PowerCell Sweden AB

PowerCell Sweden AB

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Q3 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptOctober 22, 2026

Operator

Welcome to PowerCell Q3 2026 report presentation. During the conference call, participants will be in listen-only mode.

At any time during the presentation, you can ask written questions using the form below. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers.

Please go ahead.

Richard Berkling

Good morning, and welcome. Today Anders and I will take you through the third quarter, the effects of the measures that we have initiated earlier this year, and the commercial development in our priority markets.

Our approach remains consistent. It is to manage PowerCell in this rather challenging market condition, protect our position, and then retain the capacity to capture larger opportunities.

Let me start with the quarter and our response to it. We initiated measures earlier this year, and it's now generating measurable effects for us.

Combined selling, administration, and R&D expenses has decreased with 25% in quarter three. Our measures are expected to lower our annual cost base even more by approximately 50 million SEK in 2027.

The reaction started earlier this year. Then the quarter, the numbers are not the ones that we wanted to report to you, but they are the numbers that we have prepared for.

Revenue declined 61%. That reflects a weak market, lower automotive royalties, and also deliveries that shifted from quarter three into quarter four with the PS190 ramp-up.

We have adapted our cost and commitments to this lower level of business during the year. In parallel, we have continued to sign orders.

Since June, customer activity has increased in both marine and power generation. We have signed now, recently, an MoU with Bosch to address the larger installation we see emerging in the power generation segment.

These developments are encouraging, but they are also too early to conclude that the broader market is improving, because we are operating in harsh market conditions and have been doing so for the whole year. For us, the balance between resilience and readiness has guided our decisions throughout the year and has served us well in this rather difficult market.

In our year-end report that we communicated in January, we explicitly prepared for a broad range of outcomes in 2026. We have managed PowerCell on that basis throughout the year.

We have been very, very cautious in protecting our financial position through cost, cash flow, and capital discipline. We also need to protect our strategic positioning by concentrating resources on marine and power generation, really focusing on the capabilities that can differentiate our offering and capture the volume that we actually see is out there.

We also protect our structural position by sizing the organization for current business while retaining the industrialized platforms and access to manufacturing capacity. This gives us resilience at the lower volume that we've been talking about, but still have the ability to respond when larger projects materialize.

Now I will hand over to Anders to walk us through the financial performance and position in more detail.

Anders Düring

Thank you, Richard. Starting with the Q3, I think it's obvious that, as reported, that we have had a decline in business.

It's also important to remember what Richard just mentioned about spillover effect into Q4. Looking into the sales level as an example on that one is that, provided the same level of royalty that we would expect and the business that's rolling into Q4, that we would have been close to twice the size of the sales in Q3.

Of course, that puts some expectations into Q4. This is important to have as a, let's say, understanding for the business, because delivering on larger projects, we have not that many large projects, but when they slip over a quarter, obviously that have immediate effect on the individual quarter, but rolling 12, you will see that that will level out.

I also think that one thing that's important for us at least to stress to the market is the cash flow situation. Looking into the cash flow or operating cash flow for the third quarter, we feel comfortable that this not only reflect the fact that we have stabilized the cash flow, but behind that is that we stabilized the cost structure and the cost that we have in the organization, and also been able to even out part of the deliveries that we are doing.

If we go into the accumulated numbers for the full year on next page, you'll see that the operating cash flow is -92. We dive directly into that number now.

You can also notice that if you go back 12 months and look into our operating cash flow, you notice that in the Q4 report '25, we had above 100. After that, we have had a negative Q1 that is close to the same level.

If you even out these things, we hover around 0 in operating cash flow in a very tough situation. That is a lot to do with the way that we have managed the company from that perspective over the last 12 months.

Other measures on this page, it's important, like Richard already stated, that the cost effects that is visible in the P&L are already visible to everyone. We, as Richard said, would look forward to see even further cost reduction moving in, particularly into 2027.

I think I will summarize with that and leave it back to you, Richard.

Richard Berkling

I think you have your schedule for...

Anders Düring

That's an important thing not to miss out on. The upcoming reporting dates, and I think they follow basically the same, let's say, pattern that we had previous years, with a Q4 report coming up in week six, and then the interim report for the first quarter approximately the same time as we had last year, followed closely by the AGM right after.

Richard Berkling

Good. Thank you, Anders.

Anders Düring

Thanks.

Richard Berkling

As Anders stated, there are two timing effects to take into account here and to understand them separately. During the ramp-up of our power generation production, we have seen delays in supply chain, secure deliveries that was supposed to generate revenue in quarter three is now rolling over to quarter four.

That is frustrating, but it's also an effect and a good description of the challenging market we are operating in. Our focus is now to complete those deliveries in quarter four and do that early.

Then automotive royalties follow a slightly different pattern. Deployment in China has been substantially below expectation, with delayed incentives holding back activity.

The whole industry was expecting growth in 2026 compared to 2025, but instead it became a declining market with up to 55%, 60%. Part of the royalty income that we're expecting is now going to roll over into 2027, and we're monitoring this quite closely, even though we are not addressing this market directly, but through our manufacturing and industrial partner, Bosch.

Then what we can control is how we have reacted, and we have adapted our plan to the lower contribution. We manage costs against this business that we have, and remain very cautious about timing of recovery.

Cost control and organizational measures become particularly important, and it's not just cost reduction, but also productivity improvements from new processes, new tools. We see a benefit from AI in our both engineering and aftermarket and production.

The organization remains an action readiness for the potential growth that we see out there. The cost reductions visible in Q3 are effects of the action initiated actually from the beginning of this year.

We will continue to have a strong cost control and rightsize the organization, both from a financial perspective, but also for the new potential growth that we see out there that we need to have a slightly different competence mix going forward. Further benefits will continue throughout 2026, and then in 2027, we are ready with a 50 million SEK cost reduction compared to 2025.

We have made deliberate choices about where to reduce spending, which capabilities to protect. Customer deliveries, our industrialized platforms, and system integration remain priorities.

These support business today, but it's also our ability to handle larger projects going forward. The same priorities determine where we put our people and development resources.

We need to have a strong focus right now on where we put activity and focus in the company. Then we also see an emerging business out there.

Marine remain the foundation of our business. We are prioritizing customer delivery, repeat business, which was very encouraging to see this year, and the application experience that we have built for the customers, especially now when we go into commissioning and startup.

In power generation, it's slightly different. We're building on the 190, PS190 platform, and our commercial progress is going to show some improvement going forward, the ability to address larger installations, and that is where the MoU together with Bosch is so important.

Our own resources concentrate on application expertise, integration software, and what we call energy orchestration, because when you build these large installations with 20, 40, 50, 100 megawatt, it is not just about selling a fuel cell, but it is to sell energy. It is to optimize the performance of technology in the customer operation.

That is an area where we have expanded our expertise and see that we have a very, very good opportunity to build value for the customer. The orders that we have secured show that the approach translates into customer business.

Once again, we are seeing small, encouraging signs of growth and demand, but it's still too early to say how it will play out in 2026 and 2027, we have a cautious outlook for 2027 as well. The progress we have seen in our priority markets are encouraging for us.

These examples show how we build the business around established platforms and adapt them to customer applications. The follow-on order from Torghatten and eCap demonstrate repeat business in marine using the MS-225 platform and the experience from the previous customer works.

In power generation, the ECL order provided a very valuable first megawatt multi-megawatt reference case for AI data centers, and that one followed the extended customer evaluation, and has generated a lot of application knowledge and practical experience to build on. The DLR order is also important although it was rather small, but it demonstrates the fuel-to-power capabilities.

That is important also going into power generation, because what we see now is a potential to scale is the fact that we can tap into natural gas as a resource. Natural gas reformed into hydrogen, blue hydrogen, has the potential to scale deployment of PEM fuel cells in a way that we haven't seen before in the market.

Within power generation, access to reliable power is increasingly a condition for customers to expand their business. We see that from data centers, but it's not just about power anymore.

Also other aspects like water, which is something that we produce with our fuel cell, has become a competitive advantage that the customer actively is asking for. If we then deep dive a little bit into the data center opportunity and what we see from the dialogues we have in the market, for the data center customer, the value starts with being able to bring computing capacity into operation.

Available power can determine when that happens, and we hear that it takes three, five, seven years to deploy a new data center. We hear that the bottleneck is power, but the bottleneck is also permitting and getting the environmental certification to put a data center into operation.

The PEM fuel cell local fuel to generation offers another route to where grid capacity is constrained. Our fuel cell operation also bring low noise, no local CO2, SOx, or NOx emission, which is really important.

Many of the hyperscalers in this industry has made very strong green commitments to the industry, which they have a difficulty to live up to, and they have to spend a lot of money buying CO2 credits instead. Then also water.

Previously, up until now, we had talked about water as being the only emission from our fuel cell. We are actually producing water, and water recirculation can potentially be a very, very important driver for PEM fuel cells to enter into this industry that so far has been dominated by the SOFC fuel cell technology.

These characteristics can help the site requirement, it can also be supporting in faster permits, but everything like permitting is, of course, subject to local requirements, but we see that this is becoming a very, very important value creator for us. Our module platform and access to established manufacturing capacity supports an expansion into this segment that has the potential to be larger than what we have seen in marine previously.

The PEM fuel cells from PowerCell also offer operational flexibility, the same installation can support both prime power, backup power, and peak shaving in the same drive collective, making it really efficient for the operator when installed. Deep diving into that one, the one installation and multiple power services, the PEM dynamic response is allowing an installation to provide both continuous power, but also have the capacity for backup and peak shaving.

That is really important, because the data centers are operating really high demands for redundancy and backup service. In this illustration, we see that the 50 megawatt installation will most likely be operating at 25 megawatt.

That means that they have 25 megawatt additional capacity for the peak shaving, for the backup power, which gives both a very optimal load point for the PEM fuel cell, which means that it can operate on really good conditions with good fuel efficiency and cost-effective, but with the same drive collective, you get backup power and peak shaving. That multiple power service or dynamic profile is something that the PEM fuel cell is bringing to the data center industry that they haven't seen before.

This is a very important part of the value that we create. Then also talking about the water.

If we have a 50 megawatt fuel cell installation running in a data center and the average load is half, 25 megawatt, that means that we produce more than 250 tons of fresh water per day, 250 tons of water, which is really valuable, because many of the data centers are located in areas where water is scarce resource. This can then be looped back either to the cooling loop of the data center to make that completely independent of external water, which is an issue for many of these when it comes to permitting.

Also, the excess water can be used for irrigation, it can be used for fire protection reservoirs. The asset of water production has been massively underestimated by us before and is now equally important to the power that we can produce.

These are illustrative configurations. Backup capacity, demand on the system, fuel supply, storage, and redundancy, all of this is part of the offering, and not just power, because speed to power can be solved in many different ways.

We can, with the PEM fuel cell and the offering we have, bring other additional values alongside just access to power. To deploy this at scale, reliable hydrogen is essential and has been the bottleneck previously.

We have worked quite hard on focusing on getting hydrogen and seeing how we can tap into natural gas as a resource. The hydrogen supply route determines which projects can move forward and at what economics.

In some locations, existing pipelines offer access to blue hydrogen infrastructure. In other, established reforming technologies from Linde, Topsoe, and Air Liquide can provide a route from natural gas to blue hydrogen with carbon capture, enabling access to hydrogen at lower cost than we have expected when we looked at this before.

In suitable US projects, indicative blue hydrogen production costs is lower than $2 per kilogram, and that can support really competitive economics, and also deployment at scale, because hydrogen is available in these areas. What can then change is whether or not you need to transport, store, and have a logistic chain.

What the customers are looking at right now is to establish power utilities and data centers around pipelines or build their own reforming station. PowerCell's contribution is to turn the industrial fuel cell platform into a solution that is suited for these customers, but we need to do that in partnerships with really strong players in the industry.

We do that together with Bosch, because they are our manufacturing partner, which is really important in when we talk to these customers that have larger demands than what we have been addressing previously. Our commercial foundation is the PS190 platform, and the application experience we have built through customers like ECL and others has shown really, really strong value creation.

The offering that we have is really competitive. We contribute with application expertise, integration capacity, optimization, and energy orchestration.

What you see there in the picture is the potential 3 megawatt container that we are launching to the market, where you will have between 16 and 20 PS190 systems installed inside. Anders criticized me for showing too many product pictures on the core component.

This is what the customer will use. This is what will create value at the customer site.

Our 40-foot container can generate 3 megawatt of power where our colleagues in the industry right now are operating between 1 and 1.2 megawatt. We have a massive energy density advantage at the moment together with Bosch, because we are based on industrial components that has been perfected and optimized for other segments like automotive, where cost and size is really, really critical.

For us, the collaboration with Bosch is also an opportunity to have a capital-efficient growth. We focus our investment and capabilities where we create value in the complete solution, and then we have the collaboration with Bosch, which we then yesterday strengthened in the MoU that we communicated to build on that value creation.

This is a non-binding MoU signed, but with the intention to complete the agreement in quarter four. We signed this yesterday to address the growing interest and demand that we see from data centers and power utilities.

The intended collaboration covers joint development and execution of installation of 50 megawatt and above in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Middle East. For the customer, this joint approach brings our application and integration expertise with the credibility of Bosch industry capabilities.

Both parties see this emerging potential in the market. PowerCell is granting additional technology license and the right for joint activities to Bosch, and we expect a revenue of around €5 million to be materialized in quarter four.

This supports the opportunity that we're pursuing, while our management priorities remain unchanged. We are still running PowerCell with a cautious outlook on the future, but this joint initiative is our most important factor to be able to act on the emerging business we see out there and the volumes that could come from power generation and data center.

If we then look at where we are right now and what we need to focus on is to continue to be disciplined today and still remain ready to grow. We need to manage PowerCell for the underlying market that we see out there today.

As I said when we started, these are not the numbers that I wanted to show you, but these are the numbers that we have prepared the company for. We have reduced costs, we have focused resources and retained the capabilities needed to deliver.

We have secured orders and deliveries. We are focusing on completing all deliveries in quarter four, and then also continue to work on cost optimization as they take effect in quarter four and into 2026.

We also see encouraging customer activity and the opportunities with larger scale deployments in power generation, but the timing remain uncertain. Our task is to be ready and secure and execute them while maintaining the discipline and the business that we have today.

I am proud of how our employees have handled this year, because it's been a very tough year for us. They have been working closely with our customers to complete deliveries, solve problems, and act on opportunities, because we have both, but also develop new business and new values inside PowerCell, innovation, new features, and new offerings.

We will continue to protect PowerCell's position, and we will build where customer demand supports growth. For us, the three areas to protect is to protect the financial position, the strategic position, and the structural position of PowerCell.

With that, we say thank you for now and open up for questions. Let's go to the question here.

Anders?

Anders Düring

Let me just finish reading here so I see...

Richard Berkling

It was a long question.

Anders Düring

It's a question about the cash situation. I think it's important to remember that as noted in the balance sheet, you will find that we have 18 million in cash.

However, we also have an unutilized check credit of 50. We believe that the combined 68 million of available cash at this point in time will carry us forward into the future with us managing the company.

As it comes to potential shareholder issue in the future, everyone knows that that's not for us in the management to answer about that. We feel comfortable at the level that we have, and as I addressed that in my short presentation before that we managed to level out the cash flow significantly compared to previous years and between quarters.

We feel at this point in time happy with the place where we are.

Richard Berkling

Then we have an additional question on the characteristics of customer request in power generation. Now we need to be careful, because we are not giving out forecast, but the dialogue that we have after announcing the ECL order in July, and then also addressing our offering in a more clear way, which you can see on our webpage, the interest on the market has really taken off, and we are now addressed by operators, data center manufacturers, and power utility suppliers.

PEM fuel cells was until now not part of that ecosystem. Not even SOFC fuel cells were part of that ecosystem two years ago.

The demand for new power is really driving new development, and when we see that, we also see that the customer understand that it's not just about power, it is about the other values as well. As we said, no local emissions of CO2, NOx, and SOx, which is important.

Particle emissions is in focus all over the world, because that creates a health hazard here and now, where CO2 is a bit more abstract, a long-term threat. NOx and SOx create massive issues for people, and also costs for society.

Then water, as I said. The whole installation and the value we create is different than just more power.

Then also understanding that the data center growth and demand is to me just an example of what society will look like, because you can translate the same drivers into resilience in society. We believe that a lot of the power that will be added to infrastructure going forward will be behind the meter, or what used to be called microgrids is now looking more and more to be macrogrids.

Power utilization, adding hydrogen as storage for green energy sources like wind and solar, we have been talking about it in the past. Now we see that deployed electrolyzer capacity is generating more available hydrogen, and the fuel cell can then be used to balance the energy system or provide energy when it's not sun or wind outside.

We see a data center as, we could call it a canary in the coal mine, as an example of where utilities in society might move. It's not that we say that data center is the only growth driver that we see out there, but right now it's the strongest one.

We also notice that the discussions we have, they're much more knowledgeable about PEM fuel cells than we ever expected, quite interesting. We have an follow-up question on this one.

"You signed a new agreement with Bosch for data centers. When do you expect this partnership to start bringing actual revenue?"

First and foremost, it was a non-binding memorandum of understanding. We are expecting to complete this in quarter four.

The partnership is building on what we have done in the past. We have been very clear and articulated that the combination of Bosch and PowerCell is quite strong in the industry.

Now we join forces more actively to address power generation and the larger installations. Since we don't make any forecasts, I cannot answer when it will start bringing actual revenue, but I can assure you that the combined strength of Bosch and PowerCell when we sit down with power generation customers is quite evident.

Hopefully, we can start showing more progress, actual progress, going forward, but we will come back to that when we have the actual orders. Until anything is signed, nothing is signed.

That is the only thing we can comment on. You have a question, Anders?

Anders Düring

There is one question about when the expectation is about break-even and how is that future looking like. I think you all know that we don't make forecasts, I will try to answer it in a way that will make you feel comfortable at least with being able to calculate that for yourself.

I think we've stressed at least over the last two years that we have a very, let's say, robust platform on what we stand from a cost standpoint with a high opportunity for leverage while we expand our sales. Now we have reduced that platform to make ourselves the opportunity to become profitable even sooner depending on the revenue levels.

If you backtrack the structure of the revenues, you will find that part of that is from our IP and royalties and part is that from projects that we deliver. With the combination and the margins on the two and the robust platform that we have that gives us a lot of leverage if we expand, you can all with an easy Excel chart figure out when we will break even on a operating profit level.

Then

Richard Berkling

also, we have been very clear this year that 2026 is more like 2024 and 2023, where '25 was the anomaly with rather stable revenue throughout the quarters. Volatility and uncertainty has been really strong this year.

That's why we made the preparation to focus on costs quite early, to optimize and bring down costs early in the year, which we see the effects on right now. On the other hand, we expected to see a better number this year.

As we said, we have the roll-over effects, we expected to see some improvement from quarter two. Now that spilled over into quarter four and might spill over into 2027 when it comes to the automotive royalties.

That's the reality we have to manage. The only thing we fully can control is our cost structure and our exposure to the liquidity.

Right now, that is still what is going to be focus for us. I'm not happy with the numbers that we present, but I am actually quite pleased with seeing what we do and how we manage this situation.

We have a question on the Bosch MoU in more detail. No, we are not going to disclose that right now because we haven't signed it yet.

We are still in discussion to complete it. It's a non-binding.

The primary value is to together approach the customers to make sure that we can be industrially credible when we start talking to customers with the volumes of 100, 200, 300 megawatt of power. That combination also between Bosch and PowerCell is very strong in the market, because PowerCell we have a unique speed and agility when it comes to solving problems and acting on customer opportunities, while at the same time Bosch, one of the most trusted and respected industrial entities in the world, that combination is extremely strong.

When you talk to very demanding customers in power utility and data center—and I want to also stress power utility, because one thing is the high focus everybody has on data centers, but with resilience in society and the fact that when you do power utility, you actually power people's homes, you are affecting the lives of people, that is equally demanding when it comes to safety, redundancy, etc. There the combination of Bosch and PowerCell is extremely strong.

When we have completed the agreement, we will come back and talk more about the details. With that, we have extended our time with one minute.

We thank you very much and look forward to see you in the quarter four report and hope to bring a better message to you that time. Thank you very much for listening, and always reach out if you want something.