OX2 AB (publ)

STO:OX2

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q3

[Operator]

Good morning, and welcome to OX2 conference call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to the CEO, Paul Stormoen; and the CFO, Johan Rydmark. Please go ahead.

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

Good morning, and thank you, everyone, for listening into OX2's Third Quarter 2022 report. My name is Paul Stormoen. I'm the CEO, and I'm joined by Johan.

[Johan Rydmark, executive]

Hello, everyone. Nice to meet you.

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

CFO. And we will share the presentation and the agenda as we typically do. I will start by giving you all some highlights from the quarter, and then Johan will take you through the financial situation. And we will end with a market outlook and have ample time for Q&A following the presentation, which is expected to be no more than 30 minutes.

So without further ado, we start by introducing OX2 as a leader in European renewable energy. Our business model is to develop and sell wind and solar farms. We are working in the, what we believe the most attractive part of the energy transition value chain, meaning that we are developing and constructing turnkey assets and operate them on behalf of typically financial institutions and other type of strategic investors. So we do not have the operating assets on our balance sheet, but we work with onshore solar offshore development. And new for this quarter is also a bit more on the energy storage portfolio that we will talk to.

Last 12 months have continued to be positive when it comes to the financials, booking in revenue about SEK 7.8 billion, operating margin slightly above 10%. A strong return on capital employed is one of the positive upsides about this business model where we don't have that much of capital tied into our balance sheet, which in turn can give us a lot of maneuverability on the portfolio, and we will talk to the portfolio development also today.

So far 3.5 gigawatts of wind and solar realized, which puts us on the very top of the European renewable development scene. Today the portfolio stands at about 32 gigawatts. We have diversification across Europe, but with the main portfolio in Sweden, Finland and now Aland, part of Finland, but a separate market. To some extent, Poland also being a very strong participant in our portfolio. And then we are growing rapidly in other markets in Southern and Eastern Southern Europe.

Looking to the lower pie chart in the center of the screen, you see that a main part of our portfolio stands within offshore. We will spend ample time also on the offshore portfolio. It's all based in the Baltic Sea and Kattegat; meaning Finland, Aland and Southern Sweden. The solar portfolio is continuing to grow, and we will also talk about energy storage, headquartered in Stockholm and listed on the Stockholm Nasdaq large cap segment.

Moving on and talking to the quarter a bit. We can summarize Q3, concluding that we have had expansion in the development portfolio and good operational performance, which has driven the revenue.

So talking first about development portfolio. We have grown this with as much as 8 gigawatts, now accounting to 32 gigawatts. And this is to a large extent new very exciting offshore projects outside of Aland. Here we are developing a concept with an energy park. It's a very exciting space. So I urge you all to watch this.

We have also acquired some 800 megawatts in -- across our markets, including the first project now in Spain, exciting for the team, and we are growing rapidly around the Spanish development, which is a well-known market to the renewable industry. And exciting news about the energy storage, we have a portfolio now of some 500 megawatts of European storage assets. We will come a bit back to this, but it's an effort that we've spent the last couple of years developing and you will see that we have already portfolio in all various development stages.

The quarter also concluded well when it comes to sales. We had planned to do the sell-down of parts of our offshore portfolio in Sweden, where we, late August, concluded with Ingka investments to sell 49% of these 3 offshore projects, in total 9,000 megawatts. We sold then 4.4 gigawatts of this. We have still to receive the merger filing, but this is expected very shortly to come now. And we will come a bit back to the meaning of the financials in Q4 with this sale. And also remembering that the main upside of this transaction comes when the permitting is approved of and I'm sure we will talk about the offshore permitting situation later on.

I mentioned also that construction has been contributing very well to the revenue. All in all, a strong performance by the construction team across Sweden, Finland and Poland, and we are well positioned to hand over the remaining 3 projects, counting 171 megawatts now during Q4.

It's also very pleasing to be able to reiterate our financial guidance, operating income exceeding SEK 1 billion for the period of 2022. And on the back of this morning's announcement, we see strong profitability in the project we have sold and are about to sell in the quarter. So 70 megawatts in Northern Sweden was announced this morning. It's especially pleasing to see that we can book good profitability on the project that is in the northern parts of Sweden that has not had as much impact on the energy prices and what you see in Southern Sweden and the rest of Europe. So this is boding very well for the continued development of our northern Swedish portfolio as well. So all in all, summarizing a strong quarter with good operational performance.

Looking a bit to the value chain, we have seen some growth in all parts of the value chain or the stages that we here report. Compared to last quarter, we have increased our TCM. We have increased or maintained our construction, increased late stage with mainly battery projects that are ready to go and permitted. We are increasing with onshore and PV as well. So all kind of positive movements in late stage.

Mid-stage, we have a large part of the offshore portfolio now standing since we are just waiting for the final verdict from the new government on these projects. We hope that will be in place within the coming years. And we see good traction on the PV or solar portfolio standing at 1.2 gigawatts. And as you may recall, I've also said earlier that the solar portfolio is moving slightly faster through this development cycle than what wind and offshore is doing.

Early stage, I mentioned additions of additional offshore outside of Aland, very good traction on the development of these quite large-scale assets together with Alandsbanken.

If we double-click on the development portfolio, we see that we have added some volume in the existing portfolio by mainly recalculating the size of the Aurora offshore project that was sold to Ingka investment. But there's also been some adjustments in the solar and onshore portfolio. But at the net, we have seen a 1 gigawatt increase in the existing portfolio. There's been a quite good greenfield addition, out of which 5.2 gigawatts was offshore, and we have maintained the good acquisition pace, some 800 megawatts during the quarter, summarizing to 32.1 gigawatts at end of quarter.

So now we're looking a bit on a couple of project examples. The project we sold and announced in Q3 was a combination of 3 offshore sites outside of Southern Sweden, combined 9 gigawatts, and we signed then the agreement, which will be closed in Q4 now. We're waiting for the final stamp on the merger filing, but there is no risk on that. We see that we have good support from our partner in continuous development of this. And remember also that the milestone for the next payment is the permitting part where we expect to have a positive impact in the coming years from these projects.

Energy storage is a main -- or is an important contributor to stability on the grid as intermittent energy sources will continue to expand across Europe. This is -- has today mainly been a U.K., U.S. and to some extent, Australian technologies. So the technology in itself is proven. It works, but it has not been implemented to that large extent in our current markets. But we have a very good edge here.

Our first project is ready to go, and we see very good profitability and interest in this first project. And then there will be a portfolio following this, both in Sweden, Finland and Poland. This is not only connected to wind and solar farms, but it's also standalone energy storage sites, which can be used to serve towards the TSO services with frequency response and other types of ancillary services in addition to energy trading. So very good expectations on how the energy storage will play out, I'm very excited to announce this portfolio already here today.

Then another big step is the first project acquired in Spain. This is a big market, as you all are aware, both for wind and solar. And the team is growing rapidly, we have since before or PV or solar hub of technology competence based out of Spain. So it's also very pleasing to now see that we have development portfolio, and that is expected to grow as well, rapidly and contribute positively over the coming years. So very good movements in Spain.

And if we spend some time on offshore, we have, as you have seen, a substantial portfolio in this space, covering Sweden, Finland and Aland. And what is representative for all of these markets is that they are developed on non-subsidy basis, meaning that we will connect to the TSO directly. We have planned for connection at the shore side, meaning that we have a land connection already applied for in our plans. And there's been quite a lot of discussions around how we are impacted with the new Swedish government on these Swedish projects.

And first of all, it's very important to highlight that these projects have been developed from the scratch with the plan to connect onshore. We have been supportive of offshore possibility connections. But in all these projects are too large to connect to the planned build-out of the TSO's offshore hubs. So we have designed them from the beginning, and that's how also they have been presented and assessed by Ingka investments, and we all deem them commercially viable without this subsidized grid.

So we will continue to build and develop these projects. We see good profitability in them, the investment -- or Ingka investment agreement is standing firm, and we are having the first payment now coming in Q4 and then the second payment coming when we have them permitted.

Looking to Finland, we have 2 offshore wind projects here. We have received the investigation permits and we are looking positively into also addressing potential partnership models in Finland over the coming years. Like we also have done in Aland already where we started from the beginning to develop 2 quite substantial offshore projects together with Alandsbanken. And we have also here investigation permits in place.

So once again, this is a level playing field across the Baltic Sea and Kattegat, and we can speak to all projects, not how offshore is developing in general, but all projects are built and are from scratch and commercially viable without the need of subsidized grid connections.

Looking to the construction portfolio, we have had good progress over the quarter. As you have also noted, when it comes to the revenue recognition, we have 3 projects in Finland ready for handing over now in Q4, and we have good traction and visibility on these. Otherwise the project portfolio is in good shape on the construction side when it comes to '23 and '24, and we even have projects all the way down to '25 to be handed over.

So Johan, some financial comments.

[Johan Rydmark, executive]

Thank you, Paul. Thank you. Hello, again, everyone. Right. Looking at the financial highlights and starting off a bit also with a lot of the exciting achievements that we've done this quarter. Paul, you mentioned the transaction with Ingka. We have the partnership with Alandsbanken. We've seen the acquisition pace ramp up a bit in Q3. Very happy to see that with our first solar project now having been acquired in Spain.

However if one turns and look at the Q3 earnings and P&L impact quite little of all these achievements across different parts of our business is having a limited impact on our Q3 earnings.

For example, the Ingka transaction, like we discussed, that is still pending merger filing approval. We expect that to happen any day. And once that is received, that will have a significant positive impact on our Q4 earnings. For the other achievements, a lot of these activities are relating to positioning us for our future growth, and we have seen good progress there. So very satisfying to see that, that we will benefit from the years to come.

So in a quarter where we haven't had any new sales, when you look at our gross margin here of 11%, that is then derived from the solid and stellar, I would say, performance in our construction portfolio, where we now have 11 projects under construction, like Paul said before, we're gearing up and in a good position to hand over 3 of these projects in Q4. We've made good progress on that. In addition, even though it's a small number from a group perspective, we see good growth also in our asset management part, which is also contributing to the Q3, where we now have 3.6 gigawatts under contract, up from 2.5 gigawatts a year ago.

And it's also this mix of construction and asset management and sales when looking at our gross margin that is trickling down and impacting our operating margin that we see in the quarter. As our net sales and profitability development is not linear as we've talked about also on previous earnings calls, very promising and encouraging to see when looking at our longer trends here, the LTM trends here at the bottom in terms of volume sold, in terms of gross margin, operating margin and also the acquisition pace where we struggled a bit in Q2 to see that ramping up now in Q3 as well, and they're all pointing in the right direction.

Moving on, looking at our net sales to operating income bridge. From the strong position that we have in the value chain, we see that we've been able to improve our gross margin standing at 21.5% here on an LTM basis. And this has been achieved through a combination of good valuations received on the projects that we've sold, the 750 megawatt, also the stellar performance from the delivery in the projects under construction, where we are progressing according to our budgets and plans as well as then the contribution from the asset management, and it's these 3 revenue streams that we have also in our business.

And very happy to see this in a quite turbulent market surrounding with high inflation, increasing material prices at least in the beginning of this time period. If we move on and look at the operating costs, we continue to prioritize investments into further growth into positioning ourselves to meet our medium-term targets, 2,000 megawatts in excess in the medium term.

The most significant growth that we see on the operating cost side is relating to development costs, where we see an uptick here of 80% on an LTM basis. Most significant growth in terms of percentages is relating to the activities that we are undertaking in offshore. We are now also providing some more guidance to what is happening in our offshore and the magnitude of these investments in our quarterly report.

And of course, these investments continue to impact our operating margin, given the growth phase that we're in as we are expensing the development costs relating to these projects, and we are only seeing the financial benefit as these projects are being realized. And just to, sort of, exemplify this a bit relating it a bit to the Ingka transaction where we have previously communicated the gross margin impact from this. That is roughly 95%. So of course, that will have a very positive impact on our Q4 earnings.

This is a good slide to illustrate that our profitability and net sales development is not linear. You can see that in Q3, that is no exception. And this is due to the fact that this is significantly impacted by the timing of new project sales as well as the timing of progress in our construction portfolio. And when looking at our margin, it's also then a mix of these 2. The net sales from new sales, the net sales from construction, where we see typically that we have higher margins on our new sales. And one can, of course, expect now in Q4, we are expecting that we will have a very positive swing in the gross margin development relating to the Ingka transaction.

And again, reiterating when you want to understand how is our underlying performance in OX2. It's better to look at the longer time series like you see here. And here, looking at the net sales development, the growth that we've seen here on an LTM basis is relating to the growth that we've seen in terms of volumes sold. That is also trickling down to our construction portfolio that we are now constructing the growth in that as well as the growth in asset management.

Looking at our profitability development. We continue to invest in growth for the years to come. I've already mentioned the development expense and the growth that we see there. A lot of this is relating to offshore where we see a lot of opportunities and great prospects from that, and that is impacting the reported operating margin. And like Paul said, here also looking for the full year 2022, we reiterate the SEK 1 billion operating income guidance.

Cash position, we're very happy to be in a strong financial position given a bit of turbulence that we observed in the financial markets around us, given the growth phase that we're in. We have full flexibility to continue to invest into our project development portfolio. We continue to be able to act on the opportunities that we see in acquisition. I think Q3 is a good example -- of that, we continue to see a very promising acquisition pipeline also in the quarters to come.

In Q2, I commented a bit on the net working capital development, where we had a very positive impact from the net working capital in Q2. As you can see here in Q3, that has normalized a bit. We're still I think we ended up at minus 14%, so it's still a bit on the high side in terms of negative figures when looking at historical comparison, but a bit normalized compared to what we saw in Q2.

Acquisitions, very happy, as I said, with the development in Q3, having acquired some 800 gigawatt. A good combination of different technologies, now also with storage in Poland. Most of those acquisitions were done as well as across markets, and we're getting close to the SEK 600 million that we want to deploy for the full year 2022.

In terms of our financial targets, we've made good progress here in Q3 on our financial targets, where also with the announcement this morning, the 70 megawatts up north in Sweden, we are in excess of 1,000 megawatts on the combined '21, '22 period already. We are also seeing the 500 megawatts for the full year 2022. In addition to that, we have the pending approval of the offshore transaction together with Ingka.

Looking at '23, '24 with the progress that we see in our development portfolio, good progress there. And we have good coverage on the volumes, the 1,500 megawatt on average annually for the '23-'24 period and also gearing up to meet our medium-term target in terms of SEK 2.5 billion on the operating income, and we are already at the 10% operating margin.

And with that, I hand it back to you, Paul, for the market outlook.

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

Excellent. Thank you, Johan. And we will wrap up with market and outlook before talking to incoming questions.

So we can book continued strong and positive feedback from the market on the investment in energy transformation. We have, as you can expect, projects for -- in sales processes across most of our markets and a daily dialogue with the investor community into the real asset space. And all in all, we are very well funded in general to manage the energy transition. But what continues to be the bottleneck is the permitting. We have a good position into the next period of time, but we are working actively with all of the governments on how this can be resolved.

Storage, I'm coming back to that one as well here. It's an important consider service as the volume of intermittent sources are growing in most of our markets. There are also good opportunities to benefit from providing these services to the TSOs and on top of that, benefiting from peak shaving and energy trading as the volatility is increasing on a daily basis.

So this is a space we will continue to talk about, and we will come back also later on with how these projects are developing. We've had the new government in Sweden. Sweden is one of the markets that we're active in, but it's a quite important market for us when it comes to our first line of offshore projects.

What we have seen is that there's been announcements, the new government claiming now that there will be more wind power built under this new regime than the previous regime, which also, I think supports their announced [ Tido ] agreements on the electrification being an important part to recognize and support. This is something we will contribute to. We have strong volumes in southern parts of Sweden, and we're continuing to grow the Greenfield pipeline, both for onshore and solar as well. So we very much welcome and are already operating well with the Swedish government parties on how to solve the coming demand and the opportunities that this gives the northern part of Europe, meaning home shoring of new industries, home shoring of job opportunities. So this is a positive movement as what we can conclude.

We look to Q3, concluding that, we can say we had good progress in development. The construction portfolio provided strong revenue results. And the acquisition pipeline has provided good momentum, including as we've talked about Spain.

e did sign the agreement that we had set out to do in Q3. We're very happy with that. Ingka Investment is a great partner for us since 12 years back. There is a strategic rationale for them to support new energy build-out. And they are also quite vocal about the importance of the build-out of the energy sector and the offshore opportunities in Kattegat and Baltic Sea. So that agreement is split as you remember, we were getting our first down payment now in Q4 and the remaining part when we will have the permits in place and that is expected to become a reality within the coming couple of years.

We have expanded into storage. The team is growing. The offering is being clarified strong -- very strong interest from the market on this product. And the portfolio is already some 500 megawatts, and I said that this is already in late, mid and early stage, so good inflow of opportunities in battery storage.

So we are already quite good while into Q4. The portfolio is continuing to grow through both acquisitions and also greenfield. We see that there has been a gap of new development starts in Northern Europe, onshore specifically, and we are filling this with a lot of ambitions in new greenfield.

Construction is handing over 3 projects in Q4 with good visibility already now -- our targets for '22 remains unchanged. So more than SEK 1 billion is our target, and we are continuing to invest in, as Johan also said, to meet our midterm targets. And that means both portfolio, but also organizational expansion. So we are on a path that we feel is very clear. We're executing on it quarter-by-quarter, and this quarter has been no different. It's been a good quarter for us and very proud of what the team has accomplished.

So with that said, I think we can hand it back to the operator for Q&A, and we will be here before all questions, so feel free to shoot.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Oskar Lindstrom, Danske Bank.

[Oskar Lindström, analyst]

Actually, I have 4 questions, but maybe rather quick. The first one is, of course, on offshore connection to the grid or now you're saying all of your projects have been calculated to not connect to these hubs, which is Swedish government or the previous Swedish government had planned. In terms of what your projects look like, what is the share of the total construction cost that is related to the connection to the grid? So that's my first question. Do you want me to take the other questions?

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

I can jump in. I can join in on this very quickly. We do not talk to exactly the specifics of each project. But what we can say is that these projects have been, as you said, calculated to bear their own cost from the very beginning. So this is not us having to go back to the drawing board and look at the profitability that has remained. So our plans have, kind of, stand as they have done, but I cannot talk about exact the division of what is turbines and what is cable and what is etcetera.

[Oskar Lindström, analyst]

All right. Very good to hear that. My second question is, I mean, you mentioned here that the pace of acquisitions picked up a bit here in Q3, and you were happy about that. Can you say anything about the sort of development of prices and availability in terms of projects available, especially given how turbulent energy and credit markets have been in Europe?

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

I can -- I did drop a small comment about it when it comes to the Nordic markets. There is a shortfall of permits available in near term specifically in the Sweden and Finland because there has been less new starts over the last 5 years. So we need to, kind of, top up the market portfolio, so to say, with more greenfield developments. But this is why we are now benefiting from having more markets. So we see very good availability in Italy, in Greece, in Spain, Romania.

So there's a lot of interesting markets, but we tend to focus quite a lot on the northern part, which is understandable. And in the northern part, there is less projects available to be construction started and we can just look to what has been started this year is, for instance, in Sweden, there is not that much. So offshore is important.

And here for you to understand how we are thinking offshore, the agreement with Ingka does not require us to take this all the way to financial close and construction start before we will benefit financially further from it. So we have built, kind of, a strong commercial pipeline despite of that there is fewer Nordic onshore -- at least Swedish onshore projects coming out right now.

Long term, we see that greenfield is picking up again and more applications are being filed. But near-term acquisitions will probably come mostly from other European markets.

[Johan Rydmark, executive]

And you saw that also in Q3, the division there. There was no acquisitions in Sweden and Finland, but Poland, quite sizable than Spain that we commented on Italy. So more of these regions. Just to add some flavor as well to what Paul said in terms of our portfolio in Sweden and Finland, we're, of course, benefiting from the development that we've done in these markets over a number of years. And you can see that also in sort of our mid-stage and late stage, where, of course, a lot of that is relating to Finland and Sweden.

[Oskar Lindström, analyst]

All right. That was actually my third question here. It was about the gap in projects in Sweden. So you answered that very good. My final question sort of is an offshoot from this topic. I mean, you've talked a little bit about -- previously loosely about growth opportunities outside of Europe. And I think that probably becomes even more important given the importance of diversification for you. I mean -- what are you looking at there? I mean is it -- which markets are you looking to sort of establish yourselves greenfield organically or through an acquisition of an existing player, what kind of a profile footprint are you looking for? Yes.

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

Okay. So the profile of the countries we're exploring, we try to find similar markets to what we are already active in and working with. So expect, kind of, OECD countries with a need for more renewables, need for more electricity where we can develop and build without the need of heavy subsidies. So those are the markets and the technologies that we're working on.

That easily points you to North America and Australia to be the -- kind of the near-term targets for us. And I think that's the profile that the company will have also going forward. We will not go into, kind of, a completely different risk profile when it comes to development of these assets.

We will also have the approach that we've had across Europe, meaning acquire portfolios, mid late-stage projects and build the teams around that. It may or may not include some sort of M&A activity. But the portfolio projects acquisitions is where we will enter through, and that's also why we see good use of a solid liquidity position. So this is very much a proven approach, and we've seen good benefits of this in Poland, where we took a market-leading position in just a couple of years. We see it already now in Italy, where we have late-stage projects in the market. And yes, so this is what we will continue to explore.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Eivind Garvik, Carnegie Investment Bank.

[Eivind Garvik, analyst]

Yes. So a couple of questions here. First one is just walking back on the offshore wind discussion. And I mean a SEK 40 billion proposed subsidy was now reversed. And I mean that has something to say for the marginal production cost of offshore wind projects that maybe could have been connected to those connection points. So -- and I understand that your projects do not account for this. But what I want to understand is how your strategy is in terms of, kind of, hedging your top line, what kind of prices are you talking about when you're developing these kinds of projects? That's my first one.

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

Okay. Yes, SEK 40 billion has been taken out from the market, but we were not -- we're not commenting about the markets. We're commenting about all 3 projects, and those were not included in those SEK 40 billion. So we have lost nothing. We have gained nothing. We have remained with our CapEx assumptions throughout the change of government. So this is important. How we are calculating top line?

Well, first of all, these are development projects mid-stage. There's a lot of things happening in the offshore space. We did a transaction with Ingka to get some clarity on our income profile over the coming years. So we are not exposed to 100%, but we're still owning 51% of this. So first milestone being paid now, SEK 600 million in that area. And then when we get the permits, the remaining and the main part of this partnership payments will come.

We have used what is, kind of, known to the industry when it comes to development of turbines. We have 350 meter tip heights, and that's kind of proven technology that we are using. But I cannot go into the specifics once again on the exact CapEx estimates. But this is very much aligned now across our markets. Poland, Finland and Sweden, it's the same sea. We have good winds and shallow waters in our 3 projects here, and we see the same messages being communicated from participants in the Danish offshore industry as well, where this is now a quite level playing field in the whole Baltic Sea and Kattegat, and we are not the only one confirming that we see good profitability and opportunities to build nonsubsidized offshore here.

[Eivind Garvik, analyst]

Yes, great. But I guess, I mean, good profitability depends on the power prices. So my question was really, kind of, what kind of power price are you using? What kind of strategy are you using in terms of hedging? It's probably a bit too early to say, but I guess you're making some assumptions, right?

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

Yes, we're using what is available on the long-term pricing. And as you know, this year's price hikes have not been reflected in the 2030 to 2050 or 2060 price ranges. So this is really not what -- we're not using today's power prices or these summer's power prices, of course, to value these projects. But we are using the long-term estimates, and then you will have more of a balance between the cost of production -- actual cost of production, not the cost of gas. So this is what we're using, and this is also what our partners are using, meaning long-term forecasts.

[Eivind Garvik, analyst]

Okay. Great. And just 2 last ones here. The first one is potential taxes on onshore wind in Sweden, we've had it in Norway a 40% increase in marginal taxation on wind power production. Is there any discussions ongoing about the potential windfall taxes or any resource taxes in Sweden? And the second question is just on the visibility you have of 2023. And I guess there's a lot of things happening in the market right now. And my question is really, have you seen any material change in customer behavior or how they approach you guys when you talk -- when they talk about your projects and acquiring your projects?

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

First question on tax. No, Sweden has a very different tax policy regime than what Norway has and Norway, I think stand a bit out here. Also, what I have understood and learned about Norway is that this is -- this is still, kind of, heavily debated if it's ever going to be introduced. And if it's introduced, it's going to be a very temporary tax system. But no, we have no such debate whatsoever in Sweden. The discussion on taxes in Sweden is whether or not the real estate tax would go to the municipality or to the Swedish government or state level. So I think that's where we are.

On 2023, material changes in customer behavior? No. What we've seen is that the, kind of, the scarcity of the market pipeline is kind of bringing forward some new behavior. We're seeing kind of more interest in partnering up in pipeline discussions. But in general, it's the same discussions as what we've had over the last years, very strong interest in -- or kind of classical turnkey project. But also I think we have a lot of playroom and flexibility on how we can capitalize on our already very strong pipeline.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Olof Cederholm from ABG.

[Olof Cederholm, analyst]

A couple of questions, and unfortunately, I'll just have to start or go back to the offshore connection again. Can you talk a little bit about, sort of, technically how you're planning this to take, sort of, to do the grid connection directly with the land-based grid?

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

Yes. We can -- from the beginning we looked for projects that had good TSO or backbone grid available. On the landside, we secured land and cable land agreements. We applied for sea cables all the way from our sites. So that's part of the design. So this is no different than to what other wind farms have been developed like in the Northern Sea and outside of Poland and Germany. So this has been designed from the beginning on connecting to non-connection points on onshore.

[Olof Cederholm, analyst]

Okay. So outside of maybe different costs in terms of getting you to the land-based connection, it's more or less a normal grid connection as you do in all your other onshore projects.

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

Yes, we have built several direct connections to [ SVK ], one north of Stockholm, one in -- outside of [ SE2 ]. We're building 400 kV cables and TSO connections directly now in Finland. We have built [ sea ] cables to projects in Northern Finland before. So this is known material and known territory for us.

[Olof Cederholm, analyst]

Fantastic. Can you talk a little more about the energy storage projects that you have built up? You said you have about 100 megawatts getting ready for a sales process or maybe even in a sales process. But do you see this part of the portfolio growing? Or will this be sort of a smaller segment for you going forward?

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

I think it's going to remain a fairly small segment. What is interesting here is that we're spearheading the implementation in the grid of these large-scale storage systems. So technically, we're buying basically off-the-shelf products.

I said they've been heavily implemented in the U.S., U.K. and Australia. So the supply chain is there. But what is not there and what we have been spending quite a lot of time over the last year with is how to kind of get this commercially connected to the DSOs and the TSOs. So that's where we are kind of very spearheading the industry in these regions.

But first projects now Sweden, Finland and following Poland, I think we will see a lot of benefits from the storage to be -- to take part of our portfolio and the market portfolio given that these will be able to kind of shave some volatility out of the daily prices, they will be providing services to the TSO and frequency response. They're getting us improved grid access in some markets when we're developing production assets, adding storage can get some grid priority. And all in all, it's kind of a very positive financial model behind the whole storage build-out. So this is a good opportunity for us to explore further.

[Olof Cederholm, analyst]

Excellent. And then my last question is about the Ingka transaction on the offshore side. Can you talk a little bit about what you need to do to trigger the next payment level? The way I understood it is that the projects will have to qualify to move into the late-stage part of the portfolio. But does that mean you need full permits? Or what is needed to get it there?

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

It's the permitting. You're correct. There are 3 permits needed and these need to be secured, and we need to have them -- that will then also on the back of the permitting will also give us exclusive rights to the seabed. So that's what is needed.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Anders Rosenlund, SEB.

[Anders Rosenlund, analyst]

I think it's frustratingly difficult to forecast quarterly revenues, and that has been difficult in the past as well. So this is not really a question. It's more -- well, it is a question how can you help us do that in a better way going forward to avoid these large deviations on revenue recognition?

[Johan Rydmark, executive]

Anders. Yes, it is -- as you know, and we've discussed this earlier as well, it's very much related to the specific timing of new project sales and also the specific timing of the progress that we see in the construction portfolio. And it's a very detailed plan that we have when, sort of, evaluating and also together with our counterparty, our customer, the milestones that need to be achieved in order for us to recognize the revenue and see, sort of, the accomplishment that we've done in the construction phase.

And that specific timing, it's very hard to comment on whether that is happening, sort of, at the end of the quarter or the beginning of the next. But overall, and that's why we're back to looking a bit more on the longer trends. Then of course you can be quite diligent and land in quite good -- good way when looking at the overall portfolio that we have and how that is developing and how that is growing. Yes.

[Anders Rosenlund, analyst]

I appreciate your answer. And to me, it sounds like it's another round of -- that's just the way it is, and that's -- I guess, that's fine, but a bit frustrating. My second question is, was there anything which contributed on surprisingly positive or negative to the Q3 margins -- or was this just a business, as you would expect entering the quarter?

[Johan Rydmark, executive]

I'd say, as expected, of course, in that, we are very proud of the achievements from the teams. And now if we look at the P&L, of course, then the achievements in the construction part, I think they continue to execute in an excellent way on the plans, on the budget that we've set out. And it's -- I mean, it's not easy out there, but we have a very good control, but as expected.

[Anders Rosenlund, analyst]

Okay. Well, then I think the rest of my questions have already been asked.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] No further questions on the phone. I hand back to the speakers.

[Unknown Executive]

Excellent. We have a couple of questions, I believe, on the IR web. Yes. And the first one relates to storage. Do you expect stronger operating margin for storage projects compared to offshore, onshore wind and solar?

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

No, we expect that to blend in very well with the rest of the technologies. That's what we can see today.

[Johan Rydmark, executive]

And the same type of profile also when it comes to the return on capital employed, which is a focus area for us.

[Unknown Executive]

And the next question relates to revenue recognition. How is quarters or years revenue linked to the megawatts sold and handed over during the same period?

[Johan Rydmark, executive]

Yes, good question. Like I tried to describe also when looking at our LTM sales development there. It's the combination of the growth that we've seen from the volume that we have sold, now having sold some 750 megawatts. That is impacting that growth. Of course, that is also then trickling down to us having a more sizable construction portfolio, and that volume of construction sales is contributing to the growth as well. And then a smaller portion on the group level, but also the growth in asset management, where we've seen significant growth as well.

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

No further questions. If nothing else we end the call, and thanks for participating and look forward to talking to you next time. It will be February when we have.

[Johan Rydmark, executive]

We look forward to that.

[Paul Stormoen, executive]

Excellent. Have a good day, everyone.

[Johan Rydmark, executive]

Thank you.