Good afternoon, and welcome to the presentation of Aker Carbon Capture's results for the second quarter of 2023. My name is David Phillips, Head of UK and Investor Relations, and I'm joined today by my colleague, Egil Fagerland, our newly appointed CEO. Egil will start with the main presentation. This will be followed by a Q&A with the audience. Firstly, Egil will take us through our main achievements and progress from the second quarter of this year, and we'll run through a number of topics that are important to our strategy. He will take us through our key Q2 financials, including some outlook commentary for the rest of the year. Finally, we will take your Q&A via the online system. Just as a reminder, as before, you can post your questions into the system at any time, and at the end, we will try to work through as many of them as time allows. Egil, over to you. This is the agenda for our presentation today, and thank you, David. Following a very active and promising second quarter, we will address the highlights of the quarter, our operational and business development, our delivery models, the financial highlights, and finally, our way forward. We'll move on to the Q&A. First, before we start the highlights from the second quarter, we have a short introduction to the company. Aker Carbon Capture is a pure-play carbon capture company. We're offering modular and configurable capture plants with the strength of the Aker group behind it. Today, we're already delivering seven carbon capture plants. We are making carbon capture happen. Our proprietary and patented technology has been developed for over 20 years and is validated through more than 60,000 operating hours and verified across a range of industries. Aker Carbon Capture's technology uses a biodegradable mixture of water and organic amine solvents to absorb the CO2. Our technology is modular, cost and energy efficient, and has a market-leading HSE profile. Since mid-2020, Aker Carbon Capture has focused on the European market with Scandinavia, Benelux, and the U.K. leading the way. With increased policy support for CCUS in North America, we've started our market entry. With a growing pipeline of opportunities, our first local employee is in place, and partnership discussions is ongoing as we are continuing our strategic journey to enter this important market. We're exploring the potential position we will take in the rest of Europe and the Middle East. We continue to prioritize four market segments with high market activity: cement, bio and waste-to-energy, gas-to-power, and blue hydrogen. We're also seeing good engagement with a number of additional segments where our technology is well-suited to capture CO2, such as refining and process industries. Our technology has been tested and verified across all these segments. To the highlights of this quarter. This quarter, we secured our largest contract ever, a contract to deliver five modular Just Catch units to Ørsted in Denmark. The contract value is more than EUR 200 million and has lifted our revenue backlog to NOK 3.3 billion. We now have a total of seven carbon capture units under development, and this represents a leading share of the major projects that have so far moved forward to secure contracts in Europe. We continue to see significant study activity, and we've secured studies in the biomass industries across U.S. and Sweden. We've won two studies for Just Catch Offshore, validating the importance of this offering to help decarbonize the offshore industry. We've seen good progress on our major projects in the period. At Ørsted, key purchase orders have been placed. For Brevik CCS, the installation of equipment and piping continues, and at Twence CCS, all the major equipment has been installed on site. In addition, two of our UK flagship FEED and pre-FEED projects are in the final negotiations for government support. We continue to see high Mobile Test Unit activity, having finalized a successful campaign at CO2 HUB Nord in Norway, and we've started the EU-funded AURORA Solvent Research Project. We're continuously strengthening and investing in our portfolio of offerings, and this quarter, we've launched a new modular unit or units, including the third generation, Just Catch 100, and we're introducing the Just Catch 400. Both are modular offerings targeting the mid- and large-scale emitting market. Although mentioned earlier, it's worth noting that our backlog has been strengthened to NOK 3.3 billion. On the back of the Ørsted award, I'm also happy to share that we have seen a continued revenue growth in the quarter, growing our top line close to 60% compared to the same period last year. All this, while we've been maintaining a solid cash position at NOK 1.1 billion. Also worth mentioning is our share purchase program, which was launched in the quarter for the first time for all employees. This program allowed all of our employees to acquire shares in the company and participate in our progress. It's clearly been a busy quarter for our people at Aker Carbon Capture, and let's look closer at our latest key award, Ørsted Kalundborg CCS. At Ørsted Kalundborg CCS, we're delivering five modular and configurable third-generation Just Catch 100 units and additional equipment such as liquefaction systems and temporary CO2 storage, and on and offloading facilities. This is a materialization of the MOU between Ørsted, Aker Carbon Capture, and Microsoft, which was signed in March 2021. We see this project as a milestone for serial production of Just Catch units. This will enable us to deliver cost efficiency and fast deployment of carbon capture. Modularization is already an accelerator in this industry. This is proven by our ongoing delivery of seven carbon capture units across several industries. The total contract value is above EUR 200 million and has a design capture capacity of 500,000 tons of CO2 per year. As the five Just Catch units will be capturing biogenic emissions, which will be stored in the North Sea, this landmark project will deliver large-scale carbon removal. Microsoft will purchase this several million tons of high-quality carbon removal credits from Ørsted. This represents one of the world's largest carbon removal offtake agreements by volume to date. We're truly proud to be able to help deliver the first full-scale carbon capture and storage value chain in Denmark, which will be an important contributor to reach Denmark's climate targets. This quarter, we also made headway in new markets and industries. Apart from the very important contract award from Ørsted, we've secured several studies in different regions and in different industries, including several Just Catch and Just Catch Offshore studies. First of all, we won a strategic U.S. study covering biogenic emissions. The study will cover emissions targeting 800,000 tons of CO2 per year, including the assessment of implementing two Just Catch 100 units. A combination of Just Catch 100 and Just Catch 400 units or a Big Catch are potential solutions for this client to help decarbonize its business. In Sweden, Aker Carbon Capture secured a study to help Söderenergi decarbonize the country's second-largest biomass combined heat and power plant. This project offers the potential to capture 500,000 tons of biogenic emissions from Söderenergi's facility at Igelstaverket. This is close to Stockholm. In Europe, we continue to strengthen our foothold in the waste-to-energy sector with a new study for a waste-to-energy player with a capture capacity between 200,000 and 400,000 tons per year. Together with our client, we will explore options across the Just Catch portfolio for this study. We also secured two Just Catch Offshore studies, including one for Petoro's Power Hub in Norway, targeting 720,000 tons of CO2 per year. Last October, Just Catch Offshore, our modular facility for offshore installations specialized for offshore gas turbines, was successfully qualified by DNV, the global independent energy and assurance provider. The unit is now ready to be deployed in offshore oil and gas fields, where it can significantly reduce emissions from offshore power generation. The policy backdrop in Europe showed a clear step up in the quarter, specifically in France, which released its carbon capture, storage, and utilization strategy as a part of its aim to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, and Germany, where the government released funding programs for Climate Protection Contracts. These are important steps to realize and accelerate the broader industrial decarbonization across the continent. To our pipeline. When we launched in 2020, we set an ambitious target to secure contracts to capture 10 million tons of CO2 by the end of 2025. As before, we're visualizing the progress towards this target across four categories: secured development contracts; secured FEED contracts and tenders for development contracts; FEEDs, pre-FEEDs, studies, and Mobile Test Unit campaigns; and finally, our prospects. Here, the 1 million tons represent our already secured contracts with Heidelberg Materials, Twence, and now also Ørsted, which was awarded this quarter. This is important progress that shows that we're able to successfully convert our pipeline of opportunities into secure work, with timing, of course, strongly influenced by the pace of the market itself. Our tenders and FEEDs, which now stands at 6.6 million tons. This reflects Net Zero Teesside Power and still Keadby 3, and also includes ongoing tender activity for development contracts. This category is slightly lower than the last quarter, which reflects the progression of Ørsted to secure the contract status and some new work in Europe, offset partially by one tender that is currently on hold in another region. In the quarter, we've seen a continued growth in pre-FEEDs, studies, and Mobile Test Unit campaigns. This category now totals 16.7 million tons, up from the last quarter, reflecting 1 pre-FEED moving to the tender phase, offset by new study work both in the U.S. and Europe. To give you an indication of our progress in North America, our study intake during the second quarter includes roughly 1 million tons per year from the U.S., and we see something like 2-3 million tons per year that could become study work over the next three to six months. Now, we move on to look in more detail at our operations and business development. In Aker, we have developed carbon capture technology since the late 1990s, and over the 15 last years, we've been scaling, industrializing, and commercializing our technology and products. This has been an essential part of our journey. Scaling from a pilot plant to an industrial-sized plant was demonstrated already back in 2012, when we delivered the technology center Mongstad in Norway with a capacity of 80,000 tons of CO2 per year, 80 times the size of the Mobile Test Unit. Through standardization, modularization, and modularization, we are in a position to deliver similar plants today, such as the Just Catch of 100,000 tons of CO2 per year. We're delivering this to Twence already today with a footprint and cost, which is close to 90% lower when you compare to the plant from 2012. Now, Ørsted CCS will be the first proof point of serial production of five Just Catch 100 units. In addition, we're delivering a Big Catch Brevik CCS. This is four times the size of the Just Catch. We're delivering also two FEEDs for mega-scale carbon capture facilities for the gas to power segment in the U.K., each of them five times the size of the Brevik CCS. Our technology is proven, scaled, and industrialized. Let's have a closer look at the projects we are building right now. Through the past quarter, we've seen high Mobile Test Unit activity. We finalized a successful campaign at CO2 HUB Nord, where we tested and verified our proprietary technology on the flue gases of Elkem Smelter and SMA Minerals calciners. We achieved high capture rates, both on Elkem's low CO2 concentration and for SMA Minerals higher concentration flue gases. Together with several leading industry and research partners, we've initiated the EU-funded AURORA project. This project offers the opportunity to test our absorption technology with the open-source solvent, CESAR1, at Heracles Cement plant in Greece and at the Umicore Materials Recycling plant in Belgium. The ambition is to further strengthen Aker Carbon Capture's world leading position in providing amine-based CO2 capture solutions and de-risking solvent technologies. In the Netherlands, at Twence's waste-to-energy plant in Hengelo, we are delivering solid progress. All major equipment has been installed, including three columns and the Just Catch containers. Currently, the installation and piping and cable pulling is taking place, we are rapidly heading towards the planned delivery at the end of this year. Aker Carbon Capture is delivering a standardized container-based Just Catch, which is first of a kind, the capture plant will be delivered by the end of this year, capturing 100,000 tons of CO2 per year. Just to give you an example of the efficient installation process, the container modules were transported through the gates at Twence's facilities at 9:00 A.M., and they were installed within the same day. The following week, the installation team had started hooking up the platforms, support steels, and had started connecting piping. For those of you who remember, I also mentioned this during our Q1 presentation, but as the time efficient deployment of our modular units is a clear differentiator in the industry right now, it's worth a reminder. At Brevik CCS, we're making progress. All waste heat recovery units and the internals of the direct contact cooler have been installed. All the columns and CO2 storage tanks are on site. Installation of piping is ongoing in the various modules. On the image, you see the ongoing installation of pipe spools and associated pressure testing in one of the Brevik CCS modules. The installation work will gradually accelerate during the second part of 2023 as more equipment arrives. When complete, the plant will be ready to capture 400,000 tons of CO2 per year. Ørsted we've already discussed. However, I just wanted to add that last month, we both signed the contract with Ørsted, and we've placed several of our key purchase orders already. The planned delivery of the five Just Catch units is at the end of 2025. In the U.K., the U.K. remains a very important market for CCS and one that is moving towards some important decision points the next six to 12 months. At the end of March, the UK government confirmed which projects proceeded to final negotiations for Track 1. This is the Track 1 of government funding and highlighted the potential for further projects to move forward on the Track 1 expansion and Track 2 processes. In the U.K., Aker Carbon Capture is the capture provider for a FEED for bp's Net Zero Teesside Power and a FEED for SSE Keadby 3, and the pre-FEED for Viridor's Runcorn CCS, all potential mega-scale carbon capture projects. Both bp's and Viridor's projects are now in the final negotiation stage with the UK government for Track 1 funding. For SSE's Keadby 3 project, the UK government will launch a process later this year to enable expansion of the Track 1 clusters beyond the initial eight projects announced. This aims to identify and select projects to join the HyNet and East Coast Cluster, including the Humber, where Keadby 3 is located, and their associated storage facilities as they become viable, with a clear aim to be operational by latest 2030. These projects in the U.K. are important steps forward for the delivery of our license and key equipment offering for mega scale carbon capture plants, where for both the bp and SSE projects, we are the capture partner to a consortium of Aker Solutions, Siemens Energy and Doosan Babcock. I will take us through our delivery models and financials. We have two main approaches, Just Catch and Big Catch. Importantly, we're now highlighting our expanding range of carbon capture units built around our modular Just Catch offering. Our modular carbon capture plant is based around our configurable container and skid-based Just Catch design. It comes with standard capture capacities of 40,000 tons, 100,000 tons, and an offshore optimized version. In addition, we are introducing a Just Catch of 400,000 tons, a concept for which we shared for the first time today. Several Just Catch modules can be installed in parallel trains or allow a higher total capture capacity. For instance, up to 300,000 tons of CO2 per year based on three Just Catch 100 units in parallel. In the first quarter, we launched our third generation Just Catch 100, which comes with improved energy efficiency and even smaller footprint and fewer modules compared to the previous generation. We deliver the Just Catch on an EPC basis, or to be even more accurate, due to the high level of standardization under a Just Catch supply agreement. Since the Just Catch is a standardized offering, where we prefabricate the modules with a limited customized scope, its delivery carries lower risk and potential higher long-term margins than typical full EPC projects. We also see the potential to improve margins further over the over time as we gain experience through serial production of Just Catch units. This modular market offers a very large opportunity. Our review of the market shows that emitters with between 100,000 and 500,000 tons of CO2 per year account for around 3,000 industrial plants across Europe and North America. Our Just Catch unit is also the key to our Carbon Capture as a Service offering, where we are where our customers simply pay per ton of CO2 captured. The standardized nature of these units make them attractive investment objects for yield companies and infrastructure funds, who purchase the units on a supply agreement from Aker Carbon Capture and lease them back to us or to the emitter for a stable return. The model allows us to provide and operate the Just Catch for the emitter on a pay-per-ton basis, supporting our long-term aftermarket revenue ambition. Our Big Catch offering is focused on carbon capture capacities beyond 400,000 tons and up to several million tons per year of CO2. Right now, we're delivering Brevik CCS on the EPC basis. In the future, we will offer large Big Catch plants on license and key equipment packages. This is in line with our contracting model for the UK projects outlined earlier, where we can be the carbon capture provider directly to the end customer or work with a designated EPC contractor. As a rough guidance, you could expect the license and key equipment contract size to be in the range of one-third of a full EPC delivery, with a higher long-term margin potential. The Just Catch Offshore is a modular design specialized for offshore gas turbines on FPSO vessels. Today, the Big Catch offering dominates our revenues, which is natural with the ongoing major Brevik CCS project in this construction phase. Over time, we believe that the revenues from Just Catch supply agreements can become as large or even larger than the revenues from Big Catch. As a final reminder, we do offer aftermarket services, solvent management, and supply to all our clients across all our offerings. Aftermarket revenue streams are expected to pick up over time, in line with our growing the install base of Just Catch and Big Catch units. Since the third quarter of 2021, we've shared updated quarterly estimates for the levelized cost of the full value chain Carbon Capture as a Service offering based on our modular Just Catch unit. Given our interest and activity in North America, we've now also started sharing our estimated figures for the North American market. Please note that the numbers are in both euro and USD, depending on the part of the chart that you're looking on. For reference and simplicity, we've assumed roughly equivalence between the two currencies here in this slide. For our European delivery model, the full value chain range is unchanged since the last quarter, between EUR 75 and EUR 175. This has been stable for the last quarters and validated by our ongoing Just Catch deliveries. For North America, we see the potential to realize lower costs across the value chain, mainly due to lower transport and storage costs, but also lower operating costs. This gives an overall levelized cost range between $55 and $120 per ton for that market, which you have many projects within the $85 that is a potential credit achievement today. I will now take you through the key financial highlights of the first quarter before we move on to our summary and Q&A. Bear in mind that all numbers are mentioned in Norwegian kroner. Let's start with the income statement. Overall revenue for the second quarter was NOK 305 million, which is up 57% compared to the same period last year. The growth is mainly driven by Big Catch and Just Catch projects, including the commencement of Ørsted Kalundborg CCS project. The ongoing FEEDs, pre-FEEDs, studies, and MTU campaigns also contributed to revenues this quarter. Our reported second quarter EBITDA was negative NOK 53 million, which is NOK 4 million lower compared to the same quarter last year. Big Catch and Just Catch projects contributed positively in the quarter. However, for the Ørsted Kalundborg CCS project, profit has not yet been recognized. The overall negative EBITDA continued to be driven by high sales and tender activity and R&D activity. Our second quarter net current operating assets ended at negative NOK 526 million, which represents a continued positive cash position on our key projects. Overall, operating assets and liabilities, or net capital employed, which includes fixed and intangible assets, was negative NOK 352 million. This shows that both our short and long-term business activities are funded by our working capital position. We continue to have a healthy cash position at NOK 1.1 billion, and this could cover all of our liabilities 1.7x. Finally, our equity remains strong at NOK 0.8 billion. We started the second quarter with NOK 1,348 million in cash and cash equivalents. Through the quarter, we saw an overall cash outflow of NOK 210 million. The main driver was vendor payments on key projects, represented by NOK 146 million net current operating asset outflow, loss before tax of NOK 46 million, and CapEx of NOK 25 million, mainly related to our product development and the construction of a second Mobile Test Unit. In total, cash and cash equivalents ended the quarter at NOK 1.138 billion. These were the highlights of our historical financial. Now let's have a look at the outlook ahead. Other than the strength in backlog, our financial outlook remains broadly in line with the outlook presented in the previous quarter. Our backlog ended the second quarter at around NOK 3.3 billion after securing the Ørsted Kalundborg CCS contract. By year of execution, we see this work at roughly NOK 1 billion for the rest of 2023, around NOK 1.2 billion in 2024, and another NOK 1.1 billion in 2025 and beyond. As a reminder, order intake are only included in the backlog once a firm contract award has been announced. The profit margin is expected to improve in due course with the Ørsted Kalundborg CCS project and further over time with the benefits of serial delivery of multiple Just Catch units. The salary and personnel cost is expected to increase gradually with our activity growth, whereas our other operating expenses and CapEx are expected to remain around current levels through the next six to 12 months. We continue to show a strong liquidity position, ending the quarter with a net cash position of NOK 1.1 billion, which is expected to remain around these levels through the year. Please note, as usual, that these comments do not include any assumptions for cash spent on M&A or additional investment opportunities that might arise going forward and might be subject to short-term working capital fluctuations. Let me share with you a short summary on our way forward. We have set a clear direction to position for the huge market ahead of us. We're here to accelerate planet positive through carbon reduction and removal. We've prioritized the European market and four segments: cement, bio and waste to energy, gas to power, and blue hydrogen. We see opportunities in other segments as well, such as refining and process industries. We've articulated a strategy with a focus towards entering North America. We're now exploring also our position in the rest of Europe and the Middle East. Our proven technology is market leading. We will further improve our energy efficiency and capture rate and increase our focus on new technologies going forward. Through standardization and modularization and digitalization, we're expanding our cost-efficient product portfolio. Cost reduction through serial production and working together with strategic suppliers is an important part of our journey. We will continue to offer EPC, or that is Just Catch supply agreements, slightly lower risk than normal EPC, and license models with key equipment for Big Catch. The supply agreements are for the Just Catch. All these will be followed by long-term service and solvent supply agreements. Also, as a part of our aftermarket services, we can offer solvent and performance management and optimization, digital operations, and maintenance. For the Just Catch, we are also bringing the full CCUS value chain together through Carbon Capture as a Service. To meet the expected high growth in the market, we will continue to build strong partnerships. Finally, we are building our company through purpose-driven people. We are making carbon capture happen now. By delivering on our ongoing projects and setting ambitious carbon capture targets, we are in a strong position to make a positive impact on our planet and help our clients drive a sustainable future. Thank you. Now we move on to the Q&A section of our meeting. Okay, thank you for joining our Q&A session. I hope the rest of the presentation went well for you. As always, we have a electronic system online to run through our questions. We will take them in order. Hopefully, we'll try and get through all of them in the time. Let's get things going. First question, from Zong-Zong Ren, asking about utilization in CCUS. Maybe I'll take this one. It's a relatively short question. Yeah Whether we're involved in CCU as well as CCS. We are really involved in CC, so in the carbon capture piece. The U and the S really are the drivers of our, of our demand. We actually are involved in a CCU project with Twence. As you would've seen on the slide in our presentation, that is a CCU project. We are capturing the CO2 with our equipment, and then our client, our customer, Twence, will use the captured CO2 to go into the local commercial market for CO2 in Holland, and that's actually going into horticulture. We are involved in that. We don't have any specific utilization technologies under our umbrella at the moment. For us, we're really focused on the carbon capture piece. Jumping over, we have quite a number of questions from Carrie Elizabeth Hartford now. Backlog. Looking at the backlog progression has obviously jumped up quite a bit since we last reported. I guess the question is: Does this order intake come from Ørsted, or is there anything else in there? This quarter, the majority of the order intake comes from Ørsted. That's. Yeah T hat's clear. We also have quite a few studies in the period, which is important, but they're not of the same size, of course. Absolutely. Next question from her is looking at the concept page. The Just Catch concepts. Mm do not mention license key equipment. Why does this differ from Big Catch? For the, for the Just Catch offerings, we are building the full capture facility as a full offering, a standardized unit, and plant. When you buy such a plant, you also get it with a license to operate it, and run it, and utilize it the way you want. For the larger scale plants, we offer it on a license and key equipment basis, meaning that we will work with the end customer or the EPC to deliver the design package, the license to use it, and the key equipment you need to use it in one package to the end customer or the EPC that we would be working with to build it. We wouldn't build those major scale plants ourselves. We would let someone else do that, another EPC company. Absolutely. Last question in this group here is backlog. On our backlog phasing in the financial section of the presentation, you've probably seen that phasing over 2023- Mm remainder 2023, 2024, and 2025, or $1.2 billion Norwegian kroner of backlog in 2024. Does that reflect the remainder of Norcem Brevik and Ørsted alone? It's not those two alone, but those are the major drivers next year. There is also some backlog related to other activities, such as Mobile Test Unit campaigns. Yes, absolutely, but they are very much dominated by the two, real contracts. Absolutely, dominated by those two. Absolutely. Okay, moving on, Victoria from RBC, working capital, we guided previously to outflows during H2. How should we now think about working capital through H2 this year, 3Q and 4Q? As we said in the presentation, the working capital through the second half this year, we think will remain around the same level that we have today, or the cash position will remain around the same level. The working capital will move slightly as we progress the projects, but it's not gonna change significantly. However, there might be periodic timings where, you know, early payments or late payments can fluctuate that number a little bit. You should think about it as a gradually changing... Mm number. As long as the cash position is fairly stable, the working capital should remain fairly stable as well. Absolutely. Good alignment. Victoria's next question is really around modular: Are we seeing wider interest and acceptance for modular solutions, and also, are we seeing the costs move lower for these modular solutions, versus, let's say, the full cycle cost we talked about in our capture to service. Yeah levelized cost model? You know, with the projects we are delivering right now, both the Twence project and now also Ørsted, we have validated that we're within the range that we are sharing. Our ambition is, of course, to drive down that cost over time. Serial production is one of those elements that can help drive it down. What we are aiming for now is to move it within the range that we're seeing. Yeah into the lower end. I don't think you can expect to see a major change down from the range that we are already showing, 'cause we are showing that by delivering five or 10 units of these, that's how we can drive it down to the lower end that we are showing you already. Absolutely. It's worth remembering on that levelized cost diagram, I mean, when you're talking about Just Catch, the original Just Catch was the great-great-grandchild of Mongstad. Yes which we built in 2012, and that is effectively is 90% smaller and 90% cheaper than its great-great-grandfather. Absolutely. A big change already. Just on the, on the comment about wider interest, I mean, it's a new market. There's not a lot of precedent, but clearly, what modular offers potentially, as Egil was explaining, is the lower cost. Mm. Quick delivery, less engineering challenges for the customer in terms of pre-, discussing some of the details around the plant, and so on. The level of interest in the market, I mean, we talked... I think you talked a little bit in the presentation about the, our own work. There's a report out looking at the, let's say, the small and medium-sized industrial emitter-. Mm world. There are, I think it's something like over 75% of all the plants that you look at in North America and Europe, that are emitters, fall into this, let's say, small and mid-sized category, so between 100,000 and 1 million tonnes a year. Mm. There's about 4,000 facilities in that, under that umbrella. If you look at the ones between 100,000 and 500,000, so between 100,000 and half a million tons a year, which is a very good fit for our, a growing modular portfolio, those ones, I think there are around 3,000 plants. Yes. There's a usual mixture of industries in there, all the usual suspects of gas to power, and some cement... Mm and waste to energy, and so on. That's really what's very exciting for us in this. It'll always be about when the storage starts, as always. Yes. Ability to fit our offering to that market is really, really very exciting. Hope to talk more about that in the quarters to come. Absolutely. Okay, moving on. We now have from George Schermer asking about giving a rough estimate of the size of opportunities developing in North America and the Middle East. Yeah. Let's start with the Middle East. I think it's a bit early to say something about the size of the opportunities. What we do know is, the Middle Eastern region will probably account for 10%-15% of the emissions that needs to be reduced to reach the UN's climate goals and ambitions that we have. However, we know a little bit more about the North American market, and, you know, that's where we are really focusing now to get in and to take a position. Our assessment of the addressable market for Aker Carbon Capture is close to 2,500 million tonnes. It's a enormous market for us to address, and then for us, the task becomes finding the right angle to attack that market and find the projects that can actually move forward earlier rather than later. It's a huge market, and the set of opportunities, it's vast in the North American region. Absolutely, at that end, that $2.5 billion is roughly half the overall U.S. footprint. Right it's roughly about five. and but in that, in that mix, I mean, the reason, one, the obvious reasons why we think it's such an interesting market is there are a number of industries there that are a good match with our experience, what we've done... Exactly over the last 15, 20 years. Okay, let's jump on. Rachel Fletcher, congrats on the new role, Egil. Thank you, Rachel. A number of questions here, really around the U.K., this may well fall to me for the moment. Mm. Final negotiations for funding for the U.K. Track 1 clusters, when can we expect a decision? What's the timeline moving forward with expansion, and what data points should we really look for? The U.K., as we mentioned in the presentation, there's some very important events that will come in the next six to 12 months, no question. Back from the announcement at the end of March, end of Q1, on the eight projects moving forward as part of Track 1, we knew then there was gonna be a bill going through Parliament. We knew then there would be an expansion plan announced later this year for Track 1, which is able to include other projects linked to the storage options for the northeast and northwest. We also know there's gonna be some update around Track 2, which will bring in at least two other clusters in the U.K. Since then, I would say there's been a lot of discussion. The bill's moving through Parliament very well. It's been through the committee stage, there's not been a lot of new news, although the noise around an update on Track 2 is very clear, and it feels like late summer, you're gonna see Track 2 come out in some sort of detail in terms of timing, which is what everyone's asking in the industry, is we want some firm timelines around when those will happen. The Track 1 expansion has not been mentioned as obviously, but we expect it probably is in the same breath. I guess the question is: What is that expansion? Is it a guaranteed next step, or is it another sort of additional process to go through to select other projects for that list? Let's see. In terms of what to look for, I think, summer is always quiet. You're not very far away from the UK Parliament recess, so really, you're looking at late summer for the real noise to pick up again. There's the parliamentary conference season coming up. Mm in early October. Normally, after summer, there's normally a bit of a rush of noise ahead of the conference season. We would, and this is just a personal view, expect to see more updates coming out, like, you know, in the late summer, maybe towards the end of Q3, around, especially around Track 2. On the 10 that's been put for hold, question on the. Yeah on our progress chart. We talked about one tender being put on a hold in that segment. What was behind that? We are continuously updating our pipeline and keeping it live. What you see in this pipeline is real feeds, real tenders, real studies and test unit campaigns that we have performed and where we have active clients. Also, the prospects are real prospects that we are working on. When we remove something from the tender pipeline, it's either because we've lost the job or because it's been put on hold, or they've changed their strategy. In this particular instance, there is one client in another region, not one of our core regions, that doesn't see line of sight to funding or moving this project forward in the short- term, so they put it on hold. When they put it on hold, we've taken it out of that tender list for now. It might come back, but at this moment. Mm that pipeline is a little bit smaller. The reason to show you that is also so that you can see that there's a reasonable timeframe for that to potentially convert into secure contracts. It's kind of trying to keep it alive so that both us and you can see the visibility that we are working towards. Absolutely. Next question from John de los Santos from Redburn, asking about Just Catch 400. How would a hypothetical Just Catch 400 project compare with Brevik CCS, for instance, in terms of CapEx, OpEx, time to market? Mm risks, and so on? It's very difficult to compare specifically to that project, but, you know, comparing a Just Catch 400 versus a Big Catch approach is, you know, when we are ready with a client to deliver Just Catch 400, it will be a standard offering with a product design, meaning the engineering, the big E that you do in an EPC, is much less. You've already designed the units, so you know what to build. Once you're at that stage, it's probably around 36 months to deliver a project the first time you do it. That's rough estimates from me right now, and we'll see when we deliver the first one. In terms of CapEx and OpEx, it's a bit early to say exactly what those numbers will be. What we do believe is that there will be some scale effect per ton on the OpEx side, and there will be some scale effect on the CapEx side as well, when you're building one larger unit rather than four units in parallel. However, you know, building three Just Catch 100 could, in many cases, make more sense or the same sense as building a Just Catch 400, which is why it's very important that we. Mm do studies with our clients and help them understand what's the most optimal selection of products when they work with us. Yes, exactly. On the OpEx front, of course, as you well know, you know, the energy cost is a major input and probably the largest single piece of the OpEx. Absolutely over life. To the extent to which you can recycle waste heat from our plant and also from the plant you're capturing CO2 from, that is always gonna be a major driver of keeping that. Absolutely that net OpEx number down. Absolutely. You also asked the question about does it lower the bar materially in terms of break-even carbon price? I think, I remember one... This is, does not reflect to Just Catch 400, one comment one of our colleagues said, I think last year, was if you went from purely non-modular to modular- Mm just the simplification and the de-risking of the construction phase. Mm going from piece-by-piece hook, construction to hookup and so on, you could probably take 20%-30% off the cost, something like that. Mm. That's a very, very high level rough number, which probably has engineers cringing. It's. Of course, over time, we will see that as we deliver more of these units, cost will come down. Now we're on a strong journey with the Just Catch 100, currently delivering six units. Five of them, we will be able to deliver in a series, and that will help. The same, I think we will see when we start delivering Just Catch 400 and selling those to the market, delivering more of those, getting that serial production experience with the larger standard modules as well, will take down the cost curve. I'm very confident about that. Absolutely. Next question, U.S. strategy. Can we expand on our plans to enter the U.S. market, especially in terms of potential partnerships? What I can share right now is that we are in dialogue with several potential partners in North America, but we're also working with our existing partners, such as Microsoft and Siemens Energy, to find good angles to enter that market. I think that's about what I can say in terms of more specific partnerships. We are fairly well known when we go out and talk to potential partners. Most of the companies that are interested in carbon capture have heard about us. Although we're a Norwegian, European, based company, we are also fairly well known in North America by both investors and potential partners on the industrial side. That's quite interesting, and we are engaging with many in good dialogues right now. Absolutely. Question from Victoria again. Talk about incoming inquiries. Have we seen more incoming inquiries from customers in the quarter, and where do we see the near-term opportunities in terms of contracts, either market or geography? Yes, we have seen more incoming work, both on the study side and also on the prospect side this period. We see that increasing now. Almost quarter by quarter, we can say that we're increasing the activity. What's particular about this quarter has been biogenic projects. On the back of our Ørsted award, we've won several studies from emitters with a biogenic CO2 source. I think that's quite interesting. Both in North America and Sweden, we have several of those. On the Just Catch Offshore side, where our products can help decarbonize the offshore industry, and then both in Norway, we're also seeing traction in other regions. Those are the main areas where we've seen the increase compared to earlier, and we've also had a quite a good number of studies coming in every quarter. It's an increase in these particular areas. Mm. How fast we can convert jobs, I think if you look at our pipeline chart, we have 6.6 million. Within six to 12 months, most of that should have converted into real jobs, either they might be put on hold or lost. There, there's some. Over the next 12 months, you will see a lot of decisions. Mm-hmm especially in the U.K. Yes. I think that's something we are looking forward to, and we're working hard towards. Exactly. Okay, moving on. Mr. Jones from Nordea, gross margins. Do we expect gross margins to increase from Q2 levels, even prior to Ørsted profit-taking commencing, whenever that might happen? I think I mentioned this last quarter as well, but given that we are a project business, the normal way you do project accounting is that you have your estimate to complete, and when you're fairly certain about that, you start recognizing profit. Many times, that will result in a catch-up effect the first quarter or first couple of quarters that you do it, and then it will stabilize around the level that you're delivering at the moment. Currently, we're delivering a couple of stable projects, and we have Ørsted, which is in the beginning phase. Until you see Ørsted coming into the books with profit recognition, I don't think you should expect to see increasing gross margins. They are fluctuating a little bit in the, in the periodic numbers, depending on the number of feeds, the MTU campaigns, and other factors as well, the, you know, progress on procurement and such like. Overall, you should expect that to remain fairly stable until the next project, has a uplift or if one of the ongoing projects have a, has a change. Absolutely. That's fine. Very clear. Also from this side, could you also share some thoughts around storage capacity? What's the sort of available storage capacity by 2025? Mm in Europe and North America? Maybe I'll have a go at this as well. You can have a go. What do you think about it? I can have a think about it. You start then. Yes and I'll follow- up. I mean, I think, well, firstly, I would say 2025 is quite near-term, because don't forget, even if you asked us a year ago, we would've said, "Well, you have Norway, more like starting 2024, 2025. You have Denmark and Netherlands, more like 2025, 2026, and you have the U.K., more like 2026, 2027. Yeah. Already by 2025, the U.K. The European footprint is really quite small. If you think about, I think it's just over a year ago, we talked about our TAM, our total addressable market in Europe. Yeah. We talked about that sort of billion-plus CO2 per year. Yeah footprint of everything, which drops down to 250 million tonnes per year. If you think about what is actually in the right place to join up with some of the industrial clusters being done in the U.K., Netherlands, and Denmark, and so on, and also the ones that could join up via marine transport, all things being equal. Mm. I think that's 250. At that point, and this was over a year ago, I think we reckon there was something like 50, 60, 70 million tons of storage in development in the next, let's say, by later this decade. Mm. That number has expanded. That number's gone up to between NOK 80 million and NOK 100 million now. Yeah. There is more coming, and there's also, I would say, at least from our perception, a good understanding from policymakers that this is really the big speed bump they have to accelerate. Yeah. You have the EU talking about a minimum of 50 million tons a year by 2030. Yes and that doesn't include Norway, doesn't include the U.K. Yes As we all know very well. Yeah, so in that picture, it's catching up. Mm. It takes time. I mean, there's regulation, there's testing and monitoring details to sort out. There's all the usual, if you like, reverse oil and gas, as someone described it to us once. Yeah work to do around seismic and drilling and stuff. Mm All the offshore plans. It takes a while, but it is catching up. I would guess, I mean, my only, I say my gut feel on the North American side, it is early days, but it could grow. Given the onshore potential especially- Mm You will see that pick up speed quite quickly. Yeah. It probably is a couple of years away before you really see it happen. There's quite a few planned projects in the U.S. Yes Still, getting those Class VI wells, which is the type of. Yes, exactly. that they need to get in place, permitting for that typically, I think, will take one to two years. Some are already in motion, so there might be some fields that are ready earlier. Offshore as well, there will be some development, but I think majority in the U.S., you're gonna see onshore CO2 storage. Also, I think it's encouraging to see in Europe, both in the U.K., in Norway, and other areas, licensing for CO2 storage fields are becoming more and more active. Mm-hmm. I think this market for storage will come. I think 2025, 2026, we're gonna see a larger. Yes than 2024, 2025. That's the real important period, 2025, 2026. Yeah when we really hope to see a lot more storage capacity come online. Yeah. Interesting question from a, from a shareholder here, asking about, our whole process of... Obviously, you're now in your new job. Who are the candidates, or what can we say about candidates for taking over the CFO role? I think I can't say much about the candidates in that process. That is not up to me, so I'd refer you to the board and the chairman for those specific questions. Mm-hmm. What I can say is I was very happy this morning to confirm that I was accepting this offer and really eager to take on this task, and very humbled to be able to lead such a dedicated team that we have at Aker Carbon Capture. Absolutely. Thank you. Last question. By the way, if there are any pending questions, once we finish, we will finish, if you know what I mean. If you have any burning questions, put them in the system in the next couple of minutes. Mm O therwise, we'll be off for our dinner. Question is asking about Just Catch. How do you go about pricing Just Catch modules? Is it based on achieving a certain margin? What are the main drivers? Yeah, so for pricing Just Catch modules, first of all, we need to understand what the cost to build them are. That we know fairly well now. We're delivering six units. Then it's all about helping our clients find a way to make this profitable without us also losing money. We don't necessarily drive this by margin in every case. Sometimes we look at what's needed to win the project together with the client, and then we also secure a margin as a part of that. But the most important for us now is to make sure that the projects get started and that the clients, often in the collaboration ship, are able to get through their application process to win money. I would say the Ørsted project, where we've been working together with Ørsted and Microsoft to make sure that they receive the Danish funding and deliver the best solution possible, is an example of that, how we work together and how we will be able to generate also profit because of the serial delivery and the standardized nature of the product. Okay, that was the last question. Thank you. I think that really leaves it to us to say thank you so much for your attention. Thank you. Well over 100 people on the webcast today, a very good audience. Thank you for your interest. We are well aware it's summertime, some people are on holiday already. If you joined from a holiday, that's an even bigger thank you. Look, we really appreciate the interest, we look forward to keeping in contact. Of course, we're now out of closed period, if you want to follow- up, please get in contact with me initially. If you haven't spoken to me before, if you look on our website, under Investor Relations, you can see my exact details with my email and everything else, just get in contact. Otherwise, thank you again. Thank you. We look forward to speaking to you in the next quarter or so. Thank you.