Good morning, all, and welcome to our H1 2026 semiannual results. I am here with Paul, so Bertrand Gautier speaking. Let us turn to slide three. Before getting to the detailed agenda of the day, let me start with a reminder of who we are. Greencoat Renewables is a pan-European renewable platform with a gross asset value of EUR 2.3 billion and operating 1.4 GW capacity-wise.
Since our IPO in 2017, we have generating close to a billion of cash and paid a cumulative dividend of EUR 0.55 per share. In H1, the business continues to perform strongly with net cash generation of EUR 60 million underpinning a 1.6x net dividend cover, on track to deliver 1.5x dividend cover for the full year, well exceeding the 1.2x that we indicated in December 2025. Moving on to next slide.
In March, we set out a six-pillar capital allocation framework. I want to anchor this presentation on it because it is a lens through which we run the business. The first three pillars are about enhanced capital allocation, prioritizing the return of capital to shareholders in the short to medium term. Those are buybacks, deleveraging, and dividend.
The next three are about value accretive growth, positioning the company for higher return opportunities. Six months on, the headlines are there. The initial EUR 25 million buyback is complete. A second EUR 25 million tranche has been announced as in progress. Portfolio review is now complete and formal disposal processes are underway to deliver 45% gearing level by end of 2027 and unlock the residual EUR 50 million of buybacks to get us to EUR 100 million as we indicated.
In parallel, we have established our Green Digital Infrastructure Platform and hybridization site screening now is complete with land and pre-planning work ongoing. We will go into each of these in more detail. In terms of agenda, slide five, and running order, I will cover financial performance first. Then Paul will give you some perspective on favorable market developments that GRP can capitalize on, and we will detail our progress in respect of our capital allocation.
Paul focusing on our value accretive growth initiatives. On slide seven, focusing on financial performance from a cash P&L perspective, we see that net cash generation for the half year was EUR 60 million, compared with EUR 65 million in the first half of 2025. That equates to net dividend cover, as I said, of 1.6x against 1.7x last year.
We would expect full dividend cover to well exceed the 1.2x we projected at the beginning of the year and to be around 1.5x benefited from favorable power price upside. Revenue was EUR 157 million for the period, down 2% on a reported basis versus last year. I need to stress that on a like-for-like basis, revenue actually increased by 4% and production by 6%.
This is when we adjust for the disposal of the EUR 156 million Irish portfolio in early 2025. As we flagged at the Q1 update, wind resource was weaker in the first quarter, standing at -10%. However, the second quarter was on budget and the net result is that production was 6% below budget for the first half. Operating expenses were well under control at EUR 67 million, down from EUR 70 million, which meant that EBITDA was flat at EUR 90 million.
Turning to the balance sheet on slide eight. The fair value of investment was EUR 2.1 billion, giving a gross asset value of EUR 2.3 billion, down 2% from year-end. Borrowing were broadly unchanged at EUR 1.2 billion, with net asset value at EUR 1.1 billion, a reduction of 4%. As a result, gearing stood at 53%. I will walk through the drivers of that in the NAV bridge shortly.
On the next slide nine, breaks down production and revenue by market. Ireland remains our largest contributor, generating 47% of production, but 55% of revenue at an average of just over EUR 100 per MWh. Irish revenue structure remains highly appealing, as revenues are 100% contracted, and portion of those, circa 45%, benefit from elevating merchant price when exceeding the REFIT pricing level, which stand around EUR 95 per MWh.
Together, the three markets, which are Ireland, Germany and France, are mostly contracted, generated 91% of our revenue at an average price of more than EUR 95 per MWh. Sweden and Spain are lower priced, more merchant, fully merchant exposed market. Production there was affected by weaker wind in the first quarter. In Germany, we also had temporary operation constraints on the offshore assets, which has now been resolved.
Importantly, merchant price, power price remained materially above budget, which offsets the weaker production in both of those countries. The picture is one of revenue resilience. The higher price contracted markets and the portfolio exposure to merchant prices mitigated the impact of lower production on the first half. Moving to slide 10. No update, material since this was published in early August.
NAV in H1 or at June of this year was down EUR 0.018 versus December to EUR 0.972. Operating performance, as you can see on the graph, contributed EUR 0.057 of net cash generation against EUR 0.034 of dividend and depreciation of EUR 0.032. Major headwind came from lower, longer-term power price in Germany, driven by an aggressive expected buildup of renewable capacity, as announced by the government, and suffering from an expected slowdown of electricity demand from industrial needs. As a result, our German curve has been reduced by close to 10%. However, as you will see later, we are taking steps to contract German power pricing, which will also offer upsides, certainly in the short term. Slide 11 talks about the debt structure of the business, which underpin what I would qualify as solid.
Slide 12.
Sorry. Sorry, we're a bit confused on the slide numbers, so we don't want to lose you. On slide 11, we talk about the debt structure of the business, which underpin what I would qualify as solid. Our financing is cost effective with a weighted average cost of 3.5%. The aggregate debt of EUR 1.2 billion is 89% fixed rate.
We have limited exposure to interest rate movements, and it's secured throughout to 2030 with a stage and well-distributed maturity profile, as you can see on the graph. The first maturity is coming due in March 2027. We've already begun proactive discussions with lenders, and I would characterize those lender engagement as strong. Liquidity is strong, with EUR 139 million of cash on balance sheet and an RCF undrawn capacity of EUR 240 million.
Disposal program, we'll talk about it in more detail, but this will add further in excess of EUR 250 million of liquidity, which we are planning to allocate to deleveraging. This, combined with organic excess cash flow, is paving the way for gearing to reduce from current 53% to mid-40s by the end of 2027. On slide 12, this table sets out illustrative dividend cover through to 2030 of the existing portfolio.
On current assumptions, you can see that the net dividend cover would average 1.7x over the period, ranging from 1.5x to 1.9 x in the later years. Contracted cash flow represents 73%, now 75%, when you factor the recent Borkum PPA that we have signed post-period, and of the total across the five year that we are showing here, and it's well on target.
Key is that this underpins a potential for EUR 600 million for cash generation, which offer great flexibility in terms of strategic allocation and support the capital frameworks that we put forward. The sensitivity at the bottom of the table apply different capture merchant price to a merchant volume only, and this illustrates that even in extremely low power price environment, the ability of the portfolio to support the dividend of the business.
On slide 13, we are showing you a short-term power price affected by the Middle East crisis, as one would expect. You can see that around 25% of our 2026 volume is merchant, and therefore directly exposed to power price movement. This figure of 73% increased to 78% when you factor the Borkum PPA that we sign, as we say, during the summer.
What I think it's interesting that you can see is that the forward price, which are those small dotted curve in H2, sits significantly above what was our Q2 NAV assumption in most markets. Without surprise, gas prices have continued to strengthen since the period end, which support the outlook that we currently are expecting for dividend cover of 1.5x for the year.
In Ireland only, second half future are 42% above the level assumed in our Q2 NAV. However, I would caveat, as always, that forward curves are not forecast, but as you can see, the trends is quite positive for the business. Moving on to the next slide. In this, I would say, positive environment, we wanted to recap our strategy to maintain contracted revenue in excess of 70%. On a rolling five-year basis. This is something that we have been continuously focused on.
As we just talked about, we are well on target with 75% already of those revenue to be contracted in 2030. This is a dynamic strategy. The way we have done it has been to lock in PPAs when pricing support boosts NAV and cash flow visibility. This is now a proven capability. We started this in 2022. You can see on the left-hand side that we have signed 8 PPAs.
This has covered roughly 870 GWh of annual generation. To put things into perspective, this will represent 20% of our annual generation with an average tenure of seven years. What is interesting is that the counterparties range from big tech to utilities and multinational. The most recent example is the Borkum offshore asset in Germany. As you might recall, our first other offshore asset in Germany, Butendiek, we contracted for a period of 6.5 years.
In this instance, vis-à-vis Borkum, we signed a short-term 15 months PPA for 450 GWh with a utility company, and the PPA is sitting at EUR 96 per MWh, which compare well to our H1 half price of EUR 90. So a premium of EUR 6 per megawatt hour. More importantly, it is securing the cash flow in the period where what can go down can go up, can also go down. Looking ahead, our value accretive growth strategy will further enhance our potential to lock in those premium corporate PPA, capitalizing on our unique position in Ireland, market dynamics, we just talked about it, certainly on a short-term basis, and our data center platform. Listen, on this basis, I will pass it on to Paul to go in more detail on markets.
Thank you, Bertrand. What I would like to do over the next three slides, on 16, 17, and 18, is just actually reset the scene in terms of how we see the market outlook today. Because I think the market outlook has really turned very favorable across the broader renewable and energy outlook in Europe. When you look on slide 16, we have been taking advantage and playing into the trends around decarbonization, the need for increased renewable electricity, and the policy framework in Europe has really led that opportunity over the last number of years.
But really over the last 6 - 12 months, as we have seen the demand for AI power emerge into Europe, and as we have also seen the need for increased energy security at a country-by-country level, that policy is essentially creating significant near-term opportunities for platforms like Greencoat Renewables to provide a solution.
When you look back on the policy changes over the last six months, in March, we saw the EU Clean Energy Investment Strategy. In April, we saw Accelerating EU. In June, we saw the EU Digitalization AI Energy Roadmap. Then finally, in July, we have seen the EU Electrification Action Plan. All of these are designed to increase the capital deployment to the energy and digital sector. We estimate today that there will be over EUR 660 billion of capital needed between now and 2030. Much of this will go into supporting grids and allowing the grids to take on board more flexible power and increased amounts of renewable electricity. But we see below the line, the 28 GW of new data center capacity being increased from 13 GW today. In addition to that, the increased renewables overall.
This means that we expect to see Europe continue the strategy of using renewable electricity to solve and to be the way to decarbonize Europe's power. There will be increased focus on flexibility and being able to use the grid connections to unlock increased amounts of power onto the grid today. When you turn to slide 17, we have set out for businesses like Greencoat Renewables what the opportunity sets are and how we can take advantage of that in the short term and the medium term. Today, there are a range of ways that we are playing into this new market dynamic, including taking advantage of the power price volatility that we see by having the capability to lock in PPAs when we need to do that.
Playing to the increased green PPA demand, and that is something that we will touch upon a bit later in our data center platform as we see the increased opportunity to link, being able to provide a whole solution to tech companies and being able to sell green power directly to them. We see the increased value in our portfolio of having grid connection scarcity and the firm access premium that our portfolio has, being able to do more with our existing grid over the long term.
In addition, colocation hybridization has now become core strategy opportunities. Where today, the opportunity to use the grid and add storage, to add solar, and use the grid on a more continued basis, provides both a near-term opportunity and taking advantage of the long-term embedded strategic value that we have. Nowhere more particularly is that clear than in Ireland.
You can see on slide 18 today, that the Irish market is one of the first markets to link through policy and growth opportunities. When you look across the Irish market today, you see a continued opportunity for growth into clean electrification, and Ireland has set the 80% renewable target for 2030. In addition to that, given Ireland's significant exposure to data centers already and the fact that data centers are expected to consume 30% of electricity, this is creating the near-term need for significant investment into generation, storage, and grid reinforcements.
All of this is underpinned by the fact Ireland has a very clear policy and infrastructure approach, and there is clarity as to how Ireland intends to allow large energy users, i.e., mostly data centers, to intersect with the grid with a clear message that it will be driven by renewable generation, increased storage investment, and continued using of the network.
What this results in is a scarcity value, with grid access being the key constraint for large energy users and the demand for renewable electricity supply now increasing. With a key message that Ireland is now a leading clean energy investment market, which sits at the intersection of renewable generation, grid expansion, and digital infrastructure growth. When we overlay that to our business, we see a market that will require up to EUR 40 billion of investment into renewable generation.
Given Greencoat Renewables position, where we produce over 4% of Ireland renewable electricity, we have an operating portfolio of 680 MW, and we have deep relationships across the utilities, the developers, and the off-takers. This is positioning us to consider increased growth opportunities as the opportunity for growth emerges in the future. With that, I will hand back to Bertrand, who will give you an update on our capital allocation progress to date.
Thanks, Paul. Moving on to slide 20, you might be familiar with this chart. Our capital deployment plans have not changed since the full-year results. This is a self-funded plan, and it does not rely on raising new equity, as we talked about. On the right side, you see the five-year sources and uses table, and on the left side, you see how we are planning to allocate capital to each of the six pillars, broken down on an annual basis to 2030.
As we said in the past, we are focusing the next two years on returning capital to shareholders, which is what the enhanced capital allocation dark blue segment covers. However, in parallel, but with moderate level of investment, we are gearing up our value accretive initiatives where capital recycling and allocation will ramp up as of 2028.
On the next two slides, starting with 21, I would like to detail the milestone we have delivered for each of those pillars since March. Starting with short-term plan buybacks, we announced a EUR 100 million program, of which EUR 50 million has been formally kicked off. EUR 25 of those EUR 50 million is now complete, has been completed over the summer, and we are now on the second tranche of EUR 25 million, which is in progress. This has been funded and is funded from existing cash and has been NAV accretive, continuing shareholders with an average discount of 23%. In respect of deleveraging, we are accelerating with gearing expecting to reduce to 45% by the end of 2027, and to be mostly funded by our disposal program proceed.
Formerly, and lately, key focus for the business is around disposal processes, which are underway, with refinancing discussion having commenced, underpinning by or showing a strong interest from our lenders. On slide 22, those are the three value accretive initiatives that we are pursuing. Hybridization, we have an attractive set of projects, and we have pre-qualified 11 of those with a combined potential capital deployment of EUR 100 million plus, of which three are moving to the next phase in the next six months.
Second, our Green Digital Infrastructure Platform has been established, operational. First asset is progressing well, and we are targeting cash on cash return of more than three times. We are seeing strong customer and partner engagement. By this, I mean big tech company in Ireland with an attractive growth pipeline emerging.
Lately, in respect of enhanced PPA, this remains a medium-term objective, and we build up on our ability to unlock premium price PPA and invest into earlier stage contracted asset in the later phase of our capital allocation strategy. Next slide. Portfolio disposal. This stream is probably the top priority that we have for the business.
The portfolio review against a number of criteria you can show here have been completed. We have kicked off those processes. We have good response from the market, and we expect that more than EUR 300 million of asset will crystallize and be complete by mid to end of next year. I am going to hand it over to Paul, which we are going to go in more detail in each of those initiatives.
Thank you, Bertrand. Maybe just turning to slide 25. Hybridization, I guess, is becoming one of our key focuses when we think about unlocking the embedded value that sits in our portfolio and using our existing assets potential to create this incremental value creation. To remind our investors, we have been actively doing this since 2022, and we are looking back on the progress in that business model with now five years of run rate revenue. You can see that over that period, the cash yield has averaged about 15%, and the unlevered IRR that we can see in these projects, I guess, has been around the 10% level.
When we think about unlocking value in our portfolio today, it is based off the existing experience that we have and the capability that we have in the platform, not just to unlock those sites and to get the projects developed on a fast-track basis. We are very pleased in terms of the opportunity in Ireland today. We see the policy continues to be supportive of co-location. We see the ability to use storage to provide additional services to the network and capture ancillary revenues increasing. We are now able to benefit from access to the wholesale market.
What that will mean for our business, as Bertrand touched upon, we have a range of projects today that we are moving towards pre-planning phase, and we would therefore expect through the next 12 months to bring those projects through the next phase of development and allow the business to become ready for FID type investment. Turning then to slide 26. We wanted to give a more detailed update on where we stand with our data center platform, and in particular, where we sat with the first project, which is the Drogheda Energy Park. Again, to remind investors, we closed this investment in February 2026.
Over the last six months, we have been focused around securing planning, enabling the grid works to be finalized with grid operator, taking control of the site and making sure the site would be ready to move at a fast-track pace, aligning the regulatory steps that are required in Ireland in terms of the Large Energy User Action Plan.
Over the next six months, we expect planning permission to get to a more finalized position. We are awaiting a final decision from the An Coimisiún Pleanála, which is the Planning Appeal Board, to tie down the renewables that we would want to use in that project and to secure access to those, to start to commence site preparation to allow the project to move towards a construction phase.
In particular, working with the customers who we expect to be some of the larger hyperscalers to align their interest in the site with our development phase. In addition to that, we have put in place a fully operational management team to run the platform, and that team is focused day-to-day on managing the Drogheda site, as well as focusing on some of the earlier opportunity sets, the emerging opportunity sets that we can see emerging now outside of Drogheda. On slide 27, we wanted to clarify to investors how we see value being created. Bertrand touched upon the 3x cash on cash return that we expect to deliver for sites that we then take through development.
Our business model today is around unlocking new sites, managing the development of those sites, and then securing the customer and the clean energy that are required to allow the project to move into its construction phase. Today, we are in that second phase, so we are kind of moving from site secured, land control, and having local planning secured.
Therefore, we are moving through second phase at the moment with the view that we would hit a power land phase on that project on a fast-track basis. Our intention is to take the sites further in terms of then tying down the customer and essentially securing the renewables that are required in Ireland to allow the project to move to a construction phase, where we then have the ability to sell the project to the type of long-term capital or hyperscaler that are more typical owners of long-term data centers.
The valuations that we can see today in Ireland are attractive. For power land, we see a sort of EUR 1.5 million -EUR 2 million a megawatt opportunity. Then if you can take the project all the way through to ready to build phase, that valuation range increases further from EUR 2 million to EUR 4 million a megawatt. Today's project in Drogheda sits at an initial 32 MW with the capacity to scale further through multiple phases. So this opportunity creates a chance for Greencoat to demonstrate not just the upside that we can capture from this development, but in addition to that, to allow us to provide renewable electricity to these projects, which is a key part of our value accretion opportunities in the long term. Turning to slide 28.
We've seen over the last six months, the opportunity in the data center market become much clearer with utilities, with hyperscalers, and with site owners now very engaged in terms of how we fast tracked access to new sites. Our evidence has been that hyperscalers are very focused on getting access to power, and that is a key criteria when it comes to site selection.
In addition to that, having access to grid remains a critical constraints, with most hyperscalers focused on the short-term access they can get to power. In addition to that, we see that access to flexible generation storage will become increasingly important due to policy. A second set of partners that we've worked with on a long-term basis are utilities.
We're taking a number of inbound interest from utilities who are looking to partner, who can see opportunities to be much more collaborative in delivery models, and have the ability to provide a range of services alongside our development platform, ultimately to fast-track the access to new sites. Then site owners more generally. There's a recognition today that having the capability and credibility to secure power is as important as having access to the land.
Therefore, site owners have a clear preference today to have access to credible delivery partners, which is what the Greencoat Renewables platform is able to do. When you bring that back together, and I think we've seen this over the last weeks, as we've seen some of the big tech companies move into other European markets. What we see is any solution is going to require a power-first solution.
It's going to require capability to manage the grid and capability to add flexibility, and is going to require access to significant amounts of renewable electricity. We think that opportunity set over the medium term is one that's a very attractive one for the Greencoat Renewables team. Therefore, maybe in conclusion, I'll bring it back to what Bertrand touched upon in terms of where the business sits today.
For us, the focus over the next 12 months really is focused around our enhanced capital allocation. I won't repeat the feedback Bertrand gave, but for us, delivering the sell-down of assets, delivering the increased buybacks, and a focus on the de-leveraging is really critical over the next period of time, which then gives the flexibility to the business to unlock the value accretive opportunities that we can see over the long term. With that, I'll hand back and hand over to questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please signal by pressing star one. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. You may also submit your questions via the webcast. Again, it is star one to ask a question over the phone. Our first question is from Alex Wheeler from RBC. Please go ahead.
Morning. Thanks for the presentation. Two from me, please. Just firstly, on policy momentum, you clearly highlight a good policy momentum at the EU level. I was just interested to understand whether there was anything else within the geographies you are operating in that you are looking for, in terms of policy that could be helpful in the future.
Or do you now see that most of the investment targets and necessary policies are in place for you to deliver? That would be question one. My second question here, Paul, just on your point around partnering with utilities, and potentially, the services it can offer there. Can you just elaborate slightly on how that may look in the future if that was an avenue that you ultimately decided to go down? Thank you.
Yeah, I can take that. I guess firstly on policy, no, I think we feel pretty comfortable now. We have a strong policy, and what is really needed, I think, is the opportunity to invest at the right types of return. We see the European market being one where it is a very good long-term market to invest into. For us, the criteria to do so has really been able to deliver the attractive returns to investors and being able to invest at the right cost of capital. I think we can see that opportunity set emerging as we touched upon, across the value accretive opportunities. But we look at policy today as being stable.
We look at the countries where we are investing as being stable and having a growth outlook, and therefore, the criteria that we would approach in terms of increased investment into the future is one that will be led by the returns that we can secure on those incremental investments, which we think the backdrop to that looks really interesting. Just to touch upon the utilities, I think it is a really interesting point.
When you look at what large energy parks are going to require into the future, in terms from an energy perspective, they are going to require increased investment into renewables. They are going to require increased investment into backup flexibility and storage, and they are likely going to require investment also into some thermal generation to provide the stability on a long-term basis.
Really many of those areas play to the strengths of what traditional utilities are wanting to invest into. The Greencoat Renewables capability is more led towards renewables, it is more led towards energy storage, such as batteries, et cetera. Whereas I suspect utilities are more focused today on a mix of that, but also capacity to build power plants and being able to build out the backup gas that might be required.
That type of investment need lends itself very well to partnerships. In addition to that, the fact that we have our own platform that can fast-track development, that has experience of working alongside utilities, for the last 10 years in our case, at least, means that sort of opportunity to find new sites and to unlock new sites in a partnership model works very well with utilities.
Perfect. Thank you.
Our next question is from Kate Nurse from Davy. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Good morning. Hopefully you can hear me okay. Just two questions. Firstly, just on the Drogheda Energy Park and the new platform there. Has your thinking changed on the opportunity there since it was first announced? Then, I guess beyond that pilot project, is there additional sites you could acquire, and when would that take place? Then just looking at slide 27 and the valuation framework there, that EUR 2 million-EUR 4 million range FID. Can you just talk about the evidence underpinning these ranges? In particular, is there transactions, benchmarks or discussions that support them? Thank you.
Thanks, Kate. Yeah, look, I'll take some of those and Bertrand might come in if he wants to add to that. I think the first thing is no, our view of what the development platform we've created hasn't changed. We are best positioned to develop these sites, to unlock the milestones that we touched upon in terms of planning, in terms of grid, and in terms of customer engagement, and prepare these sites to be able to be built, moved into a more long-term finance strategy.
Our view is the capital that we're investing into this platform is development capital designed to create the value uplift associated with de-risking these projects. There's a very active access to longer term capital that then can step in and become the construction and operating partner for these assets. These assets tend to be well asset financed and project financed under secured terms.
There's access to capital that is more akin to the data center sector that invests on a long-term basis into that space. We see a natural evolution or transfer, I guess, at that point of FID where other more traditional digital investment can come in and own these assets on a long-term basis. I think to evidence it, yeah, look, the benchmarks are pretty clear in terms of that transfer of value. We've done a lot of work understanding the long-term finance that will step in to own these assets and the types of returns that long-term digital investors are seeking for these assets, essentially allows the capturing of that sort of EUR 1.5 million - EUR 4 million per megawatt valuation.
What's important from our perspective is that we secure planning, that we secure grid, and that we're able to then provide the other assets or the other aspects critical for the hyperscalers, which is really the renewable energy that they will require to allow them to then step in and become the tenant or the owner of that site. Then with that, I think given in particular the competitiveness of Ireland, where each of the larger hyperscalers have their European headquarters, as well as there being an increasing number of players looking to get access to that market, the competitive dynamics are favorable towards the sale of these assets at FID.
If I may add, two things. Two observation. One, since we have announced our strategy in Ireland, since we have a real site on the go, it did trigger and credentialized quite seriously the combination of green energy that we could offer to a site. We are the only one doing this into the Irish market, which is the best market you want to be in from a data center perspective. As you know, we have been active to strike and enter long-term PPA with a range of corporate, tech company in Ireland 15 years. It's interesting to see how the phone in Ireland has been ringing from those guys, and it has completely transformed our level of engagement with those people.
When I was referring to our capability to seek PPA, it is not only PPA, but more importantly is to extract premium value for the green electrons that our asset are able to deliver. And this is really the strategic angle to all of this beyond making good investment and good cash and cash returns. The second piece, then when you look at the value creation, there is two metrics you should think of.
One is a value per MWh you are able to extract from the markets, a bit like a real estate. You have power land and you have a planning and you have secured tenant. So those kinds of value creation, which convert into those EUR per MWh pricing. And it is also, to me, it is quite interesting, your ability to scale up your campus. So you may find that those are per site.
Together, we indicated 32 MW, but there is a capacity on the site itself to ramp up to 100 MW. And you have a neighboring country, neighboring land, which could make you ramp up to a much larger scale, which is exactly the strategy. So the value creation of those is number of MW multiplied by the value you can extract at which point in time in your strategy you decide to monetize those. There is not so much difference between power land and FID in terms of risk you are taking. It is more the time it will take for you to secure the different component to get the project to this level of maturity.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please signal by pressing star 1. Alternatively, you may submit your questions via the webcast. We will now take our next question from Conor Finn from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Morning, all. Just one for me on the Drogheda Energy Park. So if you assume, say, final planning secured later this year, what sort of timeline then do you expect for the final grid connection offer?
Morning, Conor. Yeah, look, I think there are three milestones we need to go through to allow this project to move into its construction phase. The first is a final planning decision. We would hope to receive that in H2 of this year. The second is a grid offer, I think, which will follow that planning decision. We would expect that to be months, not years, given we have an existing grid connection on the 38 kV line that will take a significant amount of phase one power. So we have the capacity on-site to get access to that.
Then thirdly, under the new Large Energy User Action Plan, you are also required to have access to backup capacity plant. So that may mean that we put in for planning just to allow the building of that backup capacity plant on-site. I think if you put all of those together, it means we will probably be going through final development phases in 2027 to allow us to move towards into that more FID/construction phase in 2028.
Right. Thank you.
Thank you. There are currently no further questions over the phone. With this, I would like to hand the call for any webcast questions.
Okay. Thank you. We do have a few questions here. Following on the same theme around Drogheda, there is a couple of questions. Firstly, is the asset still held at cost? How should we think about valuation over the coming months as you progress? Maybe already partly covered, but when do you expect the first meaningful value creation from Drogheda?
I was expecting those to come, so good point. Short answer, yes. All the asset are held at cost. In terms of the value creation, we are thinking about when it is appropriate to record those into the reported value. We just went through a number of milestone, which actually does underpin those value. We will come back to market.
I think what is important from our perspective is that we are very transparent under which are the basis of the valuation for those asset when we go forward, and what are the milestone associated to the value creation, such that people have clarity and can factor views on the probability and the value creation potential into the NAV. As you can imagine, those are not operating asset per se, so it is not the same as reading a free cash flow multiplied by your timeline. It is something that we have to refine as we go forward.
Okay, the next question is on a different topic and comes to the court case around compensation and curtailment. Firstly, can you update on the likely timetable of the ECJ and Supreme Court proceedings? Secondly, what is the scope for further NAV increases, either from historic compensation or higher future curtailment revenues?
Yeah. Look, I think firstly, for those that weren't aware, we took the decision as a business to take the regulator to court because we felt that we were clear in our view that the assets that we owned, which had firm access to grid, should be compensated for any curtailment or dispatch down that they were suffering. Each the way through that process, we've been successful.
We've been successful in the Irish courts, we've been successful under appeal in Ireland, and then we've been challenged again in the European Court of Justice, which we've been successful as well. Which was a process that was led by ourselves. We're really pleased that that's the case, and therefore, it gives us and gives our investors the right returns associated with these assets, which is important for those people that see Ireland as a low-risk, long-term market to invest into.
I guess to answer your question, we probably don't have visibility yet as to when the final decision will be written up by the ECJ. We're tracking that. I think that will then allow us to engage properly with the regulator and others and determine how historical compensation will be addressed, and how then the payment mechanism associated with future compensation for dispatch down will be addressed. But I think the short answer is yes. We think there is scope for us to, and it's something in our NAV that we have under review, with opportunity that we obviously haven't reflected anywhere near the long-term compensation that we feel we've been entitled to yet into the NAV.
Okay. There's a few questions here which I'll try and group on disposals. Firstly, can you give any market color on your sales processes in terms of demand and timing, and also what you're seeing in other processes? Secondly, had there been any meaningful change in buyer appetite over the course of the current year, particularly around what's going on in the Middle East? I'm sure you won't answer this, but can you give indication on pricing relative to NAV?
Happy to start there. Maybe Bertrand will look. The market remains very strong for long-term renewable assets. These are across all our portfolio. There is a scarcity factor in many markets today, and we see good competitive dynamics. Our broader business across Schroders Greencoat, are one of the larger investors into this sector.
We pay across all different markets. We can see today, particularly in the private markets, there remains really strong appetite for access to renewable assets and, in particular, wind assets. When I play that to what the current market conditions are like, I guess that's something that we are tracking in terms of the processes that we're running, the bidders that we're engaging with, and the kind of key conditions of selling the assets in terms of the cash flows that we're forecasting.
And in that particular view, I guess what we're seeing in the short term in the Middle East is beneficial because we are, as Bertrand highlighted through his presentation, we're currently now seeing a much more attractive short-term perspective on power prices across Europe. Yeah, I guess we are busy on the disposals. We can't give any guidance today as to the specific timing associated with those sales. But we've always been clear that we would intend to sell at and/or around NAV. That was a key criteria for us allowing that to happen, and we remain really confident that is the case into the future.
Just two more questions, and then I think we can draw it to a close. I'll ask them separately because they're not related. Firstly, on hybridization, you give the Killala case study at a 10% unlevered IRR, 15% cash yield on slide 25. How does this relate to the projects that you're looking to initiate? Can you break down those returns between what is contracted and what would be sort of merchant-style returns?
Correct. The metrics are the one in the presentation. You might also have picked up that the 10% of the Killala battery on unlevered basis differs from what we have indicating in our capital allocation at 13%. It's not a typo. You may have also picked up that when we set up the Killala battery project, the market for battery revenue in Ireland was nascent. Yes. We established this in 2021, 2022.
You have picked up that the EBITDA since those earlier years have doubled versus where they used to be at the time. There is a matter of timing, and there is a matter of the market of not coming through at the time, which we anticipated, which have eroded what the run rate IRR would have been if you were to consider current market pricing and market dynamics. Yeah.
This explains the gap between those two. But the 13 is something we are quite confident the market is now set up to deliver. In terms now of the mix. It's going to be from. Bear in mind that the regulation framework is evolving. It has made good progress, but we will anticipate that the contracted mix will sit around two-third plus of the revenue mix and the residual to be merchant-driven. Acknowledging that when we took contracted revenue framework, as you see today, it's around five to six to seven-year contract. It's not 15-year contract as we see today. This is something also to consider when we get there.
Okay. Final question, and maybe you can end with any closing comments afterwards. Given the recent strength in power prices, do you see upside risk to your H2 cash generation guidance? How are you looking to take advantage of those power prices?
So maybe I'm doing this. We don't have a crystal ball. We are not trader, so obviously the caveat come with it. If you look at what we've done, I think the risk associated to power price is very limited. Even if there was short resolution in the Middle East, A, we have contracted a bulk of our merchant exposure via the Borkum PPA that we talked about, 70% of the outcome. Two, our current, I mean, the pricing we've built the NAV and our projection are underpinned by the pricing we knew at the end of June. We've seen that those pricing have strengthened in the last two months. As in addition to this, we are entering the winter period.
The winter period, given how low the current gas storage level are, it will take quite a long time for the, even if the situation politically was normalizing, for those to be reflecting into the pricing into those storage. I'm afraid to say from a customer perspective, that electricity and power price are going to remain elevated no matter what in the upcoming winter period.
Just to finish, I think thank you all for your time. Just to start and finish on the same message. We have a clear capital allocation plan that really is focused over the next period around disposals, buybacks, and reduction of debt. I hope you've had a chance to hear how we can see the pillars of growth really starting to take. We can take advantage of those, and we look forward over the next 12 months really starting to execute and closing out on the first phase of enhanced capital allocation and then moving towards the increased growth opportunities that we can see across the business today. Thank you all for your time, and we look forward to engaging with you again.
Thank you.