Oppdatering fra Norne, full rapport nedenfor.
Long awaited firm Nikola news likely not far away
NEL’s 4Q revenues were a pleasant surprise, while EBITDA was in line. Overall, there was no breaking news in the report, but the green hydrogen case is getting stronger with time and NEL is in a pole position to benefit. Therefore, we keep our Buy recommendation at a higher TP of NOK 15/sh.
Strong 4Q revenues; EBITDA in line with the recent guidance
NEL’s 4Q revenues of NOK 176m were above our and the consensus expectations (ca NOK 160m). NEL guided for 4Q revenues to be slightly higher vs 3Q and the reported growth was 18% QoQ. Reported and adj. EBITDA were NOK -43m and NOK -27m, largely in line with the guidance of NOK -45m and NOK -25m respectively. Bottom line was further negatively affected by the share of loss from associates and JVs of NOK -26m, related to the investment in UnoX Hydrogen AS. Cash position including the recent private placement was NOK 1.3bn before the subsequent offering of another 13.5m shares.
All-time-high pipeline; year usually starts slow
All-time-high pipeline was reported, while order backlog was at NOK 513m at the end of the year, which is up 46% YoY but down from NOK 575m a quarter ago. Notably, Nel is experiencing increased number of inquiries for larger scale projects. Still, the year usually starts slow and NEL guides for 1Q20 to be lower than 4Q19 in terms of revenue (same with 1H vs 2H20).
No big additional news on Nikola now but hopefully in 1H 2020
No news related to Nikola was mentioned apart from the recent merger with VectoIQ Acquisition Corp. and listing on NASDAQ. Nel and Nikola are still working on techno-economical optimization of the commercial station solution and NEL expects the process to be finished in 1H20. Notably, Nikola is calculating CAPEX of USD 16.6m per 8t hydrogen station in its business model. This includes about USD 1.8m for land/buildings. What is more, Nikola is planning 1,200 8t equivalent station rollout across North America vs earlier mentioned figure of 700.
Accelerating investments to prepare for major projects
Herøya expansion to 360MW is at full speed and Nel is accelerating investments in technology, people and capacity after the successfully completed private placement recently. More news is expected at the CMD in June this year.
TP up to NOK 15/sh; Buy stays
All in all, we did not see major news in the report, but adjusted our estimates according to the latest news from Nikola. Our updated rough valuation of Nikola contract points to NOK 9-10/NEL share value, which is for one client in one of potentially many huge application areas of green hydrogen. In addition, NEL is still priced at about half of the most relevant peers and lags the major upswing in the hydrogen stocks over the past 12m+. Therefore, we comfortably keep our Buy recommendation at a higher TP of NOK 15/sh seeing that green hydrogen is happening big time, it is being noticed by big money and there is an expectation of firm Nikola-related news in 1H 2020.
Analyst
Tomas Skeivys, CFA
+47 21 95 37 49
tomas.skeivys@norne.noNEL_2020-03-06.pdf (1,4 MB)