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Uniper Se

Q22026

8/11/2026

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Uniper Analyst and Investor Conference Call. First-year half-year results. At our request, this conference call will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions by dialing star 1 on your telephone. May I now hand you over to the Executive Vice President, Investor Relations, Sebastian Veit, who will start the meeting today. Please go ahead.

speaker
Sebastian Veit
Executive Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to welcome you to our first half results of fiscal year 2026. Next to me on today's call are Michael Lewis, our chief executive officer, and Christian Barr, our chief financial officer. Michael will present an update on our key developments in the first half of 2026. Christian will walk you through our first half financial performance and our financial year outlook for the remainder of this year. And as usual, We will wrap up with a Q&A session at the end and now let me hand over to Michael Lewis, please.

speaker
Michael Lewis
Chief Executive Officer

Thanks Sebastian and good morning everyone from my side and thank you for joining our call. So let me start with the key highlights and I'm very happy to confirm that Uniper delivered solid financial results for the first six months of 2026 and is fully on track to meet our financial guidance. We continue to navigate steadily through the increased volatile markets in reaction to the conflict in the Middle East, and whilst our operational business has not been directly impacted by the conflict, we had some operational challenges nonetheless in the first half of 2026. The weak hydro conditions in Germany and the Nordic region, together with an unforeseen outage at Oscar Sam 3, weighed on earnings in green generation. This was partly offset by higher Nordic power prices, Stronger UK Capacity Market Earnings and Improved Head Results for our Flexible Generation. The main positive driver in this first year comes from greener commodities which rebounded from negative territory compared to last year when the segment was still burdened from past optimisation spillover effects. So putting all this into numbers, Group Adjusted EBITDA reached 711 million euros nearly doubling year on year and Group Adjusted Net Income came in at around 388 million euros. Against this background, we've narrowed our financial outlook for 2026, reflecting what we said in the beginning of 2026, that Uniper today is more focused and more balanced. And we now expect adjusted EBITDA to range between 1.1 billion and 1.3 billion euros. And adjusted net income is expected to come in between 500 million and 600 million euros. and Christian will provide additional details on the financials and the outlook shortly. And let me add here, we continue to work on strengthening our portfolio and we're making progress step by step. Just recently, we added another element to the rebuilding and diversification of our gas portfolio by concluding a gas supply contract with Sealism's Canadian LNG project for up to 20 years. and our efforts to strengthen our portfolio contribute to security of supply, increase sorting flexibility and reduce exposure to individual regions and market disruptions and it's also being recognized by our credit rating agencies. Notably, we received for the first time an issuer rating by Fitch of BBB Minus with a stable outlook. Also, S&P and Scope reaffirmed their investment grade rating when stable outlook for Uniper with BBB minus and BBB respectively. And with the resumption of shareholder distributions, we added another missing piece to bringing Uniper back to capital market readiness. The 72 cents per share dividend paid in May reflects both our confidence in the sustainability of our business model and our commitment to shareholder returns. Let me now turn to our home market in Germany. We're well positioned to participate in the upcoming Strom Valkargi auctions with around 1.7 gigawatt of hydrogen ready new gas fired power plants. Our existing infrastructure and advanced permitting underpin our sound preparation and we're confident to be able to execute and deliver our projects in the event of a successful award in the auctions. In summary, we are ready. And looking beyond capacity mechanisms, we also see attractive growth opportunities in the expanding development of data centers, where our sites, our grid connections, and energy expertise provide a solid foundation for future value creation. And I'll discuss this in more detail in a couple of minutes. Now let me highlight how current market trends fit into our broader strategy. So over the past 12 months, we've further sharpened our portfolio and investment priorities to address the key trends shaping Europe's energy future. First, strengthening security of supply. Second, enabling decarbonization. And third, supporting electrification and meeting growing power demand driven by digitization and AI. And we systematically strengthen the foundations of our business. Our gas procurement portfolio is more diversified today, both in terms of suppliers and geographic sourcing. And combined with rigorous risk management and a strong balance sheet, This has significantly enhanced the resilience of our company. As a result, Uniper stands today on a stable and sustainable foundation. We operate from a fundamentally stronger position, with a business model that is better equipped to navigate uncertainty whilst capturing the opportunities arising from Europe's increasing electricity demand. And taken together, our strong performance and the progress we've made in transforming and strengthening the company give us confidence in our ability to continue creating value for our customers, for society and for shareholders alike. And this brings me to the next slide concerning our sharpened CAPEX plan. Looking ahead, we continue with our plan to invest around 5 billion euros in growth and transformation by 2030, building on our core strengths in flexible and low carbon generation. In the near term, More than half of our planned growth and transformation capex are expected to be deployed in flexible generation. A key enabler is the progress on Germany's power market framework. With the legislative approval of the so-called Strom-Valkarie, a key prerequisite has now been established to support investments in new dispatchable generation capacity and strengthen long-term security of supply. As I mentioned earlier, we stand ready. The first capacity auction is scheduled for September 8th, with 4.5 GW to be tendered, followed by a second round with another volume of 4.5 GW envisaged for December this year. And these bring us closer to executing on some of our major growth investments. With our planned hydrogen-ready gas-fired power plants at Scholven and Staudinger, Uniper is well positioned to contribute to Germany's future security of supply whilst creating sustainable long-term value for shareholders. In parallel, the German government continues to advance plans for a permanent capacity market from 2031 onwards, providing a long-term framework to support system stability and investment in reliable generation capacity. We also see attractive growth opportunities arising from the increase of data center demand. It's expected that this trend will drive substantial growth in power consumption across Europe, creating additional demand for reliable and low carbon power solutions. At the same time, Uniper is well positioned to benefit from this trend and I'll come back to this in more detail shortly. For green generation, we continue to grow our renewables business backed by a well-filled project pipeline. Projects totaling 570 megawatts are currently in execution and we signed several long-term power purchase agreements across offshore wind and solar in Germany and Poland. and our aim is to bring around 500 megawatts of renewable projects to final investment decision annually going forward. And this supports our objective of creating sustainable long-term value while further strengthening future earnings resilience. And finally, we have a clear roadmap for rebuilding our gas and LNG business and to capture emerging opportunities in renewable and low carbon gases. Moving on to the next slide, I want to share with you how we're positioned to benefit from the growing demand for data centers. The rapid growth in AI is driving unprecedented demand for data center capacity. At the same time, access to power, sites, and grid connections is a critical bottleneck. For Uniper, this represents a compelling growth opportunity. Our portfolio includes strategic brownfield sites and existing infrastructure in some of Europe's most attractive future data center locations. We can offer hyperscalers and data center developers an integrated infrastructure proposition, combining strategic brownfield sites and support for securing power capacity and grid connections. This enables us to participate in one of Europe's fastest growing markets. Value creation starts with site development through land sales or land leases and selected co-investment opportunities. Beyond site development, we see future upside earnings potential through long-term power purchase agreements. And as of today, we've identified more than 10 locations with the potential to host data center developments. These sites across Germany and the UK, three sites across Germany and the UK, are already progressing through more advanced development stages. Now, before I hand over to Christian, let me share our key priorities for the remainder of the year 2026. For the second half of the year, our priorities are clear. First, Uniper will support the reprivatization process for which we are well positioned. Over the past years, we significantly strengthened our balance sheet, reduced risk, improved our operational performance, and established a clear and consistent equity story. Second, with regulatory clarity now in place through the STROM Falkargi, we are well prepared for the upcoming auctions. The outcome of these auctions will shape the majority of our planned growth and transformation investments through to 2030. And third, operational execution remains key and is the focus delivering our results for the second half of the year. In this context, we will also complete our leadership team and Christian Olms will join us as Chief Commercial Officer effective October 1st. And finally, We're on track to complete our cost savings program by the end of 2026, unlocking around 100 million euros in annual savings from 2027 onwards. With that, I'll now hand over to Christian, who will guide you through our numbers for the first half of the year. Christian.

Disclaimer

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