Welcome to the ReFuels Q1 2027 results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to the management team of ReFuels, Philip, Baden. Good morning to you both.
Good morning. Thank you for the intro, and welcome, and thank you for all of you who have tuned in or are watching this on catch up afterwards. As mentioned, we'll go through the Q1 2027 presentation for ReFuels. As per usual, I'll set the scene, talk about the highlights. Baden will go through the financials before we wrap up. Please send questions through so we can deal with those in the Q&A section afterwards. Just to set the scene, we have 16 large public access stations in the U.K. We have a fleet of mobile refueling stations as well.
We have three more stations in build. As of today, we are refueling, there or thereabouts, about 2,250 trucks per day through our network. If we look over the last six years, we have saved our customers north of GBP 65 million, given that the fuel cost related to running on Bio-CNG is less than an equivalent diesel truck. For calendar year 2025, we saved our customers, again, north of 250,000 tons of GHG emissions.
Finally, Bio-CNG as an energy vector, as a fuel for long-haul transport in the U.K., is no longer a niche application. We are getting close to having 200 customers running CNG trucks. Just a reminder again, ReFuels owns 40% of CNG Fuels. Foresight own 60% of that, of CNG Fuels. Today, we'll be talking about the financials of CNG Fuels, given that that is the underlying entity of which value is created. Just a reminder here, Foresight is not a shareholder of ReFuels or has any shareholder rights over ReFuels.
ReFuels, as such, is a completely independent entity of Foresight. This is just an example of one of our stations. This is Warrington. It's the M62 motorway, Liverpool to the west, Manchester to the east. This is just, I think, a good example of what one of our stations looks like, but also how what we've taken 12 years to build basically is now starting to mature. Warrington refuels north of 300 trucks a day, dispenses here north of 8,000 tons of biomethane per annum, and is now in a roughly 50%, slightly more 50% utilization, and can then go up to north of 600 trucks a day.
As Bio-CNG becomes even more popular, as the 6x2, which we'll talk about in a bit, as the 6x2 adoption increases further, that utilization will just continue to grow over the coming years. So let's have a look at the highlights for the quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA more than tripled to GBP 4.9 million for the quarter. We reiterate our guidance for this financial year as in the range of GBP 16 million- GBP 20 million, and of course, we'll continue to update on that as we go forward. That is up from last year.
Why is that? Two main reasons there. We do have, of course, increase in volume in general, but increased station profitability, and attractive certificate margins from sourcing of biomethane and selling RTFS. Baden will provide a bit more clarity on that in a bit. Over the next 12- 18 months, we expect north of 900 new heavy goods vehicles, HGVs, to be delivered. And we have good visibility that our existing customer base will be operating more than 8,000 HGVs by the end of calendar 2030.
You'll see a bit later in the presentation as well that there is growing political support, growing political pragmatism for a multi-fuel approach, where Bio-CNG, biomethane, is expected to be an important part of that quite complex jigsaw puzzle. And finally, we've got three stations in build. That will take us up to 19 stations when those are operational, and we're looking to do more next year. So it's hard to talk about transport and energy that is used for transport without talking a bit about what's going on with regards to geopolitical events.
If we look at the world today, we are in a very, very complex situation with regards to energy security. Very, I would say bad energy price volatility. That is not only affecting natural gas, which of course is an input to what we offer to our customers, but more importantly, also diesel, because at the end of the day, it's natural gas versus diesel spread that is important to our customers. We are now starting to see close to record high diesel prices. The supply of diesel is becoming constrained globally.
This is not only related to the Strait of Hormuz and what's going on there with refining capacity basically locked in the Gulf. It's also related to the Ukraine-Russia war. Russia used to be one of the largest diesel exporters in the world. Ukraine has become increasingly efficient and increasingly good, if you want, at striking Russian refining capacity, which has meant that the overall global supply of diesel has been constrained. That has led to a very high diesel price as of today.
Natural gas price has also come up. That is correct. But the spread, which our customers focus on, has remained pretty much where it was before the war in the Gulf started at the end of February. In the U.K., we are, and this isn't just a U.K. problem, by the way, this is also across Europe, we are seeing growing Bio-CNG volumes. However, I think it's fair to say that the overall haulage market, logistics market in the U.K. is in a difficult position. For 2023, 2024, and 2025, we had three years where new truck orders in general were on a downward trajectory.
This year was expected to be a turning point for truck orders again to start growing. Given geopolitics, given how elevated diesel prices affect profitability of hauliers, it is now difficult to say whether or not this will be a turning point. The truck manufacturers are saying that orders are taking a hit at the moment. Here it is important to understand that Bio-CNG will continue to grow. We are a small part of the energy mix as of today.
We have a lot of growth yet in us, but it is also fair to say that we would have even stronger growth had the overall margins and the overall profitability within the haulage sector been better than it is today. If we then look at the benefits of biomethane and Bio-CNG, we not only offer a fuel that is significantly less carbon intensive, offering 80%-90% lower GHG emissions, we are also offering a fuel and supplying a fuel that offers significant fuel savings versus diesel and versus HVO. Yes, a CNG truck is slightly more expensive to buy.
The fuel is cheaper, so when you run it for typically five years, you will have a strong cash on cash payback, which you typically see depending on which customer it is and mileage they do of a payback period around about one and half years. We often get the question, "Well, it is good that you guys are growing. Of course, it is not only us that are doing this as well. There is LNG going on in the U.K. as well, and there are other similar companies to us on the continent. Is there going to be enough biomethane supply?" As of today, there is more biomethane chasing transport demand than there is transport demand across Europe.
If you look at the announced investments going in upstream to increased biomethane production, that is now getting close to EUR 40 billion over the next five years, up significantly, almost EUR 10 billion up, compared to what was announced last year. As of today, we do not see, anytime soon, a shortage of biomethane that can go into transport. Clearly, we do not have visibility further out than maybe two or three, maybe four years. But as of today, there is a lot of investment going in upstream, and a lot of that biomethane will want to find a home in sectors such as transport.
For those of you who have followed us for a while, you will have heard me, and probably Baden as well, talk about the 6x2 and why that is important for us. We are finally starting to see a fairly broad adoption of 6x2 across fleets. Whilst the number of 6x2 vehicles in operation as of today does not make up a huge part of the overall fleet that is using our stations, what is more important to us is the number of fleets. Why? Because a lot of these fleets are not going to go out and order 20, 30, 40 trucks on day one.
They will order one or three or five trucks. So the number of fleets is important. Why? Because what we have seen with 4x2s in the past is that once they dip their toe in the water, the next year or the 12 months later on, when they come to order more trucks, they typically increase their orders compared to what they have done before. So we are seeing very encouraging signs in the 6x2 market. For the Q1, we had 15 6x2 trials completed. We have now received even more demo vehicles into the fleet.
We have got two of our own now that we control, so we expect the number of demos and trials to continue to grow over the coming quarters. I mentioned previously that we have visibility out to the end of 2030, where our major customers are looking to operate more than 8,000 CNG trucks in total. Of course, this does not include potential new customers coming on board, particularly in the 6x2 market. As I say, 8,000 trucks, basically 4x compared to where we are today. There is, of course, risk with these estimates, but based on discussions that we have with customers for their adoption plans, this will then take us to almost 4x of the vehicles we have got on the road today by the end of 2030.
As I mentioned, that is not including potential for 6x2 demand from new customers going forward. Policy is a continuously moving piece of the puzzle here. Previously, there has been a lot of focus from policymakers and politicians in the U.K. that everything is going to go electric. As such, there are going to be potential for tailpipe bans for large trucks in 2035 and 2040. The conservatives have now come out and said they no longer believe in that. They believe in a multi-fuel approach. Very important change of direction, change of narrative. It is not a surprise to us that this has happened.
Why? Because the zero tailpipe or the tailpipe ban and only electric trucks by 2035, 2040 cannot be delivered on for a number of reasons, which takes a long time to explain, so I will not get into all of that here. As such, that we are seeing more pragmatism for us is not a surprise, but it is welcome, and I would expect to see more of this over the coming quarters from other political parties as well. I mentioned construction activity. We have now got three stations in build.
Magor, that will open in the coming months. We have got Swindon that went into build before the summer and where there is very good progress being made. Finally, Carlisle, that went into construction towards the end of August. These are three very important key strategic locations for us, where our customers have been telling us for years, we need stations in those area. So we are very pleased that we finally got these into build, and then we will be looking to bring more into build next year. With that, I will hand it over to Baden.
Great. Thank you very much, Philip. Let me run you through the financial performance of CNG Fuels for the first quarter. As Philip mentioned, this is the best proxy for the ReFuels value for shareholders and ReFuels performance. CNG Fuels delivered adjusted EBITDA GBP 4.9 million in Q1, compared to GBP 1.4 million in the same quarter last year. So adjusted EBITDA has tripled from the prior year. Just a reminder to everyone that the adjustments are the removal of non-cash fair value remeasurements and value movements in the share-based payment schemes that are outstanding. Essentially, the adjustments take us back up to operating profit for the period.
The improvement was supported by a combination of three factors, higher Bio-CNG volumes, strong certificate margins, and an increase in scale benefits we are continuing to see across the network. Certificate business remained the largest contributor, but importantly, it was also the second consecutive quarter in which the station business produced a positive EBITDA on a standalone basis. It is a really important milestone for the business because it shows that improving station utilization is increasingly translating into an additional and a complementary revenue stream for the business and really on an annuity basis that can continue to grow over time and can continue to be scaled.
The certificate margin for the quarter was approximately 29%, although, as I will show you in a slide or two's time, the average market price for RTFCs during the quarter was GBP 0.192 . So our realized selling price in the period was GBP 0.26.1 per certificate. So that reflects the benefits that we have always mentioned before about the way we sell on forward contracts. We are reiterating our FY 2027 adjusted EBITDA guidance of GBP 16 million- GBP 20 million, and that is based on the Q1 result, our expected volume growth, and the visibility we have over certificate earnings.
Although we are facing a challenging market, we just continue to expect around the 15%- 20% growth in dispense to biomethane volumes for the full year, and that which underpins our guidance, along with the strong margins we are seeing. Next slide. This slide shows how EBITDA growth is translating through to the P&L. Revenue for the quarter was increased by 62% to GBP 47.9 million from GBP 29.6 million in Q1 last year. The revenue increase was largely driven by higher dispense volumes, high natural gas prices, and a greater number of certificates we have sold.
It is really worth noting, though, that the higher gas prices do increase reported revenue, but our customer arrangements, we seek to pass through this gas cost to them, and therefore, a more meaningful measure of underlying progress is the gross profit and EBITDA. Gross profit increased by 74% to GBP 9.4 million, compared to GBP 5.4 million in the same quarter last year. And this reflects volume growth, improved certificate margins, and scale benefits again. RTFS contributed 58% of the total gross profit, and the station business contributed 42% in the same period. Adjusted EBITDA increased to GBP 4.9 million, as previously said, up 250% on the year.
And RTFS contributed GBP 4.3 million of this, with the station business contributing GBP 0.6 million to the result. The GBP 0.6 million contribution by the stations is obviously strategically now significant. Last year, the annual report showed the station portfolio EBITDA of GBP 5.5 million had been generated before the CNG Fuels station overheads. The Q1 result now demonstrates that after relevant station business costs and with CNG Fuels overhead allocation as well, the network is still producing a positive EBITDA without the certificate contribution.
The bottom line, CNG Fuels also reported a profit after tax of GBP 0.3 million positive. The much larger comparative profit in last year in the same quarter was essentially affected by an exceptional accounting item. When adjusting out for that, this is the first time we have had a positive profit after tax as well. Next slide. Here we are. So, key part of our earnings performance is how we manage the RTFC pricing and our margin visibility ahead. This chart illustrates both the underlying RTFC market and the benefit of our forward sales strategy.
RTFC pricing is principally influenced by the spread between a liter of fossil diesel and a liter of waste-based biodiesel, or UCOME usually, in the U.K. That underlying spread can be very volatile, as you can see in the graph on the left. The faint gray color is the actual movement of that spread. Then you can see overlaid on that in the lighter green color, is the RTFC prices on a sort of ongoing market basis. Whereas on the right, you can see the performance of what we have been recognizing as RTFC prices, over the same period with the graphs aligned there. As you can see, obviously that is much smoother.
Despite the average market price for RTFCs being GBP 0.192 in Q1, we realized an average price of GBP 0.261 . That is because all of the RTFCs we delivered in the quarter were delivered against forward contracts entered into at higher prices. In total, we generated 65.4 million RTFCs compared with 40.2 million in the quarter last year. The realized pricing together with attractive biomethane sourcing, has continued to see us have very strong margins. It produced a significant margin of around 29.3%, up 22% from 22.6% last year.
That 29.3% is really at the upper end of our long-term average of biomethane margins. As you can see, still adding a lot of contribution to the business. To be clear on that though, again, our approach is not to speculate on certificate prices. We seek to match contracted biomethane sourcing, with forward RTFC sales and margins that are essentially sustainably profitable across the relevant obligation years. That is our ambition, manage risk, and deliver sustainable margins, and positive returns.
We have already secured our estimated biomethane requirement for the calendar to 2026. We are now actively sourcing and selling into the 2027 year. On cash generation, CNG Fuels generated GBP 6.5 million from operations during Q1, compared to an adjusted EBITDA of GBP 4.9 million. Difference between EBITDA and operating cash flow principally affects the working capital movements associated with the biomethane sourcing RTFC generation and the timing of sales around those. This will naturally fluctuate over time. Investment expenditure was approximately GBP 4 million, primarily relating to the construction of the new stations in Magor and Swindon.
Of course we will very soon be adding Carlisle to the investments. These are investments in the growth of our network capacity. Financing activities have provided a net inflow of approximately GBP 2.8 million. That is largely the borrowing for the construction activity, of our facility with Foresight . After operating, investing, and financing cash flows, with foreign exchange movements, the cash balance has increased from GBP 10.8 million- GBP 15.6 million at June 30. Finally, onto our balance sheet.
As of June 30, CNG Fuels had assets of approximately GBP 235 million, and total equity of GBP 86 million, representing an equity ratio of 36%. Property, plant and equipment was approximately GBP 108 million, principally reflecting our operational station network, obviously minus depreciation over time. That balance will continue to grow with the construction of the three new stations. Very healthy quarterly cash balance of GBP 15.6 million, which was up GBP 4.9 million from the prior quarter.
On the GBP 25 million credit facility we have with Foresight, which is a senior debt facility, we have drawn GBP 9.2 million of that as at June 30th. The balance sheet also includes about GBP 110 million of shareholder loans, which it is just worthy of noting that these are shareholder loans post the transaction with Foresight last year and should be distinguished very much so from external bank debt. But obviously overall, a very strong position we are now in, at the CNG Fuels level, and to generate very healthy earnings. Thank you.
Thank you, Baden. We will move on. I will just provide a bit of summary, touch upon outlook, and then we will go into Q&A. I can see some questions have come through already. Once again, recommend that you send questions in if you have any, and then we will do our best to answer those. As I mentioned previously, we have visibility from our existing customer base, and these are typically our large customers, that they have communicated plans to us. Some of these have also communicated publicly.
The majority of these are, of course, private conversations with us, where they have communicated that by the end of 2030, when we look at these in aggregate, that we will have north of 8,000 CNG trucks on the road. There is, of course, a lot of new customers currently, or potential for new customers currently trialing, particularly the 6x2. If that is and we see adoption there develop the way we hope, but also think that it will, then there should be significant upside to those numbers. If we then look at earnings, last financial year, we reported close to GBP 15 million in adjusted EBITDA.
We are guiding for GBP 16 million- GBP 20 million this year, and we are saying that by the end of 2030, we not only have the potential, but we have the ability as of today, where taking that up to GBP 100 million should indeed be feasible. All right. Then just wrap up. We are seeing higher station profitability through increased utilization, but more importantly, also through scale benefits, as Baden mentioned, and also attractive certificate margins, which has meant that we have basically a north of 3x on our EBITDA for this quarter versus last year.
We have the visibility of almost 4x on vehicles by the end of 2030. That, of course, does not necessarily include the strong uptake that we think will come for 6x2s. Finally, we are reiterating our EBITDA guidance of GBP 16 million- GBP 20 million for this financial year. With that, we will drop the slides and go into Q&A. I can see there is quite a few that has come through already. We will just start at the top and work our way through. Okay, first one. You stated an EBITDA range of GBP 16 million- GBP 20 million with circa GBP 5 million delivered in Q1.
What needs to happen operationally over the coming quarters to deliver at the top end? I will unpack that slightly, and then Baden, I am sure, can jump in here as well. First of all, we need to stress that our quarters will be a bit lumpier, right? You cannot just assume that just because we had GBP 5 million in this quarter and our volume grows a bit for next quarter, it is going to be GBP +5 million. It could be above GBP 5 million, it could be less than GBP 5 million. Why do I say that? Because the timing of when we recognize earnings from RTFC sales will be lumpy.
It is important here to understand that the guidance we are giving here is on an annual basis, and the quarters could move around and be a bit lumpy in there. That said, what is it we need to achieve internally or operationally? We need growth, which we have communicated previously. We are guiding on 15%+ growth this year, so of course, we need to deliver on that. We need to deliver on continued efficiency gains and synergies that we are seeing.
I would say we do not necessarily have to have stellar operational performance to achieve that, but we have good visibility on that guidance, and of course, we will provide updates later on. Please bear in mind, quarters can be lumpy, and just because there is one quarter with less earnings than the previous quarter does not necessarily mean that there is a trend. There is lumpiness in there. Anything you want to add there, Baden?
Not particularly. I think probably, as you have seen, whether the gross profit basis or an EBITDA basis, obviously RTFS and the margins there contribute to an outsized portion, certainly of the EBITDA. We have extremely good visibility on the earnings and RTFC generation and costs for this year, and so we have very high confidence in that level. With regards to CNG stations, we are now, second quarter of profitability on an EBITDA basis, and we are seeing that is a highly scalable business with good operating leverage. It really will be about volumes coming through and how much that drives earnings on that side, with us maintaining our cost control as we always do.
Thanks. Next one. Of the 900 HGV deliveries, which I expect is related to the 900 that we reference here for the next 12-18 months, how many do you expect will be 6x2s, or is that more of a driver in the longer term? 6x2s are a driver in the longer term, yes, for sure. Just to run you through how a lot of fleets work. A lot of fleets will replace vehicles once a year. If they run a demo today or tomorrow or over the next month, that does not necessarily mean they will place an order for a 6x2 truck immediately, because they might already have done their fleet replacement for this year, right?
It is important to understand that there is a bit of lag here as to when they will place orders for vehicles. You have other fleets, of course, that do, some of the larger fleets, some of our larger customers that do replace fleet pretty much on an ongoing basis. That is the first thing. On the 900, some of our customers do not tell us whether they are ordering 6x2s or 4x2s or necessarily determine the split. Why? Because it depends a bit where they run 6x2s. It depends how they move their fleet around throughout the year. It might be that they have a greater requirement for 6x2s replacement next year or a smaller requirement.
We expect that 20%-25% of that is likely to be 6x2s, and that percentage of new fleet will just continue to grow going forward. There is one more here. Given the Lidl and Warburtons targets to move to 100% CNG, are any customers, especially the smaller ones, already operating 100% CNG? Okay. I will not mention names here, but we have one large customer that will be 100% off diesel by 2028. We have other customers who have a target to be 100% off diesel by 2030. If you then look at the smaller customers, yes, we have a couple that are 100% CNG, but these are really small customers that maybe operate five or 10 trucks and have them on specific contracts.
Here it is important to understand, once again, that the majority of our customers are fairly large fleets, and they are large fleets that have operations dotted around the country. Okay? Even with our 16 stations, soon to be 19, even with mobile refueling stations, for many of them, there is a limit to how many CNG trucks they can adopt short term because they still need to rely on us to increase our network coverage throughout the country.
A number of our customers do have plans to be pretty much 100% CNG, off diesel by 2030, some beyond 2030. As I say, some of them are also sooner, with the first one expecting to be 100% off diesel by the end of 2028. Okay, that is that one. Let us have a look here. I have got a couple of others. Okay, so this is in relation to share liquidity, which is a question that we get frequently. Please can you let us know what your plans are for improving liquidity in the shares? That is trading liquidity in the shares. Do you want to take that one, Baden?
Yeah, absolutely. We obviously didn't talk about it in our prior earnings release, but we have in several before that. We have an ongoing exercise at the moment to investigate a number of different avenues which will improve the liquidity for the shares, which of course, is something we get asked for, and we really are working hard on it. We need to find the right avenue to go down. It has to release value for shareholders in order to have a better functioning stock, and that is our ambition. We are working hard on it. We will update the market as soon as we've landed on the solution we want to pursue.
Thank you. Okay, here's another one. As volumes are expected to continue to increase, how will the operating leverage develop? Do you want to take that one, Baden?
Yeah, absolutely. There's two parts of the business, of course. There's the RTFS part and the CNG Fuels part. The RTFS part providing the biomethane, and of course, the operating leverage there is really about continuing to add to the sourcing capacity of the business, and that is something that's developing quickly over time. The CNG Fuels side, we have been extremely cost conscious. We've been really managing the cost lines of our business over the last two or three years as we took ourselves up to 16 stations, very soon 19, and then plans for at least another six over the next two years.
We have essentially built a U.K.-wide network. We've got stations in Kent, we've got stations in Wales and Scotland. And in order to operate those stations with 100% availability and uptime, which we have done for many, many years, we have to have engineers in the right place, we have to have spares, we have to have all sorts of resources in the right place, and we have to continue to invest in the growth of the network, which is a leading cost. As I say, we've been able to control that for the last several years really well.
And now we find ourselves in a position where we're filling in the gaps and adding volume with very, very little cost base associated with it, and we continue now to see that as the results come through, as margins continue to improve at the EBITDA level. And I can only expect that will continue now because we have the base of what we need. We have the resources and the capacity inside. We believe that we can probably double or triple the volume currently going through the network with only about a 20%-30% increase in our overhead cost. We are going to have excellent earnings leverage to that increase in volume over time. Looking forward to delivering it.
Thanks, Baden. We have a final question here, but there is still time to submit questions if anyone has got any that we have not answered or that we have not seen. What are the main bottlenecks to reach 8,000 HGVs by end of 2030, and what gives you confidence in the expectation? Let us do the last one first, confidence in the expectation. That number comes from plans, adoption curves, adoption plans of CNG trucks that basically our major customers have told us about and expressed. Could those change? Of course. There are always risks in those.
That is basically from our major customers today. As I say, that is just literally us aggregating those numbers or collecting those numbers, putting them together and out pops 8,000. There could be changes to that, of course, depending on what fleets decide. What is also important here is that does not include any adoption of 6x2s as an example, by all of the fleets, all of the potential new customers that are currently trialing. On balance, there is hopefully some upside to those numbers. What are the bottlenecks here?
First of all, we sometimes get asked, can the truck manufacturers build that many trucks? The answer here is no problem at all. For the truck manufacturers to build that number of CNG trucks, basically 6,000 more CNG trucks, there or thereabout, over the next four-plus years, not a problem. That is the first thing. The main bottlenecks here are going to be refueling. Where can they refuel these trucks?
That is upon us to continue to expand our network of public access grid-connected stations, and also to continue to expand our mobile refueling station offering. We feel that we have, of course, we are in control of that. As such, I would not call it a bottleneck. I would just say that it is important for us to continue to increase our coverage here and we have specific plans to do that. It is largely in our control to deliver on that.
All in all, we do not really see main bottlenecks here. It is just really a focus for us as the refueling station and the refueling provider here to continue to expand our grid-connected public access network and mobile refueling stations, and that should enable at least 8,000 trucks by the end of 2030. That is it. We do not have any more questions, actually. Thank you very much for tuning in. Thank you for sending through some good questions as well, and we look forward to seeing you again very soon.
Fantastic, Philip Fjeld. Thank you very much indeed for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.