Hexicon AB (publ) (HEXI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Welcome. I'm here today to give you an update of Hexicon's operations during the third quarter. I will do so, but I will also give you an update as to what is happening in the world of floating offshore wind. So let's get to it. My name is Marcus Thor, and I'm the CEO of Hexicon. So what we'll go through today is I'll start with the market update. There's quite a lot of things that have happened in the industry. Thereafter going into our projects, which is the core of our business, to look at the portfolio and how certain projects have developed. I'll mention, of course, some of our highlights during the third quarter, and I'll be ending with looking ahead. So with that said, let me start to give you a bit of an update. And the fact is that it's been quite a few years now of a weak market that is offshore wind in general and not the least floating offshore wind, which is a newer, less mature segment within offshore wind. And in general, one could say, and I'll give you a few examples here. What has happened though very recently now is that we've seen this market downturn, we've seen more and more political action to strengthen floating offshore wind. So political ambitions and actions and achievements in the last period that sort of is needed and act to balance a weaker market in general. Some of those examples are that over in the U.K., the contracts of different scheme, so the subsidy regime in the U.K. have continued to be strengthened. It's continuing to have separate auctions for floating offshore wind. We're expecting at least 2, 3 potentially more floating projects to participate this year. And the strike price cap has actually been increased, so the maximum price that you can get for floating offshore wind projects. We've seen auctions continuing in France. There's been 2 new auctions recently. One, I should say though, however, ended up with no bids. Thereafter, we had one that did include bids. Over in South Korea, which is our -- one of our very core markets, we've seen since new President came into office in early June this year, a strengthened with ambitions for renewables in general, increased targets and not the least, a new ministry, which is now up and running, which is the Ministry for Climate, Energy and Environment. So this is a push to be more focused and dedicated to the energy transition. In general, when it comes to floating wind, it's still a rather small amount of turbines installed. So it's recently reached 277 megawatts in total around the world. And just to give you some feel of what that number is in comparison to fixed bottom offshore wind, which has surpassed 83,000 megawatts. If you look at the table here on your right, it provides an example as to the expected installations going forward in floating offshore wind. And what you clearly see from a few years now of a weak market is that there will be delays. Floating offshore wind deployments will be delayed. And this will, of course, hit Hexicon as well and the general industry. However, what I do want to point out, and this is a bridge over to the next slide, is that our business model and revenue model is divesting during the development phase. So what you saw previously there in terms of the expected installations, that is actually once a project has gone through the construction phase and is installed and up and running, producing electricity. Obviously, that is what the end game is all about even for our projects, but our business model does not extend that far. We are a developer. So we focus and our core skill set lies within identifying the right market, where is the best area within that market and developing that area to be a profitable project. Along that way, so the development phase is when we divest, and we've tried to illustrate this where we are active from the very start of this project development phase and have a rather long divestment period. So anywhere between fairly early stage in the development phase, between that and somewhere up until FID, which is final investment decision when a project is ready to be constructed. And this is really where Hexicon shines as well. This is where our core skill set lies. And every project and market is unique. So we cannot say that this is the timing for all markets. But in general, and as a basis, Hexicon aims as completing the first phase of the permitting, which is the environmental impact assessment. So going through that from having identified the area going through your -- building that business model, identifying how, which environmental impacts are key, doing that work assessment surveys, packaging that and applying for that first permit. With your hands on that is a key early risk reduction and a milestone that we think is appropriate to start looking at divestments. It can be later, it could be earlier. It will depend on specific markets, but that's where our base assumption lies to go to the EIA. If you look at our projects to date here on the bottom right, we do have projects across our portfolio from prospects all the way to late stage. And we've -- this is not an exact science, but we divided the development phase into early, mid and late, where we currently have quite a few in the early stage and also some in late stage. I wanted to share this today as well. So this is just looking a few years back and also looking at what's upcoming. And going from the IPO, Hexicon's listed on NASDAQ First North in Q2 2021. And previous to that, there has been a lot of years with a very, very good market. Some might even argue that offshore wind has had a steady increase for about 30 years until somewhere around the timing of Hexicon's IPO. Since then, it's been a few years of a much, much weaker market where valuations have gone down, buyers have become fewer, et cetera. The IPO as such, however, I think, was success to the extent that we came out to the market with a plan, mainly to invest in a product portfolio build-out. We raised money for that, and that's what we've done since. Beyond the IPO, looking at a few events here that are both positives and negatives. We saw definitely fairly shortly after the IPO in '21 or during 2022, we did see that micro climate -- I'm sorry, macro climate downturn for sure. We did see higher costs, inflation rates and more. However, what we saw and had to take a decision, a conscious decision at that time was how to move forward. So looking at late '22, early '23, we've reached the point where we had achieved per our plan at the IPO, a big enough and diversified portfolio. So it was time to start divesting. At this time, the market was very, very different. Fewer buyers, valuations come down significantly. So we had basically 3 options to look at to continue pushing on forward is to sell projects at in our opinion, too low valuations. And in some instances, we think at this time in the last few years has been way too low to raise additional capital by emitting shares or debt finance the company to be able to continue to position or maintain at least the positions in our projects for future divestments. And this is what we did in 2023, when we struck an agreement with Nuveen Infrastructure for a debt financing facility with money that was earmarked for projects, some of our key projects, again, to make sure they continue to be positioned ahead of the curve and to maintain value looking at a market to change and the necessity of these projects over time, obviously, for there or then to believe for there to be value in a future point in time. Our key project was South Korea and the MunmuBaram project, which we had been developing for several years and most of them together with oil giant, Shell, 80% owned by Shell, 20% by Hexicon. And in 2024, with the new CEO at Shell, they came to a strategy shift, changed completely. They were pulling out of offshore wind in most of their active markets, South Korea being one of them. So we managed to buy this project back from Shell at a very favorable terms. That took a bit of time and then even longer to reach all the necessary government approvals in South Korea to take over full ownership of an energy project like this. When all that had been completed, and we're ready to go out to the market with it, that's when the Korean market more or less froze when the President at the time declared martial law. Then we had a period of around 6, 7 months of political turmoil, a lot of uncertainty. We fairly early decided that we cannot achieve anything meaningful with the divestment process or the partner search with new investors into the MunmuBaram project. A lot of the people we spoke to were saying, at least on the international arena that South Korea remains an interesting market, but we'll wait until all this is over and settled. And some of the potentially lower-hanging fruit state-owned regional companies in South Korea, they were not even in the position to make investment decisions at this time when there is not a President in place. So it certainly struck us. It's hit us. We are now, I would say, back in full momentum again. And if you look forward, in the next 12 to 24 months, it's very much a focus on MunmuBaram in South Korea. That's where a big part of our portfolio value lies. And we've got 2 things of priority within this project. It's -- on the one hand, of course, getting investors in divesting at the most favorable terms possible. And secondly, within the project, the next milestone, the real value increasing milestone is if the project is successful in one of the offtake auctions. And these are run annually, sometimes a few years from time to time, they're even twice a year. So this is an auction where you come in and bid and secure your offtake for 20 years for the project. And we're really looking at a few parallel tracks now in options where you either find new partners before an auction, maybe some before and some after to capture the value increase at least partially, that is having gone through the auction. Both of these, however, is what we plan over the next 12 to probably 18 months, and this will come back to you. There are other projects, of course, as well. There's a lot of activity. There will be additional divestments, but I really want to stress this and mention this because MunmuBaram remains the biggest value within our portfolio. We do have a global portfolio that is to a large degree, ready to deliver value, so ready to be divested partially or wholly, depending on market, depending on situation and interest. And a few comments on the portfolio in general is that if you compare our portfolio today with the size of it a year ago, it's quite a lot smaller. And there's a few key reasons for it. One is that a year ago, the decision by the Swedish government to reject all projects in the Swedish Baltic Sea had not yet been taken. There we had 2 projects where we had actually filed for the permit to the government already, a total of 5 gigawatts that were all rejected. Secondly, we sold 2 pretty big projects down in Italy as well. So there's been a mix of our own actions, divestments and political decisions that have led to a decrease of the portfolio in terms of megawatt. With that said, it's not only megawatt accounts, it's, of course, the maturity of each of the projects as well. So we are continuing to drive projects forward, and they are across the portfolio being matured every day that passes. If you look at our active ownership, so how much is Hexicon's stake within the portfolio, it remains somewhere around 50%, just over. And this is part of our business model as well is to deliver and develop projects in markets with a local partner. So typically, a 50-50 basis setup is how we initiate and develop projects. Our key focus going forward will be to deliver continued increased maturity within these projects and a focus on divestments. It will not be to expand the portfolio here and now. We certainly have our eyes on suitable markets that will become a floating offshore wind market where a position could be justified at this moment, but our bandwidth does not allow us to stretch out and expand our focus from continuing to mature existing and look at divestments. So let's push for later any expansion of the portfolio, so any plans to add projects to our portfolio. With that said, if you look down below here, just as an example in terms of maturity stage, as I said, determine the value of a project and expected money to be made from that project by divesting, it is certainly not only megawatt accounts. It is a mix of a lot of things, but how far the projects have gone, how mature it is, plays a key part. And if you look at that, there's 3 projects that are at the late stage of the development phase in our determination, and that's the South Korean project MunmuBaram again, and these are 2 projects in the U.K., Pentland that's in Scotland, and TwinHub down in Southwest of England. A few significant events over the quarter, just to comment on them. We did announce a press release in September that had 3 parts. One was that we've extended our existing revolving credit facility by 24 months. This is a facility that we put in place quite a while ago with a nominal value of SEK 75 million. It was to support the Nuveen facility, so the development loan agreement, which earmarked money for certain projects that we could also finance anything outside of those projects, including our own overheads. And that we now extended for 24 months, which gives us a lot of room to achieve planned divestments or any other means to, obviously, at the end of the day, also refinance that facility. Talking about the Nuveen development loan agreement, we've also come to an agreement for an extended tranche within that facility, so an additional up to EUR 4.75 million. And this has also been looked as a way to ensure that we make it all the way through divestments in South Korea. If you were to ask Nuveen, I'm pretty sure that's been their key motivation in this to extend that parent facility, is to ensure that we reach divestments and money back from the MunmuBaram project. We also signed very exciting an MoU with Wallstreet. So this is part of the Soya Group that also holds Wallenius, a shipping company here in Sweden, which has been a partner for a few years, both in terms of debt financing and owner of Hexicon as well. The purpose of the MoU is for Wallstreet to convert part of their loan into equity, so ownership or co-ownership together with us in our patents. And this is quite exciting, and there's a lot in the planning phase of that now, how we commercialize that technology, which is TwinWind in the years to come. But we certainly think that doing it together with a company like Wallstreet and Wallenius and there not the least fabrication competence across the globe and supply chain skills is something that will complement Hexicon's floating wind competence very, very well. I would like to mention as well an MoU that we signed with SK oceanplant in South Korea for the MunmuBaram project. That's an MoU with a local fabricator to support us in developing the strategies, time lines, cost base, et cetera, all the necessary components for the fabrication phase. And this is not only as those are critical input for the project, but it's also a fact that in the upcoming auctions, local content matters. So in terms of your scoring and political support locally in Korea, you need to have a certain amount of local content as part of your fabrication scheme. So this is what we're trying to address in the best possible manner together with SK oceanplant. After the quarter, a quick note as well that one of many -- there are several prerequisites for a project to enter the construction phase and ultimately deliver electrons in South Korea. And one of them, we received the approval of just a few days ago after several years of work, which is the so-called Marine Traffic Safety Examination. So that's how the project and its floating turbines coexists with marine traffic. There are traffic lanes nearby in certain instances, very close to turbines. So you need to address all that with several years of work and surveys, and this was approved just days ago. A quick note on South Korea as well and the specific project that is MunmuBaram. All in all, it's a 750-megawatt project that holds the prerequisite to participate in upcoming auctions. I mentioned this before, but an update in terms of the market as such. I've talked about the new President that took office in June, and he's already now put together a new ministry. What has come in the news just over the last few weeks as well is that he's now planning for a release probably early next year as to what the next 5-year plan looks like. And this we're fairly hopeful to look at and receive. We've seen so far that everything has done has been a step in the right direction for renewables in the country. So this new 5-year plan, we'll see what it comes out, but it's good that it comes, of course. We need certainty. We need to be able to predict the next -- over the next few years at least look like. It might not be so that it's a certificate scheme like it is today. It could be something different, and we'll see likely and hopefully quite early next year. Until then, the current renewal portfolio standard that is in place right now will continue, of course, as it is with annual tenders and dedicated pools for floating offshore wind. I mentioned just briefly on the previous slide, the Marine Traffic Safety Examination that we got approved. Otherwise, what's ongoing is very much to prepare the project for auctions and to prepare and engage with external parties, investors for the project. A word about our technology as well. We've -- and this has been run in parallel to where most of the work so far sits within product development, within the portfolio, but there's been quite some exciting steps that we've taken quite recently as well. And one of them is a so-called integrated load analysis. So this is an integrated engineering work with a commercial turbine supplier, where you look at the motions and engineering and design across the whole system. So your mooring system, floating foundation, tower, turbines, how does it move in different type of weather scenarios? Wind from this side, turbine -- sorry, current here, waves from another angle, looking at different wind speeds, how does it operate? How does it move? Does it withstand the forces? Is it within the maximum accelerations, maximum motions, et cetera, that the turbine supplier stipulates. And we not only do it ourselves, but we do it jointly with a turbine supplier. And we believe that although there's probably over 70 different floating foundation concepts around the world that we've seen, not that many have gone through this quite in-depth and extensive work together with the turbine supplier. Key results of this is not to say this is what it looks like, design, it's competitive forever. It works for all turbines. It states that there are no red flags so that it works together with a turbine supplier. Thereafter, and from there, you have to optimize, you have to adapt size and other measures for a specific turbine for a specific spot. In addition to that, what we looked at and developed is a platform controller. So this was developed again together with turbine suppliers and other partners, not only how 1 controls 1 turbine, but in our case, you have 2 turbines next to each other. So they need to know where they are geographically or in space compared to the other one. So this we've developed that is specific a control system for a 2-turbine platform version. And as mentioned, the MoU that we entered with Wallstreet, we're very excited about to take next steps towards the commercialization of our platform together with Wallstreet. So if we go from here and look into next year, where is our focus? Well, if we do this in 3 areas, start with the projects and our project portfolio developments, it's very much a focus, as I said before, on our core projects. We're not looking at expanding the portfolio, adding new projects to it at this stage. We're focused on 2 things. We're focused on our core projects to continue to maintain their position and value and in parallel, the utmost focus on divestments. We do need new investors and partners into these projects, so to start circulating money that we've invested we're building out this portfolio. On the technology development side, it's again to a large degree to maintain and ensure that the technology is state-of-the-art, continue to be competitive. In addition to that, we do need on that commercial journey, it needs to be demonstrated. How you do that, when, where, that's something that we'll spend a lot of time, I hope, in the next near term together with Wallstreet as well as part of the IP company that they will co-own together with us. It's all about establishing that route to market and quickly progress along it. Lastly, when it comes to financing, in a market like this, it's a large degree about securing staying power. We continue to be able to maintain the position of projects until market turns, investors are there ready to invest in our projects, which we're absolutely convinced it will come back. The question is when? But we are already seeing signals that indicates that potentially, if you ask me, 2026 could be that transition year where you go from a weak market back to something a lot more promising. It's a focus on our operational efficiency. We do need to make sure that we get most out of the money and every penny that is spent, again, a focus on divestment and to establish with a potential combination of divestments and other means, establish sufficient operational runway to get into meaningful divestments. And with that said, I would very much like to thank you all for listening.

We've received a few questions as well that I will read out myself before answering it. And here's the first one. I've got it in Swedish. I'll read out in Swedish quickly, and then I'll translate it. [Foreign Language] So basically, are there sufficient conditions for price of energy in South Korea to provide a return on the investments? And government subsidies in South Korea for projects like MunmuBaram in effect? And the answer is yes to most of those questions. So South Korea has adopted a so-called renewable portfolio standard scheme and certificate scheme within that. So basically, it puts -- the core of it is that it puts an obligation on major power companies need to provide a certain share of their energy production needs to come from renewable sources. If that does not happen, if they don't do that themselves, they are obliged to buy a certain volume of certificates. The government controls how much or how high this obligation is. So basically, they control the demand side of certificates, as well as controlling the supply by granting or awarding new certificates to projects that participate in these offtake auctions. So it's a very lucrative scheme. And for floating offshore wind, it's perhaps even more of a sweet spot market because in the certificate scheme and the way -- what I mentioned, how it's controlled demand and supply, et cetera, you very much look at the price or value of one certificate. On top of that, projects are received a so-called multiplier. So they receive per megawatt hour more than one certificate, which is decided by distance from shore. So the further you are from the coast, the more certificates you get or the higher this weighting factor and also the deeper the water is. In MunmuBaram, as an example, we receive around 4.5 certificates per megawatt hour. And this is obviously something that is very attractive for floating wind in particular. And the reasoning from the Korean government is that activities, whether they be shipping lanes or birds or fishing activity or et cetera, they typically go down in intensity or activity with distance from shore. So it's a way by the Korean government to avoid or at least decrease conflicts between offshore wind farms and other stakeholders. So yes, state subsidies are in place in this certificate scheme. And combining weighting factor and merchant price for electricity, floating wind projects thereabouts where the MunmuBaram project is, so 50, 60 kilometers offshore and beyond, certainly calls for an attractive return on the investment. We're looking at revenues that could be somewhere up towards $350 per megawatt hour. Now the wind speeds aren't as good as they are in the North Sea, but with that price, certainly calls for a good return on investment in South Korea. I'll go to the next question. [Foreign Language] So in English, does Hexicon have a letter of intent or other agreements with KEPCO regarding floating offshore wind? And to start off with KEPCO is the Korean transmission system operator, so the equivalent of Svenska kraftnät here in Sweden. We do have an agreement, one of the key agreements in the project, actually -- so a binding transmission service agreement, which is basically the grid connection agreement. So that allows and ensures that the project can deliver, transmit all of its electricity into the grid and where it goes into. So this is, I would say, 1 of 2, 3 really key agreements for any project anywhere in the world, grid capacity is typically a key constraint and a challenge. And it's also very much directly a prerequisite to participate in an offtake auction in South Korea. You need to have 3 things. You need to have your EIA approved, which we got about 2 years ago. You need to have your grid connection agreements, which we have now had for about 1.5 years. And you need in South Korea specifically, you need so-called electricity business licenses, which we've had in place for even longer. Good. Looking at the next question. In September, Hexicon entered an MoU with Wallstreet to convert part of its loan to a part ownership of Hexicon IP. Is this completed now? Or what is the status? Very good question. What we announced in September was an MOU, i.e., not a finalized conversion of Wallstreet's loan to co-owned equity of our IP. We've since then worked quite hard because we've identified quite a lot of things that we need to put in place as prerequisites before doing that conversion. This is not anything we do solely by ourselves. We do it very much together with Wallstreet. We have not finalized it yet. We will communicate once that is finalized, and it should not be much longer now. So we will get back to you as soon as that has happened. Next question. Can you state anything as to the expected timing of an approved permit for your project Mareld in Sweden? And this is obviously one question that I would love to be able to answer. And the frank answer is no. We don't know. We can just compare and benchmark to other processes. At the moment, we are, as far as we know, 1 of 3 projects offshore in Sweden that are in late-stage determination by the government. And this is how they themselves categorized it. Looking at time lines, we -- it's a very similar time line as to how long ago we applied for these permits compared to the other 2 that are also at this moment defined as late-stage determination. There have certainly been projects before that, that got the determination sooner or quicker than we now have. But we don't know. There's no maximum timing requirements on the government to make this judgment. What we can state is that we have, which is very, very key in looking towards a positive decision. One, summer last year, we got the support from the County Board regionally investor Götaland. So this is a one step towards a government decision where the County Board regionally recommends to the government either to approve or reject. And in this case, they recommended to approve our project. And secondly, we have more recently also got Natura [indiscernible] -- Natura 2000 permit, which is also a key ingredient for the final permit. But as to the exact timing of when we can expect this, we really don't know. One final question here I have gotten in is the following. Will the project Pentland in Scotland participate in this year's Contract for Difference in the U.K. What is the timing of that? Has it already happened? So the Contracts for Difference around this year, so-called allocation round 7 has been open for a few months, and it's been delayed a few times. So I believe that closing is -- if it hasn't been just recently, it's probably any day now or early December. Announcements should be in January by the latest we know. And yes, Pentland is aiming to participate. There is competition, not knowing the full extent of it, we probably expect there to be around 3 projects of similar capacity, all floating wind that participates in this year's allocation round. So very exciting results we look forward to, and they will likely come in January. That was the final question that I had gotten in. And with that said, thank you very much for listening. Please continue to follow us. There is a lot to look forward to and that will happen in floating offshore wind in the near term. Thank you very much.