Good morning, everybody, here at the annual number presentation of Sif Holding, 2035. My name is Fred van Beers, and with me are analysts from various banks and institutions and everybody online also welcome. For those here in the room, before we start, there's no safety drills planned for. If there is an emergency evacuation we need to go for, it will be a buzzer sounding, and follow the green signs to the exit, please. Before we continue and go into what is listed here at the first page as highlights, I'd like to introduce the people attending from the Sif side. On my right-hand side, for those here in the room, is Pepijn. Pepijn Timmermans, our new COO, who started first of December.
Pepijn, maybe you can give a quick introduction of yourself.
Yeah. Thank you, Fred. It's really exciting to be here. First time in this presentation and also be part of the, let's say, Sif family with its very warm culture. As you might know or not, I have a strong background in automotive manufacturing. Recent years in the VDL Groep. Within that organization, I was responsible for the supply chain and digitization. You can imagine that it's quite an interesting learning curve for me to get acquainted with the offshore and the Sif business. On the other hand, being here, there are quite some parallels.
If you look, for example, at the new site at the Maasvlakte, then that's a really beautiful flow-driven manufacturing site, which has quite some parallels with what automotive repetitive manufacturing is doing. Yeah, I'm very excited to be part of this team and help in the growth of the organization.
Thank you, Pepijn, for introducing yourself. We agreed for this session that Boudewijn and I will present, because on my left-hand side is Boudewijn, our CFO, known to all of you, I think. Of course, Pepijn and I are available also for operational questions later on. Yeah. Last but not least, I'm here myself as well. As you probably may or may not have seen, we also released a press release this morning that I will step down as CEO first of August this year. Koen Bogers, previous CEO of Stedin, is appointed as the new CEO, or will be appointed as the new CEO, I should say.
We have, of course, a shareholders' meeting still annual shareholders' meeting in May where this will take place. Koen will then start in May in a sort of call it learning months training session to learn all about Sif until the first of August. After the first of August, I will full-time continue as advisor till at least the 31st of January 2027, in order to also help introduce Koen in the best possible way in all external contexts, and do special projects for the board. That is good maybe to also announce to this meeting. Enough about people. Let's go into the key messages we'd like to bring across or have brought across this morning in our press release.
First of all, I think, again, safety remains our number one priority, and we'll come back to that a little bit later. We see the contribution margin materializing as we had planned for and as we have discussed many, many times in these meetings as well, which looks good. Extremely happy that the production facility at Maasvlakte is more and more starting to deliver according to plan. We are on plan as we announced in August last year. We'll come back to that a little bit later. What is a real challenge at the moment, I think, is the market. We'll come back on that as well. The short-term market, 2027-2028, is seeing quite some delays in FID taking on customer side for new wind farms.
Having said that, the longer-term perspective is extremely good. We'll show some data on that a little bit later as well. I think the good news, the main topic here I'd like to bring across, SIF is ready to deliver now with the factory running, with the capacity available, with the teams and organization in place to deliver on the North Sea Summit Declaration ambitions in Europe mainly. We have an order book and a performance that underpins the guidance that we have given some time ago, a minimum of EUR 135 million EBITDA for 2026. Of course, the question we all have, you all have, is how about 2027 and 190 kiloton in exclusive negotiation?
We'll come back to that a bit later, and what's going to happen afterwards as well. Some highlights, 'cause you need to celebrate also a little bit what happened last year. That is that we, as you all know, delivered Empire Wind 1. The project is fully paid for, installed successfully in the seabed, in the Atlantic, close to New York. Largest monopiles ever. Well done. It was tight, but we did it. We're really following up, of course, what's happening now in the U.S. with all the legal cases that are being brought forward locally. I think I'd like to underline here again that whatever happens there will not affect at all Sif because we have done our part of the job fully.
The Maasvlakte facility is ramping up, as said before, and we are confident that we can deliver on the 2026 order book. Ecowende is close to finished as we speak now, and we have the two pillar monopiles, 52 of them, all produced in the meantime according to load outs plan that needs to be completed this month. Last but not least, a lot of attention is being paid from our side, but also from our colleagues in the EU, and others in the offshore wind supply chain to make sure that the offshore wind, which is essential for the energy independence is considered strategic and is also working on the basis of a level playing field, the competitive landscape.
Although there's a lot of skepticism on whether that will happen or not, given the Chinese imports at low prices, I'm personally very confident that we are on exactly the track that we need to be to make this a level playing field business and a strategic business in Europe. I'll come back to that a little bit later as well. Let's dive into the ramp-up plan for Maasvlakte and the performance of Maasvlakte a little bit. Output significantly improves and is stabilizing on a level of 3 monopiles -4 monopiles a week, depending on size, et cetera.
We actually will see in the H1 of this year an average of five monopile to maybe six monopiles, because we have slightly different design per week, which is the planning for the period ahead of us. That is according to plan achieved in December and after the usual ramp-up issues that you see after a holiday break, Christmas. The snow week in the Netherlands didn't help either 'cause we couldn't get people back from all places in Europe. That caused a bit of a delay, but we have been able to ramp up quite quickly, I would say, and controlled to the level I just announced.
We also see that this approach of safety first, quality second, output third, is paying off and is becoming more and more the standard in a new team at Maasvlakte, which we will show also in the safety statistics a little bit later. We are now gradually moving from a ramp-up phase to a continuous improvement phase during the course of this year. As you may remember, we announced in August that by mid-2026 we should have reached a stabilized position. We're on track on that one. We have passed successfully the milestone of 4 monopiles a week in December, so we have that behind us, so we are more and more becoming a normal factory as planned.
Important role in this whole improvement is the fact that we have all senior and middle management now in place in our operation, and that starts paying off quickly. Pepijn, he entered more or less as the latest-
Yeah.
I think first of December from the team, and is more and more coming up to steam, as well in this, in this process. We are really happy with what we see happening here. On the safety statistics for the whole year of 2025, we cannot be satisfied, and we're not. As you can see in the middle picture, the H1 of 2025 saw seven lost time injuries on the basis of a normalized, I would say eleven total recorded incidents. In the H2, we saw still too many, two, but significantly less compared to the H1. We're on the right track there when it comes to safety. Sickness leave, still high.
We are not, although the industry standard in our business is higher, we see more normalized numbers of 9%-10% in our business when it comes to sickness leave. We feel that our ambition to reach 5.5% is necessary and doable and, as you can see in the bottom bullet, we're having a bunch of activities varying from case management to more investments in working conditions and individual employee support to bring down the sickness leave significantly during this year. That is, the actions are in place. The trends are positive, but we're not there yet.
Good to mention here maybe as well is that we have agreed as an industry in Europe to join forces in attacking the safety issues in our industry because they're quite typical for all of us. Through our Offshore Wind Foundation Alliance, we're now having a working group to also tackle this and even certify the European foundation safety standard. Let's make a move to the market. This picture is fresh. The ink is still wet. It's coming from WoodMac, Wood Mackenzie, and it shows the gigawatts that are planned to be connected to the grid up till 2040 for offshore wind, excluding the U.S., which is not so difficult because they're zero.
Although there is something coming to grid, of course, in the coming year still, depending on all the court cases. Excluding China, excluding the U.S. Numbers cannot be listed, but what can be told is that, when you look backwards, 2025, backwards, the average is roughly 4GW that has been connected to the grid offshore wind. You see a massive jump in 2026 and 2027. The jump basically comes from the fact that quite a few of projects have been delayed when it comes to grid connection. Remember, foundation production is about two years, one-and-a-half to two years in front of the grid connection.
2026 sees a major jump, and that has to do with, for example, Dogger Bank, where they had turbine issues. Monopile installation has been done for all A, B and C already. The turbine installation for A has just been completed, B has just started, and they're all expected to come on the grid this year. That's what the jump says. You also see that 2028, 2029 and 2030 are expected to be significantly lower. That is exactly the period that we are now experiencing, or the trend that we are experiencing now in our tender activity and FID taking for new projects. This also includes the 190 kiloton project that we have in exclusive status.
A little bit later I will come back to that. What I think is important to mention here is also that despite all hiccups in the industry, the geopolitical situation, the drive to go for energy independency in Europe is stronger than ever before. What you see happening is this famous wave of projects coming to the grid in the future, but in a stable way, we would like to plan. We see that this demand is definitely going to happen or planned for, and it may face some delay, but it's going to happen. Strong long-term market outlook. Competitive landscape is challenging.
It's challenging for all EU supply chain players and, to some extent, I claim also for our Chinese, new or relatively new entrants since the market that has been projected is delaying. We are facing aggressive Chinese import competition. That's a fact. We see certain projects or developers deciding to go for Chinese imports. What I think is important to state and reiterate from our point of view. We know it's also to do with the second bullet. We know for a fact that the EU supply chain is up to the task that is ahead of us. There's roughly EUR 2 billion invested in a ramp-up of monopile facility in Europe and the U.K. We do see delays and challenges in the ramp-up of that capacity. We are an example of it.
We saw the same happening with SeAH's. Everybody can read the papers on the SeAH investment in the U.K. All of them will succeed and will be there. This is one of the key points also in our discussions with developers, that it's a fairy tale to believe that we need Chinese imports per se to make this ambition happen. What we do need altogether is a level playing field. We are not afraid, none of us in the EU supply chain. We're not afraid of any Chinese competition whatsoever as long as it's based on a level playing field. A level playing field mainly relates to steel and duties on steel imports for not only raw materials or plates, but also for semi-finished and finished products.
That's what we're working on quite intensively altogether, not only SIF, but the whole industry, with Brussels and all the member states individually, for Germany, Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium specifically, and the U.K. independently from EU is doing the same to make sure that this level playing field situation is created. In this respect, I think it's worthwhile mentioning that yesterday we received a confirmation from EZK, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy in the Netherlands, that SIF is one of the two companies now declared strategic in the Netherlands, when it comes to industry, energy and transition or and independency.
A bit related to what is mentioned also in Draghi and the Letta report, we now see actually happening, and we are going to dive into the effects and what does this mean for us. We will come back to that later for sure in separate messages. You can all read, the Netherlands, the Dutch government, the new government has a high ambition again to go for offshore wind. We are in very close dialogue with the Dutch government on this roadmap for offshore wind. Without giving you all the details, also the exclusive deal that we have in our order book for 2027, we're not sure yet exactly when it will fall, but it's still definitely a exclusive deal.
The developer and the government that this relates to are in very intense contact, and we are also in that discussion to make sure that this deal is closed as soon as possible into a firm contract because it's needed for the rollout of.
Offshore wind in that country. I can't give you the country, I can't give you the name of the developer, but you all know what's available and out there still in the market. With that, I'd like to hand over to Boudewijn to take us a bit through the financials.
Sure. Thanks. Thanks, Fred. We'll dive into the numbers in a bit more detail. I think just some of the key takeaways on what we reported this morning is our contribution as an absolute value is up 28% from 2024- 2025. That mainly came in the H2 of the year. When we did the half year results, we were pretty much on par, 2025, 2024. We've seen a marked improvement in the H2 year, which has to do with the stabilization and ramp-up of the Maasvlakte. You see that in the revenue as well, and really pleased.
You know, August was not a nice announcement when we cut our guidance, but I think it was a very realistic decision we took at the time and pleased to see that we, well, I can say exceeded, met the guidance that we gave. Again, fully driven by the production improvement or ramp-up we've seen on Maasvlakte. We said Fred touched on it. You know, we really are set up and ready for growth. Realizing that 2027, 2028 are less secure and a bit more uncertain. We have this exclusive project, but we still need that to become completely firm and in the order book in terms of when we're going to produce it. This is a typical project business.
SIF has gone through these periods in the past, and we have the resilience and the robustness to deal with this. All of our deliveries are on quality and on time for installation within our clients' installation windows. Again, even though our struggles, what we've produced, we've produced on time, clients are installing them, and we've now moved on to the next project, Baltic, which is fully in production. Quite a significant increase in FTE. I think again there, you know, 2024, we were in construction at the start of production on the Maasvlakte and still full in production in Roermond. 2025, it was a year of full production on both plants. A significant increase in FTE related to that increase in production.
Moving on to the next slide, just showing it in some numbers. Even though production in terms of total kilotons is on average on par with the last few years, what we see is a marked improvement in contribution in absolute terms, but also per week and the increase in EBITDA. That is because the contracts we have now are financially more attractive and more reflective of the complexity of the work. You know, we've discussed in the past that metrics per ton are becoming less relevant because every ton of production is different. We do see that the financial returns on these tons are definitely improving with the order book that we have.
We discussed in August about, you know, how realizable is the growth in EBITDA that we're projecting and how confident are we in the numbers that we've given. I think here you see it as well, is when at half year we were on par with 2024, both financially and in terms of production. With the ramp-up we saw in the H2, you see a significant uptick both in terms of contribution and in EBITDA, and that's 'cause that marginal increase is so high. The costs are there, the cost base is there, the installed base is there. Every ton additional we produce has a significant impact on both contribution and EBITDA, and we'll see that even more in 2026. Working capital is still at a very high negative level. We recognize that.
Again, that is the nature of our business. We get a lot of advanced payments from customers, well in advance of us actually starting to do the work, and that's reported on our balance sheet as contract liabilities. Also, as these contracts get bigger, because this is a snapshot, a moment in time, which is 31 December, we obviously have invoices that we've received from customers that we haven't paid yet, and that's also sitting in our, in our liabilities on our balance sheet. This number will continue to be volatile, but as we run through our order book, we will see it coming down in 2026.
Obviously, depending on new contracts that come in, whether we get advanced payments there, under those, that will either increase or not result in increase in those liabilities. Just a few ESG KPIs. We've seen an increase in our CO₂ emissions. Again, partly logical because of the significant ramp-up we've seen in Maasvlakte. A lot more production, a lot more energy usage. Unfortunately, the Haliade, the wind turbine, hasn't produced the results that we expected. That hasn't helped to bring down our CO₂ emissions. We're actually in the process now, together with GE to decommission it.
We don't believe that this turbine will deliver the results that it needs, and we're together with one of our teams looking at alternatives to substitute the Haliade. Fred already touched on safety, the lost time incidents we had in 2025. It was not a good performance. You see that as well in the LTIF. Obviously, with more production, the LTIF is lower than it was in 2023, but in absolute numbers, our safety performance was not on par for 2025. We've spoken about the order book. We see the 190 is in there.
It's the exclusive contract we have, and we still have 343 kt in the existing orders that we'll be producing in this year and into 2027. The strong contribution per ton, and I think also significantly there, the contribution per month, both important metrics also as we go forward into 2026 with the order book. Our covenants, we had some challenges in the third quarter of the year, where we were actually not able to calculate the leverage covenant, and that has to do with the methodology of calculating EBITDA for the covenants, which is a trailing number where we have to do IFRS adjustments. That was a negative number, so when you divide net debt by a negative number. It's either zero or N/A.
Under the financing agreement, we had to ask for a waiver. At the time, because we were in the ramp-up and we weren't entirely certain how the year would end up, we asked for an amendment on both leverage and solvency to give us some headroom for Q4 in 2025. In hindsight, that wasn't necessary, but I'm still glad we did it. It just gave us the headroom that we may have needed. Our performance was good enough that wasn't needed, and we'll see the covenant levels returning back to normal mid 2026. Just looking as a whole, we remain focused on accelerating energy transition with our monopile manufacturing, our TPs, and our pin pile business.
The capacity that we have, there was a significant investment both in terms of people, in terms of capital. The capacity is there. Fred touched on it. The EU is ready to deliver on the plans. We need those plans to materialize. Obviously, we're dependent on developers and the government, on coming through with the projects. We have every reason to believe that that is gonna come, and we're ready for that. We're ready for Europe. Sif is an enabler. The investment we did, we still believe was the right investment. Our plant is in the sweet spot of the monopiles that we expect to come in the next few years, so we really do expect a lot of activity. As we've said a few times, 2027 and 2028 remain challenging.
Clearly, the exclusive project we have will go a long way in filling our order book for that period. There are other projects that are out there, maybe some opportunistic projects, maybe some developers who decide to capitalize on a constrained supply chain and move their projects earlier. We're, you know, we have a very active sales team. We have a very, very active pipeline of activities, and we're closely following the market, and we're ready to deliver. We certainly are, as it stands today, on track to deliver our EBITDA guidance for 2026. Fred, any closing remarks?
I think the closing remark is let's open the floor for questions on this because there will definitely be questions. Who can I give the initiative to start the conversation? Me?
Philip looks eager.
Yeah.
I'm very
Very eager.
Philip Goedvolk from Kepler Cheuvreux. First question I have is actually on your cost base. So in your cost for the 2027, 2028 order book, but I'm just wondering, I also understood that you have quite a flexible FTE base, more than 30%. I'm just wondering in terms of numbers, what do you see as a in a situation where you might have no activity or might be required. I don't know, in a negative scenario, what would be your cash burn or your minimum cost that you actually would still have to expense or will be facing in a year.
Yeah.
The other question is: how do you look at the balance sheet in such a situation, especially given the working capital really coming down, less negative? Are you already having talks with the banks on that, and what's the situation with that?
Okay. I'll also ask Fred to jump in to give a bit more flavor. I'm not gonna be able to tell you specifically what our cost base is in a scenario. What I can say is, you know, you touched on the most important point. We have quite a big flexible layer in our labor force. If there are periods where we have less work or where we consciously choose to slow down production, where we have that space under our client contracts, we will. That flexible layer is the first one that we'll focus on to bring those costs down. At the moment, as it stands now, we have an order book which runs into 2027, and that could be early 2027, that could be later 2027 or H1 2027.
We have that flexibility under delivery timeline with our clients, so that's one thing we're looking at. How do we want to optimize that? That is very much tied to when this exclusive contract starts. Is there a period in between there where we might have no work? That's possible, but it's not something that concerns us because there's a lot of things that we can do in that time. The most important thing is that we need to maintain a level of skills and expertise within our production. We can't say we just ramp down to zero and then the next time we have a project, we'll go out in the market and find people.
We have to find that optimal balance of maintaining the right base within our knowledge of producing monopiles, both in Roermond and the Maasvlakte, spreading that. We can also slow down in one area, move people, and keep them occupied in the other area. All of these scenarios are things we're looking at at the moment on how we deal with certain scenarios and how we manage that within our labor force, within our cash, within our cost base, to stay ready to produce.
To add to that, I think it's important to remember that we have seen now four or five years of high activity in this market. This is a market that follows the curve. We are in the project business, and we have been in situations in this business before that we had to deal with some downturn in the market. As you rightly say, this flexible workforce that we have is significant, and we are used to work with that, and our people are used to deal with that. I think there's a few other things to remember here. In our order book for...
that we have for 2026 and the beginning of 2027, we have still quite a bit of flexibility in when we can produce what. We can, as part of our scenario planning that and in the dialogue also with our customer to see, okay, what can we do or what should we do, and what do you want us to do, in order to spread a bit production on one side. There is, again, not to be underestimated, this 190 kiloton where there is a lot of activity in closing it. And all the discussions that are happening have nothing to do with us. They all are related to. It's not that we have a dialogue with our customer on certain items that are holding this up.
It all has to do with everything we can read about on a daily basis in the market. Whether it's grid, power takeoff, all these elements play a role in this case. The third part I think we shouldn't forget is that with a market that is becoming tighter, also the horizon of having firm order books is becoming less long and shorter and shorter. The last thing we are doing here is getting nervous about such a situation, because that is part of the dynamics of this business. We've seen spot opportunities also popping up. I think all of you have read the news on what happened with Hohe See III.
Interesting enough, that was news that was about one year old when it came in the news, so that was quite interesting to read. The spread of the order book on Hohe See III has happened already a year ago. We, in all openness, were also approached. We have thanked for the interest because of the fact that we had a full order book and a factory that we're ramping up. I've read the news said that there was concerns about the possibility of Sif. Well, we were a bit surprised with that because it's first of all one year old news. Secondly, we could include the support given our order book. That's the dynamic of this business.
Coming back to your point, because that's the underlying question I think, when you are in a downturn, can you manage it? Yes. Do we do scenario planning, as Boudewijn explained? Yes. Is it the right moment to shift gear, so to say, and act on that? No, because there is still ample time left to deal with whatever scenario that we may face on our path. But it asks a bit from all of us when it comes to patience.
Yeah. Marc Zwartsenburg, the idea maybe as a follow-up. When we look at what's more or less the latest delivery date for the monopiles you have in your order book, excluding the one which is not firm yet. Talking about spreading production over time, what's the latest delivery date of-
Exact date I can't give.
Mm-hmm.
as part of the discussion, but it will not be the end of 2027.
Okay. Assuming it will be mid-2027, and you say, "Okay, we're gonna spread production equally over time," will you then still be able to meet your 2026 guidance?
Yes.
You mentioned you've been labeled strategic by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate. What does it actually mean? Because normally when you're strategic, you're not allowed to be acquired by another company. What will it mean for you? What are your
Yeah, that's a good point. That is now, as you know, the Net-Zero Industry Act is new, being filled, and we will open now the talks with also economic affairs, what exactly does this mean?
Yeah.
Well, it is. It's not nothing. It's not a marketing stamp, so to say. That's why I mention it, because it does mean that in the Dutch tenders, in decision-making, there is a certain element of preference for Dutch/European supply chain in the evaluation of the tenders. To what extent it will work out and what exactly the percentage is that we can earmark because of this stamp is something where we'll come back on shortly.
Okay, thanks. Secondly, you mentioned that you had won an order for projects, Bałtyk I and Bałtyk II, the 48 pin piles. How much kilotons does that involve?
40. Yeah. It's roughly 40 kt.
40 kt. 4 round. 40. Okay. Lastly, for the moment, you are tendering for the first decommissioning orders. I know you're interested to recycle the steel, but in the decommissioning itself, what's your business model?
The business model is basically that first of all we have teamed up with Ballast Nedam and for the scrap steel with Dillinger. The business model is that we take a turnkey responsibility in the joint coalition with Ballast to completely get the keys handed over to us, and we will then decommission the whole thing and deal with all the scrap streams from our location. Whereby we, specifically Sif, will take care of the steel part in such a way that it is cut and prepared in such a way that it can go directly into the electric arc furnaces of Dillinger that they are building as we speak. We get a true circularity of steel.
For Dillinger, it's important because if you start producing in the electric arc process, it's very helpful that your scrap material is more or less compliant to the new steel that you need to produce. That's why input from Dillinger into the Dillinger production is so important. That's the key in a nutshell.
Thijs Berkelder, ABN AMRO ODDO BHF. For meeting your minimum guidance, what kind of tonnage is needed there in terms of sales?
Can we disclose?
No.
Don't even know.
No. It's if we give a number, I would say it's probably about three-quarters of the order book.
Yeah. Two-thirds to three-quarters of the-
The order book excluding the exclusive
Correct
contract.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. Will the exclusive clients prepay or not? Is that clear?
No, we can't say anything about that. Yeah.
A lot happening in the world right now. What in your view is Middle East impact, meaning for you? Relate to that energy prices now spiking. You are missing the Haliade now, so what kind of impact can we expect from energy prices on your P&L line 26?
Okay.
Let's start with the market first.
Yeah.
I think what we see and you've seen also, I guess, the news on nuclear power plants in Europe, for example, is that the drive and the determination to speed up the energy independence in Europe is only increasing because of this. In our view, that means that everything that's available is needed to reach that point, meaning that we are actually supportive of the initiatives now being taken on nuclear power. We're very much supportive of the North Sea Summit Declaration.
In what we clearly see, and that's where the industry actively needs to help, in joining forces in Europe with the public domain, is that our politicians for decades have not been thinking or been used on working on mechanisms that actually are against the free trade, work against free trade, global free trade. So now they have to actually protect markets, and they're really struggling with how to do that. That's where we, as Sif, but also as a branch, are taking very active initiatives to help them out in order to achieve that. That's 'cause that's the biggest concern we have in this whole thing, that the time needed to turn all the ambitions into action could take too long for the industry to work on.
On the energy price itself, I think for us it's minor.
Yeah.
It has always been minor also during Corona. We then saw some impact. If you remember that discussion.
Yeah.
Still, it was not a showstopper.
Yeah. Yeah, because we've moved to a large part of our energy usage to electricity with electric heating, for example. That is our biggest exposure. Gas is a relatively small portion of our cost base.
Last comment, the Haliade is predominantly contributing to our CO₂ footprint and not because it's cheaper, because it's not directly going into our substation. It's going into the grid, and we take it out from the grid again.
Clear. Hornsea III is no longer a potential for you.
It was already one year ago.
Yeah, yeah.
So.
Yeah, I agree. Now RWE has taken over Norfolk and won the U.K. Round 7, I would say with a clear preference to have the job done by SeAH in the U.K., probably from a U.K. government perspective. On Hornsea III, they, the U.K. already needed, say, a second supplier. Have talks already started there? And yeah, that's a real competitive battle because all your competitors also need the volumes.
Normally, we disclose on projects specifically. But what I can tell you is that our RWE is a customer from SIF. We have started production actually on Kavel VII, OranjeWind for RWE. We are in very good talks with them both on the commercial side and on the project side. We are definitely also looking at ways to continue our business when it comes to AR7, U.K. projects in general, like we always have been active on the U.K. projects. Even if the SeAH factory is fully up and running, they simply cannot deliver the whole demand for AR7 from that site alone.
Yeah. Looking at your expected factory utilization, is such order still possible for 27?
Maybe. Well, you don't. You never know. Remember that-
If your exclusive clients really shift to H2 2027, do you then still have capacity for?
AR7 normally speaking is 28 and onwards.
Yeah.
Normally speaking. Yeah.
There's a marshaling site being developed in the Port of Rotterdam where you-
TOWER. Yeah, it's called.
Tower?
That's how it's called. Yeah. TOWER project.
You are interested to
We are one of the interested parties in part of that site. Yeah. That's known.
Yeah. That will be then really your initiative or in a JV structure?
It's too early to say. We're following that very closely. Please bear in mind that we have at the moment 85 hectares available there, of which partly 20 hectares is filled with factory. We do already today have possibilities for mastering logistics.
Yeah.
Maybe for now, finally, your view on next generation offshore wind turbine sizes?
Yes.
Ming Yang is busy.
Yeah, they're all busy.
...with the factory in Scotland. Probably mega size.
Probably is a good word.
Yeah.
Let's put it this way, all the tenders we see going, you know, well into the end of this decade, are all based on the 15MW platform from Vestas or Siemens Gamesa. The overall consensus in the industry is that we should maybe for the coming decade, 10 years, stick to this standard in order to reach the level of industrialization and profitability for the whole supply chain and rollout of megawatts.
From a, like, the European perspective, you mean?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, also, you remember probably the German project, you know, where Ming Yang was the preferred turbine that has switched to Siemens in the meantime.
Yeah.
I mentioned what I mentioned before for a reason, that there is a very strong push and demand and action actually in Brussels and member states to now really protect the European supply chain. Question is, how quick can they do it? In that sense, U.K. is seen as China, it's not Europe.
Thanks.
Jeremy Kincaid from Van Lanschot Kempen. First question, on your order book, over the quarter, it went down by the same amount of kilotons that you produced, but obviously you've added this extra 40-kiloton project. Obviously the 200-kiloton got scoped down to 190, I think. Were there any other projects which got scoped down, or has been-
It's not a scope down. It's as you know, we have to deal with remeasurements, and the designs change. It goes. It can become a bit more or less. The EUR 190 probably will not be EUR 190. It could be. It will be more, or it will be a bit less, but it will be in the range of EUR 190. We had an internal debate, to be honest, between our own should we leave the EUR 200 in or go to the EUR 190. Both numbers can be true.
Is there still something that I'm missing there? Because you've added 40 kt with this new project. Is this-
No, the numbers don't add up in your calculation.
Yeah. Okay.
You have to crunch.
I have to crunch. I can't give you an answer off the top of my head. I'll come back to you on that, exactly what the deviation is. Sure.
How many tons are you missing?
Thirty. Yeah. Okay. On the now 190 kiloton project, can you provide a bit of color around what the developers need to reach FID? What are they looking for?
I can only repeat, I think, what I just mentioned in general terms. Why do we see this dip in the market today? That is because there's a certain unbalance between power takeoff, power price, grid congestion and CapEx price increases. Well, the latter part is not the issue, 'cause that's in our hands. Where we have to deal with the supply chain, it has to do with the other elements and how to find a solution there is really up to the developer and the country involved.
Okay, sure. The last one from me. In a scenario where that 190 kiloton project doesn't happen in 2027, do you think you can take enough steps so that you won't breach any covenants in 2027?
Yeah, good question. I can't say yes or no because it really just depends on what are the implications of that project then shifting? How far does it shift? What is the next project? As I mentioned earlier, you know, we're looking at multiple scenarios on what if? What does it mean from a cost base? What does it mean from a liquidity base? What does it mean from a covenant base? That's an ongoing analysis. I can't tell you we'll be fine on the covenants. I can't tell you we'll breach them. We will need to see, and particularly on how long is that period.
what you probably can say, by the way, is that we are in a very proactive and good dialogue with all stakeholders.
Absolutely
...involved in this-
Yeah
... to how to say, go through or whatever scenario we have.
Correct. Everybody from lenders, current lenders, other, let's say, interested parties on our balance sheet, everybody's aware of the situation. They're aware of the market, very constructive dialogue. It's not a surprise to anybody that we're in these discussions and that we're looking at these scenarios.
Okay, thanks.
Fred, it's Ian at Q.A. Question on your remarks about the Chinese competition. The market in China still, it looks like they are going along with their plans on electricity and offshore wind in quite substantial gigawatts numbers. Have they? Are they entering? Are they more aggressive? How should we read this statement in terms of what has changed versus, let's say, one, two years ago?
A bit of deep dive into that. What we've seen happening is that. Three years ago or so, they were all fully focusing on the Chinese market. The Chinese market saw a slowdown on one side, and they had to go further offshore. Cost of installation were increasing, issues with fishers, fishermen or whatever. Even in China that happens, and they slowed down a little bit the rollout. The other thing, what they saw happening was the massive ambition increase in Europe happening and the challenges at that time in the industry to have sufficient supplies to develop all these projects. That's why we built this new factory, for example, based on those demands at that time. Also then.
Then the Chinese entrepreneurial drive started kicking in. They actually started building European or the rest of the world dedicated factories for that specific export market. Coming back to your point now, in China, there is a supply chain for the Chinese market that is different from the factories delivering outside China. That has to do with quality, safety requirements that the non-Chinese market is requiring for their products. Even though the Chinese market is ramping up again, that basically has nothing to do with the competition coming in from China for the rest of the world. Is that a clear answer? Yeah. Thank you.
The other question I have is on what you said about maybe filling some gaps with projects. Yeah, from my understanding, obviously, you know what's happening in the market, but all monopiles are specifically designed, so the detailed designs should be-
Known
... known and there. Then you need some preparation, ramp up your internal design departments and so on to prepare for any new project that would arrive at one point. How should we see the timeline in these steps?
That changes very quickly. Maybe a good example from the past, 2020, we had this famous Formosa Wind order that we booked. We celebrated for 3 weeks, and then the whole thing went belly up. That left us with a 5-month empty production slot that we I think announced early mid-2019 at that time. 2020 happened.
Mm-hmm.
Then we managed to fill that in, I think, two months' time with an opportunity from Japan in that case, Akita Noshiro, that we. You remember? I think, you know, between the two of you. Two dinos here. You remember. That you can really quickly, when a project that has been placed with a colleague of ours, but for whatever reason, is not materializing there, that we can take over as long as the design indeed is known. 'Cause, making it ready for fabrication and ordering the steel is then the bottleneck, but that's a matter of months only.
Mm.
Even a month, if need be. Then it comes to monopiles. In that respect, I think. Your point is very valid because the example I'm just mentioning is showing that we actually can do it and have done it in the past, that the horizon to decide on this can be very short to the gap you're facing, and that the opportunities are happening today as well. We've talked about One C three. There is, we talked about Norfolk, as one. There have been some other examples in the market that have been shifting around. This is a dynamic project-driven market with.
Again, we were spoiled in the last few years with very long order books because of the dynamics at the time in the market. These dynamics that we are facing today are not new and not exceptional. We're ready for that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Philip Goedvolk from Kepler Cheuvreux. A few follow-ups. First of all, the exceptional items, I see that they've continued to rise actually, this year. So what is driving this, and what to expect for 2026 there? The second question I have is in terms of the European monopile capacity as a whole, can you indicate how much gigawatt it can roughly accommodate, the current capacity that's available? Just as an idea, especially towards the build-out, of course, towards 2030, how much more do we need to invest or not in it? And then the last one I have is still on the level playing field that you discussed. Can you just give a little bit more details on, like, where are we exactly with the current state?
As I remember last time, you sent a letter to the European Commission, and it was accepted. But how far are we now? 'Cause usually indeed these processes take time. What would be a best case scenario that you could see some measures being implemented?
That's three questions actually.
Yeah. Sorry.
You start with the first one?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'll try and keep it short. Basically, it purely has to do with the ramp-up of the plant, which started already late 2024.
You see already in 2024 quite a few exceptional items between adjusted and reported EBITDA. That continued into 2025 with the decision we took in the mid-year, we ramped up our external support. We spend more time first of all training and working with staff, so we incurred a lot of costs around that. As we continued on the stabilization, we did a lot of overtime work. We did a lot of weekend work also to with maintenance, but also to just make sure we continue in production to keep up with the requirements from our customers. In the period between Christmas and New Year's, we did work that we hadn't anticipated.
Everything that's related to the ramp-up and additional work is classified as kind of exceptional to be between adjusted and reported EBITDA. Our expectation there, the question right now is the reason for implementing this was to say, look, we differentiate between normal costs and costs really related to ramp up, so really exceptional above what should be normal operating costs. The decision we need to make in 2026 is, are these costs still exceptional, or are they just part of how we're going to operate our plant with such a full order book in 2026, for example? Does working in the weekends become normal and no longer exceptional? That's why I can't say, you know, do we expect that level to continue this year, or will that change?
We as management need to decide, you know, what is our philosophy around these exceptional costs and whether they've become embedded costs or whether we still consider them exceptional, and how we see those coming down as the production kind of normalizes from this ramp-up and stabilization phase.
Sorry, if the plant is fully ramped up by Q2, you would actually expect theoretically that it goes to zero, right?
In a normalized situation, you would. With the order book we have, and again, talking about the decisions we make, whether we extend projects, whether we try and execute them as quickly as possible, we can still take decisions on doing weekend work or not. What do we do in the holiday period? Do we hire extra people to work shifts where our normal staff are on summer holidays? It's all those kind of decisions, which are pretty expensive decisions.
Mm-hmm
are always focused around output, delivery and timing. When do we want to, and when do we need to deliver our order book?
Regardless, they will be much lower.
Over time, they will be lower, yes. Yeah, but it's not that binary that we say 30 June, we've hit a certain target, and those costs are gone.
But all the-
It's definitely not binary.
All intention is to bring them down.
The intention is to bring them down.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We have to have a good reason to not do.
To not do.
Exactly.
Yeah.
On the European supply chain, and I think I've communicated this also in a LinkedIn post a few weeks back. The European supply chain is up to the task of 15 GW a year. That depends, of course, on how many turbines you need for that. Assume the 15 GW, that's 1,000 foundations. Not all of them will be monopiles, but 80% for sure. Some of them will be jackets. Maybe some jackets need to come from Asia, I don't know. But from the monopile part of that, definitely the European supply chain is up to the task.
I said before, we as an industry invested EUR 2 billion, and I include U.K. in this, in monopile capacity in Germany, in Denmark, in Spain, in the U.K., in Netherlands, in Belgium. Don't forget, it's not us in this respect. They also heavily invested in that. We're up to the task. The message, again, that I also like to bring across here is we did our bit as an industry. Now it's up to the governments and the developers to actually live up to their promise and order stuff. It's as simple as that. That's on the supply chain. On the level playing field, that all focuses on steel. As you know, monopiles are made of steel, and if you...
You need plates to make monopiles. The Chinese steel manufacturers offer these plates at very, very low prices, up to 50% of the European market dumping. These Chinese plates are facing import duties up to now in the new rules, to 82% from the EU. That brings those plates on par with the non-subsidized European steel manufacturers. However, if you bend that steel plate into a circle and weld them together and build a section or a monopile out of it, that steel is not facing any import duties, and that's where the thing goes wrong.
Mm-hmm.
That outperforms, so to say, financially, the cost of transport. The only thing that's happening now is that steel is protected again with new import duties, and there is a commitment from Brussels that in the first evaluation of this new ruling, they will consider the semi-finished and finished products for businesses like ours. That is not confirmed. That's why it's not an official statement that we can make. The intention there is to do it. The debate now is when to do it, whether it be in six months' time or two years' time. Normally, the cycle is two years. Every two years, we evaluate.
There's a strong push to do it in six months, and if they are then able to do it in the correct way, we have a level playing field situation. We are not afraid. Then we say, "You're welcome to compete. Please come," because that makes that's healthy. Our industry, we don't ask for protection. We don't ask for industry policy, politics or so, because that is only increasing the price. The only thing we ask is a level playing field in steel.
Yep.
I've been in Berlin together with our steel producer, and also because they are, of course, also seeing this as a very delicate issue. They are investing EUR 5.5 billion now in electric arc furnace and may see their complete business floating away because of steel imports of complete monopiles out of China. We are joining forces there as an industry, also visiting Berlin, The Hague, wherever is needed to bring this message across.
Can I just ask one follow-up? How much would the duties have to be to get it to a level playing field in your, like, rough numbers or range, too? If you're talking about 80% for the plates and the.
No, that's not fair. I think you talk about numbers like, it is double digit in the 20%-40% somewhere.
Mm-hmm.
Remember, this is a little bit lesser-known impact of CBAM, which will also play a role in any imports coming outside of Europe. That's also gonna play a role in this equation anyway. CBAM is more one who's gonna pay for it, what is the impact, that's a little bit lesser-known, how that's gonna play out over time.
A couple of follow-up questions. Thijs Berkelder again, ABN AMRO, ODDO BHF. I still have questions on your ramp-up because the snow and the ski holiday, et cetera.
Yeah, I mentioned.
You said 5 monopiles -6 monopiles per week in H1 2026.
Yeah. At the end of H1.
Yeah, yeah.
At end of H1.
Yeah.
Okay. Okay.
Yeah.
Not in H1, but
No, because that order did not start yet, so we couldn't really.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
The question could be, Thijs, why, how come that it can go to 5, 6? That has to do with this famous design.
Okay.
The standard design, the reference design, that we always communicate was 4 a week TP-less, 2,500 tonnes each. The project that we now have started building is traditional monopile, not TP-less.
Right.
Traditional monopile, a bit shorter. Big diameters, by the way. That gives a possibility to build 5-6.
Yeah. How much weekend work, holiday work is then needed in H1?
Let's say that the principle that we want to work towards is going back to 24/5, with weekends as a buffer for preparing for the next week, finishing something from the previous week, doing maintenance, doing technical works, and not doing. We never have had the ambition to do 24/7 production. So it's 24/5 + some spill over in the weekend. I think that's a fair.
Can I ask something?
Yeah, yeah.
I think what we have to bear in mind here is the fact that we faced in 2025 a delay of nine months because of the setbacks in the ramp-up. We squeezed the whole order book into the end of 2025, 2026, and a bit in 2027.
Yeah.
Since we want to deliver on time, I think it's fair to say that we in half one will need weekend work in order to live up to our promises to the customer.
Yeah.
You can put that in your Excel sheet.
Okay.
Yeah.
Great. Coming back on Asia, more in general, we're talking only about Chinese, but CS Wind acquired Bladt. Titan is building, that's Chinese building a factory in Germany. Sumitomo bought into EEW. SeAH, of course, has built a factory in the U.K. It already is an Asian industry and no longer a European industry. How about your Asian connections, and-
GS Entec.
Can we expect more work there or and/or more cooperation in the partnership with GS Entec?
In terms of ownership?
Maybe.
I think that's not a question for us to answer, but.
Okay.
All right. No, you know, yes, there have been Asian partners and parties investing in Europe. We are a Dutch-listed company. They can share, buy shares if they want. We have a very solid and, how to say, realistic main shareholder in our company that has this company, has had this company for 25 years, and that's it.
Heard Dajin is going for a Hong Kong IPO, and reading some analyst reports there, they claim that Dajin can conquer 40% of the European market. If your next job as from February 1 next year would be leading Dajin into European offshore wind, what would be the track to avoid?
That's quite a few assumptions there.
But what-
If you don't mind.
What is logical from Dajin's perspective to go around our new European legislation?
I think that's a question for this one to answer. To be honest, but I think it comes back to the point that I just mentioned, today, and what we discussed about what Dajin has invested in. They invested heavily in a rest of the world offshore factory, not only monopiles, but also jackets and substations and floating and vessels to transport them. They're doing a great job there to conquer the world.
Yeah.
We're saying we're up to that task because we believe and have reasons to be convinced on that our production facility and abilities that we can offer to the markets when it comes to designs, weights, cost leadership, are up to the task to compete with Dajin. We don't see them as a threat at all as long as the steel is offered at a level playing field condition. I think it's very healthy to say that we believe in our own strength and also the right thing to do in order to maintain the right level of competition in the European market and not let it dominate by players like Dajin.
We welcome them very much as a professional and a strong competitor as long as it's based on a level playing field.
Okay. Mark, very good idea. Bit puzzled about how EBITDA will develop in 2026, because on one hand you say we go from ramping up to making the organization, the production more efficient, et cetera. That means building up production through the year. On the other hand, you said, yeah, we have some delivery dates whereby we need to manufacture in H1. More or less could you share what your thoughts are about the EBITDA delivery during the year or H1, H2? Will it be similar or H1 higher than H2 or?
No. All we can really say about EBITDA, to answer your last part of the question, is the guidance we've given for the full year of at least EUR 135. Yes, we have some delivery milestones with customers that we're working towards, both in H1 and in H2. Those we are working towards, and we're managing those with our customers.
Actually.
Sorry?
Actually, Q3.
Yeah. H1, H2 of the year. That's why even though, you know, to the point that was made at the beginning, we were a bit delayed in the beginning of the year, but those dates still stand, and we're working towards that. What I can say is it doesn't mean that things shift up further to the right. We still compress that period a bit, but we still plan to deliver. On a full year basis, we expect that to result in at least EUR 135 million EBITDA.
You're not gonna give some guidance about if H1 or H2 will be bigger than the other one?
No.
Okay. Secondly, what about your advance payments? Because this year you will mainly produce from those parties who have provided you money up front.
Yes.
How would that develop during this year?
Yeah. That's a significant portion of the working capital. EUR 144 million of that is contract liabilities, which are current. That is really all.
Exactly
Payments that we've already received. They're not. They're called advance payments, they're called contract liabilities, but it's because we try and match the cash flows with when we order steel, pay for steel, pay our subcontractors, pay for things. It's not that we've received the money, but we necessarily only going to spend all of the money this year. There is a mismatch in timing, which means it's a current liability. It's all related to that project. That's going to run off during the course of this year. Yeah.
If you make an estimate of EUR 100 million, is that a fair estimate?
Yes. Yes.
Okay. Lastly, you always had the intention of paying back the perpetual before year-end 2025. According to me, it's still there.
It is. Correct.
What are your intentions?
That's just prudence. That is because the outlook for 2027 and 2028 remains uncertain, and obviously after that as well. But as Fred mentioned, we're very confident in the longer term outlook. We think it's more important to manage our liquidity in a prudent way than to deleverage from an unsecured perpetual bond that we have no obligation to repay.
That's an expensive tool.
Well, that depends on how you look at it. You could say it's expensive debt, you could say it's cheap equity.
Thanks.
Yeah.
We have Pepijn now in the meeting, our new COO. What was the biggest eye-opener for you in your starting period in comparing what's happening at Sif versus VDL?
To be honest, when I first talked to you, I was, "What is the match?" That's why it started. Then we started talking, and I was involved in what's going on at Sif, and then you see a lot of parallels. Maybe I can best say it, if you look at automotive, it's really repetitive manufacturing. If you look at a really state-of-the-art, if it's an excellent concept in Maasvlakte, then that's far away from a traditional job shop, but really comparable with a repetitive manufacturing site. That's a challenge to get it up and running because everything is connected. It's basically a bufferless process, very efficient if you are in a good flow, but challenging to get it in that flow.
I think that's where I can bring my experience to help make step-by-step that to the optimum.
Maybe your view on Roermond site then.
The Roermond site is automated. It runs more in parallel, smaller projects. That's more like traditional job shop, and it's way more flexible. Also in handling, let's say, issues in your process and stuff. You have a lot more flexibility.
Very good build certainties.
Yeah.
Come to your next question.
No upgrading throughout the fourth. Follow-up question on Roermond. I think it's now decided that the area is being protected from the water.
Yes.
Will that lead to hiccups on your side? Or when will that happen?
No, I think, yeah, of course, yes. The quayside will be unavailable for a certain period of time, but that's being done in good cooperation with the Port of Rotterdam in a period where we say, "Okay, then we don't need to do any load outs." They can close the quayside and upgrade the foundations.
Yeah. We took care of that in our planning.
We took care of that in our planning.
'Cause this year already some work will start.
Yeah.
For part of the protection.
Yeah. Thanks.
Yeah. Took a while, but we're there.
Quite impressive.
Yes.
Just one follow-up from me on cash flow in the fourth quarter. It looked quite strong. Your net debt, I think, and I'll get these numbers wrong, but I think went from EUR 25 to then a net cash of EUR 15.
Yeah.
Obviously you're not receiving that much cash from the Ecowende project 'cause that's prepaid. Does that mean it all relates to Empire Wind? Or was there actually some prepayments from Baltic in 2025?
Yes, end of 2025, what you see. I have it up in front of me as well. I'm looking at my computer. We saw an increase in trade payables as well and an increase in cash. It's really just timing of inflows from these customers for the projects we're working on. It's a combination of Hollandse Kust West VII, so OranjeWind, Baltic, Ecowende. Empire Wind was already out of the books.
Okay.
Yeah. Just coming back to your earlier question on the order book, I just realized, and I should have answered the question straight away, those pin piles orders are not actually in the order book for 25. With pin piles, we only put them in the order book when we sign the contracts. We don't treat them the same as the monopiles, so they'll come into the 26 order book 'cause we only signed those contracts in January.
Thanks.
I just wanted to double-check before I said that, but that was.
Yeah.
Yeah. 'Cause obviously with monopiles we have preferred and then exclusive and then contracted, so we already show those earlier. With pin piles we don't do the same.
Okay, thanks.
Any questions online, or not?
Didn't work. No.
No? All right. Okay. Any questions from this side? Small. No. As usual, very good. Intense dialogue.
Thank you.
Appreciated a lot. Thank you. I officially close this meeting. Thank you for your attention and time to come here and dive into Sif. We'll see each other at the end of July, as we will do this earlier now this year, the presentation of the H1 year numbers, twenty-sixth. We have Q1, of course, yeah.
On Thursday.
Sorry?
On Thursday.
Super Thursday.
Super Thursday. Okay.
We'll do it with our avatars. Yeah. Good luck and take care. See each other later. Q1 is the first touch point, I guess.
Q1, yeah.
At least in the press release. Thank you very much. We close the meeting.
Thank you.
Thanks, everyone.