Good afternoon. Before stepping into the presentation, I would like to commend our publication of today. As you could read, we raised a share buyback program about 2.1 million, 100, 900,000 shares. It will start on Monday up to the 30th of November. The purchase price range will be between EUR 2.25 up to EUR 2.74 per share. The average is EUR 2.495 per share. The total purchase price, we think, excluded incidental acquisition costs, will be up to EUR 6 million. The rationale behind is to meet the obligations arising from the 2014-2019 convertible bond, which expires in 2019. The conversion price, it's at status of the 10th of October 2019, is at EUR 2.9971 per share. This should lead to avoidance of spending of about EUR 1 million related to the average share price of EUR 2.495 per share.
We secure the lower share price additionally in opposite to the higher book value, which was at the end of the third quarter at EUR 2.99 per share. We additionally avoid the dilution due to the need of issuing newer shares next year. At least we have a sufficient liquidity available at EUR 117.3 million. This all led to this decision. If you look to the highlights of the third quarter, we see that we have just right now projects of 93.2 MW under construction, which are in Germany, in Sweden, and in France. We received during the next year new permits of 41.3 MW. If you look to the offshore business, we got milestone payments of approximately EUR 8 million for Borkum Riffgrund 2 and Gode Wind 3. Additionally, the project Gode Wind 4 was successful in the German offshore tender.
One target is additionally to build up our new wind farm portfolio 2020. In this respect, we have our repowering project, Gerdau-Schwienau, with 21.6 MW under construction, as well as our wind farm, Schlenzer, 6.5 MW. We're working on a strategy scale-up, which I will talk about later. If you look on the next page, we absolutely according plan with our results. The EBIT is at EUR 3.7 million and the EBITDA at EUR 10.6 million. The EBIT, compared to the last year, is lower due some effects. First of all, we have the sales of the project to expect in this fourth quarter, this is absolutely according plan. It's usual in this branch, I don't know why, but always everything has to be done in the fourth quarter.
One single event with the EUR 21 million payment related to the refinancing of the 142 MW portfolio happened last year, which has been not done this year. Additionally, the electricity generation decreased due to the dismantling of our old wind turbines in our repowering project, Gerdau-Schwienau, and a lower wind year. Just right now we are at 80% wind year, not at a 100% wind year. Last but not least, due to the investment in our portfolio 2020, we did a lot of investments. We made our successful refinancing this year with the repay back of our EUR 100 million corporate bond with 8% interest rates. Now we could successful get a EUR 50 million corporate bond. It was placed in the market with an interest rate of 4%. You see still we have a gross cash position at EUR 117.3 million, a high equity ratio.
The equity of EUR 220.8 million corresponds to a book value of EUR 2.90 per share. This is a little bit lower, the equity at last year, related to dividend payments and our payment for the remaining 13% of WKN. We still have a positive outlook for this financial year, we stay with our guidance. If you look on the next page to the onshore business, the short market update. We got the decision from the government that a special tender will come up of about 4 gigawatts until 2021 in onshore wind and 1,150 megawatts additionally, which should be technology neutral. They are independent of the annual tender for wind onshore, where we have between 2.8 gigawatts in 2018 and 2.9 gigawatts in the rest of the years until 2021. Related to offshore, there had been made no clearance.
We have just right now, 55.3 megawatts of own wind farms currently in operation. As I said before, this is related to the dismantling of the old wind turbines in Gewerbehafen. On the next page, you see in offshore business, we got our milestone payments and, related to foreign markets, I would like to announce that we would like to participate on the tender in Massachusetts on the 13th of December. It's something where we would like to get a grip to the U.S. offshore market. It's our first touch with this kind of tender and we will see what will happen, and we will get experience on the tender procedure there. Related to the constitutional complaint filed, we see that it's slowly but steadily in progress. From that respect, the court is working and wrote a lot of letters and questions to the government.
Therefore, we think they take it seriously, which increase our feeling that this could lead to a successful end. If you look to the income statement, I already spoke about the numbers. EBIT, EBITDA, and EBIT positive. We have got the milestone payments. We have the ongoing development business, and I think it's remarkable to know that we have earnings, gains which we haven't shown yet of about EUR 20.9 million. It's EUR 8.5 million this year related to the wind farms we have in our portfolio, we are having under construction for our portfolio. Look to the balance sheet. I think it's still important, the high liquidity position, and on the other side, you see on the current liabilities and on the non-current debt, that we have around EUR 106 million liabilities to banks, which are mainly non-recourse. This should be considered.
The outlook. We continue to build our wind farm portfolio. We see in our key markets, France and U.S., that we have gone successfully through some steps. In Poland, we could go into the next phase with the Jasna project. In total, if you look to the pipeline in phase 3, we could increase our phase 3 volume to 1,605 megawatts, related to the past year amount of 940 megawatts. Still, we confirm, as I said before, our positive outlook for this year. Important is that we just right now working very hard on our scale-up milestones. If you see on page 10, we raised first new products and services which are available now.
I think in the next upcoming weeks, we will show what we mean with that, with new products and new services we would like to show to the market. We have made first revenues with new products in our project, Wangerland. We made financing for a project. In other projects, we do the construction management, or we look that we could do additional services. Just right now, we're working on some M&A processes for companies which could help us to increase our services. We will see what comes out. We improved our financing structure, and we filled up resources for our smart development team. Just right now, we finalized the definition of our processes and structures. We have to consider that with the 100% takeover of the shares, or with 100% ownership of WKN shares, we're just right now in a situation to optimize our organization.
That's what we're just right now doing, so that we have a direct way of working all together. We changed the WKN AG to WKN GmbH. We have a clear plan to lower cost and being more productive and efficient in our group. In this respect, we are busy on all ways, internally, externally, and we think we are in a good mood that we get our targets done. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our question and answer session. If you have a question for our speaker, please dial zero one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it is your turn to speak, you can dial zero two to cancel your question. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. One moment please for the first question. The first question is from Karsten Blumenthal, First Berlin. Your line is now open.
Good afternoon, Markus. This is Karsten from First Berlin. You rightly mentioned that the German government finally, one has to say, has shown how they want to distribute the extra tenders. It is now over three years, and I think this could give the German market a good push from next year on. However, and you rightly say this in your report, currently approval procedures are very slow and it takes quite long to get approvals. Do you think this will change in the near future now that the government obviously has shown, again, more interest in onshore wind?
Yeah. We raised that point to the government. Just right now, they are working heavily in the Ministry of Economics to come up with a plan how to avoid this kind of structural problems related to the permitting procedures. That's a really clear point. From our side, we could bring up a lot of points in this respect to the Minister of Lower Saxony and as well to the government. As I said, they're working hard on this, and we expect that they will come up with an improvement.
Okay. That sounds promising. You were all in all quite successful in the German tenders this year. However, in the last two tenders, PNE was not awarded a project and the projects from the first tenders will be built this year. That basically means that currently you don't seem to have any awarded project in Germany that you can start building in 2019. That means you really need to win in the next two tender rounds in February and May to get projects through. I would like to listen to you how you see that situation.
Yeah. Yes, as I said before, we are waiting for permissions. As you can see in our pipeline overview, we increased our numbers in Germany, phase 3 and phase 4, from 153, if you add them, to close to 200. We are having a very stable pipeline. Nevertheless, as you said, we have a delay in the permission processes for some reasons, which is not in our responsibility. Nevertheless, we are very clear that we see the projects upcoming because we are doing greenfield. Greenfield means that we have a high-quality product. That gives us a very high chance to win tenders. On the other side, therefore, at that time when we stepped into the foreign markets several years ago, we invested in this. Now we see in France, for example, and Poland and other countries, how the projects are coming up.
This will be the balance.
All right. Just one follow-up. Do you have an idea or a plan how many megawatt in permissions you hope to receive before the first tender in February is done? I mean, you have to put in your projects by mid of January. In megawatt, roughly, could you give us a range how many megawatt you might have at that point in time in Germany?
I can only say, if you look to the numbers, we had in the first quarter, we had in total 112 megawatts in our pipeline, for phase three and four. Now we have close to 200. You see that we are still working into the pipeline. I can only say that we are with some projects since a longer time in the permission procedure, and we expect that some of them are coming up in the next couple of months. I can't say your exact number.
Okay. Thanks for that. You rightly mentioned that as always in the wind business, usually, money comes in in Q4, and this is again this year. When I see into your projects, I see three main projects that could be sold in Q4. That is Kittlitz with 20.7 megawatt, a French project with 19.2 megawatt, and a U.S. project right with roughly 200 megawatt. Do you intend to sell all these three projects this year, ideally, or what are your plans?
Yeah, only to add this, we have three projects, which is Kittlitz, Groß Niendorf and Laperrière. One French project. This project, we expect high EBIT amount. Additionally, we're working very heavily on the Chilocco project. This is in delay due to some decisions from the Trump administration. First of all, we had been in a sales process, then the tax went down to 21% coming from above 30. Everybody looked which project they would like to take and which not, and this decision process took several months. The change of politics in that respect, that the support of coal power plants is there and that changed the prices for the power, and decreased the prices for the power, which led to a redesign of our project, so that we could get again our IRR.
This is the development we had to face and where we react. We hope to get it sold, Chilocco, this quarter. This is the target.
Okay, very good. You mentioned the Massachusetts offshore tender you will participate. Could you give us a bit more insight into that tender? What would it mean when you were awarded? What are the next steps in this process to get a glimpse of the U.S. market offshore?
We see the offshore U.S. business as a long time investment. This is the first tender we attend, and we are one of 19 companies in this tender. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is offering this auction. For us, it's something where we would like to go through a learning curve. Nevertheless, as always, we try to get it done. Or having in mind that we need partners on this, due to the fact that the investments are huge.
Yes, of course. All right. I wish you good luck with selling some of your projects and with the offshore tender in the U.S. Thank you very much for answering my questions, Markus.
Thank you, Karsten.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
The next question is from Holger Steffen, SMC -Research. Your line is now open.
Hello, all together. Holger Steffen speaking.
Hello.
I have only a few additional question to Karsten. I have one question concerning further milestone payments. Maybe you could give us an update. When do you expect now first payments from Gode Wind 4 and from the sold British pipeline? I've seen nothing to this point in your report.
Yeah. First of all, to the U.K. milestone payment. At that time, we made a very good business with the payments we got at that moment, but nevertheless, we are waiting the next steps to be done by Brookfield. We are in the backseat. We make our suggestions, but nevertheless, we are depending on their decisions and on their development progress. Right now, we don't plan to get something in this year and next year of milestone payments out of the U.K. deal.
Okay.
The milestone payment, the Gode Wind 4 is something which depends on the decision of Ørsted, so formerly DONG. In this respect that they have to take the decision to make the financing. That's the trigger point for the next payment. This could be done in, I don't know when they would like to do it, but I think it will be in the beginning of the 2020s. 2021 or something like that.
Okay. Only one question to your profit and loss statement. I've seen the increase of the other operating expenses was relatively high in Q3 with 25.7%. Maybe you can give us a short explanation, is a comparable amount realistic for the fourth quarter too?
Let me see. I have to need a short look to my internal presentation related to the financing numbers so that I don't say something wrong. You talk about which number, please? Can you repeat it, please?
It was other operating expenses, was EUR 6 million, increase of roughly 25% to the last year.
Other expenses. Let's have a short look. I don't have this part in my mind at the moment. Other expenses right now. EUR 6.5. I can't answer you this question just right now. I need to have a deeper look on this number.
Yeah.
I would suggest that I send you an answer on this separately.
Okay, no problem.
I have it not on my desk.
Okay, no problem. You have mentioned, as far as I understand, three projects for sale in the last quarter. It was Kittlitz, Groß Niendorf, and Laperrière. This is correct?
Yeah, Laperrière is one project which we, yeah, it is a French project, yes.
Is Laperrière the name of the 19 MW project?
It's our French project exactly, which we consider the French project, and it's a project of, we have around 19.2 megawatts. Exactly.
I didn't see so long, Groß Niendorf, which amount of megawatts has this project?
Groß Niendorf is 7.6 megawatts. This is a project where we got the permission four weeks ago, three weeks ago, four weeks ago, but We started the construction immediately, and we think we get it finalized this year.
This 7.6 megawatts come additional to the 93.2 megawatts you've mentioned that are at the moment in construction?
Exactly.
Oh, okay.
It's, again, it's the project Kittlitz, with 21 MW, Groß Niendorf with 7.6 MW, Laperrière, or some project with 19.2 MW.
That's the three projects we have and we are working on.
Okay.
Whereby not everybody will be, not all of them will be ready until this end of the year, but we will sell them until end of this year.
Okay. Okay, thank you very much for answering my questions.
Thank you.
At the moment, there are no further questions. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad. As there are no further questions, I would like to hand back to you, Mr. Lesser.
Thank you for your participation and your interest into PNE. Hope to hear you soon with good news on projects we have done and sales we have done. Thank you.