Good morning, everybody. Good morning and welcome to this analyst call. I have some of our bigger shareholders joining, but they are in listen-only mode because we do have a shareholder call at 3:00 P.M. Dutch, in English for their questions. This is a short trading update regarding the first nine months of 2026 . Our growth is continuing. It is structural, it is sustainable. Some people are still joining. We accept that. Growth still is continuing and structural. It is sustainable, and behind the scenes, we have also launched several new initiatives and business models, so we expect the growth engine to continue to accelerate. I will start with a general overview and provide some additional context. Jonas will go into greater detail on the revenue generated by the different segments. I will add some further color and context for each segment.
At the end, Jonas, Koen, and I, if my voice holds, because I woke up with a bad cold, Jonas, Koen, and I will be available to answer your questions. We have the wind in our sails and at our backs. Wind has also become an important part of our production activities. First of all, customer satisfaction continues to improve. We see this across all metrics, which are now at record levels, despite significant influx of new customers this year, both organically and through acquisition. The group revenue increased by more than 52%, and we achieved growth in all segments except EPC, as expected. Our energy supply activities continue to grow. Of course, in the third quarter, people don't use gas and they use less electricity as well, but they do continue to grow. We are now also including the DATS 24 customers who joined us in September.
Customers continue to stay with us in large numbers, including customers acquired through group purchasing initiatives, and we have felt the impact of this. That channel will probably be at least temporarily unavailable to us with one supplier, but more on this later on. Based on these results, as well as the underlying customer portfolio and installed production base, we do confirm our growth expectations for this year and for the years ahead, which means we expect underlying EBITDA to grow by 35% in 2026, by at least 40% in 2027. By 2029, we expect underlying EBITDA to reach at least EUR 125 million, and by 2027 at the latest, we expect to generate positive free cash flow after investments. This growth is and will remain sustainable, and we will explore how we can accelerate it even further in order to go to transformative growth.
I would now like to hand over to Jonas for the financial update.
Yes. Thank you, Maarten. Looking at our revenue performance for the first nine months of the year, overall revenue increased by 52.2% to EUR 142 million, continuing our strong growth of the first half year. The growth is mainly driven by our non-asset-based energy segment, where revenues more than doubled to EUR 96.1 million compared to the same period previous year. Asset-based mobility also performed very strongly and continues its strong momentum, increasing 73.1%, and asset-based energy increases 34% to EUR 26 million. EPC performance, as said by Maarten, is indeed in line with expectations and with strategy decreasing, and will be reflected on later on as well. In this segment, revenues also more than double. This is the valorization of our internal generated and produced energy, which is offset in our asset-based mobility and non-asset-based energy segment.
Geographically, we continue to focus and to grow in the home market, Belgium, increase of 73.4% there. China revenue slightly decrease in line with expectations, and the strategy, as already communicated in the first half of the year. Morocco remains on track for the budget within the group. The other is in line with the first half year. It relates to the first project under the umbrella of EnergyVision, which has been commissioned by Turbulent in South Africa, so no changes there. I think furthermore, Maarten will pick up the word again to guide you through, one by one, each segment.
Yes. Energy, so our production portfolio. There, the revenue increased by 34%, and it is really supported by the expansion of the portfolio. We secured more than 150 GWh of wind volume for 2027 as compared to 70 GWh in 2026. We have added more than 1,200 PV installations, and we are preparing the first demonstration projects of the micro-hydropower technology in Belgium, in both regions of Flanders and Wallonia. In terms of the batteries, we installed close to 2,000 plug-and-play batteries, and our bigger battery at Ostend Airport, which is linked to our PV installation, is now also fully operational. In asset-based mobility, we see volumes picking up again, a 50% increase when compared to last year. We saw a 30% year-on-year growth in Q3. We see very good results in all of our networks, especially now also in Aalst, but also in Brussels and in the three provinces.
We do expect to add 3,000 new charging stations this year in total. The last hundred of them will probably be only operational in February. So we are fully online there and doing better in terms of utilization rate than we expected. On the other hand, the e-credits are still under pressure and declined by 55% by now. Non-asset-based energy . That is our energy supply. There we had more than 80% growth year-on-year. That is a combination of organic growth and acquisition of DATS 24. We still did not do any paying marketing efforts, so that is fully organic. We have very good retention figures. We aimed in our prospectus to have more than 30% retention on the group purchase customers. But in reality, 79% of them stayed with us.
That explains why one of the organizers of group purchase is now blocking us from making an offer because basically, we break their business model. Their business model is to place these customers from one year to the other to another supplier, and with us, customers stay with us. Well, luckily, there are three organizers in Belgium, and there are also some provinces behind them. We do think that this block is only temporary. We have an organic inflow, which keeps on increasing, which was 200 last year, then increased to 600 this year. Now it is over 1,000 new customers per week, and that is fully organic without any marketing efforts. We are actively looking at acquisition opportunities in order to accelerate further. EPC is a segment where we do not put much focus on for the last two years, and we see the decline.
Even if we would put more focus on it, the decline is real. The market is going down in terms of EPC for solar. Despite the energy crisis, we still see it lagging behind. So, this is a segment which we still have, based now on Morocco and China, but we do not put much focus or efforts or investments on it. So it is a decline of 22%, in line with what we expect. We do not expect it to improve in the next quarters either, because we simply do not put the focus on this.
We have Opdrachtencentrale. We are doing the first projects at the end of the year, but it is not in our budget, so everything which comes is on top of our guidance. Customer satisfaction. Well, I already said the metrics are improving again and again. So our NPS is at 44 now. Trustpilot remains at 4.7.
Despite the huge inflow of customers, we still maintain our levels of customer care. The number of seconds before we pick up the phone, before we reply an email, before we solve a problem, et cetera. So our service model or customer care model is really scalable. In short, what it comes down to is for each 10,000 new customers, we have 1.5 new FTEs, so it is very scalable. If we look at the next 100,000 customers, that means 15 people extra in our customer care, simply because, well, people do not call that often to their energy supplier. So it is very scalable to keep our customer satisfaction levels high and to keep being obsessed by customer satisfaction. Our guidance, well, we reaffirm our guidance. We do expect 35% underlying EBITDA growth in 2026, at least 40% in 2027, reaching at least 125 in 2029.
We see positive free cash flow after investment at the latest in 2027. Up to you now for any questions you might have. Yes, Livio.
Hi. Good morning. I was wondering, last week we saw some news on energy player OCTA+ splitting some of its business to be able to be sold in separate parts. I was wondering if you are looking at that company. Maybe just for my interest, could you also give an indication how the price for such a portfolio would compare to, for example, your debt composition, considering they are lower rated in the market? Just for my interest. Thank you.
Well, we also read the newspaper, so we also saw that. In general, we look at anything between 10,000 and 200,000 PODs. OCTA+ would fit in, but several other ones would fit in. We would always need to combine this extra consumption with extra production. So we would look at both ways, both at energy supplier and at wind and solar at the same time. I cannot comment on specific names, of course, but the approach is always similar. For DATS 24, we have 18,000 customers coming in. That means we also need extra wind and solar. Same approach holds for bigger players as well. I think Luuk had some questions.
Yes. Good morning. Well, first of all, you mentioned the transformative operation. The previous question also a bit about that. Is that indeed on both sides, and can you elaborate a bit on what type of things you are looking at? Like large solar parks, wind, and can you elaborate a bit more on how you can make sure that you keep the good balance between production and consumption? I understand that you can acquire a customer portfolio, but especially with the charging stations, that may be more challenging to scale it up at the same time. I will take this first then.
We look both at production and consumption, indeed. If we would only look at one side, then we would first look at production, because we do need more wind and a bit more solar over time. But we look at both sides, and in fact, at the end, it is quite simple. One residential customer means we need 1.25 kW of solar and 1 kW of wind. One charging point is similar to four residential households. So we can always do the math. So we know exactly how much more production assets we need when we have customers, whether it be households or charging stations coming in. So we need to keep those aligned, and that means we can also keep our margins stable and our cash flows predictable. We did that at a small scale with DATS 24.
We are looking at some other small cases, but we are also examining the possibility of bigger acquisitions at both pillars. That will mean we would go beyond EUR 70 million per year, of course, but we only do that if it contributes immediately to our EBITDA and to our value creation. But it's always combining both pillars, production and consumption.
Yes. Then, on the group purchases, you mentioned that you had a conflict with one of the players. Can you give a broad indication of the inflow of customers, where they're coming from? So how much is coming, say, from price comparisons, from group purchases and other sources, to get an idea of how sensitive you are to such a conflict of interest?
Well, in the last year, so for the last 100,000 PODs coming in, less than 20% was group purchase. It was not a group purchase that we are blocked from now. It was the other one that we. We won another one yesterday from Wikipower, so this one continues. So, the inflow of new customers from that player that is now blocking was close to zero. 25% comes from comparison websites. Everything else is organic. They come through bring-a-friend actions or organically on our website.
Okay. Finally, for now, you mentioned in the press release that you have invested significantly in upgrading your systems. Can you elaborate a bit on which systems they were and how much growth they can accommodate now?
Our ERP system was NetSuite by Oracle. We changed it at the beginning of January to Odoo, the Belgian player, which also helps us because we have direct access to the ExCom. So if we have issues, we can escalate them much faster. And we have our proprietary platforms, which we also scaled up, basically, both in mobility and in energy. So we were ready for the first 200,000 customers with our previous platform. The next growth, if it would go times five, could happen on these platforms we have now.
Okay. That's good to know. Thank you.
Gert, you had some questions.
Yes. Good morning, Maarten. So, you're talking about acquisitions, it's all over in the press. Then I could ask the question about the capital increase, but I'm not going to do that because you will not answer that question. But more on working capital. Okay, you have the continuing decrease in EPC. Can you give some idea on what amount of capital you can free up in working capital? Then also in gas distribution, are you getting the advance payments? What about your payments for the purchase of the gases are also positive working capital impact, so one, two, three. And then more in general on the growth of the business. You have now a certain level of production, own-based production. It gives you also some free cash. So can you elaborate a little bit on all that?
We go to our expert of cash and working capital, Jonas will answer that.
Yes, happy to do so. Towards your first point, it's true, of course. If we have less EPC activity, it frees up some cash. That's true. On the other hand, we have increased activities when it comes to all what we built for ourselves, which consumes cash again. We are building more strongly than ever related to anything that's asset-based mobility. It also takes a lot of working capital there. That's one thing. On the other hand, and that's the second question you had, is related to working capital in terms of the non-asset-based energy. Of course, growing in that segment also means that there is an additional working capital need on the one hand because of seasonality, but also a free cash flow on the other hand, also because of seasonality, because increased PODs also means increased cash income, of course.
It's a bit a double effect. We are growing more strongly than ever, mainly in our own portfolio. Less EPC, which is selling what we built. But our own portfolio increases, so it consumes still a lot of cash over there. Nonetheless, with the growth that we have overall on the group, we do expect significant amelioration in the coming year. We do expect, in continuous business, to become cash positive as from next year.
All right. Thank you.
Yes, Trian.
Morning, guys. Thanks for letting me have a question. I am just following up on that cash question. Impressive that you are talking about free cash flow positive next year, given you have got accelerating EBITDA growth. That is despite the fact your base of EBITDA is also growing. Your CapEx is not growing. I am just wondering how you are achieving this. Is it that the cost per megawatt, I guess, of adding solar is falling or is wind helping you in the mix? How are you able to accelerate this growth but not increase your CapEx?
Well, part of it is the fact that we have wind and lease instead of acquiring everything. Part is that instead of building residentially at a higher price, we built more in B2B, so not behind the meter, but at a much cheaper price. The overall effect is positive. It gets cheaper to have acquisitions because if you have only solar or only wind, you have these negative prices for injection, so the value of the assets becomes lower. That is also why we look more actively at acquisitions instead of building everything ourselves. It goes faster, and it has a better return. Then for the residential parts, for the residential customers, before we installed, for instance, one PV installation, it cost us EUR 6,000 per customer.
Now we have people or customers that already have solar installations, but we have these plug-and-play batteries, which come at the cost of EUR 1,000. We can have six households locked in in our customer portfolio for the same price as before one, so we can scale faster using the same lot.
Okay. Excellent. You also mentioned your industrial battery at the a irport is now operational. Can you quantify the impact that has on the business and on the financials?
Limited, but we will learn a lot, and then we might integrate it in other projects. It is really to learn. It is an investment of 1 point something million euros, so it will not have tremendous results adding to the group EBITDA. But we will learn from it and then expand it.
Okay, interesting. Then, just a final thing was just that you mentioned heat pumps, which was something you also talked about at the IPO. Maybe you can just give us a rundown on what you have done and what is your sort of expectations for that going forward?
Well, by 2030, we want to get rid of gas in our customer portfolio. So by 2030, we want to have a lot of heat pumps installed. We will probably scale it up in 2028. We do not budget it yet for 2027, but we want to start learning, and we will start explaining the story to our customers in the course of 2027 because, well, gas is volatile and today, very expensive. The distribution costs in Flanders will shift from electricity to gas. The taxes in Belgium will shift from electricity to gas, and Europe is imposing penalties on gas as well by 2028 and later on. So the business narrative of heat pumps will become more interesting in Belgium. It is already today in many European countries, but not in Belgium.
We start preparing, and the idea is we install the heat pumps, our investment, we switch off the gas for a customer, and they use the amount that they pay on their gas invoice to use it for us to recover our investment on the heat pumps. On top of the business narrative and the investment narrative, today, a heat pump, I mean, that's also your cooler. We had a very hot summer. What we basically say to customers, many of them live in apartments, we say, "You get a heat pump, so you get rid of the gas in winter, but you can also have your temperature under control in your apartment in summer," which is something, well, last summer was not very pleasant for many of our customers, and there are no way for them to cool their house.
Now they would have it without any investment. So it's not only a question of keeping your energy bill predictable and lower, but also of adding comfort to your place. And that's the narrative we will start to bring in the course of 2027 to our customer base, and then start at the latest in 2028 with the heat pumps.
Excellent. Okay, brilliant.
Luuk, you had some more questions?
Yeah. One final question on the additional work that you expect in EPC from the Opdrachtencentrale. I know it's not in your budget, but can you give a rough indication if that would be enough to bring it back to growth? What kind of size could we anticipate?
We really have no clue. I will pass it to Koen if he has some better insights, but I have no clue.
We only started with Opdrachtencentrale in September. That's when they communicated towards all their members. We're now getting the first feedback and the first interest, first visits to make proposals and quotations. At this moment, it's still too early to say if it's going to be a substantial amount or rather limited.
Okay. It's clear. Thank you.
Any more questions? If not, I want to thank you for joining us and for your continued interest. We look forward to seeing you again on the 25th of February, and we will present our 2026 annual results. I wish you all a wonderful day. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.