Nel Asa

Good morning from Oslo, Norway. We are ready to present our second quarter 2026 results. My name is Hakon Volldal. I am the CEO of Nell, and I'm joined today by our CFO, Kjell Christian Bjornsen, and our Head of Communication, Marketing, and Investor Relations, Wilhelm Flinder. We have the following agenda. Nell in brief, we will skip and we will go to the second quarter highlights, followed by a commercial update, a technology update, and as usual, end with the Q&A session. In the second quarter, we generated 153 million NOK from contracts with customers. We ended the quarter with a negative EBITDA of 155 million. The order intake ended at 230 million NOK, order backlog at 1.2 billion NOK, and the cash balance at 1.3 billion NOK. Some of the highlights in the quarter were the following. We launched our new pressurized out-of-line platform, what we call the PA series, on May 8th. We'll come back to that later. We also progressed the new manufacturing line for this technology at Herøya, according to plan, and we received two purchase orders for containerized PEM solutions, each worth approximately $7 million. Looking at the group financials, revenue from contracts with customers, $163 million knockdown, 12% year-on-year. Outline revenues declined by 14%, whereas PEM revenues were down by 10%. Total revenue and income, 182 versus 215 last year. Ivita ended at 155 versus 86 last year, and this is driven by the settlement with Iwatani. If we adjust for the 70 million nok, Ivita was... Flat versus second quarter last year. And of course, this also impacts EBIT and pre-tax income, etc. So adjusting for the one-off settlement with Ivatani, all figures were actually in line or better than last year. Looking at alkaline financials, there has been a decline in revenues on the alkaline side. It's not surprising because we have had few orders for our atmospheric alkaline technology, and that's why we have launched a new platform, and it will take a few quarters for orders to materialize and to turn orders into revenue. So this is Development, which is expected, not appreciated, but again, the reason we're launching new technology is to bring these numbers back to the 2024 level, where the business was EBITDA positive. In the quarter, we had 56 million NOK from customer contracts in revenues, and 28 million NOK negative EBITDA. This quarter included 27 million NOC in R&D expenses compared to 18 million NOC in the second quarter of 2025, explaining some of the difference. In PEM, we have more stable revenues and higher revenues. There is solid demand for our containerized PEM solutions. Which means we had better revenues in the second quarter of 26 than in the first quarter, still slightly down 10% versus last year. Largely driven by kilowatt type electrolyzers, so the small, what we call the S8 and C series electrolyzers for industrial applications, and the megawatt type installations had lower project revenues in the quarter. We had also lower other income in the quarter due to delayed or canceled research grants in the US. Some of the programs have been reinstated and will be a positive effect in the second half of 26. Also, this quarter included 33 million NOC in R&D expenses compared to 33 million NOC in the second quarter of 25. So we keep a steady progress on the R&D side. More orders are needed also on the PEM side to break even, especially megawatt-scale projects. Order intake and backlog. Order intake in the quarter ended at 230 million NOK, and that's up significantly from a weak quarter in 2025, and also significantly up versus the first quarter in 2026. With 230 million NOK in Thank you very much. orders are not high enough we need to compensate by controlling expenses and that's why we have reduced our headcount from 430 down to 313 mostly in production and project delivery we have kept on most of our R&D people And this means that personnel expenses are down in the quarter versus last year, and of course versus the peak back in Q3 of 2024. On to the commercial updates. Thank you very much. The reason we see a strong demand for these type of solutions is that most projects have become smaller or start with the first build-out phase in the 10 to 50 megawatt range, which fits nicely with our containerized PEM offering. Multiple containerized PEM solutions offer a proven, efficient, and standardized alternative to customized solutions. And because we have managed to bring down CapEx considerably, combined with a growing list of references, this also increases snail's competitiveness in the market segment. Pressurized Outerline has received concrete interest, and there are several active and ongoing customer dialogues. However, it's still early phase, and we need some more months before the first orders materialize. Europe is currently the most active and promising region for now, and I guess most other electrolyser OEMs, but there are also some projects progressing in North America, the Middle East, and Asia. In the quarter, we received a $7 million purchase order for containerized PEM equipment. This is from Messure Process in France, valued at $7 million. It's the second purchase order from this customer. And we will supply, or Messure Process will supply hydrogen refueling stations and industrial applications in Europe with hydrogen. Another nice win in the quarter was with Douglas County in the U.S. This is the first system sold that will be owned and operated by a public utility, or as you said, the first NEL system sold. The electrolyzers will operate near a hydropower plant, and the equipment will be used to utilize excess power to balance the grid and to be used for other high-value applications. This reduces the need for mechanical adjustments to lower wear and maintenance on the turbine units and associated equipment. So a nice and interesting application for this equipment in the US. We have also expanded our technology partner network. We have signed a frame agreement with the leading power electronics partner SMA Altenso for PEM. Atmospheric Alkaline and Pressurized Alkaline Platforms. That means we have one supplier covering all our different platforms with power electronics. We have signed agreements with container integrators across the US and Europe delivering plug-and-play PEM containers, similar to the ones we showed on the previous two pages. We've also entered into contracts with PEM Thank you very much. Samsung E&A has recently completed its 100 megawatt rep for our new pressurized alkaline solution, what they call the Compass H2A+. That means Samsung E&A can now offer 100 megawatt or larger bankable solutions across all NELS megawatt platforms. Atmospheric alkaline, pressurized alkaline, and PAM, with long service agreements and full system guarantees. SiteBEM, we continue our close collaboration with SiteBEM is offering its IV100, a replicable and scalable full-scope electrolysis solution with sizes from 20 megawatts up to several hundred megawatts and more based on NELS atmospheric alkaline technology. And we're also working to expand the partnership with SiteBEM to cover other platforms. We have a strategic partner in India called Reliance. They have an ambition to produce electrolysers for captive use in India. The project to establish a gigafactory in India remains under development, with key supplies for its production facility contracted. The planned construction is expected to commence in this year. Nell and Reliance continue to work closely with dedicated teams on both sides, driving the project forward. So again, a very interesting project. Development with Reliance in India that we hope will materialize and bring significant profitable revenue growth for Nell in the years to come. On the technology side, we had a big happening in Norway in early May. That's when we launched our new pressurized alkaline platform, which we call the PA series. And just to remind the audience why we have launched this product, besides Having something new to show to our customers, we need to bring the order intake up. We need to get back to the levels we saw in 22-23 on the revenue side. And in order to do that, you need a compelling product offering. The new pressurized solution we said had to improve energy efficiency over the old platforms. We needed to bring the system footprint down. We needed to remove the building for the electrolysis because that building can be quite expensive. We wanted to dramatically reduce project engineering hours and site work because hours can constitute up to 50% of the total capex for the customer. We need to enable a wide operating range where in, for instance, Europe with today's energy system, You need to be able to turn the system down to let's say 10-20% loads and you also need to operate it at full load. And we need to design it for dynamic operations where you quickly shift the load factor up and down. Our answer to this is the new PA series. It's smaller, it's cheaper, and we think it's better. Starting with smaller, the new solution reduces the footprint. of up to 80% of NELS scope. That means thousands of square meters, if we talk about a large hydrogen plant. System cap base, what you see on the picture, is reduced by 40-60%. That covers power electronics, electrolyzers, and gas-liquid separation. System energy consumption is Estimated to be in the 61 to 53 kilowatt hours per kilogram range. This is best in class today if you look at real performance. Not what you find in data sheets, but real performance. And if you want more than the 25 megawatt building block, you can combine them into larger plants. This rendering shows a 100 megawatt plant. In addition to this, you'll need switchgear and high voltage to medium low voltage. You need water treatment and some other things, storage. But for the core system, you're down to less than 2,000 square meters for a 40 ton per day or 100 megawatt solution. And that's quite good, as I said, 80% down versus Nell's previous offering. More importantly, the new system redefines the cost of clean hydrogen. For a full turnkey CapEx comparison, you can look on the left-hand side. What we see in our reference projects, 20 to 30 megawatt projects using the old technology, you ended up around $3,000 per kilowatt. A similar scope with the new pressurized alkaline system reduces that down to $1,400. And that means you bring the levelized cost of hydrogen at 30 bar pressure down from $7.8 per kilo to $4.5. A significant reduction that enables new projects to move ahead. And please bear in mind that these figures are for small companies. Small-scale projects of 20 to 30 megawatt. We're not talking hundreds of megawatt or gigawatt scale projects, then the CAPEX of course would come down further. Looking at NELS build-up of the CAPEX, we have For this 25 megawatt module, roughly $1,000 linked to the hardware that you see at the bottom, and then $123 for services provided by Nell. Other hardware and services not included on this picture is $346, and that includes water purification, dryer, purification, compression from 15 to 30 bar, Additional cooling equipment, nitrogen for purging, etc. So this is an almost all-in cost estimate of $1,400 per kilowatt for a 25 megawatt system. Again, if you bring the size of the project up to, let's say, 100 megawatts, a lot of the labor costs will come down, and there are also some scale benefits on the hardware side. which means for larger scale projects it's possible to get the 1400 figured down further. The good thing about this is that it's not only a PowerPoint concept, it is a real concept and to prove that the system actually works, we have built it at Harøya outside our manufacturing facility. What you see on the picture is A plant with the gas-liquid separation to the left. You have an electrolyser and you have the power electronics, the transformer and the rectifier to the right. This system is one quarter of a full system. That means it can deliver six megawatts if you have all the electrolyses in the skids, but it can be built out to do 25 megawatts. And this is what we sold the world on in May, early May. We took the curtains to the side and allowed people to inspect it and have a look at how it's constructed and why we have designed it the way we have. To deliver this, not only build a prototype, but deliver at scale, we need a production line for some components. We will not build a huge manufacturing site where we make all the different components. We will have a capital-light approach to this. But we do need a production line for some components, and this production line is taking shape. There are ongoing tests that we have conducted that conform good product quality and we actually exceed prototype production results. We see clear quality improvements with higher yields and fewer critical defects. Cycle times are coming down and support higher capacity and improved efficiency. We have a strong process understanding. The baseline production run plan to look and the lock-in learnings with further improvement expected during the autumn. And in terms of capacity, 500 megawatts will be installed by the end of 26. This can be expanded to 1 gigawatt by 2027 through increasing the cycle time. And I want to remind everybody, especially the analysts, that capex per megawatt is significantly lower than for atmospheric alkaline and PEM. Again, back to the point that we will not make all the components ourselves. We will just make a few critical components and do the final assembly and testing in-house. The project is also funded by the European Union. We have received 135 million euros in funding. It has to be Maxed by Nell, and we have received already the first milestone payment in the second quarter, which is good. That shows progress, and it shows faith in what we have done so far. Final point, I will step down as president and CEO of Nell to pursue another professional opportunity. I have been with Nell since July 1st, 2022. It's been a fantastic journey. Great company, and I will still be around. I have a six-month notice period, and I will continue in my role until further notice. The board of directors has already initiated the process to recruit my successor. And I think it's important to say that We have gone through quite a bit of strategic shifts and organizational developments over the past four years. It's been a hectic period, but the strategy remains intact and it remains unchanged going forward. It's supported. It's not just me pursuing this strategy. It's anchored with the rest of the management team and the board of directors. So the current strategy, including technology, Product Roadmaps, Project Scope, Target Geographies, and the pursuit of partnerships with leading industrial players will remain unchanged. Going forward, the continued rollout and commercialization of the recently launched pressurized alkaline system and the future next-generation PEN technology will remain Nel's top priorities. So with that we conclude the presentation and I will be joined on stage by our CFO. Before we start answering questions, you will read the script that you normally follow, Wilhelm.

Thank you, Håkon. Before we start the Q&A session, just a few practical points. If you would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand function in Teams. We will call your name and unmute your microphone, but please make sure to unmute yourself on your end as well. We will also take written questions submitted through the Q&A function if time allows. And as a reminder, we will not comment on outlook-specific targets, detailed terms and conditions for individual contracts, or questions about specific markets. Also, modeling questions are also best handled offline. And with that, let's get started. First question comes from the line of Arthur Sittbom. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much for taking my question. I would just be keen to have your thoughts on the funding of NEL at the moment. So you report a 1.3 billion cash position. You are still burning cash on a quarterly basis at the moment, and the other backlog seems to take a bit of time to pick up. while you're investing in the manufacturing platform. So I was wondering basically, do you consider yourself as being in a strong enough funding position at the moment to turn the group into a growing entity and a profitable entity? Or should we think about potential avenues and potential action plan on the funding for the coming 12 months? Thank you very much.

So we do have a solid cash position as of now and we have no urgency to do anything about it. However, we have done many steps in the past to strengthen ourselves, including the spin out of Cavendish, frequent capital raises, but also working with customer and customer contracts to ensure that we get paid early so that we don't build up too much working capital. So a long way of saying that we have a good Thank you very much. Thank you, Arthur. The next question comes from the line of Helene Kihaud Brøndbo. Please go ahead. Yes, hi.

I was wondering a bit about the overdue receivables. Could you provide an update on the ones that are more than 91 days past overdue? And do you expect to see anything happening here in the immediate future?

Yes, so let me just handle that overdue receivable. We have one very large overdue receivable that's been out for a long time. That's related to a bankruptcy in Germany for a project developer last year, and it remains on a balance sheet until that is closed. As we communicated at that point in time, the net effect if we get nothing out of the bankruptcy estate will be zero. We do have a hope to reclaim some inventory, in which we have a strong position to reclaim, so this is a Net Zero Cash Effect on that one, and it will remain there until the bankruptcy proceedings finalize in Germany.

Okay, and you do not have any more clarity on the timing of that?

Unfortunately, it takes longer than what it would do in Norway, but again, you know, the total balance there is also, and we can follow up this on modeling questions with Wilhelm afterwards, where the counter position to that overdue receivable is.

Thank you.

Thank you, Helena. I see no further questions here, but we have received some written questions that we can go through from David Lopez. Following cost-cutting measures and the evolution of demand in recent quarters, what level of plant utilization do you consider necessary to achieve positive EBITDA And what's the most realistic timeframe for achieving this?

I think that varies depending on which platform we look at. For PEM, the plant utilization has to be around 20-24% maybe of the installed capacity, whereas for alkali it has to be a bit higher. And of course it depends on margin, where initially you have a lower margin on the equipment than you will have over time. So I think we need to come back to precisely what the load factor has to be, but it's fair to say that we need to move into the hundreds of megawatts per year on alkaline and tens of megawatts for PEM in order for this to be a profitable business.

Thank you, and another one also from David. Given increasing international competition and pressure on electricity prices, in which segment will we now maintain a sustainable competitive advantage? Is it production cost, technology efficiency, after-sales service, or the execution of projects with CYPEM and Samsung E&A?

I think we have to remain competitive. And the good thing about modern electrolyzers is that a lot of the manufacturing is actually automated. That means we're not penalized for having high labor costs in Norway or the US because most of the manufacturing is automated. I do, however, believe that supply chains in China will be cheaper than supply chains in the Western world. So I think the Chinese will have an upper hand on CapEx. I think we will have an upper hand on efficiency. And the reason I say that is not because we're so clever and have insights that the Chinese cannot also get, but it takes a while. And it's a moving train, so I think we do piggyback on almost a century of experience. We also have certain design secrets. So I think our competitive advantage will be related to stack efficiency and reliability. One thing is to build something to last a year or two, but to make it last 7, 8, 9, 10 years is a completely different ballgame. And I do think we will see Results and stories coming out in the coming years where electrolysis performance is not what people expected. And then the demand for high quality solutions will come up. So can we remain competitive on CapEx and be leaders on efficiency? I believe so.

Thank you, Hakon. We have a question coming in here from Kylian de Raspao. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. So basically just wanted to inquire about the order momentum. Essentially just wanted to get your take on where we are in discussions with customers because it's been quite a while for the alkaline division to actually have something on the books. and I think that's now starting to get to a point where it's concerning investors quite a lot. We have controlled the cash burn rate so kudos on that but I really wanted to understand where the policy supporting Europe stands versus what it is in the US and then On China as well, so what sort of competition could we expect if China breaks into the European market in terms of supplying electrolyzers and what is your view on that? Is it something similar that is going to be like the wind industry where wind turbine manufacturers have not been able to acquire a lot of market share, especially in key European countries, they have only been there in price sensitive economies. So just wanted to get your take on that also. Thank you.

That was a long question, but if we start from the top. Before you get the purchase order, you typically have worked with the client for at least a year, maybe two years. And part of that work is to do a feed study or to qualify the technical solution. That doesn't mean all feed studies are exclusive. You might be in a competitive field, Feed Situation with other OEMs. But it's usually when you talk about feed down to two, maybe three OEMs. And what I can say is that we are conducting feed work on behalf of potential clients. We are in projects with Burnell is the sole OEM and Then FID, if it's taken, will involve a purchase order to Nell. We are in situations where we have competitive feeds, where we're one out of two or three OEMs bidding on a contract, and the likelihood is then of course fairly high that we could win it. So we have these situations. But you're right, we have not seen a lot of large alkaline orders for Nell. We... We have seen fewer projects overall, projects that have not moved forward, and they've also been on the losing side of some of these bits that's true. So I think we need to give it a bit more time also for our atmospheric alkaline contracts to come through. And having said that, in order to qualify Nell and put Nell in a more advantageous and favorable position, We have launched the pressurized alkaline concepts. And the whole reason we have launched this now and started to work with customers is to get the large-scale orders on the alkaline platform. But I have to say that I think we need to pivot from atmospheric to pressurized to see more order intake on the alkaline side. And that will take a few quarters. It was launched in May, and then we need time to work with customers and customers to get comfortable with what we have built. For them to then place the order with no. We are positive the orders will come, but as I said, we have to be a bit patient because it's new technology. What was the second part of the question related to legislation? Legislation in Europe is okay-ish. There is a market in Europe. There are support programs. There are grants being handed out, but there are also some very detailed and I would say not so productive legislative pieces that are being... The European Union is taking a second look at some of these legislative pieces. The idea was to come out in July with a revised version of the Delegated Act and some of the provisions in there to qualify hydrogen as RFNBO. That has been delayed until fall. That creates, of course, a bit of uncertainty in the market, but I would say Europe is in a decent place. The U.S. is a much more difficult market. It's hard to see that the government will come up with the subsidies and grants, so every project has to stand on its own, and there are not many off-takers currently in the U.S. We do see activity in the Middle East and Asia. promising projects in those regions, but not as many as we probably see in Europe. So out of the regions, I would say Europe is still important, and it would help a lot if member states could transpose the Renewable Energy Directive into national law. Very few countries have done that. Germany has done it partly on the transportation side. That helps, that creates an end market for hydrogen. and over the coming months we hope that more companies will transpose it because that definitely helps probably helps more than you know a new hydrogen bank auction so that was a long answer to a long question so thank you so much Hakon and all the best for whatever it takes for you thank you thank you

We have another question from the Q&A function here, and the first part is something that we naturally cannot really comment on, but let's have a go on the second part. Regarding Everfuels' recent €245 million funding from the European Hardware Bank for their FIT project, do you see active interest from Everfuels' department with an element of this? And more broadly, in terms of uncommitted or potential large-scale projects like this? What kind of pipeline volume ranges can investors realistically expect to see coming down the road?

I guess we cannot comment on individual customer projects for customers that have not yet started. But on a more generic basis, we are of course targeting everybody that gets funding. Ideally, we start working with them well before they get the funding. So our ideal position would be to identify their good projects and make sure that we are well positioned before they get the funding from the hydrogen bank or similar subsidy rounds, including the ones in the UK. If not, we are playing catch-up game and we're quite good at that as well. I don't know if you want to add some more, Hakon?

No, but I think it's fair to say that if you look at the orders we have received over the past year at least, you will see a lot of repeat purchases. And that means we deliver solutions that customers like and they come back to us for more. And I do hope that we can have repeat purchases also on projects with Everfuel. As you know, they have built a 20-megawatt plant in Denmark using Nell's electrolysis.

Very good. It seems we're out of questions, so we'll end the Q&A session here. If anything comes up after the call, you're always welcome to reach us at ir.nellhydrogen.com, and I'll hand it back to the management for any final remarks.

Well, I think we have covered it all, so what remains is to wish you all a good summer, and then maybe we'll see each other in October, at least Sir Christian will be here, maybe I'll be here as well, but have a great summer, and thanks for watching the webcast.