Good morning, everybody. pleasure having you all participating the Scandinavian Biogas Q4 result and report video conference. My name is Matti Vikkula. I'm the CEO of the company. I have also here our CFO, Anna Budzynski, participating this event. We are going to present in this meeting our Q4 results, but we are also going to touch and describe our new long-term target. During the call, I'd be great if you would have questions already during the presentation. Please raise your hand and we will see that you have the opportunity to make your questions. You are also welcome to make your questions then after the presentation. Would like to start with our long-term targets and then also describe the background, why we are thinking so, why we have defined the long-term target as we have done, and then go into the details of the Q4 report itself. We have decided to set a target of 3 TWh biogas by 2030, mainly bioLNG. We see that the market which we are addressing is not only the Nordics, which we have been having had our focus so far. Rather, we see the Northern Europe, including Germany, Benelux, and Poland, potentially U.K., as interesting markets for additional growth investments. This growth ambition is driven by the positive and strong demand for the bioLNG in Europe, especially related to transportation sector. What is worth noting is that our pipeline of new projects is very well aligned with this new target. Besides of the existing business plan, intending to reach 700 GWh, which was confirmed as part of our IPO, we have been working with new opportunities since last summer and even confirmed our say, way of working with board when we had our strategy meeting last autumn. Besides of course, implementing the business plan, growth plan as communicated earlier on, we have had an ongoing activity identifying additional growth opportunities and given those, we have a pipeline which is very well aligned with the 3 TWh target. The earlier communicated 700 GWh at least annual capacity by 2024 is unchanged. In order to be able to achieve this ambition, we made some adjustments in our organization. We have established a growth enhancement function, which is focusing on organic growth opportunities as well as M&A transactions. This function is led by Mikael Wallis Olausson, who earlier on was responsible for our business unit Sweden. Now the operational business is led by Fredrik Henkel as an interim CFO executive for the Swedish business unit. Besides of that, we have also established a group level sales sourcing sustainability function, which is led by Håvard Boland, who continues also to be our business area Norway executive. The purpose is really to enhance the growth by establishing a clear function for additional growth. Why did we decide to increase our ambition level and to reach the 3 TWh 2030? The main driver we see in the market is the heavy transportation, the buses as well. Here we have an example from Scania, the overall portfolio of different vehicles. They have gas vehicles for these purposes. We have also other players in the market providing advanced technologies for gas vehicles, heavy transportation buses, Mercedes-Benz, Iveco, Volvo, MAN, just to name a couple of those. The other segment, which is very interesting way forward is the maritime. We have Viking Line having already two ships, using LNG and having the opportunity even to combine bioLNG usage on those ships. Destination Gotland is already today combining bioLNG with the traditional natural gas LNG product. The base of ships in nearby seas as well as globally using LNG is increasing, is already substantial. Always when you use LNG, you have the opportunity to combine it with bioLNG as well. Very important market segment taking us forward. It's one of the segments which is also favored by the European Commission. Thirdly, the important third important customer segment for using biogas, bioLNG is industrial usage, industrial customers. It's very interesting segment for us even though we believe that the transportation sector is probably the sector where we see the most attractive prices for our products taking forward. Concrete evidence and estimation on the market development. European cooperation organization for vehicles have made an assessment that the number of heavy transportation trucks is going to increase from 2,500 up to 280,000 during the 10 years period. This is the segment which is very attractive for us and would imply then that around 25% of the heavy transportation trucks are using gas as a vehicle energy carrier. The concrete evidence on this is information from Scania as an example. Their sales of gas vehicles has increased last years, aligned with the NGVA estimations and is clearly showing the evidence for additional need of liquid natural gas and liquid biogas combined. Overall assessment of the European biogas demand, we have different reports, analyses available. This slide is summarizing those reports published, what kind of, say, estimates those reports see as relevant way forward. Important is that we have been on a level of 200, less than 200 TWh biogas recently, estimated to grow to 500 TWh within the next 10 years, a bit shorter time period actually, and to reach more than 1,300 TWh by 2040. It's very encouraging that these all these reports published are very well aligned with the long-term growth opportunity. What is going to happen within the bioLNG segment the forthcoming years? This is summarizing the published projects and meaning that the main market areas, markets to produce a bioLNG is the Scandinavian markets, German and Italy. given our ambition to have a very large part of our overall biogas production as bioLNG in 2024, we play already a pretty substantial role in this product segment. What I would like also to flag for is the total emissions when you use different energy carriers within heavy trucks. This slide is summarizing the CO2 emissions by the users during the life cycle of the truck and divided by the distance which they have been carrying different loads. As we see that the LNG so far is providing some benefit compared to diesel, but especially when you go to bioLNG, LBG here, assuming that a certain part of the biogas produced is based on manure, you see that instead of having a emission, CO2 emission, you will actually absorb emissions, and there will be a negative emission, a certain kind of, let's say, carbon capture event. If you combine this kind of, let's say, LBG with LNG, we are also competitive towards hydrogen, assuming that the hydrogen is a blue one, and even competitive with the green one. This is something which is very important for our segment. It's showing the overall emissions divided by the distance driven, not only for the usage, but also for the energy, how it's produced, and given the manufacturing of the truck itself. As mentioned in several of our investor meetings already, we have a large base of different organic waste streams we can use as raw materials. It's more comprehensive than, for example, for biodiesel. The microbiological process to produce it, you need to have a high capability in optimizing the process, having a high stability. That is the core competence of our company. There are different ways to use the raw biogas which is coming out of the process. Also the digestate is often rich in nutrients and can very well used in different purposes such as biofertilizer on agricultural fields. All the time, it's very important to keep in mind the CO2 which we are using and the emissions which we have, it's green CO2 because it's all the time the CO2 which is already in the atmosphere. We are not increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, we are recirculating it. All in all, when one needs to position biogas as an energy carrier to other solutions, we are in a situation where we are a plug-and-play tested application in the market for heavy transportation sector buses, as well as for maritime and industrial usage. Also the production process, for the full value chain is proven, tested, and in use. There is no need for fundamental technological innovations in order to achieve this. This is something which exists, is in use, plug and play. Of course, development opportunities do exist. We are providing an excellent CO2 emission reduction value, especially when using manure as a feedstock. We are in a very circle of the circular economy as a whole. All this, encouraged by the high of a demand on the bioLNG segment for heavy transportation and maritime. I would say so that given the last 12 months, the developments on the customer side has been much more encouraging than what we were expecting like 12 months ago. The paradigm shift is clearly accelerating, and it's making this change process very, very exciting. That was the background on why we have decided to set a new target, 2033 TWh biogas. Now I would like to go to our Q4 interim report and the key highlights on that. As a whole, we had increased sales Q4. It was energy-wise, the highest during 2021. However, we experienced a reduction in the operating EBITDA margin, which was a certain kind of, let's say, disappointment. I will describe a bit later on why. Otherwise, overall, 2021 as a year, we were pleased with some of the key achievements. Would, however, have liked to have a slightly better financial outcome. Key highlights, as mentioned, we have the highest sales volume in Q4. The operational cash flow has been stable. We have already received the ISCC certification for our facility in Norway. This ISCC certification is an important part of the necessary documentation procedure required when you are delivering biogas and exporting it, importing it within Europe. It's a certain kind of, let's say, leading standard for our segment. When looking at our business plan, what we received also during Q4 is the Klimatklivet investment grant for our project in Mönsterås on the max level of SEK 155 million. That has been granted as well. The production in Norway has been actually quite well aligned with our expectations. However, we see some marginal improvement in the utilization, which will then also enhance the profitability substantially because the costs have been taken given the high biogas production as such. What is important that the other one of the investment projects we have in our business plan, Stockholm bioLNG, we have decided, made the final investment decision in December. We have selected Air Liquide as our partner for the bioLNG liquefaction facility. That agreement is also signed. We'll describe a bit more the investment projects later on. Financial key highlights. Total revenue increased to almost SEK 125 million. The majority of the revenue income is related to the acquisition of Ekdalens, which we did one year ago. EBITDA, operating EBITDA was SEK 18.6 million compared to year before, SEK 15 million, and the operating EBITDA margin was 16%. As already mentioned, it's weaker than what was our expectation. We are aiming to reach our 2024 target, 30% operative margin, definitely. Cash flow from operating activities, SEK 11 million positive. This I already mentioned, it's part of the main events after the period. We have confirmed that the target is 3 TWh. We have a very nice pipeline of opportunities, both of organic and M&A-based transactions potentially and is well aligned with this 3 TWh target. I go into the business segments, here we have first Sweden. To mention about the key reasons why the operative margin was lower than we anticipated. One of the key reasons is that even though the overall energy price development in the market, mid and long term, is positive for us, given the fact that the existing biogas agreement, sales agreements, are based on fixed prices with a inflation-related indexing index, it means that we are not short-term able to increase our prices. On the other hand, we are buying some of our raw materials on spot market, less than 10% of what we need. Also, part of our power usage is not hedged. For these two segments, raw material segments, we saw a negative price development, which has impacted our profitability in Q4. For the power sector, the way power prices, the situation is better now taking us forward. It's also worth noting that the production subsidy, biogas production subsidy we received in Sweden 2021 was around 6 million lower than it was 2020. We expect that to be going back to 2020 levels, given the fact that in the budget for Sweden, which has now been confirmed in the parliament, the overall amount to be allocated this year has increased from SEK 200 million to SEK 500 million. We expect that we are going to go back to the levels aligned with the Biogasutredningen, which was analyzed, which was published a couple of years back. Also worth noting that for Ekdalens, the logistics service provider, the cost for their energy biodiesel increased as well. Summary is that overall the positive development long term on the energy prices impacted us for short term, directly or indirectly to some extent, negatively. These are the key points to be flagged in general. In Sweden, we had also a minor maintenance stop for our maintenance activity in Södertörn, and it took a bit more time than anticipated, so that had an impact on the volumes as well. In Norway, as mentioned, We have had a good year compared to 2020 overall. All the actions which were taken late 2020, early 2021 have been successful, and we have been able to achieve a clearly higher stability. However, we see still an opportunity to improve the utilization, capital capacity utilization, with some percentage points and having a very, very high profitability yield on those additional volumes. For our Korean facility, it has been running quite stable way during Q3, Q4, and we are happy with the overall performance in the Korean at the Korean site. As a summary, we have had sales-wise a pretty good quarter, though somewhat lower than expectations, and especially now the operating EBITDA margin has been hit given the arguments I showed or mentioned. When taking forward. Some of them have been now already improved. We are before us, ourselves to be able to then reach the operating EBITDA margin 30%, 2024 ladies. I will give the word to Anna. Hi everyone. Some cash flow highlights. Our cash flow from operating activities was, as we mentioned, 11.3 is a positive. We have in the investment activities, we have some, we have a positive change in investing activities. That's due to our subsidies, the investments subsidy that we receive, when we starting to build our projects. That's coming a bit in beforehand than the investments itself. But we have, due to the investments during the quarter had SEK 71 million in investments, and the subsidies was SEK 85 million. It's net plus of SEK 13 million. The total cash flow for the period, it's a SEK +50 million, mainly due to the subsidies. At cash end, at the year-end was SEK 452 million. Yes. For our financial position in late December, we had total interest-bearing liabilities of SEK 958 million, and the main part of that is the bond, as we have SEK 636 net. It's also including SEK 288 million in leasing debt that we have due to IFRS. Net debt of the cash equivalent is SEK 218, SEK 506 million, net SEK 218 if we exclude the leasing. Yes. Thank you, Anna. Would like to have the opportunity to also describe a bit more in detail the status with our investment projects. As known, we are intending to execute four investment projects at three sites. In Stockholm, we are especially converting a substantial part of the produced biogas into liquid biogas, doing also some capacity extension, but it's mainly converting. That project has been commenced in December. Skåne two was already decided last year, April. It's going to start deliveries later this year, progressing in a very, very good way. Skåne three and Mönsterås projects, we are preparing for the investment decisions, and our expectation is that we are able to make the Mönsterås final investment decision during Q2 this year and starting then the deliveries there early 2024. This implying that the targets we have set for the group, 700 GWh by 2024 capacity. We are very comfortable with that target. The total operating income the same year, at least SEK 750 million, we are also very comfortable with that figure. Our operative EBIT margin, at least 30% the same year, we are also comfortable with this figure. It's worth noting we don't have too much headroom achieving that percentage, especially that year. We see a very good potential taking us forward given the positive price development for the bioenergy product overall. Keeping the solidity on a level of 25% ongoing is something we feel comfortable as well. Couple of words on the Stockholm bioLNG projects. We had a couple of options where we could and would like to have the investment done. Finally, we came to the conclusion we want and will integrate this bioenergy facility with our current existing facility in Södertörn. We will make an investment in Södertörn, integrate the liquefaction facility with the existing Södertörn facility, plus do some improvements and capacity extensions at that site. Besides of that, we will also integrate, connect our site in Södertörn with the gas grid, local which we have in Stockholm region. We have an agreement signed with Gasnätet Stockholm, which is the operator of the gas grid in Stockholm region, offering us the opportunity to have higher flexibility between the facilities in Henriksdal and in Södertörn, and especially the argumentation we have for the larger facility in Södertörn to reach up 200 + GWh production volume. The purpose there or the way to do it is to liquefy Henriksdal volumes or a substantial part of it in Södertörn, which is made possible by this pipeline connection. For this project, a SEK 145 million investment grant has been provided by Klimatklivet and then the project was commenced in December, and we expect to start supplying bioLNG early 2023. An overview on our projects on this slide. As mentioned, bioLNG project Stockholm ongoing. Skogn II is progressing in a very good way and we are expecting to start supplies in Q3 this year. As you remember, we have already signed an agreement with the Dutch supplier of LNG to the local transportation companies in Holland, Germany, Belgium and France. More than 20 filling stations and they want to include bioLNG in their product portfolio. We start delivering them bioLNG from Skogn later this year and then from Stockholm year after. Skogn II preparations are going forward and we would like to make a decision on that FID during Q2, latest on Q3 this year. Mönsterås project in cooperation with the local farmers. We expect ourselves definitely to be able to make the investment decision during the second quarter this year. Negotiations for the technological solution is progressing very well. The last bullet point here is I'm referring to the development for the bioLNG product in the German transportation sector, where a very attractive price regime seems to be able to achieve for especially for such biogas which has a excellent CO2 value, such as manure-based bioLNG. We expect to be able to confirm a offtake still during Q1 this year. That was the background for the 2030 target, 3 TWh, as well as the key highlights from our Q4 report. Please, now we are open also for questions.Any Questions? Yes, hello. This is Adrian from ABG. I'd like to start off with just a few question on the Q4 report and then move on to the 2030 target after that. First of all, looking at Sweden, you mentioned a few reasons for the softer margins in this quarter. What would you say was the main driver, the most important reason? Was it primarily the substrate spot prices that affected you? I think that when we look at the Q4 margin, it's difficult to say that there would be one single reason. I would say that the main reason as a whole is related to the high energy prices because it had both direct and indirect consequences. The direct consequence was that Ekdalen had higher energy prices for their trucks. It also implied that for the part of power which was not hedged, we had to pay market prices. It indirectly it had an impact for the substrate, for that fraction which we buy on the spot, because in general the spot prices were also increased due to the demand for not only for biogas production, but also for biodiesel production. Okay. Do you have a similar sort of share of your substrate supply for Q1 on spot prices as well? How have spot prices developed so far? I would say so that very often it's very common for us that we want to have a longer term feedstock substrate agreements. Typically 80%-90% of what we need is has to be purchased long term, longer term, several years. There is always a certain kind of, let's say, fraction, 5%-10%, which is on spot. That's part of the business concept. Then now the market prices for the spot side, I would say that currently more or less on the same level as they were Q4. For the power side, we have seen some benefits. Okay. We should expect a slightly better situation in the beginning of 2022 for energy prices, but not so much for substrate prices. I think that that is more or less the way how it looks currently in the market. What I would like also to add here is that in Sweden, the production subsidy which we received last year was lower, clearly lower than it was year before due to the fact that the overall money to be allocated was reduced from SEK 270 to SEK 200, and now the total amount is increased in the 2020 budget to SEK 500. We are not yet familiar to how that money is allocated and to which players, what are the practical consequences. We clearly see that there are indications the money will be allocated aligned with the Biogasutredningen recommendations, which implies that we are going back to 2020 levels as we see it. Okay. Also if prices were to remain high on substrate, how long would it take before you can actually renegotiate your current contracts and actually move those prices on? Well, if you are referring to our main agreements, I think when we published the IPO as part of the IPO, the overall average for our facilities then was more than four years. On the average, we are now more... It's a bit shorter compared to where we were then, but the average for the existing facilities is in a range of between three and four years. Also then, you spoke quite a bit about Sweden but didn't mention too much the reasons for Norway having a bit softer margins as well. Are the reasons similar in Norway? Are the sort of market dynamics similar here, or was it something else that affected you? I think that both the feedstock part for spot, the spot part of it and the energy part of it's the same argumentation for both countries or both business areas. What we also see that in Norway we had a good utilization ratio compared to year before. It substantially improved, but we still have a potential to improve it, say like 5% units, and that would give us a very good margin given the fact that the practical operational costs we have already. Okay. Just a question on your 2030 target. You talked about the sort of market growth being the basis for you setting this target. Does the target itself apply, imply that you're going to outgrow the market or grow sort of in line with the market? Our expansion rate is faster than the market growth. Yes. Is it possible to give some sort of indication as to how much of that is going to be organic and how much is going to be acquired growth? It's a very good question. It's too early to be specific for that, but definitely we would like to have M&A-related transactions as part of that growth plan. Definitely M&As will be part of it. It's important for us to be active on the M&A market and be able to find attractive cases and be able to be competitive in those processes. I think that was all for my questions. Thank you for answering all my questions. Yeah. We also have a question from Samuel. Yes, Samuel from Nordea Markets. First of all, thank you for the good and clear presentation. I had one question like connected to the question asked by the ABG. You said about outperforming the market growth, and in conjunction with the announcement of the expansion of the Klerkrone biogas plant, you stated that it's been expanded to meet the demand for the LBG. I'm just making clear here that does this mean meeting the demand, increasing demand mean exactly the paradigm shift in the market in heavy duty, or does it come from your individual existing customers' agreements, or how would you assess the demand? Is it like more of an internal or external factor? Okay. I see what is your question. I would say the demand we see in the market, the growth, it's coming from external customers which we do not have a relationship yet. It's in the continental market there is a high demand for bioLNG. That will mean that we will open a relationship with new customers. As mentioned, Rolande is one of those already. We clearly see that we are working with the new ones, both in the Nordic market but also in the continent as well. All right. Perfect. Thank you. Any other questions? Not I can see. Okay. If we are not having any other questions, thank you very much for participating. We are having a very exciting story taking us forward. The paradigm shift is accelerating, and we are really looking forward to the new opportunities in the market and feel comfortable to achieve the long-term targets as defined. Thank you very much. Have a good day.
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