Good afternoon. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the GTT third quarter 2026 activity update conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. François Michel, CEO of GTT. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I am pleased to welcome you all today online. I am sitting here in Paris with Thierry Hochoa, our CFO, and together, as usual, we will walk you through our key business highlights and our revenue for the first nine months of this year. As usual, after I share the key highlights, I will provide you with an activity update on our two divisions, GTT Energy and GTT Marine. Thierry will walk you through the nine-month revenue, and I will share with you my closing remarks before we open the floor to your questions. Over the first nine months of the year, we have received, which is a very good level, 80 new orders, including 71 orders for new LNG carriers, which can be compared with 27 over the first nine months of 2025.
This is very much in line with the expectations that I had shared with you all at the beginning of the year. This sustained commercial momentum led to a good level of order book amounting at the end of Q3 to EUR 1.85 billion, again, amongst the very highest level in the history of the company. Our revenue stood at EUR 570 million for the first nine months of 2026, which is a 4.9% decrease compared with 2025.
This is primarily reflecting the lower level of LNG carrier under construction, some of which is in fact related to the quite low level of order intake during the first month of 2025. And we have also noted over the past few months that a couple of ship delivery dates, which used to be accelerated in the first part of the year, are reversing back to initial contractual milestones. This is a slight shift.
It has small consequences on our revenues, representing less than 2% of our nine-month 2026 revenues. Again, this effect is small, and it is temporary. On the market side, the signing of 51 million ton per annum of new liquefaction capacities over the period brings to 135 million ton per annum the total of investment decisions signed for new liquefaction units since January 2025, which is a record level, which bodes very well for the activity of our group for the coming years. We have also reached a major milestone in September at Gastech where, as promised, we introduced our new service platform dedicated to the LNG industry, the LNG Performance Centre, which I will elaborate on later in this presentation. It is also during Gastech that GTT Energy released several new designs and developments. I will come back to this.
Our GTT Marine division also sustained commercial momentum during the first nine months of this year, reflected in the signing of very good contracts, key contracts with major players. As you all know, the integration of Danelec is progressing very well. We are now ready to launch our integrated software platform in early 2027. A couple of comments on FIDs. As you know, the FID level is very important for us. It is a leading indicator of our future order intake. On this front, the positive momentum continues. After the 84 million ton per annum last year, we have registered 51 million ton per annum of new projects that have reached FID by end September. In addition to this, we still have 15 million ton per annum of projects which are in limited notice to proceed and which should go quite quickly.
All this bodes very well for future orders. Another good point on that is that the vast majority of the ships for these recent FIDs, 2025 and 2026, have not been ordered yet, and those orders will come shortly. A couple of comments on the Middle East situation, which we are following closely. Together with our partners, we are, of course, monitoring the situation which remains volatile. It remains a volatile situation. The developments in the region are such that it is hard to predict the state of the transit in the Strait of Hormuz, which is not totally closed, as you can see on the top right chart.
What our reading is that this transit remains highly uncertain, and that secondly, we saw that the spot charter rate has declined to a very low level, in part due to a higher number of vessels now available on the spot market. Having said that, these disruptions are having a very limited impact on our activity. In particular, we have seen a couple of ships delivery dates returning to initial contractual milestones. But again, we do not see more than that, and this effect is small and temporary. This is having, in total, a slight impact of less of 2% on our turnover for the first nine months of 2026. Over the long run, we believe that even if these disruptions were to last, their effects on our business would be limited as the fundamentals of the LNG market remain strong. Turning now to significant development for GTT Energy.
I am happy, and I would say proud, to share that we have successfully presented our service offer, the fully new service offer, the LNG Performance Centre at Gastech in September. As I had announced before, it is a new service ecosystem, fully new service ecosystem, developed by GTT in record time, which will support ship owners and charterers in optimizing LNG carrier fleet performance and their cargo management performance. This service offer will consist of three modules: cargo management, voyage optimization, and containment system performance and maintenance optimization. I will come back to this maintenance optimization part. The offering will combine advice from experts and seasoned seafarers and captains available 24/7 with a suite of digital solutions underpinned by GTT's proprietary data and advanced models. We are the only ones to be able to offer this. LNG Cargo Insights is the very first module of this offer.
It will focus on cargo management as this is what our customers, charterers, and ship owners have asked us to address as a priority. It will be rolled out with a couple of key partners over the coming months and quarters. Going back to innovation, we have kept, in addition to this service offer, we have kept a very high pace on innovation on our core business. We are focused on the priorities that I had been sharing before. First, we continue to enhance the LNG carrier's overall performance by demonstrating the fact that the most advanced designs, in particular here, the 200,000 cu m design, can be used in the vast majority of existing LNG carriers, LNG terminals. Second, we provide more and more services to operations.
You know that services is one of my major focus here by reducing maintenance costs, and we are able here to extend the time interval between two inspections, supporting preventive maintenance from five years to 7.5 years, which of course reduces the cost associated with downtime. This service will be included in the LNG Performance Centre offer in the third pillar that I just mentioned. Third, to expand the use case of our membrane technology, we have improved a lot our LNG as fuel offer by launching a two-barg offer. That will create a platform to regain and gain market share on this business. These recent developments demonstrate that we are keeping our innovation effort at a very high pace, which, as you know, is one of our priorities. Now, a couple of comments on GTT Marine before I leave the mic to Thierry Hochoa.
The GTT Marine division performs well. We continue to see gains in commercial traction with contracts secured from leading market players, which confirm the attractiveness of our integrated offering. The integration of Danelec is well advanced. A lot of focus in this integration was dedicated not only to, let's say, revenue synergies, but also to innovation over the period. We have announced, as you know, the launch of an integrated software platform at the trade fair, SMM, in September. We have also released a very innovative software, BOQA software, which opens new perspectives on the safety market. As you know, VDRs can be used for regulatory compliance today, but we can turn them into an incident investigation tools, and an active component of the shipowner's digital safety ecosystem.
As you can also notice on the right side of the slide, our installed base continues to increase, +4% since the start of the year, and we can confirm that our revenue synergies are well on track to reach the EUR 25 million- EUR 30 million by 2030. Thierry, the floor is yours.
Thank you, François. Good evening, everyone. Now let's move to the financial part of the presentation. Let's start with our order book for the nine months of 2026, which evolved as follows. As mentioned by François, we benefit from a very high order intake with 80 orders, of which 71 LNG carriers and five onshore tanks. Deliveries amounted to 69, with 66 LNGCs, two VLEC and one FSRU. This results in a strong core business order book of 299 units at the end of September 2026. Regarding LNG as fuel, with the delivery of eight units in the first nine months of 2026, we have 40 units to deliver in the coming years. As outlined in our key highlights, our order book amounts to a very high level of EUR 1.85 billion of revenue secured, among the highest levels in the history of the company.
This give us a very strong visibility for the years to come. Now moving to more details on revenue by activity for the first nine months of 2026. Consolidated revenues stands at EUR 570 million for the first nine months of 2026, down 5% compared to last year. Two main drivers to explain the revenue variation. The first drivers is new build revenue of GTT Energy at EUR 505 million, are down 9.4% compared to last year. This decrease is consistent with the decline in the number of LNG carriers under construction, reflecting the low level of orders recording during the first nine months of 2025. This decrease also takes into account a lower level of accelerated deliveries at certain shipyards, reversing back to initial contractual milestones.
This decrease is, however, partially offset by royalties from FSRU and FLNG, which increased by 84% and 22% respectively due to the higher number of units under construction compared with last year. It should also be noted in GTT Energy that revenue from services to operations decreased slightly to EUR 16.4 million in the first nine months of 2026, compared with EUR 17.7 million last year, mainly due to the slowdown in certification activities, partly compensated by a higher level of assistance to vessels in operation.
Second driver is revenue from GTT Marine at EUR 47 million, up 138% compared to last year, driven by the contribution of Danelec, which was not contributing to the group revenue until August last year. One comment on Elogen. Revenue amounted to EUR 0.7 million, reflecting the refocusing on research and development. I now hand back to François for the outlook and the key takeaways.
Thank you, Thierry. The group in this environment confirms its 2026 objectives. As a reminder, we expect revenues to be in the range of EUR 740 million- EUR 780 million. EBITDA will be in the range between EUR 490 million and EUR 530 million, and our dividend policy of at least 80% of payout ratio is of course maintained. Now, a couple of takeaways before taking your questions. As you have seen throughout the year, our order intake is very robust. The current order book stands at an almost record level, EUR 1.85 billion. The LNG market is dynamic, I would say very dynamic and strong, and 2026 is already the third best year in terms of FIDs taken after 2022 and 2025.
On the innovation front, which is so important for our company, for all aspects, we have unveiled our new GTT Energy services offering at Gastech this September with Cargo Insights, the first module of the newly created LNG Performance Centre. It will be rolled out over the next few quarters. We have also received several important AiPs which will further strengthen our membrane performance. GTT Marine has presented our new unified software platform, which will be rolled out in Q1 next year. As I was telling you, overall, the LNG dynamics remain strong and the fundamentals of this market are very positive. Looking further ahead, the group will benefit from a couple of factors. First, of course, the very strong order book level, which we have mentioned. Secondly, the sustained order intake momentum, which keeps building up this order.
Third, the very high level of FIDs for new liquefaction projects. The vast majority of the ships for those FIDs have not been ordered yet. All of this provides very strong visibility for a good number of years. This concludes our presentation, and Thierry and I are happy to answer your questions. Thank you.
This is the conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Matt Smith with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple, please. The first one, I think one of the most common debates I am having at the moment is around the long-term outlook for LNG demand and whether that has been influenced by current events, given the supply disruption and corresponding high prices. I am inclined to think that supply will likely meet demand, but interested to get your takes, what you are hearing from your customers and your stakeholders as it relates to the resilience of demand at the moment, but also where you see the industry heading across the next decade. So that would be the first one, long-term question, and then second question focusing on comments around 2026. I think in the first half of the year, cost control was very strong.
I pick up in the release, you've talked to dedicating additional resources to develop new services around digital marine. I just wanted to pick up on those comments, whether that represented any sort of step change from what you had planned at the start of the year and where those investments are going. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for your question. I will take them in turn. Regarding the long-term outlook for demand, we have absolutely no, let's say, information or no discussions which would lead us to believe that there is a slowdown in demand. Of course, we have taken in the 550 assumptions, which we have released after the first half of the year, a number of, let's say, cautious assumptions. It's possible to have more aggressive targets, but that's not the choice that we have made. It depends on how aggressive people want to be regarding this. But for the moment, we don't hear any slowdown in demand whatsoever. Regarding your second question, perhaps, Thierry, you want to take this?
Yes. Thank you for this question and your way to underline that we have a very strong cost control, even if we launch different initiatives to protect our core business and expand our company. Definitely. We will do it in the same way for the rest of the year, because to absorb these new initiatives and the cost, definitely, we have a strong cost control and to maintain the high margin for 2026.
Understood. Thank you. Thank you very much. Over to you .
The next question is from Guilherme Levy with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, on the ship delivery dates, which appear to be reversing after an acceleration in recent months, could you provide more details behind the dynamic? Are these postponements a customer decision, or is the equipment that is necessary for construction to advance just not getting where it should get? Perhaps another way to ask that, in what stage of construction are the vessels, in which you are seeing these changing delivery dates? Then, the second one, when discussing your guidance, could you walk us through the building blocks between your bear and bull cases at this point, and why you couldn't narrow guidance at this point of the year, very close to year-end? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for your question. What we have seen is for ships in the later phases of delivery and for a limited number of situations. In total, the effect is small, and we believe is very temporary. It's not a dynamic effect. It's a stock effect, if you want. We have seen that ships that were about to be delivered have been kept for a variety of reasons, by the yards, primarily because of ship owners reverting to the contractual milestones that they wanted to receive. They just revert to initial contracts. No one is talking about renegotiations, postponements, or anything like this. It's a small, I would say, almost a statistical effect.
But we are explaining this because this is information that we have, and in total, in stock, it's less than 2% of our turnover for the first nine months of this year. Regarding your question on the guidance, today, while the environment remains, in general, volatile, we have decided to keep the guidance as it is now. But we are solidly focused on the execution. The geopolitical context is highly uncertain, and so we prefer to keep the 2026 objectives today.
Understood. Thank you so much.
The next question comes from Richard Dawson with Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening, and thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. First one, you mentioned that the majority of the vessel requirements for the LNG FIDs that have occurred since 2025 are still to be ordered. Of those 71 vessel orders you have received year-to-date, are you able to provide how many of those are related to those 2025 and beyond FIDs? I am just trying to understand how many of those are still to come. Secondly, and I appreciate it has only been a month since you released the LNG Performance Centre, but is there any early indication from customers on how that is being received? You mentioned there in the release that it is in relation to what customers were demanding. Just wondering what sort of the initial uptake has been. Thank you.
Okay. From the ships related that we have recorded, the LNGC orders that we have received so far this year, we have received 21 out of 71, which we can relate to FIDs from 2025 and 2026. If I want to be even more specific, it is 19 for 2025 and two for 2026. If I take the overall assumption that we make on the number of ships that are needed for the FID level for 2025 and 2026, it is a very small share, and this is very good for us. It is very good news for us. Your second question was related to the LNG Performance Centre and how much it was pulled by customers. The LNG Performance Centre is a response to our customers asking us to help us reduce operating costs for the ships, in particular with regards to the boil off reduction.
It is a natural expansion of our business. Of course, we have started by launching the part of the Performance Centre, which is a priority for them. It will be an overall offer. It will be developed and rolled out over the full-year of 2027 and generate significant business, I would say, gradually from either the end of 2027 or 2028.
That is clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Henri Patricot with UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello everyone. Thank you for the update. I have got one just on the near term. There has been a bit of a slowdown in new orders in the third quarter. I was interested in hearing how the discussions are going at the moment, and how much of a rebound we could expect in the fourth quarter and in 2027. You flagged that it has been relatively few orders linked to the FIDs over the past couple of years. I am interested in hearing how quickly you think these orders could come through. Following up on the question on the LNG Performance Centre. It sounded like we should not expect too much of a financial impact yet in 2027. Do you have any indication to give at this stage of how much of a contribution we could expect over the next couple of years, perhaps? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. It is very difficult for us to give a specific guidance on orders to be received in one quarter at the scale of our business, just because of the time length that when FIDs are taken, investors have up to three years to order the ships technically. We do not know when these orders are happening, and there are a number of factors that can influence the timing of these orders. We could have 100 or we could have zero. It is very difficult for us to predict this. That I cannot say. What I can absolutely say is that the amount of FIDs that we have recorded last year and this year will translate into a good level of orders according to the standard calculations that we have. Your second question related to the LNG Performance Centre.
My priority is to establish a very high level of quality in this service offer. In the trade-off between launching something very quickly and something that can really deliver good quality, good growth, and good value over a sustained good number of years, I prefer taking a little bit my time. I do not want to be too bullish on the 2027 perspective on that, and to focus on quality and to have a very strong business for the, I would say, next couple of years and even for the long run.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Jean- Luc Romain with CIC CIB. Please go ahead.
Good evening. Do you see new entrants coming in the LNG business looks like the recent orders that some shipyards have announced are for ship owners which were not yet in the LNG market and are now entering. Do you see that, or among your orders, are there some which were from new players?
We see discussions with ship owners wishing to enter this market. It's not the majority of the discussions that we are having today. But we see we have a couple of ship owners that are already present in the shipping industry and who want to enter the LNG space. That's true. It's not the majority.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from Théa Lacroix with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. My questions are related to Danelec. You mentioned commercial synergies gradually materializing. Where are you seeing the first synergies? And how is the integration going on with Danelec? My second question is regarding the Japan office. You just announced that you opened a new office in Japan. What does having a local team in Japan allow you to do that's something that you couldn't do before? And is the main opportunity coming from winning new customers or expanding relationship with existing ones? Thank you.
Thank you. Thierry, do you want to take the question on synergies for Danelec?
Yes. Fine. We mentioned that at the beginning of the acquisition that we expect around EUR 25 million-EUR 30 million until 2030 with new synergies, including the different products. We have two types of synergies. The first one is synergies from Danelec legacy and Ascenz Marorka, our current affiliate, to combine software and hardware. Hardware from Danelec legacy and software from Ascenz Marorka legacy. That is the first type of synergies that we expect to combine these two solutions, hardware and software. We are on track regarding working synergies at the end of September. The second type of synergies, it is thanks to Danelec, we can develop services for LNG because they have a solution to capture, to collect the data and to propose services to our clients. It is a very game changer for us.
That is the second type of synergies that we expect, but we have not yet evaluated the amount of synergies that we can have from the LNG services.
They will be very important. Regarding your question on the office in Japan, I think I am very happy. In fact, you are mentioning Japan, which is a very important market for us. As you know, Japan is the largest LNG importer in the world. In fact, we are very present in Japan, and we have been very present in Japan for a very long time. We are working together with the Japanese authorities today on plans to revive even the shipbuilding activity in Japan based on our technology. This is very important. Here, typically, we know all the customers. It is a good example of synergies between GTT Marine and GTT Energy because based on the strong relationships that we have between GTT Energy and the Japanese ecosystem, we are able to launch a local office which will benefit GTT Marine and the development of GTT Marine.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The last question comes from Jean-François Granjon with ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you. Good evening. Two questions on my side. Regarding the activity and the sales, taking into account the nine months performance, that means that there is a quite important decrease by 13.3% for the sales in Q3. Do you expect the same magnitude of decrease for Q4? My second question concerns the guidance. Will you confirm the guidance for the EBITDA? I well remember you have some positive trend during the first half in terms of performance. We can, at this stage, expect probably the high end range of the guidance. Due to what you mentioned during the delay, are you more comfortable with the midpoint or not of the guidance for the EBITDA? Thank you.
Thank you for your questions. Again, on the sales, it's hard for us to predict quarter-on-quarter changes. We can have very high level of orders as we can have quite low level of orders. It's more of a rolling 12 that the figure is important. I really cannot say on Q4 right now. We are having extremely active discussions with a lot of customers at my level. Clearly we don't see any slowdown in the traction in the discussions. That I can tell you. But the actual date of order is not something we can predict precisely, including because of cut-off dates, et cetera. Regarding the guidance, I think our position is the following, is that the overall geopolitical context is uncertain and today we confirm confidently our objectives for 2026. That's the best way for us to frame it today.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
We have a very last question from Jamie Franklin with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks for squeezing me in. Just one last clarification for me, please. Just on the GTT Marine, you announced a contract in July to equip the PETRONAS LNG fleet with VPS solutions. Just wondering if that contract was recognized as revenue in the third quarter or if it's something to come in a future period. Thanks.
It's not yet.
Okay.
It will come. Yep.
Thank you.
Mr. Michel, this was the last question.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones. Thank you.