MAGNORA DATA CENTER ASA

MAGNORA DATA CENTER ASA

12.28
NOK
-0.92
(-6.97%)
-0.23EPS
1.23BMarket Cap
Dec 02Next Earn

Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptAugust 26, 2026

Erik Sneve

Today's first quarterly public presentation, our half-year 2026 report. Highlights from first half and subsequent events: We have multiple customer dialogues on two sales-ready projects.

We've signed a few letter of intents regarding their interest. We also have very good relationship with a few vendors, which is helpful.

The Storspeed data center upgrade is developing according to plan, and we've formed a Metro Edge development portfolio in a joint venture with Blix Group, who operates two data centers in Oslo. We're also exceptionally happy about securing building permit, land, and a grid connection agreement and a letter of intent for more power and district heating in less than 8 months.

This is evidence of our operating model from renewable projects over the last few years and what we can achieve in a very short time when we go for the right opportunities. Our financial capacity has grown quite considerably, and we're very happy with the IPO.

We had substantial growth, and the IPO was very successful in June on the Euronext Growth in Oslo, and we're now the first listed pure-play data center stock in Europe. We raised 650 million, backed by leading Nordic and international mutual and pension funds, almost 30 who participated in the private placement ahead of the IPO.

Currently, portfolio 650 MW. We have a number of potential sites and ongoing dialogues with new projects, very attractive.

We hope to close in the short- to mid-term future. It might be a new market than we're presently in now.

Very attractive opportunities. Let's go through our business model.

We're an asset-light developer. We develop powered land.

For large projects, site evaluation is very important, project management, execution phase. We have subject matter experts across different topics there, very important on having that in-house so you know what type of project it is.

We also have relationships with EPC vendors, which is also good, but this is the place where we hand over the project to our customers. That's a much more capital-intensive phase, and others do that.

Regarding portfolio development, it's very important when you operate in this business to have access to capital. Access to capital is important because even secure land options, you need to be able to pay for grid deposits, guarantee for grid connection agreements.

They are much higher than small companies and startups can handle, and that's one reason we went IPO. You need speed in execution, the ability to do multiple smaller projects at the same time to create value, and you also need flexibility in your value chain and your business model to be able to grasp the right opportunity.

With a strong balance sheet, we have some flexibility in timing and monetization. We want to sell to the right customer at the right time.

If we see project that fail, we stop the projects, not immediately, but we can do that when we have a good portfolio. De-risking a project, very important to handle all these processes, in particular the grid connection agreement, concept design, building permit, noise, height, all these issues that are important for the locals.

We work closely with the municipalities, the mayor's office, incubators, and we try to be a good friend and respect local traditions and local needs. A little market update.

I'm sure most of you have seen this multiple times. It's been growing very, very quickly from the invention of ChatGPT in 2022, and the market has increased fivefold in 2026 over these last 4 years.

The ability to provide powered land in Europe is lagging the market demand. The Nordics have very good conditions for data center businesses because population density, share of renewable power is high, a cool climate, very advanced fiber network, good latency to key centers in Europe, and high adoption of cloud and AI.

The Nordic offers among the greenest energy in Europe, and the prices are quite stable and attractive compared with many other markets in Europe. Vacancy rates in continental Europe is dropping at all-time low, and you see that installed capacity increase in the Nordic markets, also in Italy and Iberia, but we're present in the Nordics and in Italy.

Sold out in Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin. Here you see the portfolio distribution at end of June 30th.

These are net numbers to Magnora Data Center. We have two sellable projects, and we have projects in the consenting stage and in early stage.

I think most of our large projects in Norway now have been approved as mature for Norwegian grid operator, we've had good advancements there as well. We have good progress in Italy as well regarding grid agreements, I think we come up with some news there in not too distant future, and we're looking to grow in all these markets.

Selected project portfolio highlights: We've increased our stake in [Hämeenlinna?] project, and the transaction was closed yesterday.

We were offered to buy more shares in that project in June, and we thought this could be a very interesting opportunity for us, we closed the transaction and negotiated in the summer months, and happy to own 100% of the project. We have good momentum in Italy, four projects in the Milan area, individually small, but Milan commands a great premium to even the Nordic markets, very interesting.

Then we're working on a development platform together with Blix in the Oslo area, and we'll come with more news there, I think. We've strengthened the collaboration.

We have very high origination activity, and we expect to announce new projects, new milestones in second half, and also new large projects and potentially also sales or other value-enhancing elements for our business. Just to go quickly over the Finnish project: Phase 1 is planned to have 120 MW.

Second phase, we plan to go up to 250 MW. The lot is 150,000 square meter, and servers have become much more dense, and we have a very good cooperation with the local utilities and also the municipality, who's very supportive of new growth business, and we think this can be a very interesting campus over time.

In less than 8 months, we were able to secure the land and mature the project, very proud of the team we have. The work we're doing could not have happened in a better way, because we have a fantastic board in both Magnora and Magnora Data Center.

Lars Edin is the former founder of EcoDataCenter in Sweden and CEO, and Jean-François Bourque is CTO in GreenScale, former worked in Amazon Web Services and OpenAI and for Microsoft, they know the marketplace really, really well. It's very fruitful for our team to discuss project opportunities with them from time to time.

We also have a great board in Adele and Wendy and Lars Erik and Hilde, who worked on various energy and data center projects over the last year, this makes us very competitive. John Hamilton took over for Torstein Sanness in May, and John has been with the Magnora board for 8 years, and we're very pleased to have him as our chairman in the group.

Priorities going forward is originate more. We are going to grow the portfolio substantially.

We have a very high tempo. We've recruited more people to the data center business.

We work on de-risking the portfolio. De-risking means more value, and we think we can have project sales within the next 6 to 9 months, and maybe before, but we're going to go for the right partner and the right customer for Magnora Data Center.

Very good interest for Nordic projects for the time being. The financials: For the quarter, net loss of 14.6 million in Q2 and 6.1 in Q1, I think within the guided costs from the IPO.

We have not done any M&A of size in the quarter, but that was also budgeted in the forecast. We really love the greenfield origination model, and we're going to stick to that and do some selective M&A as we mentioned in our IPO presentation.

The cash holding is around 630 at the end of the quarter, we're very well financed. We had discussions with banks who like to provide credit facility if needed, but very solid cash based on our cost structure and operating level currently.

With that, I would like to thank everyone for participating in the IPO. It was a very exciting process.

We have gained a lot of attention in the market from industry players, and we have very good discussions regarding new land opportunities, new municipality-owned land, clients, people who want to work for us, and the future looks very bright for our powered land business and our edge business going forward. If you have any questions, feel free to send them to us when you have them.

We wish all a great day, and thank you very much for the support.