Cloudberry Clean Energy ASA ($CLOUD)

Hi, and welcome to Cloudberry Clean Energy's First Quarter Presentation. My name is Anders Lenborg. I'm the CEO of Cloudberry, and I'm joined here today by Ole-Kristofer Bragnes, our CFO. We have prepared a presentation for you that we will go through shortly. And please also use the opportunity to ask questions, and we will try to answer as many of the questions as possible after the presentation. The agenda today, we -- I will start off with giving some highlights and an introduction to Cloudberry. [indiscernible] will then take you through the numbers, and I will sum up with some comments on the market and price curves going forward. So let's dive into the presentation. We are very pleased to see that we have increased both the revenue and EBITDA from the first quarter 2025 to first quarter 2026. That's mainly due to a higher power price. We have a realized power price of NOK 1 per kilowatt hour or approximately EUR 100 per megawatt hour. And that is historically a very high power price in the Nordics that has, in combination with the increased production, given a very strong result for the first quarter 2026. As you can see here on the right hand side, we have also then increased capacity, installed capacity and including our projects under construction, we are closing in on 500-megawatt in total and production in our production portfolio. In addition to a strong quarter when it comes to the revenue and EBITDA, we have also continued grow the platform, continue to grow Cloudberry with an entrance into Finland. Very happy. We have followed Finland and the opportunities there over the last couple of years, but we have now entered into the Finnish market with acquiring 50% of the wind farm MLK. We will get back to that in more detail. And in addition to that, we have also entered into the power land sector, and we have started off with a project in Norway, but we are also looking at projects throughout the Nordics. And we will also go into that in more detail later in the presentation. But before going to the details and numbers, I want to give you an introduction to Cloudberry. We have, over the years, developed a profitable independent power producer, profitable IPP. As you can see here, we focus on the Nordics. We have created a platform that covers the full life cycle of our projects from early phase greenfield development until they are in production, and we also have operation and management of our assets. And this is according to our developed own and operate strategy. We want to be able to both develop but also to own the projects that we developed to secure our production portfolio, yielding long-term cash flow to the company. As you can see here, we have now approximately 1.3 terawatt hours in production. But we have also a backlog of projects. The backlog is exclusive projects. We have a project that is permitted, and we have projects under construction. Today, we are constructing a best project in Sweden, battery storage project in Sweden and hydro power plants in Norway. We are in 4 different countries. We're covering 4 proven technologies. We have a hydropower, we have win, we have solar and best in our portfolio. And all this giving Cloudberry a very important flexibility so we can always focus on where we see the best returns. And we have also managed to establish us in 9 different price areas, giving us a very strong power price historically compared to the system price in the Nordics. As you can see, we have developed most of our projects in the South of Norway and Sweden and also in Jackland, in Denmark and now entering Finland also this last quarter. So all in all, flexibility has been very important to stay profitable. We have seen that the CapEx and regulations have affected us up through the years and then we have always been able to focus where we see the best returns. And I think going forward, you will see just more of the same, that we will continue to stay focused, continue to stay Nordic and with proven technologies and try to combine the different technologies to create a base load profile production portfolio to optimize the production and also the profile throughout the year. So flexibility is to be diversified is also key. As you can see here, we have started out with a small hydro portfolio in Norway, 5, 6 years back. And over the years, developed this and entered into Sweden to Denmark and now Finland with other technologies. And just if you look at the development from 2025 to 2026, it has been quite substantial with these new developments, hydro in Norway and entering into Finland in the last quarter. So these are attractive assets. We have also an attractive M&A market. We see a lot of opportunities, and we are quite confident that we can continue this growth continue to develop these assets, both in-house, but also in the M&A market over the next year. Approximately 90% of our portfolio is merchant, and we have secured some PPAs. We have a new PPA last quarter, where we entered into 2027 PPA in Denmark on approximately EUR 85 per megawatt hour. So this is also what we have focused on to develop a diversified portfolio and continue to grow with. And that's also important over the next years to continue to grow the production portfolio. I'm very happy to finally manage to be across Nordic platform. As I said, we have been following Finland up through the last couple of years to see what's the right timing to enter the market, where can we find the right assets and projects for us to enter the market. And when MLK, we got the opportunity on MLK and at a level below CapEx, we found that this is both the right timing and the right entry into Finland. And we're also very happy that we are now partnering with an energy that is only the other 50% of MLK and we have already started to look at developing the assets further with the best battery storage system in connection with the wind farm. And we are also looking at other opportunities in Finland. It's a natural development of us entering the Finnish market, and we also continue to grow the portfolio in Finland over the next couple of years. And this is also a very natural development of the Cloudberry strategy and the Cloudberry competence. We have, over the years, built a team and experienced team and a lot of experience with the local stakeholder management, securing land, securing grid capacity and we have seen that this powered landmark is quite attractive, and we have the competence in-house now, both on developing their projects, but also the market and how the customers are looking at the powered land opportunities. So over the last quarters, we have developed a portfolio. We have started out in Norway, securing the first site, 160-megawatt site in just south of Oslo in [ NO2 ]. And we are continuing to develop other opportunities in Norway and Denmark and Sweden. And we will -- we're looking at the pipeline, I think, of around 1 gigawatt of opportunities, but it's just too early to say how much this will be. But we see that this is attractive and also it's attractive for some of the data center players to have a gateway to the Nordics and have a Nordic portfolio. So this is something we find very interesting, and we will continue to develop, and we will continue to also update the market when we have the next deadline. Just a couple of comments on the strategy. We continue to focus on being a profitable we continue to develop projects and acquire through M&A projects that are accretive. We want to stay fully financed with a strong balance sheet. So as you saw here in Finland, we have used our share, and that's a currency that is getting more and more popular. So I will also think that this is a one way to finance the opportunities also in the future. And we have cash and we have a facility that we can use, but we think it's in a combination with the share, this gives us a lot of flexibility and also to continue to develop our platform. We have rightsized the platform last quarter, taking down our greenfield development capabilities. And now we have focused more on the M&A short-term brownfield opportunities and strengthened our team now on the M&A side and strategy side. So the strategy is pretty much the same as it has been earlier, but adding powered land to the mix. And of course, we are focusing on the ESG and safety. We have 0 incidents last quarter. And we are continuing to reporting and continue to focus on the footprint and ESG focus in Cloudberry and we are also very pleased to see that we get recognized by the banks on how we are performing on the ESG side. So with that, I think I will just finish off and give the word to Ole-Kristofer, and he will take you through the numbers. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Anders. My name is Ole-Kristofer Bragnes, I am the CFO of Cloudberry, and very happy to take you through the financial story of this quarter. So first of all, we've had a very strong growth in our balance sheet since inception and the Cloudberry listing in 2020. We raised some equity over the years, and that has enabled a lot of growth within the production volumes, the platform Cloudberry -- Cloudberry has a strong Nordic IPP. We have reduced increased our asset base, our producing portfolio, creating long-term cash flow they use growth within the project segment and the remaining of the platform. We also done some capital recycling throughout the years to showcase the value of the platform that we have built and also realized development gains. You see this all through the balance sheet development through the equity increase in total assets. And we've also been very cautious with that throughout the years. Capital discipline has been a foundation for growth. We raised some equity as mentioned, and have also started to utilize our share a bit for consolidation purposes and increasing production base, which we believe is very important to have a sufficient size to further capitalize on the platform and the synergies within that. So going into the beginning of Q1 of '26. We see that we have increased the balance sheet size, as I mentioned, year-over-year. This is predominantly from the transactions that we've done in the last 12 months. For those of you who remember, we entered into a new hydro platform with [ Swiss Life ] in Q3 where we injected all our hydro assets at contribution in kind into [indiscernible] that over 2x book value and also increased our ownership in [ Fort Energy ] in Norway, the producing small-scale hydro platform we already own with as we slide but now up to above 50%, where we now consolidate both assets and then also then increased our hydro exposure. That is the majority of the growth, but also then the inclusion of MEK, the entry into Finland, as Anders talked about earlier in Q1, which increases the assets, but also the total equity where the vast majority of the transaction was settled in Cloudberry shares, which is, again, as [indiscernible] stock, but there's a good currency to use to consolidate and get the scale effects of the Cloudberry platform within Cloudberry. We were a bit, as mentioned, been cautious with that, but we also from a risk management perspective prioritized to hedge our interest rate exposure, given that we're merchant exposure on the power price. So we still have over 70% of our proportionate interest-bearing debt fixed at long-term agreements at around 4%. And that's important now in this volatile interest rate environment. Exiting Q1 with a strong cash position that enables growth and we continue to build the Cloudberry platform into what we believe is next. Okay. So on the P&L side, as I mentioned, it's -- of course, the power sale, that's the backbone of the profitability within the Cloudberry platform, selling power at prevailing market price, but also capital recycling and development gains. That's been very important for the profitability in Cloudberry, especially evident in '22 to '24, where we've done as mentioned, capital recycling, selling down hydro assets at historically high levels, showcasing the value of the platform and asset appreciation has been within the platform that over to this book values and realizing strong IRRs, which on development gains for completing [indiscernible] wind farms and SEI, but also development activities within the hydro assets that we did divest whereas the gain is recorded within the commercial segment. And throughout the year, is of course, increasing our production volumes from 268 GVH in '22 and now reporting almost 800 GVH in '25 or in LTM Q1 '26 and we have now a strong asset base of 1.3 terawatt hours, including on the construction that yields long-term cash flow to fund the platform going forward. Diving into this quarter, we see we have strong growth year-over-year in both revenue and EBITDA at also increasing EBITDA margins. We do show a strong realized power price that's driving this and slight increase in power volumes. I'll come back to those 2 factors on the next slide when we go through the commercial segment. But I also wanted to just quickly highlight the IFRS gain that we have now in relation to the MLK transaction. So when we acquired the MLK and this is completely the same as we've done for all transactions that just end result is a little bit different for this transaction. When we acquired MLK, this is a business combination. And then according to IFRS, you need to include at fair market value and fair market value is not what you acquired it for. It's based on a market-based perspective, on weighted average cost of capital, updated power curves and so forth. So it's a more technical approach. This is, as I mentioned, like we've done for previous transaction, but combining this with the fact that we acquired these assets below book values, this has resulted in badwill over the -- through the purchase price allocation and badwill you need to recognize through the P&L. Same as we've done projects action, but then there has been some goodwill or other effects, which you do not have to take through the P&L. But the bad will need to go through the P&L, and that results in a gain of NOK 66 million, which is evident in the consolidated EBITDA or the proportionate revenue and hence, the EBITDA. So sum up a more technical IFRS adjustment that we need to take in this quarter in combination with the acquisition. Looking into the commercial segment. This is also where the gain is recognized by stripping this out. We have a growth in both revenue and EBITDA and also increasing EBITDA margins within the segment. So that's good to see. We are realizing an average power price of NOK 1 per kilowatt hour, which is 1 historical high power price for us in the Nordics and the growth compared to Q1 of NOK 0.7 per kilowatt hours. We see here in this quarter that we have a power price that's much more close to the system price, whereas we have been for previous quarter, much higher and that has to do with our -- all the Nordic price regions have been at very high power prices over this quarter, including where we produced relating this to the actual [ aero ] prices when where we produce them. When we produce, we see the capture price we achieved for this quarter is very strong compared to previous estimates. On the other hand, we have production volumes, which is lower. There's been a lot less wind in the Nordics, especially in Norway and Sweden. But here, you really start to see the diversification effect of the Danish wind portfolio because in Denmark, there was a lot to win. That's the driver for the production for this quarter. And it's good to see when we do have a little bit less production, the power price is a lot higher. So this affects a little bit more correlated. And also, I wanted to highlight that, and this is that it's obviously a prioritized for us to achieve higher revenues and low production volumes. So when power prices are negative or around 0, we do curtail our production volumes as we, of course, want to decrease revenues and not production. This will increase the achieved power price, and this will be more evident when we start to see or if we see more negative pricing towards the summer and so forth. But is, of course, more important for us to increase revenue, and we're also now participating in a lot more balancing markets that we talked a little bit about in the quarterly report that will be also a contributor to revenue at volatile power prices or low power prices. Looking at the other segments. Our project segment is more or less in line with the year last same quarter last year. The project segment main profitability driver is realizing projects. We've done so in the past. For this quarter, we are developing our projects further -- but we do have some very interesting opportunities with the data center activities, like Anders talked about earlier. We have best initiatives on our current assets, which we talked about last quarter, how that drives profitability and also driving our backlog forward and work on a permitted project is of importance, but you won't see it in the P&L until we actually realize some of these effects. For instance, completing the [indiscernible] project is an important development game that we're looking forward to see. As a management side, we're very happy to see that we're realizing the improvement program that we talked about over the last quarters. We have a showcase and cost reduction and improved revenue in the same time, and that's driving profitability. So EBITDA is up year-on-year and now in the positive side, which is very good. But of course, the main importance of asset management is not the EBITDA contribution, although it needs to be positive and increasing. It's all the effects and the synergies between the other segment and the expertise that, that drives into our platform, ranging from increasing availability on our current assets to network and opportunities M&A capabilities and so forth. And our corporate segment lastly is more or less in line with the same quarter, actually a minor drop, which is again, good to see. And lastly, I wanted to highlight that we did in the last quarter, initiate -- or in the last quarterly report, initiated a cost reduction program, predominantly in relation to a refocused development strategy, focusing more on late-stage development or development in combination with our current assets, much closer to cash flow instead of creating a backlog and early stage greenfield opportunities that we have done in the past. There's more on that in the last report. We targeted about NOK 30 million in annual savings that would be evident throughout the year. And we've already now completed all reduction in FTEs, around 20% reduction in combination with some overhead reduction, we are at around NOK 25 million in cost reduction now and the remaining up to at least NOK 30 million will be increased reduction in operational expenditures and reduced debt spending compared to our initial estimates before we started to divert our project strategy. We are also evaluating some more simplified reporting to reduce reporting costs, and that will be most evident in the third quarter report, if we do any large adjustments, which is not subject to monitor half year reporting requirements. So that's all from me on the financial side, and I'll hand it back over to Anders for [indiscernible] in summary before we divert over to Q&A. So thank you so much.

Thank you, Ole-Kristofer. And as Ole-Kristofer mentioned, we have delivered a strong quarter driven by higher power prices. And here, you see the power price historically, how Cloudberry has delivered on the power price achieved power price compared to the system price. And then you will see a hike here in the curve going forward. And for 2026, this is the forward power price curve. So this is the forward power price curve in 2026, and then it's the [ Tema ] price curve from '27 and onwards. So you see here that we have had a spike here in the power prices in the next year due to the -- that we put in the forward power price -- and we haven't seen that this hike has continued in the forward pricing, but it's also an increase in power price in the [ Tema ] price curve. And then we can speculate if it's going to continue to have a higher forward price or if it's going to be somewhere between what we see now on the forward price or the price curve from Tema. What we see is a very strong demand for new renewable energy. We have on top of the energy transition driven by the climate goals, the digital industry that has come into the Nordic market now for full. So only in Norway now, we have 21 new terawatt hours of production and capacity being awarded to the digital industry over the last year, and we see the same also in the other Nordic countries. It's a very strong demand for more power, both from the traditional industry that is transforming its energy mix and but also to the new digital industry. that we see emerge throughout the Nordics. So it's several drivers here. And if you look at the new projects coming into -- in production, new permits, -- it is very low. It has been low throughout Norway, Sweden and Denmark. And I think it will take years before we see a higher supply from these projects because of the lag in the new permits. So demand side staying strong and even also building on new industry and the supply side that is quite modest. So this is the picture, how we see it and our [ Tema], our partner on the price curves going forward. So as we also talked about earlier, we have a new energy reality. We have seen now that geopolitics is driving energy, security of supply has become a great issue for throughout Europe and also in the Nordics. So we see also a new interest for securing power and securing new projects. And I think being in the Nordics, having the network and having the experience. We have a strong balance sheet, an attractive share. This all gives us a perfect starting point for the next years and that we can utilize the position we have and the knowledge to continue to grow the company both through in-house developed projects, but especially through now also M&A opportunities that we are currently seeing as attractive through -- so as we say, we are perfectly positioned for the energy transition. And thank you for listening, and I think we will now jump over to questions, and thank you for your time.

We've had -- thank you, Anders. We've had 2 questions that I can start with. One is related to buybacks if we're evaluating buybacks at the current levels. And we have done buybacks in the past that made a lot of sense to us then, although declared this is a board matter that needs to be resolved through the Board. But how we see it as there's a lot of interesting growth potential outside of the Cloudberry share at the moment. But again, this needs to be run through the board if buybacks are evaluated. Secondly, we had a question about best initiatives within our current portfolio. And Sweden is the most close to where we can see some activity. Of course, we are constructing an asset at [indiscernible], which is expected to be done at around Q3. But we see we could look at best initiatives in combination with our existing wind farm with permitting could take as short as 6 to 9 months and around 12 months, give or take, to construct project. So that could have come a lot quicker than what a traditional wind project or hydro project could take from permit to COD. And that's all we have time for today. And the question we see. Thank you so much for listening in.