Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the PNE AG first quarter 2026 results conference call. I am Yota, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Heiko Wuttke, CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today in this conference call regarding the quarterly statement for the first quarter, 2026. My name is Heiko Wuttke, CEO of PNE AG, and I'm accompanied by Harald Wilbert, CFO. Let me first give you an overview of the presentation and the course of today's webcast on slide three of the presentation. As usual, I will begin with a summary of Q1, 2026, followed by an update regarding the operating business. I will pass over to Harald for the financials. After that, I will conclude the presentation with the outlook for 2026. We will then open the line for questions. As always, our slides can be found on our investor relations website.
Before I continue with the operating business, I would like to address the upcoming changes in the Board of Management and Supervisory Board we announced end of April. My colleague, Harald Wilbert, asked the Supervisory Board to release him from his duties as a member of the Board of Management for personal reasons. The Supervisory Board has agreed to this request. We regret that Harald leaves the company and would like to thank him for his work over the past years. He has made a significant contribution to the transformation of PNE AG. We wish him all the best for the future. The CFO position is to be assumed on an interim basis by Dirk Simons, currently Chairman of the Supervisory Board. This provides a very strong short-term solution to address the upcoming task.
He is expected to be appointed to the Management Board and to assume the role of CFO until 19th May , 2027. In this case, Dirk Simons would no longer be available to serve as Chairman of the Supervisory Board. Supervisory Board Member Marcel Egger has expressed his willingness to assume the chairmanship subject to his election by the Supervisory Board. This ensures continuity both on the Management Board and the Supervisory Board of PNE AG. Having said this, I would now like to draw your attention to slide five. Ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to share that we had a good start into the financial year 2026 and that we are on track to achieve our full-year targets. We successfully sold projects in our core markets, Germany and Poland, with a total output of 152 MW in the first quarter.
Four wind projects with a total capacity of 111 MW and one PV project with 41 MW peak. In addition, we completed one wind farm project with 34 MW for third parties. As mentioned in our last webcast, we consolidated our own IPP portfolio at 466 MW after the successful sale of the wind farm Bokel with 25 MW. Power Generation increased to 262 GWh, which is an increase of 33% compared to Q1 2025, due to higher wind yields in the German onshore wind market, where, according to the ERA5 data, wind speeds were approximately 8.5% higher than in the same period last year. Also, the total output of our Services business grew to EUR 10.3 million, a plus of 17% year-over-year with good margins.
I will elaborate on more detail on the next slides. In financial terms, the first quarter 2026 was successful as well. Our total output grew to EUR 68.9 million, which is a plus of 24%. Our normalized EBITDA, adjusted for one-off items, reached EUR 17.9 million, while our EBITDA increased to EUR 16.6 million, clearly up from EUR 3.6 million in Q1 2025. Please remember, from the 2026 financial year onwards, normalized EBITDA will serve as a key financial performance indicator for our forecast, as it provides a better and more accurate picture of our operating performance. With this, let's move on to the project pipeline on slide seven.
In Q1 2026, we decided to discontinue our offshore Project Development activities in Vietnam, since we have not been considered as an investor in this nearshore project, which had a capacity of up to 2,000 MW. The project was thus taken out of our project pipeline. As we did not capitalize any costs, no impairments had to be made. Our project pipeline wind onshore and PV remains stable compared to the end of 2025 at 21.7 GW. Thereof, the pipeline in core markets, Germany, France, and Poland, is on a high level with 12 GW. I will go in more detail on the next slide. On slide eight, you can see our project pipeline onshore wind, which was stable compared to the end of 2025 at 14.6 GW.
Our home market and core market, Germany, which accounts for more than 40% of the project pipeline, remains strong with 6.1 GW. As mentioned earlier, we sold three wind farms with a total capacity of 39.6 MW, including Bokel with 25.2 MW. One wind farm with 34 MW was completed for third parties. In addition, four wind farms with 63 MW were under construction in Germany, plus another four wind farms with 59 MW for third parties. We received new permits here for 172.8 MW. With respect to our core market, France, we see a stable project pipeline with 1.5 GW, and we received a new permit of 10.8 MW. Regarding our core market, Poland, we sold one wind farm project to a global player in the energy transition. The wind farm consists of 10 wind turbines and a total installed capacity of 72 MW.
We will further develop this project to the ready-to-build stage, which is scheduled for 2029, with commissioning planned for 2030. Coming to slide nine, we see that our PV pipeline was stable as well at 7.1 GW peak. Our development activity is continuing to show good progress from projects to the later project phases, resulting in a 22% growth of Phase III projects to 1,027 MW peak, coming from 824 MW peak at the end of 2025. We successfully sold a 14.8 MW peak PV project to Poland's leading energy utility, Orlen. The project stands out due to its strategic location and technically, technical configuration. The PV farm will be connected directly to the internal power grid of the Plock's refinery. This behind-the-meter approach offers significant advantages.
By not using the general grid, it reduces regulatory risks and simplifies administrative procedures during development and construction. In addition, we received new permits in 2025 in South Africa with 75 MW peak. In our core market, Poland, with 41.4 MW peak. In Italy, with 23.6 MW peak, as well as in our core market, France, with 12.3 MW peak. If you look at our own IPP portfolio in Q1 2026 on slide 10, you see that the megawatt in operation decreased compared to the end of 2025, as we have successfully sold the Bokel wind farm at the end of Q1. The total megawatt in operation now amounts to 466 MW at the end of the first quarter 2026. 150 MW are coming from wind onshore Germany after the sale of the wind farm Bokel.
11 MW coming from the onshore France, and 6 MW coming from the wood-fired combined heat at the power plant Silbitz. Due to the comparatively higher wind yields, we produced 262 GWh of green energy in the first quarter 2026, which has increased, an increase of 33% and avoided 198 kt of CO2 emissions. The hidden reserves accumulated in our portfolio decreased to EUR 155 million compared to EUR 159.3 million by the end of 2025, which is partly because they are gradually recognized over the lifetime of the project and partly because of the project sales. More than 90% of our IPP projects are based on feed-in tariffs for 20 years, leading to an average weighted contracted tenor for the IPP portfolio of more than 15 years.
This shows an interesting upside opportunity through short and medium-term PPAs that are more attractive than the EEG remuneration. About 40% of our IPP portfolio already have a PPA. Let me also give you some information about our Services business on slide 11, since it continues to perform well and delivers growing high-margin returns through a long-running contracts. First of all, operational management and technical inspections continue to grow. The assets under operational management increased to 3.2 GW, and we had a good order intake in Germany and internationally, with 75% external customers. The customer retention rate for the operational management is above 98%. After the successful market entrance by the end of 2025, we have further BESS contracts under negotiation. Last but not least, we conducted approximately 300 technical inspections in wind farms in the first quarter of 2026.
The strong performance in wind and sites continued with approximately 150 wind assessments and expert opinions in the first quarter 2026, and we conducted approximately 100 LiDAR verifications. With these figures, we are well on the way to matching or even exceeding last year's very good results. In addition, we had a good start of our PPA-as-a-Service business under the new brand, Wattmate. In 2026, in a traditionally quiet first quarter, with more than 13 wind and PV PPA projects and a total output of approximately 165 MW and a transaction volume of around 270 GWh. Bitbloom showed assets under monitoring at approximately 4.5 GW. Perhaps even more important is the high customer retention rate. As you know, our largest customer recently prolonged this contract by three years.
Then the second largest customer just added 250 MW for performance monitoring. Furthermore, a new EU customer just signed a three-year monitoring contract. Overall, we are very happy with the performance of the Services segment. With this, I would now like to hand over to Harald for the financials.
Yeah. Thank you, Heiko. First of all, I also would like to welcome everyone here in this call. Looking at slide 13, you see that our total output increased by 24% to EUR 68.9 million. This was driven by successful project sales, by high development activities, as well as the result in Power Generation and our Services business. Our EBITDA increased to EUR 16.6 million compared to EUR 3.6 million in the previous year, especially due to project sales, mainly the wind farm Bokel and the improved Power Generation result due to the higher wind years. The normalized EBITDA, adjusted for one-off items, reached EUR 17.9 million. The one-time effect of EUR 1.3 million were mainly related to consulting fees for our transformation projects.
The decrease in the financial result of EUR -4.0 million was mainly driven by higher interest expenses resulting from a higher average volume of project financing. The positive tax effect was mainly attributable to deferred taxes arising in connection with project settlements due to IFRS 15. Looking at the segments on slide 14, I would like to mention that previous years' figures were adjusted due to changes in the segment reporting. The consolidation now includes all group consolidation as well as general overhead costs that could not be reliably allocated to operational segments. Consolidation, therefore, renamed to corporate functions and consolidation. Having said that, we see growth in Power Generation and Services, but a decreasing output in Project Development in the first quarter 2026.
Total output of the segment Project Development decreased to EUR 22.4 million compared to EUR 36.4 million in the previous year due to fewer projects built in Q1. Total output of the segment Power Generation increased to EUR 32.3 million compared to EUR 22.0 million in the previous year due to the higher wind years mentioned before. Total output of the segment Services increased to EUR 10.3 million compared to EUR 8.8 million in the previous strong order book. EBITDA-wise, the segment Power Generation had the highest contribution in the first quarter 2026, with EUR 24.2 million. The Services segment contributed EUR 2.9 million, and the EBITDA of the segment Project Development decreased to EUR -6.3 million. Balance sheet.
On the asset side, we see on slide 15 that most is allocated to property, plant, and equipment, as well as inventories, what we see as investments in stable values and recurring cash flows. Our cash position fell to EUR 61.2 million due to investments in Project Development, but is still on a good level. Equity decreased to EUR 149.4 million, reflecting the negative net income. The equity ratio was 13.1%. We continue to aim for an equity ratio of 20% or more in the midterm and already expect a clear improvement in 2026. Adjusted for hidden reserves, the equity ratio was at comparable 23.6%. Liabilities to banks remain stable, resulting in a net debt of EUR 748.5 million.
In addition, it's worth mentioning that the majority of the bank liabilities are non-recourse project financing. Yeah. With that, I would like to hand back to Heiko for the outlook.
Thank you, Harald. Ladies and gentlemen, this leads me to the outlook on slide 17. Based on the current plan for the 2026 financial year, we continue to expect a group EBITDA normalized for special items, or just normalized EBITDA, of between EUR 110 million and EUR 140 million. Regarding our operating business, we of course aim to sell a significant number of projects in the financial year 2026, for example, in Germany and Poland, and as you have already seen, in South Africa. The expansion of our IPP portfolio will be consolidated this year before we further build it up in midterm. According to our stronger focus on selected core markets, exits for Turkey and Canada are targeted for 2026.
As already mentioned last time, we now focus even more on projects and solutions with high system and grid compatibility, such as BESS applications. Coming to the end of my presentation, I would like to emphasize once again, we are committed to future-proof, sustainable growth, and value creation. With this, I would like to conclude our presentation and open the call for questions.
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to task a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone who was a question, may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Holger Steffen with SMC Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for your presentation. I have some questions about the recent development. First of all, one about your project or your sale of the wind farm, Bokel. Are the proceeds from the sale already fully reflected in the figures? Maybe could you describe the impact of the transaction on the income statement?
The revenue is included in the Q1, and the cash in was in April, so a little bit later. There was a postponement.
Okay. I would have expected a higher other operating income from this sale. Is this not correct?
This is Heiko, Holger. Compared to the sales that we usually have in an earlier stage or when we still sell turnkey, this farm was in operation and therefore with project finance and non-recourse finance, whilst then, of course, parts of that is not being reflected in the return and in the result of the first quarter.
Okay. Thank you. Are you planning any further sales from the existing portfolio in the current year?
Yeah, thanks. As we pointed out, that this year will be a consolidation year. We plan further sales of the IPP portfolio, not in a significant manner, but to be in the position to flexibly react on market situations. It's, it's a plan that we sell further, without giving a clear number to that.
Okay, fine. In the first quarter, other operating expenses have risen significantly from EUR 7.2 million to EUR 12.8 million. Could you provide us with further details on this development?
It's not coming from one position or one item. It's coming from a lot of items. It's a, it's a mix from maintenance for the IPP business, from consulting fees for transformation project. It's from all typical other operating expenses. Then it's connected to the higher volume of the business, of course. You see that we have higher revenue and normally then the operating costs, the other operating expenses are increasing simultaneously.
Okay. There were no special effects—
No.
—in the first quarter. Okay. I see. The external revenue in the Service segment is declining significantly from EUR 8.1 million to EUR 5.6 million, while internal revenue is increasing. Is this a capacity issue or what is the main cause here?
It's, we are looking only now to Q1, so in Q2 or Q3 could look totally different. This is, then depends on when we are selling projects. Normally, we sell projects in later phases of the year, so in later quarters. In the last year, there were some, when you compare Q1 to last year, there were some sales in the first quarter, what was extraordinary. In this year, we are absolutely on plan. We are a little bit above plan when you look in our internal figures, so we are totally happy with this.
Okay. My question was belonging to the Service segment.
Yeah.
Because we see there are a lower external revenue in the Service segment and more internal revenue.
Yeah.
My question was if it's a capacity issue.
No, it's not a capacity issue, but we can deliver this information then afterwards. We have to prepare this, but there's nothing extraordinary what we see here in Services. Service running really well. Here we are on budget, so everything is well there. Yeah. We will prepare this information and then come to you.
Okay, that's fine. My last question about the prices in wind energy tenders in Germany. Maybe they could fall below EUR 0.05 in the future. What would that mean for your project pipeline? Will you have to stop some projects, and could there be any write-downs?
Yeah, thanks for that question. Yes, we see quite some competition and therefore declining prices on the feed-in tariffs. There are different ways how to react on that. Because if that's the case, we have to tackle the whole cost that we see in the system on the CapEx and the OpEx side. We have seen that there are possibilities to decrease CapEx and OpEx. That's one point. The other is, I think, we mentioned this last year, and this is something we continue to do very, very deeply. We do a more thorough value engineering of the projects.
More or less investigating all possible factors to increase, at the end of the day, profitability and the quality of the project. By doing that, although we have a very low level of the auctions for this year, we don't see that we have to stop projects at this point in time, but we have to make them better. One additional remark, I think at the end of the day, this will be a very clear situation for 2026. For 2027, things are to be seen as we will be in a different regime of an EEG, very likely a CFD, two-sided CFD regime.
At least in discussion, I expect that the volumes to be auctions will be adjusted slightly, meaning increased. Both combined with the CapEx and OpEx point that I mentioned, I think will still make at least our projects at PNE viable.
Okay. That's, that are good news. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
You're welcome.
The next question comes from the line of Guido Hoymann with Metzler. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. Three questions from me, please. The first one is, do you want to share some details on how far your portfolio streamlining measures have progressed so far this year, for example, in Turkey and Canada? The second would be, on the wind speeds, you mentioned they were up 8.5%, or I think that's, yeah, that's also what I've seen for Germany, so, up 8%-9%. In Q1, your IPP result is up 50%. Is that due to better prices, i.e., PPAs, maybe in particular in the context of the Iran crisis, at least from, yeah, March onwards?
The third one is a rather, let's say, technical industry or broader industry-related question on the subject of the grid connection backlogs and, you know, all the stuff piling up there. You know, if I understand correctly, a developer can enter a tender with a project based on a grid information alone, so Netzinformation. To your knowledge, do many project developers do that? For example, to save time, and are you doing this, or do you participate in tenders only once you've got allotted a specific grid connection point, you know, the concrete grid connection point? I understand that there's a lot of projects also around, you know, with the information only, so no fixed connection point.
Could that lead to a bad surprise, if it takes longer than three or four years, you know, to get the actual grid connection, and from which point penalties would become due, or the whole contract award or the guarantees would be, expire? A bit of a longer question. Sorry for that. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Guido. Maybe on the third question, I will have a counter question, so to speak, let me first tackle the first one, the streamlining. We are in the midst of selling, stepping out and liquidating the companies and projects in Turkey and in Canada. That's ongoing progress. Actually, as you can imagine, having been there for many, many years, there's a lot to be tidied up. It's on the way.
Okay.
We'll stick to that plan. At the end of the day, some formalities may still come up, but we are on good progress here, I would say.
Okay.
The question to the wind yields or the results of the IPP. Yes, we had a better first quarter, wind-wise, this year than compared to last year. The higher increase of the revenues for IPP is, I think, twofold. Partly, it's coming out of the sale of Bokel, which was in the segment IPP. The other is that we had a high volume, of course, due to the installations and additions in the IPP portfolio, which resulted in higher revenues. Coming to the third point, if I understood your question correctly, and please correct me if I'm wrong then.
The question is like when we participate in tenders, for the, for the auction, for the tariff, wind onshore, correct?
Yeah.
That's what you mean?
If we have fixed grid connection points or if we just have, let's say, something that's more, a kind of prediction but not a confirmation.
Yeah.
We go the safe way. At the end of the day, once we receive the tender award, we are not just having the permit, we have the grid connection approval, and then can immediately start into the financing then.
Okay. Okay, that's good to hear that. My impression is that there are many projects around which do not have that, who rely on this paragraph eight, you know, the, let's say, the general information. I think given that there are so many projects piling up these days, and grid connection is taking longer and longer, that might turn out to be a problem for those who do not have this concrete connection point. Good to hear that that you are actually only participating on the basis of having a grid connection point. Thank you for your answers.
You're welcome.
The next question comes from the line of Karsten von Blumenthal with First Berlin Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Heiko. Good morning, Harald. My first question is regarding the BESS application you mentioned. Perhaps you could elaborate further on that. Is this battery with solar? Is that battery alone? You know, which sizes are there in consideration? Perhaps you can elaborate on that.
Hello, Karsten. We are focusing different levels of the BESS applications. One is that we are owning and operating different substations where there is some remaining capacity combined with batteries. This is then where the wind farm is connected, providing a certain business case. We also follow hybrid solutions with wind and or PV and BESS. Typically combined. There's not yet a clear focus on standalone BESS from our side. We are going for the green battery in some cases, so just within the EEG and without the necessity of having an additional grid capacity approval. There are different ways, actually. We're not just doing this only in Germany.
We are focusing this in Poland. We just recently received a permit in Romania. To give one disclaimer, it's a process which is highly reliable or highly dependent, sorry, on grid connection approvals. There, not only in Germany but in other markets as well, it's not a clear path how and when this can be granted. We are lined up there. We've made our homework and ticked all, let's say, criteria boxes that the DSOs have. It's not a fast track, we have to say.
All right. Pretty interesting. You mentioned that it's BESS, also together with wind. Usually we hear that with PV. Is it BESS and wind in European countries or also in Germany?
That's in Germany.
Okay. Pretty interesting. Okay. Very good. Second thing. You mentioned that you aim to reach a 20% equity share. Any target, you said midterm, any target, could you more specify on that when that should be?
Yeah, 20% is what we're aiming for, or even better. Our target, since it's something that has to be evolved over time, is to reach that latest 2028.
At 2028. Oh, okay. Thank you. You mentioned this interesting Polish project where you deliver behind-the-meter. Could this be a kind of role model for many other projects, not only in Poland, but in other countries?
Thanks for that question. This actually is a good example how things can work out if you have industrial partners that have, let's say, different processes and productions are running. That's something that we currently investigating and we're actually preparing. It's still on a business development level and not fully operational, that we are looking for industrial partners in order to find solutions on their energy demand, on their change from to more electrification and using the different processes in production, be it electricity or heat. That's something that's going on.
We think there will be an increasing demand because at the end of the day, not only let's say reliable and cheap green electricity is in demand, but to serve more decarbonization that is on everyone's agenda when supplying to the customers is the second point, so that the demand there will come up. That's at least what we think. Again, we investigating this and have the first pilots that we started with that. The Polish project is a good example how this can work.
Could you remind me, the Polish project is PV, isn't it?
That's PV, correct.
Yeah, okay.
That's PV to a refinery.
Yeah. Because, there's a German company, called Windwise, claiming that they have, developed a special, low wind turbine with a certain technology to provide, up to 4,000- hours, onshore, full load hours and, producing very stable, power during the year. My question is that something you have already spotted? Could this, for a project developer, such as PNE, could, technologies going in this direction, so, relatively stable, wind production, perhaps also behind-the-meter, that something, that is interesting for you?
Well, in general, we look into many applications. L et's say I'm in this case a bit more skeptic when I hear these figures. Well, checking and testing this, yes. On the other hand, we have not the goal to enter into completely new technology, but we want to use our know-how that we currently have in terms of planning and realization of products, but not going into completely new ways. Looking at this, yes. Will it fly? Let's say I have my slight doubts on this example that you just mentioned.
All right. Thank you very much for your feedback on that side. Thanks a lot for taking my questions.
You're welcome.
For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Heiko Wuttke for any closing remarks. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. If there are no further questions, we would like to thank you for your participation in today's webcast. We look forward to welcoming you next time, maybe at our virtual AGM next week or at our next webcast on the publication of our half-year financial report 2026, which is scheduled for the 13th of August 2026. Have a great day. Bye-bye.
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