Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Analyst Conference Call of P&E Wind AG. At our customers' request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. May I now hand you over to Markus Lesser, CEO of P&E Wind AG, who will lead you through this conference.
Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning. I would like to give you an overview about our operational highlights in 2017. First of all, and later on to the financial highlights and give you a complete overview about 2017. Yes, in the areas in all areas, we had successes in the onshore business, in the offshore business as well as in our wind farm portfolio sales. Also, we filed a new strategy, scale up, in November.
So starting with the successes in onshore business, we completed solar or started constructed 233.6 megawatts of projects, and we did it national but as well internationally in U. S, France and Sweden and in Germany, of course. We had a successful tender in Turkey, about 70 megawatts. And in offshore, we sold our project Atlantis 1 to Wachensau. One project, Gotwin 3, joined successful in the 1st German tender, which shows the project quality of P and E Wind.
The significant earnings and cash inflow we had about in this in the business of Twin Farm Portfolio 2016. We could do a refinancing and got an out payment of around €21,000,000 and we sold the remaining 20% stake to Allianz for EUR 23,000,000 Also, we could build up our new wind farm portfolio 2020 partly with our wind farm drills at Alsted, which we could complete. It had been around 43 megawatts and is still in operation and in our ownership. Looking to the financial highlights in 2017. We see that we could exceed our initial forecast, And we gave an increased guidance of €70,000,000 to €23,000,000 And the EBIT of 23.1 1,000,000 was the final outcome, which really satisfied.
The earnings have been driven by the project sales, as I mentioned before, especially the portfolio earn out. So what you can see because of this 142 megawatt portfolio sales, we could increase our EBIT and could get additional earnouts, which we fought for and we could get finally that means that we could get a strong financial basis end of last year. We have a very high gross cash position of about €194,000,000 and we are net cash positive with EUR 14,100,000. This EUR 194,000,000 gives us the complete basis for our strategy to take all measurements to be successful in that and to pay back our bond of EUR 100,000,000, which we have to do in June. The refinancing process is on track.
The first phase with equity financing of around EUR 25,000,000 is already secured with AKB Bank. And additional measurements and negotiations are we are working on. And we think in the next couple of weeks, we will get news on that. The dividend of €0.04 per share are proposed. And yesterday, we got the good news that the corporate rate rating of BBB will be with a positive outlook.
Formerly, it was with a stable outlook. Last but not least, the guidance for the financial year 2018. We see an EBITDA of EUR 10,000,000 to EUR 16,000,000 for this year and an EBITDA of EUR 20,000,000 to EUR 26,000,000 This is remarkable if you think about that we also do investments to increase our business and follow-up on our strategy. On next call, you see the onshore business in Novo. We are still working on 4.7 gigawatts.
And when you see the last year, the U. S. Wind farm, Vivaldi, was sold. We sold the project rights to better energy. The commissioning is expected in 2018.
Additionally, a next international project you could sell to a German investment group, the Swedish wind farm, Lagerskogen, with 25 Megawatts. And very remarkable strong momentum in France with projects, Summit Acura, which was completed some Monten Lars, which was sold to Jean Lange and is in preparation and the wind farm Longueves, could be completed and was sold together with the project, Viacor, to Claro Capital. So we see also, as I mentioned already, that the wind from Kirste at Arsted was completed. So we started already to with our 200 megawatt portfolio. Turkish tender, we joined with our wind farm, Tesla, and we could get the pre license, which was a big success in Turkey.
By the way, only an information for these days, we joined recently the German TIN and we with the 14 megawatt part of the project and we have been successful as well. In total, we have 69 megawatts of own wind farms currently in operation. Some of these wind farms are in preparation for repowering. In the Offshore business, we could sell Atlantis 1 to Wattenfall. It's we got roundabout €25,000,000 whereby 7 around €7,000,000 had to be paid to the former owner, but We expect further milestones in the future and the next tender in the next round, we will see, but we are in good hopes that Atenfall will join there.
Goodwin 3, as I mentioned already, we had been successful in the first tender. And we are still a service provider for Dong and for Waffenfar. The next payments milestone payments are expected. The next would be for Borkum Rivkund 2. And for because the construction of Baukomrivkom started.
And the next then would be good wins 34 with around €20,000,000 The computational complaint recording our because of the change of the wind Sigismet is still ongoing and but nothing new on this in the moment. If we look to the financial highlights and the income statement, you see that we got our EBITDA of €23,000,000 which is the upper side of our guidance and was mainly driven by the portfolio deal and our successful sales of Atlantis 1 and the international projects. If you see, this means that we have a very positive net income of €71,000,000 at the end and EPS of €0.22 per share. Related to the balance sheet. As I mentioned before, the most remarkable point is that we are in a very good shape regarding our liquidity position.
Cash position of €194,000,000 is remarkable and will help us in paying back our bond and additionally follow-up on our strategy. If you see last year, we have been on the level of EUR 147,000,000 Looking to the liabilities. There, we can see the bonds in June in May 2 thousand end of May 2018, we have to repay that. It's now in current liabilities. Normally, it was in noncurrent debt.
And on the other side, we see liability to banks, which is which are mainly nonrecourse project financing liabilities related to our projects, which are under construction or, like you said, already in operation. But there are some changes in the market and some changes we will follow-up. As I already showed on the Capital Market Day last year, November, we want to be and develop ourselves in a clean energy solution provider due to some reasons. One reason is we want to be not that volatile anymore with our earnings. Secondly, we want to increase our EBIT to 30% up to 50% until 2023.
And we could see that the market changes, So that's why we are looking more and more in the direction of additional technologies, so PV, storage, power to gas, so that we have the full failure chain and could present to the market all what the market needs. Secondly, we want to look how we can improve that what we get out when we produce renewable energy. So if it is gas, heat or whatever or pure energy, we would like to have an overview, and that's why we follow-up that carefully with our smart energy supply management. And we will have a look to emerging markets because the need is very high in these kind of markets for solutions of their energy needs. And last but not least, we would like to give solutions in terms of consulting business.
We would like to present the market financial solutions as well as services as well as repowering projects. And this is something where we would like to invest also maybe if we find a target to purchase. The program around this we call scale up. And we have a plan and milestones and the 20 seventeen's milestones have been to start the phase looking for the right people, follow-up on the team. We implemented an office in Hamburg.
And we that was one target. We wanted to finalize the first project for the 200 megawatt portfolio. This year, 2018, we would like to have the first project and services available and would like to have the first revenues around that. So if you look to the outlook related to Onshore Wind Power, we see that we have the wind farm Gerdau Schwinnau, which is in the moment in operation. And we look how we can this is we went successfully through the tender, and this is something we would like to do some repowering measurements.
We continue to build up the wind farm portfolio 2020. And we're furthermore working on projects like Chilocco, where we in the United States, with around 200 megawatts, where we would like to finalize the sales process. Additionally, we saw and see that some trench projects are coming up very soon. And we furthermore, we are looking for new markets in Asia or Latin America and the Onshore business. In the Offshore Wind Power, we're doing our job as consultants as well as we explore new markets.
Around 5 gigawatts, we did unsolicited bids in the Eastern Coast of the United States, and we're working on these kind of projects. We would furthermore follow-up on our strategy. We are looking to get new products on board. We want to finalize refinancing, and we're looking for opportunities for inorganic growth and cooperations. The outlook for the year 2018, around EUR 10,000,000 to EUR 60,000,000 EBIT and EBITDA are EUR 20,000,000 to EUR 26,000,000, as I mentioned before.
So thank you very much, and I'm prepared now for questions.
The first question is from Karsten von Broomtha. Your line is now open.
Good morning, Markus. Congratulations to the very good year, much better than I initially expected. Currently, the French market is very attractive, and I've seen from your project pipeline that your Phase III projects in France are a bit higher than in Germany, so you are very well situated there. My question is, in 2 years' times, do you see your French pipeline being even higher than today? That would be my first question.
Yes. I can answer this first question with a clear yes.
Perfect. Is that an enormous increase in overall project pipeline? Or where do you see it in 2 years' time?
It's our target to increase our project pipeline in any case, but it's always the same in very competitive countries like Germany, France and others. You have to look for quality projects and not to take projects only because they are projects on board. So therefore but that's very clearly our strategy and to increase it.
All right. In your report, you mentioned that in Poland, you see chances of PPAs without subsidies. That is new and very positive development. Perhaps you could elaborate on that. And I recently read that Poland wants to go offshore.
Do you also see opportunities in the Polish offshore market for your company?
So first of all, because we've looked very carefully to Poland and to the offshore and onshore Poland business, we see that in the onshore business, there is there are offers in the market for PPAs. So therefore, it's not it's something which is very substantial. Secondly, in the Offshore business, we look carefully to that and we saw that the cooperation and partners which are there, the 3 around 3 or 4 projects which are related to grid connection in the North. And so for us, it was not a market where we would like to step in.
All right. Regarding the onshore Polish business, do you see any chances of selling your projects this year on a pure PPA basis?
We try to. Okay. It looks like they like
that. In the report, you mentioned the
yes, sorry? It must make sense only to make sure that we understand now that there's a I think there's a pressure from the European community and government related to the winter package to Poland. And if you look to the market in itself, you have the most potential of all markets because they have 90% coal production coal energy production or coal related energy production. So therefore, this is there is a there we see advantage to step in this business.
All right. I hope the Polish government will be with you there. You mentioned in the report the Wangerland project with 34 megawatts where you will offer comprehensive services, is that your own project? Or is it a project from someone else? And could you elaborate on these comprehensive services?
Yes. This is we if you have wind farms, which are made by private persons, it was the first time that we did something like that, that we did a kind of consulting business. But this is a business which we also want to work on as a kind of our services business. So in this case, we negotiated contracts and worked on the Construction Services. It was the first try to do this, and we have been successful.
And it's another way to work on projects.
So that is not your own project. You did it for someone else and Yes, exactly. Okay. Okay. Sounds good.
My last question would be, as far as I understand, you did not or you hardly paid any taxes in 20 17 despite your substantial net substantial EBT, before taxes. Could you roughly explain why?
Sorry, can you repeat the question for a moment? I couldn't get it.
Yes. You hardly paid any taxes last year. Why was that?
Yes. I think this is the structure of the deals we have. Usually, we have it was mainly driven by the portfolio sale and out. For example, in the earn out, we paid the usual fee and this was the outcome. And the second thing was that we usually sell shares, yes?
We have shares which have an attractive tax situation.
Yes. I understand. Okay. Great. Yes.
Thank you very much for taking my questions, Markus. The
next question is from Horne Stephan, CMC Research. Your line is now open.
Good morning. I have only a few additional questions. Maybe we take a look on your onshore pipeline. You have mentioned 2 projects at stage 4 in Germany and France with 10 megawatts. Could you tell us something about these projects?
And in general, about possible project sales in 2018, which are included in your guidance?
Yes. So we have one project in France. This is a 10 megawatt project. This is our project, some maternal L'Ars, which was which is under construction. And in Germany, we have a project which is standby our WKN, which is under construction as well.
So and the future business we see and you'll see the increased Phase III level that we prepare ourselves, as I already said to Carsten, that we want to increase our French portfolio. Where we see that the tender conditions in the moment are better than in Germany. But nevertheless, also in Germany, we see that the price level of the tariff increased in the last tender, which gives us and this is exactly a point where we waited for, where it gives us the opportunity to step in with further projects. And we will step in with further projects in the next ten months in Germany this year and we'll start construction off. Okay.
So the level of 40 €7 per megawatt hour, it's fine for you're fine with it?
Yes. We have to consider that the tariff of SEK 4.7 is a tariff of 100% wind yield project. That means project with less wind get a more attractive tariff. So if you're and the main projects are somewhere between 70% 85% and then the then you are somewhere between €0.05 5.5 So this is an attractive amount due to the fact that on all levels, the prices went down and that we get new machines and machine types in the future. Okay.
You have already mentioned that you want to finish Shilohco sale process near time. Can you give us some details which work is still to do?
Yes. We are in the middle of the process due to the fact that Trump made a tax decision which changed the tax situation in the United States, we had to step back and try again with the investors and rework this project in terms of the sales process. This is why we are not in a I can't tell you now that we are finished our sale. But we are very far in the progress.
You have included the sale in your guidance for 2018? Yes. Okay. In your annual report, you have mentioned possible offshore projects in the USA. You intend to rent 5 areas in the first step.
Maybe you can give us some details about further steps and the possible time line of U. S. Offshore business?
Yes. First of all, I have to say these are unsolicited bids. These kind of bids means that we are in a prequalification situation and that we have to tender on the project areas end of the year. So we end of the year, we expect that this tender will start. So we prepare ourselves and have a deep look to the projects, and we will see if the final outcome is likely that we think that this is that these kind of projects are interesting for us.
So the final decision will be made, I think, in the Q4. Okay.
Maybe we switch to Turkey. You've bought back the share of STIAC in the Turkish projects. Maybe you can give us some background information about this transaction?
Yes. We there had been some uncertainties related to the situation if STERAG want to bid or not to bid. And we clarified the situation in that case, so we purchased these projects back. And so we went into the bid for our own. That's the whole background about it.
But you will still work together with STAG and other projects?
Yes. We work we are still in a good mood and in a cooperation partnership. But in the moment, we have no projects together. Okay.
My last question, actually, you run a wind farm portfolio of 69 megawatts. Which production and which revenue do you expect in 2018 and have included this in your guidance?
In 2018, so I know in a moment, I can't give you the complete number. I in the moment, you can can take a look to the numbers we had last year. So in 2017, we are around €8,000,000 and I think this will increase. But in the moment, I can't say more.
Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.
At the moment, there are no further questions.
And goodbye.