Volue ASA

OSE:VOLUE

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q2

[Trond Straume, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Volue's presentation of the results from the second quarter of 2022. My name is Trond Straume, and I'm the CEO of Volue. Together with me today, I have Arnstein Kjesbu who's our CFO. Jørund Haartveit, who is heading up our Insight business will also be joining. He will talk about our Market Insight platform for the power markets. There will be opportunities to submit questions throughout the presentation and we will hold a Q&A section at the end.

Volue with its heritage has been pioneering Green Tech for decades with focus on industry's critical to society. Our research work started in the power industry more than 50 years ago, and we're now one of the largest software companies in Norway. Creating Volue in 2020 has helped us become a frontrunner with digital coverage along the clean energy value chain from monitoring using sensors to realize cash in trading. Building from our success in the Norwegian home market, we've now won the trust of more than 2,200 customers across more than 40 countries. At the core of our value offering is our platform. We measure success by how the platform is utilized by our customers, led by more than 30 billion automated calculations in the cloud, we execute more than 25 million trades every year on behalf of our customers.

Our Market Insight service for power professionals holds 150,000 price curves, accessed 650 billion times annually. Our sensor platform collects 120 trillion data points from a 4,500 installations. These numbers increase every year, and this is how we retain 99% of our customers. Volue is active in 3 segments, all with relevance to the transition to renewable energy. For the Energy segment, we decided to expand from a dominating Nordic position in 2013 and into Continental Europe. Since then, we worked to expand our platform into thermal, solar, wind and batteries, et cetera. This is important to our customers as they continue to operate their existing assets while expanding capacity in new asset types.

For our Power Grid business, we enjoy a strong market position in the Nordics. With decades of experience, supporting our customers, building probably the strongest grid in Europe and now tested through the EV revolution. We believe we can expand our footprint on the back end on our market position in the Energy segment. With our infrastructure business, we have so far focused on SaaS transformation in our home market with more than 900 customers in the infrastructure construction business and covering over 84% of the Norwegian population with our water and wastewater business.

Combined with ongoing expansion to Sweden and Denmark, we believe in further increased profitable growth in Scandinavia. Now let's look at some of the key developments in the Volue Group in the second quarter. Looking at the financial performance in the quarter. We delivered recurring revenues of NOK 189 million, which represents 17% growth compared to last year. SaaS revenues ended on NOK 68 million in the first quarter, which is a strong 29% growth compared to the same period last year. We continue to grow our operating revenues to NOK 298 million, which is 28% higher than Q2 2021. With a challenging second quarter last year, influenced by the cyber incident, the performance in the quarter is a testament to our resilience and implementation of Volue's build back better program.

Looking at our segments. We see that our Energy business was the largest growth driver with 44% revenue growth. We delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 15% in the quarter, which is a reduction compared to the same period last year and in line with our strategic decision to invest in long-term growth. Improving our margins is a key priority, we will come back to later in the presentation. We continue to deliver strong sales performance by closing 750 deals in the quarter and with a minimal impact from the turbulence in the world economy. We've seen increased performance in the Energy segment over time. It is also rewarding to see that our offerings for the power market is ever more attractive in a turbulent European energy market.

Our Nordic home market has traditionally experienced energy surplus with a high degree of energy flexibility. Now shortage of supply has become a concern in parallel with increased value of flexibility. To us, it is a testimony of our capabilities that we've closed several strategic contracts in the quarter that will help mediate these challenges and further increase the yield of our customers' assets.

Now let's have a look at one of our newest service offerings. As part of our innovation efforts, we always maintain a handful of new services under market validation. With the ongoing energy crisis as a backdrop, we're seeing shortage of gas. By its nature, gas is well suited to help stabilize the energy system with its flexible characteristics. The gas shortage means that we need to find alternative measures to stabilize the European energy system. Over the last couple of years, we've been working to innovate and validate a new trading advisory service, helping customers to bring renewable energy to the market in a new and scalable way.

And we do so by combining decades of domain experience with AI and machine learning. To put it simply, our service takes price forecasting to the next level by advising our customers how they best can put their available capacity to use in the short-term market. It has proven that we can successfully offer these solutions to our customers as a scalable service with minimal human intervention. And needless to say, helping our customers monetize renewable capacity to a market in desperate need of energy has proven to be a success. And then energy world becoming ever more weather dependent, we believe there are attractive opportunities to further scale our trading advisory business also in a more harmonized market where there is a better balance between supply and demand. For the section of results for the second quarter, I will hand over to Arnstein Kjesbu, our CFO.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

Thank you, Trond. I will now go through the financial performance for the second quarter. Volue had a very strong quarter with a growth of 28%. And combined with a stable uplift in our recurring revenues, this makes out a very solid quarter for the group. Operating revenues ended at NOK 298 million at a growth rate of 28% in Q2 with an organic growth rate on 25% compared to the second quarter of 2021. The segment grew with 44%, and we especially see this true uplift in our recurring revenue, also with a solid tailwind from a very volatile power markets.

The shift in business models for infrastructure gives impact on the overall growth rate for the group, but in line with our plans for the shift in business models for the segments. And furthermore, Volue continues to invest the scaling organization to meet our long-term ambitions and this has partly influenced our margins in the period. Adjusted EBITDA margins ended on 15%, somewhat down from last year. As we are currently undertaking strategic investments to scale for further growth, that impacts our margins in the quarter. As growth and scalability is core for growing the business and improving our margins over time, we will keep on strengthening our product offerings and our SaaS platforms. We expect the R&D CapEx level to increase going forward, some will not from the level in Q2 to capture new market opportunities.

Growing our recurring revenue level is core for Volue as a software company, and growth journey is based in uplift in annual recurring revenues. Our share of revenues from annual recurring is 63% in Q2. And in the quarter, Volue generated NOK 189 million in recurring revenues, creating a growth of 17% from Q2 2021. And this growth is in line with our plans and targets.

The growth rate is driven from all the segments. And in 2022, for the second quarter, we have a 29% growth in SaaS, leaving the SaaS level on 23% out of total revenues for the last 12 months. Growth in annualized recurring revenue is basis -- is mainly driven by new sales. As stated previously in the presentation, we see a strong sales in the quarter, and it gives an uplift in the base. Since the IPO, our recurring revenue base has grown at 34%. This, combined with low churn is a proved point of growth path and profitability plan.

At the end of Q2, our ARR base annualized recurring revenue on a 12-month basis was NOK 798 million. In the base, we also see some uplift due to sale on pricing on existing customers. The base was growing 18% from Q2 2021, and we are undergoing transformation on our business models, and we are very pleased to see that our churn levels remains very low.

To us, this is a testimony that our services are business critical and vital to our customers' business processes. Statically speaking, churn level under 2% suggests that the average customer lifetime for our customers is 50 years. Volue's customer base is sticky with low churn and combining this with year-on-year uptick in our ARR levels. On the picture on the left, you see a typical revenue growth from a large European production customer, where we see a doubling of recurring revenues over a 5 to 7 years period. Volue is a supplier to the industry that is critical to the society, and our solutions are critical to our customers' operations. And that's why we have a long relationship with our customers.

Going into our segments. We see that a very strong growth is coming from the Energy segment on 44% in Q2. We see a very strong volatility in the Power markets and this creates a tailwind for our trading advisory part of the portfolio. The Power market volatility creates increasing demand for our services. Our businesses outside the Nordic is growing rapidly. In our home market, we see a strong development with the portfolio managers as a service. Combined, this creates a strong growth in our revenues. The adjusted EBITDA and absolute numbers is proving from following good uplift in SaaS and overall sales.

And also, we see margins increased compared to Q2 2021. And for this segment as well, we will keep on investing to scale our business going forward. For our Power Grid segment, we had a strong quarter with sales closing and increased order backlog, strong sales given uplift in recurring revenues on the base level while uplift in an ARR level going forward. Furthermore, we see a good market outlook for the segments and the order backlog is growing, while Volue will increase capacity to deliver on a growing order backlog.

The margins in the second quarter has decreased from Q2 2021, however, we see a stable margin picture for the last quarters. The main reason for the -- this is increased activity to expand our market footprint and building an organization for further growth. Volue also invest quite significantly in addressing new market opportunities in the Spark program that impacts our margins. And we expect the CapEx level to increase for the segments going forward.

For our Infrastructure segment, we are very pleased to see that our shift in business model are progressing as planned. And we have managed to protect software revenues despite a large shift in revenue stream. This gives an expected short-term revenue growth impacts, but building more shareholder value quickly. We are growing our top line compared to last year. The margins are partly -- is partly weaker compared to Q2 2021, but in line with the margin for the 3 last quarters in the segments. More of the spending are moved to R&D investment, and we will continue also to scale our SaaS platform and putting new services on the top of this. The capital levels on the segment will be more or less in line with the current level in Q2 for this segment.

Volue plan is to increase our profitability towards 2025. The main elements for our increase in our margins as a growing SaaS company is growth through economy of scale. So what is the main drivers why profitability and cash flow will improve towards 2021, in line with our targets. Shift to SaaS will increase profitability with centralized technology services and capabilities on the Volue platform. We are doing quite significant investments to meet market opportunity and profitability increase by getting more and more services on top of our SaaS platform. The features shown in the right corner shows the typical profitability over time on SaaS offerings. Volue is investing in sales and marketing and building the organization for further scalability. And we will see uplift in margins coming from this towards 2025.

Most of all, we are expecting our margin footprint and market footprint and meeting increased addressable markets, giving profitability upsells and growth in new markets. In the short run, we have several activities impacting our short-term profitability. Scaling in organization, sales and marketing, the SaaS journey and the shift in business molds and several new business development activities are put into the accounts.

As a proof point, we see that we increase our profits while uplift in our contribution from our products. Since the creation of Volue, we have focused on realizing synergies and scalability, and we're very pleased to see increase of our product profitability of 20% over the last 12 months. This is -- this has, in turn, enabled us to invest more aggressively in long-term growth.

Yes. Then I give the word back to Trond, who will go deeper into the industry development and strategy.

[Trond Straume, executive]

Thank you, Arnstein. The purpose of Volue is to help our customers succeed with a transition to renewable energy, whilst mastering the ongoing and upcoming crisis along the way. Traditional energy production, like thermal and nuclear are being phased out in favor of renewable energy, such as solar and wind. These new asset types are nonregulated, meaning that the production capacity is weather dependent. In addition, renewable energy is being installed where climate and political conditions are being met, not necessarily within geographical reach for critical demand.

The consumer side becomes more unpredictable in a world that is ever more dependent on electricity. This means that the load on the grid is creating problems. The result is volatility in the power markets, creating more opportunity and more risk for the power industry. Our customers are talking about the need for wall-to-wall digitalization across processes and disciplines to manage this transformation. And for a company like Volue, who's been serving a conservative energy industry for decades, this represents a shift change. Helping power producers, distributors and industrial consumers to manage this transition is what we do, and we know how to do it.

2022 has been the year where the European continent fully realized its dependence on electricity. We closed down nuclear and coal power plants to deliver on our goals for the green transition. The new energy sources are in large part weather-dependent solar and wind assets. Gas prices are rocketing as geopolitical challenges leads to shortage of supply. The power industry has widely been recognized as stable, predictable and conservative for a century. However, a number of colliding factors and incidents creates concerns for governments and regulators. The consumers are left with unprecedented high power prices.

The big conversation this summer has been the risk of rationing power consumption this coming winter. But that is only the short-term picture. In Volue, we have Europe's largest team of power market analysts. They see increased risks of power blackouts in certain weather scenarios with low wind and solar production in combination with low temperatures. This is a risk that is predicted to last for the next 10 years. We were all shocked by what happened in Texas last year, but this can be a reality in Europe too when the balance between demand and supply gets out of control. In fact, the industry battles this every single day, and has a recent nightmare scenario in Germany from the last 2 weeks. Due to differences in supply and demand, customers were facing imbalance cost of EUR 3,200 per megawatt hour, a disaster for the holder of the imbalance and the unique opportunity for the companies prepared to capitalize on a volatile market.

Let's look at what the future holds. Even for Volue, having Europe's largest analysis team, it is hard to give an exact guidance for the energy market. The explanation can be in part be described by these 2 charts. The green shift triggers a close race between the increase in supply and demand with periods of shortage of supply. Also, bear in mind that the new production capacity being fed into the system, by and large, is weather-dependent renewable energy sources. In many ways, you can say that our end markets are experiencing what we think is the perfect storm, and that's a storm that is projected to last for decades. It is interesting to hear from our customers how Volue helps drive top line growth. To date, we focused on delivering 5% improvement. And to the left, we see a larger utility who recognized 5% improvement, translating to EUR 40 million increased revenues annually. Another example is a smaller utility who achieved our return on investments in 3 months and saw 3% improvement in the first quarter after go live.

Now we're looking to find the next 5%, 10% in total. In conversations with executives, we are often challenged if we can provide evidence upfront before commitment. And our answer is that we only need to realize 0.5% improvement to provide ROI in 12 months. And in that way, it's an easy value-based cell.

Let's have a look at our offerings. In Volue, we help customers with optimizing power production and maximizing profit in power trading. We do this through our sophisticated platform of products. And to tell you more Jørund will talk more in details about the challenges that power industry face and how our Insight platform helps our customers understand the Power market to make better decisions.

[Jørund Haartveit, executive]

Thank you, Trond. Yes, our products at Volue cover the entire value chain of production, planning and energy trading. And I'm glad to be here to talk more about how we help our clients by always delivering up-to-date market analysis, forecast and data for the power market. In the European power market that is getting increasingly interconnected with trading operations running 24/7 our clients depend on reliable data and forecast in order to reduce risk and create value and stay ahead of the game.

Our services provide real-time data, forecast the market analysis for the next 15 minutes and for the next 30 hours and beyond. We have data loaders and quantitive models running continuously on our scalable cloud-based platform to serve our clients with the most up-to-date information and critical insight. As we have heard, we are currently experiencing unprecedented changes in the power market and the energy complex as a whole. And this, within our world that is increasingly dependent on electricity. As the chart shows, the price levels and volatility have never been higher. We see new records nearly every day now. And this is a situation that is expected to persist and continue also in the coming years. So for any component that is active in the power market or has an exposure to the power price access to trustworthy and consistent analysis and forecast for fundamentals and price has never been more important.

Our services support our clients to take informed decisions about how to navigate in this changing volatile market environment and to mitigate risk as well as being able to take advantage of the opportunities that arise. And in this current price regime, with high volatility, the consequence of not having the latest information and stay ahead of the curve could mean the difference between high profits or in worst case, going out of business.

In Volue, we provide forecast for all weather-driven fundamentals across Europe and for all-time horizons. We quantify the uncertainty and the impact on price. We have in-house developed proprietary models from hydro to wind and solar production and also for electricity consumption. And this, together with plant by plant reputation and information on availabilities, efficiencies, ramp rates and green constraints. We model and predict prices and electricity flows for all priced regions in Europe, and we're leveraging the full power of the data across all these areas. So we truly provide a pan-European service that gives our clients the full picture.

And in this complex market setting, we also help our clients to manage the information overflow and provide them with the insight and data on what really matters. And this again allows them to efficiently manage their continuous operations and trading in all markets from balancing intraday and spot market to further out on the curve, 24/7.

We also enable our clients to tap into more than 20 years of experience in the power market by giving them access to expert opinion through daily commentaries and recommendations. As Trond said, Volue has one of the largest independent groups of subject market experts within the Power domain, solely focusing on the European power market. And to understand this shifting market dynamics, optimize production and reduce risk exposure in addition to execute trades in multiple markets at the right time, market participants and our clients need easy access to consistent, reliable and timely data in addition to forecast and trusted analysis, and this is exactly what we provide. Thank you. I will give the word back to you, Trond.

[Trond Straume, executive]

Thank you, Jørund. That concludes industry development and strategy. If you'd like to learn more about Volue and what we do to create customer value, there will be an opportunity to attend our Capital Markets Day on the 21st of September. Now let's shift our focus to summary and outlook. Our services are very sticky as we are ingrained in the customers' business processes and value creation and providing an integrated value chain in the cloud is the answer to our customers ask for wall-to-wall digitalization. And for us, this also opens up opportunities to cross-sell and upsell our capabilities, fueling growth.

Now let's take a look at our priorities and ambitions for the second half of 2022. As we continue to pursue synergies within the Volue Group, we see there are many opportunities for increased operational efficiency. This is one of several levers that will help improving the EBITDA margins from H1. At the core of our growth strategy is to grow our recurring revenues through our ongoing SaaS transformation. An important goal for us this year is to invest in market expansion outside the European home market. First product launch for the Japanese market is scheduled for first of September. We operate in attractive end markets undergoing transformation, and we focus our investments on scalable growth.

The energy market is quite fragmented, and we believe there is an opportunity to take a leading position in a much needed market consolidation. We remain quite bullish about the future, and we're looking to exceed NOK 2 billion in revenues by 2025. And there are 3 reasons why we believe in growth. First of all, our end market is growing. Our customer spend on advanced software solutions is growing as a consequence of the green transition and market changes. Second is European growth. We have a solid footprint in the European market, and we continue to invest in sales and marketing outside the Nordic region, which still represents our largest source of revenue. Lastly, we believe Volue has a great opportunity to realize synergies by selling our expanded portfolio of offerings.

Looking at our recurring revenues. We see that SaaS contracts hold double the amount of recurring compared to a traditional contract. This is because we take a larger responsibility when operating the software with an associated SLA or service level agreement. As we progress with SaaS transformation, we believe in an uptick in margins with EBITDA levels towards 30%. We operate in a fragmented market with smaller specialized players, not necessarily positioned to fully support their customers on their much needed transition to sustainable energy.

When we look at M&A opportunities, we typically see 2 categories of players. One is established companies with a solid revenue stream, but maybe with a somewhat dated technology stack offered to a decent customer base. The other category is younger companies with great technologies, great people and IDs, but without a significant revenue stream and market penetration. We find these 2 categories of companies, attractive for M&A, one for market access, the other to strengthen our capabilities along the value chain. We believe that Volue with its size and market reach can bring value to the industry by acting as a consolidator.

So to summarize. We see the shift to green noncontrollable energy sources lead to increased volatility and complexity for our customers, requiring more advanced software solutions. We in Volue help our customers with wall-to-wall digitalization of the clean energy value chain. And our ongoing SaaS transformation lead to growth in recurring revenues and uptick in EBITDA margins over time. And our 2025 goals of exceeding NOK 2 billion remains. Thank you for your attention. We'll now open for Q&A.

[Gard Aarvik, analyst]

Gard Aarvik, Pareto. So my first question is on the SaaS target. To me, it seems like it's lowered. It used to be over 50% of revenues in 2025. And now it's 15% annual growth from here on out until then. So -- what's the reasoning behind that?

[Trond Straume, executive]

I think it's fair to say that our SaaS revenues sort of grows in quarter -- different quarter-by-quarter depending on the deals we do. It also depends on the pace and which of our product streams that we are targeting for a shift in business model and shift to SaaS. But maybe Arnstein, you can add some more color to that from your perspective.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

Yes. When it comes to the SaaS revenue, it's fair that what Trond was saying. Also, we see that the SaaS revenues have been -- the growth rate has been higher previous quarters, but also we see that we have some more backlog now on taking out the SaaS revenues. So we still remain confident to our plan on growing the SaaS revenues and mainly seeing that the investments that we are putting is going to -- through the SaaS and the SaaS platform and offerings going forward.

[Gard Aarvik, analyst]

Okay. But the absolute ambition is lowered in 2025.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

The ambition remains, yes.

[Gard Aarvik, analyst]

My second question is on the trading advisory part. So I mean, of course, in these extreme markets, it looks like a very attractive offering. Is it possible to say anything about what type of customers -- there is this new customers that you haven't been working with previously or is it someone who already have a relationship with? Are there any opportunities to turn those kind of revenue streams into recurring revenue over time?

[Trond Straume, executive]

Yes. So if we look at our trading advisory business, as I talked a bit about in the presentation, it is sort of the next logical step for our insight capabilities, where we offer our customers contextual advice on how they could best monetize their renewable energy capacity in the market. It's a combination of existing customers and new customers. Some of the customers we are serving are quite large. They're operating in different markets. And they get access to a very comprehensive platform, which enables them from -- in the short-term market to make really clever decisions on how to best monetize and where to steer their renewable capacity.

And we, of course, enjoy a market that is -- that keeps quite high energy prices. But in reality, our value prop is to help our customers with renewable energy to monetize in a very volatile market. So we believe that volatility is here to stay, it will only increase. So in terms of the opportunity to scale this business moving forward, we're just coming out of market validation. We are now seeing this as a strategic service, and we're looking to scale it. And we believe the opportunities are quite attractive, to be honest.

[Gard Aarvik, analyst]

And the last one for me on the M&A side and these days with such a market that we experience, is it easier or tougher, been sometime since we've seen any announcements on the M&A side?

[Trond Straume, executive]

I'd say to close deals, it is in part really easy these days because we -- there's more inbound, there's more companies knocking on our doors, and that's for many different reasons. But as we've said before, we remain quite picky. So we have a pretty good overview of the landscape. We know the companies where we are attracted to and there's clearly opportunities out there in the market. Of course, the market is coming down. And I think from -- for privately held companies, I think the sort of valuation expectation is now being adjusted down to a different level, which I think is good for everyone.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

Kari?

[Kari Hartvedt, analyst]

Kari Hartvedt, Pareto here. I was wondering about the Power Grid segment. You said that major reason for the lack in growth is the constraint in capacity. And I'm wondering about how you're going to expand your capacity in this segment and also how you're going to address the increasing backlog in this segment?

[Trond Straume, executive]

We've been working quite systematically and methodically to bring in -- capacity to bringing people to the team to help serve this growing backlog. And I'm really pleased to say that we've been quite successful. We brought on more talent and they are being brought along. They're being trained and they're engaged in delivery. So I think we're seeing that -- we're seeing positive trends in terms of our capacity.

[Kari Hartvedt, analyst]

And like short term, will that maybe have some impact on margins for that segment?

[Trond Straume, executive]

So I think Arnstein, maybe you will...

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

I do think that we have onboarded quite a few resources in the first half year. And obviously, it takes some time to getting up to speed. So we believe the main parts of the impact on profitability has been taken in the first half year. So we're going to see uplift going forward.

We have some questions also from the Q&A session on the web. First goes into M&A. And a question to you, Trond. How do you how -- how is the current M&A pipeline? And also, if you can comment on the multiples that we see particularly.

[Trond Straume, executive]

So in terms of the M&A pipeline, I would say, is quite robust. As I said earlier, we remain quite picky in the companies we want to onboard. And of course, this is an opportunity for us to be even more crisp in the market that sort of is coming a bit down in -- sort of in the excitement we have seen throughout the pandemic. So I think a good pipeline we're seeing. And I think the -- on the multiples, I believe the multiples are coming down. So opportunities to make some attractive deals.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

Yes. Good. And there's one question here. For 2022, do you still keep your margin unchanged -- margin target unchanged in line with Q4 last year?

[Trond Straume, executive]

So if we look at the margins we've delivered in the first half, our focus now is to keep improving those margins and where we have different measures in place that we've talked about. So I think we're going to see a positive trend upwards in our margin development.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

Also, if we -- I can maybe answer up on this one, describe the dynamic of the margin recovery over time, leaving out employees compared to growing -- recurring revenue? that's the question.

So what we have seen that, yes, we have been investing in that and increased our employees now. So we do see that investing in scalability and products. We will -- the size between the revenue growth, SaaS growth compared to a number of employees that we're going to onboard will shift and that will make up much of the uptick in the merchant.

And there is a further one question. There is a question about the payback time on customer projects and that Volue is enabling revenues uplift from 3% to potentially up to 10%. And -- and there is a question, there is risk of under pricing and do you have a success-based or outcome-based price based on this?

[Trond Straume, executive]

So we have different -- so I'll address the first part of the question first. Are our solutions under price compared to the value they bring? I think that's a fair question, and we're working to innovate our business models as we progress towards the SaaS transformation. But I think it's fair to say that our solutions are, let's say, cost efficient. They generate lots of value.

So moving forward, there are different things we can do, and we have different models in the product portfolio, so -- but a general sort of measure for us is the installed capacity. So the amount of power volumes that flows through our solutions. And we are looking to slightly change in some areas into a more outcome-based pricing models, meaning that there should be a correlation of what we can charge in -- compared to the value that our software helps create.

But of course, it is a transition.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

Yes. And then the last question, if you can please give some more color to the expansion, I think especially into Japan?

[Trond Straume, executive]

Yes. So Japan has been deregulated, meaning that Japan has implemented a liberalized power market, started to happen following the Fukushima disaster. And what we're seeing is that we're implementing, not surprisingly a Nordic market design, not too different to what we see here. And that really puts us in pole position because we know that market by heart, and we worked to prepare our platform with fundamental models for the Japanese market.

We've established an office in Tokyo. We've got some fantastic people on board, and our first product launch is 1st of September. We believe the Japanese market is quite immature. There is a limited set of players like Volue active in the market. We do appreciate the cultural barrier for a European company to scale fast in Japan. But for us, this is a long-term investment, and we're quite bullish about the opportunity in Japan. If we look at the install capacity in Japan, Japan is 1/3 of the complete European continent. So the market is huge for us.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

Okay. Yes, there is no question on the web. So if there is no -- if there is any final questions from this audience.

[Trond Straume, executive]

Well, thank you for your time, and thank you for listening in online.