve in 2026, and then it's the Thema price curve from '27 and onwards.

You see here that we have had a spike here in the power prices in the next year due to that we put in the forward power price, and we haven't seen that this hike has continued in the forward pricing, but it's also an increase in power price in the Thema price curve. Then we can speculate if it's going to continue to have a higher forward price, or if it's going to be somewhere between what we see now on the forward price or the price curve from Thema.

What we see is a very strong demand for new renewable energy. We have, on top of the energy transition driven by the climate goals, the digital industry that has come into the Nordic market now for full.

Only Norway now, we have 21 new terawatt-hours of production and capacity been awarded to the digital industry over the last year, and we see the same also in the other Nordic countries. It's a very strong demand for more power, both from the traditional industry that is transforming its energy mix, but also to the new digital industry that we see emerge throughout the Nordics.

It's several drivers here, and if you look at the new projects coming in production, new permits, it is very low. It has been low throughout Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

I think it will take years before we see a higher supply from these projects because of the lag in new permits. A demand side staying strong, and even also building on new industry, and a supply side that is quite modest.

This is the picture how we see it, and our Thema, our partner on the price curves going forward. As we also talked about earlier, we have a new energy reality.

We have seen now that geopolitics is driving energy. Security of supply has become a great issue throughout Europe and also in the Nordics.

We see also a new interest for securing power and securing new projects. I think being in the Nordics, having the network and having the experience, we have a strong balance sheet, an attractive share.

This all gives us a perfect starting point for the next years, and that we can utilize the position we have and the knowledge to continue to grow the company both through in-house developed projects, but especially through now also M&A opportunities that we are currently seeing as attractive throughout the Nordics. As we say, we are perfectly positioned for the energy transition.

Thank you for listening, and I think we will now jump over to questions. Thank you for your time.

Ole-Kristofer Bragnes

Thank you, Anders. We've had two questions that I can start with.

One is related to buybacks, if we're evaluating buybacks at the current levels. We have done buybacks in the past.

That made a lot of sense to us then, although to be clear, this is a board matter that needs to be resolved through the board. How we see it is there's a lot of interesting growth potential outside of the Cloudberry share at the moment, but again, this needs to be run through the board if buybacks are evaluated.

Secondly, we had a question about BESS initiatives within our current portfolio. Sweden is the most close to where we can see some activity.

Of course, we are constructing an asset at Duvhällen, which is expected to be done at around Q3, but we see we could look at BESS initiatives in combination with our existing wind farm, with permitting could take as short as 6 to 9 months, and around 12 months, give or take, to construct a project. That could come a lot quicker than what a traditional wind project or hydro project could take from permit to COD.

That's all we had time for today, and the questions we received. Thank you so much for listening in.