Jenny Sandström
Good afternoon, and welcome to Orrön Energy's Capital Markets Day. Today, we will be joined by our CEO, Daniel Fitzgerald, CFO, Espen Hennie, and Commercial Director, Axel Wikner, who will present the 2025 results and the latest strategy of Orrön Energy.
We will finish the presentation with a Q&A session, please feel free to send across questions as you go along, and we will collect and go through them at the end. With that, I would like to hand over to Daniel Fitzgerald to kick off this presentation.
Daniel Fitzgerald
Thank you, Jenny, and welcome to all of those joining here and online for our Capital Markets update and Q4 results. This is now our fourth time we're doing this for the Capital Markets update, and we'll be able to share our results in Q4 and for the full year 2025, and then a little bit more insight into the business as we move forward into 2026.
I'll be joined today by Axel Wikner, who'll run through the greenfield development, which is a growing part of our business and an exciting part this year as we look into seeing some more recurring revenues from the project development side in Germany and the UK. I'll also be joined by Espen, who'll cover the financials for today.
In terms of looking at our overall business, I think from a high-level perspective, it is quite a simple business and strategy to understand. We have 380 MW of producing assets in the Nordics, we have a large-scale development pipeline, and we're fully funded for growth.
When I look deeper than that, it gets a little bit more complex as to how we're operating in a really evolving energy landscape. As we move more and more into renewable penetration in each market in which we operate, we have to evolve.
We have to change the ways we operate. We trade power, sell power, and balance our energy systems.
That's something that I'm really proud of the team in 2025 for building that flexibility into our operating domain, and we'll touch on that a little bit in the presentation. That part of our business is the core part that's the cash-generating arm today.
It's delivering long-term steady revenues into the business and underpins the finance facility that we use to fund some more of our equity and growth capital across our business. That really is an important part.
Excited to say that 2026 is already looking a little bit more positive than what we've seen over the last one or two years, with strong pricing in the Nordics, unfortunately some cold weather, as some of you have mentioned today, but on the business side, it gives us a lot of revenues already year-to-date compared to what we've seen in the last one or two years. When I move into the large-scale development pipeline, we started this business in 2023 and signed our first projects and opportunities, and the second half of last year, we started delivering revenues out of that from Germany.
Really happy with what the teams have built, and this is going to be a core part of our business that starts to emerge with recurring cash flows and we'll start to build a bit more scale across that over the coming years. Axel will go into a bit more detail on that pipeline, but I'm really proud of what the teams have been able to achieve and the start of what is going to be a recurring set of revenues and real value creation coming out of that part of the business.
Then Espen's role is to ensure we remain fully funded, to make sure that we have opportunities to grow. Although we have seen a slower period in 2024 and '25 in terms of M&A, pleased to see that we're seeing a lot more transactions coming to market this year.
I think buyers and sellers are coming closer together in terms of expectations, and we're starting to see more M&A coming forward. Really important that we have that funding line behind us to go and grow this business.
I don't believe we should exist in the same size and scale if we look forward two or three years. We need to be much bigger.
We need a stronger level of recurring cash flows and some more legs to stand on in terms of value creation. That funding set allows us to do that from within our own means.
If we take a step back into 2025 and look at the highlights for the year, there's no doubt that 2025 was a challenging year for all renewable entities in the Nordics. We saw continued low and volatile pricing, we've seen higher balancing costs coming through the year, and that's changing the way in which we operate our business.
We've seen relatively weak pricing through 2025, below the LCOE of new wind coming on stream, and that's impacting the investment decisions across the sector. For us, we delivered 839 GWh of production in the year, impacted by weather on one hand and some of the price curtailment on the other.
Our revenues, we achieved €34 million of revenues at €36 per MWh achieved price, which is lower than where any of the price forecasters are putting forward their views on the market long-term, and significantly lower than where we see futures pricing already in 2026. That led to a slightly negative EBITDA of €2 million, noting that we had €7 million still of ongoing costs linked to the Sudan case.
That's down to almost half of that level at €4 million this year, and we expect to see the conclusion of that case towards the end of this year, which will significantly lift the revenues of the company if nothing else changes from 2025. Net debt of €89 million, and importantly, at the end of last year, we realized our first sales from our greenfield platform.
We'll touch on that as we go through the presentation, but that really is the start of what we see as a recurring revenue stream. We realized €4 million of that at the end of last year, and we have €14 million of that still to come over this year and next, of which some has already been received early in this year.
As we look then forward to 2026, I see a much stronger start to the year. Year-to-date already, we've seen system price in January of around €100 a MWh, achieved price for us around €80 a MWh of that, significantly north of where we saw the entire year last year.
We have hedged a portion of volumes as the futures prices increased, and that gives us protection to the downside. If we just forecast that flat futures price into our long-term cash flows, we have a significantly different business to where we're trading today on the share price.
As I touched on with Sudan, it is really a pivotal year for the company with Sudan. We're going to see the end of the trial in May, and then we're going to see a verdict, most likely late Q3 or Q4.
We'll know more once the trial concludes in the District Court. We'll know exactly when that verdict is going to be published.
What that means for us is our ongoing costs linked to Sudan are down to €4 million for this year, and as of the middle of this year, we will see that drop to very, very little cost. My view on the verdict has remained unchanged for many years, and now that we've heard all of the evidence in the case, I don't expect anything to come that would change that view.
We will reach a full acquittal at the end of the year. Importantly for us, I think the trading in the share today is mostly through the retail arm of the market, and we have some institutions still in there, but there's a range of institutions who are waiting until we see the end of this case.
As we go into the latter part of the year, I think for us anyway, delivering on the production volumes, delivering on a stronger Nordic price, seeing the recurring revenues coming out of the greenfield business and the end of the Sudan trial, it really opens up a new phase for the company as we exit the year. New institutional owners in the share, the equity comes back on the table as an option to use to grow this company accretively, and there's so many more tools with a much stronger platform behind us.
I really see 2026 as an important formative year for the company, where we put some of the old legacy issues behind us and then really see the recurring revenues coming out of the greenfield business and operating business. A very short recap on our Nordic operations and overview.
We have 1,000 GWh of production spread primarily across SE3, SE4, and Finland in some of the higher-priced regions, and we tend to take a premium to the system price because of that location. We have a range of assets that have grid connections secured today, that have land positions secured.
In our view, that asset base should be perpetual in its lifetime. We should be able to repower, extend lives.
We should be able to add combined batteries and operational sites on the same grid connection. That work is ongoing day to day in the Nordics.
That's coupled with a greenfield portfolio of around 1 GW. Today, we're seeing a lot of value in the flexibility space.
As I look at this asset base and renewables, we should be producing renewables as close to a baseload generator as we possibly can. We need to add storage.
We need to add flexibility. I'm proud of what the operating teams in the Nordics have been able to do through the course of '24 and '25 in expanding that flexibility across our business.
Today, there's limited value in some of the new build solar and wind across the Nordics, but that's going to change over time. We see with the increase in flexibility, we're going to see value coming back into that part of the sector.
We really need to continue to build that foundation for the future. The last pillar in the Nordics is on the M&A side, and we have acquired 500 GWh since the inception of the company.
A little bit quieter in 2025, but I see deals coming back into the market at accretive levels this year. Consolidation is really important across the sector.
Now there's a number of players of our size and scale where it makes sense to combine. We're seeing that with Aneao, who have stepped into a range of transactions.
We've seen some of that, our public peers, stepping off the market. It is getting to a smaller space, but there is consolidation still to do on the operating side.
With the financing behind us, I see us moving more and more in that space this year. Stepping into the power generation side of the business, which really is the core cash-generating arm of the company, we delivered 839 GWh of production, and you can see the seasonality on the left-hand side of the graph here, where we produce more in the winter months, in stronger pricing, and a little bit less in the summer months.
Importantly, as we look over to the right-hand side, we've seen 2 years of quite difficult conditions in the Nordics. If I look at 2025 alone, we curtailed around 200 and 240 GWh worth of production, either through poorer weather than average or through price curtailments.
That weak pricing, especially through the summer of last year, has led us to shut down production when prices have been below our variable cost of production. When we look at our asset base on a long-term average, we should be producing around 1,000 GWh is where the technical potential of this asset base is.
We've given guidance this year or a forecast this year of between 800 and 950 GWh, and that assumes we have 130 GWh worth of curtailment with some spread because of weather conditions. If I look at what's happened already year-to-date, we've had very little, if not no, price curtailment with the futures price as it is.
That's going to impact this production guidance, and we'll be able to share more as we go through the year based on how the weather conditions evolve and where we see the market pricing. Centering around that 1,000, if we look at the long-term potential of the company, we should be forecasting around that 1,000 level and then moving year to year depending on the market conditions.
Within our operating business, I touched on this a little bit before around how we should operate and how we should think about the power generation from our business. More and more today, we need to be flexible in how we produce our power and sell our power.
When it comes to pricing, we need to be price-dependent bidding. As prices are low or below our variable costs, we need to manage our production levels.
On the other side, we saw spiking balancing costs through 2025, and that's impacted our ability to earn strong revenues in those months. On some of our assets, we've implemented the ability to steer the output of our turbines and reduce our impact on balancing, and that also allows us to earn revenues from the ancillary markets on FCR-D up and down, on mFRR, and some of the balancing side.
When I look at a renewable asset in the future, we should have the ability to participate not only in the sale of energy, we should be participating in ancillary services, providing balancing services, and steering our output to manage our economics from that asset. The addition of batteries into that sector is really important, I think, as we move forwards, where we can take control of the revenue side of the equation and the cost side of the equation.
Again, I'm proud of what the teams have been able to do across our Nordic business in implementing the solutions we need and then operating and trading the power in the right way to maximize revenues, and that's going to make us more resilient as we move forward through the future. We've also focused on OPEX.
Where we've seen some increase in the underlying OPEX costs, we've also pulled costs out of the business through some of this. When I look at how we're touching and operating our asset base, that has evolved over the course of the last two years.
Now that we see stronger pricing this year, our ability to really squeeze more from the assets is going to be important going forwards. It gives us another edge in the M&A discussion to be able to add more flexibility into assets where they don't have that today.
I see this as core business for us. It's really important to maintain this, and even more important when we look at how renewables should behave in the market in the future.
I won't steal all of Axel's thunder on the greenfield development side, but it has been another fantastic year for greenfield development. Germany's really leading in this regard.
At the end of last year, we sold 300 MW of projects at an average price of around €55,000 per MW installed. We'll receive those proceeds in milestone payments between now and ready-to-build, and that total package is worth around €18 million.
In essence, if I multiply that through into the right-hand side of this slide, where we have around 6 GW of projects in Germany, a mix of solar and batteries, we have a fantastic pipeline that's now starting to come more often to market. As of the start of this year, we have just shy of 300 MW that's ready to move into the sales process.
We have an ongoing sales process now, which we should see more results from in either late Q1 or into Q2, and then I expect the rest of that 300 to hit the market. Behind that, we have another gigawatt that's going through the late-stage municipal discussions now and becomes the feeder funnel for what's coming in this greenfield pipeline.
If I look across Germany, we get pushed a lot from investors and analysts to give them a number in terms of what we're going to sell and when. I'm sure there'll be a few questions today.
If we look at what we did in 2025 for Germany, I think that's the minimum of what we should expect going forwards. The ability to sell around 300 MW a year is easily supportable by the pipeline and by what we have in quite late stages at similar multiples to what we've put forward.
The 18 million we expect to achieve over '26 and '27, obviously subject to hitting milestones, but that sort of magnitude then becomes an important recurring cash flow for our business. When I look at the UK, we've secured Gate 2 grid applications for around 3 GW of projects, split between data centers and solar.
When I look at the potential magnitude of the revenues from that, it becomes a game-changer for the company and material in terms of the market cap, and Axel will touch on that a little bit more in his slides. We should start to see some revenues from the UK later this year.
Putting all of that business together with a view on the overall cash flow of the business, on the left-hand side, you see the operating core of the business clean of any greenfield proceeds. Between €40 and €60 per MWh, we earn between €40 and €60 million of revenues from that part of the business on our long-term forecast.
In terms of converting to free cash flow, we see somewhere between 10 and 30 million of free cash flow out of that part of the business long term. If we look at a futures price this year of around €60 a MWh, we sit somewhere in the base case for this at around €50 per MWh achieved.
We're centering around that as of this year. If I look forwards at any of the price decks that we use to gauge the longer term of the business, and investors and banks use the same third-party ones, we're sitting at around that €60 per MWh system price across the board.
It really is a strong, long-term, recurring flat cash flow out of our producing assets. If I take just what we divested last year and assume that we're able to do that year on year, we're adding a very high EBITDA conversion on that business and a lot of recurring cash flow coming out that could double what we've put forward on this.
When I look at the market cap of the business today, it really is a fraction of where our value is, and we can earn our market cap in a very short space of time before we even touch any of the upsides in the UK business, the data center business, or the flexible battery side of the business in Germany. It really is a strong platform.
We've had two years of lower performance than we'd like in '24 and '25, and 2026 is starting in the right way. It needs no mention, but this is a sustainable business.
If I look at our ESG performance and our ESG rankings, we rank up there at the top of the industry in terms of sustainability, validated by Sustainalytics and ISS. We had no material incidents in 2025, we were carbon neutral across our Scope 1 and 2 emissions, and even of the Scope 1 emissions, we've seen a large reduction in performance based on 2025's numbers.
We are releasing for the first time some more detail around taxonomy alignment, and pleased to say that we rank very, very highly in terms of our investments on the taxonomy side and the taxonomy alignments. This really is a sustainable platform as we look at how we produce and how we operate our business.
Then stepping forward into 2026 and what we expect from this year, we expect between 800 and 950 GWh of production, and that range, we've delivered within that range for the last two years. If anything, based on year-to-date performance, it's probably a little bit conservative when we look at the potential of the assets given the pricing we've seen.
In that range, we also have production curtailment based on low pricing to the same level of what we saw last year. We will see and guide the market as we go through the year on how the evolution of weather conditions and curtailment looks.
In terms of our cost base, very similar in a large regard to last year, we expect around €19 million of OPEX, in line with what we've delivered last year, and G&A expenditure of €8 million. We saved around €1 million of G&A costs through the course of last year, and we're sustaining those savings as we go forwards, which has been really important in the low-price environments that we have seen.
Really importantly, the Sudan legal costs is dropping by €3 million down to €4 million, and as of end of this year, we forecast no ongoing Sudan legal costs based on a positive outcome from the District Courts. Our capital expenditure is €11 million, €1 million less than last year.
I expect this capital expenditure to be fully funded out of revenues from greenfield, and those we haven't forecast in any of our cash flows for this year, and Espen will share a little bit more detail on the underlying cash generation of the business. With that, I'll pass over to Axel for a review of the greenfield development, and then I'll come back at the end for a few concluding remarks.
Axel Wikner
Thank you. 2025 marked a step change in maturity, scale, and opportunity for our greenfield development business.
Our multi-gigawatt platform across UK, Germany, and France delivered its first divestments of 310 MW during the year. This strong track record is the result of the outstanding development teams we've established throughout these three countries.
We have all the competences we need to be successful in the short, medium, and long term, and we cover everything from GIS, land acquisition, permitting, and even into construction competences. On the back of this strong performance, we've been able to move from originating opportunity into capitalizing on that opportunity.
Starting with a look at 2025 and the performance from Germany in that year, we divested a total of 310 MW for up to €18 million in total consideration. These divestments were split between two transactions.
The first transaction was a single-asset agri-PV project signed in July, total consideration of €4 million, of which €2 million were paid at closing, also in July, and €2 million contingent on approval of the zoning plan and Solar Package 1 or equivalent legislation in Germany. The second transaction was a portfolio transaction signed in December for three agri-PV projects.
Total consideration for that second transaction was up to €14 million, and under the milestone structure, we will have received 40% of the total consideration as the projects reach ready to permit, or RTP, and we will receive 60% of the total consideration as these projects reach ready to build, or RTB. We expect all three projects to reach RTP this year and RTB next year, subject to favorable municipal approvals and grid reservations.
Year-to-date, we have already received €1.6 million for the first project of 93 MW. These divestments are of course important from a revenue and cash flow perspective, but they're also an important validation of our business model, and they show that there's a deep and competitive buyer universe for our projects.
You can also use these transactions as a proxy to estimate the value of our broader pipeline, which comes after these first divestments. We have seen a bit of a shift in the market from single project divestments into more portfolio-type transactions, and we will continue to stay close to the pulse on that and remain flexible in our approach to capitalize value.
Looking ahead at 2026, we now have an advanced pipeline, which enables this recurring revenue element. This is the first time since inception for this business where we have the combination of scale and maturity, and it offers us very interesting opportunities to crystallize value.
We have a total pipeline of 6 GW. It's spread roughly 1/3 on solar and 2/3 on battery projects.
Out of the solar portion, we have 1.3 GW of agri-PV projects with at least land reserved and indication of grid availability. Out of those 1.3 GW, we have 280 MW where we have already received the municipal approvals, and in that category of projects, we also have the 90 MW which have reached RTP and where we have an ongoing sales process.
I'm very conscious there's a lot of numbers here, but I still want to stick with this 280 number for a little bit longer. If we go back just one year from today at the Capital Markets Day last year, the megawatts in that category was zero.
I think that gives a good indication of the scale and maturity we have today compared to just one year back, and it's also a good way of looking ahead what you can expect from 2026 and beyond. The combination of scale and maturity supports this view that we will now get recurring revenues from this part of the business.
In addition to the solar projects, we have a multi-gigawatt battery pipeline, where 900 MW have also secured municipal approvals. These are large-scale, transmission-connected projects, and we're in close contact with the transmission system operator, and we expect grid offers for these projects late this year or early next year.
Once we have the grid offers, we're ready to go to market with these projects. To conclude, Germany remains a core engine of value creation for us, both in the near and medium term.
The combination of scale and maturity and our flexible approach to value creation means that we're well-positioned for a strong 2026. Moving to the UK, we've been able to secure a successful outcome of the UK grid reform.
We have a total capacity of 2.9 GW of projects now at RTP with both land and grid secured. We expect to receive the final connection details in the second half of 2026.
We have started exploring divestment options, in particular on the solar side, but we're also recognizing the fact that we may want to wait until triggering those divestments until we have the final connection details to maximize the value out of those projects. Looking at the solar side, it's a total capacity of 1.8 GW.
You will see the capacity split per the three projects listed in the presentation. One project in Devon, two projects just north of London.
We have completed the pre-permit work for all these projects, and we're ready to either divest or run into permitting. On the data center side, we've secured 1.1 GW of capacity, and we've done so as data center projects have moved from being IT projects into power projects.
That's a change that has been triggered by the radical increase in power consumption of these data centers. Just a few years back, a big data center would be 5 or maybe 10 MW.
Today, you can easily see several hundred megawatts of capacity on these data centers or even gigawatt scale. That means that the power side, where we are very, very confident and well-placed to deliver, becomes more and more important.
Same thing here, two data centers are just north of London, and one is in East Midlands. We also have the optionality to offer the ultimate data center operator private wire options for solar and battery projects as a value add.
We're not looking to operate these projects, it's the similar or the same strategy as we have with our wider development platform, where we're looking to divest before large capital commitments. In addition to these six projects, three solar projects, three data center projects, we have a multi-gigawatt pipeline of additional solar and battery projects with land secured and well-positioned for future grid application windows as and when the capacity limits change.
Overall, we're in a good position in the UK with a strong portfolio coming out of the grid reform, and we do expect some value recognition from the fact that grid connections, in particular for solar, are now scarce following the capacity limitations imposed by the UK regulator. To conclude, we see that our model works, it's repeatable, and it's scalable as we've been moving from first sales to recurring revenues.
Our initial divestments of 310 MW validate our business model, and we have 90 MW in addition in an ongoing sales process. After that, we have a large pipeline of 3 GW of near-term solar opportunities across Germany and the UK, which we will take to market in the coming period.
As I've touched upon, these divestments are important from a monetary perspective, but they also validate the quality of the projects. We see that we've, through external validation as part of the first project sales, have developed these projects best in class.
Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, we now have up to €14 million in contracted revenues from prior divestments, and our development teams are now focused on delivering to unlock those revenues. We expect multiple additional project divestments annually going forward, and the combination of our large-scale pipeline as well as track record from divestments signed to date makes us confident that we can deliver a strong return on capital in this part of the business.
To conclude, we have moved from investment mode to value realization mode, and with the business being validated with scale and maturity, we're now well-positioned to crystallize value near-term and achieve annual recurring revenues going forward. With that, I'll hand over to Espen.
Thank you.
Espen Hennie
Thank you, Axel. Good afternoon, everyone.
We'll go through the Q4 financial performance, also touch upon the outlook for '26. Before I kick off, I just want to sort of repeat and emphasize what my colleagues have said here before me, that it's been a very, very strong start to the year 2026.
We are now seeing power prices at levels we haven't observed since 2022, very solid momentum within the greenfield business on the back of our first divestments, which we announced last year, as you heard Axel go through just now. Lastly, as we all know, next quarter, or in three months' time, the trial will end in the Sudan legal case, and we expect a verdict during second half.
Lots of things to be excited about for the coming quarters. If we start then with some financial highlights for the fourth quarter of '25, power generation was 226 GWh during the quarter, impacted by low wind speeds throughout the quarter, but on the other hand, achieved price was significantly stronger than the preceding quarter, and also higher on a year-over-year comparison.
This translated into quarterly revenues of €11 million during Q4, which includes €2 million of revenues from project sales, and a corresponding EBITDA of €3 million during Q4. Important to remember that in that €3 million of EBITDA in Q4, we do include €2 million of Sudan legal costs, and as from second half of this year, we don't expect those costs to occur going forward.
Our strong balance sheet and financial resilience is also highlighted here, ended the year with a net debt position of €89 million compared to a total debt facility of €170 million, which provides then more than €80 million of available liquidity to fund both our planned activities and also support future growth initiatives. Then a quick look at some key financial metrics for Q4 and also the preceding quarters going back to the same quarter in 2024.
If we start with revenues, you can see there was a significant uptick compared to the previous quarter, explained by both higher volumes and stronger pricing, and also year over year, if you adjust for the revenues from project sales, we achieved revenues in line with what we had in Q4 '24. The lower volumes in Q4 of '25 was fully offset then by a stronger achieved price.
You can see the same pattern also in our EBITDA, with a significant improvement quarter-over-quarter and an in-line performance year-over-year when you adjust for the project sale revenues. A quick look at our achieved price during 2025 for the full year.
The average system price was €40 per MWh in the Nordic region, whereas the average spot price for our portfolio was €46. That's a quite healthy premium of 15% due to the favorable location of our assets, with the majority being in SE3 and SE4 in Sweden, which typically then enjoys a premium pricing compared to the Nordic average system price.
For the full year, our other revenues and hedging impact was sort of in combination a wash, and then we deduct the capture price discount, which came in at 22% for 2025 to then end up at an achieved price of €36 per MWh for 2025. Our achieved price, especially on a quarterly basis, is made up of quite a few moving parts, which can be hard to predict and can be quite volatile quarter-over-quarter.
If we take a step back and look at the most important factors that determine our achieved price relative to the system price on a more sort of longer-term outlook, it is what we have listed on the slide here, then we need to focus on our portfolio's premium to the system price, and it is the capture price discount, which is namely the difference between the baseload price and the achieved price. If you start by the portfolio premium to the system price, as I said, we have enjoyed a very solid premium, and if you look at historic data, it was more than 20% in '24 and 15% in 2025.
Again, due to the favorable geographical location of our assets, it's fair to assume also a persistent premium going forward on average. When it comes to the capture price discount, we have seen an improvement from '24 to '25, a lower discount in '25, 22% for the full year on average.
We do expect for '26 and short to medium term, we expect the capture price discount to stay quite close to the level that we averaged on in '25, in the 20% to 25% range. What this means then is if you combine the portfolio premium and the capture price discount, on average, you should expect our achieved price for the full portfolio to be within 10% of the Nordic system price before any hedging impacts.
Obviously, this will fluctuate on a yearly basis. We'll have some years which can be even higher or lower, but as a long-term average, and keeping in mind that we have a couple of decades left of power generation and cash flow generation from our assets, I think this is a very reasonable assumption for achieved price outlook.
Then our cash flow during the quarter, and net debt and liquidity. We entered the quarter with a net debt of €83 million on a proportionate basis.
Our cash flow from operating activities during the quarter was neutral, but we had a negative working capital impact of €1.5 million. Then our cash flow from investing activities in Q4 was €3.9 million.
The majority of this, or the largest component, is investments into our greenfield projects, which is essentially short-cycled investments positioning us for future project sales. When you combine all of this, then we ended the quarter with a net debt position of €89 million.
If you shift the focus to the right-hand side of the slide here, you can see our total liquidity of more than €80 million, and what it's made up of. That's €16 million of our cash that we had at year-end '25, and then €66 million of still available, undrawn commitment under our revolving credit facility, which then sums up to more than €80 million, as I said, in available liquidity.
Tax balances, we like to sort of repeat and emphasize this regularly because it is a very material asset, especially relative to the size of the company. Due to several years of investments and expenditures, we have accumulated quite significant tax balances in Sweden and Finland.
If you combine the two countries, this is more than €500 million in total cash balances, which can offset then future revenues. The net effect for the company is then a potential cash saving in terms of reducing our future cash taxes to the tune of €100 million over the coming years.
Again, very material impact for the company, something which is important to keep in mind when looking at future cash conversion and cash flow projection for us. Then the cash flow outlook for 2026.
We have laid out three different scenarios here based on different achieved prices, with a low scenario of €35 per MWh average achieved price, then €45 and €55. Because if you compare to current prices, both achieved year-to-date and futures prices, where we have now around €60 per MWh system price average for 2026, it's obvious that at least the low end of this range looks maybe overly conservative as we speak.
Now we want to show a range of outcomes here. Also when it comes to volumes, we are here assuming the midpoint of our power generation outlook, which is then 875 GWh.
What we see is that based on these price decks, we expect revenues to end up between €30 and €50 million for the full year, with a corresponding EBITDA ranging between €1 and €18 million during '25 based on also the OPEX and G&A which we have guided on, and the legal costs. If we exclude the Sudan legal costs, and as I said before, and as Dan also mentioned, from second half of this year, we expect that to be a thing of the past, our corresponding EBITDA generation for this year is expected to end up between €5 and €22 million.
If you move to free cash flow pre-CAPEX, we expect that to end up somewhere between -€4 and €13 million for '25, with between breakeven and €17 million after excluding Sudan legal costs. Couple of things to note here.
In the figures you see in the bars, we are excluding any future revenues from greenfield sales, are only here reflecting what we have actually received year-to-date, which is the €1.6 million mentioned by Axel. We do target several project sales per year going forward at very healthy EBITDA margins, obviously that can have a very profound impact on the figures that you see on the slide here.
Secondly, if you look at the free cash flow pre-CAPEX outlook, you also roll in our 2026 CAPEX guidance of €11 million, and you compare it to our available liquidity of more than €80 million, it's obvious that we have ample headroom and a lot of firepower to support obviously our current business plans, but also to pursue a lot of accretive growth opportunities both organically and inorganically going forward. With that, I hand over back to Dan.
Daniel Fitzgerald
Thanks, Espen. Hopefully, we've given you a little bit more flavor for the business, and I'm just going to touch again on the very first slide I ran through.
Our business is quite simple. There's three distinct parts to it.
We have long-term cash generation out of assets that have a 30-plus year lifetime that we expect to run in perpetuity. We should be able to extend lifespans, repower these assets, build flexible generation if we're unable to extend the lifespan of a wind farm.
That operating asset base has cash flows that are going to be here for decades. We can see with a short-term price over the last two years, it's not been as favorable as we want it to be, but already year-to-date and looking forwards, if we forecast a reasonable long-term price in this asset base, we have strong recurring cash flow out of that operating arm of the business.
I see a lot of opportunity there to continue to grow that, to move harder in terms of M&A, to see more transactions coming to market, and then to bring flexibility into that asset space through batteries, moving ancillary services into how we operate and trading the power. That really is a core pillar of the company that I feel really really confident that we can extract a lot of value from that part of the business.
Axel's touched on the large-scale project portfolio. For three years, we've been investing into this portfolio.
End of last year, we're starting to see revenues coming out of it. The magnitude of what we can deliver out of that is material for us, material in terms of the market cap and material in terms of value for shareholders.
We have to keep going on this. We have to see that steady growth in Germany.
We have to see conversion into cash flow, and we have to see the UK delivering the same return from the sales of projects in that domain. When we see that, again, that's a massive step change for the company.
As Espen touched on, we remain fully funded. We have more than enough liquidity headroom to grow the business, more than enough opportunities in the M&A space, investments into our own portfolio or through life extension, repowering, and other opportunities to continue to grow.
As I look at 2026, I feel a lot more optimistic, and I see that reflected in the discussions I have with stakeholders, with investors and others around the sentiment in the renewable sector. We have seen some weaker sentiment in '24 and '25, and it feels like that tide is turning.
Feels like we're out of the bottom of the market, we're starting to see more transactions, and we're starting to see more value coming from the renewable space, and I think that'll translate into our performance going forwards as well. With that, I'll invite my colleagues back to the stage, and we'll move into Q&A.
Jenny Sandström
Thank you very much, Daniel, Axel, and Espen. We have a lot of good questions coming in online.
If you haven't sent across a question yet, but you're sitting and joining us online and you have a question, please send it across and we will go through it. I wanted to start with questions from the room, if there's anyone.
Caleb?
Thank you. Maybe I'll start off with a bit of a housekeeping question.
You guide for €19 million of operating expenses this year, but volume somewhere between 800 and 950. What production figure is that €19 million figure based on?
Espen Hennie
Yes, that's based on our midpoint of our outlook, also keeping in mind that a significant portion of our costs are fixed, although around 30% to 40% will vary with either volumes or price.
That's clear. Thank you.
The sort of increase in operating expenses year-over-year, is all of that due to balancing cost? Sort of as a follow-up to that, given that balancing costs are significantly higher in SE1 and SE2, and prices are sort of structurally lower, I guess, could you be looking to divest those assets, as you did with Lehtirova?
Daniel Fitzgerald
Maybe I'll take half of the question, and Espen can take the other half. Balancing costs, in 2025, we saw a change in the market from 1-hour settlement periods on balancing down to 15 minutes.
We've seen pricing spike through the summer of last year. What we have seen though in Q4 is those prices have come down to a more reasonable level.
We do see it elevated in some markets, Finland is a higher balancing price in general, as is, like you touched on, SE1 and SE2. With the active steering of our output on the turbines, we're actually making money out of some of the balancing side on mFRR today as opposed to spending it, and at the expense of some volumes.
I think that solution is now being implemented across the portfolio along with other ones. If I look at the portfolio we have on Gotland, it has a different wind pattern to the rest of SE3.
By taking it out of the SE3 portfolio and running balancing on its own, we're actually today making a profit out of balancing as opposed to a cost. Are we looking to divest?
Everything's for sale at the right price. Today the future price in SE2 is too low, I think, to divest assets.
It's more a buyer's market in SE2, and we should have the ability to manage and mitigate some of the balancing costs as we move forward. Anything to add?
Espen Hennie
Also when it comes to operating costs, our outlook for '26 is actually lower unit cost compared to actuals for '25. Just to repeat what Dan touched upon when it comes to balancing costs, it's been a positive sequential improvement now, and so Q4, significantly lower costs in terms of balancing across the board compared to the spikes that we saw around summer.
I think sort of what we have observed during Q4 is also what we are basing our '26 outlook on in terms of balancing costs.
That's clear. Thank you.
You talked a bit about sort of flexible production and the revenue potential from grid services. How should we think about the sort of part of your portfolio that currently at least lacks that capacity, like the older fleet of wind assets, for example?
Is that technically possible sort of add over time, or?
Daniel Fitzgerald
This part of the market, I'd say, only really started evolving in the last two years when we've seen high volatility and high balancing costs, for instance. We have the ability now on 80% of our portfolio, we can turn our production on and off depending on price.
Each month, we're adding more assets into the ancillary services domain. We took a decision through the summer of last year to shut down some of the production in SE2 given that the price was lower than the variable cost, and we'll do that on an asset-by-asset basis.
If I roll forward another 12 months, I expect our ability to manage these risks to be embedded in how we operate our assets, and it shouldn't be an issue going forwards. Then the question at the end of that is, can we achieve more revenues out of operating flexibly than we can out of just producing into the market?
What we've seen this year is we're able to do that. We should be on par, if not better, by putting all of these services into play.
Maybe two more questions. First, how should we think about the sort of contingent milestone payments?
Do you expect to receive 100% of the sort of €14 million from the projects you've already sold? For projects in '26, what sort of blend should we expect, both in terms of maturity and technology?
Daniel Fitzgerald
I'll give my view, then Axel can jump in. I expect to receive it all.
The reality is some milestones won't make it through. We have the ability to supplement those portfolios with potentially other projects.
In my mind, we should count on those revenues coming at some point in time, even if it's not exactly that project or that opportunity. The split is difficult to forecast given that it's milestone-based, but our view is it's somewhere evenly over that period we should start to receive the revenues.
Axel Wikner
I think I touched upon that a little bit in my presentation, where we do expect the three projects that is part of that sale to reach ready to permit this year, which means then 40% of the total payment this year and 60% next year. We don't take pricing risk on these projects, but we still sit with the development risk.
We need to reach the milestones to unlock those revenues. As Dan points out, even if a project were not to go forward, we have a buyer who wants this capacity, and we have an open dialogue where we will be able to add a new project to fill the gap that such project not moving forward leaves then.
I think it's a good assumption to assume roughly 40% this year and 60% next year.
Just a final question. I asked this last year as well, but on buybacks, as you sort of alluded to, you've had at least five buyouts in your space at significantly higher multiples than you're trading at.
If you just sort of compare the private valuation of your assets to your listed valuation, what's the reason you haven't sort of pulled the trigger on buybacks yet, and should we maybe assume it's related to financing or?
Daniel Fitzgerald
I think there's value in a buyback, for sure. I think if you look at analyst average pricing, if you look at where transactions are happening in the market, we should be trading significantly higher than where we are today.
I think those discussions very much alive. We have a mandate to buy back some of the shares.
As we look at capital going forwards, I think there's a lot of opportunities to grow as well. We have to trade the buyback, which on paper is a very, very good use of capital against the scale and size, which then we open ourselves to a much broader investor base, and we start to get more value in the stock.
It's not as though you can look at them purely in an Excel spreadsheet and say one is better than the other, because one of them will give us a lot more scale, size, and opportunity. One of them will effectively shrink the capital available to grow, and I think there's tension in that discussion.
At some price, it absolutely makes sense to do buybacks. That price is today, but then we're facing an opportunity to acquire assets at a fraction of where the public-to-private trades have been happening, which is very accretive on the stock as well.
We will come to market. I know we have a discussion every quarterly results and CMD on buybacks.
We will come to market when the conditions are right and the decision is made, but there's no decision today to buy back.
That's all for me. Thank you.
Jenny Sandström
Anyone else in the room have a question? Yes.
Yeah. First question is about, you talk about repowering or wind power.
How do you rank repowering of your current assets relative to maybe investing in batteries or other CAPEX outlays?
Daniel Fitzgerald
Each investment we have needs to be accretive on a per-share basis, is how we generally look at capital allocation. Wind investments have to compete with batteries, have to compete with some capital allocation to greenfield, if it's not accretive, we shouldn't do it.
We have a range of wind farms that will come to end of life in the coming years. We're looking at opportunities for life extension and repowering, but we also have the ability to turn some of those projects into battery investments where we use existing land and grid.
In terms of new wind in Sweden, I'd say it's difficult today to make some of those investment decisions, and we've seen that in limited amounts of new wind being built in Sweden. If I look at Chinese suppliers on turbines, we're a fraction of the CAPEX compared to a Western supplier, your investment threshold is much more easily met with some of those options, but with it you do take some risk being one of the first to deploy those kind of turbines.
I'd say we're not at investment decision today on repowering. We have a lot of opportunities where we're extending land leases, we're starting the permitting work, and last year we acquired a suite of the Näsudden asset from Vattenfall, which hasn't been repowered like the rest of Näsudden.
We have some candidates for some large-scale repowering. When it comes time, then it has to compete with the rest of the business.
Where I see shorter-term investments, I think, is in the battery and flexibility space this year. We need more and more assets in that domain.
Okay. Thank you.
Also, can you elaborate on the timeline in the UK for the data center build-out?
Axel Wikner
Yeah. On the data center side, we're right now moving into permitting on the first project, not yet on the other two.
We want to start with one of the three projects. It's a bit of a different market, where premiums are absolutely crazy if you can connect here and today, and then that premium goes down the further out you go.
Right now we're working with a sort of dual-track process where, first of all, we need the certainty from the grid connection, which we expect during the second half of this year, or absolute worst case, mid-January next year. We're looking at bridging solutions then between that expected connection date in the early 2030s and yeah, late 2020s.
Once we have that ready, then I think we have something we can go to market with. We need a little bit more time, I think, to develop those projects to a more mature state, but ultimately it can be very, very valuable for us.
Daniel Fitzgerald
I think that behind the meter, we didn't really explore too much today, but although the grid connection might be further down the line, we have options. On the rest of our portfolio, we have around 9 GW of solar that we put into the Gate 2 application.
We have a range of land positions sitting at Gate 1. You have the ability to build out a solar farm behind the meter to provide power to this.
In other sites, we have a gas connection close by, which allows power generation to come onto site. It's not only limited by the grid connection date.
There are some other options to power that site, and if I look at some of the hyperscaler assets, they want two or three sources of power to their site anyway. It may be that we can accelerate the coming-on-stream date by an element by providing behind the meter, and then evolving with the grid connection as it's available, but it's very early days still.
Okay. Understand.
Final question, the 280 MW, do you see any risk that these projects will not come through in the relatively near term?
Axel Wikner
The 280 MW?
Exactly.
Axel Wikner
I think the risk is very, very low because we have received that first municipal approval, the Aufstellungsbeschluss, and typically it's the same municipality who later takes the RTB decision. The risk is low from a development point of view.
That being said, it's development, we still need to get the projects to a stage where we can sell them. Risk is low.
Okay. Thank you.
Jenny Sandström
Thank you very much. We have another question here.
Thank you.
Thank you. Just one more question.
Can you maybe talk a little bit about risk of appeal for the Sudan case? The €4 million in legal case costs, is that sort of including a scenario where it gets appealed?
Daniel Fitzgerald
Appeal is something that's potentially on the table. I think, in our view, the evidence we've seen in the trial so far doesn't support anything that the prosecutor is putting forward.
Our view is that we will become acquitted in the long run, and I think the Swedish state has spent enough time and energy on this case to not take it further than that. Obviously, if we do see an appeal, then it potentially takes longer to resolve, but I think that verdict has a massive impact if and when we get that in our favor.
The costs are primarily for the District Court trial, to see the end of the District Court trial, and then we'll come back with a view on cost longer term should we be in that case. The appeals court is essentially a rerun of all of the evidence and witnesses we've heard in the District Court case, and we don't rehear those witnesses again, it is a much smaller operation than what we've seen so far.
Thank you.
Jenny Sandström
Thank you very much. Are there any further questions from the room?
No? We have a lot of good questions coming in online as well.
A lot of them are related to the greenfield pipeline. One question is around, to what extent are you already engaging in presale discussions on the UK pipeline prior to having the final grid details?
Axel Wikner
We've started some select discussions with hyperscalers and the likes, not only because we want to start preparing for a divestment, but also because we want to understand their detailed IT requirements on the projects. We know the power side really well, as I've mentioned, but the IT side, we need a little bit more meat on the bones for that, and therefore we've had a few select discussions.
Jenny Sandström
We also got a few questions here around timing for the grid details in the UK. Do you have a timeline for when you expect to have the grid connection dates, and also if you have a grid connection date post-2030, how does that affect your divestment timeline and valuation?
Axel Wikner
I think earlier is better. Everyone is screaming for grid access for data centers today.
We do expect our grid dates to be in the early 2030s, but we're not going to have the grid dates until we get the grid offers expected later this year.
Daniel Fitzgerald
With the behind-the-meter opportunities, it may be that that grid date is when we scale up the full project to its full capacity as opposed to when we start. There are some other options to accelerate on that
Axel Wikner
in
Daniel Fitzgerald
that regard.
Jenny Sandström
Then given the scarcity of power in the UK and specialized nature of AI, do you view your AI data center pipeline as more valuable than solar, or how do you look at that valuation?
Axel Wikner
We see some crazy valuations, I would say, in the market today. You see projects transacting at above £1 million per megawatt currently, and typically the earlier you can connect, the higher the value.
You also need to be close to the availability zones, which we are for at least two of our three projects. Then the further out you go, the lower the value is.
It's important to get that grid access locked in, and then work if it's more dated, to work on those bridging solutions so that we can get a premium in that size.
Jenny Sandström
What's the level of profitability that you expect from future sales? Is the level that you received now with the 76 MW project, what do you expect moving forward?
Axel Wikner
That's on the solar side then. I think we're not really guiding on a future view on developer premiums.
We have now executed the two transactions for four projects. I think the value has been fairly stable over that half-year time when we executed those two transactions.
We have an ongoing process with similar values in the market today, I think that's a fair assumption around that level.
Daniel Fitzgerald
If we look at the strategy on this business, we're selling at the earliest possible point we can sell the projects. As we look longer term, we wanted initially this business to be self-funding.
We want to see that return on capital early to ensure that the business continues to fund itself. As we move longer in time, we expect to hold some of these projects a little bit longer and receive a higher premium and a higher NPV on some of these assets.
This will evolve over time. We want to see validation of the business model.
The premiums we've seen, like Axel said, I think is representative of where the market is today for solar. As we move forwards, especially in Germany, we're seeing much higher valuations if you're selling projects at ready-to-build, and given our competence, we'd be more than happy to take that risk to ready-to-build.
However, we want to see the early value creation. Short-term you should expect, I think, that same multiple, but longer term we should be able to execute at a higher level.
Jenny Sandström
Are you planning on looking at data centers also in Germany?
Axel Wikner
I think we almost have to when we have that grid competence that we have. It's a little bit earlier, I would say, than in the UK, but it's something that we're actively looking at.
Jenny Sandström
Good. Then we have a few questions around the stock price.
Why has the stock price dropped, and what are you doing to address this?
Daniel Fitzgerald
We're doing the best we can to address it. I think if you look at the sector and for those that are in the market, small-cap stocks, if I step across the Nordic space, especially in Sweden, I think small-cap stocks over the last 12, 24 months have been hit especially hard, as has the renewable sector.
We can't fight against that phenomenon in and of ourselves. I think, like I said before, the market feels a lot more optimistic.
We're up 40% year-to-date on the stock on the back of some of the public-to-private transactions, some of the multiples in the market, some of the pricing we see year-to-date, we're already seeing a step change. In terms of what we're able to do to address that, I think cash generation is really key.
We're seeing more of that coming in this year's guidance and what we achieved last year. We're seeing Sudan costs coming down.
We're seeing stabilization on some of the savings we've made on G&A carrying forwards into future years. We're staying on top of that element and generating as much as we can out of the asset base while adding the flexibility.
I think greenfield is going to take a step change this year, where we're going to see repeatability on those revenues. That will roll into stock price, I think, once investors get the confidence that that is recurring.
Then finally, with the conclusion of the Sudan case, we're going to see a change on the back of that. There's a range of investors who can't hold our stock or don't want to hold our stock today with that risk.
I think once we get through the verdict and get to the back end of that, we are in a fundamentally different position at the end of this year compared to where we enter the year.
Jenny Sandström
Are you looking at listing the stocks on other markets for better liquidity, like the US market or anywhere else? Is that an option?
Daniel Fitzgerald
I think if you look across Europe, the Swedish exchange is one of the best in terms of liquidity. If you look at IPO volumes for the last period, Stockholm is the place to be for some of that liquidity.
We see a lot more liquidity in our stock than some of our peers and ex-peers now on the market, I really think there's a space for a Nordic champion across all of the price regions traded publicly in the Nordics that has a deeper and broader portfolio. Consolidation's something we need to look at.
We need to increase the value of the stock from a total market cap perspective, but I think Sweden, we're not looking at listing elsewhere at this stage. I think we need to stay where we are on Stockholm and go and deliver on this year's program, and then we can come back once we're through that to have a broader discussion.
Jenny Sandström
Yes, perfect. Then the final question, how are you planning to make a profit in the future?
Daniel Fitzgerald
I think I'll let our CFO take that one, but already year-to-date we're making significantly more than where we have over the last few years. The EBITDA margin on Axel's projects and the greenfield team's projects is a step change from where we've been in the past as well, but.
Espen Hennie
I think it's important to remember that for '25 as a whole, excluding Sudan legal case, we generated positive EBITDA. I think we've shown here today, in terms of outlook for '26, we expect quite significant improvement year-over-year in EBITDA and cash generation in '26 compared to '25, and that is also based on quite low volumes.
We have significant upside from also generating higher volumes, and then obviously, on top of that, greenfield project sales. I think sort of the path to significant profits is I think something we have tried to communicate quite well here today.
Daniel Fitzgerald
Although this is number four in terms of Capital Markets update, we are still quite junior as a company. We've been investing in the greenfield side, we're only just seeing the revenues.
We've been growing our business through M&A, I think we need to see more of that growth to get to a material size and scale as well. It's a mix of the underlying business is sound and generating good cash flows, and then we need to scale up and grow to really deliver the upside.
Jenny Sandström
Perfect. Thank you very much.
We have no further questions online, and if there are no further questions from the room, I want to thank all of you for joining us here today. Feel free to reach out in case you have any further questions.
We're happy to help. Thank you very much.
Daniel Fitzgerald
Thank you.
Espen Hennie
Thank you.
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