Aker Horizons Asa

Good morning and welcome to Aaker's first quarter results presentation for 2026. My name is Fredrik Berge, Head of Investor Relations at Aaker. I'm joined by Aker's president and CEO, Eivind Eriksen, who will take you through the key highlights and portfolio developments in the quarter. I'm also joined today by Torbjørn Tjus, chief economist at Aker BP, who will share his perspectives on the energy markets. And finally, Aker's CFO, Svein-Oskar Stocknes, will take you through the financial results in more detail. After the presentation, we will open for questions. You may submit your questions at any time using the chat function. And with that, I hand it over to Eivind Eriksen.

Thank you, Fredrik. It's tempting to start with a fun fact that puts things into perspective. When I joined Aker in 2009, our net asset value was 18 billion Norwegian kroner. Today, we're reporting a single quarter, three months only, which added 43 billion kroner to our net asset value. And the Viaker share price went up 39% in the same period. Two companies drove the development. RKBP contributed 15 billion to our net asset value, and Nscale added 22 billion kroner following our investment in the Series C capital raise. Beyond record-breaking results, the numbers reflect underlying forces. In energy, a structural shift is underway. Geopolitics is no longer episodic, but a persistent part of how energy is priced. Supply is more actively managed, investment has been uneven, and the system's buffer is thinner than it has been for decades. In artificial intelligence, demand for compute continues to run ahead of supply, and the gap is not narrowing. This is no longer just about technology. It's about access to power, infrastructure and capacity over time. These are forces shaping our portfolio and driving growth. Aaker is heading into a next phase of long-term value creation. The quarter materially advanced the portfolio, not just in results, but our position going forward. N-Scale stands out. The company raised 2.1 billion US dollars in its Series C, the largest of its kind in Europe ever. Aker invested 350 million US dollars in cash and rolled up our joint venture stake. As a consequence, Aker became N-Scale's largest shareholder. Our ownership is now direct and more strategically anchored. Nscale represents an asset value of 32 billion Norwegian kroner and has become our second largest asset after AKBP. The company is progressing at an incredible speed both commercially and operationally. I'll get back to this in more detail shortly. Across the rest of the Acre portfolio, values continue to be crystallized. Acastor listed HMH on Nasdaq, raising $210 million, consistent with its strategy of unlocking value. Acre Solutions monetized its shareholding in SLB and returned the proceeds to its shareholders. In total, 4.2 billion Norwegian kroner was distributed as dividend after quarter end. And lastly, AKBP delivered yet another strong quarter. Operationally, the Symra field came on stream nine months ahead of schedule, and Solveig Phase 2 started as planned, adding more than 100 million barrels of recoverable resources. reflecting on the strength of the portfolio. The annual general meeting approved a dividend of 29 NOK per akershare, with authorization for an additional distribution to our shareholders later this year. Now, back to the biggest single portfolio event this quarter, and was one of the most significant and consequential moves we have made in years. our investment in N-scale and entry into AI infrastructure. It comes at a time when AI is scaling into build-out at industrial level. Demand is moving ahead of what can be realistically deployed, which reflected in both capital allocation and in pricing. hyperscalers are investing at a pace the industry has not seen before. At the same time, access to compute capacity is tightening, constrained by power, grid, availability, hardware, and the ability to execute at scale, which is shaping how this market develops and who captures the value. This is a massive opportunity, and exactly where Nscale is positioned. In the US, platforms such as Corvive and Nebius give a clear reference point for valuation. They are scaled against capacity, contracted demand, and growth in deployment. The Series C post-money valuation of Nscale at 14.6 billion US dollars sits within that range for a platform that is earlier in its build-out but scaling quickly in the same market. Nscale is building a fully integrated AI infrastructure platform. It designs, builds, owns and operates data centers and compute clusters as one system. Facilities, GPUs, networking and the software layer developed specifically for AI workloads. This integrated approach is a key point of differentiation and allows capacity to be developed and deployed in parallel rather than step by step. The platform is anchored in markets with access to low-cost renewable power, including Norway, Iceland, and Portugal, and is firmly established in the United States, the world's largest and most active AI infrastructure market. N-scale has already established a portfolio of projects with a growth potential that can make it one of the leading neocloud companies in the world. The company and partner base with global leaders like Microsoft, Nvidia, Nokia and Dell also reflect that position. I'm the vice chairman of the N-scale board. The quality of the team combined with the pace and scale of the company's trajectory is, frankly speaking, unlike anything I have ever seen. Starting with governance. During the quarter, Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Becker and Nick Clegg all joined the N-scale board. Those kinds of high-caliber leaders are both a testament to the company's potential and a reflection of the current momentum. On the technology side, N-scale has secured early access to NVIDIA's industry-leading VeraRubin platform, with plans to deploy more than 100,000 GPUs across Europe starting in 2027. That's capacity at industrial scale and speaks to the level of partnership N-Scale has already established. On financing, the Series C was complemented by a US$1.4 billion asset-backed term loan to support GPU development and deployment. Critical financing components to ensure both build-out and deployment. Commercially, Microsoft has now contracted the full initial capacity at Nightvik, replacing the earlier Stargate structure. The site itself hasn't changed, but the company now has a larger, long-term agreement with one of the strongest counterparties in the market. And in the United States, the acquisition of the Monarch Compute Campus in West Virginia firmly moves N-scale into the top tier of AI infrastructure. This is a 2,000-acre multi-gigawatt site designed to scale into one of the largest AI compute environments globally. Microsoft has already in place a letter of intent, converging more than a gigawatt of compute capacity. Beyond AI infrastructure, our industrial software platform has also reached an inflection point. Cognite is operating at scale, as reflected in the first quarter results. Revenue grew 28% year on year, with recurring revenues up 27% and more than 86% of bookings are now driven by Atlas AI. Cognite's Industrial AI Agent Workbench, which allows customers to build and deploy AI agents directly on top of trusted, contextualized operational data. Adoption is accelerating fast. The number of Atlas AI customers has increased nearly five-fold over the past year. At the same time, Cognite is expanding its ecosystem in a way that strengthens the platform. The partnership with NVIDIA supports faster execution of industrial AI workloads, while the collaboration with Snowflake extends the reach across the enterprise data stack, connecting operational data with analytics and decision making. That progress is being recognized externally. Cognite was named the leader in the IDC marketscape for industrial data ops platforms. And the growth is broadening beyond energy. We are seeing solid traction in pharma and life science, which speak to the broader applicability of the platform. When I look at what has been built over the past several years, I see a platform that is becoming more relevant with each passing quarter. As AI deployment accelerates across industries, the need for trusted, contextualized operational data only deepens. And that is exactly where Cognite is positioned. For Aker, Cognite hits our ownership sweet spot, combining strong and lying trends with deep domain expertise and building platforms that sit at the center of where value is created. All in all, a pivotal quarter with performance at historical magnitude at Aker. I can't promise to beat that record quarter by quarter. That's neither the objective while managing a portfolio with exposure to geopolitical and market volatilities. What matters ultimately is the longer term creation of shareholder value. What excites me most is the repositioning of ARKR at the intersection between energy and AI. Both segments with undisputed growth trajectories and high investor appetite. And both opportunities that we are pursuing and realizing with customers and partners who are defining the future globally. I can hardly think of a better point of departure for managing the current uncertainties and opportunities in the world markets and generating even more value to Aker shareholders. but it also requires insight and analysis. I'm privileged to have some of the most knowledgeable experts as my colleagues. One is Torbjørn Hjus, who I invited to join me today to share with us briefly his perspectives and outlook for the energy markets. So, Torbjørn, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Øyvind, and good morning. I will in particular explain why price developments in dated Brent and North Sea crude grades have been so extreme recently, and what this tells us about risk premia, timing and physical scarcity in the market, factors that are directly relevant for value creation and cash flow in Aker's portfolio companies. I will cover five topics. How oil is priced in practice. What dated Brent actually is. Why North Sea differentials have moved so much. And what an oil price above $100 really means in historical context. And what kind of longer term effect the current Hormuz crisis might entail. So, how is oil actually priced in real life? Crude oil is generally sold as a price differential to a benchmark, not at a fixed flat price. Brent is the dominant global benchmark. Around 60-70% of all globally traded waterborne crude is priced against it. The futures market, on the other hand, dominated day-to-day price discovery. But the futures market is ultimately anchored to physical oil through delivery mechanisms. That physical connection becomes especially important when futures contracts are approaching expiry and markets are stressed. So what is dated Brent and why is it so much higher now than the paper market, the futures market? Well, dated Brent is a daily assessment of the price of fiscal crude oil available for prompt delivery in the North Sea, typically within a 10 to 30 day window. It is assessed each day by S&P Global Platts based on market activity in the market on close window. Some call this the Platts window, which closes at 16.30 London time. What we have seen recently is a record high differential between dated Brent and the front month Brent futures contract. The key reason is timing. When physical barrels are scarce, the market places a very high premium on immediate availability and the forward curve becomes sharply backwardated. In simple terms, people are willing to pay much more to get oil right now than to get it next month. So since March 12th, when the Brent price surpassed $100 per barrel, Brent data has averaged $117 per barrel, while the first month Brent futures have averaged around $105 per barrel. So historically extreme differential between those two of $12 a barrel. So why have these North Sea differentials increased so much? Because on top of the brand dated price, the NCS producers receive a differential agreed on average about a month before each cargo is loading. And the average peak differential of NCS crude oil grades versus brand dated was agreed in the period about 10 to 15th of April. at close to $19 a barrel, on top of the Brent-dated price. So this means that peak physical pricing for NCS grades should likely be in the first 2-3 weeks of May. The underlying driver is a severe physical supply disruption, of course, related to the flows through the Strait of Hormuz. We estimate that around 13 to 15 million barrels per day of crude oil production is currently shut in. Because storage fills up inside the hormone straight, making it necessary to curb production. Logistics are tightening, shipping times increase. So in the most optimistic scenario, which would be a reopening of the strait during May, Middle East producers will have shot in approximately 1.5 billion barrels of oil production in 2026. When flows resume, global inventories will need to be refilled, supporting incremental import demand of about 2 million barrels per day for up to two years. This alone should support prices well into 2027. So, is $100 a barrel, is that a historically high oil price? Well, in nominal terms, yes, of course, it is significant. But in real inflation adjusted terms, it's not historically exceptional at all, actually. Because the average Brent price the past 20 years, in real terms, has actually been $100 a barrel. So what matters most is the share of global economic output spent on oil. So if Brent Dated averages $150 a barrel in 2026, the oil burden would be approximately 5%, similar to what we observed between 2011 and 2014, when the nominal average Brent price was around $107 a barrel. Now, what about the longer-term oil price effects? A prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz would leave lasting imprints on global oil markets. The Hormuz crisis has underscored more sharply than any event in recent years that energy security remains a central concern for governments and corporations alike. Governments and corporations would likely mandate structurally higher strategic petroleum reserves and emergency stockpiles, while new and costlier trade routes, such as expanded pipeline capacity and longer tanker voyages, would embed a permanent risk premium. A sustained price shock of this magnitude could, however, accelerate fleet electrification and biofuel adoption, for example, in transportation. Much as the oil shocks of the early 1980s permanently drove oil out of power generation market, a market it never has really meaningfully re-entered. We don't almost use oil for power generation anymore. This stands in sharp contrast to episodes of mere demand suppression, as I like to call it, such as the 2008 and 2009 financial crisis or the Covid shock of 2020, where demand collapsed, but only temporarily, and ultimately rebounding, leaving oil's structural market position mainly intact. So while European EV sales, electric vehicle sales, have accelerated after the Hormuz crisis, sales are down in both the key markets, China and the United States, so far in 2026, which is reflecting reduced policy support in both those important markets for electric vehicles. The net result is that global year-on-year EV sales were in fact negative even in March. meaning the crisis potential to accelerate oil demand displacement through electrification remains, for now at least, more of a medium-term aspiration than a near-term reality. What is observable so far is that the market has already priced up the average expected Brent price for 2027-29 by about 15-30% compared to when we started this year of 2026. So what are the key takeaways? First, Brent is the dominant global benchmark for crude oil, and crude oil is sold as a differential to Brent. Second, the large gap between dated Brent and Brent futures is mainly driven by timing and physical scarcity. Third, North Sea differentials are amplified by the same timing effects and steep backwardation curve structure. And fourth, an oil price above $100 a barrel is not historically extreme. We would need a sustained average of $150 a barrel to match the oil burden that we saw from 2011 to 2014 of about 5%. Finally, the longer-term effects of the Hormuz crisis They are uncertain. Will we end up with permanent demand destruction like we saw in the early 1980s? Or just temporary economic demand suppression like we saw in the grand financial crisis in 2008 and 2009 and the COVID crisis in 2020? No matter what happens to real oil demand going forward, we believe we can be quite certain that demand for imports to refill drawn-down inventories will be supportive for oil prices at least far into 2027. For Acker ASA, where Acker BP is the core industrial asset, these market dynamics primarily support earlier, more visible and resilient cash flows. which is strengthening the predictability of dividend income and overall financial flexibility. Thank you for listening.