Cenergy Holdings SA (CENER) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I am Alex Benos, CFO of Cenergy Holdings, and I'd like to welcome you on this sunny afternoon to today's live webcast on our company's 2025 financial results. Next to me on today's call to comment and discuss our segment's performance and outlook for 2026 are Mr. Ilias Bekiros, General Manager of Corinth Pipeworks; and Mr. Kostas Savvakis, General Manager of Hellenic Cables. Let us now follow together the highlights of our results. 2025 has been a year of very strong performance. It was characterized by growth both in revenue and operational profitability, disciplined execution in both segments and margin expansion. The adjusted EBITDA for the year was equal to EUR 348 million, an increase of 28% from last year, while the revenue surpassed the EUR 2 billion threshold, reaching EUR 2.1 billion, 15% higher than last year, with both segments showing very strong momentum in sales. Our backlog is a robust EUR 3.4 billion, slightly higher than the one we announced on Q3 2025. And margins have reached almost 17%, record levels for both segments, especially steel pipes, as we will discuss in a while. The free cash flow generation was also strong at EUR 23 million, which allowed us to finance more than EUR 260 million of CapEx. Leverage is still at very low levels, almost 1x EBITDA and even lower if we allow for the cash we received 15 months ago from the share capital increase in October '24 and with both segments showing important operational achievements, a capacity expansion that we've discussed quite often in the past for the Cables business, both for the offshore facility, which is now completed and for the onshore facilities, the 2 plants in Greece, which is almost done and which is expected to wrap up in the first half of this year. As for steel pipes, it is showing its commitment to sustainability since it has completed the largest industrial rooftop photovoltaic system in Greece, giving almost 80% of its needs in electricity from renewable energy sources. And at the same time, it has also completed the important cement weight coating for steel pipes, which allows the company to get into deep offshore projects. All of the above has put us in a good path towards setting an EBITDA guidance for 2026 in the range of EUR 370 million to EUR 400 million, meaning that we are very likely to reach the medium-term ambition set in 2024. I remind you that was in the range of EUR 380 million to EUR 420 million. We are expecting to reach those levels 1 year earlier. So let's see together now the group key financial figures. First, looking at sales. As I said, revenues surpassed EUR 2.06 billion, a 15% increase from last year. And if we break that into the well-known projects and products business units, we start from the focus on cables projects, which showed a 38% increase from last year, reaching almost EUR 790 million for the year, with steel pipes projects following suit with a lower increase in monetary terms, but an important increase in volume terms. As laid out in our press release, there was an increase of 17% in volume terms, which means that all these production enhancements that were made in the previous years and that lead to better production planning and execution led to higher volumes, which will sooner or later, of course, bring an increase in euro sales, dollar sales, I mean, monetary sales as well. And we should, of course, take into account in this environment that until Q3, the prices in the steel pipe market was -- were lower and that a weak U.S. dollar made receipts in euros seem lower just by the translation effect. The important thing for steel pipes here is not the 4% increase in monetary value of sales, but the fact that an efficient production and the modern CWC line give a much stronger revenue growth expectation. Then we do have, of course, cable products, which showed a significant increase of 14% in the sales. You should also note that the split that we see between projects and products in cables is clearly moving towards projects. It started in 2024 rather shyly, I would say, with a 52% share for projects at that time, EUR 572 million versus EUR 526 million. And that is now clear. In 2025, we have EUR 789 million from projects and only EUR 600 million from products. So the share of projects this year is around 57%. I will not comment a lot on the hollow sections sales in the steel pipes, which remain constant around EUR 25 million to EUR 30 million every year. From a geographical standpoint, we should really keep 2 messages if we look at this timeline of evolution for sales. The first one is that the prevailing share of Europe for the group, it has grown from 42% to 48% to 66%. So it's going towards 50-plus or 60-plus percent of the revenues and the shrinking share of Greece. The penetration in the Americas is still moving around, having its ups, having its downs. This, of course, is expected to change over the next years once the Maryland Cables facility is completed, and that will give an impact on group sales starting in 2028. The value over volume strategy is still a central point in our company. That is clearly shown by the fact that a 15% in turnover translates in almost double increase in operational profitability. So we do care much more about the value we offer our clients and the profit we offer to our stakeholders rather than the volumes per se. Margins are again very strong. They gained more than 170 basis points from 2024, reaching almost 17%. A part of it is due, of course, to the exceptional performance of Corinth Pipeworks, but the trend in cables is the strong underlying factor since projects will continue to occupy more of the cables revenue and their margins, as we all know, are the stronger ones, and they will keep rising. More of that, of course, will be given to you later by the General Manager of the segment. Looking at the backlog. The backlog is still a robust number, EUR 3.4 billion at the levels of 2024. This is really, you should look at the backlog as a water tank result. It means that it depends on the inflow of new awards, but also the outflow due to execution. And if we look at the -- first at the Cable segment, the awards that the Cable segment got in 2025 were over EUR 800 million. But as extra Corinth capacity, I mean, the extra capacity in the submarine facility came into play during the same year, we had more than EUR 900 million, EUR 950 million executed for projects of previous years, including parts in the frame agreements, which means that the cables backlog actually shrunk a bit since we had more projects executed than gained. This does not, of course, decrease or diminish in any sense, the very important amount of new awards gained throughout the year. For steel pipes, the story is a little bit different. The new orders were higher than the projects executed and invoiced during 2025, and that led to a backlog of almost EUR 0.5 billion, EUR 490 million. The important part, however, is found in the right hand of the slide in front of you, which is diversification. If we look at the cables backlog, one could say that it's not a geographical diversification, which is a strong point since most of the backlog is concentrated in Europe. Of course, we plan, as I said, to slowly change that with the cables plant in the U.S., which will be operational in the second semester of '27. The important point of cables is the bottom part, the applications split, which is rather balanced, 44% in interconnections due to grid enhancements necessary in Europe and elsewhere, another 30% in offshore wind and another 30% in other, which include frame agreements. For CPW, the story is, again, a little bit different. CPW is more diversified in geographies with a large chunk of the backlog of the current backlog in Americas and the rest equally split, one would say, between Europe and the rest of world. An important part here is that CPW is earning awards in the U.S. despite the uncertainty in geopolitics and the tariffs proposed and imposed -- not proposed, imposed by the U.S. Administration. This means that the clients are willing to bear that extra cost in their budget in order to receive top-tier pipes for their project, especially deep offshore where CPW has a clear advantage. And in application using our pipes, we see that a large part, a significant part is in fossil fuel networks, oil and gas, but CCS keeps on a noteworthy 20% share in future revenues. Profitability. Profitability rose at EUR 250 million profit before taxes from EUR 180 million last year. The important factors that we should follow here is EUR 61 million more gross profit from the Cable segment, EUR 14 million from steel pipes, higher, of course, SG&As because requirements increase with revenue rising lower finance charges of around EUR 18 million, EUR 17.7 million without excluding the FX cost. What is this cost of EUR 6.6 million that you see on the chart. The EUR 6.6 million is the delta from FX losses and gains that we had in 2024. I remind you, these are due to the fact that we have a U.S. dollar exposure. The U.S. dollar exposure is due to the needs that we do have for our U.S. plant. And as the U.S. dollar weakened throughout the year, that produced FX accounting losses. And there is also a lower impairment -- higher impairment, sorry, than 2024. The rest are just adjustments from last year. So we arrived at a PBT of EUR 249 million, which then translates into EUR 194 million in bottom line profit after tax. I just note here that if you have followed through the financial results of our competitors, you will see that we are now close in absolute terms to the results to the bottom line of 2 out of 3 of our competitors despite the fact, of course, that they do have, I would say, at least 70% to 100% higher revenue than we do. And this is a very promising scenario for us, and we're trying to really keep it going because as you all know, Cenergy Holdings is deeply focused on delivering returns. That was the message of the management throughout all these 3 last years. The share price has shown tremendous performance. It has more than doubled from its level of the share capital increase in October '24. The return on capital employed is close to 30%. It is the highest versus all competitors in the same industrial sector, and it's due, of course, to the profitability margins, which are very strong. And given these 2 positive metrics, the company would like to share some of this fruit of success with its shareholders and especially those that followed the company in this trip to growth, which is still ongoing. That is why the Board of Directors will propose to the Ordinary General Meeting in May, the distribution of EUR 0.26 of dividends per share, an increase which may seem very large in absolute terms, more than 80%, but still gives a yield of 1.25% compared to the share price of today, in line with industry peers. The company managed to generate positive free cash flow throughout the year. The EBITDA of EUR 340 million was enough, together with the changes in working capital, was enough to repay -- to pay income tax, to pay finance charges and to cover all CapEx payments for the year, excluding those that were due to be financed by the share capital increase. So if we look at the adjusted free cash flow, as we call it here, this is a positive EUR 23 million. It might not seem as a high conversion rate of EBITDA to free cash flow, but it is still very positive given the important amount of CapEx undertaken throughout the year. If we, of course, deduce the CapEx payments for the U.S. plant, which are financed by the share capital increase cash, this turns into a negative free cash flow, and then you have almost the same amount of money that we had in the beginning of the year. We are left with the same amount of money at the end of the year. In this calculation, of course, I should be very clear to say that the CapEx, which is not due, but which is -- but whose objective is to develop the U.S. plant has a specific availability through what I would call cash in the drawer. So although in accounting terms, it is included in the CapEx payments of the group and of the Cable segment, from an analysis point of view, it should be kept aside in a sense, it is like developing like establishing a new company from the bottom up in the United States of America. For that company, we have received money through the share capital increase. This money will be spent most of it in this year as well as construction works are in progress as planned. And if need be, next year, we will see alternative ways to finance maybe working capital or other small charges that will come up after the factory is close to operation. The balance sheet remains very disciplined. As I told you, there were EUR 263 million, almost EUR 264 million addition to assets, EUR 43 million for the U.S. plants, EUR 94 million for the offshore cables facility in Corinth, EUR 98 million for the 2 facilities in Thiva and Eleonas. Thiva is almost finished. Eleonas is also in very good shape. It will be fully really operational and ready to show its image as a center of excellence for low voltage and telecommunication cables in September this year and another EUR 29 million from the Steel Pipe segment. The net debt is low. We had only an increase of EUR 50 million, which leads to a leverage ratio of 0.6x if the cash from the share capital increase is included. If it isn't, this 0.6 increases to 1.04, which is very respectable indeed. Finally, the negative working capital that we see at the end of the year is really an issue of our business models with both segments dealing primarily with projects, which means that the project execution timelines and the revenue recognition timeline affect the working capital, which is recorded on a specific date. Milestone payments during the last month of the year may push working capital lower. Now they pushed it to a negative level. For your analysis, however, you should keep in mind that the normalized level of working capital for the group would be between 6% and 9% of sales, as we have also mentioned in the past. Turning to segments. I start with cables. Cables, the story, I think, is a very clear and positive one. You have a 20% increase in sales, a 34% increase in EBITDA and a 44% increase in earnings. That's the usual waterfall of a successful company in a growing sector. Our competitive advantage, as we said often in the past, is the same and remains the same, operational efficiency, flexibility and commitment to quality. Mr. Savvakis will elaborate on all these points later. As for CPW, the story here is a 4% increase in revenue in turnover. That translates to a 15% increase in adjusted EBITDA and to a double -- more than double, 36% increase in EBT. This is an amazing performance of a top-tier industrial producer in a rather mature sector where some larger competitors are already showing serious weaknesses. And the very low net debt is really linked to the great working capital management for a sector where the raw material still cannot really enjoy the privilege of market quoted commodity as is aluminum and copper. Finally, after all that, we will now turn into the forward-looking perspectives of the company. I will first pass on the floor to Mr. Kostas Savvakis, General Manager of Hellenic Cables, for his thoughts on 2026.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Alexandros. I would also like to welcome you today in this webcast with the Cenergy Holdings results. May I say that in 2025, we are glad to say that the Cable segment achieved the most successful year-to-date. This was actually based on strong foundations that we decided the previous years, and we also took advantage favorable market conditions. All this resulted in a record-breaking turnover and profitability, as Mr. Benos, as Alexandros just said. We need also to highlight that major expansion programs across both onshore and offshore manufacturing plants in Greece are nearly completed. And there is also significant progress that has been made in the construction of our Maryland facility in the United States. A couple of financials. We just saw that revenue for 2025 reached EUR 1.46 billion, marking a 20% year-over-year increase. This important growth was actually driven by the continued execution of submarine and underground projects, along with resilient demand that we faced for cable products. A couple of examples of notable deliveries last year, we had the Ostwind 3 project for 50 hertz in Germany. We also produced the export and the inter-array cables for the Baltic 2 and 3 offshore wind farms in Poland for Equinor. And also in the land cable side, we manufactured the 220-kilovolt underground cables for the Gennaker projects sold. Adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 241 million with the margins improving to 16.5%, reflecting disciplined project execution high utilization rates across our production facilities and of course, favorable evolution of the sales mix. We -- Alexandros said with you, we are happy to say that we had EUR 800 million of new awards last year in both land cables and subsea and offshore business, which resulted in a backlog of almost EUR 3 billion, actually it's EUR 2.9 billion. And this order book includes turnkey projects in the high-voltage market as well as long-term framework agreements, primarily in the medium voltage market. Some recent awards that were also press released is the BC Wind offshore wind farm in Poland by Ocean Winds. The RTE project for Dunkerque Offshore Wind Farm in France and also here in Greece by our client IPTO. It's the interconnection between Corfu Island and Igoumenitsa. And of course, on top of that, we have several framework agreements with European distribution networks that mainly involve low and medium voltage cables. This diversified backlog in applications, products and geographies continues to bolster confidence in our future performance. On top of that, this order book provides very strong visibility for the coming years and reinforces our position, the position of Hellenic Cables as a key enabler in the energy transition. For 2026, may I say that we expect full utilization of all our manufacturing plants. If we want to go to Cross Atlantic now, turning to United States. The development of our cable manufacturing facility in Maryland is progressing on schedule. We are on track. And we anticipate to enter the dynamic market of North America in the second half of 2027. It's important to say that U.S.A. market conditions remain strong. The grid needs to be replaced due to its age. It's quite old, the U.S. grid. And it also needs to be expanded and modernized in order to accommodate the increased demand for the data centers. And the Maryland facility, it's important to highlight this once operational, will be strategically located and positioned in the data center's development map. If you have a look on the East Coast, you will realize that we are exactly on the center on the epicenter of this development. Our segment continues to experience strong demand across onshore and offshore projects as well as solid demand for the cable products. The high-voltage market, it is mainly driven by interconnections and offshore wind. This market remains robust. And we just stated that electricity grids are expected to see further growth, fueled mainly by investments in the replacement extension or modernization. Our investments and capabilities are designed to capitalize on these strengths, in order to enter the next phase of growth with enhanced manufacturing capacities and strong commercial momentum. In summary, for the Cable segment, please allow me to say that the ongoing transformation of the energy landscape is generating demand for our products and services. We face favorable market conditions driven by rising electricity needs, increased integration of renewable energy sources and the replacement of aging networks. All these have generated strong traction for Hellenic Cables. This is a positive trend that we expect to remain in the coming years. Overall, the capacity expansions at our manufacturing facilities, our entry in the North American market through the Maryland plant and our substantial backlog of orders reinforce optimism about our future performance. That was about the Cables segment, Alexandros.

Thank you, Kostas, very much. Thank you. So now I will turn -- I will give the -- pass on the floor to Ilias Bekiros, the General Manager of Steel Pipe segment, to talk about the outlook and the performance of the steel pipes.

Thank you, Alexandros. Thank you, Kostas. Also, I'd like also to welcome all in this 2025 review of a truly outstanding year for Cenergy for cables. And as you can see also for our Steel Pipe segment, it has indeed been a year of records as it was last year, but even more than that, we have reached right now, as Mr. Benos mentioned already, record numbers in terms of EBITDA at EUR 108 million, record numbers in turnover, almost EUR 600 million, record number in terms of margin of 18.1% in terms of EBITDA. And at the same time, as mentioned already, with a very reasonable working capital percentage of around 5% to 6% and leverage of debt to EBITDA of 0.3, return on capital employed over 30%. These are outstanding numbers for a sector, as we mentioned, that it is considered to be mature and not at a growth phase. And maturity means both in terms of demand and also, of course, in terms of competition that we closely monitor. So there are competitors from outside that are far away right now from our numbers and our performance and face strong hurdles and strong headwinds in terms of their backlog. While at the same time, we grow and we capitalize more and more in what we do. This is a Corinth Pipeworks model that obviously works, and we are very proud about that. At the same time, from the demand side, we can say that generally, there is a sustained demand when it comes to natural gas across the globe. We always look at the large diameter pipes in demand on a global scale, on a global basis. We can see a lot of demand in Asia Pacific right now. North America is super strong. The offshore and deep offshore market are always remain quite strong. Europe is weak from the traditional markets, but heading towards stronger terms when it comes to carbon capture and storage mainly. And hydrogen, even though lagging a little bit. Let's not forget, of course, that for us, what is important is that the infrastructure is being built right now, both for carbon capture and for hydrogen. The molecule of hydrogen will come at a certain point to get into the grid, but the infrastructure needs to be done right here right now and the backbone is being built with us having a very strong participation on all this. So all in all, we are cautiously optimistic for the next 2 to 3 years when it comes to the momentum of the sector, and we are truly optimistic on what we do. From the Greek side, from the Greek facility, also, as you can see from the more analytical figures, our CapEx gets smaller year-on-year basis. We have done already our investments in debottlenecking, in incremental capacity increases and cost efficiency. Let's not forget that one of the key points of our success is not only the increased sales in terms of value, but of course, the cost efficiency and the cost effectiveness. This is the model that we keep being very focused on and having a very strong control in our cost structure, and this is going truly well. Last but not least, probably you have seen our latest news, today's news of an acquisition of a new facility, Hartlepool LSAW line in the U.K. is part of our own -- of our plants now of Corinth Pipeworks strong force. This is an LSAW plant with a very strong heritage from the past, very similar business model in the past with the LSAW part of Corinth Pipeworks. Nevertheless, this plant has suffered a lot of changes of ownership without any one of them being fully focused on the pipe sector. So right now, we -- this was an asset deal, not a company deal, and these assets are being -- going to be fully utilized by Corinth Pipeworks, and we are really proud for that. This doubles our LSAW capacity and brings us with a new non-EU production footprint that is definitely important for various places geographically. And of course, very important even for the U.K. decarbonization sector, which is strong and very -- and powerful right now with various carbon capture projects and hydrogen projects being built and also designed for the future. So all in all, we remain optimistic. We are keeping costs under control, margins under control, and we look at the future with quite a lot of optimism, at least for the next 2, 3 years that we can foresee right now. Thank you, Alexandros.

Thank you, Ilias. So I will go back now to our boring numbers and the story continues. Given all the above, the performance of this year and the outlook ahead, we estimate operational profitability for next year between EUR 370 million to EUR 400 million, reaching our medium-term ambitions a year earlier. I will close with a note on our financial calendar since it is slightly altered than last year. By the end of March, our annual report will be published. End of May, we do have our Ordinary General Meeting of '26 and the Trading Update on the first quarter results. And this year, it comes earlier just before your summer vacation. We will announce in the first week of August, the financial results for the first semester of 2026. I would like to thank you so much for your attention, and I now turn to our operator to give you a brief guidance on how questions and answers will work.

[Operator Instructions]

Thank you, Mrs. Koraka. I will start with a question that was, in a sense, answered through the presentation, question by Mr. [ Bruno Rage ]. The capacity expansions in cables for Europe, I mean, for Greece, they are all in production in operation right now. The only part which is expected to enter in 2026 is the small part concerning the land, the onshore cables in Thiva and Eleonas, medium and high voltage and mostly low voltage. As for North America, as we said, the operation of the plant will start in the second semester of 2027. Of course, it will need at least 15 months to ramp up. So that means that the actual monetary impact on revenue will be seen in 2028. I now turn -- there is a question by Mr. Marios Bourazanis. Mr. Bourazanis, you have the floor.

Great. I hope you can hear me. Just a couple of questions on my side. I just wanted to ask, given the recent developments involving Iran and considering that aluminum is a key input for cables, if you see any potential impact on your supply chain or on any input availability? And if you could give us an indication of maybe how long your current inventories could cover production needs if these disruptions were to persist? That's my first question. I could also ask my second question. I also wanted to ask on Maryland. You mentioned in the presentation right now that you're expecting the first year to be 2028 of production. Will this be full production? Or will ramp-up be, as you said, more gradual and maybe it will contribute for half a year in 2028. Those are my 2 questions.

Okay. Let me again clarify that, Marios, for the U.S., and then I will let, of course, Mr. Savvakis answer the first question. What we say is that the factory will be operational in the second semester of '27. The factory being operational means it will be producing and selling but no one can expect that in September or October '27, the sales of a brand-new facility will be enough to impact, I use the word impact the Group's revenue. It may be a revenue of $10 million, $20 million, $30 million, which means that the EBITDA will be in the single digits. So that is not something that will change the picture that you see right now. That picture will change by the end of fiscal year '28 when we will have much more ramped up production in the areas of hundreds of millions of dollars. I've many times, I often said that the capacity of that plant is around $250 million. Nobody can say when exactly that capacity will be reached, but we are confident that it will be reached by the end of '28. That's why the impact to the Group's numbers will be in '28. The factory will be, however, operational, producing and selling by the second semester of '27. Kostas, you have the floor on the aluminum supply chain question, please.

Yes. Indeed, that's a very reasonable question. We actually have no issues due to the war in Iran. We are -- our supply chain has not been disrupted at all, and it's not expected to be all the critical materials we already have in big safety stock in our yard. So I don't see any issue coming up.

That's clear. Just to clarify maybe on Maryland, I was just asking maybe more around licensing and that sort of part of the equation, not so much about production. Maybe if you can comment on that about the timing for 2028 production.

Alexandros, may I?

Yes, of course, of course. Of course.

So indeed, certifications in North America is also part of the process. It's depending on the product range, it can last from months or less actually. So this has been included in our forecast when we say that our first financial year, gradually, it will be the 2028.

That's clear.

There is a question by Mr. Stathis Kaparis. Please, Stathis. We cannot hear you.

Can you hear me now?

Yes. Yes, we can hear you.

I've got 2 questions, if I may. The first one is around CapEx expectations for 2026, including Maryland. Does it make sense that they should remain at around these levels? Again, including the CapEx spend in Maryland and maintenance CapEx for pipes and cables. That's number one. And number two, if you can give us a color on embedded margins on the order book, especially on the pipe segment. I understand you're fairly optimistic. There seems to be quite a decent demand. Do we -- can we maintain the margins around these levels?

Okay. I will start with the CapEx question, and then I will leave, of course, Mr. Bekiros to give you a little bit more color. The CapEx, as I said, for the U.S. plant is another EUR 120 million at least for 2026. And this is just by subtracting out of the EUR 200 million, what has already been spent in '25 and a part of '24. So if we leave out the EUR 120 million, you should expect an amount around EUR 100 million for the non-U.S. plants, meaning Greece maybe the new CPW plant, if Mr. Bekiros wants to give some color on that. The Thiva and Eleonas, and of course, a large part of this EUR 100 million is maintenance because maintenance turns around EUR 55 million to EUR 60 million. So you are left with investments of another -- I would call them -- I wouldn't call them strategic, but value creation investments of EUR 40 million to EUR 45 million for the 2 segments. Ilias, I remind there are 2 questions. The one was about the margins of CPW. If you want to add some color about the Hartlepool plant, please you're welcome.

Yes. So the margins question is a very understandable one, and I can see that there is also a written question around that from Mr. [ Koriass ]. Yes. So you can imagine, first of all, when you are into the project business and there's basically no commodity base load or not really a product base load to be working on or it's very small. That means that depending on the mix of the projects, the margins could really be affected significantly. Nevertheless, as I said, our model lies more on the very demanding sectors on the applications, the offshore, deep offshore applications where the biggest turnover and profitability come from. And this is what you expect to have also in the future. So yes, the 80% is an outstanding number. we might see that going down a little bit in the future. But we expect that we will still be more than an average of the competition right now or the sector which might be at 10% or 12% as a standard or as a good case. Therefore, maybe if a 10%, 12% is a characteristic of the sector, we expect to be at a 14% to 16% or even to 18%, as you can see there, and this will remain sustainable. Of course, on the other side, we need to look at the percentages on one side and the values on the other side. So having another facility, of course, brings more quantity that needs to enter into the market. So we expect to increase our turnover in the future with the addition of Hartlepool right now from the U.K. facility. We expect that the margins will be kept at least a sector base plus CPW. And there is the chance, of course, and the possibility that in terms of values, the EBITDA will increase, and we will strive and we will do our best to keep the percentages as high as possible, of course, in all the markets that we are in right now.

Okay. Now there is a question by Mr. Thijs Berkelder. Thijs, you have the floor. Yes. We cannot hear you. Well, maybe it's a technical problem. I will -- we will wait a little bit. I'll come back to you, Thijs. Mr. [ Peter Testa ] now can have -- ask his question.

Yes. Can you hear me fine?

Sure, sure. Absolutely.

Maybe just continuing on from the pipe side since we just touched on that with the new facility. You talked about the capacity related to LSAW relative to current. I was wondering if you could give some sort of context for pipes as a whole as to how much capacity you've acquired? And what do you think the opportunity in the existing backlog? Or is it new business that will bring that business up to current sort of margins?

Yes. So I'd say that generally, as we mentioned, the market is considered to be a mature market. Therefore, we do not foresee that on a global scale on a global basis, especially when it comes to the LSAW part, the demand is rising significantly. Incrementally, we would say that it is rising. And we always need to see on the regional aspects, of course, of this increase. For example, as we said, Asia Pacific is showing increased growth. Middle East is showing increased growth. North America, also other markets in the traditional sector like Europe or like other markets, they are not so strong. But at the same time, we also see increased growth in carbon capture and hydrogen. And this is where mainly also our additional capacity comes into play. So the U.K. facility will accommodate for the North market a lot for the North European market and the Northwest Continental shelf as well as also the offshore and deep offshore markets, especially with carbon capture and hydrogen on a global scale. It's hard to put a number on the total demand globally, how much this increases. There are lots of applications, lots of sectors and subsectors in this. But as mentioned, we expect a small incremental increase in demand, and we expect that we grab a significant piece out of this with the additional capacity that we will have. Especially in the demanding applications, of course.

Okay. And what is the revenue capacity or tonnage? How can you put the context in the totality of current pipe as opposed to just LSAW?

Yes, that is a good point. So right now, if you add up the numbers, you can see that we have around 400,000 tons of capacity spiral, another 400,000 tons of ERW, this is 800,000 tons. Another 400,000 tons of LSW, 1.2 million tons. We have a small ERW line, which adds to 0.15 million tons. So 1.35 million tons is the capacity right now, the nominal capacity of CBW in Greece. And you can add approximately the same level of the LSAW capacity that we have in Greece, it's going to be added from the U.K. facility. So another 400,000 tons. So we reached 1.75 million tons of total capacity of all manufacturing processes right now.

That's very clear. And then on...

Sorry, Peter, because there's a lot of other people waiting. So I have to change a little bit the form. If we do have time, you can come back. All the capacity numbers, of course, Ilias, are nominal.

Nominal as I mentioned.

Okay. So I have to give back the floor to Thijs Berkelder because he was not able to comment before. So Thijs, can you hear us? And can we hear you?

I can year you.

We can hear you. Okay, we can hear you, please.

Great. First, congrats with the strong results and the strong outlook. Can you remind us what the cable project margins were in '25? And yes, I'm also puzzling on Hartlepool, of course, but we meanwhile got some indications. Is Hartlepool already included in your 2026 guidance on revenues and EBITDA or not yet? And what size of order backlog does Hartlepool already have? Thirdly -- sorry, we've seen quite a lot of cable projects being announced by IPTO, but also a lot of pipeline projects being announced, for instance, by Alaska LNG. Can you give us an update when you expect to announce your first HVDC project? And/or when we can expect Alaska LNG to take off?

Okay. I will get the easy ones, and then I will let the difficult ones to my colleagues. The margins of projects, as always, I remind you are as follows: submarine cable projects, they turn at 22%, 23% plus and a little bit higher if it is an EPCI one. Onshore projects, if they are related to an offshore, they are close to 18% to 20%. If not, if they are -- sorry, medium voltage, medium voltage offshore, they are close to 20% if they are related to the submarine and to an offshore wind farm. I'm talking about inter-arrays. If not, the medium voltage cables have lower project margins. As for low voltage and communication, they are in the single digit 5% to 6% to 7%. Now, the Hartlepool numbers have not been included in our budget, neither in terms of revenue nor in terms of EBITDA, nor in terms of guidance, so they are not there. And I will let Ilias, there's a question of when will -- and what do we expect from Hartlepool in terms of money. And for Kostas, what is the expected time of the first HVDC project.

Yes. Just to add on the expectation from Hartlepool and also for Alaska pipeline. Both questions are very accurate and very good ones, good points. So first of all, we have been expecting that Hartlepool since this was operational until around November. There was no backlog heritage that we would get. So actually, right now, the contracts, the customer contracts that we are inheriting are very, very small, up to negligible, I'd say. So we need to build a new backlog or transfer backlog, of course, from what we have and increase furthermore our backlog now for both sides and both facilities. So you can imagine, first of all, exactly as [ Sir Benos ] said, we have not included any provision. The announcement was just done today. So there's no provision on the results from Hartlepool. The second part is also we do not expect significant numbers during 2026 coming from Hartlepool activity exactly because as you can imagine, we need to bring this facility back into normal operation, and there is a need for some minor -- medium minor CapEx that needs to be done, maintenance mainly in order to get that back in order and of course, build new backlog for this facility, which cannot, of course, be expected to be done within 2 or 3 months. This will take a little bit more time. So you will need -- we will need to see later during the year what this might mean for Hartlepool. Yet, we are optimistic that we will build more activity there. From the Alaska side, Alaska Pipeline side, yes, you've seen the news that there is a conditional award right now, which means basically a promise of a commitment from Alaska LNG from Glenfarne to CPW for actually approximately 230,000 to 240,000 tons. This is 1/3 of the project. This is a significant number. It has not been included in any, of course, forecast that we do because it is not an award. It is a conditional one. And of course, as this is a humongous project and needs back in financing, government financing, we expect this to happen within the coming months, but we cannot, of course, commit into whether this is going to happen as an investment decision and a PO in March or in April or in May. I would say though, somewhere within the coming 3 months, we expect more firm news from this project.

Kostas?

Yes. So there was a question about the DC market and products regarding Hellenic. May I little bit highlight and remind that in 2025, we completed the entire 525 kilovolt DC qualification. So Hellenic cables on top of the 320 kV solution, now we are successfully qualified also for the 525 kV. We also press released some months ago that we are approved and we have joined the National Grid in U.K. for the 525 kV frame agreement we have with them. So if I may say, we are heavily tendering for DC projects. And we are on the very right track to step in this market as well.

Kostas, I would like -- since we are discussing on the outlook, there is a chat which was sent out by Martin about our optimism on the offshore wind farm in Northern -- offshore wind farms in Northern Europe. They write lately, many projects have been canceled or postponed. So that makes us a little bit surprised by that statement. Could you explain your optimism? So how many offshore wind farm tenders will be this year in '27? And when looking at the production capacity for inter-array cables, what do we see happening in Europe?

So we have some facts about offshore wind. We see some projects being moving a little bit slower than initially anticipated, but there are some facts. First of all, we had recently a very good announcement from U.K. about the latest allocation round, the AR7, which was marked as the largest auction of its kind in Europe, which had a very, very good outcome of this auction. And we know that in U.K., which is a very mature market, there is the allocation round 8 coming, maybe this year, latest in 1 year time from now. We have seen also other countries getting a little bit -- having a step forward. For example, Poland awarded tariffs to 3 projects in December, 3.4 gigawatt. In Ireland, we saw also project with 1 giga. And if I may go in a little bit more political side, we saw recently the recent North Summit, which was 9 countries, 9 head states, they signed a declaration aiming for 300 gigawatt of offshore wind capacity by 2050. And on top of that, if I may add the energy security and energy independence agenda, in my view and in our view, offshore wind is a necessity for Europe. So yes, indeed, the initial timelines may be moving a little bit slower than initially anticipated, but the facts that I just shared with you are -- we can say that the market remains robust.

I think this is clear. I can have one other -- because I was a little bit abrupt with my friend, Mr. Testa. So if you still have your question, you are still with us, we could go with your last question on that because we are already above our 1-hour slot. Peter, if you can hear us, please jump in. If not -- no, maybe he has left. I will apologize to him later on. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your patience and for your attention. I wish you a very nice afternoon. Thank you again from all of us. Thank you very much.

Thank you.