Aker Solutions Q2 2026 Earnings Call | Revenue Hits NOK 13.1B as Full-Year Guidance Is Raised

Thank you Prenbek and welcome to everyone tuning in this morning. As always, let me start the presentation with the main messages for today. First and foremost, I'm pleased to see that we continue to deliver solid financial results following the peak activity period in 2025. The second quarter revenue was 13.1 billion kroner with an EBITA margin of 9.2% or 7.9% excluding net profit from SLB 170. Strong results over time also mean that we can serve our shareholders well. During the second quarter, we paid cash dividends of 4.2 billion or 8.6 kroner per share. Operationally, we are making good progress on our project portfolio meeting key milestones in the AKBP projects. On the tender side, we secured another long-term frame agreement for our life cycle segment, this time with Cenovus in Canada. There are also maturing opportunities across other industry verticals such as carbon capture and storage, hydropower, and small modular reactors. Finally, we are revising our guidance for the full year. We now expect revenue to be between 50 and 55 billion with EBITA margins of around 7.5% excluding net profit from SLB. And as SLB subsea is an important contributor to value creation in Aker Solutions, we expect dividends from SLB subsea to increase in the second half of 2026, supporting full year distributions broadly in line with 2025 levels.

Now let's go deeper into some of the operational highlights of the quarter. A natural place to start is the AKBP portfolio. We are currently in the final period of assembly and storage for the two large topsides Hugen A and Valhal PWP. Both smaller platform topsides Hugen B and Edvard have now left our yard in Verdal for offshore installation and commissioning phase. The same yard has also delivered all four substructures for the AKBP portfolio. In total more than 3,500 man-hours have been involved in these projects at Verdal. This includes 130 apprentices, something we are particularly proud of as they represent the future of our industry. Another project I like to highlight is the Skarv satellites. This project comprises three separate subsea fields that will be tied back to the Skarv FPSO. SLB subsea has delivered the subsea production systems for these developments while our responsibility has been to modify the FPSO to enable the tiebacks. Supported by strong execution performance, the projects are on track to deliver first gas in the second half of 2026. Now I think an important part of the story is not just what we deliver but how. Because together with Aker BP and the other alliance partners, we set out to radically change how to deliver capital projects, and the achievements in these projects are proof that we are doing just that. The drive for change is also highly relevant in our life cycle segment where we continued our winning streak in the second quarter with the award of the five-year frame agreement with Cenovus Energy in Canada. The scope includes engineering, maintenance, and operations support for the new West White Rose platform as well as the COS FPSO. With this award, we have successfully renewed all five frame agreements that we have tendered for over the past 12 months. Not only have we won, but our scope has increased and we are now taking responsibility for several new assets both onshore and offshore.

So what is the winning ingredient? When you break it down, I believe it's a combination of our deep technical expertise, our cultural collaboration, as well as our improvement mindset that sets us apart. In Aker Solutions we focus on developing next-level solutions, and this is next-level life cycle where our ambition is clear: a 50% improvement in costs and delivery times. So how do we achieve it? We do it through three main levers: co-creation, increased efficiency, and reducing costs. Firstly, for us co-creation means making an early impact. We start early and work closer with our customers to shape better concepts from the beginning. We simplify the solutions, define the right level of standardization, and reduce complexity before the project enters execution. This has a significant impact further down the line. Next, we increase efficiency in execution. We challenge requirements, digitalize and automate our processes, and adopt more agile ways of working supported by artificial intelligence. And lastly, we reduce costs. We remove what does not add value, standardize how and what we buy, and reuse solutions that work rather than reinventing the wheel. At the same time we leverage new technology to improve information flow and enable more remote and autonomous operations. All of this is not about doing more, it's about doing things smarter, simpler, and together, and proving the value for our customers every step of the way.

Next, I wanted to say a few words about how we are maturing the different versions of ourselves in other industry verticals. Carbon capture and storage is a market where Aker Solutions has been present since the early 1990s. Norway is one of the front runners in this market, supporting the development of a complete CCS value chain through the Longship project. Here Aker Solutions has been the main contractor for delivering both the carbon capture facility at Heidelberg Cement Plant in Brevik and the Northern Lights storage facility on the west coast of Norway. Now we are executing the second generation of CCS projects in Norway, and in the second quarter we celebrated construction start twice at Stord. One was for the modules to the carbon capture and storage project at Haraldrud Celsio waste energy plant in Oslo, and the other for the capacity expansion of the Northern Lights storage terminal. We believe the market outlook for CCS is positive, and we are positioning for several upcoming opportunities in different geographies both through ongoing tenders, early phase services, and strategic alliances.

Another example is hydropower. Hydropower is the backbone of the energy system in Norway, representing about 90% of electricity supply, and its importance is growing both due to rising energy demand and through its role in balancing variable energy sources such as wind and solar. Hydropower is not something new to Aker Solutions. In fact, we trace our history in this market back to the 1850s when the Norwegian hydropower competence was developed by our predecessor Kvaerner. With the acquisition of Rainpower in 2022, hydropower was again a part of our energy offering, and since the acquisition we have transformed the entity into a robust growth business with solid underlying margins. Recently we were awarded a contract to supply all electromechanical equipment for the Tussa hydropower plant in Norway. What is special about this project is that we have been able to bring an alliance-inspired model into hydropower. This means working closely together with Tussa Energy from the early phase of the project. Through this collaboration we've been able to develop smarter and more efficient solutions, something we hope will set a new benchmark for hydropower going forward.

Strategic collaboration also plays an important role in our engagement into the emerging market for small modular reactors, or SMR for short. In late April, Aker Solutions signed a memorandum of understanding with Rolls-Royce SMR, a leading player in this market. Through this partnership, we will apply our expertise in design, project management, and modular construction to develop non-nuclear parts for these power plants. Rolls-Royce SMR has now been selected for several projects in the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, and most recently in Sweden. All projects are backed by state governments. In Sweden, the government recently acquired 60% of Vattenfall which will be the developer and operator of three SMR units with a total capacity of 1.5 gigawatts. The active involvement of governments in Sweden, the UK, and the Czech Republic highlights the growing confidence in SMR technology and its role in Europe's future energy mix. In fact, these three countries have publicly announced ambitions of building more than 15 SMR units. Meeting these ambitions will require a coordinated effort by the European industrial base. We are quite proud of being selected by Rolls-Royce alongside other robust partners to deliver on these ambitions. So where are we now? As part of the MOU, we are working closely with Rolls-Royce SMR to mature the module scope and finalize the first binding contracts for engineering and design services. A bit further down the line, we expect start-up of larger construction scopes by early 2029. This takes me to the tender pipeline, which is currently at about 77 billion kroner. The reduction from the first quarter mainly relates to the loss of a follow-on win project in Europe where the developer selected a local competitor for execution. However, we continue to see a good mix of opportunities across oil and gas, renewables, and adjacent markets which we believe will create activity in the years to come.

And with that, I leave the word to Idar who will take you through the financials of the quarter.

Thank you, Idar. So to summarize, I'm pleased to see that we continue to deliver solid financial performance following peak activity levels in 2025. I'm also encouraged to see that we continue meeting critical milestones on ongoing projects and that we are maturing future opportunities together with our strategic partners. Next, our revised guidance for 2026. Based on secured backlog and market activity, we now expect revenue to be between 50 and 55 billion. EBITA margins excluding net profit from SLB subsea are now expected to be around 7.5% for the full year. CapEx is currently expected to be between 0.5 and 1% of revenue in 2026, and we continue to expect working capital to normalize over time to a level of between minus 4 and minus 6 billion. Finally, SLB subsea is an important contributor to value creation in Aker Solutions, and as mentioned, we expect dividends from SLB subsea to increase in the second half of 2026, supporting full year distributions broadly in line with 2025 levels. Thank you for listening.

Acceleration of BP projects. In general we have high activity level in all segments, and we are around activities that will continue, but the dominant activities are obviously the huge projects that are currently at Stord. The way of handling them means that the second half will be as high activity as the first half, but we will see a shift from onshore to offshore. The first projects have already been installed offshore and we are following them and completing them out at sea. Both Valhal and then eventually Huger will also follow, so throughout the second half of 2026 we will move from onshore to offshore. It's also very clear we are focused on being predictable on the startup part of this. In the alliance with BP we will make sure that these projects start up as planned in 2027. In terms of numbers, as you have seen from our report, we have guidance for 2026 full year with increased revenue guidance and also margins for the renewable and field development segment. We have said that the revenue will be in a range of 35 to 40 billion kroner, which should indicate a similar level in the second half of 2026 as in the first.

Too early to come with updated guidance, but we are working on several projects that could have impact both in 2027 and 2028, providing that we are successful on the bidding.

CCS is a change journey, a transformation journey for the whole industry. Both on the operator side and us as main contractor, we need to understand how to create a new version of ourselves to be precise and lean enough to make sure that these business cases are viable, that we create win-win situations and earn money. I think the industry is slightly polluted by the oil and gas tradition on specifications and the way of collaborating. Now in this second generation it's remarkable to see how we are working to challenge and positively cannibalize the way we are handling this. We are really moving the needle, particularly on the CCS side where we are creating new versions of ourselves that can serve this leaner, different kind of industrial market, but also up the game when we are looking at the likes of SMR and defense.

Hydropower has been key to energy provision in so many different regions of the world, and we have been part of it for hundreds of years if you look at the old Aker history. It hasn't been renewed or modernized over the years in perhaps the same way that oil and gas and other areas have evolved. What we see now is that the players in that energy market are curious about what we bring to the table when it comes to different ways of both early involvement to define how things can be done technically and also how we can link up through the actual terms and conditions to create common drivers. It's also good to see that they are curious about how we collaborate around developing technology, which is a big lift and shift that could provide a next level on the hydropower side.

Qualitatively speaking, we have some huge oil and gas posts in the tender pipeline, both in Norway and abroad. But there are a lot of initiatives both in offshore wind, CCS, and hydropower that are ongoing and I would say growing and looking very good. The numbers will vary from quarter to quarter depending on the portfolio in the tender phase, but right now it's dominated by oil and gas in totality. As we know, it's fluctuating from quarter to quarter. And maybe to add, as we said, the SMR opportunities we expect the big construction scopes to come from 2029 onwards, but we are targeting smaller engineering scopes which may start earlier.

We have this partnership with Rolls-Royce SMR because we see how we in a partnership can handle that kind of task together. The task is large and complex. Construction start is not the only big milestone. Ahead of that we will be in design where we are developing the concepts and methodology, we will be in a detail engineering phase with hundreds of engineers involved, and then also start a procurement plan where we are placing orders to equipment providers. So construction start is about our own physical activity on our yard, but before that we will have a lot of activity to make sure that these projects are on track.

Our mission and purpose is solving global energy challenges for future generations. Throughout the years that we've been here, we are really focused on making this happen and we are still in that whole energy mix and broadening it as well. What is important then is to understand the true capacities and capabilities in the totality of Aker Solutions and are we good enough to make sure that they are groomed in the company. That is a super important part of the communication going forward that everybody understands the importance but also the relevance of the totality of Aker Solutions going forward.