Helleniq Energy Holdings Aktie

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for holding. The conference will begin shortly. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Maria, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the HELLENiQ Energy Holdings conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the second quarter and first half 2026 financial results. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to the HELLENiQ ENERGY Holdings management team. Gentlemen, you may now proceed.

Thank you very much. And I think I would like to thank everybody who is are spending today's afternoon to to be with us in order to discuss the second quarter and the first half of '26 results. And any issues that may arise as a result of this presentation.

So I would like to start, first of all, with something which is not results related. And it is something that was decided by our Board of Directors earlier today. And it has to do with our support to areas which have been affected by the wildfires over the last few days in Greece. Over and above the usual local community support programs that we have and they are quite extensive, we felt that the situation was quite severe. And as a result, the Board approved a special contribution of EUR 25 million to be used with cooperation with the appropriate authorities. As a means to accelerate and the relief, aid to people who have been affected. A lot of these areas are areas where we have operations, be it in the electricity production or in in parts of Artica where we have the refineries. So it is something that we feel very, very responsible for people in those areas, not for the fires, but for the people in those areas.

And I would like to say that this is a decision which has been made by the Board of Directors, but it was also a decision which is fully in line with our previous strategy in TSR. And what our main shareholders are actually sort of pointed to as a direction. And we have received the confirmation and the -- if you will, positive feedback in this respect because at the end of the day the company is effectively a legal vehicle for the representation of the shareholders. So this is something which we feel it's important, and we should stay it upfront before we go into the results.

Moving on to the summary, which is Page 4 of our presentation. Clearly, it is a quarter which has been exceptionally strong. It is a quarter which presented us with various challenges. These challenges have to do with safety issues, for example, because we completed the as probably refinery turnaround that was done with success with very good safety records and the refinery started up operating mid-to-end April successfully.

And we are actually seeing the benefit of a start-of-run refinery performance. We also had the challenges of crude supply. This continues roller coaster of supply routes being opened and then being closed and then being open again. And then before you actually send the ship in to the , the gap is closed again, -- it is something which has attracted a lot of our efforts, and we have managed to maintain a very high level of crude supply into our refineries. And that is something which effectively has supported the level of financial performance that we see in the quarter.

In addition to that, I would like to emphasize that we are seeing, and especially in the last month or so or so after the end of the quarter, we are seeing very high refining margins. That's a result of the supply-demand in balance on products, and it's a result of restricted flows out of the group. It is a result of no Russian exports via a number of routes. And it's also a result of the last 2 decades of underinvestment in the European refinery space, either because of economic reasons, refineries is a cyclical business.

So yes, we have been enjoying good refining margin over the last period. But it has been a very long series of weak refining margins in previous years as well. So a lot of majors or independent companies have not kept up with their investments in refining capacity and this is the result of a series of years of underinvestment leading to the supply shortage, especially in diesel in this part of the world.

In terms of operations. We have a very good brand with all of our refineries performing very well. We expect that this will continue for the rest of the year. In the third quarter of this year, we were planning to commence the refinery shutdown of the [indiscernible]. This is likely to be pushed to '27, which means that from a performance point of view, we should expect to be in a good spot given the current environment that we have.

It's not just benchmarks, which have done very well. It's also the over performance or the additional performance that we are monitoring, which has been doing very well. That's a combination of 2 things, much more detailed performance optimization at the refineries, which is driven by our recent investments in technology, in AI and a result of the digital [indiscernible]. So being able to extract more value out of the same molecule of hydrocarbons, of course, into the refinery. But it's also a result of better coordination and performance with the supply and trading team in Greece and in Geneva, which has given us an additional agility and insight into the market, which has been able to be converted into additional profitability.

The third level of performance is sales. We are doing very well at [indiscernible] levels. In fact, it is a case of being able to sell more than what we can produce or source at this point in time, which is very good. On the power sector where we have the convention of the thermal capacity and sales under Enwave and the renewable portfolio. The news are positive there as well. And the news effectively come in the form of being able to hold a sliding performance in the older [indiscernible] system because of the process of changing ownership.

That's been halted. The company has entered into a turnaround mode, which is evidenced by better metrics are pretty much everything. Clearly, we cannot double the financial performance of the company in a year, but the signs are very positive. On renewables, the rollout of additional megawatts is adding to the portfolio. And as a result, we are seeing some improvements there as well.

On financials, I won't go into detail. Vasilis will be covering those later. It's suffice to say that it is a record half year and it looks like the remaining of the year will be at least as good, if not better. The outlook, I just mentioned that performance for the remainder of the year is going to be at least as good. And we see that subject to the 2 ARM conflicts in Ukraine and the Gulf, we will continue to be seeing a higher than mid-cycle performance.

The rollout of capacity of the renewables mainly is continuing as planned. It's up to us to effectively accelerate even faster and the increased profitability does give us the ability to deploy faster our investment plans, both in hydrocarbons and renewables. I will end this introduction by just referring to the E&P portfolio, where we've completed the transfer of this 30% Block 10 to share on, which effectively leaves us with with 5 blocks that we are effectively exploring with Chevron.

One block, which is soon to be drilled, brought in the Ionian and also 2 other blocks, South West Creek, which is currently 70% accident 1% ourselves and the [indiscernible], which is 100% HELLENiQ. So that taking form, it is a portfolio which changes, and that's the point. We focus on what we can do and what we should be looking into utilizing international expertise and hoping that we'll be able to get something at the end of this process.

So over to Kostas for the market back. I'm sorry.

Thank you, Andrea. Good afternoon. Starting off with the industry environment. The quarter was dominated by geopolitics as has already been mentioned. There was a lot of volatility at both crude absolute crude prices and relative cracks. Brent prices averaged about $105, and we're mostly from the end of Q1, we're mostly dropping up until the last few days of June. .

Product cracks improved during the quarter, reaching very high levels for distillates and gasoline, smaller numbers and a small decline for naphtha and fuel oils. Our system benchmark margin averaged $9.5 per barrel, which is a bit less than the previous quarter, but well above the 5.7% average last year's same preview.

If we focus on the domestic market. The domestic market declined by 6% during the second quarter, driven mostly by reduced LPG and gasoline demand as prices had reached high levels. overall diesel demand was stable, if not rising a bit. The relaviation fuels for the Greek airports is showing a steady increase from the start of the year and has reached 6% quarter-on-quarter raised, while bunkering has dropped a bit due to a bit lower demand of Marine Gasoil. Vasilis, over to you.

Thank you, Kostas. Good afternoon to all of you attending our call this afternoon. Moving on to the environment on nat gas and electricity effectively as a result of the crisis, we saw natural gas prices at escalating as expected around the [indiscernible] during the quarter averaging [indiscernible] significantly higher than either the previous quarters or the last quarter, similar quarter of last year.

The the impact on electricity price has been largely contained mainly due to the fact of the penetration of renewables in the energy mix, which is certainly higher than what it used to be in a similar situation, perhaps 3 or 4 years ago with the Russian crisis. In terms of generation, Greece continues to be -- I mean the increase in renewables is also reflected here. So similar passengers at a much higher production base and Greece being a net exporter to nearby country. So moving on to discuss a little bit more detail on our performance.

So a quarter of autosomal operations, let me remind you that as profit was started from the turnaround only after Easter. So missed out perhaps 2 or 3 weeks from the quarter. [indiscernible] had pistohydrocracker during June, a planned one for the change of categories. So production and sales much higher than last year because last year, let me remind you had the turnaround at Lesina at 3.8 million tons and for the half of the year of 6.8 million.

Similarly, higher volumes at marketing and power includes, obviously, the incorporation of [indiscernible]. We have the annualization is the last quarter that the comparables of last year did not include nerve. Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 442 million for the quarter and more than EUR 100 million for the last year. with refining almost doubling its contribution for the quarter. Petrochemicals recovering from the loss of the last few quarters mainly driven by the supply constraints due to the crisis of Hormuz.

Marketing, better performance, both in our domestic business and our international and power, largely driven by the very strong performance of finer wave even if we compare the reported numbers last year. In terms of cash flow before go to cash flow, we -- the first half -- during the first half, CapEx and investments in total exceeded EUR 400 million. This is the highest reported on a first semester ever. driven by the turnaround of poor refinery that we discussed before as well as the addition of the the parks in Romania with the 2 more coming in the next few weeks.

So despite relatively heavy maintenance half the normalization of working capital because let me remind you, in the first quarter, we had the impact on the supply chain because of the popsturnaround. Together, we started the crisis. This largely normalized. As a result of that, the second quarter cash flow was around EUR 300 million. And the impact of the net debt versus the previous quarter was EUR 700 million, significantly better performance.

In terms of our profitability and how we connect with last year. As you I mean we discussed about the impact of benchmark margins. On top of that, we had very strong margin capture because of the crude differentials. And we certainly paid more than normal to -- for crude supply, especially at the height of the crisis during April and May. Still, we paid much lower than what the benchmark was, and that margin capture is also reflected in the overperformance.

Similarly, in terms of our operations and being realized, especially for premium because of the shortages in diesel and jet. We were able to maximize the production of both which are seen are running flat out. And to the extent possible squeeze in a bit more the production towards mid distillates because of the short in our markets and the region in general, [indiscernible] with higher export premium that we were able to realize and achieve a much better performance in that respect.

The net impact of the maintenance in terms of volumes was certainly lower because last year, we had the full turnaround that we have seen throughout the quarter more or less. However, that gain at a much lower impact in terms of loss profitability because of the very high margins if we look at the second quarter of '26. And one more point is the accounting profit and the cash profit that came from the farming out of block the the partnership with Chevron, that is also included in the -- in our EBITDA numbers.

In terms of our balance sheet, as we discussed before, the very strong cash flows resulting deleverage both on an absolute basis with net debt below EUR 2 billion and having the bulk of the CapEx already behind us for the year. So what is coming for the second half. There's not much in refining really as we push the sort of main turnaround for next year. So there is the -- the acquisition of the [indiscernible] Romanian PV parks, the battle will be connected, but the CapEx has been largely spent and then -- so there's not much we would expect compared to the first half for -- in terms of CapEx.

So the cash flow generation will be even better in the third quarter. if we look even on a relative basis, leverage of 1.3x based on our last 12 months numbers, if you look at downstream, it's actually 1 carter the higher profitability, but as well as a very low net debt figures on an absolute basis. So we'll move on to discuss a little bit the business performance in each of our strategic business units. In terms of refining, not much to add on Page 15, we'll discuss more detail about the margin capture almost EUR 250 million CapEx for the half, including mostly the foot and around and the improvement work at spottier.

Let me comment here that out of the improvement projects, we have already seen a very strong performance [indiscernible] refinery. Especially at the energy efficiency projects at the reformer unit. And certainly, the fresh at beginning of run performance is as expected and even a little bit better than we anticipated. So -- on the operations page, let me highlight the very good in of met distillates, a result of have seen operating at full capacity as well as our efforts and the selection of crude with the proper netbacks in order to maximize output of diesel and in jet.

And on sales, let me highlight the 270,000 tons of crude. This refers to 2 cargoes that we were effectively able to trade during the quarter. It was a kind of difficult situation in the sense that we have to make sure that we have enough group. The market was very volatile. Amid this environment, our [indiscernible] team in Geneva was able to take advantage of opportunities that arose in terms of both the forward curve as well as the netbacks, the relative netbacks between the various crude types, and made 2 tales in May and June with a very good outcome for the business and financial obviously.

In terms of profitability, the benchmark margin around $10 per barrel in the second quarter was a bit distorted in the sense that, that included a significant premium on the crude. So if you would look at Brent-based refining margin. So assuming that there was no cost of discounts on the crude. The number would be something like double that -- so the overperformance includes other than the very good export premium, a significant discount effectively relative discount that we were able to realize on the crude supply versus the benchmark.

Petrochemicals, we've seen a stronger spike in the benchmark margin hovering even above the EUR 700 million -- EUR 700 million, sorry per ton that was the average for the quarter. to a large extent, we're able to take advantage of this with the business operating normally, with the exception of the first couple of weeks of April because of now out from the proper splitter. Margins can corrected is, but they are in areas much better and much more favorable than the previous few quarters.

In terms of our fuels marketing business, important to note a very difficult environment in the sense that the prices were high, consumption was slightly affected but more so on the premium fuels that we've been focusing a lot in the last few years. We also have the margin cap for several weeks during the crisis. Despite this environment, our business continue delivering much better results, a very strong momentum, but we capitalized on very good performance, improved the NFR. And overall, that stability both on the quarter and the 6-month basis.

in the second quarter, also a very strong aviation business performance that we were able to take advantage of. In our international marketing business, the backdrop in the sense of sanctions affecting refineries in the region and reducing supply options brings all the group companies at a much better position and having to cover the shortfall. Also, the operation now is more, more than 6 months of the diesel converted pipeline between the [indiscernible] refinery and our Okta facilities in [indiscernible] the transfer of products at a much lower cost and much higher volumes in order to cover also the deficit in the market. And as a result of that, improved volumes mostly on the wholesale as well as EBITDA.

At this point, I will pass you over to George Alexopoulos, that will discuss our Power business. George?

Thank you, Vasilis. Good afternoon, everybody. On Page 24, we show our power business key numbers. And since we did not consolidate Enwave [indiscernible] in Q2 of '25, we're showing it on a pro forma basis to enable comparisons. On the operating capacity, we have about 60 megawatts more as a result of the completion of 2 of our Romanian PVs. Power generation is essentially flat, although the mix is somewhat different. EBITDA is considerably higher as a result of a marked improvement on the Enwave side, both the turnaround of the retail business and better balancing market opportunities contributed to this increase.

And in -- on the renewable side, we're starting to see the contribution of our Romanian assets the market remained challenging in Greece as a result of curtailments and very low prices during the midday hours. I will skip Page 25 with the numbers. I'm sure you have reviewed them and go to Page 26 to update you on our renewables development plan. As you can see on the graph on the left side, we have currently over 0.5 gigawatt under construction. Most of the projects are in Southeastern Europe. And out of these projects, we expect to have 250 megawatts of PV and battery projects entering operation in this quarter.

The path to 1 gigawatt -- 1.5 gigawatt by 2028 remains secure. And through our pipeline, we can also comfortably achieve the 2 gigawatt target in 2030. Our technology mix remains diverse, both at the operating level and the pipeline level. And as we roll out our plans in Southeastern Europe, our geographical diversification increases. And with this, I think I will close our presentation.

I will turn it over to questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of George Grigoriou with Wood & Co.

I've got 3, please. I'll shoot the mall out together. One, if you could please explain in the refining segment, the main difference between reported EBITDA and adjusted given that rent prices towards the end of the second quarter were lower than what they were at the end of the first quarter? That is my first question. The other question relates to marketing -- there was a substantial decrease in the number of petrol stations quarter-on-quarter. I presume that relates to dealer-owned network, if you could give us some color on how you see that evolving in the remainder of the year or going forward, if you like?

And my third question is you mentioned something about an accounting gain from the farm out our A&P. And I suppose that maybe if you could explain to us a bit more what that may gain at the other line in EBITDA relates to suppose that's it. And whether that is actually net of tax as well capital gains. Thank you.

Vasilis you want to take the lead the first and the third question. .

Yes. Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Jo, for the question. In terms of our important the main -- it's 90%, 95% is inventory gains, right? So in the first quarter, we recorded something like EUR 150 million -- the reason for that was 2 reasons, right? One is we don't act, we do weighted average. So the increase of the prices take some time to replenish through our inventory. So the price increase take some time to get through both ways, and that explains also how she decline. That's 1 thing.

The second is that the crude we acquired versus the benchmark. First of all, it's a gate versus the IC and the premium on top of that -- so the realized price of procurement is actually higher than the bread price that you see on the screen. And the third one is that -- we were a little bit late to record those numbers because of the lower sales in March because of the focus turnaround. So the start of that is pushing the inventory gains mostly [indiscernible] May effectively. And in June, we recorded a small loss to be honest, because of the -- because the prices went down. The price went up a bit. So let's see in the third quarter, if prices remain at 80 or below, then we should see -- we should see additional losses. So the a partial offset of the gain reported so far.

In terms of the impact of the farm-out with Chevron effectively, the agreement was cash consideration for the expenses that we have paid up until the farming in of Chevron that was around EUR 17 million, which given the fact that we had -- that those have gone through our OpEx in the previous years. They -- it's a gain of EUR 17 million, which is net of tax, there's no impact in terms of tax.

Okay. On [indiscernible], I think your comment this was on George. It's an ongoing process of reducing [indiscernible], which are underperforming and replacing them partly with Columbus or with better performing stations. So there is a trend that will continue. It's difficult to predict what is going to be the magnitude of the reduction of the network reduction.

As you might know, we've seen reductions of 3,000, 3,500 federations increase over the last 10 years, 10, 15 years. So it's 1 West Street. We see how that goes. There is a plan, which will take the number of [indiscernible] even lower.

Okay. Vasilis, sorry, just a follow-up on that net capital gain of EUR 17 million you mentioned. There's the reported and the adjusted numbers are shown in the presentation, where the difference is about EUR 13 million. Can you please in that as well, if you can, when you're at -- and I'll finish off here. Thank you.

Sorry, your which number you're referring.

Yes, on the presentation of the - at the end on Page 31 of the presentation, where it shows the breakdown of reported and adjusted EBITDA. The other which includes mainly E&P between adjusted and reported there's a EUR 13 million, EUR 13 million difference. In the second quarter.

Maybe if you cannot see it, maybe there's a point of picking up later and calling George to sort it out.

The next question is from the line of Christiana Armpounioti with Eurobank Equities.

Congratulation for [indiscernible]. One question from me. Could you clarify whether the EUR 20 million contribution and at lowering fuel prices at the pump represent one of [indiscernible] for August or whether you could consider extending similar support over over the coming months if prices remain elevated. And in relation to that, do you have any insight into following this action whether the government could still be considering a windfall tax on excess refining profit as we saw in Portugal.

Well, thanks very relevant questions. Going the wrong way for the results, of course, but on the discounts, we have offered a $0.10 and $0.05 per liter effective discount at the pump price. So for us, you have to take out the VAT costs. In reality, the value of that discount is going to be higher than EUR 30 million simply because volumes are picking up. We are not seeing any real demand distractions as a result of higher prices. So it's going to be a little bit higher than that number.

But in the context of things, still a very manageable number. We have not made any decision whether we will continue for the following months. There are 2 here. The first 1 is the absolute level of pricing. That level is changing on a daily basis. As you may have seen, product prices have dropped significantly. So this will find its way into the pump price over the next few days, unless there is another change in in the gulf situation. So it's very difficult to be able to see what's going to happen.

Clearly, our performance has been very good, and it's going to be even better in the third quarter. So to the extent that we can afford and in a responsible way, responsible, meaning to all stakeholders, provide some price support to maintain the demand for private consumers, especially in the period, which is very sensitive for Greece, I would not count out a continuation of this process. But it's early days.

Now on the windfall tax, we've seen what Portugal has done. Portugal is a totally different case, much more system. -- much lower investment in refining. They don't have enough products to serve their own market. So it's a bit of an easy case for them, much smaller numbers as well. I think it's roughly 200,000 barrel per day refinery compared to just 1 million barrels per day refining capacity increase. So it is something which is a totally different ballgame. Very difficult to say what's going to happen. This is clearly something that the government will have to be taking as a question. So I will leave it there.

From our end, we're doing what we can to provide support to the [indiscernible] market. As part of the profitability that we are enjoying mainly from international factors and exports. So we are doing in a prudent and possible way rebalancing through our commercial policy. I don't have anything else to add to add on this front. So we'll have to wait what the government will decide if it decides on anything.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further audio questions. I will now pass the floor to Mr. Katsenos to accommodate any written questions from the webcast participants. Mr. Katsenos, please proceed.

Thank you, operator. We do have some questions through the webcast. The first question comes from [indiscernible] Bank. [indiscernible] be updates on the Northern Neona exploration program with Texon Mobile and Energia -- are you still targeting the first exploration well in first Q 2027. And what are the key milestones over the coming quarters?

Okay. George, do you want to take this?

Sure. Sure. Nothing has changed. We're still targeting Q1 of '27. there is currently the environmental permitting process, which is required in those cases. The drillship has been reserved. It was reserved earlier this year. So the program is on track, and we expect to be drilling with our partners in Q1 of '27.

Thank you. And we do have another question from Marion Richards, Nicolas Traton. Please do you discuss your outlook for refining margins in 2027 and beyond under 3 scenarios. -- first, continued Middle East disruption; second, return to 2023 conditions; and third, a return to 2019 conditions pre-covid and previous rent. .

The second part of the question is how do you view Hellenic renewables business as the energy transition evolves towards a more balanced energy mix is a capital allocation strategy reflectable if market views on wind and solar continue to change. And the third part of the question should investors increasing use land as a company with a greater focus on exploration, if exploration is successful, how could this change Atlantic's long-term strategic positioning.

Okay. A question which covers pretty much most of our portfolio. I think we're left engineering out and eat. But nevertheless, very, very relevant [indiscernible] to questions. I cannot not honestly tell you which of the 3 scenarios will prevail. What I will tell you, it doesn't mean I can't. But what I will tell you is that my prediction results, the refining margins in '27 will remain high. And they will remain high, not only because of the crisis, but because there are fundamental reasons why they cannot go back to where they were 10 years ago.

Demand is increasing. Demand for energy is increasing, demand for hydrocarbon is increasing. We are seeing regional imbalances. We are seeing disruptions to supply either because of wars or geopolitical issues or because of the need to upgrade refineries. And make no mistake, the refinery part -- the refining market and assets in terms of capacity and conversion is not the same as it was 5 years ago. It's not the same as it was before the beginning of the war. So you will be having an ongoing demand increase, you will be having less supply, and you will be having either crisis, meaning war or you will have countries coming out of war, which means construction.

Overall, I am a little bit more positive on the expectation for the refining margins and the refining business overall.

Renewables, I don't know, [indiscernible], you want to take that as a general comment. I think you've covered it, but

Yes, sure. Well, first of all, I think we have said from when we started with Vision 2025, that our approach is actually a balanced approach and why we support the energy transition, and we are investing in renewables, we also see a continued relevance of hydrocarbons for many years to come.

So this hasn't changed. And in fact, I would say, it is being confirmed. Now regarding our focus, we do take into account developments, we are investing in a balanced renewables mix, which includes wind and solar, but also energy storage, which is essential for the increased penetration of renewables, either in the form of stand-alone storage or hybrid renewable projects or co-located storage. So we see relevance in this approach. And frankly, we expect growth in our renewables business, but also in our Downstream business as well.

So that's in a natural, a balanced approach which we have adopted since Vision 2025, and it's something that we are very careful. We are growing in some clean energy, but we are doing that in a prudent way, in an advanced way. On exploration, I wouldn't expect the company to become an exploration super major game it not to be corrected in a few months, and I will not complain if I am. But I don't expect the structure of the company to change significantly. .

Thank you. And we do have another question from Vita securities from [indiscernible] -- congratulations on the results. Two questions from my side, following your geographical expansion strategy in renewables business, would you consider further investment beyond Bulgaria and Romania. And second, first 1H 26, cash flow generation has been strong. We intend to offer an increased dividend.

So I will take the question on the geographical expansion. Look, we have a regional expansion strategy building on our renewables, but also our conventional assets and our energy management position, our market position. So -- we see our focus in markets like Bulgaria and Romania, which is our interconnected to Greece and they follow more or less the pricing of Greece, but they also offer at this point, better opportunities being less mature markets. .

When we consider other countries consistent with the strategy. I suppose we could. But it's more important at this point to build material positions in these markets as a priority.

Okay. Now on dividend, Vasilis, are you planning to share any good news with us?

Okay. Let me remind you, our dividend policy is to distribute anywhere between 35% to 50%, that's the range of the adjusted net income. Considering certainly other things like cash flows, CapEx, taxes, so all those things have to be considered when time comes. Certainly, we're looking towards an improved profitability versus last year. So someone could expect that on actual basis the total payout should be higher. I think we will be able to come a little bit more specific with the Q3 results announcement that we usually announce also our interim dividend.

Thank you, Vasilis. We have another question through the webcast from Morgan Stanley. Silvia Richard, was how do you see refining margins developing in the year-end? Secondly, have you increased your market share in international exports, taking market share from customers usually served from Russia. Third, have you been seeing any demand destruction in Greece or your other export markets?

Thank you. I'll take it from the top. As Andres already mentioned, our outlook for refining margins is strong in the months following the end of Q2 cracks and margins have reached quite high levels, and we expect that to persist given the bottleneck in refining capacity as was explained. Increased market share international exports market share international export is a bit of a long term. But our international exports are -- have have increased. There's elevated market from black -- the elevated interest in the Black Sea, which was as said previously served by Russia. So the Black Sea area would be an area where you're seeing substitution quite vividly.

For the other markets, there's nothing particular. Demand destruction in Greece or other export markets for Greece, we haven't seen any major demand destruction. In fact, demand for diesel has probably increased a bit. Demand for jet has increased significantly. It's a record deviation year. There are periodical small drops in general retail, things like gasoline and LPG but small numbers. Thank you.

Thank you, Costa. We have another question from second place advisers, Nick [indiscernible], who asks -- in the current security environment, would you purchase crude to be loaded at you -- what about crude loading inside the AG?

Last 1 is easier. Loading inside the Arabian Gulf has been suspended since the war broke out. has no international maritime organization could provide any solid safety clearance.

For Yanbu, it would be on a more case-by-case basis. It is less risky. It's much easier for us to low that [indiscernible] for the same -- inside the med for the same rate.

Thank you. Operator, we don't have any other questions through the webcast back to you. .

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I'll now turn the conference over to management for any closing statements. Thank you.

Once again, thank you for attending the call. Overall, a very good quarter on all fronts which is very reassuring for us. And I believe that the company is demonstrating in the best possible way that it has come a long way over the last few years. We have the improvement in every single prospect of our operations.

We are deploying a very solid, well thought out and well-implemented strategic plan without delay, without spending money where we're going to see value. And of course, being in a position to take advantage of very good pipe drop in refining. The remaining of the year looks to be at least as good as the first half of the year.

And I would dare to say that 27% F 28 as well also look very positive. With that, we expect that we'll be able to take the company into even better performance levels in the coming years and take the advantage of this brand of good results and good background for the environment. to accelerate the transformation of the company, invest both within our own core basins increase, but also expand internationally and accelerate the transition into clean reforms of energy. So thank you very much, and I wish everybody to have a relaxed August with no more fires hopefully increase and we'll be back with you in the next few weeks. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephones. Thank you for calling, and have a pleasant evening.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Vassilios, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the HELLENiQ ENERGY Holdings conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the first quarter 2026 financial results. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to HELLENiQ ENERGY Holdings management team. Gentlemen, you may now proceed.

Thank you very much, and we appreciate the time to sit through the results presentation for the first quarter of '26. Overall, a very good quarter for us on a number of fronts as a company.

First of all, we've managed to complete the Aspropyrgos refinery major turnaround safely, on time, on budget. And the refinery is back in operation with, hopefully, all of the expected benefits from this extensive -- I would say it's probably the largest turnaround -- maintenance turnaround since the start of the new refinery, so over 35 years actually. So that's the first part.

The second part has to do with our ability to change supply sources to take the crisis with the Hormuz Strait into consideration and be able to react and ensure the continuation of our supply chain, not only for Greece, but also for the other markets that we operate in. And that's quite important, given that we are operating in an environment and in a geography, where effectively, three big sources of crude traditionally supplying the East Med with about 60% to 70% of the crude, i.e., Russia, Iran and Iraq and Saudi Arabia coming out of the Strait of Hormuz are not in the market.

So there is a material change, which compounds the problems we already had. However, our team, and of course, the additional flexibility we have by having an international trading team in Geneva has been able to replace crudes and other feedstocks at a cost, but still we did not have to suffer any slowdowns. And all the markets that we operate in, to the extent that we're concerned, are properly supplied.

Now as far as the performance of the company is concerned, we had a positive quarter, just under EUR 300 million of clean EBITDA, driven by the performance of the Refining, Supply & Trading business, and of course, the consolidation of Enerwave into our group results for the first time. Had it not been for the Aspropyrgos turnaround, the number would be closer to EUR 400 million, maybe a little bit shy of EUR 400 million of clean EBITDA, which is a significant upside on last year.

Now this is clearly driven mainly by the market conditions created since the conflict in Iran and the Gulf, but it is also a number of improvements, which are gradually being seeded into the performance of the company and helping us to maintain a relatively improved performance. On most of the businesses, I think we have positive news, news not only relating to the actual financial performance, but to operations, the evolution, the development of our business strategy, the creation of new business strategy and objectives. So on all fronts, we're doing quite well.

The market, at least in Greece, has not suffered a significant downturn on the demand side. So we haven't seen a big demand distraction on the Greek market. There is a little bit of a drop in April volumes, and we'll wait to see what's happening in May. But with everything happening, having a single-digit drop on auto fuel demand, for example, by 2 or 3 percentage points is to be expected, to be honest.

Now going forward, in terms of what we have ahead of us, the startup of the Aspropyrgos refinery means that the two major refineries in the south have now a clear runway for the next 3 to 4 years. So the shutdowns have been completed safely within expected time and cost budget. The upside of the performance is actually beginning to be noticeable, both from the Elefsina refinery, which was a few months ago, but also from the Aspropyrgos refinery. And we have the Thessaloniki refinery, which will be going into a scheduled shutdown, much smaller than the other two refineries, towards the end of the year.

So from the operational point of view, we have ticked off a lot of boxes on effectively things that could take up significant management time and worry levels in the organization because safety is our number one priority. When you have two refineries within a space of 6 months being in such a thorough maintenance shutdown, you always need to be extra careful.

From the supply and trading point of view, we see a new equilibrium, which I hope is going to be short term in terms of the sources of crude. We haven't suffered any major issues other than maybe in the first quarter a little bit of risk aversion on the supply of crude from other markets. So I don't see any problems, not for Q2, but I would dare say that we don't see a lot of issues even further than that.

Demand will be coming down. There's no question about it. But I mean, if it's within a few percentage points, then I think we should be able to avoid any material implications. And clearly, the profitability is tracking along very well and is expected to be quite positive, most likely better than last year.

On the power front, what we used to call new energy, the consolidation of Enerwave has given us new capabilities in the power production, first of all, gas power production and the combination with the renewables to be able to behave as a more integrated power business. So we had a plan in place so far, and George will be going through that in more detail later. So far, indications are positive. So we haven't made any major miscalculations or missed expectations of what we can and what we cannot deliver.

And on retail, which up until now has been an extension of the fuels value chain, we see the conversion into more retail business with non-fuel revenue and also an electron (sic) sales point on e-mobility and potentially a combination on the commercial side and the cross-selling with Enerwave products developing very well. So the portfolio seems to be doing very well.

On E&P, we had three developments over the last few months. The first one is the completion of the Chevron-HELLENiQ joint venture process. So the new blocks are being effectively under development now. And we expect that in the next few quarters, we'll be shooting the first seismic in those areas. The second has to do with a commitment to progress with the drilling in North Ionian in west of Corfu, which is something which will take place either Q4 or Q1 next year. So it's -- within the next few months, we will know whether there is something worthwhile investigating further.

We perfectly hope that that is the case. And also, we have rebalanced our portfolio, given that we have added new blocks with Chevron and progressing the drilling campaign with Exxon and Energean in the Ionian Sea. We've relinquished part of the Cretan blocks, the West Crete blocks so that we can focus on the new blocks and the Southwest Crete block for the next couple of years. So all in all, a very good quarter. I think the fact that without the Aspropyrgos turnaround, we were talking about the quarter, which is close to EUR 400 million EBITDA, is indicative of how good it was in terms of results.

But as I said at the beginning of the introduction, most importantly, successful completion of maintenance works, safe completion of maintenance works and good handling of crisis implications, which I think are more important than maybe EUR 10 million or EUR 20 million up or down in our reporting of results.

So with that, I will ask Kostas, and I believe with intervention from Vasilis, to cover the industry environment for the two main areas, the fuel business and the power business.

Thank you, Andreas. The key metric for the external environment that dominated our performance was the Brent price, which had started increasing from the start of the year, having started close to $63, $64, was moving in both January and February upwards and then up from the 1st of May, with the geopolitical events, spiked to $104 on average, reaching $120 in April and then coming back off those highs.

Affecting refining margins, the product cracks the most -- the most influential part in our profitability this quarter was the ULSD crack, which reached very high levels. This was also true for gas oil and was even higher for jet volumes. Gasoline remained a bit lackluster, so did HSFO, but -- and recorded lower values than previous, but in more recent month -- weeks have rebounded a bit. Our overall system margin was at 11.4% for the quarter, nearly double that of the same quarter 2025. Vasilis?

Thank you, Kostas. Good afternoon. In terms of the natural gas and electricity markets, the event in Middle East equally affected those markets as well, especially the gas market was 58% up around 40% to 50% versus February, just before the crisis.

On average, though, TTF price for the quarter are somewhat lower than the equivalent of last year. In terms of electricity prices, due to the fact that renewables and hydro had a significantly higher participation in the energy mix, the effect of the high nat gas prices didn't flow through to electricity with DAM prices actually slightly lower than when the crisis started in March.

EUAs temporarily declined in March with prices recovering slightly in the last few weeks, but still lower than the highs of the beginning of the first quarter. Important, as I mentioned before, if you look at the production output of the Greek electricity system, it's significantly higher than last year, mainly driven by increased renewable capacity on stream and hydro generation, slightly lower nat gas-fired generation and overall higher exports for the quarter, significantly higher than last year.

Back to Kostas for the domestic fuel market environment.

Thank you. The domestic fuel market sales in the first quarter showed a very small decline overall. Automotive fuels were nearly flat. And the delta that we saw was in the heating fuels on gas oil, heating gas oil and heating LPG. Aviation sales were up 10%, which is very much in line with increased passenger traffic from the main airports. Bunker sales to bunkering clients continued the previous trend of having fuel oil substituted by marine gas oil. Same trend was observed in Q1 of this year.

So moving on to the group results on Page 10. As Andreas mentioned before, the main drivers of the numbers are the refining environment, obviously; the Aspropyrgos turnaround with its impact on CapEx, sales and production; and the consolidation and inclusion of Enerwave in our numbers.

So somewhat lower refining volumes due to Aspropyrgos turnaround, partially compensated by higher utilization at Elefsina and Thessaloniki, increased sales in the marketing mostly out of our international business in North Macedonia and the other markets; the inclusion of ELPEDISON for power production and overall sales volume, very good EBITDA numbers, mainly driven by refining both margins and the operational performance.

In terms of reported numbers, we have a partial gain, a partial offset of the losses that recorded in 2025 as prices are higher, especially in March. So that is affecting our reported EBITDA numbers close to EUR 0.5 billion for the quarter. And in terms of our capital employed and net debt, the turnaround of Aspropyrgos has affected temporarily the supply chain and the working capital requirements.

This was further aggravated by the commodity price environment, so a temporary increase in working capital and net debt. As we're flowing over the second quarter, this is reversing very strong cash flow generation up until now with 2/3 of the build already having reversed and a good -- a positive outlook for the rest of the quarter.

Now in terms of how our numbers compare versus last year, so you have close to EUR 30 million from the consolidation of Enerwave; very good support from refining margins, which was realized to a large extent due to the higher utilization of Elefsina and Thessaloniki that was mentioned before; as well as the very good execution of our crude supply program in March when the crisis actually started. Had we had Aspropyrgos operating, that would have meant around EUR 100 million of additional EBITDA, mostly in March versus February, so overall, close to EUR 300 million of adjusted EBITDA.

In terms of managing risk, one of the things that you have to look at is certainly liquidity aside the fact that cash flow generation so far is very strong. The crisis came when we had enough cash reserves headroom in terms of -- in the form of committed facilities as well as additional uncommitted and overdrafts that we can draw upon if required. We're certainly way too far from that and have a very good balance sheet and capital structure in a sense of low cost of debt, a very good maturity profile, no maturities effective in the next couple of years, reliance on committed facilities, either markets or mostly the banking system and a good balance between fixed and floating exposure.

Moving on to the business. Starting from refining, we went through most of the key elements. Obviously, CapEx is affected by the implementation of the turnaround. And the rest of the numbers, I think we'll move through, no reason to repeat. Andreas before discussed about the turnaround of Aspropyrgos, a very complex work. It's the largest in scope turnaround that we have ever undertook at Aspropyrgos refinery. The refinery has successfully completed a 5.5-year run. This is in line with top-class FCC refineries worldwide, and we have now started the new run.

Apart from improvement in performance because of units are fresh out of the turnaround with brand-new catalyst, so you have around $0.5 per barrel of improvement if you compare the end of run versus beginning of run. But on top of that, a number of small upgrade projects have been implemented at the refinery. You have the energy efficiency project at the reformer unit, which was successfully completed and now operating, the first phase of a similar project at our larger crude unit, which will be finalized in the next couple of months.

Together, those will reduce CO2 Scope 1 emissions by around 35,000 tons and benefits, in terms of euros, at least EUR 10 million. These are conservative. We believe that we can do even better than that. We also completed the first phase of the debottlenecking of isomerization unit that upon completion next year will increase the gasoline output. That will be another EUR 5 million to EUR 10 million of annualized benefit from next year.

A number of other works that happen every 10 or 20 years, the overhaul of our FCC unit, heat exchangers, compressors, the flare, so those are small projects that increase reliability, reduce small trips here and there at units. So we expect additional annualized benefit from there. So all those will start flowing from '26 and some of them in '27.

Now on Page 17, as we discussed before, Thessaloniki and Elefsina partially offset the loss of production from Aspropyrgos, certainly much higher diesel and jet yield driven by Elefsina having higher contribution of the overall mix at the right time when the crisis started, obviously. Now Aspropyrgos is back online. So it will increase -- production. It's operating a refinery flat out. So production and sales will resume in the second quarter back to normal levels. Important to highlight the flexibility of our refining system for middle distillates, especially between diesel and jet.

Overall, we have surplus production. We're net exporters across all product categories. As HELLENiQ Petroleum refining system and Greece as a refining hub, one of the very few countries in Europe that do have the surplus. And to the extent possible, other than covering the needs of our core markets, we can alleviate a bit of the supply crunch in the south Europe and Black Sea markets.

In terms of margin realization, we're very happy with the outcome of the first quarter with the -- around the number of barrel of performance on total benchmark. So far, we see a very good realization of benchmark margins in the second quarter to date for April and May. And we're hoping the same for June. Having executed most of the supply program, we're now well supplied for the second quarter, as Andreas mentioned before.

Moving on to petrochemicals. The first quarter was not much different in the sense of industry backdrop, with very low margins. We also had the lack of propylene production from Aspropyrgos due to the turnaround that meant imported propylene, which is diluting the realized margin of petrochemicals for those 2 months. In the second quarter to date, the petrochemical business globally has been equally affected by the Middle East crisis, so reduced utilization mostly in Asian refineries that are producing petrochemical feedstock. The result of that is much higher PP margins than what we've seen in the last year, 1.5 years.

Moving on to our fuels marketing business. Again, the focus was to manage the supply crisis, and especially during the first couple of weeks of the crisis, a very good performance across the business, high profitability, mostly due to inventory and price gains, but still ability to increase market shares and supply the market at difficult times.

As part of the government initiatives to mitigate the strain on consumers due to the high prices was a temporary imposition of the retail gross margin cap from mid-April to June, as we know so far, and also a temporary discount on diesel of around EUR 0.20 per liter.

Similar situation in our international marketing business with the focus to be able to supply our markets in North Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro. Important to highlight that the crisis in Middle East comes on top of the crisis due to the sanctions on Russia has been affecting those markets in the last few months. So additional strain on the supply chains that we've been able to manage and increase our market -- improve our market position, increase market share and retain a very good profitability.

On that note, I'll pass you over to George, our Deputy CEO, to discuss our power business. George?

Thank you, Vasilis, and good afternoon, everybody. Page 25, power. We show the unit, which includes Enerwave and HELLENiQ Renewables. And we show it for better comparison purposes also on a pro forma basis as if we owned Enerwave same quarter of last year. Our operating capacity increased by 58 megawatts addition of PV assets in Romania. So this also constitutes our entry in the Romanian market in terms of operating capacity, and we expect further additions in the next couple of months or so.

On -- in terms of EBITDA, comparable if you look at it on a pro forma basis, large increase as a result of consolidating Enerwave. This is generally a good quarter for Enerwave. The volumes -- the production is somewhat lower, which followed the general market trend of lower gas utilization. But as a result of demand for balancing services, the profitability remains comparable. We also had a good quarter in terms of our commercial business. The turnaround continues with positive results so far.

On the renewable side, slightly higher capacity, but this only was the case for a few days in March. So the full effect will appear in the second quarter. Profitability at similar levels, higher curtailment, better capacity factor for wind. So almost the same level of EBITDA. And in terms of capital employed, as our program evolves, you can see investments being realized and thus increasing capital employed in the form of under-development projects.

I will not go through the numbers on Page 26. I think we covered it on the previous page. I do want to spend some time on Page 27 and discuss our development plan, which is evolving according to our targets. We expect to have a gigawatt installed -- total capacity installed in the next 18 months. We currently have 564 megawatts in operation and 346 megawatts, most of which are actually in Romania under construction. We also have an additional 400 megawatts, which in the graph, you can see as RTB, but are actually entering the construction phase as well. As a result, we expect to have 1.5 gigawatts operating by 2028.

And with that, I believe we have concluded the presentation, and I will turn it over for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Ricardo Rezende with Morgan Stanley.

I'd like to follow up on something from the intro remarks. It sounds like you're painting a bit more of a cautious outlook for the rest of the year in how should we think about the cash generation and the profitability versus 2025? Could you please provide us a bit more color on what's embedded in your expectations? Is that because of the turnarounds that we saw in the first quarter, they're going to see in the fourth quarter as well? Or it's because of some of the differentials that we're seeing on the feedstock prices.

Thank you, Ricardo. That's a fair question. Let me answer that by sharing some facts. The first quarter without the Aspropyrgos refinery would be close to EUR 400 million of EBITDA. The second quarter, we don't see any reason so far for that number to be materially different. Now whether it's EUR 350 million, EUR 450 million, I don't know, but we still have 1.5 months to go almost. So we do see a relatively strong performance there from the system.

Now for the remaining half of the year, I cannot tell you. I mean you tell me when the Strait of Hormuz are going to open, then I can tell you what's going to happen on the crude supply, which is a big driver. But I would definitely expect to see an increase versus last year. Whether it's 10%, 20%, 30%, I don't know. And on the cash generation, that benefit will actually flow through because we have lower capital expenditure in 2026 versus 2025, subject to any potential new projects on the renewables.

But then that is -- it's not really maintenance CapEx. It's effectively an M&A type of CapEx because you're adding capacity. It's almost like buying a new business. Whether you build it or whether you buy it, it's almost like adding new business. So that CapEx will bring additional cash flows over the future period.

So I wouldn't say I'm cautious. I would expect to see better numbers than last year, but the volatility is so high that we need to make sure that we don't send the wrong signals, first of all, to ourselves, so we don't relax our follow-up and management, and also to the market. But I would be expecting a better performance for this year, to be honest.

And if I may, a separate question. When I look at your pipeline of renewables, and you just mentioned on the 1.5 gigawatts by 2028 and you have the target of 2 gigawatts by 2030, we've seen one of the other Greek companies coming with a more aggressive expansion plan as well in the region for their capacity. Would you expect any increased competition weighting on potential returns for that -- for your pipeline or are you comfortable with the sort of returns you might get as you progress toward the 2 gigawatts?

Look, Ricardo, it's a market which is in growth mode. It's the fastest growing market in Europe. We definitely see the environment, including different types of capacity compared to today. That is mainly standalone batteries and hybrid projects. In fact, it's interesting to note that our neighbors in the north are further along the progress curve in batteries than Greece.

So as batteries are deployed and with the projected growth in the market, we should see curtailments in renewables stabilizing and returns improving. Certainly, we would expect good returns in our battery project, at least for the first few years, given the spreads between afternoon hours and early evening hours, which are currently quite high. Of course, the more batteries you bring in, these spreads will tend to decrease. So we remain confident about our plans. We will reach our targets, and we expect to -- now with the benefit of an integrated position, which includes Enerwave, we generally expect better realizations for our renewables assets as well.

There are no further audio questions. I will now pass the floor to Mr. Katsenos to accommodate any written questions from the webcast participants. Mr. Katsenos, please proceed.

Thank you, operator. We do have some questions from the webcast participants. The first question comes from Nicholas Paton from Edison Group.

And he asks, could management comment on the sustainability of Mediterranean refining margins relative to both pre-2022 levels and the peak conditions seen since the start of the Ukraine conflict? In particular, to what extent does management believe continued underinvestment and rationalization in European refining capacity, fragmentation of global product trade flows since 2022 and increased geopolitical risk around Middle Eastern energy logistics could support refining margins beyond 2026?

And additionally, could management comment on whether the current level of realized margin outperformance versus benchmark margins is sustainable over the medium term? The second question has to do with the power business. And the question is, should investors increasingly view the renewables and power strategy as strategically integrated with refining operations and downstream decarbonization rather than primarily as diversification into separate business lines.

Okay. Kostas, do you want to take the first one on refining margins and the overall supply and trade flows issues?

Yes. Sustainability of Mediterranean refining margins, we would have to split between time periods. Right now, the margins look well supported. There is healthy middle distillates demand, and we're quite confident that it's not going to change very quickly. Long term, it really -- as Andreas previously said, it would depend on guessing the date of two geopolitical events. One is the normalization of the Arabian Gulf trade flows, and it will also be a guesstimate of when Russian hydrocarbons will exit the sanctions regime. So that one is very hard to address.

But in general, we have a positive outlook for margins in the Med. The current level of overperformance versus benchmark, parts of it -- a significant part of it is sustainable as it relates to ability and flexibility over correct selection of crudes that produce a more profitable slate. The parts which relate to market volatility would probably dissipate when markets calm down.

Okay. George, you want to cover the renewables?

Yes, sure. Sure. It's a good question. I believe it's -- both rationales are very relevant and I will explain why. Starting with the second, yes, it is a diversification into a new business line. It is a forward-compatible approach with general energy trends, namely electrification. So it's a solid plan, which could stand alone even if we were not a major refinery operator.

Nevertheless, we should not forget that we have considerable synergies with our refining operations. We are a major consumer of electricity and gas, which is not relevant for renewables, but it's very relevant for our utility business, Enerwave. And we have large, very innovative projects, renewables projects which are going to decarbonize the power supply of our refineries, thus achieving the goal of gradual decarbonization as well. So I would say both are relevant you can look at the business as a standalone business line, but you should not overlook the synergies with the downstream part of our business.

Thank you. And we have another question from Eurobank Equities and specifically from Christiana Armpounioti who asks, how do you see refining margins in the second quarter? We saw that gasoline cracks, for example, came under significant pressure in April. Also regarding petrochemicals, when should we expect additional capacity?

For the cracks going into Q2, the most recent picture is that distillate cracks for gas oil -- for ULSD and gas oil have remained at relatively good levels. Gasoline and fuel oil cracks have improved since their initial pressure in the recent weeks.

Thank you very much. Operator, back to you to accommodate any other questions through the phone line.

The next audio question comes from the line of Yulia Bocharnikova with Goldman Sachs.

Can I please follow up on the crude supply? Could you maybe elaborate how you're adjusting that in terms of replacing Iraqi crudes? And which level of crude differentials you are currently seeing on your crude supply? And maybe also, what is the visibility of this supply? Is it a couple of months? Is it 1 month? And if you could give us an indication of where you see your current spot-realized refining margin, that would be great.

Okay. The main diversification, which was for the Iraqi crude, several sources. We're talking to Norwegian crude, Latin American crude, and then more recently, North American crude. Our typical horizon for booking crudes is -- and we keep it quite strictly, is a range between 1 to 2 months ahead.

Okay. That's clearly, Yulia -- this is the case until we discover oil in our exploration attempts, and we don't have to buy any oil in Greece from third parties. But this is probably a little bit further down the road.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing statements. Thank you.

Once again, thank you very much for spending this part of the afternoon with us. Repeating what I said at the beginning, it has been a very good quarter. A lot of the operational and crisis management issues were dealt with successfully. We've had a good performance. We are expecting an even better performance in the second quarter of 2026.

From a product placement point of view and demand destruction, we're not seeing something materially different from last year. So there may be a small drop in demand, but other than that, we see strong demand from the markets. We expect to see what the tourism market is going to look like for Greece. It is an important part of the year for us as we move into the next 4 to 5 months of peak demand for this part of the Med.

And we sincerely hope that the geopolitically driven disruption issues dealt with as quickly as possible, clearly, not only from a business point of view, but also from a geopolitical turmoil point of view that will allow us to spend more time in better managing our business and creating value rather than managing crisis. Once again, thank you, and we look forward to seeing you for our second quarter half year results in a few months. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a pleasant evening.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Vassilios, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the HELLENiQ ENERGY Holdings Conference Call and live webcast to present and discuss the fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to HELLENiQ ENERGY Holdings management team. Gentlemen, you may now proceed.

Good afternoon. Thank you very much for the introduction, and welcome to the financial year '25 results presentation. We'll be going through the fourth quarter, but also through the full year numbers and key issues that we believe we need to communicate. So group financial highlights, Page 4, for a fourth year in a row, we've got very good performance. I won't go through the numbers in detail. They will be dealt with later on, but it's a clean EBITDA of EUR 1.1 billion, which effectively puts the company for a fourth year in a different league.

And if I was to take a view on the future, I would probably say that this is something that is expected to continue. Now whether it's going to be 0.8, 0.9 or 1.2 or 1.3. I don't know because I don't know what the market is going to look like. But given that a lot of the new investments is actually more predictable as cash flows, I think we've managed to move up into a different league.

On the net income base, we've bridged the EUR 0.5 billion, which is good news. And on that basis and given the balance sheet, which is very healthy, we are proposing a EUR 0.60 final dividend, which effectively means EUR 0.40 -- sorry, EUR 0.60 per share total dividend, which means EUR 0.40 per share as final dividend. That's EUR 0.15 up from last year, which covers partly the exceptional dividend that we -- distribution rather than dividend, which had to do with the sale of DEPA Commercial.

Moving on to the next page on the key points. A relatively good market, especially towards the end of the year with respect to the refining environment. Europe has been benefiting from relatively low prices and low dollar compared to euro, which means that palm prices have been kept at a relatively lower level. That always helps the consumption and demand, which is still growing, not only because of the price levels, but also because we see the economic activity growing as well.

On the electricity side and the nat gas, we've seen some normalization, which is beneficial for the consumption, but still, Europe is suffering from relatively high cost of energy compared to non-EU markets. As a company, we've had a good run. If one takes into consideration the fact that we had Elefsina down for 4 months in the year and that as probably was a refinery was at the end of its run before the shutdown. The achievement of a record high production is actually very good news.

From a margin point of view, we had healthy international benchmarks. But on top of that, we managed to improve on that as a result of better supply chain management, procurement and of course, the fact that the Geneva team is now up and running, which helps increase the overperformance of the system.

Moving into more controllable areas, which have to do with marketing. I'm very happy to say that both domestic and international businesses have done very well. We have the best performance from marketing for a number of years. And that's a result of a very holistic and diligent work done by all the teams, be it market shares, new products, NFR, network expansion, service delivery, all of these things have done very well, and we are pleased to see that actually being capitalized in the form of improved numbers.

On the power, clearly, the inclusion of Enerwave in the system for the last part of the year for the half, July, December is reflected in the consolidation. We've tried to give you a view of the performance -- full year performance so that we get a better idea of the run rate. It's a business which we believe we can improve upon. The performance of the business was effectively held back by the process of acquisition from 1 of the 2 shareholders. But I think now it is in good hands. And combined with the renewables portfolio, it would be able to grow even more.

On the financials, you can see the performance, and I've talked about the numbers. As key milestones, I would refer to probably a few things that are part of the operating review, but they are also the result of our strategy over the last few years. So starting from the most important thing for us, which is safety. The completion of the Elefsina turnaround earlier in '25 is something that we're very happy about because it was done safely within time and within budget. And that's always our #1 priority, and that goes for the Aspropyrgos refinery shutdown as well.

We managed after a lot of back and forth and a lot of years to establish the trading platform in Geneva with a team that combines external expertise and talent with our own people who have relocated there or work from Athens in the refineries. And that is something that has already started demonstrating some tangible results with respect to how good we can do there.

Marketing, as I said, has been doing very well. And as a result of that, we were able to maintain and extend the BP trademark use for another 10 years, probably one of the very few countries in Europe that BP has that sort of arrangement.

And on the development point of view, right at the last day of the year, actually on the eve of -- on the 30th rather of December, we started pumping diesel from Thessaloniki-Skopje. So that is a process that we are very happy about because it took us almost 10 years to get this pipeline back in operation.

On power, we've done a lot over the last 4 years. We have even more ambitions going forward. The plan is to develop a second pillar, and we are well on our way to doing that. So on top of the downstream capabilities, the power, which is effectively Enerwave Gas and Power and Renewables is expected, is planned to deliver up to EUR 0.3 billion of EBITDA by 2030. Clearly, totally different economics from the current downstream business. And even in between that, we have different economics between power generation, supply business, gas and renewables. Even within renewables, we have different profiles, but it's there.

And the good thing is we have a very specific 1.5 gigawatt of portfolio, which means another gigawatt of projects that we fully control in terms of delivery. And the FID is entirely up to us based on specific returns and timing. We beefed up our delivery capacity through the acquisition of a small team in Greece. George will talk a little bit more about it going forward, but we feel more comfortable about that part of the business.

On upstream, I don't think I need to tell you a lot of things because it's been well publicized. We've signed the agreement with Chevron for the exploration and the Farm-In agreement with ExxonMobil in Block 2 has already been signed and announced. Effectively there, what we are saying is we have been consistent and deliver on the strategy envisaged 5 years ago to convert the E&P business into a portfolio business, whereby we maintain a smaller stake, but a much more diversified stake into various assets. And in the meantime, we have our national champion head, if you will, agenda, which helps this process.

Finally, positioning in businesses and running businesses requires good governance and operational excellence. And on that basis, the main drivers, which are effectively how we run our HR, how we run our systems, digitalization, procurement efforts are very high on the agenda. So a business is as good as you make it to be.

And at the same time, we don't forget that we need to be part -- an active part of this community of the society we work in and proactively participate in CSR initiatives and at the same time, manage our ESG footprint. Even though the discussion has shifted a little bit on the ESG and especially on the CO2 agenda, it is not something that we take lightly. And in fact, the recent changes are more in line with our original Vision 2025 strategy of transitioning on a realistic path towards a better environmental footprint.

With that, I'll pass you on to Kostas. Kostas Karachalios is our new Head of Supply and Trading. Kostas has been with us for a number of years in different positions in the past. His latest position was in International as Head of International. A lot of the achievements as he's doing, but even before that, he spent a lot of time in refineries and in business development. Kostas, welcome to the team in this role. You've been part of the team. And over to you for the industry environment.

Thank you for the intro. Good afternoon to everybody. The industry environment was mixed during this year. The 2025 started off with declining crude prices, particularly sharp during Q2, and it also continued well into Q4, ending the year with an average of $64 per barrel, significantly lower than the start of the year. However, there was a robust demand for products and cracks remained relatively healthy, particularly in Q4, reaching near record levels for middle distillates, which provided a margin to the system of approximately $10 to the barrel on benchmark margins, double what it was in 2024. And as previously mentioned, record production during the last quarter with the margins boosted results significantly.

Moving on to Slide 9. Natural gas prices were started off relatively high in the year and tailed off to 30. Similarly, with electricity prices ending the year overall at the same levels in 2025 on average that we had in 2024. Carbon emission credit, EUAs had a soft start to the year, but then rallied in Q3 and Q4, reaching at some point close to $100 per ton. They've eased off since those levels recently.

In terms of fuel demand, the domestic market grew modestly in 2025, although Q4 was almost flat. There was a 2% increase overall. Aviation sales and bunkering sales -- aviation sales increased 6% during the year and bunkering sales 1% overall. With those key market developments, I hand over to Vasileios. Thank you.

Thank you, Kostas. Good afternoon, and many thanks for attending our earnings call today. So moving on to discuss our numbers. As we mentioned before, both fourth quarter and the full year exhibited very strong refining production and volumes despite the turnaround at Thessaloniki refinery earlier in the year. Same with marketing, both domestic and international. In power gen, you have the addition of Enerwave during the second half that we started consolidating.

In terms of EBITDA, more than EUR 1.1 billion of adjusted EBITDA, driven by a very strong fourth quarter. In refining, it's the second best quarterly performance ever recorded on the back of the strong refining margins that Kostas mentioned before, but also a very good profitability in marketing, both domestic and international, setting up a very -- a much higher baseline going forward.

Finance costs lower, and we'll discuss a little bit further. And if you look at the reported results, those have been affected largely by the inventory losses on the back of 20% to 25% decline in euro terms, oil and commodity prices. Adjusted EBITDA just over EUR 0.5 billion, that enables a very good distribution that Andreas mentioned before.

Now on Page 13, so a 10% increase in adjusted EBITDA. If you look at the Downstream business, this is mainly driven by the very good environment, strong refining margins in the second half, partially offset by the weaker dollar for most of the year and improved operations in both SNP refining and marketing despite the impact of the turnaround that we have seen now in the second quarter.

On the Power business, you have the addition of Enerwave and the renewables investments at the end of '24 that's giving a good EUR 30 million for the second half. The annualized impact of that is double, which we'll see from '26 with the adverse impact of curtailments mostly and the lower load factors due to weather conditions for both PV and wind.

Now moving on a bit on the cash flows on Page 14. 2025 was a year of record investments, if you look at the total. So we have the usual run rate of stay-in-business CapEx of EUR 250 million, which during '25 was augmented by the turnaround of Elefsina had a full turnaround in the second quarter as well as some long-term maintenance in tanks, jetties and pipelines.

In Downstream, we invested into mainly some energy efficiency projects at Aspropyrgos refinery that will be tied in during the turnaround and will yield additional EBITDA benefits of around EUR 15 million from the second quarter on an annualized rate as well as targeted investments in our marketing business in Greece and internationally.

The bulk of the expansion CapEx will goes to power. It includes the 50% of Enerwave acquisition as well as investments in renewables, mostly outside of Greece during 2025. So on a cash flow basis, we start from what we call normalized cash flow, which includes the EBITDA of the year that required, let's call it, same business CapEx of EUR 250 million and any other working capital movements, lease liabilities, so the operating stuff that you need to run your business.

We take out the remuneration of our capital providers, and that yields more than EUR 300 million of cash flows. We've invested in Downstream and mostly in our Power business. That was funded partially by the acceleration of DEPA Commercial sale proceeds that we were able to collect during the year. And certainly, these investments are yielding additional EBITDA as we discussed before. And think that wouldn't move much the total net debt position.

However, we had the Solidarity contribution that was paid in February '25, as you may recall, a net impact of just over EUR 170 million as well as the impact of the disruption on the Red Sea routes of the cargoes that are coming from Iraq. That is increasing the working capital temporarily. We don't know for how long, obviously, because this is very much geopolitics driven, but it's not something to be repeated in '26. So we're ending up with a net debt of -- for the group level of EUR 2.1 million, flat leverage levels versus last year.

Moving on to Page 15, looking at the capital structure of our 2 businesses. So just under EUR 4 billion of capital employed in our Downstream business. We don't see significant movement in the gearing of this business. It oscillates anywhere -- the net debt oscillates anywhere between 35% to 45%, depending on the working capital needs of the year. It's well funded by committed facilities, termed out no maturity in '26. We're certainly going to continue working during the year -- during this year at improving this even further.

If you look at our Power business now with the addition of Enerwave, it's just over EUR 1 billion of capital employed. 20% of that is development capital projects that are under construction, especially the 100-megawatt wind farm at Northeast Romania, which will complete in '26 and start operating in beginning of '27, with almost 50-50 funded between debt and equity. More than half of the debt is project finance, non-recourse project finance at the project level with maturities of around 15 years on average for the projects that are already operating. And you can see the maturity profile on the bottom right.

Now looking at the capitalization, again, of our 2 businesses. So the leverage of Downstream is 1.5x. We're looking at an absolute net debt levels of around EUR 1.5 billion, a little bit higher, a little bit lower depending, as I mentioned before, on the working capital financing of the business. Those levels are lower than they used to be 10 or 15 years ago with EBITDA being 2.5x higher. And I think it's important to mention that around half of the EBITDA is coming from going to the markets from our commercial logistics business, which includes supply and trading as well as marketing, which have established a baseline on which we can further grow with the rest coming from refining.

So a much more resilient and stable earnings and cash flow profile versus 10 or 8 years ago. And for Power business, despite the fact that it's a business that it carries a higher level of gearing because of higher upfront investment. Still at the end of '25, the credit metrics have improved a lot. And again, let me remind you that this is mostly non-recourse project finance at the project level without spillover to either the rest of the Power business or the group as a whole.

The interest cost courtesy, both of rates reduction as well as spread improvement has reduced even further for the second year in a row to EUR 110 million. And important to look how the market perceives the credit. So if we're looking at our outstanding notes maturing in 3.5 years, more or less, it's more than 100 basis points of reduction. More than half of that is actually implied spreads that I think it's an important message.

In terms of distributions, we -- I mean, we have -- over the last few years, we've been returning significant capital to shareholders, driven by the profitability of the business as well as one-off events that have to do with the sale of our DEPA participation back in '22 as well as in '24. This is totally in line with our dividend policy. And if you look at the normal recurring dividend, it's 20% higher than it used to be last year at EUR 0.60 per share. Again, very competitive both at the Greek Stock Exchange as well as the European peer group.

Moving on to discuss the performance of our business, starting from Refining, Supply and Trading. As we mentioned before, one of the best performance or the best quarterly performance, both in terms of production and sales despite the fact that Aspropyrgos was at the end of run with the shutdown currently ongoing. We're halfway through this process, in line with the table, safely execution and aiming to complete by the end of the current quarter with overall EBITDA 12% higher year-on-year.

In terms of operations, important to note the domestic market sales increasing with market share gains, if you look versus last year and very strong exports. It's the highest quarterly -- it's the highest fourth quarter performance in terms of both percentage and absolute export sales we've ever recorded.

Very strong -- moving on to Page 22, very strong realized margins, $11 per barrel of benchmark margin with overperformance at almost at $10. We -- I mean, we had very good opportunities in the market during the fourth quarter, both on the crude supply side as well as export netbacks. And now our Geneva desk with the better market outreach as well as a much more solid risk framework that we've established was able to capitalize on those opportunities and take advantage and this is flowing well into the first quarter of this year.

In Petrochemicals business, we're certainly in a downside. We had a lot of capacity additions globally over the last 3 years, which combined with the slow demand growth that we've seen, it's resulting at negative margins for most of the quarter. It's improving a bit in the first quarter, but certainly, we're not looking at getting back to what used to be normal anytime soon in petrochemicals.

Still, however, it's important to note that the integration with refining provides a resilience for this business. And it's cyclical. It will certainly -- the current overcapacity will certainly prompt capacity rationalization. It is taking a bit more, but the business will find a way to rebalance itself.

In marketing, we discussed before or even in previous quarters, the very strong performance, which is consistent and improving on the back of the strength of our EKO brand, structural market share gains in both diesel and gasoline mostly, high penetration of differentiated fuels, high-margin differentiated fuels as well as increasing NFR contribution and the best EBITDA performance for several years at EUR 71 million.

Similarly, international marketing, another record-breaking year, similar story more or less with domestic in the sense that NFR contribution has increased notably. The positioning of the group in the regional markets has improved. We're able to take advantage of the geopolitical developments to a large extent.

And from '26, we'll also have the additional contribution from the reopening of the start of the Thessaloniki-Skopje pipeline that will reduce the operating cost of transporting fuels to South Balkans as well as open up market opportunities. So we're expecting an additional EBITDA contribution of anywhere between EUR 5 million to EUR 10 million from '26 from this event.

On this note, I'll pass you over to George Alexopoulos to discuss our Power business. George?

Thank you, Vasileios. Good afternoon, everybody. This is the first quarter in which we have fully consolidated for the whole quarter Enerwave. On Page 29, you can see -- you can look at the entire business taking Enerwave on a pro-forma basis to give you a better picture of the unit, about 1.4 gigawatts of operating capacity, EUR 100 million EBITDA, 3.7 terawatt hours of generation and about EUR 1 billion of capital employed.

If we turn to Page 30 and zooming to the renewables business, it was a quarter with unfavorable weather conditions in both wind and PV and also continuing curtailments. So the profitability was somewhat lower than last year. And the year is just about at the same level as last year. You can see the load factors. Of course, the load factors reflect curtailment as well as weather conditions and the generation and EBITDA mix.

As you can see, the work-in-progress, the projects under development have increased as our growth plan is being rolled out. And that also has an effect -- a short-term effect on profitability as we haven't adjusted figures for these expenses.

Going to Page 31. You can see what Andreas mentioned before. We have a secure path to getting to 1.5 gigawatts installed by 2027, starting from our current operating capacity of 0.5 gigawatt. We expect the 300 or so megawatts under construction to be delivered in the course of this year and possibly an additional 50 megawatts for our batteries towards the end of the year.

Together with a number of RTB projects in Greece and Bulgaria and Romania, that makes up the composition of the mature pipeline, which can bring us to the 1.5 gigawatt. We have focused on delivery, and we have improved considerably our delivery capabilities through the acquisition of ABO Energy Hellas and the development and construction team. And we are diversifying both technologically and in terms of geography as well as gradually hybridizing our projects to adjust to the market conditions.

If we go to Page 32. Enerwave, again, shown on a pro-forma basis, both for -- well, the quarter, it's really the same, whether it is pro-forma or not because we consolidated it fully, but the year is on a pro-forma basis. Improved performance as a result of the improved performance in supply following the acquisition of the company and the re-branding in November of last year and also better energy management account for a 27% increase of the adjusted EBITDA to EUR 54 million.

In addition to the new identity, it's worth noting that since we took over the remaining 50% of Enerwave, we reviewed and redesigned the commercial policy and launched new products and solutions and improved customer experience, reducing also the customer churn and all that translated already and will translate in the following quarters into improved performance.

Regarding energy management, we are running now as an integrated portfolio. Our conventional units, our renewables units, soon our battery portfolio and managing the significant store positions we have in retail and in our own consumption. So this is very much part of the strategy of our integrated power business, which includes renewables, but also conventional assets and energy management position.

And I think with this, we've come to the end of the presentation. So we will turn it over for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Villari Giuseppe with Morgan Stanley.

We have 2, if we may. The first one is regarding the one-off items you recorded for the fourth quarter. I think you mentioned during the presentation, but could you tell us -- we can see EUR 29 million in adjustments. Could you give us more color on that?

And then secondly, your domestic performance in retail has been very strong. So you're clearly benefiting from the lift of the fuel retail caps in Greece. Could you quantify what the benefit is? Is performance driven by other factors as well? And also, thirdly, if you could like quickly run through sort of an outlook for 2026 in terms of volumes, especially for refining, that would be great, if possible.

Okay. I'll ask Vasileios to take the part on the financials, then I'll talk a little bit about the marketing. And on the volumes, maybe Kostas can give us an update on the '26 projection. Vasileios?

Thank you, Giuseppe. I mean out of the EUR 25 million, you have, I mean, a number of small items. The main ones have to do one with the legal case at EKO, a very old, 30-year-old case that was finally resolved against the company which is EUR 12 million. And the other has to do with decontamination expenses at some products of the refinery at Aspropyrgos. The other are small items of around EUR 5 million here and there.

On domestic marketing, the performance is much better in the fourth quarter. Clearly, given the size of the numbers, it's not a totally different ball game, but it's a big improvement. A very small part of this improvement is due to the price cap lifting simply because we refrained from increasing prices. What did happen, however, is that the increase in profitability came from 4 main drivers.

The first one has to do with the crackdown, which the Greek state has affected on petrol stations, which were operating not exactly within the boundaries of legislation and tax provisions. We've had a couple of campaigns, which led to closure of a number of petrol stations. And the change of practices that were destroying the market. That has boosted our quality and reliability message and has given us an advantage in terms of sales volumes. It also reduced the pressure on some areas where margin was depressed as a result of inappropriate behavior on the part of certain petrol stations.

The second has to do with the continuous effort on premiumizing our products. So we've increased the penetration of premium products in our total sales portfolio, and that is something which is leading to improved margins. The third has to do with NFR, and that is something which is continuously improving. We have a long way to go, but it is something which is now beginning to show that we're doing very well. I'm just talking about the retail business now. I'm not talking about aviation and bunkering.

And the final part has to do with the network configuration. So new petrol stations, locations and also the conversion of petrol stations into commercial stations, which effectively increases margins. So those are the key drivers of increased profitability on the petrol stations. Kostas, do you want to tell us a little bit about the '26 volume expectations given we have the shutdown of Aspropyrgos and Thessaloniki.

Exactly. Thank you, Andreas. The volume expectations for 2026 in terms of refinery production would probably look slightly less than the 2025 numbers. There's the major shutdown of Aspropyrgos, which is expected to last less than last year's Elefsina shutdown, but there's also a maintenance schedule for Thessaloniki as well that would influence.

The next question comes from the line of Grigoriou George with Wood & Co.

I've got a couple of questions. Going back to what you just mentioned about the shutdowns. Can you give us a timetable when Aspropyrgos and Thessaloniki will be down for the year? That's my first question.

George, Aspropyrgos is already done for the fourth week now running. We expect it to be completed by the end of March, give or take, a few days. So, so far, so good, progressing well. Thessaloniki is expected to go into a maintenance shutdown sometime in Q3 this year. We have to run our full diagnostics and go through the process to define when exactly and for how long.

Okay. If I can ask as well. You mentioned Vasileios, that there was -- if I got it right, there was a EUR 12 million hit to marketing in the fourth quarter from some legal arbitration that actually was settled in the fourth quarter, if I got it right. And Vasileios, you also mentioned some improvements in downstream that you expect to add some euro million to profitability in 2026, but I didn't catch the number you mentioned.

Correct. Grigoriou, there are a couple of items here. So one has to do with the energy efficiency projects at Aspropyrgos and some debottlenecking at units that will be completed and tied in unit shut down. We expect a run rate of around EUR 10 million to EUR 15 million at refining at Aspropyrgos. And the reopening of the VARDAX pipeline, the Thessaloniki-Skopje pipeline will yield another EUR 5 million to EUR 10 million in '26 onwards annualized.

Okay. And if I just -- one last question, sorry. I don't want to take up your time. Given that there's been talk now about the EU's CO2 emission allowances and what will happen to the EUAs and everything like that, you can see where the prices have gone for CO2 allowances. Can you quantify, for an example, if you can give us -- I don't want to mention any specific examples. But let's say that if you -- I think you've got still free allowances in 2025, you had free allowances. If that was to be sustained until, let's say, the end of this decade, what would be the benefit to your EBITDA?

If there's no change in the free allowances from '25 at current rates, we would be looking at around EUR 25 million of EBITDA.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further audio questions. I will now pass the floor to Mr. Katsenos to accommodate any written questions from the webcast participants. Mr. Katsenos, please proceed.

Thank you, operator. We have 2 questions from PKO BP Securities and specifically from Adam Milewicz. The first question is whether we expect to pay special dividends also in 2026. And the second question relates to the current level of refining margins.

Okay. With the special dividends were linked to special transactions like the sale of DEPA, the sale of DEPA Infrastructure, sale of DEPA Commercial. We don't have something up for sale at this point in time. I have to say that. Never say never, but there is no projection for that. So any special dividend will be replaced by what I would call an exceptional performance dividend if we're blessed with decent refining margins. Sorry, current level of refining margin -- yes, sorry, I didn't see that. Kostas, do you want to comment on that?

Yes. Thank you. The current levels of refining margin and benchmark margins have rebounded quite strongly. So from a weak start of the year, in the last week or so, they're between $9 and $11 to the barrel, which is very attractive numbers.

Operator, we don't have any other questions from the webcast. Back to you.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing statements. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much for your time. I hope that we've been able to convey the message for the performance of the group. It has been a good year. The performance -- the financial performance is one indicator of how well the company is doing, clearly affected by the environment. So it is clear that we have been blessed with the good environment in the last part of the year, and that added a little bit of profits to the bottom line.

However, what we need to take away is the fact that this company over the last 5 or 6 years has transformed itself, we've managed to establish a baseline, which is EUR 1 billion, something that we've been talking about for a number of years. A lot of new businesses have come into play on the renewables part more than anything and the conversion of investments into cash flows. I've always maintained that investments should be converted into cash or cash flows. So we've converted the Enerwave, the ELPEDISON investment into cash flows by acquiring the additional 50% and we converted the DEPA investment into cash by divesting by selling the 35% that we had.

So that actually brings about a much better governance and operability of that business. So we have been adding new businesses to the group, which are more predictable, maybe not as predictable as we would like on the renewables, but still they are not driven by refining margins. They are establishing a cash flow baseline, clearly, a totally different model from the refining baseline, but it is adding to the group stability.

The Enerwave business is something which will provide additional profitability with a diversified profile, the gas and power and the utility profile is different to the refining profile. So I think we've been doing a good job at diversifying the portfolio and also making it more future compatible with a lower environmental footprint as a group. However, we should not ignore the improvements made on our up until now core business of downstream, which has to do with the refining, the supply and trading and the marketing.

In fact, I probably feel more proud of the turnaround in the domestic marketing than the investment in growing our portfolio of renewables because that involves a lot of people, changing of cultures, being more aggressive in the market and fixing long-standing issues of management in the group. The expansion in markets outside of Greece, whether it's exports and whether it's trading through the new company or whether it's acquiring petrol stations or expanding into existing or new markets, again, it is something which has been done very, very successfully.

And Kostas has handed over a portfolio, which is in a much better shape than the one he took responsibility for almost 7 or 8 years ago. That is a signal of strength for the group because I don't know when, but I have no doubt in my mind that refining margins will change again. Maybe they will go down, maybe they will go up. Chances are that from where we are, we will see lower margins in the next 3 or 4 years. But what provides comfort is the fact that the group has built some sustainability, some strength, some endurance to manage those volatile trends and we'll continue to deliver very healthy profitability.

Over the next few weeks, we will be aiming to address the market with our new strategy. We have a number of events planned for the next 3 months, the opening up of the VARDAX pipeline ceremony, and things which have to do with other parts of the business. So I think we will have the opportunity to expand more on our strategy in the coming months.

Up until then, you have to take away with you a very good performance, a more robust and sustainable performance going forward, a much improved operation and governance structure in the group, a healthy balance sheet even with EUR 0.5 billion of investment in renewables, which were funded entirely out of debt, project finance or our own reserves. And even after that, we are still at a very healthy leverage and credit metrics. So I believe that is good news for the group going forward.

Thank you very much once again, and we'll renew this appointment in 3 months' time. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a pleasant evening.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Vassilios, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the HELLENiQ ENERGY Holdings conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the third quarter and 9 months 2025 financial results. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to HELLENiQ ENERGY Holdings management team. Gentlemen, you may now proceed.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon to everybody. We're going to be talking a little bit about our third quarter performance over the next half an hour to an hour. And at the end, try and see if there are any questions that we can answer and maybe give you a bit of an insight into how we see the rest of the year closing. The backdrop, first of all, we have a market which is positive for the downstream business, relatively low level of absolute prices, low levels both in terms of the commodity price, but also in terms of the euro-dollar exchange rate because that effectively translates into lower euro prices in the domestic market.

That, combined with a regional mostly supply-led shortage of products, especially middle distillates have led to very healthy refining margins, which we have been enjoying for the last few months. If you add to that increased demand not only from the Greek market, but also from the regional markets for a number of reasons. Most of it is supply side led, it gives a very good backdrop for downstream businesses.

In terms of operations, we have a very good refining performance after the Elefsina shutdown earlier in the year, revamped and updated refinery is running with very high availability. Aspropyrgos, which is nearing the end of run cycle. It's scheduled for a refinery shutdown and maintenance shutdown in the next few months is also doing very well. And this helps us to capitalize on the strong margins, the increased footprint on the international markets. And of course, the increasing demand that we have, as I mentioned, in pretty much all markets that we operate in. The other businesses have delivered record results, especially on the marketing side, both in Greece and international. And for the first time, we also have the full consolidation of the Enerwave. I'll make sure that I don't call it ELPEDISON I can because that would be sold off by my colleagues here.

So Enerwave is the new name of ELPEDISON, which is included in our financials on a fully consolidated basis for the first time this quarter. As a result of that, we have an adjusted EBITDA, which is close to EUR 0.75 billion for the 9 months with EUR 365 million for the quarter. That puts us on a relatively safe trajectory to overshoot the EUR 1 billion, which is something of an internal benchmark for us, given it's going to be the fourth year which we managed to achieve that.

And it is helping to deliver strong operating cash flows. Some of it were used to pay the one-off solidarity tax and others for the acquisition of the 50% of the old ELPEDISON, which was partly financed by our own cash flows and also by the disposal on the DEPA commercial business. But still, it leaves a healthy room for an interim dividend of EUR 0.20 per share, which is in line with what we paid last year. And this is effectively a strong signal of how we see the outlook as well. Now on the outlook, we have a number of developments. It's going to take us quite a long time to go through all of these. In summary, positive outlook. The quarter-to-date has been very strong. In fact, it has actually been even stronger than the third quarter.

We've started the new business model on the supply and trading with the activities from our Geneva subsidiary, which is gradually picking up speed. And it is coordinating even better with the refining and the Supply & Trading team here in Athens [indiscernible]. Marketing is improving, mostly as a result of improved market, but mostly from the efforts that we put behind our networks and our performance in the pedal stations.

Soon, we should be able to announce the commencement of the Thessaloniki-Skopje pipeline. I hope that by the end of the year, we'll be able to do that, which will give us an even better operating model and a better footprint into the West Balkans. And from them -- from there, we could actually think about reaching other markets as well. The green utility, which is effectively the combination of Enerwave and the renewables.

It's coming together. It's going to take some time for this to blend into a seamless operation. We know that we're patient, and we'll work diligently to get to the results. The high-level plan is to double the size of Enerwave on a number of fronts and also to double the size of the green utility in the next few years. Now whether that takes 2 or 3 years, I don't know. We're still in the phase where we are relaunching the whole business. But there is definitely room for improvement there.

Finally, on E&P, which is part of our business, which attracted a lot of publicity over the last few weeks. The latest one has been the signing of a farming agreement by ExxonMobil into Block 2. I remind people that we were effectively a 25% minority stakeholder there in the joint venture. 25% was owned by Energean, and they were the operator.

The discussions with Exxon were led by Energean, and we participated in those discussions as well. I think we're all happy that we have the participation of a company like Exxon, which will not only cover some of the past costs and the well -- the exploratory well that will take place. But more importantly, it's providing the credibility and the experience and knowledge required in difficult explorations. A few weeks ago, we also announced that the joint venture with Chevron is a preferred bidder. And we hope that over the next few weeks, we should be signing that concession agreement as well. Which means that we'll be closing all the areas that might be of interest to us in the Greek [E&P].

Overall, a very good quarter, a good 9 months, not only in terms of results, but in terms of operations, in terms of safety and also in terms of steps in our strategic plan to grow this company even more. So with that, I will turn over to Dinos Panas, who is heading our Supply and Trading and he's also the Deputy CEO for the HELLENiQ Petroleum team to walk us through the environment and maybe shed some light on what he expects things to look like in the next few months. Dinos?

Okay. Thank you, Andreas. Good afternoon, everybody. I have 3 slides on the environment. First slide, Page #6. We see that we had a weak Brent during the last 2 quarters of the year, second and third. We still see, let's say, a global crude [overhang], mostly driven, let's say, by the increased production from the United States and Guyana, but also from the lower, let's say, refining utilization in Russia following the drone attacks from Ukraine, which actually obliged the country to export more crude since they could not run the refineries.

We see this type of trend continuing into the fourth quarter of the year. So most probably we will see weakness in crude, let's say, continuing in 4Q. And of course, a quite strong euro versus the USD, plus 6% compared to the last year's same quarter. Now the product cracks were quite strong in Urals gasoline in the third quarter. We see the same trend continuing in the fourth quarter, actually much stronger yesterday, as you all know, let's say, from the prices we had the USD crack of $38 a barrel, and the gasoline crack of $25 per barrel.

And we had a refinery benchmark margin of $8.5 a barrel in the third quarter, significantly higher than the third quarter of 2024. We have seen October margins much higher than this number. And of course, November [advance] of the quite high numbers. Most probably, we will see that the middle distillate crack will stay strong during the remaining part of the year. And also remain strong when we have the U.S. sanctions in place in the 26th of January, if I remember correctly, which will make, let's say, imports of middle distillates into Europe more difficult because everybody will have to prove where the origin of this material comes from.

Now on Page 7, we can see that natural gas prices were down by 7%. Electricity prices down by 3% and the EUA is higher by 7%. EUAs now are trading a little bit higher than [EUR 81 per metric ton]. And finally, on the gas market, we can see that the third quarter remained strong. We had a 2% increase in gasoline, flat quarter-over- diesel so in 0.5% increase overall. Aviation sales up 7% and the bunker sales 5%.

We believe that the lower prices will support further growth in the domestic demand. And of course, with the economic growth that [indiscernible] increase, we expect that this will be the case in the third -- and in the fourth quarter of the year. And with this, we will pass to Vasileios Tsaitas for the group performance.

Thank you, Dino. Good afternoon. So moving on to Page 10 to have an overview of our key numbers. So the refining sales up 4.3 million tons, it's an all-time record, driven by the very high production that we'll discuss further on at our system of refineries. Marketing also very strong sales, 4% higher. In terms of power generation, we have the addition of Enerwave that is mainly driving the quadrupling of the production.

And similarly, it is also having an impact on the turnover, which otherwise without Enerwave would be lower driven by the lower commodity prices. An adjusted EBITDA of EUR 365 million, double the one of the third quarter '24, driven mainly by refining, the very strong refining margin that we discussed earlier on. Similarly, a very strong performance from marketing and the presentation of our green utility business, which combines Enerwave and renewables becoming a meaningful contribution to the group numbers at just over EUR 30 million for the quarter.

In terms of our sources numbers, this number is now less relevant that [indiscernible] now Enerwave is fully consolidated. Finance costs lower than last year. And overall, we're moving a bit further down total capital employed of over EUR 5 billion as we have now fully consolidated Enerwave and total investments for the 9 months exceeding EUR 0.5 billion. Moving on to Page 11. So the doubling of our adjusted EBITDA profitability comes mainly from the very good refining environment comparing with refining margins in the similar period of last year.

FX is having an impact given the strengthening of the euro, especially in the third quarter with retreating in the last few weeks. And performance-wise, certainly, our refining operations with Elefsina fresh from the turnaround and yielding very good performance in the third quarter, our marketing contribution as well as the addition of Enerwave.

On Page 12, I think it's important to discuss a bit our CapEx and our cash flow for the 9 months. So our CapEx is driven on the downstream side, mainly by stay in business and largely by them and the turnaround at the [indiscernible] turnaround at our Elefsina refinery that happened during the second quarter, which is maintenance CapEx on the one side, but on the other side, it significantly enhances the ability of the refinery to capture the very good refining environment that we're experiencing in the second half. And on our green utility, we have the growth in Romania mainly. So the implementation of one of the wind projects and the acquisition of the hydro project in Bulgaria and the acquisition and the equity consideration of Enerwave. On the top right, effectively, we present how the adjusted cash flow, including normal operations, normal stay in business CapEx as well as accrual-based taxes. So excluding the effect of differences in taxable earnings in prepayments of taxes or any one-off windfall taxes.

So that leaves us around EUR 450 million for the 9 months to be able to remunerate our capital providers, both on the debt as well as on the equity side, pursue our growth CapEx, and that should be just enough to have a net debt virtually flat compared to the beginning of the year -- but we have 3 items. One has to do obviously with the acquisition, including the debt consolidation of Enerwave.

Obviously, this -- we don't make this level of this size of acquisitions every year. And if we do, it will enhance, obviously, their profitability base of the company. We have the Solidarity contribution in the beginning of the year that you are very well aware of, again, a one-off item. And as a result of the supply chain disruptions in the Red Sea and the increase of offtake of Iraqi crude, it has an impact on our working capital as long as we -- we have to ferry the cargoes around the Cape. So it's a temporary -- just over EUR 200 million of impact on our inventories, again, not recurring. So that brings the net debt to the total of EUR 2.5 billion. Moving on to the next page, a higher net and gross debt similarly due to the reason that we presented just now. The debt servicing cost has escalated significantly. This is driven by the decline in base rates, which we're able to take advantage given our floating exposure.

The decline in spreads that we were able to negotiate with all our credit providers during the year and certainly a better cash utilization that eliminates or minimizes to be exact the cost of [indiscernible]. Our maturity curve well has -- I mean, properly amortized. We have a maturity coming up in the next few weeks, which is at the final stages of refinanced for 5 years. So that will move to the end of 2030.

On Page 14, Andreas mentioned before, the decision about a flat interim dividend versus last year. We're certainly going to revisit our full year dividend at fourth quarter results as we do every year. I guess, always good to remind combined almost 40% of dividend yield in the last 3 years. That is compounding the total shareholder return over the last 4, 4.5 years to 1.5x of the share price. Now we'll move on to discuss a bit the business segment performance starting from Downstream. So our Refining Supply and Trading business, as we mentioned before, delivered very strong results on the back of good refining margins as well as a record production and record sales.

So very good ability to capture refining margins, especially following the completion of the full turnaround at Elefsina refinery. And total sales for the 9 months around 11 million tonnes. On the next slide, we reiterate on the very good operational performance with exports close to 50%, yielding very strong returns, something that is driving -- moving on to the next page, something that is driving the very good overperformance.

So as you can see, the $8.7 per barrel on the far right is the highest that we've seen in the last several quarters. That is partially driven by an improvement in the crude spreads given the availability of crude that also Dinos highlighted before as well as the very strong export premia that we are enjoying in the neighboring markets. Moving on to our Petrochemicals business on Page -- sorry, on Page 21. Certainly, we're experiencing a difficult cycle in this business in Europe and globally driven by overcapacity.

It looks like that it's going to take some time to clear the overhang. So the returns are going to be much, much lower than the mid-cycle that we are -- would be used in the past. Important to say that our business is almost -- is to a large extent integrated with refining with Aspropyrgos refinery producing polymer-grade propylene, which is then converted to polypropylene at [indiscernible] complex.

So that helps manage our position across the supply chain in order to be able to be much more resilient in the downturn and avoid losing money effectively in this business. So still considering the environment, a positive EBITDA of EUR 3 million for the third quarter. Now moving on to our fuel marketing business, starting from our domestic market in Greece.

So as we discussed before, a very good result of EUR 38 million for the third quarter and over EUR 6 million of adjusted EBITDA for the year. This is driven by the increasing strength of our brands, especially Eco in Greece, the consistent increase in market shares in all products, in all auto fuel products, increased penetration of differentiated fuels, both in gasoline and diesel, increasing volumes while we continue with the rationalization of our network, so higher ATPs and much higher contribution at the point of sale and much higher profitability. And certainly, as a reminder, ECO is very well placed to take advantage of a very good tourist season in Greece, both on the retail side as well as on the aviation.

In the international business, again, another record-breaking quarter and year-to-date with [EUR 30 million ] and EUR 70 million of adjusted EBITDA, respectively, close to 15% higher versus last year, increased volumes, increased profitability. Again, some of the drivers that referred to the Greek market like the very strong NFR contribution to our numbers and the differentiated fuels penetration are the key trends that have helped drive this result. On that note, I'll pass you on to George Alexopoulos, who's going to discuss our Green utility business. George?

Thank you, Vasily. Good afternoon, everybody. We're very pleased to be consolidating Enerwave and thus being able to report our green utility segment. And turning to Page 26, I will not repeat the information on natural gas electricity price. I will note that prices were lower and continue to normalize natural gas and electricity. It was a quarter of low consumption in Greece, the third quarter. And also, we continue to have high participation of renewables in the mix, namely 57% versus 44% in the same quarter of last year.

Turning to Page 27 and looking at the Green Utility segment with Enerwave on a pro-forma basis for the quarter, we -- it was a weaker quarter in terms of market fundamentals. On the conventional power side, spark spreads were lower. On the renewables side, we saw high curtailments. And given the lower demand, we also saw lower thermal production. So all in all, this translates into lower power generation and lower adjusted EBITDA overall, higher for renewables, but lower for Enerwave, and we will be discussing those separately as well.

If we turn to Page 28, we see for the renewables higher capacity. We are at 494 megawatts installed capacity. Of course, higher production as a result of that, better weather conditions on the wind side. And thus getting better performance despite facing more pronounced curtailments versus last year. Quarterly EBITDA at EUR 15 million and 9-month. EBITDA at EUR 37 million, respectively.

Turning to Page 29. I think we've discussed this graph before, but I wanted to stress that we are continuing our expansion plans. We focus on Southeastern Europe. We are diversifying both geographically and technologically. We are currently present in 5 countries, including a small participation in North Macedonia, which is not shown in the numbers of the renewables business is shown as part of the international business.

We are progressing our installed capacity. And we have secured the path to 1.5 gigawatts by 2028. We currently have over 300 megawatts under construction, and we expect to complete about 1/3 of those within the current year or around the end of the current year. Turning to Page 30, the Enerwave page. I keep repeating it so I don't get it wrong.

As we said, weaker market conditions. There was also grid unavailability at one of our sites, which did affect production. So all in all, lower adjusted EBITDA versus last year for the quarter, slightly higher for the 9 months. Yesterday, we relaunched the company under the new brand Enerwave, and we are pushing ahead our strategic transformation, which has several elements, 2 of which are important enough that I will mention here.

We have already redesigned our commercial policy, and this is starting to show results. We expect to be launching new products following the relaunch of the company, improve customer service and, of course, targeting a higher market share. On the energy management side, now we have a combined portfolio of almost 1.4 gigawatts if we look at conventional assets and renewables assets.

We are managing this portfolio on an integrated basis from Enerwave, and we expect to see better realization and better results for our renewables assets, but also for the combined green utility as well. And with this, I think we've reached the end of the presentation, and I think we will open it for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Grigoriou George with Wood & Co.

A few questions, if I may. The one regards your production now in the third quarter. If I'm not mistaken, this was a record for your refining output. Just wanted to hear your thoughts on how much more you could actually produce. And my other questions are, I've noticed on your slide that in the third quarter, diesel sales of diesel, all the diesel here in Greece were actually 0, flat year-on-year.

I wanted to hear your thoughts on that and how you see it evolving after the third quarter. And my last question goes to what was Dinos discussing before about the refining margins. You obviously mentioned the middle distillate cracks, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on the gasoline cracks as well.

Okay. Good afternoon George. I would ask Dinos to comment on the production and the cracks. Before doing that on the diesel sales, Well, we are seeing some increase. The market is not growing as fast as it was growing in the previous few years, but it's still growing. If you will, our market shares are growing. And also we're seeing a premiumization of our portfolio. So we're getting more of the premium auto fuels, which has diesel and gasoline 98 and 100 octane gasoline and the diesel, [biofuel] which are growing. Now on the cracks in the production, I will turn over to Dinos, who will answer.

I think that we had a very high utilization in the third quarter. So the target is to keep that level, which is exceptional for -- was exceptional for the quarter and most probably if we keep it, we'll have a very good quarter in the fourth quarter of the year. So what I'm saying is that there is not a lot of space to increase production in the refineries.

Now coming in the fourth quarter of the year, I mean diesel has been growing by roughly 2% in the 9 months of this year. We see signs of remaining strong in the fourth quarter as well. And additionally, on top of that, we will be selling gasoline, hitting gasoline in the year. So quite a few qualities of diesel will be shown in our sales in the fourth quarter. And we do have, let's say, a strong demand for diesel around the area.

So I think it's going to be a good quarter for the diesel overall in the fourth one. Now regarding, let's say, gasoline, we have this ongoing issues with [RCC], which combined, let's say, with the Russian disruption and the low U.S. inventories makes us feel that the market -- the gasoline market will remain strong despite it's the weaker seasonality, but definitely not as strong as the distillate ones in the fourth quarter.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further audio questions. I will now pass the floor to Mr. Katsenos to accommodate any written questions from the webcast participants. Mr. Katsenos, please proceed.

Thank you, operator. We have 3 questions from Sylvia Richards from Morgan Stanley. The first one is third quarter was very strong on volumes. How do you see volumes for the fourth quarter? The second question is, what would be the CapEx needed to double anyway size? And the third one on your refinancing, do you expect to have lower finance costs?

Dinos, do you want to take the first question?

Yes, I will take the first question. Q4 until now, we have the refiners operating at capacity. So the volumes are as high as I can get the production volumes. The second one on the CapEx.

I'll take the CapEx. Just to be -- just to clarify, Enerwave is the utility business. It includes conventional generation, energy management, commercial business, retail business. So it's not -- it does not include the renewables. The CapEx required to double its size is fairly limited because the improvement in the profitability comes through performance improvements and growth in commercial and energy management and trading. So it's a limited investment. It's not a major CapEx. But as I said, this does not include renewables, which is tracked and reported separately.

Vasileios, one on the financing?

Sure. On the refinancing, by [virtue] of refinancing, there won't be a significant impact on the finance cost. Over the year, we've been repricing all our facilities. So I would say that around 2/3 have already been repriced and we've seen the impact in the second and third quarter. And the last, let's say, 1/3 of our facilities, including the one that will be refinanced, will be repriced in the fourth quarter. So there is some positive impact left, but not as significant, I would say.

We have another question from [Nicholas Payton] from Edison Group. Nicholas asked with regards to renewables are you still confident that you can hit your medium and long-term targets in terms of capacity for the renewables business? Second question, can we have an update on the office that has been set up in Switzerland? Is everything going to plan? And the third one, is there any update on the Suez situation any time that you might be able to resume that?

Okay. Nicholas, on the first question, I mean, the short answer is yes. As you saw from the presentation, we have a secure path to -- we are at 0.5 gigawatt today. We have a secure path to 1.5 gigawatts in the next 3 years. And we have a pipeline of approximately 6 gigawatts out of which we can certainly find the rest to the 2 gigawatt target. Of course, every investment is subject to scrutiny and it proceeds when our return goals are met. But the answer clearly is yes, we can.

Okay. On Suez and the trading office, Dinos, do you want to take it?

Yes. The trading office in Geneva is up and running for quite a few months now. We have the key, let's say, trading team front office in place. We have the middle office also in place, and we have the back office set up here in Athens. So the team is working well. We are looking to start buying and selling a little bit more outside of tenders. And of course, trade some third-party volumes, which will help us to increase our overall volumes above the system ones that we are producing the refineries.

Now on the fifth Suez situation, there was an announcement from the Houthis leadership that they will stop the tax, but most of the majors are looking to the situation very carefully. We are monitoring the vessels that are passing through the Suez, and we've seen a little bit of an increase there. As soon as we are confident that the risks are very limited, we will start using the Suez route again, and this will help us both on the cost and on our working capital requirements because currently, it takes 45 days to go around the Cape, while through Suez, now it takes 16 days.

Thank you. And we have another question from Christian Are from Eurobank Equities. Is there a turnaround scheduled for 2026?

Yes. The answer is there is one for Aspropyrgos was scheduled to start at the beginning of next year in the first quarter. So February, March, we're going to have the maintenance turnaround of Aspropyrgos.

Thank you. Operator, we don't have any other questions through the webcast.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your attendance. As we said, it has been a very good quarter. Our financial performance has been very good. The market backdrop has been very favorable. And in terms of operations, we've been able to make the most of it. From a strategic point of view, we have the upstream announcements over the last few days.

We had the Enerwave launch, which effectively repositions and relaunches our power sector ambitions. As we've said, we're not buying to be the #1 electricity company and utility in Greece. We are aspiring to be a decent size, much bigger than we are today, Green Utility centered around our operations in Greece, but also looking to capitalize on opportunities in other markets as well.

From a downstream point of view, we have a good setup of the refineries. The trading is doing very well. The international trading office has started picking up speed, and we are gradually seeing the benefits of this model change. The retail business in Greece and outside of Greece is doing very well. And in fact, it is an area where we think we can grow even more.

But as you can appreciate, the pace of additional business and profitability is of a different scale between the 3 different businesses, the refining, supply and trading, the marketing and the utility. So we need to make sure that we maintain a balance between the 3 on the capital allocation policy, if you will, and continue our operational improvements irrespective of which business they relate to. So with that, we thank you for your time. And I am sure we will be able to touch base with you again in a few months when we do the full year presentation, which I expect to be and hope to be even better than what we have presented now. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a pleasant evening.