Good morning.
This meeting is being recorded.
Depending on where in the world you are, welcome to this Orrön Energy second quarter results presentation. Glad to see that so many people are joining us on this August day. As usual, we have a Q&A function, which is in the bottom of the screen. Do not use the chat function, but the Q&A, where you can type your questions. The formal presentation will be followed by a Q&A session, where all questions will hopefully be answered. With that, I would actually like to hand over to Daniel Fitzgerald, the CEO of Orrön Energy.
Thank you, Robert, and good afternoon. Welcome to our second quarter results presentation. Thanks to all of those joining us, whether, whether from this side of the world or, or across the patch in, in the Americas. This half year report marks our first year as a company and our first year as Orrön Energy, and it, it really is a year that's, that's transformed the company from when we launched back in the summer of last year to where we are today. We've grown significantly since then. We've changed the size and scale of the company and, and built some fantastic platforms for growth that, that we expect to see deliver value over the coming quarters and coming years.
I'm pleased to say I'm joined today by Espen Hennie, and together we'll run through the second quarter results and the work we've been doing over the first half of this year and second quarter to build the foundations for the business. A short reminder on Orrön Energy. We are a pure-play renewable energy company, and we will be generating around 1,100 GWh of power per year from the end of this year once our Karskruv facility is online. We'll share a little bit more around Karskruv, which is going fantastically ahead of schedule at this stage.
Then, the pillars we're looking at really are around the growth side of the business, growing through acquisition, and we've demonstrated our ability to grow through M&A, both through the course of the end of last year and, and the, the first part of this year by completing 12 transactions to completely change the size and scale of the company, and we don't see that slowing down as we move into the second half of the year. Once we have those platforms built, organic growth really accelerates those returns. The ability to go and take an asset or an opportunity and, and turn that into a, a producing facility that we either own or farm down is, is where we're going to see fantastic returns at the same time.
We've always said since day one that we need to be diversified across technologies, so we're primarily wind with a small amount of hydro today, but we are looking at projects and building projects that are in the battery domain and solar domain. We aim to be a company that is diversified across both technology and geography, and diversified across the full life cycle of the renewable domain, from early-stage greenfield projects through into the operational phase and into late life repowering, et cetera. We have the ability and the teams to be able to do all of that. Establishing that foundation for growth has really been the focus for us in the early part of this year.
If we roll back to the end of last year, we secured our first transaction with Slitevind and really boosted the, the power-generating profile of the company. We acquired a team who have a fantastic track record and proven experience in this domain, and a suite of assets in Sweden. That makes up the, the producing assets on the left-hand side of this, combined with the existing assets from Lundin Energy prior to the, the spin-out of the oil and gas business and merger with Aker BP. That's a 300 MW portfolio across around 45 sites, and we're continually looking to, to supplement that portfolio through minor and major acquisitions of producing assets. Once we get towards the later life, we have the opportunity to repower, to extend lifespans, or to change technology.
That operating portfolio will continue to grow over time, both through small scale, working interest acquisitions, larger acquisitions, and organically through repowering and other opportunities. In the development domain, we have our major project, Karskruv, which is just shy of 90 MW, and that will be online at the end of this year. Beyond that, we're looking at a range of projects, both co-located projects close to existing assets and sites where we already have land and grid, and some new projects in the greenfield domain, where we have secured land and grid and moving those towards ready-to-build stages. Again, we're going to see a portfolio of projects that we're continually investing in and maturing through into the producing domain.
Earlier this year, we signed into a platform which is a large-scale solar and battery platform focusing across Germany, France, and the U.K.. I'm pleased to see that that platform continues to grow. We'll touch a little bit on that during this presentation. That gives us a really good opportunity to step right into the early greenfield stage of these projects. We've secured a range of grid positions or grid connections, which are firm. We're moving through the land acquisition stage to ensure that we can secure that land to get the projects through into a ready-to-permit and ready-to-build stage.
On top of that, in the Nordics, we're seeing a lot of opportunities, both through our network and through our producing assets, where landowners and, and other people in our network or companies in our network are, are sharing opportunities and opening the door for large-scale and small-scale greenfield projects. Today, we end up with a portfolio of early-stage projects, both small and large scale, all the way through to an operating asset base. That gives us the ability to touch all avenues to go and create value within the renewable space.
If we then turn to our second quarter highlights, in the second quarter, we delivered power generation of 164 GWh. To the half year, we've delivered just shy of 380 GWh net to the company, and all these numbers are on a proportionate or net basis for the company. That's in line with our guidance of 800 for the full year, and we're firmly on track to deliver that. We delivered EBITDA of EUR 2 million on a proportionate basis and an achieved price of EUR 54 per MWh. We've seen in the, in the second quarter, we've seen electricity prices continue to soften from the first quarter, and year-to-date, we've achieved around EUR 61 per MWh, all in on the portfolio.
Espen will touch a little bit more on our on our financial results and achieved pricing as he goes through the financial section of this presentation. Net debt, we ended it at EUR 51 million of net debt at the end of the second quarter, and still significant headroom compared to our lending facility at EUR 150 million. Again, Espen will touch a little bit more on the details, but fantastic appetite from the banks to support the company with that. On top of the EUR 150 million, we have an uncommitted accordion of EUR 150 million, which gives us ample liquidity headroom within the main facility and the ability to go and extend that facility should we need to from a liquidity perspective.
We'll touch on the Karskruv project, but pleased to say that we're ahead of schedule on Karskruv. We've finished construction. We expect Karskruv to be online in the fourth quarter of this year. It adds 40% to our producing asset base, and especially with it in the SE4 region, it commands a premium to the system price and continues to do so. That's a really important asset to come into the mix from the end of this year. The project pipeline, pleased to say that we continue to see that grow. Every week, we're seeing new opportunities, and we're maturing opportunities closer towards ready to permit and ready to build.
So I expect to see over the coming quarters and months that we, we will continue to build this portfolio, and we'll be able to share more details as it gets more and more secure over the coming quarters. Our aim from day one has been to increase our producing asset base, and pleased to share that again this quarter or this half year, we've seen that increase continue in line with our expectation. We started in the summer of last year at 300 GWh. In 2023, we're firmly on track to deliver 800 GWh, having concluded the deals at the end of or in the second half of last year. With Karskruv online, we'll move to 1,100 GWh per annum from the fourth quarter of this year.
That sets us up perfectly as a, as a foundation for, for production, which gives us a cash flow to be able to go and, and grow the business in other avenues. We continue to see opportunities, and especially in this quarter, where we've seen pricing soften, to continue that, that journey in terms of growth through acquisition, organically and with new projects, and, and we will, we'll step into that in the next couple of slides. On the Karskruv project, as we've said, the, this project remains ahead of schedule, and I think the team have done a fantastic job in the construction and commissioning phase. So all 20 turbines have been constructed on Karskruv, and we're running around a month ahead of schedule.
We have 12 turbines that are producing power to the grid. We have around 5 turbines that are in their performance testing period, which is full load testing and full power testing. Great to see this project continuing ahead of schedule. We expect it online in the fourth quarter of this year. It's an important step into growing that production base for Orrön Energy. It'll add just shy of 300 GWh to our producing asset base. It's from 20 Vestas turbines. So far, what we've seen on site and from Vestas and OX2, who are managing the construction site, has been a fantastic project. We expect to have this online during the fourth quarter of this year, ahead of where we expect it to be.
The 800 GWh that we've forecast for this year includes no contribution from Karskruv. Ideally, we'll see a significant contribution in the fourth quarter from Karskruv coming online. Our Nordic core business continues to deliver. Our operational assets have been performing well, with high availability across the fleet, and we've seen performance, although wind speeds have been lower than average wind speed in the second quarter, we've seen relatively high availability during that period. The second quarter production was slightly lower than the first quarter production, one, due to seasonal wind, and secondly, due to wind speeds across the Nordics, but the underlying assets have been performing quite well.
We've secured two further minor acquisitions in the quarter, and so accretive acquisitions, where we're seeing the rates of return that we expect to see with double digits, and those integrate seamlessly into our operating asset base and into our teams. Some of them are increased working interests, and some of those are new wind farms, where we take a strong stake, and we'll look to acquire further working interest over a period of time. I'm pleased to share that we've also submitted our first permits for our co-located solar and battery projects. One of them, a small-scale solar farm at Näsudden, and one of them, a battery project co-located with some existing wind assets. This really is the tip of the iceberg in terms of those projects.
We're moving a range of the portfolio now into that permitting phase, where we have land and grid secured. Over the second half of this year, I expect to see more permits being secured, then as we roll into 2024, we should be moving into the construction phase and investment decision phase for these projects. Beyond that, we see a long pipeline of opportunities in the Nordics for both co-located and greenfield projects, and we're continuing to develop those as we move forward. Pleased to share also that our European business continues to grow. In the U.K., we signed a transaction to step into the U.K. in March of this year, that came with some secured grid connections. Over the course of the second quarter, we've secured even more grid connections.
Now we have a multi-gigawatt portfolio of early-stage grid connections that we're moving into the land phase, where we're trying to secure the required land to get these projects through into a ready-to-permit phase. It's a fantastic team we have working on this, who have been in the industry for a number of years. The U.K. is by far the most mature in this portfolio, followed secondly by Germany, where we're in exclusive discussions on land to secure required land for some of our first solar projects there. This portfolio is a very large-scale portfolio. It's also very early stage, where we do need to secure all of the required land, grid, and environmental and construction permits to construct these projects.
We're opportunistically looking at the market and, and at various milestones, whether it's at the ready-to-permit stage, ready-to-build stage, or financial close or online. We have opportunities to monetize or farm down some of these projects. Because of the scale, we expect that we will, we will bring partners alongside or farm down completely as we move through this, this process. We're, we're opportunistically looking at the market. I think once we hit the ready-to-permit stage, we have some milestones that we can discuss where, where to turn to next.
At this stage, we're, we're pleased to share that it continues to grow, and we continue to see opportunities for, for building this platform and this portfolio of projects through into a, a, a point where we can see some monetization. That's a summary of the, the operating side of the business, and I'll pass over to Espen, who's going to talk through the financial results in the second quarter.
Thank you, Daniel. Good afternoon to everyone. We'll go through the financial performance for the second quarter, and we'll also touch upon some of the outlooks. Starting here with some financial highlights for second quarter. As mentioned already by Daniel, we had power generation of 164 GWh for Q2, impacted by normal seasonality in wind speeds across the Nordics, but also then slightly lower than average winds impacting our output. Our realized price was EUR 54 per MWh, and we have a separate slide with a bit more details and breakdown on that later in the presentation. This results then in revenues on a proportionate basis of EUR 9 million for Q2, and a corresponding EBITDA of EUR 2 million. We are ending the quarter in a very strong financial position.
We have a net debt at the end of Q2 of EUR 51 million on a proportionate basis, which then represents ample liquidity headroom towards our EUR 150 million facility, which we entered into just after the end of the second quarter. I think as we're getting closer to 2024, it's important to remind ourself about the very positive outlook for next year onwards for the company. From 2024, we will see, or actually expected from Q4, we expect to see approximately 40% increase in power generation when we get Karskruv online, adding a lot of additional revenues from a high-price region, SE4, in Sweden.
On top of that, we don't have any firm capital commitments for the company from 2024 onwards, meaning that you should expect a significant. We're well set up for a significant increase in cash flows, and at the same time, we have a lot of flexibility and can be opportunistic in terms of what to invest in and when to invest in our future growth. I mentioned the new debt facility, EUR 150 million, which we announced early July. We refinanced our EUR 100 million bridge facility, which we entered into last year, into now a longer-term EUR 150 million revolving credit facility.
On top of the EUR 150 million, we have also a EUR 150 million accordion, meaning that we could upsize the facility, you know, up to EUR 300 million if that becomes relevant at a later stage. I think it's important here to mention and stress that we have excess debt capacity in our portfolio, but of course, we always want to balance our costs related to debt financing with ensuring more than sufficient liquidity headroom. For us, EUR 150 million are the ideal size initially for this facility. We have three-year maturity, and we also have extension options on top of that. We also enter into this facility at what we think are attractive commercial terms, paying 1.8% floating margin above Euribor.
All in all, this new facility provides us with significant financial flexibility and it will support our growth strategy going forward. Just a quick note on our guidance, our full-year guidance, and how we are performing against these different items year to date. I think the very short story is that we are, we have good cost control. We are performing according to schedule and plan on sort of all cost parameters you see here on the screen. And we are reiterating our full year guidance for Operating expenses of EUR 12 million-EUR 14 million, G&A, EUR 10 million, Sudan legal costs of EUR 8 million, and Capital expenditures of EUR 80 million. No change to our full year outlook and guidance for these for these elements.
Here we look at some key financial metrics for the second quarter and comparing it to the preceding quarter. As you know, our power generation in Q2 was 164 GWh. That represents just about 20% reduction from Q1, as I mentioned before, driven by seasonality and also some lower-than-average wind speeds. We had an achieved price for Q2 of EUR 54 per MWh, which is just shy of 20% lower than the prices we saw during the first quarter. If you combine those factors, that explains the variance in revenues going from Q1 of EUR 14 million to EUR 9 million in Q2, so very much sort of as expected there when you take the volumes and prices into account.
You can also see the corresponding impact on EBITDA, sort of the same magnitude there in terms of reduction explained by volume and prices, leading to a Q2 EBITDA of EUR 1.6 million on a proportionate basis. If you move to cash flow from operating activities, as we have reported on a consolidated basis, before working capital changes, that was EUR 1 million for Q2 compared to EUR 15 million in Q1. Again, it's the same same drivers here. You have the lower consolidated revenues in EBITDA, but on top of that, which makes this change a bit more pronounced, is the fact that we received almost EUR 10 million in dividends during Q1. The sort of the net dividends received during Q2 was EUR 2.7 million.
Of course, this, this makes sort of the difference between those two quarters looks a lot larger than sort of the underlying operations. It is important to keep in mind, as we have said before, that the dividends we receive from our JVs, they, they are lumpy. You should also expect them to be to vary considerably between quarters going forward. If you look at it on an annual horizon, longer term, I mean, that the dividends we receive from our JVs will mirror and should mirror the underlying cash generations from these assets. Our achieved price for the quarter and sort of the, the different factors impacting the, the all-in outcome. The average system price in the Nordics was EUR 56 per MWh for Q2.
If you look at the average regional spot price for our portfolio, taking into account the actual Q2 production volumes for the company, that was EUR 52. As we also mentioned in our Q1 presentation, it is sort of an unusual outcome that our portfolio has a lower average price than the system price. Indeed, if you look at historical data, you would expect our portfolio to exceed the system price more often than not. Albeit, I mean, that discount also was significantly lower than we saw in Q1.
When we have the Karskruv volumes coming on in Q4, with almost 300 GWh of SE4 volumes, should expect this situation, our average price, relative to the system price to improve further. We had a positive impact from hedging during the quarter, EUR 2 per MWh. This relates to hedges through acquired companies, which will roll off throughout the year. On top of that, we achieved EUR 7 per MWh from the sale of Guarantees of Origin. We receive Guarantees of Origin for all our production volumes, since all our power generation comes from renewable sources, and then we in turn sell these on the market.
Then this last sort of factor impacting our realized price is the capture price discount, which you always have to a certain degree on, on renewable power generation. That was EUR 7 per, per megawatt hour for Q2, which is lower, both on an absolute and relative level compared to the preceding quarters. Explained partly by the lower baseline prices, lower volatility, and also then the fact that, for us, Leikanger makes up a larger portion of Q2 volumes compared to Q4 and, and Q1, which typically also has significantly lower capture price discount. All in, achieved a price of EUR 54 per MWh for, for Q2.
If we then move to the underlying cash flow generation of our portfolio on a proportionate basis. As I have said before, we believe this is a very relevant and meaningful metric to focus on for our assets and company. If you start off with the second quarter revenue, including other income, that was EUR 9.5 million. We deduct operating costs and G&A. As I said before, they are very much in line with plan and schedule. Please keep in mind that we are adjusting G&A here for non-cash items of EUR 0.7 million, leading then to an EBITDA after removing non-cash items for the quarter of EUR 2.3 million. Against that EBITDA, we had a current tax charge of EUR 1.3 million.
That is explained by our hydropower assets, like Leikanger in Norway, which is opposed to our other assets, in a tax-paying position, and where we also are exposed to a high marginal tax rate or a high tax rate of 67%, compared to 20% and 20.6%, for the rest of our portfolio. That leads to an operating cash flow on a proportionate basis of EUR 1 million, and with a corresponding interest expense, of a similar amount. Which means that despite lower power generation explained by seasonality and lower wind speeds and also weaker prices, we fully covered all our running costs for the quarter, through the current portfolio.
Before looking into our CapEx investments and our CapEx, the lion's share of our CapEx is related to Karskruv, which is essentially investing into future cash flows. We strongly believe and are convinced that all those investments are highly accretive for the company and for our shareholders, and we really look forward to seeing the outcome of that when we get the volumes on stream, hopefully during Q4. I would also like to mention, and remind everyone that our organization and our cost base is already sized according to also having Karskruv volumes online and in the mix. Meaning that we don't expect any incremental costs when we get the Karskruv volumes on, and as expected during Q4, besides, of course, the asset-specific OpEx.
Indeed, the asset-specific OpEx for Karskruv is expected to be lower on a unit basis compared to the rest of our portfolio. Just sort of as an illustration, just to put it a bit in perspective, if Karskruv had been up and running for the second quarter, we would have expected an uplift to our EBITDA between EUR 3 million and EUR 4 million, meaning that instead of EUR 2 million, we would have reported in the EUR 5 million-EUR 6 million range based on Q2 prices. That sort of underlines sort of the, the significant impact we are expecting from that asset when it comes online, hopefully in a few months' time. Lastly, on our net debt position and development during the quarter, we ended Q1 with a proportionate net debt position of EUR 20 million.
We had a CFFO before working capital changes of EUR 1 million, as, as shown earlier. We had a negative working capital impact of EUR 3.7 million. As I mentioned, we had investments totaling EUR 27.9 million into CapEx, mainly being Karskruv, before we have FX and other, and other impacts and changes to our JV cash position, leading to a total net debt of EUR 51 million at the end of Q2. As I said in the beginning, this is very comfortable and low leverage. It's according to plan and means that we have very significant headroom to our EUR 150 million debt facility.
Just to reiterate, now, as we expect Karskruv to come online during Q4, we will have approximately 40% increase in production, and with all of those volumes coming from the high-price region, SE4, should expect a quite significant impact on revenues, EBITDA, and cash flows for the coming quarters. On top of that, for 2024, we have full discretion on our capital spend, no firm capital commitments, and meaning that we can be optimistic, and we are very well positioned to start deleveraging from 2024 and to create and generate strong cash flow long term, based on the high quality and very long lifetime of our assets. With that, I'll hand the word over to Dan for some concluding remarks.
Thank you, Espen. Our role at Orrön Energy really is to create value through the energy transition. And so with the platform that we have in place today, we expect to be generating 1.1 terawatt hours of power from the end of this year, delivering long-term free cash flow to the business. And as Espen touched on, the, the refinancing of the company means we have ample headroom for future growth, and the structure of that facility allows us to use it for a multitude of purposes. It sits at the corporate level and is very flexible in terms of how we can utilize that funding towards further growth, whether it's investing in our own projects or through acquisition.
As we get to the end of this year, with Karskruv online, we expect our cash generation to increase, and we expect to start deleveraging fairly quickly after the end of this year. Beyond that producing asset base and power generation, we do have a large-scale portfolio of projects, and some of them at very early stage and some of them at later stage, and from large to small scale. So we see a fantastic portfolio of opportunities to go and invest in, to farm down or to, to optimize, to create the most value for the company. So we really do sit in a fairly unique space in, in my mind, having this suite of assets, this opportunity set.
Being only a year old, we're very, very early in our journey, and having the ability to touch and see some of that growth coming to fruition over the coming quarters and, and months will be a fantastic place to be. So I think the liquidity headroom, coupled with the liquidity in the share, gives investors an opportunity to, to step into a vehicle at, at the very beginning of its journey in this renewable energy transition. With that, I'll pass back to Robert. I think we move into Q&A.
That's right. Thank you very much, Daniel and Espen. I'm happy to say that we have quite a lot of questions, so we can move into these questions straight away. The first one is about acquisitions and expansion. A participant saying that they do not seem to get the attention they deserve. Can it be communicated better?
Yeah, I think it gets, a very big part of our day is spent towards acquisition and expansion. Some of these are extra working interests in existing assets, where our working interest increases, our production volumes increase somewhat. Some of them are material, like the Slitevind transaction. I think the investor base should rest assured that it's forefront in our minds, and we're having these discussions every day. What we don't want to do is, this year we've concluded on five transactions. Some of them have been minor, some of them major. Where it makes sense to, we will communicate externally via press releases and other means on the acquisitions we've done.
The two that we've done this, this quarter are fairly small in, in magnitude, but given the weak pricing towards the end of Q1 and Q2, I think the in- the investor base should expect that we're, we're mature on a range of those and should expect more in the coming quarters.
Thank you very much, Daniel. The next question comes from the same shareholder, it's about. "No one can, of course, predict the weather, but in, in this particular shareholder's view, the Swedish national grid is just in the same poor state as last year, or even worse, maybe." Would, would you agree with that assessment from your point of view?
I think the weather is a challenge. As we move into the energy transition with more renewable energy in the grid, it becomes a really difficult job for the system operators to balance, and to balance the power when we have intermittency in weather. I think it's not just grid, the whole power network and the way we consume power needs to change. A big part of what we're looking at is how do we stabilize our production? Having some element of batteries online allows us to de-deliver more of a base load type power profile, and it also helps have some of that support in the grid. I think with the, the intermittency of weather, we're seeing that in pricing, we're seeing volatility in pricing, and that brings challenges further down the line as well in terms of grid.
Thank you. The next question is whether we are close to invest in any BESS projects in the Nordics?
Yeah, we are. BESS projects, battery energy projects. We have our first small-scale projects co-located with existing wind farms. We have land and grid secured, and we're moving those towards a permitting phase. I think we're hopeful that we'll, we'll have permits and all of the approvals in place through the course of this year. Ideally, by next year, we're already starting to invest in some of our own battery projects if we don't move into something sooner.
Thank you. Looking at known projects only, is it possible for you to make a five-year projection on power generation? Where could you be at in five years?
I think it's difficult to make a certain prediction. I can share, we can more than double, double the size of the company in terms of megawatts installed capacity today based on the projects that we have within our portfolio today. We need to be mindful of pricing as we move forward. We need to be mindful of the CapEx cost increases, which are hitting the market as well. We're maturing this portfolio, as we reach investment decisions, we'll be able to share a bit more detail around it. Certainly, on the projects, we've taken a view with this, that we want to be more mature and more certain on the projects when we communicate them to the market.
Although we have the ability to, to touch something that, that more than doubles the size of the company today, I think we wanna see those coming through into a more mature phase before we share them too much externally.
Thank you, Daniel. We have quite a few more questions, so let's, let's move ahead with them. One question here is about Daniel mentioning a multi-gigawatt project plan. What Orrön will do to finance this if staying at 100% merchant exposure in a lower price environment?
Yeah, I think, I think for us to build out a multi-gigawatt portfolio would take significantly more capital than we have available today. Interestingly, each of those projects brings its own debt capacity and, and finance ability. I think you should expect us to look at that portfolio opportunistically. It's unlikely that we take multi-gigawatts through into our balance sheet and invest in all of them, and we will likely bring along partners and other investors as we move through that journey. However, if the, if the project returns and economics are strong enough, we also have the ability to, to step in, raise financing against individual projects, and move forward on that basis. I think you should expect us to be opportunistic around the portfolio.
We have a fantastic team and a fantastic opportunity set, and as we get more and more mature and hit the key milestones, I think we'll look at the best outcome in terms of farming down, financing moving forward, and whether we do that 100% or with partners and other investors alongside.
Thank you. Related to that question, given the power price forward curve as it stands today, what could trigger Orrön to hedge some of its future prices, either through PPAs or financial hedging?
Yeah, it's a good question, and I think we're now a year into our journey, so understanding of the market, understanding of our production profile and stability in the company is a completely different place to where it was last year. I think we're always opportunistic around this as well. We keep our eyes on the PPA market, but as it stands today, it's this point in time, it's not accretive to step into hedges at this point in the market. So although we're ready to, and, and we have the ability to, we don't see the returns and, and the pricing on PPAs and hedging at a level where we think it becomes attractive. As Espen touched on, financially, we're in quite a strong position. The amount of leverage we have compared to the underlying value of the assets means that we're not...
Our balance sheet isn't stretched or stressed, and it doesn't need hedging to support it. On top of that, once we get Karskruv online, we expect to hit peak net debt towards the end of the year and start de-leveraging fairly quickly thereafter. I don't think we're in a position where we need to, and we don't see the market being attractive enough to step into that today.
Thank you, Daniel. If we look forward to 2024, Karskruv will be adding a lot of volume during next year and going forward. How should we think about cash flows for next year, and how much are you planning to spend on CapEx?
Maybe, Espen, you should jump in.
Espen, I think you're muted.
Apologies. Thank you, Daniel. Now, in terms of cash flow, as I said, it's important when it comes to, when it comes to Karskruv volumes, that we don't expect any underlying cost increase except as a specific operating cost. Basically, if you take our current cost base, you add the Karskruv operating, or the operating costs, which I also said will be lower than the average of our current portfolio, that will give you an indication of cash flow generation next year. Obviously, you will see a significant uptick because no, it's not... It's 40%, but it's 40% in one of the most highly priced regions in the Nordics.
As you also know, we have full merchant exposure, so what the actual cash flow outcome will be is, is very much dependent on, on the spot pricing. You should expect a significant uptick in our cash flow generation potential than from Q4 when we have it online and going forward.
I think in terms of CapEx spend, we're always looking at projects from a shareholder value accretion perspective. All of our CapEx is discretionary once Karskruv is online. We have the ability to invest in our own projects and greenfield business at the pace and scale that we wish to. I think it becomes one where if we do see pessimistic pricing going into the long term, then we have the ability to slow down our CapEx spend, and if we see fantastic returns and fantastic projects, then we have ample liquidity headroom to step into that. Again, we have all the levers within the company to be able to manage our balance sheet and keep it strong through good times and through tougher times in terms of price.
Thank you, Daniel and Espen. A question on the EBITDA indication range that was provided at the Capital Markets Day. Will it be possible to extend the power price range, especially around the lower end, in order for the ones following the company to understand the sensitivity?
Yeah, I, I think we gave an indication of EBITDA generation, and maybe, Espen, you can give a bit more flavor in a second. We're not intending to give guidance on EBITDA in the same way that we give an indication on power generation. Ultimately, it's wind speed and wind that is going to, to drive the, the end result in terms of power generation. The same on EBITDA. I think we've given, we've given ample opportunity from a production and, and regional pricing perspective, where people can apply their own price forecasts into our, our model, and our cost base gives them the ability to deduct all of our operating and other costs from that to get to EBITDA generation.
Yeah. No, I fully agree there, Daniel. Just again, want to then highlight, and we will carry on with our current cost base, and we expect less than 40% increase in our operating costs when Karskruv is online. Of course, the, the resulting EBITDA depends on, on the spot pricing, as we have a full merchant exposure. Also, again, our portfolio is well positioned now to, to, on average, exceed a higher premium compared to the system price than before Karskruv volumes coming online.
Thank you very much, Espen and Daniel, for that. Continue. A question about Guarantees of Origin. They increased a lot quarter-to-quarter. How should we think about that going forward? Any guidance would, of course, be helpful to be able to predict.
I think, yeah, as we've seen, there's been a very strong demand for Guarantees of Origin, and also reflected in pricing. We still see those drivers for on the demand side continuing, you know, in the quarters and years to come. I mean, we think the pricing, price outlook for a Guarantees of Origin is looks very constructive at the moment. We are, as with the, the rest of our power generation, we are selling our Guarantees of Origin in the spot market, or we have full merchant exposure. We will also, quarter on quarter, we will realize, we realize that the quarterly spot prices also for those volumes. I think if you look at the current, sort of, forward predictions there, it's quite close to, to the levels.
If you look at 2024 and the rest of this year, it's, it's quite close to the levels we, we realized for Q3 at the moment.
Thank you, Espen. You have secured, Orrön has secured access to significant funds. The company's positioning itself as uniquely positioned for growth. Why have there not been more investments made during the period, during the quarter?
I think in Q3 and Q4 of last year, we saw significantly high pricing, that, that's driven sellers' expectations to a different place than what we saw earlier in Q3 last year. I'd say the early half of this year, the expectation of sellers has not been in the right domain for us to see the same accretive transactions that we were able to secure earlier on. We have secured some this year, two of the transactions that we've done have been fantastically accretive, strong returns. I'd say there's more and more coming to market now as we're back into a relatively lower period of pricing. We're starting to see sellers' expectations in the right window.
We have the ability, we have the funds, but as we've said all along, I think we need to be fairly, fairly controlled in terms of what we invest in, to ensure that we're only investing in projects that are accretive. That's why we haven't seen as much investment in the, in the existing asset space during Q1 and Q2, because it's, it's sellers' expectations, which in my mind, and, and from what we're seeing in the market, have come back to a, a reasonable level in, in the tail end of Q2 and, and now into Q3.
Thank you, Daniel. The next question is, is specific about the Swedish energy market and the future of it after a Swedish government press conference today, where the government has been speaking about massively expanding the nuclear production, in the period 2030 to 2040. Any thoughts on that?
Yeah, I think every single government, and we've said this a number of times, every single government is challenged with multiple conflicting ideals. We need to decarbonize our power systems, we just don't have enough renewables to do that. Nuclear, whether it's nuclear renewables, gas, carbon capture, gas with carbon capture and storage, et cetera, we need to decarbonize our grid, but we also need to provide relatively low-priced energy to the population. I'm not surprised that countries are looking at expanding nuclear. I think the cost base of nuclear in today's market and the timeframe it takes to get nuclear online is not going to be a short-term fix.
If, if we're talking in, in the political regime today around expanding nuclear, it's gonna take a lot of money and a lot of time to get there. In the meantime, I think we just don't have enough low-carbon power sources in, in the system to, to do what we need to do in terms of decarbonizing the grid. I think future energy market in Sweden, it's going to take all of the technologies we have to deliver the electrification and decarbonization that we need, and renewables are gonna be a key part of it, as is nuclear and other, other technologies as well.
Thank you. The next question is about capital costs going up and electricity prices are going down. Plus, there is cost inflation in construction, because of that, we have seen several players canceling projects, particularly offshore. Why is it, in your view, attractive to invest in this industry? What electricity prices do you model going forward?
Yeah. I, I think it's where we are today is, is a challenging period in terms of that supply chain challenges with all of the, the situations that we've seen geopolitically across the world, the cost inflation across, across the world, and, and delays in construction. I'm, I'm not surprised that we're seeing some offshore projects being canceled. We took a decision early on not to step into offshore for two reasons, really. One, we didn't see the economics, and two, we're not big enough to really generate scale in offshore. We don't see the, the value in the offshore domain like others do, and so I'm not surprised that some of those are, are being canceled.
It really opens up a difficult, a difficult time for the energy transition, where we are starting to see some of these cost pressures, meaning our investments into decarbonized and renewable power become challenging, certainly the more expensive ends of the spectrum. In my mind, we still need this renewable generation, and the lowest levelized cost of energy is in the onshore domain. Wind, solar, and batteries are the key technologies onshore that have the lowest levelized cost of energy, that provide the balancing into the system, and that's where we're focusing. For us, we, we always are looking at this with a view on value accretion. We'll step into those projects that are accretive for shareholders, and we will invest where that makes sense, and we'll, we'll step out of them where it, it doesn't make sense.
So in the industry as a whole, I think there's some challenges around generating really strong returns out of large-scale portfolios like offshore wind, but there's still there's still parts of this renewable energy spectrum where there's fantastic value to be created, and we're chasing those.
We have a final question, and that's coming back to getting some more questions now. We might be here for a little bit longer, but that's fantastic. But the question at hand is about a Karskruv, and how much does the volume introduced by the Karskruv reduce the required realized price to reach your break-even point?
Yeah. No, a good question, and, obviously, it will, it will play a quite significant role and, and reduce it, quite a lot. I, I think just to look at it sort of simplicity, if, if you take our current, 2023 guidance and outlook, if you sum those, if you take the sum of the operating costs, the G&A and the legal cost, I think you arrive at EUR 38 as an EBITDA break even for this year. Then we know that our volumes from Q4 will then increase from 800 to 1,100 GWh . We know that our operating costs. We haven't provided specific guidance for the Karskruv OpEx, but we know that our operating costs, as I said, will increase by less than 40%.
Again, if we've just for the sake of easy calculation, add 40% to our current OpEx base, our break even will then go from 38 to 32, so quite significant. As I said, it will be slightly more downward revision than that because the operating costs for assets, operating costs for Karskruv are lower, but which we will come back to with more guidance, you know, at our CMD at the latest. Of course, this is based on the current current real cost, so before taking any inflation into account, which of course, by the way, also will be reflected in spot prices.
Thank you, Espen, and I think we'll stay on with you for the next question. It's about working capital, and if you can explain the change in working capital.
Yeah. I mean, working capital will always be there as a, as a cash flow impact. It, it's just always the, the difference between current assets and current liabilities and how they change from quarter to quarter. Since we're now in sort of in a development phase, with quite, a lot of CapEx related to Karskruv, it can be larger than sort of, normal and larger than when we are done with the Karskruv development. Nothing sort of out of the ordinary there. You should look at sort of more the, the longer-term period than only quarter on, quarter on quarter. There will always be a cash flow or a working capital impact in our cash flow, but you should also expect it to be lower going forward when we don't have that, Karskruv CapEx, ongoing.
Thank you, Espen. For the last question here, back to, to Daniel, I think, to talk a little bit more broadly again about the plans to expand in different EU countries. Are you looking at the ones you have mentioned before, or are you looking at other EU countries as well?
I think we're opportunistic around a range of expansion plans, so we are active in a range of other countries in the M&A space. I think the, the focus for us, certainly in the early part of this year, in the first two quarters, is been to establish the platforms for growth after the acquisitions and the, the joint ventures that we've stepped into. That has really been the focus to get the U.K., German, and French platforms up and running, established, and, and moving through their business plans and development pipelines.
We are actively looking at a range of other EU countries. There's a few geographies that, that I think are quite attractive, but when we step into those, we need to step in with a, a reasonable-sized acquisition or starting point to allow us to create value from there. I don't think, I don't think we should expect another six or seven countries coming online in the coming months. Over a, a longer period, you should expect us to expand through Europe once we've established the platforms that we've already started to build today.
Thank you, Daniel. We have one more question coming in here. How do you feel your operations have performed during the first half of 2023 versus your listed peers? Is this a function of the Nordic wind market?
Yeah, I think it's, it's hard to find an exact peer. If we look broadly across the renewable companies, both developers and producers, our assets have performed well in terms of availability, uptime, and, and operational performance. What we have seen, and I think you see this across the producers, you do see a, a lower wind speed in certainly in the second quarter of 2023 compared to historical averages. I think that's, that's clear across the industry. I think there, there are some, some challenges around CapEx cost increases and interest cost increases that are, that are playing on some of the more pure developers in this space.
I think it's, it's been a mixed year in terms of our peer group. I think there's been positives and negatives, and, and what we're looking at is, is a company that's building for the next 10 or 20 years, as opposed to 1 quarter to the next. The platforms that we've built and, and that we're looking at developing are, are here for the long term, and we're making long-term investment decisions with our portfolio.
Thank you, Daniel. While the fourth quarter is typically anticipated to have stronger pricing, what are your expectations for this quarter, for the third quarter, given the current gas reserves in Europe?
Yeah, I think we've seen gas reserves from the end of the winter. We had a mild end to the winter. We've seen pricing come back in terms of gas pricing. We've seen reserves fill up through the, the course of Q2, Q3. I think Q3, investors and, and others can have a look at the market daily on Nord Pool and, and get an idea of where pricing sits. I think Q3 has, has continued. The early part of Q3 has continued as Q2 did, and we've seen the weaker pricing in Q3. We expect that to reverse in Q4, and, and our view is fundamentally we haven't solved all of the challenges that we've, we've seen in Europe over the last winter period.
I expect to, to return to stronger pricing as we move into the more winter months, even, even though we have seen fuller gas reserves than average at this point in the year. As we said, we're, we're building the, the core of a company that's gonna be here for 10 or 20 years. Month to month, quarter to quarter cash flow is important and very critical for the company. As we get Karskruv online and, and move through the project portfolio, I think we've got a platform where we can build opportunities for decades, not just one quarter to the next.
Thank you. That actually concludes the Q&A session of this webcast. I would certainly like to thank Daniel and Espen, but most of all, I would like to thank all the participants that took time out on this summer's day to, to call in, and we're very happy to have so many engaged shareholders. We hope you're here for the long term, as we are. We will, of course, come back with another webcast after the third quarter report. In the meantime, we are all available, whether it's Daniel, Espen, myself, my colleague, Jenny, anyone else in the company. Feel free to reach out with any questions. Again, thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.