Cloudberry Clean Energy ASA

OSE:CLOUD

Earnings Call Analysis

Cloudberry's Strategic Value Creation and Growth

Cloudberry has been diligently moving projects forward, such as bringing Sundby into production efficiently, with minimal contingency costs, and seeing production ramp up. They're happy with the project progression and partnerships like the one with Skovgaard contributing to the Nees Hede project. With effective asset sales, particularly hydro plants, they've fully financed the Nees Hede project and are strategically creating shareholder value. Focusing on value per share without issuing new shares, they've kept a low debt level and have hedged production to benefit from attractive Nordic power prices. A decrease in the projected hit from the new resource tax, from NOK 2-3 to NOK 1 per share, shows improved conditions. Operations exemplify strong equity, a solid cash position of about NOK 800 million, and financial prudence, preparing for future growth without compromising on financial risks.

Cloudberry's Agile Expansion and Risk-Adjusted Focus

Cloudberry Clean Energy demonstrated a nimble approach to project management, highlighting their Sundby wind farm as a case study in efficient execution. As they maintain a diversified portfolio in hydro, wind, and solar across Scandinavia, they utilize a flexible business model which allows for selective focus on the most lucrative projects. Given market conditions, they've consciously decided not to proceed with Stenkalles, an offshore project with inadequate returns, instead exploring alternatives like battery storage or partnering in solar. This strategic adjustment symbolizes their commitment to profitability and cautious capital deployment. Cloudberry's drive for value creation, consistent with the company's ethos since its IPO, is further evidenced by Sundby's lower-than-expected development cost and the smooth progression of the Odin partnership, which is rapidly advancing the Nees Hede solar project.

Financial Resilience Amidst Strategic Shifts

Cloudberry's financials reveal a savvy operational pivot as they navigate shifting markets. Their shift from offshore wind to solar is underpinned by falling solar panel costs, which present a valuable opportunity for the Nees Hede project. Despite a one-time hit to EBITDA due to write-downs on Stenkalles, they've effectively leveraged asset farm-downs to remain well-capitalized, thereby shoring up investor confidence. The company has a robust balance sheet, with significant cash reserves and a stable debt profile, ensuring all ongoing construction projects, including Nees Hede, are fully funded. The company retains the intent to explore the strategic potential of share buybacks, further evidencing management's commitment to shareholder value.

Positioning Within a High-Price Energy Market

Cloudberry's strategic focus on positioning within lucrative Nordic energy price areas has started to bear fruit. The company reported an average spot price significantly exceeding projected figures, topping NOK 0.76 per kilowatt-hour. Their targeted approach to PPAs, aiming to double enrollment over the next year, reinforces their commitment to secure revenue streams. Such initiatives indicate Cloudberry's strategic emphasis on solidifying its standing in the high-priced regions of the Nordics and optimizing their production portfolio amid a market inclined towards renewable energy.

Navigating Regulatory Landscapes

Cloudberry has adapted to the regulatory changes, particularly Norway's 25% resource rent tax. Though there's a non-cash impact to the P&L of approximately NOK 18 million this quarter attributed to the tax, it's improved from the initial estimate and is expected to be investment-neutral for new projects. The nuances of these regulatory challenges exemplify the company's adeptness in managing external factors while maintaining a steady course toward profitability.

Market Optimism and Development Progress

The company's confidence in the market is buoyed by a favorable investment climate with declining CapEx costs in select technologies and falling long-term interest rates. Their optimism is fortified by successful permit applications and on-track project completions. Cloudberry's focus on value creation, evident in the momentum of moving projects forward and filing new permit applications, aligns with their strategy of fortifying their market presence amidst strong demand for renewable energy. As they integrate Captiva into Cloudberry, the company underscores its objective of streamlining operations for enhanced efficiency and value generation.

Future Considerations and Growth Prospects

Amid high transaction multiples, Cloudberry is open to strategic divestitures and farm-downs. While this reflects an ongoing evaluation of capital allocation strategies, it also signals the intent to finance new developments through existing liquidity, partnerships, and asset sales when advantageous. Their indicated interest in the possible sale of non-core wind and hydro assets hints at a continuous pursuit of optimizing their asset portfolio for better financial and strategic returns.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q4

[Anders Lenborg, executive]

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Cloudberry Clean Energy's Fourth Quarter Presentation and I am joined here by our CEO, Christian Helland, here today, and we have prepared a presentation for you that we will go through and we will also open up for questions. So please use your Q&A function and send us your questions.

But before diving into the presentation, I want to have a couple of comments to the picture that you all see now. This is Cloudberry's latest wind farm, Sundby outside Stockholm in the SE3 region. And it's a perfect example on Cloudberry Clean Energy's value creation, where we entered into a half finished project, managed to get new technology and up-dot-date turbines on the site and executed and built a wind farm over less than a year, and it's today in operation and generating income to Cloudberry. So it's a perfect example to understand the Cloudberry way of doing many of our projects.

So we will now go through the presentation. I will start off giving you an introduction and some highlights, then Christian will take you through the financial numbers before I finish off with a summary, and we will open up for Q&As.

We have this slide, always with us for some of you. It's a well-known slide, but I think it's also a very important slide to understand Cloudberry. So we are a lean focused Nordic developer, owner and operator of renewable assets. We cover the full life cycle from early stage greenfield hydro, wind and solar projects until they are in production, and we do also manage the projects in-house. So we cover the whole life cycle.

Our portfolio is also a diversified portfolio. We have a diversified portfolio on different technologies, now wind and hydro and solar. We have also diversified it on 8 attractive price areas in Scandinavia and in 3 different countries, and we also cover the full life cycle of the project.

So we do have a backlog of project where we have exclusivity. We have projects that we have got permits that we have a right to construct. We have 2 projects now under construction, a wind farm in Sweden and the hydropower plant in Norway. And then we, of course, have our production portfolio that is generating long-term cash flow to Cloudberry.

And why is this important? It is important because it gives us unique flexibility. It gives us flexibility to pick and choose the different projects that we want to focus on. where we see the best returns, where we have the best returns when it comes to price area or technology or timing, so that is extremely important to understand how we are thinking in Cloudberry. And we have also tried to show that on this slide. If we start on the left-hand side here, it's always been important for us to be profitable, to be well funded and to be capable.

And being profitable is -- the flexibility is key, where we can use our flexible model to always shift focus to where we see the best returns and that gives us a project that we want to take to FID and construction and into operation. So that's the reason why we are not going to focus on Stenkalles going forward. We haven't spent any capital on that project over the last quarters, but we have now decided also to post the shallow water project. Two reasons, we don't see enough returns on the project. We don't see the meeting the IRR requirements that we have.

So instead of pushing through a project that is marginal, we will focus on other projects, or the technologies like Nees Hede, but also on the Stenkalles project. We have infrastructure in place onshore. We have a 100-megawatt grid connection. We have infrastructure in the sense of substation and so on. So we are now together with our partner looking at other possibilities. That could be, for example, a storage project, batteries or in combination with solar. So this is very key for us to get across is this flexibility and how we can -- that we have enough projects to -- in the portfolio to always could focus on the most valuable projects for us and our shareholders.

And we also like to remind you that we are -- have always been well funded, still are, we have cash. We have a bank facility that we have not used fully. And that means we are fully financed for all the constructions that we have ongoing, but also fully financed for Nees Hede, if we will take an FID on Nees Hede during the year. And we are fully financed then for over 430 megawatts.

And when it comes to be capable, it's -- it has a side to flexibility, of course, and we are happy that we have now bought the last 40% of Captiva. We had an attractive price on the last 40%. And we are now 100% owner of Captiva and then we have already integrated organization into Cloudberry, and we see that, that will bring us more synergies. And also it's strengthening the Cloudberry platform.

And here on the right-hand side, you see what that means actually means that where are we going to focus. We are always focusing on proven technology. We are focusing on creating our portfolio. We have a mix of different technologies, different production profiles. So we have a solid production throughout the full year.

That brings us over to the Q4 highlights. We are happy to see that the revenue is up. We have been on the back of new producing assets. So we have delivered on our construction projects. We delivered on time and cost and in some examples like Sundby we've delivered under cost. And we see that we can also fill up with new projects both hydro, wind and solar. So we're always moving the project portfolio forward and getting new projects into the portfolio.

The EBITDA is hit by some one-off write-downs, especially Stenkalles, we have now write down all our offshore activities on the balance, and we do not have any further offshore in -- on the balance sheet. And then we have also a write-down on Captiva due to acquiring the last 40% to an attractive price there.

When it comes to Odal, we are, of course, hit by the resource rent tax, as we have talked about several times. It was proposed 40% resource rent tax. It ended up by 25%. We got what we wanted on the new project where we get actually the money back when we are constructing a new wind project in Norway. But here, we have a noncash deferred tax expense of approximately NOK 18 million related to the implementation of the resource rent tax in Norway.

On the right-hand side here, you see that we still continue to deliver on building the production portfolio, both in production and also in installed capacity. So this is how the portfolio looks now. You see we have diversified it on technologies, countries, steadily growing the portfolio up through the year, delivering on our strategy, delivering on what we have told the market. And we are looking forward to continue to deliver on these technologies and also adding solar to the mix over 2024.

This is a slide that shows our Asset Management segment. So we will use the Captiva brand on the Asset Management side. We do have a very competent team that is managing many, many projects throughout the Nordics but also now on the continent. We are managing maybe 85% or -- between 85% and 90% of the assets [ that ] are not Cloudberry assets. And that volume is important for us. So we have a competent team that can make the best out of our own assets and how we manage them and to have a close dialogue between development of the projects and asset management side is important, and we see very important synergies by integrating Captiva into Cloudberry and having that increased network out there in the markets.

And here is the Nees Hede example. We have a permit for 175 megawatts in the Odin energy portfolio now. We have applied for additional wind. The project is stand-alone on solar is meeting our return requirements, and we are working towards the FID before or just after the summer, and then we will see when the wind permit is decided on, but the whole project is super interesting size in DK1, which we like the price area. And the whole ESG and sustainability side of this project is also super interesting, and we are actually looking at copy pasting this project also in other projects, both in Denmark but also in Scandinavia.

On the ESG side, we had no health and safety incidents in Q4, and we are happy to report that. And we have also still managed to avoid -- increased avoided emissions due to new projects coming on grid. And the rest of the ESG updates you will also find in our ESG report, sustainability report that comes out later this spring.

So by that, I say thank you for now and give the word to Christian that will take you through the numbers.

[Christian A. Helland, executive]

All right. Thank you, Anders, nice to be back. Before diving into the numbers, I was just in [indiscernible] 1 year ago, I seem like to tell you what have we done for the last year and show you the progress in the portfolio and also to explain some of the transactions done over the year.

1 year ago, as you see we have sold hydro plants. It's been record prices in the Nordics about NOK 9 per kilowatt hour for our hydro projects, showing that we are able to create value on and also then selling down on our projects. You see we're moving our projects forward. We've taken Sundby into production but low cost we just the minimum of the contingency there, so extremely happy with how that project has progressed also from start to end and [ now ] Vestas turbines producing and ramping up the production as we speak.

We also see the addition of Odin, extremely pleased with our new partnership with Skovgaard and we also see now how the development agreement with Skovgaard is working on the Nees Hede project, which we think is extremely attractive in the short term due to rapid falls in the prices of solar panels.

So this shows how we've been doing also how we have now -- are able to fully finance Nees Hede due to far effective farm downs of our hydro plants and how we efficiently use our capital to return values to our shareholders. Again, from day 1, we've been extremely focused on creating value for our shareholders. This shows the value creation we've done since we listed the company in 2020.

For us now, it's a lot of focus on value per share. We will not print more shares. We're very focused on creating value per share and growing this further into '24 and '25. So all activities we're doing now is creating value per share, which is, we think, is very interesting for our shareholders over time.

Again, keeping low financial risks, we have swapped our interest rate long term, low sensitivity to interest rates. And, as you see, we have a low debt level compared to our equity. Also, as we said a year ago, our goal was in 2020, '21, establish a platform focused on profitability, scaling up our production and being positioned in attractive price regions in the Nordics. We're able both over time to hedge our production but also receive attractive power prices in the right regions.

So to the quarterly numbers, as Anders mentioned, we're ramping up production, Sundby on stream. We have as mentioned, Stenkalles. We have, over time, followed this project, not used capital on it over the last quarters, been very careful with spending capital in offshore, but now seen that we can use our existing grid connection at Stenkalles to potentially batteries or solar. We see that as too expensive to continue to build offshore at the moment. Turbine prices remain elevated and the cost of offshore remains high. So we have no more balanced items in offshore. So that's quite important for us, and we focus on where we can have the highest return on our capital.

We're also, as Anders mentioned, the resource tax is implemented for '24. We said initially that, that was going to hit us with NOK 2 to NOK 3 per share with improved terms, we came out and see in this report that is hitting us with about NOK 1 per share. So it's absolutely improved and for new projects, we see it as neutral or slightly actually positive since the cash compensation is coming early on from the Norwegian government. But for Odal isolated, we see a P&L effect, not a cash effect of NOK 18 million for this quarter. It's also nice to see that we received good prices.

We are in the southern areas of the Nordic. We also see how DK1 is a good price region for us. So down to the segments. We'll go -- come back to the Production segment. Development segment, Sundby in production. We're a little bit earlier than expected. So we received revenue already in the development phase from Sundby, Kvemma, Munkhyttan on time. And we also see very good development on our backlog with projects in the southern part, central part, close to industry links where we believe it's attractive properties for further development over the years to come.

The Operations segment. Again, we have seen the high value of Captiva and Cloudberry are now 100% owner, very pleased with this. They have a lot of development experience in hydropower, which we sees us highly attractive for us also going forward. And then also risk reducing a lot of our development projects and have shown a good track record of building project on time and cost.

So to the Production segment, ramping up production. Last year, extremely high power prices, Ukraine instability in the power market in Europe. But we also see we are very pleased with the power prices this year. We, as mentioned in previous quarters, Odal, we have production stops with the winds primarily the winds that Siemens is changing. So the production volumes out of there is significantly lower than we believe it will be long term. The important part is that we have not recognized any of the lost revenue.

So there will be guarantees coming in from Siemens over the year, but these are not in the revenue statements as of now. We also signed a PPA in Denmark showing how valuable the production is there and what the market is willing to pay. This is a 3-year fixed contract at about NOK 1.18 per kilowatt hour. Anders will come back to it, but this is about twice the price of the system price in Europe, showing that we have production in the right areas.

There's always volatility in how this -- when you should enter into this PPA. So again, we have said over time, we will increase our fixed price hedging up to 30%, will still be about 70% in the spot market.

Last for me here, strong financial position, low debt swapped on long-term interest rates at attractive levels. We are again showing how we have a strong equity, strong cash position, about NOK 800 million in cash. So fully financed for Nees Hede and also partly for Duvhällen. On Duvhällen, we have a partner strategy to maybe not on that as 100% but that is something we will come back to over the next quarters.

So all in all, one off items on Stenkalles and the resource tax on Odal, but very pleased with the underlying operations of Cloudberry. So Anders will give you a couple of market comments before we move into Q&A. Thank you very much.

[Anders Lenborg, executive]

Thank you, Christian. Hi, everyone. We have now reached the market slide. And as some of you probably has noticed, it's a slightly updated slide. We still have the price -- system price estimate from volume, which is the orange marked line here. And as you can see, there is a shift from pre-COVID today on the price curves. And we believe that this shift from having some of the lowest prices in Europe to today's level is something that we will also see over the next years. But there's also another point here, and that's the price areas that we have in the Nordics.

We have different -- 5 different prices in Norway, 4 different in Sweden, 2 different price areas in Denmark. And we have been very focused on the different price areas. And the system price is a mix of all the price areas. But if you see this -- the actual price that we do get in the spot market, it is well above the price curve you see here. So in 2023, we had an average price of more than NOK 0.76 per kilowatt hour. And we have also put in the PPA, we did in DK1 now last year to show the price level we have on that 3-year PPA.

So our price -- average price will be a mix between the spot price we get for our production in all our product -- all our price areas and the PPA price that we have. We will try to also increase the PPA level from today's approximately 10% of the total production to -- more doubling that over the next year.

And when it comes to the macro numbers on the CapEx side and the interest side -- interest rates, we see also that it's developing into a positive, more positive terrain and on the solar power panel prices, it has really dropped a lot the last -- the price had dropped dramatically over the last year.

So summing up before we take some of the questions, we are delivering on our strategy. We use our flexibility to always focus on where we can create the most value and taking advantage now on folding solar CapEx and also taking advantage of becoming a 100% owner of Captiva and integrating that organization into to Cloudberry. So we are now on one lean team in throughout the Nordics.

When it comes to value creation, we managed to move projects forward. We managed to fill up with new projects into the backlog. We have a lot of interesting projects. We have already delivered permitting applications for 3 projects. We will deliver 3 new -- delivering 3 new permit applications over the next half year. And we've also delivered actual construction projects on time and cost. And the market, we think it's a favorable market going forward with falling CapEx prices on some technologies and also falling long-term interest rates and still a strong demand for new renewable power. So that was it from us, and then we will try to answer as many of your questions in the next 10 minutes. Thank you.

[Christian A. Helland, executive]

Okay Yes. Reading as we go here. So I could start out the Q&A with some financial questions. Are you considering any further share buybacks at the current valuation of Cloudberry? And the answer is definitely yes. We are always looking now and also will ask the general assembly to have this as a tool with us -- we think of it financially is that we believe our asset values, and we see it in the markets is significantly higher value than the market price. So for us to buy back shares is attractive. Some rough estimates of equity IRRs of at least 15% of those buybacks.

The reason we are passing it now is that we see high value in Nees Hede, the Nees Hede is a solar project positioned in the middle of a lot of wind productions, very strategic position. We know this will be attractive asset also in offshore wind is expected to come in the [indiscernible] and we've seen solar prices falling rapidly, so spending some capital in that developing and constructing this hopefully in not too long of a time. We see it as a very value creative.

We showed with our hydro assets that we delivered equity returns of above 50% IRR on those projects. We don't saying we're maybe reaching those levels, but we see highly attractive as we see panel prices, and it's easy to construct. It's a flat area, very interesting ESG footprint and so forth. So we believe this is an attractive asset, but we'll continuously evaluate that versus share buyback. So that's a long answer to the share buyback. It's not forgotten and it's continuously evaluated by the management and the Board.

Could you highlight some more light on the expected project returns on Nees Hede? Yes. I think I just covered it. Again, strategically position is better sun radiation is very easy to construct, the ground is sound very simple. So we expect it's a large project in the right position with favorable terms at the moment. So that's why we have high speed on this project.

How do you see the opportunity for selling Stenkalles now? This is a 50-50 we have with Hafslund. So we've seen that the organization much better spending time on the grid concession we have. It's a deficit area in SE3 for power. So the grid connection could be highly valuable for us. We need some time now to see is this solar, is it battery. We know the frequency market in Sweden is very attractive. And we know there are investors willing definitely to invest in this. So for us, it's being a developer. We don't see us spending much CapEx on this, but we see we can develop the grid and again, not focusing short term on offshore development on Stenkalles.

And a couple of more on the finance. What's your thoughts on hedging? So hedging, we -- again, we are hedging when we see attractive opportunities. Again, we always have to -- we think by having more production and uncorrelated production, especially in Denmark, it's important, again, sun and wind and correlated technologies gives us a good opportunity to hedge more also in Denmark. So again, this is something we continuously do. You've seen us done PPAs. Now they're starting to pick up also in size as we are increasing our production, where the goal is to at least have hedged our cost, interest cost and our overhead costs. We don't -- there is a lot of different PPAs. It's pay as you produce, it's base loads. There are different between counterparties, counterparty risk, industrials and so forth. So this is a very complex pricing.

We're starting to get a lot of competence in this area, but this is varying from week to week and month to month. So what we are focusing on is delivering the right power in the right areas. And again, we're focusing on the high-priced regions in the Nordics. Anders, you can maybe continue here. It's more...

[Anders Lenborg, executive]

Yes, I have some of the questions. Are there other development initiatives that is at risk of being written down and for the time being? No. we have done what we felt was necessary. And as I mentioned, we have no more offshore wind on the balance.

When it comes to the Norwegian project portfolio, is that of focus? Yes, we do have a large wind development portfolio in Norway that we haven't worked on over the last years. With the result that we got on the resource rent tax, and we have the investment neutral set up for a new wind, we will definitely and we are at as we speak, working on Norwegian wind projects. We have a portfolio from -- in the south of Norway. We have some smaller industrial project and but we are also some large-scale wind projects. that we will definitely move forward with. And we are currently now looking to the timing of taking the next step and talking to the local municipalities and so forth. But we have the land lease agreements in place.

Yes. We have to -- you have some more questions you can answer. Thank you.

[Christian A. Helland, executive]

Thanks for questions. I tried to -- I see several are asking about the cost, perfectly correct. We are focusing on cost now in '24. We see profitability is our main goal and the NAV per share. So that's obviously on agenda, and you will hear more on us on this.

Again, it's very important to know that the cost of development must be seen over time because last year, for example, when we built [ Home ], we at least created NOK 200 million in development revenue or profit on that project. And this is a development project. So they are lumpy. So this quarter, we didn't do any sales of our development projects. And obviously, we have a quite large development organization, especially in Sweden, but also on hydropower here in Norway.

We see, for example, hydropower was also a question here, what does it cost and so forth. We see good hydro project we can develop maybe at NOK 5.5 per kilowatt hour. And in the right and as we showed, we sold it for NOK 9. We see a lot of value created there. It will be bulky. So in certain quarters, the cost of development and also partly in the Operations segment will be higher versus the revenue.

So this is how we're thinking about it, but the corporate, we're trying to be extremely lean. We will be an efficient company and continue to show that over the quarters to come. Yes. So yes, time is running. So I feel we answered a lot -- questions, Anders, if there is?

[Anders Lenborg, executive]

I just had the last one here that I think was an interesting question given the high transaction multiples, multiples will you consider to divest further. And of course, as we have mentioned, it is the thought going forward to finance the projects through the cash we have, the bank facility, partnerships, but also to divest and farm down on assets. We have some hydro and wind assets that's not really fitting into the portfolio that we could look at a sale and we have interest for all those assets, but we are also considering to look at farming down on a larger portfolio, but that is still work in progress. So -- but it will be an important part of financing new development projects going forward.

I think we say thank you for your attention, and thank you for the questions, and have a nice day from Christian and Anders.