Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the PNE AG Nine- Month 2024 Results Conference Call. I am Jörg, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing Star and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press Star and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Pedersen, CEO of the company. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, also from my side. Thank you for joining us today in this conference call regarding the results of the Q3 2024. My name is Per Hornung Pedersen, currently interim CEO of PNE AG, and I'm accompanied by my colleagues, Harald Wilbert, CFO, and Roland Stanze, COO. So let me first give you an overview of the presentation and the course of today's conference call on slide 3 of the presentation. As usual, we will begin with a brief summary followed by an update regarding the operating business. Then I will pass over to Harald for an update on the financials. I will conclude the presentation with some comments and remarks on the outlook for the remainder of 2024. As always, we will then open the line for the sell-side analysts only. All other participants will stay in listen-only mode as it is our company procedure for years. As usual, our slides can be found on our investor relations website. So please go to slide number five. In operational terms, I think we made good progress for the first nine months of the year in all of our business segments. And despite that, it has been a challenging market environment with several external factors that slowed us down, such as supply bottlenecks, mud, rain, unfavorable weather conditions, lower power prices, high interest rates, and turbine delivery issues. In view of the market conditions, then we are pleased with the progress achieved in the first nine months. We put wind farms with an output of 61.3 MW in operation in Germany. We further strengthened our positions as IPP. Our own power generation portfolio grew from 321 MW last year to 412 MW as of end of September 2024. Construction activity is very high. As per end of September, we had projects with a capacity of 274 MW under construction. Where we are also very good is in the tenders. We were successful with nine projects with a volume of 141.9 MW submitted in the German tenders, and we have received 95.3 MW of new permits in Germany. We also had some successful sales. We closed the sale of our US business in June with 2.1 GW and could sell projects in South Africa with 240 MW peak PV and Canada with 210 MW wind and 100 MW PV. Project pipeline developed to 17.8 GW, reflecting the sale of the US pipeline. It is then thus remarkable that the pipeline increased slightly year- over- year. Power generation output also grew by 15% year- on- year with 485 gigawatt hours due to the increased installed base. But in Germany, we had lower wind yields in the Q2 and Q3, as well as lower power prices compared to last year. Our service business continued to perform well. It now manages a capacity of more than 2.9 GW. And last but not least, we are delighted that our new CEO, Heiko Wuttke, will take office as member and chairman of the management board on the 13th of January 2024. Heiko has been in the renewable energies industry for nearly 30 years and knows the business from many different perspectives. In Heiko, we have found a new CEO who also fits very well with PNE and its culture as a person. This is important in order to successfully shape the growth and further development of PNE. As you might know, project development is people business. So please turn to slide 7, the IPP portfolio. If you look to the expansion of our own generation portfolio, we see that we made progress here as well. We added 61.3 MW to the IPP portfolio in 2024 and now have 412 MW of German onshore wind projects in operation at the end of the Q3. Further, approximately 274 MW in Germany and France, mostly intended for the portfolio, were under construction at the end of the Q3 2024. We are well on the way to increase the portfolio to around 1.5 MW peak, according to our company strategy. We produced 485 GW hours of green energy in the first nine months of 2024, which is, compared to the first nine months of last year, an increase of 15%. Hidden reserves accumulated in our portfolio increased to EUR 277.7 million, compared to EUR 185.7 million in the previous year. Please turn to slide number 8. Project pipeline is on a high level despite the sale of the U.S. pipeline, in which 2.1 GW exceeded the pipeline, so our total pipeline developed to 17.8 GW, which is actually a slight increase compared to Q3 2023. Wind onshore grew to 2.2 GW, and PV decreased slightly to 6.1 GW peak, and offshore was stable at 2.5 GW. We go to slide number 9. Wind onshore pipeline. The basis for our IPP production and portfolio is the wind project pipeline, especially in Germany and in France, where we have 848 MW in the permitting phase and 274 MW under construction. That means that we are on a good path to continue to grow our IPP portfolio with these projects. If we go specifically in and look at the pipeline, we increased in Germany the pipeline to 2.625 MW compared to 2.529 MW in previous year. Wind farm Heidelberg, which is 5.5 MW, and Schenklengsfeld, 19.8 MW, and Heidmoor, 36 MW, were completed and put in operation for our own generation portfolio. One wind farm, 6.6 MW, was completed for an external investor. 10 farms with 252 MW are under construction in Germany. We were successful with nine projects with a volume of 141.9 MW submitted in the February, May, and August tenders. We received permits for five wind farms with 95.3 MW in the first nine months of 2024. In France, we have two projects under construction with 22 MW. As you know, in the U.S., we sold our complete U.S. wind pipeline with 746 MW in the Q2 2024 to Lotus Infrastructure Partners. In Canada, we sold one wind project with 210 MW in the Q2 2024 to a Canadian energy company and three First Nations. PNE Canada will continue to develop the projects up to ready to build, and in the beginning of Q4, we were able to close two important project sales. We sold the Papenrode wind farm with 59 MW to Qualitas Energy, informed yesterday, and in the U.K., we sold the Sallachy wind farm with 43 MW to Boralex. With these sales, we exited the U.K. market in line with a stronger focus on our core markets. Regarding the PV pipeline, we were able to sell some projects as well. In South Africa, we sold 240 MW peak projects. In U.S., as mentioned already above, we sold our complete PV pipeline of 1.372 MW peak to Lotus Infrastructure Partners. In Canada, we also sold one PV project with 100 MW in the Q2 to a Canadian energy company and three First Nations. PNE Canada will continue to develop the project up to ready to build, so I would now like to hand over to Harald for the financials. Yeah, thank you, Per. And first of all, I also would like to welcome everyone here in this call, and thank you for your interest. Starting with page 12, the financial highlights. Looking at the financial highlights, the results for the first nine months 2024 reflect our high construction activities, especially for the build-up of our IPP portfolio, as well as the ongoing investments in our developing pipeline. Total output grew by 34% to EUR 210.9 million, the highest nine-month number in PNE history. The high total output reflects the good operating business, which is, however, not yet reflected in earnings due to high construction activities and delayed commissioning of own wind farms due to supply bottlenecks, as well as unfavorable weather conditions. EBITDA decreased by 62% to EUR 6.2 million, compared to EUR 16.5 million in the previous year, but it is expected to catch up with the project sales and milestone payments in the Q4. I will comment on the earning drivers in more detail on the next slide. Hidden reserves increased by EUR 27.1 million in the first nine months, compared to EUR 16.2 million in the previous year. EBITDA adjusted by these hidden reserves was at EUR 33.3 million, compared to EUR 32.7 million in the previous year. Our cash position remains at high level at EUR 102.3 million, compared to EUR 90.4 million as of December last year. Equity declined to EUR 155.5 million, coming from EUR 208 million as of the end of last year. But on the other hand, the hidden reserves accumulated in IPP portfolio grew to 227.7 million EUR, compared to 194.6 million EUR at the end of 2023. Net income, and so the equity, was negatively impacted by subsequent measurements of KfW loans in accordance with IFRS. I will elaborate on this special item on the next slide. So on page 13, looking at our profit and loss statements and the key earnings driver, the total output grew by 34% to 210.9 million EUR. The cost of materials increased, especially due to the high construction activities for German IPP projects, as well as higher project development costs for the larger project pipeline. Personnel expenses increased, driven by an increase in the average number of employees of 46 and higher salaries. EBITDA decreased to 6.2 million EUR. However, EBITDA adjusted, so including hidden reserves was stable at 33.3 million EUR, so more or less like the last year. As I just mentioned before, the net income was negatively impacted by subsequent measurements of KfW loans in accordance with IFRS. According to IFRS 9, we have to apply the so-called effective interest method on all loans. As the applicable market interest rate changed for PNE in Q3, IFRS demands for these loans a revaluation at fair value, the so-called subsequent measurement. In consequence, decreasing market interest rates, as seen in the last month, lead to higher present values of the respective KfW loans and so to interest expenses. In our case, the financial result was impacted by minus 13.3 million EUR in the first nine months of 2024, compared to only minus 2 million EUR in 2023. These interest expenses caused by the effective interest method influence our net result and thus our equity ratio. But I want to stress here that these negative effects have neither an effect on liquidity nor they reflect our operating performance. And this is why we show an adjusted net income, and for the first nine months 2024, this amounted to minus EUR 35.4 million compared to minus 22.8 million EUR in 2023. Now, have a look on our segments on page 14. Looking at the segments, we see that all three segments grew. Total output of the segment project development increased the most to 170.8 million EUR, which corresponds to a plus of 41%. The reasons here were the high construction and development activities. Total output of the segment power generation increased to EUR 55.3 million, which means a plus of 15%, and total output of the segment services increased to EUR 26.5 million, which equals to a plus of 17%. Of course, this is a view before consolidation. Due to the transfer of projects in our IPP portfolio, consolidation remained at a high level for total output at EUR 41.8 million. EBITDA-wise, the segment power generation has with EUR 37.5 million the highest contribution, and this with stable and recurring EBITDAs, mostly backed by the EEG tariff. The EBITDA from segment services grew by a pleasant 8%. The project development segment shows a negative EBITDA, which will improve drastically with the sales of projects in Q4. Now, looking at the balance sheet on page 15, we see the solid cash position of EUR 102 million. The equity ratio came down to 12.2%, which, however, is a temporary effect, as KPIs will significantly increase in Q4. Our goal here is a minimum equity ratio of 20% at the end of each year. The equity ratio adjusted by hidden reserves was at 25.4%. Liabilities to banks increased further as the build-up of our IPP portfolio continued. It is worth mentioning that the majority of these bank liabilities are non-recourse project financing. On the asset side, we see that most is allocated to property, plant, and equipment, as well as inventories, what we see, of course, as investment in stable values. As I mentioned before, especially with the realized sale of the wind farm Papenrode in October, which, by the way, is the biggest EBITDA contributor in our project development segment for this year, we are very optimistic to show solid and favorable KPIs in our upcoming financial statements 2024. With that, I would like to hand back to Per for the outlook. Thank you, Harald. You already indicated, actually. Ladies and gentlemen, this leads me to the outlook. We are confirming our guidance for the full year 2024 of a group EBITDA in the range of 40-50 million euros, as we anticipate a strong Q4. With the sale of Papenrode and the Sallachy wind farms in the last weeks, we have pretty good visibility that our KPIs for 2024 will significantly improve compared to the third quarter. We also expect further project sales and milestone payments in the remainder of the Q4. In addition to the earnings contribution from project sales, the Q4 is usually a strong quarter in terms of wind power generation, which will also contribute to our full year result. Having said this, let me assure you that the build-up of our IPP portfolio continues. Further wind farms are expected to be put in operation by the end of the year. But growth in future will be more balanced with profitability. We will have a stronger focus on selected core markets and will only allocate capital to projects and markets with corresponding return expectations. We have been through a phase of strong growth. We are now transitioning from a largely pure growth phase to a more balanced phase of growth and profitability. With this, I would like to conclude our presentation and open the call for questions. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star and One on their touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press Star and Two. Participants are requested to use only handsets when asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press Star and One at this time. The first question comes from the line of Holger Steffen with SMC Research. Please go ahead. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for your information you gave us about the development in the first nine months. I have several questions about your presentation and your work. First of all, regarding your international project business, you expect milestone payments in the final quarter, and you are preparing for the project sales. Can you give us some details? Which amount of milestone payments is expected, and which projects are ready to sell? Yeah, I can take over this question. Thank you very much. So we are selling more projects. The aim is to sell another big project in Germany. This is on the way. Then the milestone payments can come. We are not 100% sure if we have the income in this year from the USA. We sold the USA business, by the way, just in time when you see what happened yesterday. And then from Romania and Poland. But we don't want to talk about amounts today because there's a lot of uncertainty about the amount. But we are very positive that the fourth quarter will fulfill our guidance with these payments of the sale of the project and the milestone payments. Okay, fine. You have mentioned that you will sell another project in Germany. And I think the wind farm in Papenrode would have been a good add-on to your own portfolio. Is the disposal of German projects the result of the actual gap to your guidance? Roland Stanze speaking. Hello, everybody. Our strategy was always we have a certain flexibility. The projects we do turnkey. One element is one way it goes into IPP, build up the own operation. But we also have said we have a flexibility by this. We can decide to go one or the other way. First half of this year, we decided to, let's say, test the market. Do we get good offers for this wind farm? And at the end, we got good offers, so we decided to sell it. Selling projects is also a source of getting capital. That has been the history of PNE for years. But these disposals are no problem. It's no problem to reach your target of 1.5 GW owned portfolio until 2027? As I said before, we have been through a phase of growth, and we are still aiming towards, you can say, 1.5. However, I think that profitability and what I prefer to call a bankable balance sheet is more important than whether we receive 1.45 or exactly 1.5 gigawatt. But the target is there to build a substantial IPP portfolio. Okay. In your report and in your presentation, no, there aren't any projects at the development stage one and two in Panama. Did you interrupt the development of these projects? I think, Roland, and that's for you. So we took the chance after summer to check, let's say, more or less the overall pipeline about what are the probabilities and chances of being realized and what is. And we decided to the super early stage projects in Panama, we don't see the profitability enough to move on with them. Okay. In former times, the projects in the third stage should be sold in this year. Is this still realistic, or will we see it next year? You mean Panama? Panama, yes. We are about in sales talks with investors or sales processes. But we have to see whether the outcome is acceptable or not. We don't want to put ourselves, those in our projects, under pressure to do a deal so it must not be signing this year. So if the conditions are okay, we accept. And if we need another month for that, we take the time. I think what we can say here is that the goal is to exit Panama until the end of next year. It takes time to process, and in this process, we try to sell the projects as best as possible. Okay, perfect. In your report, you have underlined the plan to add PV projects to your own portfolio. When do you think we will see the first realization of an owned PV project? We are about developing several of them. But as I said, we also look, of course, at profitability. And I would say within the planning horizon of the next two to three years, we will see them be added to the pipeline, also to the IPP pipeline. Okay, so the portfolio is in two to three years? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. My last question. Your equity ratio has further decreased. Will we see a capital increase soon? No. Not the next year, maybe in 2026, but this is open. Especially as a CFO, you can imagine I have a close eye on the equity ratio. With the sale of Papenrode, we simulated this. We had been at 17-ish%, so much higher. And then let's see what's happening until the end of the year. So we hopefully are close to the 20% goal. So we are really optimistic there. But of course, if we want to grow with IPP, with this 1,500 megawatt goal, then in the future, we will need more equity. It's clear because this is the arithmetic of the figures, especially when we want to keep this equity ratio at around 20%. Okay. Okay, fine. Thank you very much for taking my questions. You're welcome. Pleasure. The next question comes from the line of Karsten von Blumenthal with First Berlin Equity Research. Please go ahead. Good morning, gentlemen, and thanks for taking my question. You mentioned a delay in commissioning of your wind farms. Could you tell us what exactly are your supply bottlenecks there? I think what I said was that we had this year different challenges due to weather conditions. So you had sites that were covered in mud, more or less, making it difficult to complete the construction. You have bottlenecks in the supply chain. I mean, the OEMs have bottlenecks in the supply chain leading cascading also to us with later deliveries. I think in terms of completion of projects, those are at least two major obstacles. Any comments there, Roland? That's the main reason, yeah. All right. Thanks, Roland. Could you tell me where you see your own plant portfolio capacity at the end of the year? You mentioned that you might add further wind farms and plants to the portfolio. So given that we now have the beginning of November, what is the likely portfolio at the end of the year? In the IPP portfolio, I think we will be around 440 MW by the end of the year. Perfect. Thanks for that. Any comments regarding the end of the German traffic light coalition? Do you see any direct impact on your business in coming months? In the short term, not. And we have to see the next year when we have a new government. But we don't see there any big changes for Germany in the near future. So with the U.S. business, we exited this. So this shouldn't affect us in any way, at least not directly. So we don't see any change in our strategy from now, the change in government in Germany as well. All right. In this year, we have seen quite some hours of negative power prices and power price exchange. Do you see this as a danger for the profitability of your onshore wind and future PV projects? Let me comment first, and then you can comment. I mean, the bulk of our IPP projects, the projects that go into our IPP portfolio, are German-based, i.e., they are under the feed-in tariff system in Germany, secured for 20 years. So from that aspect, you can say the German projects that we are building now and the coming two years will not be to that degree exposed to PPA and i.e., volatile power prices. Yeah, in general, I agree. But we have this four-hour rule that as soon as more than three hours of negative power prices occur, then you lose the market premium. Yeah, that's of course correct. So the four-hour rule, or maybe that changed over the years, will change over the years, getting shorter. We have taken that into account to a certain degree in our profitability cash flow calculations. That's on the one side. On the other side, the so-called Direktvermarktungsverträge, they cover part of this risk, as you might know. So let's say, yes, this is an aspect, but we have taken that into account, I would say. So there's no surprise where it will bring the profitability down in the future. All right. Thanks for that. I was a bit puzzled when I looked into your calculated Q3 segment results. When I calculated right, your IPP portfolio in terms of revenue performed quite well. There was a massive decrease in EBITDA on the flip side that doesn't really fit together. Perhaps you could elaborate what happened in Q3 to your IPP portfolio performance? Yeah, it went down by two effects. We have more in a higher installed basis, so naturally, it should increase, but we had a really poor Q2 and Q3 when it comes to the wind yields in Germany, roughly 12% or so, and then we had, of course, lower power prices, so in the past, we had PPAs in the last two, three years, which were really favorable, and the market prices, they shrink for the whole industry, and so the potential there for higher prices than the feed-in tariff was not so high this year. These are the two main reasons. October, by the way, is a poor month too. There's no wind or not enough wind, and November doesn't look good as well, at least for the first two weeks, but this is something, of course, we can't influence. The weather next year maybe looks totally different. But the main reason is the wind yields, which are in this year not favorable. All right. Good to know. Thanks for that. Last question from my side. Is my perception right that you have performed a change in your general strategy? As PNE mentioned, it's a more balanced strategy, balanced between growth and profitability. My impression in the past was that there was a strong focus on growing the IPP portfolio. Now, my feeling is that you rather go for a stronger profitability and perhaps slower growth of your own plant portfolio. Is that the right perception? Yeah, you could say that's what I said. And what we say is that profitability is, you can say, more important than growth in itself. We will continue to grow. We will still build up the IPP portfolio, but we will have a sharper eye on profitability. Yes. Great. Thanks for taking my questions. You're welcome. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Guido Hoymann with Metzler. Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning, gentlemen. Three questions from my side. The first one is I recently read, might be right or wrong. Could you please speak a little louder? Yeah, yeah. I recently read that you had traveled to Vietnam, I think, the week before last, and you were recently visited by the Latvian energy minister. So the question is, is there any news worth mentioning regarding your offshore development business? So maybe an update on the progress there. The second one is on. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Oh, okay. I understand that you want to sharpen your geographical focus. So I think you actually exited the U.K., if I got you right. Which other countries would you categorize as non-core? Is there already a decision on that? Or the other way around, which are core? And last but not least, you mentioned the need for raising equity in the future, but if I'm right, you don't have the necessary approvals or authorizations yet. And it looked like, yeah, it was hard to get them from your shareholders. So can you maybe shed light on that, how you expect that to progress? Let me start. There were three questions that I got it. So let me start in Vietnam. Yeah. What's correct. I went to Vietnam a couple of weeks ago. And we have been active in Vietnam now for four years, developing and, you can say, helping the Vietnamese government with setting the framework for their offshore development. Vietnam has 2,000 kilometers of coastline and has an ambition to build 10 GW of renewables, predominantly wind. And there we are pursuing a project in the southern part of Vietnam, which can have a capacity of up to two GW. I was out there and had some, you can say, good conversations with the Vietnamese government or members from the Vietnamese government and also from the party. And I mean, they confirmed, and you can basically say that the pretty intensive press coverage that was initiated by the Vietnamese and not by PNE, showing that the Vietnamese has a strong interest in pursuing these projects. I was again repeatedly saying to the official part of Vietnam that we want to pursue the project. We support the project, but we need, you can say, exclusivity that the project belongs to us, and I think the message was received, so that was my reason for going to Vietnam. Okay. The other question about the countries in focus. You already heard that we want to exit Panama, and Sweden is also a country where we want to exit. I think that might already happen this year. Let's see, and certainly, Turkey will also be one of the countries where we will, during the term of next year, hopefully exit. I mean, we don't have a fire sale; we don't do fire sales here. So we exit in a, of course, trying to get the best most out of it, but they are on the list of countries that we will not focus on going forward. I think on the capital increase, I'll hand over to our CFO, Harald. Can you repeat the question again, please? The third one with the capital, please. Yeah, it's just that I think that you don't have the approvals, and so you could not raise equity at the moment, be it whatever, 10% or be it a rights issue or so, and yeah, so you have to ask your shareholders. Regarding the so-called Genehmigtes Kapital, and I think third time in a row, we had no approval. We will try it on the next AGM again, but we are not begging, of course. We are working on alternatives. There are alternatives to raise capital with a simple majority of 50%. It's another process. This is something maybe what could be interesting for 2026, because, of course, if you want to build up the IPP business, we need more equity by nature. So this is an alternative. Or we have to sell projects like Papenrode in this year to build up more equity, and then we have the basis to do other projects and so we can then grow by our own cash flows. But of course, if you really want to make big steps forward, we need a capital increase. It's no question. But it's not so easy. But we are just doing this right now to elaborate on alternatives. And there is one, and it's maybe interesting AGM, where we bring it on the agenda, but it's not for sure, no. Can you repeat that first option? I didn't really get it. You can do the capital increase by another way than the so-called Genehmigtes Kapital. For the Genehmigtes Kapital, you need 75% of the votes on the AGM, and for the simple capital increase, this is another one. You need only 50% or 50 plus one vote, and this is a totally different process. In the past, you need a prospectus for this, and the EU canceled this, and I think it's already proved that you don't need it, so the process to raise capital in this way is much easier in the future than it was in the past, but it's a longer process. You need seven, eight months for a capital increase when you do this way, and you need, of course, the 50% approval from the AGM. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you for answering my questions. Pleasure. Once again, to register for questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to the speakers for any closing remarks. Thank you. So if there are no further questions, we would like to thank you for joining today's webcast. We look forward to meeting you at the IP Capital Forum in Frankfurt on the 25th and 26th of November, or to welcome you again at our next webcast on the publication of our annual report 2024, which is scheduled for the 27th of March 2025. Wish all a good day and stay safe. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference.