Welcome to Magnora's Q1 2024 presentation. I'm Magnora's CEO, Erik Sneve. It's April 16. It's just 6 weeks since we presented Q4, so we haven't had that much happening over the last 6 weeks, but we have had some breakthrough, which I'll be delighted to present. So first thing, we're still an asset light developer. Our land bank keeps growing faster than we anticipate. We're at 9.1 GW, and as you remember, we raised our goal to 11 GW recently. Our new sales target for 2024 is still the same, 500-625 MW. We have mentioned that we have quite a lot to potentially sell in multiple markets, so that's further back in the presentation. Listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange main board. So highlights in the quarter and subsequent events and a look ahead. So we have the restructuring coming up with Hermana Holding ASA, our legacy business.
We have rapid growth, and we have cash conversion with the award by Globeleq at Eskom a week back. So subject to approval, we have a huge dividend share distribution coming up with the shares in Hermana Holding, our legacy business. And as a shareholder in Magnora, you will for free receive 70% of the shares in Hermana Holding. Magnora will keep 30% of the shares, and we'll consider further the handout of dividends a little later. We've had a huge breakthrough in South Africa. The first project we sold last summer to Globeleq was won by Globeleq with Eskom. It was an auction, and they showed us our project to Eskom, and they were the lowest bidder. And that's a 153 MW, 612 MWh project, the Red Sands project. And it triggered another milestone.
And we have a third one coming up later at financial close, second half of 2024. So it's approximately above NOK 50 million for this project. And as you remember, this was originally a wind and solar project. And we're lucky that Eskom decided to have a battery storage project at our site. It's the largest battery storage project in Africa to date. The project will cost $360 million for Globeleq to develop. That's around NOK 4 billion. The battery in itself equals 8,160 Tesla Model Y batteries, just for comparisons. In February, Helios delivered a large-scale PV project to Nordic Solar, 40 megawatt. It says plant there, but it's actually a project. Sorry for that. We have further developed our land bank to 9.1 gigawatt, and we have robust growth ahead in all onshore markets.
Our battery energy storage portfolio leaped 50% in the quarter, and we're now at 1.6 GW. A lot of new projects added in Finland, South Africa, and U.K. We're very pleased by the growth and the success in South Africa so far, and we're accelerating the growth. New hires coming on board to assist with more origination and more sales. At the end of Q1, cash and cash equivalents declined by NOK 39.7 million from the end of the year to NOK 308 million. We returned another NOK 0.187 per share to our shareholders, and we also increased our investments in South Africa and the U.K. We have high activity across the board with a particular focus on sales, as well as many deliveries coming up soon and milestones being met, like the one in South Africa. So we're securing revenue recognition for the short to mid-term. So this is very, very exciting.
Some highlights: our portfolio. Since Torstein Sanness, the Executive Chairman, and I took helm at the end of 2018, we have returned NOK 586 million to our shareholders. Since June last year, we've returned NOK 69.1 million in dividend capital distribution and share buybacks. We have zero debt, and we have a credit facility of NOK 150 million. Our portfolio keeps growing. Trendline growth 20% quarterly, and we're very happy by that. We have projects to sell for many, many years, a decade or two, as we grow at this speed. Half our portfolio, almost, is in Sweden, a little less. And we have very healthy growth in Finland and South Africa. We also see good growth in Norway. Norway has a more challenging landscape, and we have a lot of potential growth coming up in England with solar PV and battery storage.
We have multiple projects there for sale as we speak as well. Outlook for 2024: large potential dividend in Q2 with the Hermana legacy coming up for the general assembly for Voltair. We have a lot of revenue recognition as the projects we've sold previously in South Africa and Sweden go over to deliveries. That'll be more revenue recognition and cash conversion. We've had a very nice breakthrough in South Africa with a win of Globeleq to Eskom. Our focus is on organic growth. We grow strongly in the companies and projects we are currently, but we are looking at new business development opportunities in new markets. We have a team of 4 people looking at that on a daily basis. We're excited about those initiatives and hope to bring some news in the short to mid-term.
We have multiple milestone payments coming up, as I mentioned. We're also working on farm downs and alliances on some of our bigger stuff. We hope to be able to bring some news about that in the short to mid-term as well. We still have very high focus on capital allocation, dividend and buybacks. As we receive more cash, we'll return more cash to our shareholders. Our business model is still the same. We like to invest greenfield early stage, NOK 2 million-NOK 20 million initially, and develop a good business plan with the local team or with our own staff to develop a new project or a portfolio of projects. Minimum return requirement: five times. Our business model is to develop the projects to the ready-to-build stage.
If you look on the bottom, you see some of our larger, much larger competitors and also our investor, Hafslund. So we don't take operational CapEx of the projects. We deliver the projects at the ready-to-build stage for others to finance the construction and working capital for the construction phase. So we offer construction management services and also technical management services over the lifetime of the assets, which is important for some of our clients. We also offer procurement management. And what we do is secure the land, secure all permits, and a grid connection agreement. So it's quite complex. It takes a team of 15-25 people to deliver these specific services in a certain market. So in Sweden, we have 25 people. In South Africa, we have 15. And in other markets, we will develop similar organizations.
So the project demand is much larger than the project supply. This is driven by zero CO2 by 2050, EU, Japan, and many other countries. We also now see that artificial intelligence is driving demand for energy. A lot of consumers and businesses are afraid that if they spend big money on cars or industrial processes with fossil, they'll be obsolete quickly. You see a fast transition towards green energy than many anticipated just a few years back. We secure a lot of land and permits, and that secures a very valuable land bank for Magnora and its shareholders. This chart is quite similar over the last 40 years. I think it was the exact same in 1980 when I was in elementary school. Around 80% of the energy in the world is delivered by fossil, and renewables 14%, and the remainder by nuclear.
So we still have a long way to go to become a CO2-neutral economy. Our customers in our respective markets are leaders. Globeleq, very serious company owned by the Norwegian and British government. Commerz Real, large German bank. Hafslund, second biggest utility in Norway, one of the biggest green utilities in Europe with 21 TWh of annual production. And the list goes on. So very excited to have very well-financed customers who are not dependent on high-yield markets to develop and build their projects. Little update about South Africa. Beautiful country. And South Africa has a major problem with rolling blackouts. It's a quite well-developed economy, and it's a huge, huge play. So coal-fired power plants have installed an effect of 50,000 MW. And if you multiply that by 4,000 hours, which is half of the year, you have around 200 TWh production.
It used to be much higher, 30% higher, meaning they've lost 100 TWh since 2016 alone. This creates a headache for the South African government, consumers, and businesses. In addition, they have a goal of increasing their renewable power. But we think it's a very, very huge opportunity for Magnora and its shareholders to be there with a great team of developers who can provide projects for Eskom and for South African consumers and businesses based on solar, wind, and battery. South Africa, the right market, the right team. We have close to 1 GW, a little above actually, for sale in the upcoming year. The South African market resembles, or the South African business resembles a lot our Helios business in Sweden just 15 months ago. We believe we were there at the right time.
Our organization, very flat structure, different people, different backgrounds. Torstein, one of the first employees in Saga Petroleum and founder of Lundin in Norway. We have Peter Nygren, who's a shareholder as well in South Africa together with Magnora. He is also a co-developer in Helios and also founder of Arise Wind Power in Sweden. We have Stein Bjørnstad, used to be assistant professor at the Norwegian School of Management. Haakon Alfstad, who was the Senior Vice President of renewables, offshore, and onshore wind in Statkraft for multiple decades. And younger people like Espen, Emilie, and Bjørn Erling, who are very savvy and research-oriented and very good project developers. So we have a team in Oslo that sort of helps with the governance and the growth and sales process in the various countries.
Torstein and I are big shareholders, as well as Haakon and all our other employees own shares, basically. Hafslund is our largest single shareholder. Over to financials. You see that as we deliver more projects, our bottom line improves. We've had a handover of a project in Sweden. You can see that on the profit and loss from associated companies. We have a total result of -4.9 versus 15.9 at the end of Q4 2023. You see our legacy business under discontinued operations. Under other income, you see part of the contingent revenues from Globeleq since they won a project with Eskom just recently. There's then a high probability of the remaining revenues there. For IFRS purposes, you see some percentage of the revenues for second half under other income.
We have a nice tax loss carryforward and a lot of paid-in capital. So here's the cash flow. Operating activity reduced our cash by NOK 22.6 million. Net investment NOK 5.4 million. And at financing, negative NOK 11.7 million. So we ended up with NOK 308 million. So the outlook: very strong prospects for further sales and growth. A lot of stuff happening in our project development, but also our sales. We see that in South Africa, they reduced the time needed to get a permit for a solar or a battery energy project, meaning that we potentially have more to sell this year as opposed to what we believed just six, seven weeks ago. So a lot of good stuff happening in the renewable business for Magnora. Capex on solar and batteries falling dramatically in 2023. And we still think it has further room to fall, which increases the pricing power of Magnora's projects.
We guide to sell our projects between NOK 500,000-NOK 1.5 million per megawatt, depending on the attractiveness of the project, the matureness of the project, the technology, and the various markets. So 2023 was all about going to market. 2024 will be cash and profits. So we're very, very happy to see our underlying activities and our growth in the markets where we're strong. We look forward to receiving more milestone payments, potentially, from Evolar and from our Globeleq sales and also from all the projects Helios have sold already, in addition to new sales coming up in the U.K. , Helios, and potentially also Norway and Finland second half of this year. That was it. We are very pleased with the quarter and the underlying activities. And we are very excited about the rest of the year and Q2 and Q3 in particular.
With that, I wish you a very good day. Feel free to send me an email about any question you have. I look forward to hearing from all of you. Have a great day.