Orrön Energy AB (publ) (STO:ORRON)
Sweden flag Sweden · Delayed Price · Currency is SEK
9.76
-0.42 (-4.13%)
May 19, 2026, 12:28 PM CET
← View all transcripts

Earnings Call: Q1 2026

May 6, 2026

Jenny Sandström
Communications Lead, Orrön Energy

Okay, now let's go live and wait a few seconds. Good afternoon, welcome to Orrön Energy's Q1 results presentation. Today we will listen to our CEO, Daniel Fitzgerald, and CFO, Espen Hennie, describing the Q1 results and the future growth strategy of the company. As usual, we will have a Q&A session at the end of the presentation. Please feel free to send across as many questions as you have. We will collect and go through them at the end. With that, I would like to hand over to Daniel Fitzgerald to start this presentation.

Daniel Fitzgerald
CEO, Orrön Energy

Thank you, Jenny Sandström, welcome to our shareholders joining us for the first quarter 2026 results. As a quick recap for the company, Orrön Energy is a pure play renewable energy company. We have 380 MW of producing assets with 80% of those sitting in Sweden, 20% in Finland, all of that portfolio is onshore wind. Happily sharing today that we've seen higher pricing in Q1 of this year, that's led to some of the strongest cash flows we've seen for a number of quarters within the company. We'll touch on that throughout the presentation. These assets deliver long-term cash flows give us the ability to go extend lives, add value, hybridize assets, utilize the infrastructure that we have in the most valuable way for creating value in the long term.

The second pillar of the company sits around the greenfield development business. I'm pleased to share that again this quarter we've seen strong results from that. We're seeing the recurring cash flows coming out of that portion of the business with quite high and strong margins, and we will continue to see that coming through as we mature the pipeline. It's in really strong shape with a lot of optionality and opportunity within that portfolio. Finally, the third pillar, which has always been a strength for us, is that we remain here today fully financed, ample liquidity headroom to continue to grow the business and to continue to invest in this space. With that, we'll spend a little bit more time now on the quarterly results. I think we start a little bit with the market.

This quarter has been exceptionally strong for us. We've seen certainly in January and February, much lower temperatures in the Nordics, much tighter supply-demand balance, which has led us to see very strong electricity pricing in January and February. That followed to a lesser extent in March and April, but still high relative to long-term averages or at least the achieved pricing we've seen over the last number of quarters. Interesting to note that Q1 performance really was driven by the cold weather and tightening of supply and demand prior to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. I think we haven't really yet seen the full impact of that closure. We've taken around 20% of LNG volumes out of the market, and today we've not seen them coming back in.

We've not replenished the gas storage, and we sit at seasonal lows in terms of gas storage. We've seen futures pricing across the Nordics increasing slightly during this period. The longer this lack of supply on the LNG side goes on, I think we're going to see more and more strengthening of the electricity price in the Nordics, and especially if we're unable to fill gas reservoirs back up to the levels that they need to be, we're going to see a much, much tighter balance through the winter next year and already in the summer of this year. That sets us up for quite a strong outlook, and I think Espen will touch on some of that later in the presentation where we share our outlook for 2026.

I think these structural issues behind this, it's going to have an impact later in 2026 and into the winter. If we look at our performance during the quarter, we achieved revenues of EUR 17 million, including both the power generation business where we delivered 231 GWh of production and our greenfield development business where we delivered around EUR 1.6 million of revenues from that in the quarter. That was against an achieved price of EUR 67 per MWh, and I think we have to roll our minds back to the end of 2022 or early 2023 before we've seen either revenues, achieved pricing or EBITDA at these levels when we account for or exclude one-off items on our quarterly results. Very, very strong quarter. We're looking forward at stronger volumes.

We're looking forward at stronger pricing as we go through the year. Our net debt position remains largely unchanged, and again, Espen will touch on this. We saw strong cash generation in the quarter. However, a working capital build due to phasing of receipts has meant that we haven't seen that coming through in the deleveraging this quarter, but we will coming into the next quarter. The final element on here around the divestments, we now to date have sold 400 MW worth of German projects, and that's translated into sales contracts of EUR 23 million, where we've received only a portion of that to date. There's still some recurring revenues that are going to be coming out of the greenfield pipeline, and we're seeing that again already in Q2, which we've announced, and we'll see that later in the year.

Importantly, on the district court trial in Sudan, we really are at the end of this process now. We have a number of weeks left in the court, and it's resounding where we are today, compared to the time that we've spent on this process. We've had the ability in the court over the last couple of weeks and month to sit down with all of the evidence in front of us, all of the prosecutor's allegations, and it further reinforces our view that we will end this process with a full acquittal. Our defense teams over the last two, three weeks have gone systematically through every single one of the allegations of the prosecutor, and we've gone methodically through all of the evidence and tried to line it up.

I think there's a number of things that come out of this for me that are resounding again, and it's the first time in nearly two years we've had the ability to do this in a very structured way. The first piece of evidence that comes out is the company and the individuals have been a force for good in the country. There has been no evidence that supports any wrongdoing or any of the allegations that the prosecutors put forward. On the other hand, there's a lot of evidence for a lot of community investment, community support, and we went into the country with the support of the EU and the Swedish state at the time. The individuals in the company operated in line with international standards for our business.

We did everything that we should have done, and that's documented through all of the evidence. When we turn our eyes to what the prosecutor is alleging, his indictment and his suspicion sheet is extremely vague and imprecise. When we go through each of these elements, there's no shred of evidence that stands up that links any of the individuals to the underlying allegations or that proves any of the underlying allegations are real. We're going to see the results of this. Both the company, myself, the defense teams, and all involved are absolutely certain that this will end in an acquittal of the individuals when it comes to verdict later in the year.

I think the imprecise nature of the allegations and the vagueness of the suspicion sheet has led us to waste a significant amount of time and resources on this, and we will be making that claim to the court for the costs involved in this process as part of this final closing. When we come to the end of the year, I remain extremely optimistic around this. I'm absolutely certain that we have done nothing wrong. The individuals have done nothing wrong. We will see a verdict in our favor at the end of the year and the full acquittal and dismissal of all of the charges and the forfeiture. Stepping back into the production for the company and performance during the quarter, we delivered 231 GWh worth of production in the quarter, including compensated volumes.

For the full year outlook in terms of production, we remain in line with where we expect to be between 800 and 950. We saw very strong pricing in the quarter. You can see here an achieved price of EUR 67 per MWh, and you can see in the yellow dots where we've been on achieved price over the last eight quarters. It's a big jump from the historical averages, we expect to see an average system price across the Nordics this year, assuming we rely on futures and Q1 historicals of around EUR 65 a MWh. This really sets up a stronger year for cash generation for the company. We also are increasingly adding optionality and flexibility into our operating portfolio.

We now have 50% of the portfolio qualified for ancillary services and actively providing ancillary services to the market. We have over 80% of the portfolio able to steer their production and slow down when prices are significantly low or speed up when prices are higher. That flexibility is going to make us much stronger in the long run, and we are still on the lookout to continue to grow this asset base, either through acquisitions, investments in our own opportunities and projects, adding batteries and flexibility to the portfolio or extending the lives and the production output of each of our assets.

Stepping into the greenfield portfolio, we continue to make really good progress in this portfolio, I'm now pleased to see that for the last four quarters or for the last three quarters plus the quarter coming, we now have documented project sales from Germany in each of those quarters. To date, we've sold 400 MW at around EUR 55,000 per megawatt of capacity, that multiple has been fairly consistent, sometimes up, sometimes down, but certainly around that level for all of the last project sales. That equates then into contracts totaling EUR 23 million, where we've received EUR 6 million of that to date and included in the financials to date, including the April project sale, where we received around half of that consideration up front.

However, in front of us, we have EUR 17 million worth of outstanding contingent payments as we continue to reach milestones on our projects. That excludes any of the future project sales from this portfolio. If I look at Germany alone with a 6 GW portfolio, we've now got 1.8 GW worth of batteries that have secured municipal approval and are working through the grid process to secure grid in line with the reform in Germany. We've got 1 GW worth of solar projects where we have reserved land and available grid. That portfolio every quarter is maturing more and more. We're seeing more milestones being met, and most importantly, we're seeing those recurring revenues coming through. If I look on the right-hand side, we miss in that discussion, we miss the true optionality and opportunity within this portfolio.

In Germany, for instance, we're building energy hubs that have data centers, batteries, solar, all together in a location where there's a grid connection. We're able to monetize solar projects. We've done that on a number of occasions to date, and will continue to do so in what is one of the strongest markets in Europe. We're starting to see the data center business gaining some real momentum, not only in the Nordics, but also in Germany and the U.K., and our teams have been able to set up in each of our countries of operation some opportunities for data centers to move forward in the portfolio.

Within that, I'm absolutely confident that what we've achieved to date is only just the beginning of where we're going to be with this portfolio, and Germany is going to move into more sales processes in Q2 and Q3 this year. When I look at the U.K., again, we're building optionality across the portfolio. We are expecting to see the final outcome of the grid reform and the grid connections with the binding documents later this year or, at the very latest, early next year. However, we're in the market today with three solar projects. We're soon in the market with another data center project, and the buoyant market in the U.K. is very, very supportive of these.

We will see as we move through the course of this year whether we're able to secure a project sale or whether we need to wait for those final grid connections. In both of these countries, we're seeing opportunities progressing very quickly, and we're quickly seeing the monetization of the portfolio. I remain very excited. If I look at that element combined with the production element and the conclusion of the Sudan trial, I remain very confident in our ability to create value from this platform, and there's a lot of exciting things happening on every single front. With that, I'll pass over to Espen for the financial update for the quarter.

Espen Hennie
CFO, Orrön Energy

Thank you, Daniel. Good afternoon, everyone. Go through the financials for Q1, which Dan touched upon earlier, has been quite solid across the board. We'll go through sort of the details in the usual fashion and also wrap up with our updated cash flow outlook for the year. Starting here with some of the highlights, EUR 17 million of revenues in Q1. That includes EUR 1.6 million of revenues from project sales. This then translated into an EBITDA of EUR 6 million for the quarter. Daniel has already touched upon the power generation, 231 GWh, including compensated volumes and an achieved price of EUR 67 per MWh, which is very strong in a historical context.

As Dan said, we need to go back to late 2022, early 2023 to see sort of similar levels. This translates into then, ending net debt on a proportionate basis at the end of the quarter of EUR 90 million, which leaves us with a very solid liquidity buffer, under our EUR 170 million debt facility. A quick look at our full-year guidance, and how we have performed so far this year, starting with operating expenses. We are reiterating our guidance for OpEx, and all the other parameters you see on the screen here. Same guidance as we put forward at our CMD. OpEx, we had EUR 6 million in Q1. This also includes one-off of EUR 200,000.

Adjusting for that, you know, the figure on the screen here would have rounded to five as opposed to six. Just want to emphasize that the OpEx year-to-date is fully in line with our plans and consistent with our full-year guidance, as for the other parameters here on this slide. G&A expenditure, EUR 2 million for the quarter. Again, on track for full-year guidance. When it comes to Sudan legal costs, those are then now expected to be significantly lower already from this quarter, Q2, as the trial ends this month, during the month of May. When it comes to CapEx, we do expect the pace of investments to pick up over the coming quarters and then total EUR 11 million for the full year.

A look at some key financial metrics for Q1 and the preceding quarters going back to Q1 2025. If we start with power generation at the top right here on the slide, you can see that that was flat quarter-over-quarter. Our achieved price was in the order of 75% higher than what we realized in Q4 2025. This then drives the significantly higher revenues, EUR 16.6 million of revenues including the project sales revenues in Q1, as opposed to just shy of EUR 11 million in the preceding quarter, which also included project sales revenues, but then EUR 2 million as opposed to EUR 1.6 million in this quarter. You can see the same pattern in our EBITDA.

Very solid uptick in EBITDA, quarter-over-quarter. EUR 6.3 million EBITDA when we exclude non-cash items, compared to EUR 2.5 in the previous quarter, which obviously is driven by the stronger revenues, partly offset by somewhat higher OpEx and G&A, which again was fully in line with our plans for the full year. Moving on to cash flow from operating activities excluding working capital. We strip out the working capital from the chart you see on the slide here, as that is by nature very volatile and bulky on a quarterly basis.

To get a better picture of the underlying cash flow generation prior to those impacts. That was EUR 3.1 million in Q1, which is, as you can see from the chart, a very solid improvement relative to the previous quarters. Our achieved price for Q1, we have the breakdown here, with the sort of the major moving parts, summing up to our all-in achieved price of EUR 67. If we start with the Nordic system price, that averaged EUR 91 per MWh in Q1, a very supportive market environment during the quarter. Our portfolio had an average spot price of EUR 84, an 8% discount to the system price, which is sort of a deviation to the norm. If you look at longer historical data.

Our portfolio typically enjoys a premium to the system price, whereas in Q1, it was a small discount, to a large extent explained by somewhat weaker pricing in the northern parts of Sweden and Finland for parts of the quarter. We are obviously very happy with the overall outcome here, of EUR 67. As a long-term average, you should expect our portfolio to sit at a premium to the system price. Other revenues, EUR 1 per MWh in Q1. That consists of ancillary services and sales of GOs. We had a loss on our hedges, which represents - EUR 6 for the quarter. This is actually the outcome that we want. Preferable outcome for us to lose on our hedges.

The hedges, they serve as an insurance against lower prices. Since we are not hedging all of our volumes, our total revenues end up higher when we lose on our hedges. We hope that also to stay as a negative in the coming quarters. Capture price discount, - EUR 12 per MWh. That represents a capture price discount of 14%. Also somewhat lower than or deviates a bit to the data if you look at the last couple of years. Normally, you would expect the capture price discount to be slightly higher than what we observed in Q1. All in all, achieved price then of EUR 67 MWh during the quarter. Cash flow and our liquidity position for Q1.

I mentioned CFFO excluding working capital. That was EUR 3.1 million for the quarter. Daniel already mentioned a quite significant working capital impact this quarter. You can see it on the screen here, - EUR 3.5 million in cash flow impact. Most of that is explained by purely timing of receipts from our power generation sales. We had a couple of, you know, sub-parts of that just slipped over the month, so into Q2 instead of Q1. Obviously we expect that to reverse during the current quarter. CapEx in Q1 was EUR 2.2 million. That mostly consists of investments into our greenfield portfolio in Europe mainly, but also in the Nordics, which was almost fully offset by the revenues from our project sales of EUR 1.6 million during Q1.

After some other items, we ended the quarter with a proportionate net debt just shy of EUR 90 million and, you know, quite in line with what we had at year-end 2025, including this quite significant negative drag from working capital, as you mentioned. A quick look at our liquidity position. We have cash and cash equivalents of EUR 17 million. If you also include cash balances in our JVs, the undrawn portion of our debt facility is EUR 65 million. This makes up EUR 82 million of total liquidity available to the company, which obviously is a very robust liquidity position and provides a lot of flexibility and resilience for us in terms of future planning and growth. Wrapping up with our updated cash flow outlook for 2026.

We are now reflecting Q1 actuals. If you compare this with what we presented at our CMD in February, you will recognize that the range is narrowed as we have now one quarter behind us with actuals. More importantly, the low price scenario is lifted quite significantly. You know, here reflecting actuals year to date of being Q1. We're also taking a new look at price expectations for the coming quarters, Q2 to Q4. We now expect our yearly achieved price to average in the range from EUR 40-EUR 50 per MWh. Taking into account our hedges, as you can see on this slide here. Starting with revenues, we expect that to end up between EUR 39 million and EUR 47 million for the year.

That includes the project sales revenues that we had year to date of EUR 4 million. That's the EUR 1.6 million that we have announced in our Q1 report today. It's also the EUR 2.4 million of project sales that we received in April, according to the press release that we announced not long ago. The EUR 4 million is only the portion that we already have received and that sort of sits already is in the bank. The slide that you see here, it fully excludes all future potential revenues throughout the year from further project sales, which we definitely do expect to occur.

That represents pure upside to the figures you see on the slide here. Based on the revenue range that I mentioned, we expect EBITDA to fall in between EUR 7 million and EUR 15 million for 2026. If you exclude the Sudan legal costs, which already from next month is expected now to be a fraction going forward of what it has been before, EBITDA would have been EUR 11 million- EUR 19 million for the full year. Free cash flow, pre-CapEx, we expect that to end up somewhere between EUR 2 million and EUR 10 million, with a corresponding metric excluding Sudan legal costs, ranging from EUR 6 million- EUR 14 million.

Guess it's quite clear from this sort of slide and this picture to see that we do expect a very significant uptick in revenues and cash flow this year. Important to note, as already mentioned, there is still quite material upside in future potential greenfield sales, which we do expect to occur throughout the year. All of this is then underpinned by very strong balance sheet and very robust liquidity position. With that, I'll hand the word back to Daniel for some concluding remarks.

Daniel Fitzgerald
CEO, Orrön Energy

Thank you, Espen. I think on the next slide, I'll reiterate what we have, what we've shared at the Capital Markets Day and where I sit with the company today. The producing asset base has excellent potential for long-term cash generation and the ability to continue to produce for many, many more years. We're now seeing in Q1 a return to more profitable times. We're seeing the higher pricing, we're seeing stronger revenues, and we're seeing good performance from our operating asset base. That's one really important trigger that I shared at Capital Markets Day. I think the second really important trigger that has no value in the share at this point in time is the recurring revenues from the greenfield portfolio.

With data centers, energy hubs, solar batteries, and a mix of opportunities within that sphere, I see a lot of opportunity that's coming towards us, and every week that goes by, we're adding more and more options into the mix, and we're seeing more and more projects ready to come to market. That's going to be a really important one to watch this year. The third one, which is not on this slide, is the conclusion of the Sudan trial, and in May, we will see the end of the district court, and then it's a waiting game to see when the verdict comes in the second half of this year.

That's a really, really important trigger for the stock, not only to stop the spend on the legal costs, to ensure that the right outcome comes from the district court with the full acquittal, and then to see the return to the company of the invested capital over the period of time we've been funding the legal fees. The fourth pillar, which as important as ever, is the continued resilience for the company and the strength of the balance sheet to continue to grow in good times and in poor market opportunities as well, which gives us a lot of flexibility to continue to follow the opportunities which create the most value for us. With that, I'll invite Espen back to the stage, and then we'll move into Q&A.

Jenny Sandström
Communications Lead, Orrön Energy

Yes, we have a lot of good questions, as always, and if you're joining us online and you have not yet submitted a question, then now is a good time to do so. We have a lot of questions around the greenfield developments and one around data centers. What's the strategy with these? What are you planning to do and how do you think about this?

Daniel Fitzgerald
CEO, Orrön Energy

I think the greenfield teams are looking at creating maximum optionality from the portfolio where we're in the communities every day chasing land positions, grid positions, and permitting within local municipalities, and that exists. That workflow is quite similar across solar batteries, wind to some extent, and data centers. Where we have opportunities to co-locate these technologies or to have standalone opportunities, we'll follow those which have the best outlook over a long period of time. I'd say today there's a lot of opportunities coming for data centers. Our strategy is very similar to the rest of the portfolio. We aim to create those opportunities, identify the projects, mature the projects, and look to divest those projects before incurring major capital expenditure. Within data centers, we'll continue to do that.

Where we have the most value within a project, then we'll start to aim towards that higher value point. Whether that's selling it ready to permit, ready to build, somewhere in between, we'll look to monetize the options from the portfolio. I think this year we'll see our first data centers coming to market, both in the U.K. and Germany, and it'll be an interesting data point like our first solar project sales were, such that we can steer the market on how much to expect in terms of multiples from these opportunities.

Jenny Sandström
Communications Lead, Orrön Energy

In terms of the greenfield business, how many projects are you targeting to sell per year from this?

Daniel Fitzgerald
CEO, Orrön Energy

We're targeting to sell all of them every year. Every year we're adding more and more opportunities to the pipeline, every year we're seeing more opportunities that are coming to market. I'd say the minimum you should expect is what we sold last year at 300 MW should be the minimum going forward, and that's more than enough to cover our capital spend and a significant return beyond that for future growth. At this point in time, I think that's the best proxy, and we'd like to, or we expect to significantly outperform that certainly this year and the coming years.

Jenny Sandström
Communications Lead, Orrön Energy

When it comes to the value of those projects, is the value achieved on prior sales what you expect moving forward? Or do you see higher value on data centers, or how do you think about this?

Daniel Fitzgerald
CEO, Orrön Energy

I think the solar projects we've sold to date, I think range somewhere between low 50s to low EUR 60,000 per MW. Some projects are better located, shorter distance to grid, lower grid fees. Better optimized in terms of irradiation. It really depends on the project, but we've now sold 400 MW at an average of EUR 55,000. For the solar projects, I expect that that's the right number to use at this point in time, but obviously depends very much on what's in front of us. If we look at data center projects, I think the best located data centers which are coming online in the next 18 months or two years have valuations that mean we should deploy all of our resources into chasing that. They're significantly higher than the solar portfolio. We will be chasing after some of that.

I think we need a balanced portfolio that's going to continue to deliver steady returns over a long period of time. Where we have the opportunity to monetize into today what is a very, very hot market for data centers, we will, but it won't be the core business of this. It'll be one strand of our strategy within the greenfield portfolio.

Jenny Sandström
Communications Lead, Orrön Energy

In the beginning, you started talking about the Sudan legal case and everything around this. How much do you claim, will you claim back, or how much do you expect to claim back in terms of legal costs?

Daniel Fitzgerald
CEO, Orrön Energy

We'll share that, and it'll become public towards the end of the trial. Orrön Energy, in its time, has spent an average of around EUR 7 million per year, and this trial's been going on for more than 10 years. You can get a feel for the magnitude of legal costs, which is very substantial for a company of this size. We will claim back every single cent that we're owed. Like I said at the start, at the opening, the prosecutor's been very vague and imprecise, which has forced the defense teams to spend a lot of time and energy, and it has taken two and a half years in court, which is a very long period.

It's been very wasteful in terms of resources and costs and we'll look to reclaim whatever we're due from the Swedish state.

Jenny Sandström
Communications Lead, Orrön Energy

Final question, when can shareholders expect to see dividends?

Daniel Fitzgerald
CEO, Orrön Energy

I think dividends, share buybacks, capital allocation, they all come into the same bucket. We are still too small as a company. I think we still need to grow to a much bigger size with a more broad and diversified revenue stream coming in or set of revenue streams coming in. There's no discussion for dividends today. Then we can come back to the dividend discussion in the future.

Jenny Sandström
Communications Lead, Orrön Energy

Great. I don't see any more questions at the moment, so thank you very much, Daniel and Espen. Everyone joining us online, feel free to reach out in case you have any further questions or anything you want to discuss. Have a lovely afternoon, and see you soon.

Daniel Fitzgerald
CEO, Orrön Energy

Thank you very much.

Espen Hennie
CFO, Orrön Energy

Thank you.

Powered by