Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Arise audio call for the teleconference Q1 2022. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards there will be a question and answer session. Today, I'm pleased to present CEO Per-Erik Eriksson and CFO Markus Larsson. Speakers, please begin. Thank you very much. This is Per-Erik. I will start. If you start with the slide number three, some brief facts on the company. As a background, Arise was founded in 2007. We are a fairly small company, 33 employees today. We have an own production portfolio of some 139 MW wind power. We have a project portfolio of some 2,600 MW in different stages of development. We also have some asset management operations, about 1.4 GW or 1,400 MW. We have never had so many construction projects in terms of megawatts under construction as we have right now. We are at this moment having 473 MW under construction. We have three business segments, Production, Development, and Solutions. Since last year, we have also a new developed strategy, which means that we added new geographies and also new technologies, which in practice means that we are also active in solar business. With that said, I leave the word to Markus Larsson, our CFO. Right. Thank you, Per-Erik. Yes, we released our Q report this morning. It was a strong quarter for the company, where net sales came in at SEK 88 million. This is compared to SEK 47 million for the same period last year, an increase that is to a very large extent driven by our own production. This trickles down also EBITDA and EBIT, which totaled SEK 61 million for EBITDA and SEK 46 million for the EBIT. Looking at comparable profit before tax, it came in at SEK 42 million compared to SEK 4 million the same period last year, and the reported profit before tax was SEK 37 million compared to a negative SEK 4 million same period last year. The items that affecting comparability for the quarter amounted to minus SEK 4 million, and this is related to the FX effects on our euros loans. Also, very strong operating cash flow, which was SEK 67 million during the quarter to be compared with the SEK 15 million that we had a year ago. Again, very much driven by strong cash conversion in our own production. Cash flow after investments amounted to SEK 47 million to be compared with SEK 8 million the year before. Our own production generated 100 GWh of green electricity. One year earlier, it was 82 GWh. Increase basically due to stronger winds. Average income from production increased to SEK 756 per MWh compared to SEK 463 per MWh in Q1 2021. All in all, this resulted in an increase in total income from our own production to SEK 75 million to be compared with SEK 38 million a year earlier. Our development business had a total income of SEK 7 million, which was an increase from Q1 2021. This is basically attributable to the revenue recognition in Ranaskär Solprojekt. Solutions came in more or less in line with Q1 2021 at SEK 7 million. We turn to the next page. During the first quarter, we made an investment decision regarding the construction of the wind farm project, Lebo, which is in Västervik Municipality. This project is located in SE3, consisting of 5 turbines with an installed capacity of 6.6 MW each, or 33 MW for the total project. These turbines will be supplied by Siemens Gamesa. In March, I was also appointed a new CFO, forming part of our group management. After the end of the quarter, we signed an asset management agreement with BlackRock regarding four wind farms in Finland. These four wind farms have an installed capacity of close to 200 MW, and are still under construction. In addition to these four, we already manage one of BlackRock's already commissioned wind farms. The total assignment with BlackRock in Finland is about 200 or it's 219 MW. Daniel Cambridge was also appointed as Arise new CCO, responsible for business development and M&A, and with that, our group management also became complete. With that, I'll hand over to Per-Erik again, and we flip page again. Yes, we are done in slide number six. To the left, you can see a diagram showing the development of the company. In general, you could say, the staples show our own production assets, how that developed over time. As you can see, we started up in 139 MW in 2011 and had for a while as well a co-owned asset, that was together with a partner, which we divested in 2018, 2019. We are back on 139 MW today. You can also see the green and orange graphs or curves, and the upper one, the orange one shows the total amount of MW which have been realized by the company, and the green one shows what has been divested. All in all, we have until today's date been realizing some 1.2 GWs or 1,200 MW, and we have divested roughly 1 GW or 1,000 MW. Looking at the number, the total value of the realized, if you translate the megawatts into euros, we have by now realized new wind power for EUR 1.5 billion. That's a quite significant number that we are quite proud of, performing with a small company like Arise. Part of the results from this you can see in the right graph, where you can see our loan-to-value. You can see in 2014, we may have some 40%-54% debt in relation to the value of the assets. Now we have bring that down to below 30% in 2022. This means that we have a very low leverage and also means that we can allow us to have more. We have more possibility to decide ourselves the exposure in terms of hedging activities. We also have a much better situation in terms of profitability in our own assets. By doing this, we are well-positioned to accelerate the growth agenda which we have. The development business has really been the key for us to improve the financial status of the company. With that, we can flip to slide number seven, which shows our project pipeline, some 2,600 MW in total. As you can see in the upper table, we have some 600 MW in later stage development. I can mention here Kölvallen project that we are actually in sales process right now for, so that's ready for sale. We still have a time, we're aiming for to have a financial close second quarter this year. End of second quarter, we already had a investment decision as mentioned on Lebo and so on, five turbines, 30 MW all in all. We are waiting for grid concession from Svenska Kraftnät, but that's also quite close to be ready for sale, so to realize. We are also waiting some decisions from permits for Finnåberget, and we have filed applications for grid and permit for Tormsdale in Scotland as well. We are a bit in a waiting mode for those. I can mention also something about the early-stage development. As we have been communicated, we have an agreement with HT Skogar, and we have ongoing activities now there, doing inventories and bird studies, et cetera, started up this spring. We have also started up activities with a new early-stage development project in Scotland as well, starting with some bird studies and activities connected to that. With that, we flip to slide number eight. Regarding our portfolio expansion, we have seen a bit of a change on the political arena in Norway. There are some more positive comments and initiatives regarding land-based wind power in Norway. We are continuing our activities there with different landowners, and we are also increasing the resources a bit, putting some more manpower into Norway as well, at the moment to try to speed up the activities. We are continuing our work with the large scale solar project in the UK. Key activity there is the grid connection to find a solution for grid connection. Together with our partner, we'll have activities and concrete discussions in Poland regarding acquisition of projects in different development phases in Poland. That's ongoing as well. With that said, we move over to slide number nine. The market developments. I think you're all seeing that we have an extreme situation on the power markets, very much driven by natural gas and what's happening in Ukraine. We have a strong price momentum on the forward power curve, driven by increasing fuel prices and also CO2 prices staying on a high level. On top of that, we see a weak hydrological balance. It's quite dry in Southern Norway, which also push the prices up. We have seen Southern Norway lifting the system price relatively to SE4. System price and SE price area 4 prices in Sweden has been quite even, you could say, and system price even a bit higher over in quarter one. SE2 and SE1, one is still lagging behind, supported by relatively cold and dry spring. We had a number of bottlenecks in terms of the transmission system, which basically is the driver for the high, the large deviations between different price areas or different, the big gap between different price areas. German prices have been cooling off a bit in the front, but gaining on the curve. We can see 2023 power prices at all-time high levels, above EUR 200 per MWh. We have quite extreme prices also in 2024, above EUR 170 per MWh. All in all, power markets on record levels. Again, we had a bit calmer market in January, but the war in Ukraine has really pushed prices. I hand over the word to you, Markus. Yeah. That's then on page 10. Thanks, Per-Erik. If we look a bit into the power production and the pricing on the left-hand side, you can see that, as mentioned previously, was another quarter with very strong market prices in Q1 2022, illustrated by the bar charts. The green dot is our realized prices, which we see again is a bit on record levels, although they are still well below the market average. This is again explained by, you know, an extreme volatility in the market with large price differences, not only between days but also between hours. As well as explained by our hedges, which also are below the market average. On the top right-hand side, something about our production. January, February were very good production in our own production assets. March, a little bit less so, but all in all, we produced 100 GWh, which for this quarter was more or less in line with budget and some 18 GWh higher than the year before. In the bottom right-hand side, our hedging portfolio, we have for 2022 the remaining quarters, about 40% of our production volumes hedged at EUR 80 per MWh. We now continue to hedge also into 2023 when we see attractive prices. We have also started to hedge into 2024. Turning to page 11, some comments on our GE farms related to our production. We have incurred some additional CapEx during Q1 2022. We also expect some additional CapEx also during Q2 for some measures that's necessary in these affected GE farms. We have made, and we will make further claims and demands for compensation from the former service provider, and we hope to be able to reach an agreement and settlement during Q2. Otherwise, we're well prepared and ready to initiate an arbitration process. I'll turn to page 12, then I'll hand over to Per-Erik again. Yes, yes. Thank you. Some update on the construction projects ongoing. As said, we never had as much in terms of MW under construction as we have right now. Starting with Skaftåsen project, as we have been communicated earlier, we have quite extensive delays. We expect to have a COD at earliest in quarter three 2022. The turbine deliveries are delayed, which is the main reasoning behind that behind this. We also have some cost increases that being communicated earlier on grid connection. Civil works, grid works are basically finalized, so it's the installation works on the turbines remaining and there have been a bit of a lot of delays for different components by different reasons as well. Looking at the impact from this, we, it will be partly limited due to the contract structure we have. We have some capped risk in the RTB sales. Looking at Ranasjö and Salsjöhöjden, the later project, some 242 MW that we sold to TRIG in July last year. We started up the project last summer. Yes, after December 2021. We have experienced. We are in a quite turbulent market in terms of raw materials, steel prices, fuel prices, as you all have seen, and that has impacted and will impact the project. We have seen steel prices basically doubling beginning of this year. But here as well we see that the consequences will be partly limited by the contract structure we have. We have... When we do RTB sales, we have some capped risk, which will give us some protection, but obviously it will have some negative impact on the profitability of the projects. We expect our completion in quarter one 2024. We flip to slide number 13. The key activities for 2022, an update. The first bullet, to establish a Green Financing Framework, that is actually completed. We have received an external validation for operations by CICERO Shades of Green, and we have been classified as dark green. That's ticked off. The reasoning for doing this is, of course, to attract capital for our growth plan, basically. We had done, as mentioned by Markus Larsson, we had an investment decision on Lebo, so that's also ticked off. Remaining to do is to finalize the sale of Kölvallen. That's on the way, and we are still aiming for second quarter this year. We're also awaiting grid concession on Skaftåsen, which I believe I mentioned earlier. We are working, as communicated before as well, on the to secure the product pipeline in Poland and the UK. That's on the way as well, and we hope for, also have some concrete result at present this year. With that said, I think we are through the presentation. Looking at in general at 2022, I think we have quite high expectations that it will be a good year for Arise. With that said, I thank you for the attention and leave the floor open for questions. Thank you. If you have a question for our speakers, please press zero and one on your telephone keypad. The first question comes from Olof Sandh, ABG. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, gentlemen. A couple of questions from my side. First, talking about the cost inflation. You're saying you're limiting the effects. Is it possible to say whether, you know, you still have parts in the projects that are still open, or is everything, sort of all the big cost drivers, limited through contractual agreements? If you could expand a little bit on that would be great. Then the second thing is also on cost inflation going forward. When you look at Kölvallen, for example, costs are increasing and also the future projects in the pipeline, are you able to retain the original margin you expected out of a project like Kölvallen through higher selling prices? Or should we expect a slight squeeze on those as well? If I start with those two, then I have a third one as well. Okay. I think, yeah, I can take these questions. If we start with the construction projects, it's a bit different situation if you compare Skaftåsen and Ranasjö & Salsjö, we have a bit different situation. Skaftåsen is. We are actually at the end of the project. I would say that the raw materials, et cetera, are fixed. It's basically the delay part and the cost that's already incurred on grid in Skaftåsen. We're in it. It's a bit complex situation. There will obviously be LDs on delays from the supplier, and also there will be pre-commissioning revenues. It's a bit of a complex calculation to do that. We expect that it should be quite a limited impact versus what we have communicated before on that one. We will have some more input on that next quarter when we come closer to COD. When it comes to Ranasjö & Salsjö, it's a bit of a different story since that is earlier in phase. Here we can see extraordinary cost that incurred by, yeah, you could say that. It's almost a force majeure situation in terms of the cost, the escalating costs as we see. We have also some indexations in different contracts. Here we will have some direct impact from the extreme situation we have in the market right now. It's difficult for us at this moment to guide how much because it's a subject for discussions with different suppliers. I think we will have more input on this in the next quarter presentation. Here as well, we have sold both this project to Ready-to-Build, which means that we are a bit protected by the contracts we have with suppliers and investors. The second question was regarding Kölvallen. Yes, we will see increase in CapEx level quite dramatically as well, but we also see compensating that is also compensated by the fact that we have a quite strong market. There is a bit of imbalance between the access to good project like Kölvallen and the capital that is in the market. There is larger demand of products versus access to capital in the market and investors. The appetite is still, as we see it, quite strong in the market. We believe that we cannot guide on how much we will expect to earn on Kölvallen at this stage. We can at least say that we see a fairly good situation in the market. We expect a good product like Kölvallen should have a good profit. Very good. Thank you. My last question is about Poland. Can you talk a little bit about you know the types of the sizes of the projects that you're looking at in Poland and also if it's you know differs between technologies if you're looking at PV as well as onshore and so forth? So far, we have been focusing on PV, and we have been in a few bid processes as well on different scale of development portfolios, you could say. We have some concrete ongoing discussions on some larger portfolios, but we are also interested to look into smaller developers because it has been a quite competitive market until now. Certainly we saw last year that we were a bit behind in the bidding process in terms of valuations. But I think we hope to have something realized this year, so some first acquisition. Mainly we are looking into solar PV. We are in bidding process of in some larger portfolios at the moment. The outcome, we will see. Very good. Thank you. That's all for me. Thanks. The next question comes from Johan Rogen, Handelsbanken. The line is now open. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, good morning, everyone. Some of my questions have been answered, but the outcome or the future for the Lebo project, I know you have been working on different options. Where are you on that discussion right now regarding keeping, selling, or doing some kind of mix between the two? Yeah, it's, I would say that that's still an open question. I think the performance we had within the company until now means that we have the flexibility to decide later, as we have a quite strong financial position. I would say that we will not make a decision until we have the project in operation. That's still open. I think from my personal side, I believe it's good in the long run to own production assets. I'm quite sure about that. With that said, we haven't decided yet. Okay. Thank you very much. That's all for me. There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to you, speakers. No, I think we are through, and if there are no further questions, I think I would like to thank you all for participating. If there are anything that pops up, just drop an email and we will answer ASAP. Thank you very much. Thank you.
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