Good afternoon and welcome to today's webcast. My name is Stefan. I'm the Managing Director and CFO, Chief Financial Officer of MPC Energy Solutions, and I'm happy here today to share our preliminary operating results for financial year 2025. Before we begin, I'd like everyone to know that I will be making some forward-looking statements. Such statements are naturally uncertain and subject to change and risk and I kindly refer that you read the respective disclaimers which we have included in this presentation but also in other presentation materials and reports. Should you at any time have any questions during this presentation you can use the QA function which you will find embedded in the platform that we use and I will as always address questions after I have concluded my prepared remarks. And as always, this presentation, the video feed, the audio feed, and the transcript, including the Q&A, will be made available on our website afterwards. So if you like what you see and or hear, you can watch it and listen to it over and over again. All right, today I will very briefly address two main subjects. One, of course, the review of the 2025 operating results, the preliminary ones, and our key metrics that we're tracking. And then, and I'm sure everybody is interested in that, also a brief update on the Project Merlin, meaning the progress on closing or working towards closing the transaction that we announced in November of last year. Please bear in mind that the numbers I will be sharing here are preliminary and still on audited. The audited results will be published in late April. So it's always possible that certain numbers change, though historically any changes have been quite immaterial. And with that, let's take a look at our key metrics, the preliminary results for 2025. So as many of you know, there have been quite a few divestments that our company has done in 2024 and especially 2025, and that makes a direct comparison between the core metrics year over year a bit more difficult, or I would say less helpful, which is why we have also shared here, and I will be focusing on that, the like-for-like numbers. Because some projects have maybe contributed in 2024, but not in 2025 or not entirely, and we just want to make sure that we take a look at the proper core portfolio. which is why we have included for this like for like comparison two projects one is NEO CHP it was a power plant that we sold in late 2024 and we have also entirely removed our previous joint venture Planeta Rita so what you're looking at is basically the projects in El Salvador Mexico and Colombia starting with the energy output as the four first key metric we did actually experienced quite poor weather conditions or irradiation conditions throughout the year. It was quite challenging, especially El Salvador in many months had solar irradiation levels that were significantly below what we expected or planned for. But nonetheless, we were able to mostly compensate for that. We had a great technical performance and availability across the entire portfolio. We had fewer grid side shutdowns which is also very important we were especially in El Salvador hampered by that during 2024 a little bit and we are commonly not compensated for for such shutdowns for example if maintenance work is being done on the power grid side so despite the poor weather conditions the good technical availability and the fewer grid side shutdown led to the fact that we actually we're able to increase our energy output by 3% to 97 gigawatt hours, actually 97.4 gigawatt hours. And if it weren't for the poor weather conditions, we would have easily surpassed the 100 gigawatt hour mark. So this is, I think, quite a remarkable result. We did very well, and I'm especially helpful to the team that made this possible. On the revenue side, like for like, also an increase of 3% to 10.6 million. Some of our power purchase agreements that we have are tied to spot market tariffs and we have a certain spot market tariff exposure and the good thing was that over the year 2025 compared to previous years it was certainly less volatile. So as we expanded our energy output correspondingly we were also able to increase um our revenues so three percent up to 10.6 million most importantly though and i think this is really the key takeaway uh for the year 2025 is that we've we've always been cautious and very much focused on making sure that our plans our portfolio step by step get to a profit level that we need them to be and that we believe is common for such renewable energy projects as the solar PV plants that we operate. And 75% for the portfolio was always the target, and I'm happy to report that for 2025, we accomplished that. On a like-for-like basis, the margin was 76%, up from 67% last year. So as we make sure that energy output is aligned with expectations, we increase our revenues, we now finally also see a significant uptick in the profitability of these plants. And on a like-for-like basis, we had a 17% increase of the operating profit to 8 million, really quite a significant improvement, the improvement that we needed. And this for us is really the key. It's good if you grow and we manage to grow, but it's much more important that costs are under control, costs are as low as they possibly can be without risking health and safety and other matters. And that's why I'm very proud to report that we dramatically increased our profitability if we leave the project level behind and we look at the group as itself especially over at costs many of you know that in the middle of 2023 late 2023 we started implementing a quite substantial cost cutting measures we already had a substantial reduction between 2023 and 2024 and now we were able to lower these costs further by over 11% or roughly 11% to 3.2 million in 2025. If I'm being quite frank, I was targeting an even better result, but the transactions that we did and certain costs related to that, especially legal advisory fees and such, were simply a little bit higher than expected in Q4, or they added to the cost structure. And that's why ultimately we ended up with 11%. But looking ahead to 2026, our budget on the overhead side for 2026 is actually 2.3 million. So another significant decrease compared to what we already achieved in 2025. we have a much smaller setup now we have a smaller team so that overall we are looking at spending roughly two hundred thousand dollars a month compared to you know more than four hundred thousand that we had two years ago so I think our dedication to a lean structure making sure that spending is under control is very much paying off and for 2026 we really expect another drop in overhead costs overall and very positively also of course the free cash position which we have been reporting for a while now it ended up at the higher end of the range that we projected for the year 9 million free cash were available at the end of december 2025 and with the lower overhead that we have planned for 2026 and with with the basically non-existent commitments for project investments going forward we have a lot of flexibility and this will of course help us in our target to ultimately maximize cash from these sales and then also start distributing significant amounts to our shareholders later this year to conclude the preliminary result review of course brief look at the other metrics total assets year over year changed very little. We still have a solid equity ratio very much in line with what you see in the industry. We only have project-related debt. We have no corporate debt or anything like that. And the consolidated cash positions of all companies in the consolidated figures was nearly $14 million. And of that, as I mentioned, $9 million were free and available as per our definition that concludes the preliminary results as i said before q a feel free to add your questions in the feed and while you do that i will provide a brief update on project merlin what is project merlin project merlin is an agreement that we have signed in november last year and we of course published the information to the market that we will sell our projects in el salvador and guatemala two core projects in our portfolio um combining for 87.4 megawatt peak total capacity um so this is really a majority of our portfolio that we have agreed to sell and ever since we signed the agreement we have been step by step working towards making sure that we meet all of the different conditions that we need to meet before closing is achieved and we can exchange ownership in the projects for the purchase price that we have agreed our shareholders many of you i assume have anonymously approved the transaction already in mid-december that was one of the conditions that we needed to fulfill and we have done that but there's other stuff we have to walk through most importantly of course we need to put the plant in guatemala in operation we have now received the second of the third permit that we require it's still an incredibly slow process but it's a process where we at least see the end now we know what is expected of us sometimes it felt like new regulations and demands were being implemented we had to install additional equipment we had to change drawings we had to put together a lot of information there was a new um let's say element introduced when authority said we need a certain report in a certain form but there's only a handful of people in Guatemala who can prepare these reports. So we've been working with everybody very diligently towards making that work, and we are making progress. But as I said last time, the timing for this progress is so difficult to estimate because, as I said, sometimes fields, new demands or new requests are being introduced as we are already working towards the finishing line. Nonetheless, we have some visibility on this. We do believe that we can accomplish this permitting process or complete this permitting process over the next, let's say, six weeks. Then we can do the testing and commissioning, which will take another two. So we should be able to put the plant into operation in Q2 and therefore also close the transaction in the second quarter of 2026, certainly a little bit more towards the end of the second quarter of 2026, as the other conditions that we have to are well underway and we've already ticked a lot of boxes of what we have to do and something that also has not changed is we still intend we will distribute um the proceeds and maybe an amount beyond that to our shareholders uh if if possible the annual general meeting that we've scheduled for the middle of may will be used to make sure that we propose and and put to vote all the resolutions that we require um to make that happen um and after that in the netherlands because we want to make sure it is tax efficient once these resolutions have been passed by the shareholders there's a certain waiting period of two months and then after the two months we can start with distributions so as we um projected before it should be somewhere in the middle of the year july and by then we should have closed the transaction gotten the money and then having all the resolutions in place to start distributing cash to shareholders and as i said before it remains very much a priority for us this year um to downsize the portfolio and to maximize distributions and actually stock distributions to shareholders wonderful this concludes my prepared remarks entirely i now have a few minutes left to address questions you might have So should you have them, please use the Q&A function, and I will then go through them step by step. All right, I have a first question here. Can you say more about the planned sale in 2026, and what do you think about dividends going forward, timing, and amount? I think I already briefly addressed that in my prepared remarks. So the planned sale is, first and foremost, the transaction we already announced, the agreement that we've already signed. We want to make sure we close that transaction in the second quarter of 2026. So then we have our free cash. We have the sales proceeds available. In the middle of May, we will put the resolutions to vote. I will assume now that the shareholders will support these resolutions that are required to then turn around and make capital distributions. It will not be a dividend. we will take money out of the share capital and just return capital to the shareholders. That is the current plan, and that is what we believe to be the most tax-efficient option. And as I said, with a waiting period that Dutch law requires, we should be able to start doing that in July, unless anything dramatically changes on the timeline to close the transaction. Next question I see here is what will happen to the rest of the portfolio after Project Merlin is completed? So what remains is basically a development project in El Salvador, an operating project in Mexico, and another operating project in Colombia. These combined, looking at their revenues, looking at their profitability and the free cash that they generate, will not be large enough to operate MPC Energy Solutions as a purely profitable company. So we will make sure that we find options for these projects that also lean towards divesting them. But both Mexico and Colombia are different markets, challenging markets. So it will take time to make that happen, because even though timing is in our favor, the faster we can manage this, the better it is, because we will have to spend less on overhead in the meantime. but it's difficult to estimate how long it will take to get a good price for it because we don't want to sell them at any price that is not what it is we know what these projects are worth and we want to make sure we get also for our shareholders a fair valuation in return but we're working on it and of course we're trying to move this forward quickly and this is also as much as we've said in the general meeting that we conducted in december in the documents this plan was was mentioned so this should not be surprising and nothing new again downsizing the portfolio maximizing distributions that is what's on the agenda for us this year next question after the guatemala sale only two projects are left what group ebitda and group cash flow would you expect after holding costs for the portfolio on an annual basis and would cash holdings and book value continue to decline or even increase So Los Santos and Los Gerasoles combined would be able to generate around 5 million in revenues at what I believe is a solid 65% EBITDA margin. So let's say that's around 3.2 to 3.5 million in EBITDA, then we have our overhead costs. So we would generate more than a million in a group EBITDA at that time. Of course, Mexico still has project financing in place, so the overall free cash flow of the group would likely be relatively neutral at the time. And so, as I said, that is not a model which would work on a sustainable basis, which is why we have to find a solution. And with regards to the cash holding and the book value, look, the cash holdings are there, and they will, of course, diminish slowly. the longer it takes for us to divest these projects. Time is in our favor, but as I said, we need to find the right balance here. And of course, once this large part of the portfolio is gone and then maybe the next portfolio is gone, costs will also come down. But with 2.3 million that we are projecting for 2026, we're already at a fairly low level. Don't forget that we still are a listed company. We need to undergo audits. We have a lot of text work, advisory work to pay for. And there's just a certain level of expenses that will not go away as long as we're publicly listed, regardless of how many projects we have in the portfolio. And I hope that answers that question. Question here is, can we expect a full wind down of the company in 2027 and 2028? Well, that's a long way out. And that's really not what we have, let's say, considered at this time. What we're looking at is let's close Project Merlin. let's make sure that overhead spending is minimal to the extent possible we will certainly sell our development project in el salvador that i mentioned earlier because we don't want to spend money on development but we believe there is some upside we will find a buyer who is able to share that upside with us and then for the rest of the portfolio mexico colombia we will try and find solution but the timing is difficult to estimate and when all that is said and done or before that We will certainly sit down with the remaining members of the board and we will have an honest discussion. But I wouldn't say that you can expect a full wind down or anything else. That is still far out for now. We're focused very much on the year 2026 and just to deliver the proceeds from the sale and actually start distributing. Because we've been in this position before where we wanted to and we were unable. So let's tick that box first, get that milestone done before we think about anything else. why is okay this is a follow-up question to my question on the group cash flow why is the quality diminishing if the two projects are generating a small profit after holding costs so we we need to look at this from a cash perspective just because the projects are profitable doesn't mean that they will regularly be able to distribute cash to us they have other obligations to me first and foremost bank debt and debt service related to that especially in Mexico. Columbia doesn't have any debt. So when you say we have to spend 2.3 million on holding level, it's not guaranteed that we get 2.3 million out every year out of these projects readily, because there's also other criteria to be met. When you have a bank debt, you have certain covenants that you need to meet. So what I'm saying is we will, for the most part, tab into the free cash reserves. And of course, we will try to get money out of these companies, especially when they're profitable but there is a timing gap between this and when you said liquidity i assumed that you were talking about the free cash and this is why i say timing is of the essence because especially in the beginning we will into the free cash reserves and this will of course increase if we decide to add part of the free cash to the distribution to shareholders i hope that makes that clearer all right i'll give it a few more seconds and then I don't see anything else right now good well you guys know if there are any more questions we do have an email address ir at mpc-energysolutions.com and any questions that I did not answer today or that might come after please feel free to address them there and we will make sure to respond and also publish them if this concerns something that we have not publicly Thank you all for your attention. This concludes today's webcast and I'll talk to you again soon. Bye-bye.
