Results continue to be affected by the company’s strategy to pursue growth and higher activity levels, including an increasing number of employees working to develop projects, including paid large-scale FEED studies. Increasing price pressure on raw materials and supply chain challenges following the aftermath of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine is also impacting the results.
“We remain committed to our growth strategy and are confident in the long-term potential for the industry. Both backlog and pipeline are growing, and we continue to see a strong outlook for green hydrogen”, says CEO Jon André Løkke. “By industrializing our technology platforms, designing large-scale hydrogen plants, and further develop our technology, we will continue to reduce cost and take large steps towards our goal of reaching fossil parity by 2025”.
Nel recently inaugurated its new and fully automated electrolyser manufacturing facility at Herøya in Norway. The factory has a current production capacity of 500 MW which can be extended to 2 GW. The company has now decided to secure long-lead items for a second 500 MW alkaline production line.
“We have enough space to expand our production capacity at Herøya, but are also considering other locations in Europe outside of Norway, where the authorities can offer favorable frame-work conditions,” says Løkke.
At quarter-end the cash balance was NOK 3 940 million (Q1 2021: 3 248) following a successful private placement on 23 March 2022. The company raised gross proceeds of NOK 1 500 million at NOK 15.3 per share, the largest in Nel’s history. The book was substantially oversubscribed at 4.5x. This capital raise puts Nel is in a solid financial position to pursue its growth strategy.
EBITDA and other alternative performance measures (APMs) are defined and reconciled to the IFRS financial statements as a part of the APM section of the first quarter 2022 report on page 21.