Aker Carbon Capture ASA: First quarter 2023 results

Aker Carbon Capture made important progress on existing projects in the first quarter of 2023, with revenues reaching NOK 287 million, which was up 99% compared to the same period last year. The cash position at the end of the quarter was solid at NOK 1.3 billion. The company’s flagship projects, Brevik CCS and Twence CCU continued to progress and are the most mature large-scale carbon capture projects under construction in Europe today.

Aker Carbon Capture continued to accelerate its market activity in the first quarter. A Letter of Intent for the delivery of two Just Catch units for an undisclosed European customer was signed early in the quarter. The company welcomes that bp's Net Zero Teesside Power and Viridor's Runcorn CCS were selected by the UK Government as successful bidders in the Track 1 CCUS Cluster Sequencing Process and are now proceeding to final negotiations for governmental support. Aker Carbon Capture has delivered a FEED and a pre-FEED for the two projects respectively. In the quarter, Aker Carbon Capture won an important pre-FEED for an undisclosed European power utility customer and secured several studies across industries such as waste-to-energy and smelting. In April, Aker Carbon Capture has been awarded a Mobile Test Unit campaign and feasibility study for Fortum's facility in Nyborg, Denmark, with a planned capture capacity of around 170,000 tonnes CO2 per year.

Through the first quarter, the company made several research and development (R&D) achievements. Aker Carbon Capture’s proprietary technology has shown a high level of effectiveness for the smelting industry, the third generation Just Catch was launched with improved energy efficiency, smaller footprint and fewer modules, and an R&D project for high pressure CO2 separation utilizing membranes was completed.

“The recent UK governmental support announcement for CCUS was an important step forward for the delivery of our License and Key Equipment offering for mega-scale carbon capture plants. We continued to realize solid progress on projects in Norway and the Netherlands. In particular for the Twence CCU project, it is truly impressive that our execution team installed all the Just Catch containers within a day after receiving them on site. This confirms the advantages of our modular and configurable Just Catch concept, and we are now looking forward to finalizing the project on schedule by the end of 2023,” said Egil Fagerland, Chief Financial Officer at Aker Carbon Capture. 

Aker Carbon Capture aims to take a leading position in the global CCUS industry, and the company has launched a long-term goal of '10 in 25', which states that the company will have secured contracts for carbon capture plants for a total of 10 million tonnes per year by the end of 2025.

Financial results

Aker Carbon Capture saw continued revenue growth through the first quarter. Revenues reached NOK 287 million in the period, which was up 99% compared to the same period last year. The increase in revenues was mainly driven by progress on the Brevik CCS project, Twence CCU project, UK FEED and pre-FEED projects, and the CO2 Hub Nord MTU campaign with Elkem.

EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization) in the first quarter was negative NOK 51 million, compared with negative NOK 61 million in the same period last year. Both the Brevik CCS project and Twence CCU project are now recognizing profit and are expected to continue to deliver positive results through 2023. The FEEDs, pre-FEEDs and studies also delivered positive contribution in the period. The overall negative EBITDA continued to be driven by high sales and tender activity and ongoing investment into technology and innovation, including digitalization.

Aker Carbon Capture ended the first quarter with a solid cash position at NOK 1.3 billion, and equity remained strong at NOK 0.8 billion. The order backlog closed at NOK 1.0 billion.

ENDS

Aker Carbon Capture will present the results in an audiocast, followed by a live Q&A session, today at 15:00 CEST. Click on the following link to follow the event: https://channel.royalcast.com/hegnarmedia/#!/hegnarmedia/20230426_3