Good morning and welcome to Hexagon Purus' webcast. My name is Karen Romer. I'm the SVP Communications at Hexagon Group. I will moderate today's broadcast from our facility here today in Kassel, Germany. Earlier today, Hexagon Purus announced its intention to acquire Wystrach, a leading European hydrogen system solutions company. This move brings unprecedented expertise and capacity together to create the industry leader in hydrogen storage systems. Joining me here in the studio today is Morten Holum, CEO of Hexagon Purus, and Michael Kleschinski, Executive Vice President. Later in the webcast, we'll be joined by Dilip Warrier, our CFO, from his office in the U.S. The webcast will cover an overview of the transaction details and rationale, an introduction to Wystrach and its history with Hexagon Purus, how the addition of Wystrach supports and accelerates Hexagon Purus' growth plans, and a short business update.
This will be followed by a Q&A. Please feel free to send your questions throughout the broadcast to ir@hexagonpurus.com. You see it down there on the lower left-hand side of your screen. I now invite our CEO, Morten Holum, to take the floor. Morten.
Thank you, Karen, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us on this webcast. Earlier today, we announced that we are acquiring Wystrach, a longtime business partner and the leading hydrogen system supplier in Europe. We're very excited because we truly believe this is a transformative deal, not only for Hexagon Purus but also for the industry. The transaction values Wystrach at an enterprise value of EUR 50 million, and the total consideration paid for 100% of the equity will be up to EUR 43.3 million. The transaction will be settled with 35% cash, 35% Hexagon Purus shares at closing, with the remaining 30% in the form of deferred payment and a cash earn-out dependent on future performance. The closing of the transaction is expected in Q4 this year, following regulatory approval and customary closing conditions. This deal is highly complementary and has a very solid industrial rationale.
It marries Hexagon Purus' leading hydrogen cylinder capabilities to best-in-class hydrogen systems capabilities, design, assembly capacity, and resources. It significantly expands our product portfolio and increases our exposure to the hydrogen infrastructure build-out, including distribution, mobile refueling, and stationary storage solutions. It vertically integrates Hexagon Purus further down the hydrogen value chain and gives us better control of the total system cost. A very key aspect for us is that we acquire these capabilities in one fell swoop, rather than building them up and growing them organically over the next several years. This will enable us to significantly accelerate our development. To talk a little bit more about Wystrach, I'll hand the word over to Michael Kleschinski.
Thanks, Morten. Wystrach is a family-owned business that has been in the industrial gas space for more than 30 years. With an acquisition, we add Wystrach's system capability in design and production, and subsequently their systems assembly capacity as well. Therefore, we can quickly add bandwidth in a high-growth market. The hydrogen activities of Wystrach have grown significantly this year and already account for almost 50% of sales. With the high expected growth of the hydrogen business, it will likely become the dominant segment in only a few years. In addition, Wystrach is profitable and cash-generating, which is accredited to Purus' overall financial profile. Wystrach operates a modern facility in Weeze at the Dutch border close to the Rhine-Ruhr metro region, with sufficient space to further expand in line with the growth trajectory of the industry.
Wystrach brings more than 185 skilled employees to Purus, which adds important bandwidth to the organization. As an expert in storage solutions for high-pressure gases, Wystrach is active in different fields. The starting point of their business was built around gas bundles, mainly addressing equipment for the stationary storage of industrial gas, with a focus on the so-called air gases, oxygen, and nitrogen. These gas bundles are also the building block for the broad portfolio of stationary storage solutions. Gas bundles can also be used for the stationary storage of hydrogen at Power-to-Gas solutions, ultra-high-pressure storage for hydrogen refueling, and hydrogen storage for residential power solutions. The significant growth potential of Wystrach comes from the hydrogen storage for mobility applications, in particular hydrogen distribution modules, which is currently one of the main contributors to Purus' growth.
Also, hydrogen fuel systems for heavy-duty mobility applications like trains, buses, and heavy-duty trucks will drive the growth. Wystrach's latest product suite around hydrogen mobile refueling is addressing the infrastructure as a front-runner of hydrogen-based zero-emission mobility. On the operational side, the industrial gas business provides scale for hydrogen mobility applications in the early stages of growth. The overall portfolio and Wystrach's experience in design and production is the key to their blue-chip customer base, comprising the leading players in the industrial gas and mobility space. A significant portion of railways worldwide is not electrified. Zero-emission trains powered by hydrogen have a strong decarbonization potential, and it's easier to electrify the train than to electrify the railways. Wystrach is a supplier of hydrogen fuel systems for Alstom, who is the first mover in fuel-cell electric trains.
They have an LOI for a total of 100 trains over the next few years, and so far, 41 train sets have been ordered. Mobile refueling units for heavy-duty mobility is the latest product innovation by Wystrach. One of the first customers for this innovation is Germany's state-owned railway, Deutsche Bahn. The mobile refueler consists of a dispensing module as well as hydrogen stored at 500 bar. This will enable refueling of trains that Deutsche Bahn plans to start operating in 2024. There's a lot of value-added activity and content when going from a cylinder to a hydrogen storage system. To store and transport large amounts of compressed hydrogen in a very demanding operating environment requires a significant amount of engineering and know-how.
With the acquisition of Wystrach, we expand our position in the value chain by now controlling the system structure, high-pressure piping, and assembly, which are key activities in building these hydrogen systems. Therefore, we will be able to control a much higher share of the cost through the value chain and therefore drive the total costs of ownership down. Now, back to Morten.
Thank you, Michael. To summarize, we're very excited because we believe that the combination of Hexagon Purus and Vistrak is transformative for us and for the industry. It substantially increases our revenue. In 2020, on a pro forma basis, it would have more than doubled our revenue of 180 million NOK. This is profitable revenue at high single-digit EBITDA margins. Both Hexagon Purus and Vistrak are seeing similar growth trends in our hydrogen businesses. This significantly increases organizational resources and capabilities, doubling the number of team members. It significantly increases systems assembly capacity, and this is best-in-class systems capabilities. It brings us closer to many important end customers also. Many of you will be familiar with this picture. From where we sit today, we see a market with very strong growth rates in the coming years.
The hydrogen cylinder and systems market is estimated to reach around $1 billion by the middle of this decade. The growth in the second half of the decade is expected to be substantially higher as more applications are entering in the mass production stage. The key to addressing a substantial portion of this $7 billion market by 2030 will be the systems capabilities. That is the ability not only to produce the hydrogen cylinders but also to integrate them into highly engineered systems for a wide variety of applications. We have spoken a lot about distribution applications as one of the early use cases for hydrogen adoption. As increasing volumes of green hydrogen become available and the use of hydrogen for automotive and industrial applications increases, the need for solutions to transport the hydrogen from the source to the point of use will grow. We see this happening already.
The increased demand for distribution modules has already driven substantial growth in our revenue this year, and we expect this growth to continue. The acquisition of Wystrach increases our exposure to this market application and gives us a sixfold increase in production capacity. This year has already been a very eventful year for us. We continue to see strong demand for our products and capabilities, resulting in some very significant customer wins across a variety of applications. We see a lot of activity in the distribution segment, as I just mentioned, but also in the transit bus and heavy-duty truck segment. We have added important contracts with companies such as Air Liquide, New Flyer, and Nikola. We're progressing very well with our China JV activities. Summing it all up, this acquisition will enable us to accelerate our growth.
It combines best-in-class systems capabilities of Wystrach with our market-leading cylinder expertise to create the leading hydrogen systems provider. It expands our product portfolio and gives us control of a much higher share of the overall system cost. It gives us significant additional capacity that will be needed to meet the industry's growth. In a nutshell, the acquisition doubles the size of our company and enables an immediate and significant acceleration compared to the organic growth track that we had planned. We're very excited about this transaction and look forward to using the combined strengths of Wystrach and Hexagon Purus to accelerate the hydrogen transition, and in doing so, deliver significant value to customers, to shareholders, and to society overall. That concludes our presentation this morning, and we will now open up the floor for Q&A.
Thank you very much, Morten and Michael. Joining us now also is our CFO from his U.S. office, Dilip Warrier. Welcome, Dilip. Good morning. Can you hear us well?
Morning, Karen Romer, everyone.
Good morning. Great. As I reminded all of you at the start of the broadcast, please feel free to send your questions into ir@hexagonpurus.com. I do have a question that's come in already. This is for you, Morten. Could you talk about how this transaction came about? Was the process a competitive one?
Yeah. We have been considering the systems part of this for a while because we believe that systems capabilities will be very important. Given that we have a long-standing relationship with Wystrach, this was naturally one of the companies that we have been looking at for a while. When the owners of Wystrach were considering then new ownership for their business, it became very clear that they also were interested in a very solid industrial home for the business. Since the businesses fit actually very well together, it became clear pretty early that this was a good match. We have been for most of this process on an exclusive track.
Excellent. For you, Dilip, have you quantified any synergies in this transaction?
Yeah. Thanks for the question. This transaction is not about cost synergies. This transaction is about growing the business, growing our capacity, growing our capability, and vertically integrating down the supply chain to become the leading hydrogen solutions provider.
Great. Michael, we have also one here for you. Wystrach's hydrogen revenue seems to be on a good growth trajectory. How should we think about drivers of growth in the non-hydrogen business and the overall mix of hydrogen versus non-hydrogen going forward?
Yeah. Hydrogen already has been last year 30% of the revenue of Wystrach, and this year will account for up to 50%. Hydrogen is clearly on the growth trajectory. We expect hydrogen to grow further. The industrial gas business, which is an important building block from a technology perspective, is more in a steady-state glide path. Hydrogen in the long run will be the dominant part of the portfolio.
Excellent. We have a question. This was for you, Morten. Will the acquisition of Vistrak accelerate plans to move Hexagon Purus to the main list on the Oslo Stock Exchange? When do you expect the move to be completed?
Yeah. We communicated when we went on Euronext Growth last year. We communicated very clearly that it is our intent to list ourselves on the main list on the Oslo Stock Exchange. This is still our ambition to do. In terms of acceleration, this process here has actually taken down the speed a little bit because of all of the work needed to complete this transaction. But yes, we are committed to listing ourselves on the main list, and we'll do that as quickly as we can, likely sometime early next year.
Okay. Dilip, how will the acquisition impact Purus' financials going forward?
Yeah. Great question. Historically, Vistrak has been a customer of Purus. We have supplied cylinders to them. If you look at it in historical terms in 2020 and looking to combine the P&L, Vistrak now becomes a group company within Purus Group. Purus would recognize the external revenue associated with the sale of the system to the external customer, and we would eliminate the intercompany cylinder sales between our Kassel facility and Vistrak. If you combine the two revenues and eliminate the intercompany sales, which were roughly about 25 million NOK or so last year, we're looking at a combined revenue of over 415 million NOK versus the 180 million NOK that Purus Group recognized in 2020. I think it's also just important to note that the revenue accretion is also EBITDA accretive. This is a business that does high single-digit 8%-9% EBITDA margins historically.
It is also good to note that this is a family-owned business. It's a self-sustaining business. It's a self-funding business. There's been a minor amount of bank loans, but it's a fairly asset-light business compared to the cylinder business, which is exactly in line with our expectations given our history in the Hexagon Group, especially with the Agility legacy.
Thank you, Dilip. I think this might be a combination of Morten and of the three of you, but how much of Wystrach's capacity is utilized to reach the 2021 revenue estimate of the EUR 35 million?
Yeah. Let me cover that one. This year's revenue projection of EUR 35 million will utilize a major share of Vistrak's capacity. Therefore, we also intend to continue investing to keep up with the growth trajectory that we're expecting.
Great. Thank you. Morten, do you expect M&A to be an important part of your growth strategy going forward, or Hexagon Purus' growth strategy going forward?
I think we have always had organic growth as our main path and our main focus. Every once in a while, there will be some opportunities where we, through M&A or non-organic measures, can propel our way forward like this acquisition does. While we're not ruling out potential M&A also in the future, I think our main path is still on organic development.
Thank you. Dilip, can you provide an update on Wystrach's current year-to-date performance?
Yeah, fair enough. Wystrach did about EUR 24 million last year in revenue. This year, we expect that they will post about EUR 35 million. Year-to-date, through the first half, they were sitting at roughly about EUR 13.5 million. It is a back-half-loaded year and not really surprising given generally kind of similar really to Purus. For Purus, it will be a back-half-loaded year. You do see supply chain delays just across the industry. It's tracking well.
Thank you. Michael, are there any plans to co-locate Hexagon Purus and Wystrach given the strong industrial link?
Yeah. Well, the intention is to keep Vistrak as an independent operating unit, which also enables us to sharpen the focus on the cylinder business and the systems business. Vistrak is supposed to also become the hub for our systems assembly activities here in Europe.
Very good. I think this might also be for you, Michael. You mentioned the deal adds capacity. In which areas is there additional capacity if Vistrak is a client rather than a competitor?
Yeah. The main addition of capacity is on the assembly side. I mentioned distribution as one of the growth drivers, the hydrogen distribution, and there's subsequently the capacity to assemble large distribution modules, but also modules for mobility applications like transit bus. This is where Wystrach significantly adds installed capacity to Purus' business.
Dilip, any changes to your long-term guidance as a result of the acquisition?
Yeah. Look, I think the right way to think about this acquisition is we're looking to close this sometime in Q4. As it relates to 2021, the revenue accretion to Purus is really not going to be material. I'd say that at this stage, we stand by our revenue guidance. We've talked about 50%, actually more than 50% revenue growth organically. As it relates to our longer-term revenue aspirations, we've talked about NOK 4 billion-NOK 5 billion by the middle of this decade. The right way to think about this is it's a stepping stone. We're putting the foundations in place to build that future, and this is just a nice step forward. It really accelerates our plans more than anything else.
Thank you. Morten, was the non-hydrogen industrial gas business of strategic importance when considering the acquisition?
I think if you have to look at the company as it is today, like Michael explained in the webcast earlier today, there is a very strong link between the non-hydrogen business and the hydrogen business. It's basically the same customers and the same technical capabilities, the same machinery. There's a high degree of overlap, and the industrial gas part of the business is really what has enabled this quick growth into hydrogen systems. I think that's how we see it. We think that the hydrogen part, again, as Michael mentioned earlier, that's the business that really is on a very, very strong growth path, whereas it's more modestly stable on the industrial gas side of the business. Over time, more and more of the business will be weighted towards hydrogen.
I'll just remind the audience that the email address for your questions is ir@hexagonpurus.com. Michael, how does this acquisition impact your relationship with existing cylinder and distribution module customers?
Yeah. Good question. We believe that with this transaction, we can bring added value to the market. I think this will be very positively perceived not only by our customers but by the whole market in general. We are in a fast-growing market here, so subsequently, there is enough need for the capacity that together we will bring into the market.
Okay. I think, gentlemen and our audience, I think that wraps up the Q&A, at least that I've received. A quick refresh just to see that I haven't missed anybody's question. Very good. I think then we will say thank you very much for joining us for this morning's webcast, and please follow with the company as we move ahead. Thank you very much.
Thanks, everybody.
Thanks, everybody.
Thank you.