Orsted Aktie

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Ørsted Interim Report for the Second Quarter of 2026 Conference Call. I am Haley, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Group President and CEO, Rasmus Errboe; and CFO, Trond Westlie. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. The first half of 2026 has once again reminded us how quickly geopolitical tensions can impact global energy markets. The volatility has underlined the importance of European energy independence, which cannot be taken for granted. But these challenges also represent an opportunity for Europe to strengthen competitiveness for businesses through electrification and lowering of energy costs. An opportunity to ramp up production of homegrown, affordable and reliable energy. So global shocks to energy markets do not limit prosperity. Renewable energy is central to this necessary transition.

And as a reminder, each of the recent 10 years have been the 10 warmest years ever recorded on earth. And combined with wildfires across Southern Europe this summer, this obviously further underscores the need for a rapid acceleration of the energy transition. To improve European sovereignty and resilience, increased investments into renewable energy is central and necessary. With the right actions now, offshore wind can provide several significant benefits for Europe and the energy transition as a whole.

As we highlighted in our recent paper, the real value of offshore wind the build-out of renewables with offshore wind as a significant component can reduce annual fossil fuel imports by more than 30% of the current import need. Further, these investments can reduce total European electricity system costs by up to 30% by 2040 as the integration costs of solar and wind are marginal compared to the large savings from reduced use of fossil fuels in power generation. Finally, the paper shows that an investment level into offshore wind in line with the ambitions outlined in the Hamburg Offshore Wind Investment Pact can cut annual carbon emissions in Europe by 20% compared to 2023 levels corresponding to 550 million tons of CO2.

When we assess the outlook for offshore wind, we see several positive signs for our industry, and we remain optimistic about the prospects for the sector. In the short term, there are several attractive offshore wind opportunities where the regulatory frameworks have improved and contributed to strengthening the investment certainty for future projects. We have seen improvements in the framework across several markets in Europe, including Denmark, U.K. and Poland. And most recently, the budget for the upcoming [indiscernible] tender round in the Netherlands was also increased.

Our solid progress across our major construction portfolio, where we continue to progress all projects on time and on budget should also give policymakers and other key stakeholders increased confidence that the offshore wind industry can, in fact, deliver renewable energy at massive scale as long as sufficient volumes are tendered out on a recurring basis with the right frameworks.

In the mid- to long term, the outlook for offshore wind, particularly in Europe, also remains strong. This is underlined by the 300 gigawatt offshore wind build-out target agreed in Hamburg in January '26. Compared to 2024 levels, this build-out in the North Sea would amount to an increase in the capacity of European offshore wind by a factor of 8, representing a significant growth opportunity for the industry.

And at the European political level, the need for an acceleration of the energy transition is also recognized. The recently proposed review of the EU emissions trading system reflects the EU's continued reliance on a rules-based carbon market as its central climate policy instrument. At the same time, the electrification action plan and the proposal on electricity network [indiscernible] reinforce the commission's focus on accelerating electrification across sectors to strengthen Europe's competitiveness, energy security and decarbonization, highlighting the need for continued investments in renewable generation, stronger electricity grids and greater system flexibility.

We are encouraged with the continued positive signs for our industry and we will continue to be a close partner to government and industry peers to provide solutions for the acceleration of offshore wind. By continuing to deliver on our business plan, we will become a more focused, competitive and stronger company and we will assess the upcoming tenders and auctions with a disciplined approach to capital allocation as we are ready to pursue the most value-creating opportunities to remain the global leader in offshore wind.

Let's continue to Slide 5 and an update on the strategic priorities and our operational performance. Our first priority is to strengthen our capital structure. And with the closing of the divestment of the European onshore business in April, we have made further progress on this. Also, the divestment -- of the divestment of a 50%-50% stake in our Greater Changhua 2 project is still expected to close later this year following the commissioning of Greater Changhua 2b and 4.

Lastly, our continued strong business performance is driving our solid earnings generation, which is supportive of our financial foundation. With the measures we have taken during the last 18 months, we have the necessary robustness to pursue new value-creating opportunities within offshore wind while also reinstating a dividend payout in line with our previous commitments. Trond will cover the details of the dividend policy later in the presentation.

Our second priority is to deliver on our 8.1 gigawatt offshore wind construction portfolio where we expect to commission 3 projects with a total capacity of 2.5 gigawatts this year. We have achieved significant progress during the quarter. I will shortly go through the construction progress in more detail.

Our third priority is a focused and disciplined approach to capital allocation. As we look ahead for new offshore wind opportunities in Europe, and select markets in APAC, we will maintain our disciplined approach with a focus on value. Our fourth priority is to improve our competitiveness, and we are continuing to progress as planned on numerous measures across our organization to achieve a stronger and more competitive Ørsted.

As part of improving our competitiveness, we recently outlined our decarbonization efforts towards 2040 in our next zero paper, which describes how we -- with our partners, we'll work to achieve cost-effective reductions of key emissions hotspots across the offshore wind value chain. Reducing value chain emissions is essential from a climate impact perspective, and will improve our value proposition in future offshore wind auctions.

Turning to the operational highlights of the first half of the year. I'm very satisfied with our operational performance. Our EBITDA, excluding new partnerships and cancellation fees, amount to DKK 15 billion, which is an increase of more than DKK 1 billion compared to first half of 2025. This was driven by ramp-up generation in offshore and slightly higher than normal wind speeds. The performance was also supported by good availability within our offshore business. Our financials for the first half of the year keeps us fully on track to deliver on our full year guidance.

When it comes to safety, we have seen an increase in our total recordable injury rate compared to first half of 2025. The increase was primarily driven by an incident related to food poisoning at one of our power plants, which we consider a one-off event. In addition, the organization adjustment undertaking means that a reduced share of our colleagues are working in the offices and relatively more are working directly at our assets. Safety remains a top priority for us and our employees and we continue to strengthen our safety commitments through targeted initiatives and sharing of best practices with suppliers all aimed at preventing incidents and bringing our people home safe every day.

Let's turn to Slide 6 and an overview of our construction portfolio. I will start by covering our projects that are near commissioning and subsequently cover the other projects individually in more detail. For Borkum Riffgrund 3, turbine commissioning is progressing as planned. The project is more than 99% complete, and we are expecting to commission the project during the third quarter.

For Greater Changhua 2b and 4, the project ensured further progress during the quarter as all turbines at Greater Changhua 4 have started producing power and completed all main scopes. In addition, the project has completed all the onshore works related to the upcoming repair of the export cable related to Greater Changhua 2b. With this, the degree of completion is now at 85%, up from 80% in the first quarter. The project remains focused on the installation and energization of the export cable for the Greater Changhua 2b section.

The repair work is expected to be completed in the coming period. And subsequently, the export cable will be energized before turbines commissioning will commence. The project remains on schedule for commissioning at the back end of the third quarter.

For Revolution Wind in the U.S., the project continues to ramp up production with the commissioning of turbines. Currently, the project has 61 of the 65 turbines installed and the project intends to install the remaining turbines this year. The project is more than 95% complete and the project remains on track towards full commercial operations in the second half of 2026.

Turning to Slide 7 and an update on our Baltica 2 project in Poland. During the quarter, the project has made significant progress, particularly with the installation of monopile foundations. Since the installation campaign was initiated in May this year, the project has installed 103 monopile foundations out of the planned 111, including all 4 of the monopile foundations for the offshore substations. This is a significant achievement by the team and a testament to the execution ability. With the progress achieved during the quarter, the degree of completion has increased to approximately 40%, up from 30% in the first quarter.

For the offshore substations, the manufacturing of the structures is progressing as planned. And in the third quarter, all 4 top sites will be transported to the site for installation later this year. The fabrication of the export and the rate cables are progressing as planned, with 2 of the 4 export cables having passed final acceptance test. The onshore substation work is well progressed and nearing completion with onshore cables manufactured and installation on schedule.

In the coming period, the focus of the project will be the continued installation of the remaining turbine foundations and secondary structures as well as tracking progress on the cable manufacturing. Also, the load out and transportation of the 2 complete export cables will commence in the third quarter and finally, the work on the onshore substation will continue, including termination of the cables to the onshore substation.

Turning to Slide 8 and an update on our Sunrise Wind project in the U.S. During the quarter, the project has continued to make solid progress. This includes both progress on the installation of turbine foundations, array cables and turbines. With the progress achieved during the quarter, the degree of completion has increased to approximately 50%, up from 47% in the first quarter.

For the installation of turbine foundations, the work has been resumed after the seasonal installation restrictions ended in May. Since the installation resumed it has progressed well, with 77 of the 84 positions now installed. The remaining work on foundation installation is planned to be completed within the current installation window.

On turbine installation, a total of 20 turbines and 20 array cables have been installed. On the export cable, all sections have been installed, joint and energized, and the offshore converter station has been energized. For the onshore substation, the converter [indiscernible] export cable route is complete. In terms of turbine fabrication, all equipment remaining to be installed have been manufactured. In the coming period, the project is expected to complete monopile installation and continue the installation of turbines and array cables. Commissioning works will also continue in the offshore converter station, and the project is expected to start commissioning of turbines later this year.

Turning to Slide 9 and an update on the progress at Hornsea 3 in the U.K. The project has made further progress across several scopes. Since the commencement of turbine foundation installation, the project has installed 43 out of the total of 197 positions. With the progress achieved during the quarter, the degree of completion has increased to approximately 30%, up from 25% in the first quarter.

Regarding the enabling and reinforcement works at the Norit main substation, where the project is due to connect to the U.K. transmission grid, the work is progressing according to the updated schedule and expected to be completed next month. We are continuing to engage closely with National Grid Electricity Transmission and the National Energy System Operator as they work to minimize the delay and mitigate any further delays from occurring and impacting the schedule. On the export cable, the installation work has continued. For the offshore converter station that is already installed, the associated export cable has also now been installed and tested and is ready for energization.

For the export cable to be installed at the project's second offshore converter station, the nearshore section has also been installed. The manufacturing of the mid- and fast shore section is complete, and is planned to start installation later in the year. In the coming period, the focus of the project is to progress foundation installation according to plan. with the manufacturing and supply foundations on track. Also, the installation of the project's second offshore converter station is planned for the third quarter.

And finally, the installation of the turbines is planned to start later this year with 2 installation vessels that are currently active on other projects before commencing work on Hornsea 3.

With this, let me hand over the word to you, Trond.

Thank you, Rasmus, and good afternoon, everyone. Let's start with Slide 11 and the EBITDA for the second quarter of '26 and as always, unless I state otherwise, the numbers I refer to will be in Danish kroner. In the quarter, our operational performance was in line with expectations and we delivered an EBITDA excluding new partnerships and cancellation fees of DKK 5.4 billion.

Let me walk you through the main developments. For our offshore business, total earnings came in DKK 400 million higher than last year, coming from higher earnings within construction agreements, partly offset by slightly lower sites earnings. Sites earnings came in DKK 200 million lower compared to last year. In the second quarter, our trading business delivered earnings as expected but not to the same extent as last year. During the quarter, a planned maintenance outage at Hornsea 1 during most of June also impacted earnings.

And finally, there was year-over-year effect from Gode Wind 1 and Gode Wind 2 gradually stepping out of its subsidy during the first half year and is fully reflected in our full year guidance. This was partly offset by higher wind speeds in the quarter as well as higher power prices.

Earnings from offshore sides excluded contribution from trading activities, was approximately 5% higher than the same period last year. Earnings within existing partnership increased compared to last year, mainly related to construction agreement from Hornsea 3 and updates to other construction agreements. In our onshore business, earnings decreased by approximately DKK 200 million to last year. This was mainly due to sale of components in second quarter of last year, which was not repeated this quarter. while earnings from offshore sites were at the same level as last year.

Within bioenergy and other, earnings were in line with last year, driven by higher generation and prices at our combined heat and power plants. This was offset by a lower contribution from ancillary services and a provision related to our gas storages.

Then going to Slide 12. In the second quarter of '26, we incurred a noncash impairment loss of DKK 1.2 billion relating to our U.S. offshore project as a result of an increase in the long-dated U.S. interest rates. Our net profit for the quarter totaled DKK 700 million. Compared to last year, net profit was impacted by a noncash impairment loss that I just described as well as lower EBITDA from new partnerships in second quarter of '25, that were not repeated in this quarter.

Net profit adjusted for impairments, new partnerships and cancellation fees amounted to DKK 1.9 billion this quarter versus DKK 2.1 billion in the same quarter last year. Adjusted for impairment and cancellation fees, our return on capital employed came in at 6.6%, a decrease compared to last year due to lower EBITDA for the 12 months period and higher capital employed. The reported return on capital employed came in at 3.1%.

Let's turn to Slide 13 and our net interest-bearing debt and credit metrics. At the end of second quarter, our net debt amounted to DKK 22 billion, representing an increase of DKK 700 million during the quarter. Cash flow operating activities included contribution from our operational earnings as well as work in progress relating to the offshore construction portfolio and changes in other working capital.

Divestments mainly related to the sale of our European onshore portfolio. Our gross investments amounted to DKK 10.1 billion, reflecting the continued investment into our renewable construction projects. Our credit metric, FFO to adjusted net debt stood approximately at 45% at the end of the second quarter which is well in line with our target of more than 30%. The increase is driven by an increase in the fund from operation over the last 12 months, the proceeds from the rights issue and closing of various farm downs.

At the end of the quarter, we had a total liquidity reserve of more than DKK 115 billion. We remain committed to a solid investment-grade rating. And in early July, we discontinued the rating [indiscernible] Standard & Poor's as we continuously review the cost benefit of maintaining multiple ratings and concluded that Moody's and Fitch provide sufficient coverage for our investor base. The decision will not change our funding plan or how we will be utilizing hybrids as they remain a permanent part of our capital stack. However, the decision will reduce the administrative burden and fees without affecting our capital market access.

Turning to Slide 14. I will introduce the dividend policy within our capital allocation principles. Our capital allocation principles remain unchanged and are in a ranked order. Firstly, to have a strong balance sheet, targeting an FFF to adjusted net debt above 30%, which is aligned with solid investment grade rating, as I just mentioned. Secondly, to reinstate the dividend for the financial year 2026 as we have committed to. And thirdly, a disciplined approach to pursue value-creating opportunities for further growth. Finally, we will consider the shareholder remuneration should we be overcapitalized after 2027.

As previously communicated, we target to reinstate the dividend as part of the financial year 2026 with the first payout in 2027. This dividend policy will replace the previous one and the policy will apply for the financial years '26 to '28. The dividend amount will be announced together with the annual report for 2026 in February '27 and formerly proposed by the Board of Directors when calling for the Annual General Meeting in 2027. We believe that within total shareholder returns, we can create more value through earnings growth rather than through higher dividend yield as the fundamentals and outlook for offshore wind across our core markets are strong. As such, the initial dividend level will be set reflecting: one, our continued commitment to a strong capital structure aligned with a solid investment-grade rating; two, the ongoing investments into 8.1 gigawatts offshore wind construction program through '27. That includes, of course, the DKK 90 billion of capital committed through 2026 and 2027.

Three, the uncertainties regarding the ongoing regulatory risk for offshore wind in the U.S. together with ongoing legal and arbitration proceedings. And four, our opportunities to invest into new value-creating growth. Within this policy, the dividend amount is expected to start at a modest level and increase each year.

As part of our second quarter '26 consensus, we received 13 contribution on dividend per share for '26 ranging from DKK 2 a share to DKK 5 a share. And while no decisions have been made at this point in time, we currently expect that the starting point of our dividend distribution to be in the lower part of this range.

Finally, let's turn to Slide 15 and our outlook for '26. With the operational performance and progress in -- on our construction portfolio, in line with expectation for the second quarter, we maintain our full year EBITDA guidance, excluding new partnerships and cancellation fees of more than DKK 28 million. We still expect offshore wind -- offshore business to come in higher than last year and onshore in line with '25. We have changed the directional guidance for bioenergy and other from -- in line to lower due to the lower contribution from ancillary services and a provision related to our gas storages in second quarter in '26. On CapEx, we maintain our gross investment guidance for '26 of DKK 50 billion to DKK 55 billion.

And with that, we will now open for questions. Operator, please.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Casper Blom from Danske Bank.

And the first question from my side goes to the slide Trond Westlie almost just presented about capital allocation. And the point about potential rebalancing measures if overcapitalized post 2027. I assume this is a point that you've put in, in order to address the potential situation that you run out of projects to construct when done with the current construction portfolio. I was wondering if you could give any kind of indication as to when you would regard the balance sheet as being overcapitalized? Is there a certain level of debt-to-EBITDA or FFO, whatever measure you would be looking at? Where you would say, okay, now we need to start returning cash somehow to shareholders?

Casper, thank you very much. As Trond also alluded to, we obviously have a prioritization -- implicit prioritization in our capital allocation principles where rebalancing is #4 of the 4. We are -- I am quite bullish about our potential for laying the foundation for profitable growth for our shareholders. We see ourselves as a growth company. We have set a new strategic direction last year. During the first 18 months of our turnaround plan, we have, which is also evident from this quarter, continued to deliver according to plan across all of the 4 priorities that we have as part of the updated strategy it. There is nothing that I have seen in -- or let me put it differently, everything that I have seen, especially in Europe on the offshore wind side during the last 18 months have only made me more confident in the attractiveness of the market going forward while obviously continuing to have a razor-sharp focus on value and a very disciplined bidding on our side.

So if I look at the opportunities in all of our core markets, there are sort of 5 as an example, tenders coming up during the next 12 months, all with frameworks that make sense to us broadly speaking, there is ample opportunity for us to achieve sufficiently profitable growth for our shareholders. Hence, also the guidance on a dividend that Trond gave before. So sort of speculating more into the future on potential metrics one day that would make you rebalance is very premature from my perspective.

The next question comes from the line of Kristian Tornøe from SEB.

I am just curious to get your view on the outcome of the Danish auction we saw recently. I mean from my side, it's difficult to conclude anything else that [indiscernible] was fairly aggressive in its bid. And obviously, this is interesting in regard to the comments you made several times, Rasmus, about value creation. So the centralized auction, I mean, do we need a change the competitive environment before you would actually be able to win capacity with the right value creation?

Thanks, Kristian. So first of all, when we look at new opportunities, new tenders, whether it's centralized tenders, proprietary tenders or whether it's project-specific M&A, we obviously both look at the strategic fit for us, and we also look at value. And obviously, Denmark is one of our core markets, and it is an attractive market for offshore wind. And the Danish politicians has, in many ways, provided a very good framework for the tenders.

That being said, when you allocate capital of this magnitude, projects that are 5, 6 years before commissioning, after that, they will be there for, let's say, 30 years, you will obviously need to be very disciplined in in your requirements to also value. And we are -- and that also goes for opportunities in Denmark.

As I said before, we are -- if there is one place I am bullish, it is on the prospects for being able to to get to that profitability in our core markets in Europe. I'm not going to speculate on the specific outcomes and bid levels in individual auctions. That is -- I focus on what we put forward ourselves. And I said, we put forward at a disciplined bid with a focus on value.

The next question comes from the line of Alberto Gandolfi from Goldman Sachs.

I am curious to see if you are willing to disclose how much is your work in progress. So how much CapEx have you spent for assets that give 0 contribution to your P&L and cash flow? And one of the reasons I'm asking is I'm trying to understand from a valuation perspective, but also your return on capital employed has an extremely conservative definition because you have all this CapEx spent with no contribution to the P&L. I'm trying to understand how from about 6.5%, you can go back to above 13%. And if you could disclose that figure that would be very helpful.

We don't distinguish on our working capital level at that level, Alberto. So there is -- I don't have a sort of a number in my head relative to how that sort of sort of debt capital in our balance sheet relative to the return on capital employed. So...

Can I try a logic to see if it makes any sense. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

I am ready.

And apologies about that. No, I was thinking that it takes 2.5, 3 years or sometimes longer to build offshore. So if you have DKK 50 million, DKK 55 billion CapEx per annum, is it reasonable to assume that your work in progress is perhaps 12 to 18 months of CapEx, some excluding onshore and so on? Would that be, you think, a crazy assumption on my side?

I think it -- that assumption is a bit sort of broad in sense because that also depends whether or not we have a construction agreement or sort of -- if you take Baltica 2 50-50 agreement. On Sunrise, that would be right. on, for example, on Hornsea 3, it would not be right. We do have 100% of the CapEx in there, but part of the funding coming from our partner. So I would suggest that you take that discussion with the IR department, Alberto, to come closer on your logic.

We now have a question from the line of Louis Boujard from ODDO.

Just wanting to bridge maybe a little bit H2 EBITDA that should be expected considering your guidance of DKK 28 billion. I understand and I appreciate that you feel quite comfortable with your guidance at EBITDA level, but we need to make sure that apparently, I would expect that you need to post DKK 13 billion of EBITDA in the second half to be compared to EUR 11 billion that you posted last year. We know that you have some commissioning that are expected. But at the same time, I think that some of these assets are supposed to already contribute at the moment because they're already very close to the commissioning date. So I would like to know if there is any sensitivity on your guidance potentially on the wind regime. Do you think that eventually a relatively, I would say, low wind regime in Q3, but most likely Q4 because Q3 is natural would eventually put in your the guidance for this year?

When it comes to our guidance, you're absolutely correct that the the first half has been slightly better than we have expected. That is mostly due to the wind and price, but also as a negative element in -- specifically in the second quarter in bio, slight negative. When we do our guidance, we do guide on the average wind element. So we do not sort of set our guidance up relative to speculation about the wind elements. We do the guiding on the basis of sort of the average. So when it comes to the element, yes, we are in a good position to deliver on our '26 guidance of more than '28. But there is also uncertainties relative to development and also some sort of percentage of completion elements, time elements and other elements that is of decent amount of uncertainty. And therefore, we're holding the more than 28% stable.

The next question comes from the line of Dominic Nash from Barclays.

Previously, I think you responded saying that you described offshore wind as a buyer's market when you were selling assets into it. But given the recent auction outcomes, particularly in the Danish, I think, DKK 67 to DKK 73 megawatt hour, which I think is quite a low return. Is it now more attractive to acquire projects and seabed positions from third parties rather than sort of bidding for them organically? And on that, are you seeing a pipeline of potential attractive seabed leases or partially developed projects coming in as big oil is reappraising its positions or some of the early expansion and exuberance we heard from sort of 3, 4 years ago starts to unwind? And where do you think the most compelling areas for this is?

Thank you very much, Dominic. We see 3 avenues for growth for us. It is centralized tenders -- it is the proprietary auctions in the U.K. as an example, Korea as an example, Australia as an example. And then we see what I sort of choose to call project-specific M&A. So not -- obviously not corporate M&A of any sense, but basically where you enter into a partnership with someone or entirely take over a project that has been won by others or developed by others in one shape or form, but well ahead of FID. Those are the 3 avenues for growth that we are working with and in the sense, it always have been for as long as I can remember.

I'm not going to speculate on or share my view on, as I said before, winning clearing levels at individual bids that can be in Denmark. It could have been AR 6, AR 7, it can be in Poland. It is for you -- it is for all of us to just take a look at the numbers.

What I can say is that we see a healthy balance starting to emerge in the market, both in my view, when it comes to competitiveness or competition between developers, there are fewer than what we saw 3, 4, 5 years ago, where we also had a lot of of oil majors in the mix, and there are predominantly companies that sort of have significant experience working with offshore wind and therefore, also typically looking at the projects in a sort of through the same lens.

What is very important from a competition perspective is to ensure that we have frameworks that allow competition to play out. And that is what we continue the sort of that's the discussion we continue to have with the regulators across Europe that you allow competition to play out like you just saw in the Danish tender where you had bidder for -- sorry, 5 bidders for [indiscernible] and you had 2 bidders for the [indiscernible] because that allows a healthy competition. So of course, you should take that comment also in the context of the sort of draft regulatory frameworks that we are seeing in many of our core markets, including in Germany.

On the M&A side, I'm not going to be more specific. We see a healthy balance. We see several opportunities coming to market, and we assess what comes, and we have 3 avenues of growth.

The next question comes from the line of Harry Wyburd from BNP Paribas.

I wanted to ask -- get into a bit of detail on the German offshore wind auction. So the government released the framework, 2-stage framework. Is that framework sufficient given the push by you and the industry for more CFD structured auctions? And is that an auction framework that you think you could work with and would be a good template for other countries to adopt in Europe?

Thank you very much, Harry. So as I have said before, in terms of templates, I think the approach to tendering out offshore wind that we see in the U.K. remains a very good model. When I look at basically the latest draft framework that we sort of very recently received from the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy, there are clearly highlights in that. It is encouraging for me to see that the expansion targets for offshore wind remain unchanged in Germany, so 30 gigawatts by 2030, 40 gigawatts by 2035 and 70 gigawatts by 2045.

I'm also encouraged by the fact that it is a return to CfDs to 2-way CfDs that was, in our view, sort of about time to be a bit blunt in Germany. It's a very attractive market for offshore wind, and we are very pleased to see the return to 2-sided CfDs. There are always mechanics in frameworks that can sort of -- where we would have done it differently. And we will take that in the dialogue we have as part of the market hearing. I think that is the best forum for that. I'm not going to comment on the caps of DKK 94 and DKK 96 with an opportunity to increase with up to 35%. I'm just going to leave that on commented for now. But just overall, say that we are pleased with the direction of travel that we see in Germany.

The next question comes from the line of Ahmed Farman from Jefferies.

Trond, maybe this is a question for you. I was just wondering whether we can get an update from you on the dynamics of the ITC market in the U.S. Obviously, we have seen some seabed leases since then. Your projects have moved further. And as you're sort of highlighting today, they are progressing according to plan. So I just wanted to see if anything that has either changed your view or anything you see in the market in terms of the broader health of the market and monetization of [indiscernible].

When it comes to the sort of the tax credit process, as I said in the last quarter, we have established the structure, the advisers, so moving along on time elements of the structure on the tax credits. So the development from last quarter is that the markets itself have become slightly more positive relative to certain areas of the U.S. business is is doing better that are used to using the tax credits. So the marketing phase of the tax credits has been slightly better than what we have planned for. So when it comes to Revolution, that is in good progress. When it comes to Sunrise, that marketing process has not started yet. So we are in the process of assembling the structure on Sunrise and also doing the administration and sort of the back office work to get it established in the right fashion. So when it comes to the marketing elements on Sunrise, that has not started. But revolution is going well ahead.

So can I ask just a quick follow-up. When do you expect the marketing process on Sunrise to start?

The likelihood of that starting is not until beginning of '27.

We now have a question from the line of Olly Jeffery from Deutsche Bank.

My question is around if we think about your EBITDA towards the end of this decade when you finish construction projects that you currently have on your books and then there being a bit of a gap until you potentially have new projects. You potentially could be involved in auctions in Belgium and the Netherlands later this year. And my the COD for those is potentially '31, 2032. I would just be keen to kind of get your sense of gap would you be willing to tolerate kind of flattish EBITDA growth in absence of new projects? Or would you look to more try and look in the M&A market on a project basis to try and bridge some of that gap? And your thoughts on that would be great.

Thanks a lot, Olly, absolutely. So if we just take one step back first and just look at our growth profile, right now, as we have also discussed today, we remain on track to deliver on our guidance for this year of EBITDA of more than DKK 28 million. And we have a guidance for next year of an EBITDA of more than DKK 32 million we delivered a little bit more than 25 last year. In other words, the growth that we are seeing right now on our EBITDA in '26 and '27 expectedly is very, very significant. It is sort of plus 10% growth at least, especially a bit more next year across both years. So we are looking at a few years now where we're on the back of sort of executing on our 8.1 gigawatt construction sort of program, which is a lot and also more than I would expect we would have any time soon in the future. We are seeing very significant growth. Relative to that, you are, of course, right that our growth will -- in the most relevant scenarios flatten in the years on the other side. So the back end of this date.

Okay. That being said, as I have said a few times, if there's anywhere we are bullish, it is for the long-term prospects, and mid- to long-term projects for offshore wind in Europe. And if we just take sort of the bucket of growth that I have talked about before, which is the centralized tenders, that's sort of the easiest one to talk to in this regard. Then you are very much seeing potential CODs in the early in many of the opportunities that could potentially be relevant. So if you look at sort of just look at the tenders that are coming, look at it factually without reading anything into where we may or may not be. The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, the U.K. and Taiwan are 5 countries where there are tenders coming up the next 12 months, all of those [indiscernible] plus/minus will be with CODs in the early 30s sort of roughly again plus/minus on the same time line as we saw for the Danish bids.

So there is a lot of opportunity out there still, and we remain very confident and very convinced that we will get our fair share of the profitable growth. In terms of sort of managing the gap, as we you mentioned before. There is not a scenario where we will sacrifice value in our capital allocation to sort of fuel the machine, if you will. We have, of course, this challenge is not new to us. We have -- this was part of our strategic thinking also last year. We have mapped our capabilities throughout the entire organization. We have a very firm view on how we will manage that at those years. And again, it is very subject to outcome of tenders, proprietary and centralized and also a potential project specific M&A. This is the long game, and we are convinced about mid- to long-term growth.

We have now a question from the line of Peter Bisztyga from Bank of America.

Maybe sort of following on from that previous question. You've previously mentioned that you've got 6 or 7 gigawatts of safe harbor equipment for onshore wind, solar and other technologies [indiscernible], I guess, in the U.S. And just sort of -- I think in previous calls, you sort of mentioned that some of those projects are -- could be advanced towards FID. Just sort of wondering what is the status of that endeavor? Why do you not see sort of the U.S. onshore business as potentially one of the things that could help bridge this kind of growth pocket as people like to call it in the last part of this decade.

Thank you very much, Peter. We have, as you also referenced, we have a solid pipeline -- development pipeline of opportunities in our U.S. onshore business for the years to come. We have 6 to 7 gigawatts of capacity that meet the IRS definition of qualification through '29. And our development portfolio consists of a mix of solar, wind and also storage. And I would say, near term, our near-term portfolio is probably weighted more towards solar. We recently achieved COD on all 300 bids, so 250-megawatt battery in Texas. And we also COD [indiscernible] wind in Q1. So we continue to grow our U.S. onshore business, and it's going well.

The fundamentals for onshore and U.S. are good as has also been widely referenced in the market. We -- in terms of our strategic direction, it is, as I have said before, our key focus in our capital allocation will be on offshore wind, predominantly in Europe, that -- nothing has changed in that regard. As I also have said, I am more convinced than for a very long time about the prospects for offshore wind in Europe when I look at what has happened in the last 18 months. We have separated our U.S. onshore business out in running in a sort of a separate entity. Finalized that last year, and it's going really well, and we have a solid business. We have growth opportunities and the team is delivering really well.

Okay. So maybe -- sorry, just a follow-up. I mean, is it reasonable to assume that we could have some contribution from the U.S. onshore pipeline within the next 2, 3, 4 years?

We have an organization. We don't guide on volume. As you know, we guide on value. So I'm not going to throw out gigawatt ambitions or targets per year, also not for the U.S. onshore business. But we have a pipeline and we have a team and we have an organization that has opportunity to grow in the coming years.

The next question from the line of Jenny Ping from Citi.

A couple of operational-related questions, please. If I look at the Changhua 2b and 4 projects in terms of progress, you are still quite far out '22 out, I think, from being able to fully energize -- and the progress versus 1Q seems to be quite slow relative to what you have achieved previously. I just wondered whether there's anything to read into there? And then separately, looking at Revolution, you've installed incrementally, I think, one turbine within the last quarter. But obviously, I guess the majority of the effort has been going on to energizing and powering what you have. Is there any holdup in terms of vessels on the last few installation? And then just lastly, on Hornsea 3, what's the latest around the sort of progress with National Grid in order to hit the target? If you can give us a little bit of detail there, that would be great.

Absolutely, Jenny, thanks a lot. So if we take them one by one, Changhua first or let me lift it up quickly before. All of the 3 projects that you referenced, so Changhua 2b and 4, Revolution and Hornsea 3 are moving forward according to plan, both on schedule and also on cost, just to be very clear. If we take Changhua first, the degree of completion is now 85%. We have achieved first power on all turbines at Changhua 4. As you remember, the key focus for us has been on Changhua 2b on the export cable, so Changhua 2b is 24 out of the 66 turbines and Changhua 4 is [indiscernible] of the 66 turbines. But on 2b, our focus has been on repairing the export cable, and that is what is, as we have said last time also is pushing us to the back end of Q3 in terms of COD. And that was predominantly around getting the vessel on site. And everything is going according to plan in that regard. The [ Kalypso ] vessel, it is called from [ Fanor ] is now on site. And they are actually -- we're actually fixing the joint on the export cable as we speak. It's always, at this point, this time of year in Taiwan, you have the typhoon season, there is a -- sort of a bit of a [indiscernible] on the weather windows. And this week, it looks good. So we are active right now. And then we expect to energize the [indiscernible] very soon. And then on the back of that, we need to commission the remaining 24 turbines at Changhua 2b that have been installed.

So everything we're working hard. The team is doing an excellent job, but we are moving forward according to plan, and we expect COD at the back end of Q3. On Revolution Wind, the degree of completion is 95%. And of course, if you compare it with the 94% of last quarter, of course, it's not that I don't understand your question. We are now at 61 turbines installed. But just as a reminder, we basically stopped a turbine installation on Revolution Wind earlier in the year and moved the vessel [indiscernible] to Sunrise. And that vessel has now installed 20 turbines on Sunrise, and that's going quite well.

And now we have returned the vessel to Revolution, and it has now installed 1 of the remaining 5 turbines, so we are at 61. And then we expect to install the remaining in Revolution in the coming weeks and months. So therefore, also here moving forward according to plan and the vast majority of the 65 turbines have first power. On Hornsea 3, also, if you just take it from the top first, it's going really well on construction progress with a degree of completion of 30%, up from 25%, 43 monopiles installed, second offshore converter station to be installed, first one1 already in. So sort of preparing for turbine installation in the second -- in Q4 '26. It's a huge project, but it is going forward according to plan. Specifically regarding the reinforcement work at the north main station that we talked about before, very much in the last quarter. It's also moving forward according to plan. We are working closely with the National Grid and the expectation is that the back feed [indiscernible] will happen during September, which is also as we had planned. The risk is not sort of -- the risk has not gone away, obviously. We continue to stay very closely and work very closely together with National Grid. But based on what we have seen since we spoke last time, we have, as of now, a good feeling about the backfeed date being reached as planned.

We have now a follow-up question from the line of Ahmed Farman from Jeffries.

Just broadly, just at a high level, anything specific on the U.S. policy around tariffs or any sort of Section 232 related issues that are on your mind that could be for the second half of this year? Or is that a fairly sort of clear path right now? I'm obviously thinking more about Sunrise in?

When it comes to the tariff updates, they did have a deadline or time line relative to beginning of August now. I believe it was the 8th. What we hear is that we would likely not hear anything or see anything on the 232 until at least September. So we are unsure -- uncertain on whether the tariffs. So as of now, our preliminary evaluation relative to 50% tariffs on the parts that has been sort of a part of the understanding for quite some time is still in our estimates. On other things on the U.S. no, nothing -- nothing has moved ahead. So it has been sort of quiet for a period.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Rasmus Errboe for any closing remarks.

Thank you all very much for joining. As always, we appreciate the interaction and the interest. And if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate. Our IR team will be here to answer any one of them. Thank you. Stay safe, and have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Ørsted Interim Report for the First Quarter of 2026 Conference Call. I'm Sergen, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] And the conference being recorded. [Operator Instructions] At this time, it's my pleasure to turn over to Group President and COO, Rasmus Errboe; and CFO, Trond Westlie. Speakers, please begin.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call.

As the world enters its second energy crisis in only 5 years, it is clear that dependence on imported fossil fuels comes at an unacceptably high price for society. Recent events in the Middle East have increased volatility in global energy markets and led to higher energy prices threatening to affect both growth and disposable income. And even if hostilities are rapidly brought to a halt, we can expect the global energy supply and energy markets to take a long time to normalize.

Energy security has become crucial to ensure the resilience and sovereignty of nations around the globe. This is particularly the case for Europe, where the vulnerability and costs associated with dependence on fossil energy imports are unsustainable. The solution is at hand, increase electrification of industry and transport, create a coherent European energy system and accelerate the build-out of renewable energy, not least offshore wind.

Over the past years, we have advocated for strengthened investment certainty for offshore wind through supportive regulatory frameworks. We are now pleased to see positive and concrete changes to policies and regulations, both at regional and national level. With the offshore wind investment pack from January 2026, 9 heads of state agreed on a coherent approach to the build-out of up to 300 gigawatts of offshore wind in the North Sea by 2040, together with industry and transmission system operators, of course.

Concrete changes to regulatory frameworks have taken place at national level, including in the U.K., where the budgets for new offshore wind projects in the recent allocation round 7 were increased. In Denmark, a contract for different (sic) [ difference ] scheme was introduced for the upcoming auction, and we are also seeing a shift towards the so-called CfDs in other European countries, including Belgium and the Netherlands.

At Ørsted, we will continue to work with governments and industry to provide solutions to enable the acceleration of renewable energy. To this end, we launched a paper titled Facts over Perception: The Real Value of Offshore Wind at the recent Wind Europe Conference in Madrid. In the paper, we outlined the benefits that renewables and in particular, offshore wind bring to Europe, and we clarify that an electricity system based on renewables is significantly more affordable than the fossil fuel-based alternative. We show that renewables with offshore wind as a significant component can reduce annual fossil fuel imports by more than 30% of 2024 import levels.

The paper also shows that offshore wind together with other renewables can reduce total European electricity system costs by up to 30% by 2040, as the integration costs of solar and wind are small compared to the large savings from reduced use of fossil fuels in power generation.

And finally, the paper shows that an investment level into offshore wind in line with the ambitions outlined in the offshore wind investment pack can cut annual carbon emissions in Europe by approximately 20% compared to 2023 levels.

In Ørsted, we will contribute by continuing to deliver on our business plan and become a more focused, competitive and stronger company that is ready to selectively invest in the most value-creating opportunities over the coming years to remain the global leader in offshore wind.

Let's continue to Slide 5 and an update on the strategic priorities and operational performance for the first quarter. We continue to progress on the 4 strategic priorities that we introduced in the beginning of 2025. Our first priority is to strengthen our capital structure. And with the completion of the rights issue in 2025 as well as the signing and closing of the transactions in our partnership and divestment program during '25 and early '26, we have delivered strong progress on this.

In late April, we closed the divestment of our European onshore business, and this will be reflected in our accounts for the second quarter. Likewise, we still expect the divestment of a 55% stake in our Greater Changhua 2 project to close in the third quarter of 2026 following the commissioning of the Greater Changhua 2b and 4 project.

Our second priority is to deliver on our 8.1 gigawatt offshore wind construction portfolio. We have achieved significant milestones during the quarter, which includes the delivery of first power at Revolution Wind as well as a successful installation of the first turbines at Sunrise Wind. I will shortly go through the details of the construction progress across the portfolio.

Our third priority is to ensure a focused and disciplined approach to capital allocation, where our focus going forward primarily will be on offshore wind in Europe and select markets in APAC. With the measures we have taken to strengthen our capital structure and financial foundation, we are in a position to pursue new value-creating opportunities within offshore wind.

Our fourth priority is to improve our competitiveness, and we are progressing as planned on numerous measures. This includes the initiatives within our trading and revenue function as well as our generation organization. In addition, we are delivering according to plan on our announced adjustments to our organization, so it will become more efficient and more flexible.

Turning to the operational highlights of the first quarter. I am pleased with the operational performance. Our EBITDA, excluding new partnerships and cancellation fees amount to DKK 9.5 billion for the first quarter, which is an increase of more than 10% compared to the first quarter of 2025. This was driven by ramp-up generation in offshore wind and also slightly higher than normal wind speeds. The performance was also supported by the good availability rates within our offshore business, which stood around 93% for the quarter.

The renewable share of generation stood at 98%, slightly lower than the level for the first quarter of 2025 due to higher gas usage at our power stations following the colder weather conditions.

When it comes to safety, while there was an increase in our total recordable injury rate of around 11% in the first quarter, we remain on track to deliver on our target for the full year. Safety remains a top priority for us and our employees, and we continue to strengthen our safety commitments through targeted initiatives and sharing of best practices with suppliers, all aimed at preventing incidents and bringing our people home safe every single day. We have consecutively reduced our total recordable injury rate over the past 4 years, and we will continue working towards reducing it again this year.

Let's turn to Slide 6 and an overview of our construction projects. I will cover the more advanced projects individually and in more details as usual on the next slides, while putting a few remarks on the remainder of the construction portfolio here.

For Borkum Riffgrund 3, we are continuing the commissioning of turbines with 80% of the turbines having produced first power. Following adverse weather conditions for commissioning works during the first quarter, combined with ongoing unplanned grid outages from the transmission system operator and grid curtailment, the commissioning and testing of the turbines have progressed slower than planned and the full commissioning of the project is now expected in the third quarter of 2026. All foundations and turbines are installed and with the high share of turbines that have delivered first power, combined with the higher-than-assumed power prices, the slight commissioning delay only has a marginal financial impact.

For Baltica 2, the project continues to progress as planned and has, as of last week, achieved a significant milestone with the installation of the first monopile foundations. With the solid progress during the past quarter, the degree of completion has increased to 30%, up from 25% last quarter. This includes further progress in the fabrication of foundations with all foundations for turbines and offshore substations completed and nearly half of the turbine foundations ready for load out at the Harbour site. The manufacturing of the structures for the offshore substations is complete. Tests are ongoing for electrical equipment and all 4 top sites will be transported to the site for installation in the second half of this year.

Fabrication of the export cables and the array cables are also progressing as planned. The onshore buildings are finalized. Majority of electrical equipment are in process of being installed and the onshore export cable installation is on schedule. In the coming period, the installation work of turbine and substation monopile foundations will continue.

For Hornsea 3, we have made significant progress. We have commenced the installation of turbine foundations, pulled the export cable onshore to meet its onshore counterpart and successfully installed the first of the project's 2 offshore converter stations. With these achievements, the project is now approximately 25% complete, up from 10% at the fourth quarter of 2025.

As we have noted in the past, the project is dependent on timely connection to the transmission grid in circumstances where several renewable energy projects are currently under construction. We have collaborated closely with National Grid Electricity Transmission and also National Grid Electricity System Operator, NESO. Regarding the timing of the grid connection in order to keep first power and commissioning on track. However, National Grid have informed us of a grid connection delay, which impacts our critical path by up to 2 months, resulting from National Grid's enabling and reinforcement works at the Norwich Main substation, where Hornsea 3 is due to connect to the U.K. transmission system.

While we have been able to absorb the majority of the delay within the project's contingency, we now anticipate first power in Q1 2027 and commissioning in the 6-month period between Q4 '27 and Q1 '28. We will continue to work with National Grid as they work to minimize the delay and mitigate any further delays from occurring and impacting the schedule.

We expect minor financial implications as it is primarily a shift of ramp-up generation and slightly higher project costs that are absorbed within the typical variance of project budgets during the construction phase. Remaining construction work continues to progress, both onshore and offshore with other key milestones on schedule.

Turning to Slide 7 and an update on our Greater Changhua 2b and 4 project in Taiwan. With the progress achieved during the quarter, the degree of completion is now at 80%, up from 75% in Q4 '25. The project ensured further progress during the quarter as the installation of array cables has been completed and the cables have been terminated. At this stage, 38 of the 66 turbines have been commissioned and are producing power and the commissioning works of the remaining turbines is ongoing.

The project remains focused on the installation and energization of the export cable, which will resume works to replace the export cable for the Greater Changhua 2b section. Onshore works related to this is ongoing and the replacement work offshore will commence later this quarter. The project remains on schedule for commissioning during Q3 2026.

Turning to Slide 8 and an update on our Northeast program, starting with Revolution Wind. During the first quarter, the project continued to progress and achieved a significant milestone as the project achieved first power in March. The project has currently installed 60 of the 65 turbines, and we intend to install the remaining 5 turbines. The project is assessing all available options to complete turbine installations safely and efficiently.

With the progress achieved during the quarter, the degree of completion has now increased to 94%, up from 87% in January '26. At this stage, the project continues to focus on progressing commissioning activities towards full commercial operations in the second half of 2026.

Turning now to Slide 9 and an update on the progress at Sunrise Wind. During the quarter, the project has continued to make progress and achieved an important milestone as the first turbines have successfully been installed. Of the 84 positions, a total of 5 turbines have been installed.

In addition, the installation of the export cable is nearing completion and the far shore section of the export cable was pulled into the offshore converter station and connect -- and joined to the mid-shore section after completing nearshore installation in the fourth quarter last year. With the progress achieved during the quarter, the degree of completion has increased to 47%, up from 45% in January 2026.

In terms of fabrication progress, all turbine foundations remaining to be installed have now been fabricated and are either loaded onto installation vessels or transported to storage ahead of installation. All nacelles, all towers and all blade sets have also been fabricated with only a low number of blade sets awaiting final painting, which will be completed later this year.

On the onshore substation, the second of the 2 circuits have been energized and the commissioning continued to progress according to schedule. In the coming period, the project will continue to progress the installation of turbines and finalize the burial of the offshore export cable.

In addition, installation of turbine foundations will continue as the time of year restrictions lift and the installation of array cables is planned to start during the quarter as well. The project is expected to start commissioning of turbines later this year.

With this, let me hand over the word to you, Trond.

Thank you, Rasmus, and good afternoon, everyone.

Let's start from my side on Slide 11 and the EBITDA for the first quarter of '26. And as always, unless I state otherwise, the numbers I refer to will be in Danish kroner. In the quarter, we had a strong operational performance and delivered EBITDA, excluding new partnerships and cancellation fees of DKK 9.5 billion, which is an increase of more than 10% compared to same quarter last year.

Let me walk you through the main developments. For our offshore business, the overall site's earnings came in DKK 700 million higher compared to last year. The wind speeds in the quarter were slightly higher than the norm and significantly higher than the first quarter of '25. In addition, our earnings benefited from higher power and ROC prices. These effects were partly offset by trading results that despite a good performance over the quarter, were lower than last year as well as step-downs in subsidies at Gode Wind 1 and 2 and Borkum Riffgrund 2.

Earnings within existing partnership increased compared to last year, mainly related to construction agreements at Borkum Riffgrund 3 and Hornsea 3. The other costs within offshore improved mainly from lower fixed costs. In our onshore business, earnings increased by approximately DKK 200 million compared to last year. The increase was primarily due to sale of an early-stage development project in the U.S. onshore and sale and leaseback of land at 3 operational projects located in the U.S. Most of our U.S. onshore projects are built on land leased from third-party landowners, and this transaction is viewed as an optimization of the U.S. onshore portfolio. With our existing partners, we will continue to own and operate the projects.

Within Bioenergy and Other, earnings in our combined heat and power business decreased by approximately DKK 300 million, driven by lower earnings from ancillary services. As a result of increased market entries and auction changes for ancillary services, we see higher competition, which is driving prices downward and lowered the volumes we have sold. This change also means that contribution within the segment will expectedly will be lower going forward.

Let's turn to Slide 12. In the first quarter of '26, we incurred a noncash impairment loss of DKK 1.4 billion across our U.S. offshore and onshore assets, driven by increase in the long-dated U.S. interest rates. On our net profit, the quarter totaled DKK 2.6 billion. While we had a higher EBITDA, the net profit was impacted by 2 noncash accounting impacts being the impairment loss that I just described as well as the tax effect. The main tax effects are a deferred tax equity liability at Revolution Wind and Old 300 BESS as we received initial tax equity contributions during the quarter. The tax effect of that totaling just short of DKK 900 million.

We expect to monetize the majority of the tax credits for the Revolution Wind project via the transferability market, and we will, therefore, not see further impacts on our tax from the Revolution Wind tax credit monetization. On the tax elements, for more detail, I refer you to Note 10 in our quarterly report for more details.

Adjusted for impairments and cancellation fees, our return on capital employed came in at 8.6%, a decrease compared to last year due to a higher capital employed. The reported ROCE came in at 4.6%.

Turning to Slide 13 and our net interest-bearing debt and credit metrics. At the end of Q1, our net debt amounted to DKK 21.3 billion, representing an increase of DKK 2 billion during the quarter. Cash flow from operating activities include contribution from our operational earnings as well as taxes paid and changes in other working capital. This also includes a tax equity contribution related to Revolution Wind as we entered into a tax equity structure with a partner for a portion of the project's tax credits.

Divestments include the sale of a development project in the U.S. onshore and sale and leaseback of land in the U.S., as mentioned before. Our gross investments amounted to DKK 2 billion, reflecting the continued investment into our renewable construction projects.

Our credit metric, FFO to adjusted net debt stood approximately at 42% at the end of the first quarter, which is well in line with our target of more than 30%. The increase is driven by an increase in funds from operation over the last 12 months, the proceeds from the rights issue and closing the Hornsea 3 transaction. At the end of the quarter, we had a total liquidity reserve of more than DKK 115 billion.

Finally, let's turn to Slide 14 and our outlook for '26. With the strong operational performance in the quarter, we maintain our full year EBITDA guidance, excluding new partnership and cancellation fees of more than DKK 28 billion. We still expect the offshore business to come in higher than last year, the onshore and Bioenergy earnings in line with 2025. On CapEx, we also maintain our gross investment guidance for '26 of DKK 50 billion to DKK 55 billion.

And with that, we will now open for questions. Operator, please?

[Operator Instructions] First question coming from Harry Wyburd from BNP Paribas.

I'm afraid it's a bit of a catching one on Iran. So very clear and I think probably shared by a lot of people that Iran is going to provide a significant boost on electrification, which is supportive.

But aside from that, what other effects are you ready for or expecting from the conflicts; and 2, in particular that I'd be interested to hear about. One is, given your portfolio, your hedging and some of the changes you've made in the past to the way you hedge, what exposure would you have to the changes in power prices that you've seen in your regions since earlier in the year?

And then also probably more importantly, how ready do you feel for the inevitable disruption and inflation that's coming in a few months' time? Obviously, that's something that you've perhaps changed your processes around over the last few years. How confident can we be that you would be able to weather not just cost inflation in your supply chain, but also physical disruption and shortages and so on?

Thank you, Harry. So let's take them one by one. If we take the supply chain angle to your question first, we -- the ongoing crisis in the Middle East has a marginal impact on our supply chain across the projects that we are currently constructing. We -- of course, fuel costs are going up, et cetera. But if you look at the totality of the project economics in our 6 projects under construction across 3 continents, it is a marginal effect.

If you look at the power prices, as you also partly hinted to, our business model is basically that we have a very high degree of regulated earnings. And we also hedge to a large extent, the remaining power price exposure we have in our portfolio. So that also means that we have a sort of marginal upside from the power prices spikes that you see across sort of Europe in particular right now. Power prices are now roughly double the level that they were at before the crisis. But again, it doesn't have a meaningful effect on our portfolio simply because of that we have regulated earnings, we have CfDs and corporate PPAs in our portfolio.

Then, of course, on a longer horizon, we, as everybody else, are, of course, looking out for and are sort of considering additional potential disruption, inflation, et cetera. And it is something that is sort of clearly manageable for us with the exposures we have and also something we, of course, can take into account when we decide to move the new opportunities forward. So it is something that we are prepared for.

The next question comes from Peter Bisztyga from Bank of America.

Yes. Can I sort of ask you to sort of maybe expand on the other aspect of that question vis-a-vis electrification. We have this AccelerateEU document from the European Commission a couple of weeks ago. Is there anything concrete in there from your perspective that could be specifically beneficial to your business and offshore wind? Or is it just sort of kind of rehash of previous EC documents? And what kind of would you like to see in EC commentary regarding this whole acceleration of electrification process?

Thank you very much, Peter. Yes, you are right that what the second energy crisis in 5 years makes very evident in our view is the need for a significant ramp-up of renewables across Europe for affordability reasons, for sort of strategic sovereignty reasons, et cetera. So that's obviously very, very clear.

And we also are starting to see very good progress on the regulatory front. You could say Europe are truly sort of at its best when they are under pressure. We saw it in the beginning of this century on the financial crisis. We've seen it on COVID. We've seen it on Ukraine. And we're also, in our view, seeing it now.

I think the North Sea Summit is a good example of that, where you saw 9 member states standing shoulder to shoulder committing to a build-out of up to 300 gigawatts of offshore wind towards 2050. And on top of that, we also see improved regulatory frameworks across several of our key markets, U.K., Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland. And then we are, of course, looking out for Germany in the coming months.

Specifically on the AccelerateEU that you are alluding to, in our view, it rightly places electrification and renewable deployment at the center of Europe's energy security and competitiveness agenda. And this sort of continued focus on grids interconnections and also cross-border infrastructure that is part of the AccelerateEU plan is exactly what we would like to see to sort of install investor confidence in sort of this significant deployment of renewables. That is what we need to see. We need basically predictability.

If you just take one factor and then I'm done on grids more specifically, grid investments in Europe need to double in our view to around DKK 100 billion per year going forward, which will mainly be driven by growing demand and also an aging -- aging our European grid. So that's sort of roughly 75% of the investments, and then partly by increased solar and wind integration as part of the energy mix, that is roughly the remaining 25%. So this massive investment in grid, we are sort of seeing as a need to have, and therefore, we also appreciate the AccelerateEU.

The next question comes from Lars Heindorff from Nordea.

It's more specific on your own activities. You addressed it in your opening remarks about Borkum Riffgrund and Hornsea, and I know there's a compensation for the delay in Borkum. But for Hornsea, just to be clear, you think you mentioned that it was insignificant, but it's still 6 months delay. Just out of curiosity, will you bear the burden for that delay in terms of grid connection for Hornsea 3? Or how is the structure of that deal?

Lars, just to be clear, it is not a 6-month delay. So what is -- so the facts are that on the back of the sort of dialogue we have had with National Grid, which, by the way, have been sort of good and open and constructive. We have decided to adjust our expectations for COD of Hornsea 3 with up to 2 months.

So therefore, when you look at what we are sort of communicating, we are basically saying that instead of having an expectation for COD sometimes during H2 2027, we have to be cautious, updated the guidance so that you can expect COD sometimes during Q4 '27 and Q1 '28. So we have moved it, you can say, with 3 months. But as I said, we expect up to a 2 months delay.

And just to be clear, the financial impact on the business case, if you will, here, is assessed to be minor for us. Everything that is within our control is moving forward exactly according to plan. And then, of course, you can expect sort of minor impacts to the earnings profile between '26, '27 and '28. But again, as of now, assessed to be manageable and assessed to be minor.

And then you had an additional question. And it is -- and that is in terms of sort of who bears the burden. It is a developer risk. It is us who bears the risk of delays on grid in the U.K. That is the framework we have. That is the same for all developers, and it has been like that for as long as I can remember.

The next question comes from Alberto Gandolfi from Goldman Sachs.

I wanted to ask you, when do you think you'll be in a position to actually materially step up investments? When can you deploy capital? Is it when Sunrise starts operations? Or do you think this could be done a bit earlier because you sense perhaps a change in stance by the U.S. administration, considering that it is not a pre injunction and considering that there have been deals on seabed. So can you maybe talk about growth in the context of pending regulatory risk in the U.S.?

Thank you, Alberto. So yes, first of all, we have firm ground under our feet on our capital structure. As you know, we have delivered on our plan. It is one of our 4 strategic priorities. The equity raise went as planned. We have outperformed on our farm-down program, raised DKK 47 billion relative to the more than DKK 35 billion we had expected. And we have farm-down under our feet on our capital structure. We are -- part of it all along has, of course, also been that we are putting ourselves in a position where we can invest, and that is also the case now.

So that will mean that if you look at Europe as an example, there is no doubt that you are starting to see a rather significant step-up in relevant offshore wind opportunities with the right frameworks in our core markets. And we will, of course, assess them one by one with a razor sharp focus on value more than anything.

I don't guide sort of specifically on volume because it's not the way we think we focus on value, and we will only move forward what we believe is where it needs to be in that regard. But we are there and we are ready to selectively invest in our core markets.

Then specifically with respect to sort of the U.S. regulatory risk that you are alluding to, I would say we move forward here as planned ever since day 1 of this situation, if you will, we have had a focus on -- we've had a legal track, we've had a dialogue track, and we are focusing on delivering on our construction across 2 projects. And I am satisfied with the fact that they are both moving forward exactly according to plan with degrees of completion now of 94% for Revolution Wind and 47% for Sunrise.

So of course, we have made a 3-year turnaround plan for us that we are 5 quarters into the plan. We will continue to deliver on the plan quarter-over-quarter. And of course, when we come out on the other side, we will, of course, have even more headroom to invest should the right opportunities be there.

The next question comes from Mark Freshney from UBS.

Trond, I was intrigued when you mentioned that you've got some tax equity done on Revolution. We spoke about this before. There are some stop orders still technically in place on the U.S. projects, which may make it more tricky. And I understand that there's about DKK 25 billion that you would hope to get through ITC credits. Can you give us any more color on the quantum of what you've managed to do on Revolution and the confidence you would have on tax equity there?

And if I may ask a question on the U.S. onshore business. It seems that I think you've got some BESS under construction. and some European projects under construction, which will go with the transaction that you announced. But it seems that onshore business has very, very little under construction and some of the opportunities, U.S. onshore are very good in solar and BESS. So can you talk about what might be on the horizon there and growth in that business?

Well, Mark, thank you for that. When it comes to the tax equity plan, we are following it as we have been planning for quite some time. So the agreement with the partner came in just before first power as it needed to be. And we are progressing with the plans. And will start the -- to sell the transferability during the remainder of the year.

So -- but when it comes to your numbers on the DKK 25 billion estimate, we have just started with Revolution, which is the smaller part of this. Sunrise will then ramp up during the year and will probably not come into effect late this year or beginning next year. So that's really the plan as a result of the development of the projects.

Coming then...

It seems like you're very well progressed with the plans and you've made excellent progress. Is that fair?

Well, I think we have made the progress that we expected to do. We are, of course, dependent on the market and the market reception relative to find buyers for the transferability. So the political uncertainty in the U.S. still prevails. So yes, we have come to the position and we have planned to be more. And as a result of the uncertainty, we believe that's a good place to be.

And Mark, on the U.S. onshore, just sort of the facts first. So we have an operational portfolio of 6 gigawatts, roughly 3.5 gigawatts wind and 2.5 gigawatts solar and battery. And right now, we have, as you also alluded to, we have Old 300 BESS, 250-megawatt battery under construction. And then earlier during Q1, we COD better wind.

And if you look at it from a development pipeline perspective, we have 6 to 7 gigawatts of capacity that will meet the [ IRS ] definition of qualification through 2029. So a very good and very solid business that continues to deliver for us. And in terms of sort of a forward-looking perspective, we do have a couple of mature projects in our development pipeline that we could very well decide to move towards FIDs during 2026.

And then as you know, we have, over the past 9 months, completed a process of uniting and separating out the U.S. onshore business. So basically making it a stand-alone organization so that we can drive value through lower overhead costs and reduced global and U.S. complexities and also more clear governance. So we are in a good place on our U.S. onshore business.

The next question comes from Ahmed Farman from Jefferies.

Yes. I had a similar question to one of the earlier ones about sort of the medium-term opportunity and the CapEx plan.

On your Slide 34, you have listed almost 7 offshore wind tender auctions that are in 2026. Could you just help us a little bit sort of say a little bit about which one of these are sort of most relevant for Ørsted, where are you best positioned? I would have thought Taiwan, but we would love to hear a little bit more around -- get more color around your positioning into some of these auctions.

Thank you, Ahmed. So at the risk of sounding a little bit annoying, I typically never give any indications as to which tenders we plan to participate in. I prefer to have that conversation after the tender results has come out, and that is still the case.

So if we talk about it more sort of from a framework perspective, the framework in Denmark is sort of twoway CfDs capped, but twoway CfDs, it's a core market. The framework in the Netherlands and Belgium are also moving towards CfD, also part of our sort of European -- core European focus. As you also alluded to, there is a tender coming up, I believe it is in Q3 in Taiwan, also a market that we are active in. And obviously, we will also assess that like we assess the others.

And on top of that, we also have sort of an expectation that during 2027, you would see a significant pickup in relevant tenders in Germany, very likely based on CfDs as well, which we believe is the only right way forward here as well. So you are starting to see across our core markets quite a few relevant tenders for us. And then, of course, the U.K., we have moved -- as we have talked about a few times, we have moved Hornsea 4 back into development. We are moving that forward well and according to plan, and we will be able to participate with that project should we decide to do so from AR9 and onwards. And in addition to that, we are moving forward our other pipeline opportunities in Korea, in Australia, Isle of Man, et cetera. So we are moving our pipeline forward.

The next question comes from Dominic Nash from Barclays.

I'm going to ask a question about decoupling gas and power prices, which I think is a theme going across the whole of Europe. And I'd be interested in your take on the initiatives that we are seeing on potentially adopting carbon -- changes in the carbon price like we've seen with the CPS in the U.K., but potentially elsewhere, whether or not you see further decoupling initiatives in other markets and so clearly on the U.K., where we've had the -- we're going to be -- we have a consultation in the coming weeks. What your thoughts are on the impact of decoupling and of potential CfDs on your brown energy prices in your [indiscernible]?

Thank you very much. So of course, we have noted the debate on sort of decoupling across several of our core markets. And of course, if you just take a fact, if you take Italy as an example, I believe the power prices in Italy during Q1 were around DKK 130 per megawatt hour. And I believe that gas was the price setting technology 89% of the time.

And then if you look at Spain, same period of time, I think the energy prices were around DKK 42 per megawatt hour on average across the first quarter. And here, gas is only price setting at 15% of the time. So of course, we -- of course, we understand the dialogue in some of these markets.

That being said, we do not expect any updates regulatory in our key markets. We also think that there was a pretty firm perspective from the European Commission. It's obviously also a trade-off also between creating the necessary investor certainty. And we do not believe it is the right path forward to change some absolutely essential fundamentals in the power market due to spikes.

The way to solve the affordability challenge for the longer term is to switch the energy system in Europe towards a much larger degree of renewables over time. That is the cheapest solution for society rather than changing the marginal pricing system.

The next question comes from Rob Pulleyn from Morgan Stanley.

I just return to the question of future growth. You obviously mentioned quite a few tenders there, Rasmus. We also talked about onshore. Given, of course, you're executing on a large amount of projects, and I think it's fair to say Ørsted has used a lot of its seabed acreage outside of the United States. Should we also be considering that you may pursue different ways of finding future growth, i.e., would you be open to consolidation farming into other projects, seeking new markets? I noticed you mentioned Australia or outright M&A to restock the growth pipeline given your balance sheet capacity. I'd love to hear the thoughts.

Thank you very much. Our approach to growth within offshore wind is basically split across 3 buckets. And the main bucket, no doubt, when we look forward is actually going to be through tenders because for the reasons you also alluded to that we have discussed on this call that we do see tender frameworks moving very much in the right direction, including an increased willingness to pay in our core markets. So that is -- that is by far -- that is a very relevant growth avenue, probably by far the biggest.

On top of that, we obviously also have a proprietary pipeline. You also alluded to it. We have a proprietary seabed in the U.K. with Hornsea 4. We have it in Korea. We have it in Australia that you also alluded to. So we also have proprietary seabed, and that is also an avenue that we will continue to pursue.

There are also, as an example, in the U.K., there is the next lease round coming up next year also tendering out seabed. I mentioned a few other opportunities also before. So that is also an avenue for us.

And of course, the last one is, you can say, project-by-project M&A. If we do that, we only do it where we can see the value. Obviously, and you should not expect us to sort of go in at projects that are very mature. So it would just be another way to doing development in -- potentially with partners.

From a -- as we have also talked about a few times before, from -- also from a risk management perspective going forward, you can expect that us -- they will, to an increasing extent, be going into partnerships when we develop offshore wind.

The next question comes from Louis Boujard from ODDO BHF.

Maybe just a follow-up on this M&A topic and the potential for partnership. You mentioned in the possibilities to seek for future growth with different projects in which you have already some options, but there is also upcoming option that could be expected eventually in France with some option in terms of partnership. Is it an area that you would eventually look at in the next few months? And is something that where you could eventually find some opportunities going forward considering that in the past, it was not necessarily your core markets?

Thank you, Louis. We will, of course, continue to monitor all offshore wind markets in Europe where we see strong bottom fixed opportunities. And then we will decide on an individual opportunity, taking into account the value and the potential pipeline fit. That is as far as I can take it in terms of new opportunities within Central Europe.

The next question comes from James Carmichael from Berenberg. Cut off line. Okay. Next question comes from Richard Alderman from BTIG.

Can you hear me?

We can.

Just following up on Rob's question just now around different M&A or investment opportunities. Equinor management today in the call earlier on this morning described themselves as a long-term industrial holder, a happy long-term industrial holder of their 10% stake. But -- in a slight change of tone from what they were saying at the full year call, they mentioned 3 times that the offshore industry is in need of consolidation. How do you see that statement in terms of your thoughts around the overall industry?

And as opposed to sort of answering the question that people keep asking around the market around the potential for merger in the long-term, could you consider maybe asset swapping or pulling assets into structures that might create value for you in terms of servicing or operations, cost savings, et cetera?

Thank you, Richard. Richard, I don't want to speculate about potential future M&A asset swaps, consolidation, et cetera. What I can say is that our focus is to deliver on our plan. As I said before, we are sort of 5 quarters into the turnaround, and it is going quite well, and I am very satisfied with the progress we have made.

We are also very pleased to have Equinor as a key shareholder, and we have a very good dialogue with Equinor like we have with all of our key shareholders. So that is basically as far as I can take it. I don't want to speculate in consolidation. I think already now you are seeing that there are fewer relevant players, if you will, on offshore wind in Europe as I see it right now. So the field has already narrowed in the last 3 to 4 years.

Next question comes from Deepa Venkateswaran from Bernstein.

It is a follow-up on some of the markets with upcoming tenders. So more specifically, I wanted to check about South Korea, you have a project Incheon, but I wasn't very sure if it was advanced enough to be eligible to participate in the upcoming auction? Or is this, in your view, further out auction?

Similarly, on Taiwan, more of a clarification. I understand that there's like a floor price of $70 per megawatt hour. But then if you want to price above that, then you need a PPA. And I believe people have been struggling with PPAs in Taiwan. So I just was interested in hearing your comments on these 2 markets.

Deepa, thank you very much. So if we take them one by one, Korea, the short answer is no. We will not -- we don't have any plans to participate in the tender that is ongoing right now. It is too soon for us. We have been granted an electricity business license, it is called an EBL to develop an offshore wind project off the coast of Incheon of up to 1.4 gigawatt. And it's actually moving forward quite well and according to plan. We have completed site investigations, and we are progressing permitting activities so that we can participate in future offshore wind auctions in Korea.

And then as part of that, we have entered into MOUs with KOEN and POSCO for the project and thereby sort of laying the foundation for an equity partnership that would combine our experience and expertise also with KOEN's deep knowledge of Korea's power market. And then with POSCO, it will be to explore opportunities or we have explored opportunities of supplying high-strength steel, et cetera, for the project -- for the EPC part of the project. So you can say the development is moving forward according to plan, and we will assess this once relevant like we do in our other markets.

And then in Taiwan, you are right that it's a bit of a -- how should I put it? It's a bit of a hybrid market. It is a PPA market, but it is a market where you can enter into long-term PPAs that have sort of very similar sort of characteristics with the CfD. We have been quite successful in our own view on the projects we have in Taiwan in entering into long-term corporate PPAs with TSMC. And we, of course, assess, as always, the depth and the pricing and the robustness of the PPA market in the countries we are in. We also do it here, and we are not sort of as such concerned on that part going forward.

If I could just follow-up. Why have so many projects in Taiwan not gone ahead recently, not yours, other people, and they're all saying they're not getting PPAs. So I'm just wondering, is there a disconnect?

Deepa, I don't think it is for me to opine on why other people are not moving forward with their projects. That doesn't feel right.

What I can say is that if we look forward, the tender framework that is being put forward in Taiwan for the upcoming round is sort of based in a way also where local content is a smaller part of it, et cetera. But it is not for me to speak on other people's behalf.

As far as us, the construction for our project is moving forward according to plan on Changhua 2b and 4, and that was also the case broadly on Changhua 1 and 2a. So I think that's as far as I can take it.

The next question comes from James Carmichael from Berenberg.

I think I am not sure I have never -- I was just wanted to go back to the Italian power prices that you referenced. I think it's DKK 130 per megawatt hour. Obviously, quite high when compared to the Spain example. But I guess if I was to put the AR7 prices in there, they'd be towards the top end of the range.

So just -- I know you've guided to 30% cost reductions over the next sort of 10 years or so. But just wondering if there's anything that can be done in the near term to bring offshore wind costs down and obviously [indiscernible] power prices.

Yes. And just to be clear, we are not active in Italy. It was just an example to basically show the impact of renewable penetration relative to gas in terms of the effect of what is the price saving technology in a given market.

But in terms of what is needed to bring down the cost for offshore wind, it is predictability. It is predictability on volumes. It is predictability on tender frameworks. It is standardization, and it is a commitment also from the industry to deliver.

And I do we see -- I do believe that we see actually quite a bit of all of that right now. As an example, on the supply chain front, just the last 3 years, you have seen investments in European supply of around EUR 14 billion across ports, vessels and manufacturing. And you're also seeing companies, including Ørsted, who are strategically focused on being there and build offshore wind in Europe. And I think you have more examples of that. So those are some of the drivers to basically bring down cost for offshore wind towards 2040.

The last question comes from Mark Freshney from UBS.

Sorry, my question has just been answered.

Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Rasmus Errboe for any closing remarks.

Thank you all very much for joining. We appreciate the interaction. We appreciate the interest. And as always, if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out our IR team they will, of course, be here to answer them. Thank you. Stay safe, and have a great day.

Welcome to this Ørsted Q4 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]

The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. Today's speakers are Group President and CEO, Rasmus Errboe and CFO, Trond Westlie, Speakers, please begin.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. 2025 has been a defining year for Ørsted. We have taken significant steps to solidify our financial foundation and improve the robustness of our business. At the outset of the year, we stepped away from our long-term capacity ambitions and established 4 strategic priorities to secure a more focused and competitive [ Ørsted ].

We have sharpened our strategy to focus on maintaining our global leadership position within offshore wind with an emphasis on our core markets in Europe and select markets in APAC, where we have a distinct competitive advantage and can leverage our unique offshore wind capabilities.

As the global leader in offshore wind, we will continue working with governments, industry and investors to strengthen the conditions required to support future offshore wind development. At the recent North Sea Summit in Hamburg Monday last week, Governments in our core markets demonstrated their willingness to strengthen these conditions when they signed the Joint Offshore Wind Investment Pact for the North Sea's alongside the wind industry and transmission system operators. The pact will turn the North Sea into the green power plant of Europe, reaffirming 300 gigawatt of offshore wind capacity by 2050 and charting a path of more evenly distributed offshore build-out between 2031 and 2040 with up to 15 gigawatt installed capacity per year in Europe, which includes a sound investment framework for offshore renewables through mechanisms such as national and cross-border 2-sided contracts for difference.

This will unlock massive investments in Europe in the coming decades and is a giant leap towards powering Europe with renewables, secure and cost competitive electricity. Further, the agreement between the Danish and German government to develop the Bornholm Energy Island will strengthen energy security and deliver enough affordable electricity to power the equivalent of more than 3 million German and Danish homes. The agreement reached at the North Sea Summit are very positive framework developments for future offshore wind opportunities in Europe. And with our focused strategy on offshore wind in Europe, we are ready to invest in the build-out. Throughout 2025, we have executed on our 4 strategic priorities, and these will remain our focus over the coming years. Let me go through our progress across each priority.

Our first priority is to strengthen our capital structure, and we have delivered significant progress on this during 2025. A key part was the completion of the rights issue, and we are thankful for the strong support we received from our shareholders. The completion of the rights issue supports our target of a solid investment-grade rating, and it is -- and it has reinforced our ability to realize the full value potential of our existing portfolio and capture future value-creating offshore wind opportunities. As part of the updated targets presented in connection with the rights issue, we plan to secure more than DKK 35 billion in proceeds through our partnership and divestment program across 2025 and 2026.

The transactions signed during 2025 and early into this year amount to around DKK 46 billion in proceeds, and we have thus exceeded our projections and finalized the program ahead of our expected time line. Pending closing in 2026 of the transactions already signed related to Greater Changhua 2 and our European onshore business, this includes the closing of divestments related to stakes in Hornsea 3, West of Duddon Sands and 3 U.S. onshore projects. Another important element in supporting our capital structure and financial foundation is the continued performance of our operational portfolio. Despite wind speeds below the norm throughout the year, we have delivered DKK 25.1 billion of EBITDA, in line with our guidance.

This is mainly driven by an increase in the availability across our offshore portfolio due to strong performance every single night and day by our generation team. Our second priority is to deliver on our 8.1 gigawatt offshore wind construction portfolio, and we have seen significant progress across the portfolio throughout 2025. Some of the major milestones achieved include the commissioning of Gode Wind 3 as well as delivering first power at Borkum Riffgrund 3 in Germany. And in Taiwan, we have completed the installation of turbines and delivered first power at Greater Changhua 2b and 4.

In the U.S., we have progressed well on several installation scopes, including completing the installation of all 3 offshore substations for our 2 projects. All of these milestones are delivered under complex and dynamic conditions and are attributable to a strong risk and execution management by our EPC organization and our project teams. I will shortly go through the continued construction progress in detail. But first, I want to touch on the lease suspension orders that our 2 offshore -- U.S. offshore projects, Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind received from the U.S. Department of the Interior, BOEM, requiring the projects to suspend all ongoing activities on the Outer Continental Shelf for the following 90 days. Both project companies pursued litigation in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia separately, including motions for preliminary injunctions against the orders while the lawsuits over them proceed.

Revolution Wind's motion for preliminary injunction was granted on January 12, 2026, and Sunrise Wind's motion for a preliminary injunction was granted on February 2, 2026. Both projects have subsequently resumed work of the halted activities while their lawsuits over the orders proceed, and we are determining how it may be possible to work with the U.S. administration to achieve an expeditious and durable solution. Our third priority is to ensure a focused and disciplined approach to capital allocation, always prioritizing value over volume with a strategic emphasis on offshore wind opportunities in Europe and select markets in APAC.

During the year, we demonstrated this disciplined approach in relation to Hornsea 4, which we are now reconfiguring for potential future development. The decision was taken prior to incurring significant breakaway costs, and we continue to hold the seabed lease, grid connection and key permits. In November, we secured the rights under the Irish tender to develop the 900-megawatt fixed bottom offshore wind farm Tonn Nua, alongside with our partner, ESB. As a potential final investment decision will not be until early 2030s, this is an early-stage opportunity and the project needs to be assessed and matured through our stage-gate process, including meeting our value creation criteria. Finally, on our fourth priority, we have also taken steps in improving our competitiveness with the announcements of significant adjustments to our organization.

Due to the sharpened strategic focus of our business going forward and the fact that we'll be finalizing our large construction portfolio in the coming years, we will adjust our organization accordingly to become more efficient and flexible.

Let's turn to Slide 5, where we'll talk through some of the operational highlights for the full year. First, I am pleased with the operational performance with our EBITDA, excluding new partnerships and cancellation fees amounting to DKK 25.1 billion for the full year, driven by strong availability rates within our offshore business, which stood at 93% for the full year. This ensured a material earnings contribution and is an increase of 5 percentage points compared to last year. Also, we delivered a net profit of DKK 3.2 billion, primarily driven by the solid operational performance in the year. For several years, we have had a target that renewables should consist of 99% of our generation by 2025.

And I'm very pleased that we reached this ambition or this ambitious target in 2025. The increased share of renewable was driven by the closing of our last coal-fired CHP plant in the second half of 2024. Furthermore, 2025 was the year where we became the first energy company to complete a green transformation of its own energy production. We have reduced Scopes 1 and 2 emissions intensity by more than 98% since the beginning of our transformation in 2006.

We will continue our decarbonization journey focusing on reducing our upstream and downstream carbon emissions to deliver on our 2040 net zero target. Lastly, with our continued focus on safety, we reduced the total recordable injury rate to 2.5 in 2025 that we reduced our total recordable injury rate, and we continue to strengthen our safety commitments through targeted initiatives and sharing of best practices with suppliers, all aimed at lowering the incident rate and bringing our people home safe every day.

Let's turn to Slide 6 and an overview of our construction projects. I will cover the more advanced projects individually and in more details as usual on the next slide, while putting a few remarks on the remainder of the construction portfolio here. For Borkum Riffgrund 3, all offshore installation works have been completed. The grid connection has been commissioned by the transmission system operator and was announced ready for first feed in early Q4 2025. First power was achieved early December according to plan. Turbine commissioning is ongoing and progressing according to schedule, and the project is expected to be fully commissioned towards the end of Q1 2026.

For Hornsea 3, construction is progressing according to schedule. The onshore works at the landfall cable route and converter stations remain on track. For the offshore scope, the project will be using 2 HVDC offshore converter stations. The first platform is undergoing final equipment installation in Norway, which is progressing well. And the second platform arrived in Norway from the fabrication yard in Thailand in December to complete the same final works.

Our turbine and foundation installation partners have taken delivery of their new build installation vessels, and we have started offshore activities preparing the seabed for export and array cable installation. We continue to closely monitor a number of items related to the delivery of the project. This includes the schedule of the project's grid connection, where we are working closely with National Grid on our onshore grid connection works to support commissioning this year. Further, we continue to focus on manufacturing of turbine monopile foundations to ensure they are delivered according to plan, enabling us to commence installation in spring 2026. The manufacturing has started as planned and 2 suppliers have started to deliver completed monopiles, the first of which have arrived in seaport ready for mobilization.

There are multiple suppliers contracted for the scope. And if relevant, we can utilize the flexibility gained from this to mitigate risks should they occur. Next steps in the project will be the commencement of the main offshore installation activities, starting with the installation of the offshore export cables, the first offshore converter station as well as foundation installation. For Baltica 2, the project is progressing on schedule as we move towards offshore construction. There has been good progress in the recent quarter, and the degree of completion has increased to 25%, up from 15% last quarter.

This includes further progress on the manufacturing of the 4 offshore substations and further fabrication on the turbine foundations with 48 of the 111 turbine foundations fabricated at this stage. The fabrication of the export cable has also commenced. For the onshore substation, majority of the equipment have been delivered to the sites and onshore export cable installation is on schedule, supporting timely grid integration milestones. The project team is focused on ensuring progress of the transmission system, fabrication of the key components and the onshore and offshore substations. Next steps are the preparation of the seabed ahead of turbine foundation installation, which is planned to start during Q2 this year. The installation of the offshore substations will also start towards the end of this year.

Turning to Slide 7 and an update on our Greater Changhua 2b and 4 project in Taiwan. With the progress achieved during the quarter, the degree of completion is now at 75%, up from 65% at Q3. The project achieved a major milestone during the quarter as the installation of turbines was completed for the project. At this stage, 17 of the 66 turbines has been commissioned and are producing power and the commissioning works of the remaining turbines is ongoing. The project remains focused on the installation and energization of the remaining array cables.

At this point, 57 out of the 66 array cables have been installed, and it is the expectation that the remaining array cables will be installed during the first quarter. Also, the project will resume works to replace the export cable for the Greater Changhua 2b section. Onshore work related to this is ongoing and the replacement work offshore will commence during the summer. The project remains on schedule for commissioning during Q3 2026.

Turning to Slide 8 and an update on our Northeast program, starting with Revolution Wind. Despite offshore construction being on pause for 3 weeks due to the suspension order, Revolution Wind continues to make progress, and the degree of completion has increased to approximately 87%, up from 85% in Q3 2024 -- 2025 sorry. During the quarter, all remaining array cables were installed. The export cables, interlink cable and both offshore substations have now been energized. At this stage, 59 of the 65 turbines have been installed. In the coming period, the project will focus on completing installation of the remaining turbines and continue ongoing commissioning activities. First power for the project is expected within weeks.

Turning to Slide 9 and an update on the progress at Sunrise Wind. During the quarter, despite offshore construction being paused for 6 weeks due to the suspension order, the project has made progress illustrated by the degree of completion increasing to 45%, up from 40% in the third quarter.

The first installation campaign of turbine foundations has been completed according to plan with 44 of the 84 turbine foundations installed. Onshore construction and commissioning are progressing well. The onshore portion of the export cable has been installed and jointed and the nearshore section of the export cable was successfully installed. In terms of fabrication, all turbine foundations, array cables and the remaining sections of the export cable are now complete.

All turbine towers and nacelles have been fabricated and the majority of blade sets have been fabricated with the remaining sets progressing according to plan. In the coming period, the project's focus is on resuming halted activities with safety as a top priority. This includes the offshore installation of the mid and far shore section of the export cable. The project is working diligently to maintain the installation schedule, which includes first power in the second half of this year and commissioning of the project in the second half of 2027.

Turning to Slide 10 and an outlook for our deliveries in 2026, to focus on delivering on our strategic priorities over the coming years as this will improve our financial foundation and ensure that we can compete from a position of strength for new offshore wind opportunities in our core markets. Specifically, in 2026, we will continue to have a very significant focus on our generation and ensure that we deliver in line with our expectations. We will be commissioning more than 2.5 gigawatts offshore wind capacity across 3 continents.

And for the remainder of our construction projects, we will continue our efforts building on the solid progress achieved during 2025. We will assess new opportunities within offshore wind across 3 avenues. First is on the auction and tender front, where there are several relevant opportunities for us to assess during 2025 in our core markets. And from 2027 and onwards, we are expecting a material step change in terms of the number of auctions. Second, we will continue maturing our proprietary pipeline and bring the projects forward if the value creation is there.

And thirdly, we continue to assess the potential for any project-specific collaborations. Those will remain the buckets that we are looking for when we think about offshore wind growth and filling our pipeline for the back end of this decade and onwards. And we will prioritize value over volume. To support this, we will further progress on measures to improve our competitiveness. This includes the initiatives within our trading and revenue function as well as our generation organization. In addition, we will deliver according to plan on our announced adjustments to our organization, so it will become more efficient and flexible.

With this, let me hand over to you, Trond.

Thank you, Rasmus, and good afternoon from me as well, everyone. As always, unless I state otherwise, the numbers I refer to will be in Danish kroner. And then let's turn to [ Slide 8 ] and the EBITDA for '25. For the full year, we had a solid operational performance and delivered EBITDA, excluding new partnerships and cancellation fees of DKK 25.1 billion, as Rasmus previously said. And this is in line with our guidance for the year.

Let me walk you through the main development. For our offshore business, the overall site earnings came in DKK 500 million higher compared to last year. This was driven by higher availability rates, ramp-up generation for Gode Wind 3 and compensation at Borkum Riffgrund 3, leading to an increase of approximately DKK 1.5 billion. This was, to a large extent, offset by the lower wind speeds, lower earnings by approximately DKK 1 billion compared to 2024. Earnings within Partnership increased compared to last year as negative effects in '24 were not repeated to the same extent in '25. For other costs in Offshore, there was an increase primarily driven by changes in cost allocation methodology with no impact to the total EBITDA.

In our offshore business -- onshore business, sorry, earnings increased by approximately DKK 200 million compared to last year. The increase was due to the ramp-up of generation at Sparta Solar, Eleven Mile and Mockingbird, partly offset by the farm-down of the same projects. Within Bioenergy and other, earnings in our combined heat and power business increased by approximately DKK 300 million, driven by the higher achieved prices and improved spreads, only partly offset by lower generation.

Earnings in our gas business increased by approximately DKK 300 million, mainly driven from our offtake contract with the Danish Underground Consortium and its ramp-up production from the Tyra field. The negative effect from other was mainly due to a provision for severance payment relating to the rightsizing of the organization initiated in the fourth quarter. The total impact of severance payment and provision amount to approximately DKK 750 million in '25 and covers the period of the executions in '25 through '28.

Let's turn to Slide 13 and our guidance for '26. For the full year of '26, we expect an EBITDA more than DKK 28 billion. Let me go through the expected drivers for the different segments. In our offshore business, overall earnings are expected to be higher in '26. Our offshore site will benefit from ramp-up generation of Greater Changhua 2b and 4 and Revolution Wind and Wind speeds in line with historical averages, whereas 2025 was below historical averages.

This is expected to be offset by lower market prices, lower earnings from trading activities and subsidy step down for Borkum Riffgrund 3 as well as Gode Wind 1 and 2 stepping out of subsidy, leading to expected sites earning to be in line with the '25 level. We expect earnings from existing partnerships to increase compared to '25, mainly driven by construction agreement at Hornsea 3. Within our offshore business, we anticipate lower expense project development costs as well as lower fixed costs. For our onshore business, we expect earnings to be in line with '25. This is driven by the ramp-up of generation from new assets, offset by divestment of European onshore business, which we expect to close during second quarter this year.

For our Bioenergy segment, we expect earnings to be in line with '25. The gross investments for '26 are expected to amount to DKK 50 billion to DKK 55 billion, which is in line with our previously expected investment level. Furthermore, our committed capital of approximately DKK 145 billion for the period 2025 throughout '27 remains unchanged as this already accounts for the planned divestments of the European onshore business.

Let's turn to Slide 14. In the fourth quarter of '25, our EBITDA, excluding new partnership and cancellation fees amounted to DKK 8.1 billion, which represents an increase of approximately DKK 500 million. This was driven by the offshore business, where earnings increased compared to last year due to higher wind speeds as well as lower fixed cost levels. Our net profit for the quarter totaled a negative of DKK 3.4 billion. This was impacted by the negative noncash EBITDA impact from the closing of the Hornsea 3 transaction and the impairment that have been recognized following the lease suspension orders to our 2 projects in the U.S. as well as the sale of our European onshore business. As part of closing the Hornsea 3 transaction, we have recognized a noncash impact of DKK 4.8 billion to reflect the accounting net present value effect of the asymmetric distribution structure.

The impact was rebased upon closing as the project was slightly less advanced compared to our expectation at the time of signing. The underlying transaction structure and valuation remains the same. The lease suspension order have resulted in increased costs due to anticipated extension of contracts for both our projects, leading to an impairment of approximately DKK 600 million in the fourth quarter of '25.

As part of the decision to divest the European onshore business, we have reassessed the book value of the segment. In previous acquisitions of the business, we have recognized goodwill in our accounts. And as part of the decision to undertake the divestment, this has been written off, leading to an impairment of DKK 1.6 billion. Adjusted for impairments and cancellation fees, our return on capital employed ROCE came in at 8.4%, which is a decrease compared to last year, driven by an increase in capital employed. The reported ROCE came in at 5.4%. We had expected that '25 ROCE would be lower than the ROCE in '26 and '27.

However, it has come in lower than expected, primarily driven by the impairments relating to the suspension order on Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind and the impairment of goodwill related to the divestment of Ørsted's European onshore business. Our target for average ROCE for '26 and '27 is to be around 11% and above 13% for the period '28 to '30 with the expected improvement of ROCE in '26 and '27, primarily driven by increased operational earnings coming from the commissioning of the projects that we are currently constructing.

Let's turn to Slide 15 and our net interest-bearing debt and credit metrics. At the end of Q4 '25, our net debt amounted to DKK 19 billion, representing a decrease of approximately DKK 64 billion during the quarter, which was primarily driven by the proceeds received from the closing of the rights issue. Cash flow from operating activities include contribution from our operational earnings as well as payments related to both the divestment of 50% stake in Hornsea 3 transmission assets and the construction agreement that was entered into as part of the divestment. For the divestments, this includes payment under the SPA agreement relating to Hornsea 3 divestment as well as the divestment of a stake in Badger Wind U.S.

Our gross investments amounted to DKK 15.1 billion, reflecting the continued investment into our renewable construction projects. Our key metric -- our key credit metric, the FFO to adjusted net debt stood approximately at 43% at year-end, reflecting a significant increase compared to previous years. The increase is primarily driven by the proceeds of the rights issue and the closing of Hornsea 3 transaction and is currently well above our target of 30%.

And finally, let's turn to Slide 16 and focus on our divestment program. With the closing of Hornsea 3 transaction as well as the signing of our Greater Changhua 2 farm-down and the divestment of our European onshore business, we have successfully delivered on the partnership and divestment program, which we announced as part of our second quarter '25 update. We had a target of delivering proceeds of more than DKK 35 billion across the announced transactions.

And with securing proceeds of assets around DKK 46 billion, we have now ensured strong delivery on this. In combination with the completion of the rights issue, this is a significant contribution to the strengthening of our capital structure, and it will ensure that we have a robust financial foundation throughout the coming years. Also to pursue new value-creating opportunities while we are delivering on our construction program.

Upon completion, our projects will ensure significant contribution to increasing our financial headroom. With this, we have reduced our dependency on divestments of operational assets and we will now be able to undertake a more value-accretive and flexible approach to partnerships and farm downs going forward.

And with that, we will now open for questions. Operator, please?

[Operator Instructions]

The first question comes from the line of Harry Wyburd from BNP Paribas.

It's on the North Sea agreement or the Hamburg agreement. Could you help me draw a line between the commitments that were made there, which are obviously huge and the money that you expect to be put behind the CfD auctions. So I guess anyone who's familiar with AR7 will be -- you're familiar with the concept of the pot size. I believe that governments in Europe or around the North Sea will put a big pot size behind these CfDs given affordability constraints?

And have you had any informal commitments from governments on whether they are willing to put a lot of money behind the CfDs that would be able to procure that many gigawatts? And then maybe as an add-on to it, there was a 30% cost reduction commitment in that agreement as well. Where would you see those cost reductions coming from? And I presume it's not just hoping for lower interest rates. Is this coming from the supply chain? Is this coming from OEM manufacturers? Is this coming from your processes? Could you give us some color on how you would deliver that cost decrease?

Absolutely. Harry. There is no doubt that the agreement that was made between the 9 heads of states in Hamburg last Monday, we are very pleased with that agreement. Not sort of one thing is, of course, that the governments stand shoulder to shoulder and commit to up to 300 gigawatts by 2050. That's sort of one thing. I think the more important part actually is that as opposed to previous agreements made on this one, the 9 countries involved are a bit more specific about the how is this actually going to happen. So it is by tendering out up to 15 gigawatts of offshore wind every single year from 2031 to 2040 and 10 of the 15 gigawatts are expected to be with CfDs. That commitment provides 2 things to the industry. It provides certainty about a more linear build-out. So basically stepping away from the more lumpy build-out and less coordinated build-out that we have seen in the last years.

And what it also provides is the right sort of frameworks in terms of how to tender out offshore wind, i.e., a consistent approach centered around CfDs across all the 9 involved states. So that -- those 2 things combined, Harry, in our view, provides the necessary predictability for the industry, which is exactly what we need to again break the curve and bring down cost. As you rightfully point out, the commitment from the industry has been to reduce levelized cost of electricity by roughly 30% towards 2040. And it is coming from this predictability. It drives significant investments in the supply chain.

The European supply chain has already invested, I believe, more than EUR 14 billion in the last 3 years across manufacturing vessels and ports. And that brings you to roughly 10 gigawatts. And then if you go to 15 gigawatts as is now set out, it's sort of roughly EUR 10 billion more. Those divestments -- sorry, those investments will provide sort of cost down on the supply chain. And obviously, also the predictability will make it easier for the developers to also enter into framework agreements and also, you can say, deliver the projects that has been won. So that is what's going to drive down the cost again towards 2040.

And then for the second part of your question on sort of the pot size, we would have to see what comes out in the individual auctions in the coming years, the same way as you have seen in the U.K. But I would, as an example, just highlight the agreements that has just been made in Denmark -- between Denmark and Germany, where the cap or the budget set aside for the 3 gigawatts of offshore wind between Denmark and Germany is around DKK 140 billion committed by the Danish and German government split roughly with 30% to Denmark and 70% to Germany. So this is just an example about the commitments that we are starting to see here.

The next question comes from the line of [ Christian ] [indiscernible] from [indiscernible].

So my question is on your farm-down program where all transactions have now been down. But sort of reflecting on them, I would claim that some of these transactions have lowered the financial transparency given the increasing level of noncash EBITDA as a consequence of these transactions. I understand why you've had to do this, but I'm just curious how problematic you consider this movement and not least, if you are to consider further divestment transactions in the future, should we expect you to go sort of back to the old model, which were more simple?

Well, part of the proceeds coming from these transactions is, of course, paying for some of the equity value, but some of them are also a part of our working capital like the OFTO. So it goes into the operating cash flow. And as a result of the accounting rules, making sure that we actually apply to those, we also have to address that. So I do think that we have been very transparent in telling how the sort of the split between our expected more than DKK 35 billion were divided into the 3 major and the other smaller divestments. So as of now, Hornsea 3 has provided us with DKK 10 billion, of which DKK 4 billion is proceeds and a bit more than DKK 6 billion is on the working capital.

On the onshore U.S. transaction, it is DKK 5 billion in proceeds. On the EU onshore, it's short of DKK 11 billion in proceeds. The Changhua transaction, which we're going to close in Q3 this year. It is, of course, an asset value of DKK 16 billion. And the reason for having that asset value is, of course, because we are consolidating the full project until COD and then we deliver the full package to Cathay. And then West of Duddon Sands of DKK 4 billion. And that asset value of all those transactions is DKK 46 billion. Going forward is really we expect -- well, we do not have any concrete plans as of now. And we do believe that in case we are doing transaction, we will, of course, inform them about the content of this transaction, depending on the structure of the transaction every time.

We now have a question from the line of Peter Bisztyga from Bank of America.

So a question on your growth profile towards the end of this decade. Once everything is operational, hopefully, in 2028, I presume any new projects that you might win in offshore auctions over the next couple of years won't be operational until after 2030. So there's going to be a window of like 2 or 3 years where you're just building up unproductive capital without kind of any new earnings coming in. So I'm just wondering, first of all, how do you think about that? And given your planned divestments have exceeded your target by a sort of fairly material amount. I'm just wondering if that gives you flexibility to accelerate investments, for example, in U.S. onshore solar and battery or something like that to fill that growth gap. So interested in your views on that point, please.

Absolutely. Thank you, Peter. A few reflections. I think, first of all, important to emphasize that we as you also allude to that we are very much in a position now on the back of the successful divestment program that Trond talked about and the successful capital raise last year. And we are in a place where we have the financial robustness to pursue value-accretive offshore wind opportunities in our core markets. And we are seeing quite a few opportunities already during 2026. As we talked about before, sort of there is a tender coming in Denmark.

There is a tender coming in the Netherlands. There is a tender coming in APAC. And when you get to -- in Taiwan, and you also -- when you get into 2027, you are starting to see a significant pickup. So that is sort of one avenue for future growth for us, one potential avenue. Another one is obviously also to move forward with the projects that we already have, the more proprietary projects. We talked about sort of Hornsea 4 as an obvious example that we'll be able to bid in from '27 and onwards.

And then at the same time, as I also alluded to before, we are also pursuing, you can say, project-specific collaborations where relevant, all to further fill up the pipeline on the other side of the build-out that we have right now. You are right in the sense that we will see a drop in our gross CapEx from in '28 relative to the levels we are at now. That is quite clear, which is also why we have put the measures in place in terms of having a more flexible and rightsized organization to manage that dip, if you will.

We are quite sort of bullish on the long-term projections for offshore wind in our core markets and the growth for the longer term. You talked about sort of unproductive CapEx and so on in the years towards the back end of the decade. And you also mentioned U.S. onshore. Just reminding us about our capital allocation principles. So it is to make sure at all times, we have a robust capital structure. We honor the dividend commitment. We intend to honor the dividend commitment by paying out first time in 2027 on the back of '26. Bucket #3 is value-accretive growth. And then bucket #4 is, of course, potential rebalancing towards our shareholders.

Those are the principles that we have and we have had for a while, and we intend to follow them. We continue to invest in our U.S. onshore business. We -- as we have said before, we have separated out now to be more of a stand-alone business. We finalized that in October last year. We are right now constructing 2 projects in U.S. onshore, 500 megawatts in total. And we will continue to develop the business, but you should not expect a rebalancing of CapEx, as you alluded to before, our key strategic focus is offshore wind in our core markets, i.e., in Europe.

The next question comes from the line of Jenny Ping from Citi.

Actually, my question was fairly similar to Peter's with really the pivot more to your point around project collaboration. I just wondered whether this actually meant in order to fill in the back end of the decade growth profile, you would be open to buying into projects that other people have won that's already kind of getting to -- have got CfDs, et cetera, that's getting to FID stage that would deliver back in the decade just to keep the momentum of the growth.

And then just along the same lines in terms of the balance sheet, I'd be very keen to understand the opportunity to releverage the U.S. projects. Obviously, you're making very good progress in the delivery of that. Is it the case that these projects we shouldn't even think about the opportunity to project finance them and take equity out before reaching COD? Or are banks actually starting to warm up as you deliver the construction?

Thanks a lot. Jenny, I will take the first part and then leave the U.S. project financing question to Trond. So we are pursuing growth across 3 buckets. It's tenders and auctions in one bucket. It is developing our proprietary pipeline in another bucket. And then the third one is, as you alluded to, to potentially enter into agreements with other developers potentially about projects. There is a significant backlog right now of offshore wind projects in several of our core markets. And we have that as we -- which is not new, we have had that for a while, 1 of the 3 buckets that we are potentially pursuing.

That being said, you mentioned sort of momentum of growth. It is important just to reemphasize that we will be patient. We will be patient and we will always prioritize value over volume. And we have -- we are setting ourselves up in a way where we have and are sort of able to cater for a slight dip in our construction activity towards the back end of the decade. But we do believe there are quite a few opportunities out there across the 3 buckets in terms of future growth.

When it comes to the balance sheet effects of the U.S. projects, we have -- when we sized the rights issue and also deciding on the farm-downs and the sales proceeds, -- we did not -- we made sure that we had enough capital not to plan for project financing before COD in the U.S. That has been a major element to this to make sure that we have the financial solidity as well as the liquidity in place to make sure that we can continue constructing on our 8.1 gigawatts. Having said that, the timing of project financing when it comes to those projects is, of course, dependent on the political uncertainty and how the financial market in the U.S. and also elsewhere, but mostly in the U.S. looks at certainty of those projects coming into play. So it will be an opportunity for us at some point in time, but we have not planned or concluded on that time.

Okay. Sorry, just to be clear, so M&A is on the table under this bucket of project collaboration?

Project level, yes.

We now have a question from the line of Deepa Venkateswaran from Bernstein.

It is somewhat similar to the previous questions, but it's probably a more philosophical question. So in the past, Ørsted was always a lead developer, you farm down to financial players. You haven't done too many projects with other industrial players, but we know many of them are looking for partners. I think Vattenfall said that they're looking for partners for their German offshore project at BASF -- have, and we know SSE, for example, will be looking at these. So where do you see from a perspective of value creation Ørsted kind of coming in as perhaps the -- maybe not in the driver's seat, but as a secondary partner, would those sort of transactions be okay with you? And yes, or is there any commitment that you need to be the lead developer operator constructor of these projects? I think that's my question.

Thank you, Deepa. So in terms of market by market, I would rather say our focus is on the core markets that I -- that you know that we are focusing on. So the U.K., Denmark, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, that continues to be the case. And then again, we have the 3 buckets that I mentioned before. It becomes too speculative for me to sort of get into what kind of potential partnerships it could be that is a bit premature.

But in principle, would you be okay with building something with another industrial player?

The answer will be the same, Deepa, that it becomes a bit too speculative for me to talk about potential future collaboration models.

Next question comes from the line of Alberto Gandolfi from Goldman Sachs.

It's Alberto Gandolfi. I just wanted to talk about growth, but from a slightly different perspective and a bit more granularity. The first one is how much capital do you feel comfortable in committing in the next 18 -- 12, 18 months given the lingering risks around Sunrise, just in case we still have another move and appeal by the administration, the court case is pending. And while you are talking about offshore, in particular, would you mind telling us how many gigawatts you could potentially bid for in these regions?

There's a very good slide where you talk about all these countries in Europe and Asia. So how many gigawatts in terms of permitting leases could you potentially bid for if you wanted to? And if you can tell us, given you talk about value over volume, how do you define value? Is there an absolute IRR we should be thinking about given where the cost of capital is today? Do you think you need to now put more contingencies? So can you tell us how we should be thinking about risk, quantity and returns?

Thank you, Alberto. So sort of 3 buckets in your question, maybe partly overlapping in my answer. So first of all, you're saying what kind of capital are we comfortable committing considering the situation we have in the U.S. I'm not going to put out any numbers here. What I can say is, and Trond can, of course, elaborate here, that we have our CapEx -- committed CapEx program towards '25 to '27, and we have DKK 145 million in total. And we are still there across our projects. And then we have -- as we also talked about, we have completed the farm-down program.

We have completed the equity raise. So we are in a position now where we have a robust balance sheet. part of sizing the equity raise was to be able to withstand the regulatory uncertainty that we are also now seeing unfolding in the U.S., but also to deliver on our business plan. But I'm not going to put out a specific CapEx number, which is the same reason for why I'm also not going to put out a specific gigawatt number because this is exactly what we -- where we have changed our approach, if you will. So we're not chasing gigawatts. It is value over volume.

You will remember from the beginning of the year that we -- one of the first things we did after I took over was that we canceled our 2030 targets in terms of gigawatts -- because our focus is on value. And as I said before, we do believe that the opportunities are out there. On value, you said sort of how do we define value. We have -- our value criteria are unchanged in the sense that we guide that it is 150 to 300 basis points on top of our cost of capital. We stand by that. And then at the same time, internally, we obviously also look at the absolute IRRs of the projects that we are considering moving forward.

But we only guide externally on the 150 to 300 bps on top of our cost of capital. And then, of course, when we look at value, we also look at the flip side, which is risk. And we have -- we are carefully assessing risks in our opportunities that we are looking at. We are looking at the breakaway profiles of the opportunities. We're looking at the farm-down, potential farm-down risk as we also talked to as part of putting Hornsea 4 back to development. So those are some of the things we look at when we assess new opportunities.

We now have a question from the line of Ahmed Farman from Jefferies.

I have a sort of broad question on the 2 U.S. projects, but with a few sort of subsegments. So last year, you provided us an estimate of the remaining CapEx to be spent in the second quarter. So sort of the first question is, could you just remind us where that is? Could you remind us on the timing of the monetization of the ITC for Revolution Wind? And then Rasmus, you referenced expeditious and durable solution, trying to sort of find that in your sort of -- in your strategy. I would be interested if you could elaborate on that point further.

Thank you, Ahmed. So I will take CapEx and the durable solution and then leave ITCs to you, Trond. So yes, just to reiterate, the remaining CapEx for us the share across Revolution Wind and Sunrise is around roughly DKK 35 billion. So basically, you can say broadly unchanged relative to what we have said before. In terms of the dialogue track, as you indirectly alluded to, so we have -- we are focusing on 2 things here in the U.S. One is obviously to finalize construction of Revolution Wind and Sunrise as fast as well and as safe as possible for our colleague.

And the construction is actually progressing quite well across both despite sort of taking into account that we have been out for 3 weeks on one and roughly 6 weeks on the other. But I can, of course, talk much more about that construction progress. The other part of the work we do is on seeking to, via dialogue, see if there is a path for a more expeditious and sort of a durable solution across the 2 projects. I will follow the same line as I have had before here. I don't want to go into the content of dialogues we may or may not have with other developers, with the administration, with suppliers, et cetera. But we are pursuing still 2 tracks.

On the ITC element, the element on the ITC and what we expect is the money to come in sort of a year subsequent to COD. And that's sort of the planning phase that we are looking at.

The next question comes from the line of Mark Freshney from UBS.

If I could just drill down a bit on to the ITC. My question is, is it possible to monetize the ITC and do the transactions with the bank while the lease suspensions are still in place. So do you need those lease extensions removed to get the -- I think it's like DKK 25 billion from both of the construction assets in '27 and '28. So that's my first question. And just secondly, it sounds -- standing back, it sounds like we're now focusing on growth beyond the 5 construction projects. Given the kind of opportunities you've laid out and the kind of optimism, and given the need to maintain a strong balance sheet, can we infer that the dividend payout ratio will be sort of low, potentially somewhere around where it was at the time of the IPO, which I think was about DKK 2.5 billion.

When it comes to the ITC, I would probably answer you, Mark, in 2 different ways. When it comes to the tax equity part, it is still a good market there in the onshore sector. And there is no differential really relative to tax credit where they come from. So when it comes to that, having said that, there is, of course, the political surroundings in this uncertainty as well as the legal elements as you talked to about the suspense orders and so forth. So yes, there is, of course, elements here that we are discussing with investors.

But the progress of this is continuing as we have planned. But as you allude to, there is uncertainty parameters that we need to contain or address during the course of the way. But as of now, the progress is there. There's no sort of nothing hindering the process, except for, of course, that we to have to cater for those elements. On the dividend side, we will not, at this point in time, give any guidance on the levels as such. We will come back to that in due time. But as of now, it's too early for us to expand on where that level is going to be starting to be paid in '27.

We now have a question from the line of Casper Blom from Danske Bank.

A question regarding the ramp-up of Revolution and Sunrise Wind. You mentioned, Rasmus, that you expect the first power from Revolution within the first next couple of weeks and with Sunrise, you say in the second half of this year. Can you give any kind of guidance to how much you expect to squeeze out of these 2 projects this year? And maybe a percentage of how much power you expect to generate compared to how much it will be when these projects are fully up and running? Any flavor to the impact that the projects will have on this year's earnings would be very nice to have.

Thank you, Casper. I, of course, see what you're doing, but I'm not going to guide on sort of EBITDA at the project level for '26. But I can give you sort of a little bit of color of sort of where we are and then leave it for you to make your own assessment. So on Revolution Wind, as I said, we have now installed 59 out of 65 turbines. We expect first power, as I said, within weeks.

We have energized the export cable. We have energized what is called the interlink cable, energized the offshore substations and also the onshore substation. So therefore, you can say moving forward quite well. But more details about sort of remaining installation and ramp-up, I cannot give. Our guidance remains that we expect COD for the full wind farm in the second half of 2026 and the ramp-up within week -- and the first power within weeks, as I said.

On Sunrise, again, we also here do expect first power this year. But again, what -- and what we have stated in recently is that we would expect for it to be in October. 2026 and then COD by second half of 2027. And also Sunrise is progressing according to plan. We have sort of the fabrication progress is going quite well. We only have 7 sets of turbines left and so on and 44 out of 84 foundations installed, offshore substation installed, onshore converter station, 90% done, energized onshore cable 100% done. So it is moving forward according to plan despite the setbacks we have received.

The next question comes from the line of Olly Jeffery from Deutsche Bank.

Just asking about a different topic. Could I get an update on the Elsam related case, which has been ongoing for a while. I think the amount there potentially liable for is DKK 4.4 billion, depending on how that court case outturns. When do you expect -- can we expect a judgment this year? And if so, do you any time lines on that? Is there a kind of date for when we will get more information on how that turned out?

Well, the Elsam case has been there for quite some years. So it has been a long way to go. When the case was up last time on the final ruling on the main case, that was back in, I believe, 2017 or '18. We did win that. Subsequent to that, there are, I think, around 1,100 small cases that has been added up to this case coming up. And the case has started up now. It is the amount that you have said. We have disclosed that both in the rights issue and it's also in the annual report. We do not have any provisions for this. We do have a view that it will end up as it has been ended up before. But the case is ongoing, and we expect to have an answer or a decision here midyear somewhere. And then again, just to be clear on that, the decision made this time may be appealed by both parties.

We now have a question from the line of Rob Pulleyn from Morgan Stanley.

The remaining question I would like to ask is, given obviously lots of interest in your future partnerships you mentioned and also the market is very interested in potential collaboration with your Norwegian neighbors. And to leave to park that particular topic, there is a related one is that, that particular neighbor has a U.S. project and pipeline as well. And so from a high level, could you talk to whether you would be interested in increasing your exposure in the U.S. market at all?

Thank you, Rob. So yes, you are right that sort of with respect to Equinor that we are -- we continue to be pleased having them as a shareholder. They were very supportive at the capital raise. They are a 10% shareholder, and we have a very good dialogue with them. We have no expectations whatsoever to increase our exposure to offshore wind in the U.S. Roughly a little less than a year ago, shortly after I took over, we adjusted or we basically came adjusted our strategy for [indiscernible]. And one of the things we did when we came to the U.S. was to refocus to basically only focusing on finalizing the 2 projects we have, Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind on the offshore side. We maintain the leases we have. And we sort of continue to comply and we have them for sort of optionality, but we have no expectations to acquire new projects in the U.S.

The next question comes from the line of James Carmichael from Berenberg.

Just first one, just quickly on the 2,000 headcount reduction that you mentioned. I was just wondering if you could say how many, if any, of those occur naturally, I guess, as part of the European onshore disposal, how many effectively go over to CIP with that asset base? And then just while we're talking onshore, just wondering if you could maybe remind us of your commitment to the U.S. onshore business given the strategic focus on offshore and Europe that you talked about.

Thank you very much. So if we take the people aspect first, as you -- just as a reminder, we communicated in October that we would be reducing our -- the number of people working for us towards the back end of 2027 with roughly 2,000 positions. We are moving forward according to plan in that regard. And we have said goodbye to around 500 colleagues in the back end of last year. And the 200 -- and it is -- on top of that, it is roughly 200 people who are employed in our Europe onshore business, and they will all transfer to the new buyer and is included in the reduction that I talked about towards end of 2027.

It is very important to me that we continue to treat all of our employees, those staying and those leaving in the best possible way. And I believe we are -- then the other part of your question was sort of what is our commitment to our U.S. onshore business. We are moving forward according to plan with our U.S. onshore business. It is going well. We have separated it out as a separate unit, as I mentioned before, effective from October last year.

And the business is going well. We are moving forward projects. We have right now roughly 500 megawatts under construction, 1 wind project, 260 megawatts battery wind in MISO and one battery, 250 megawatts in ERCOT. And then on top of that, we have 6 to 7 gigawatts of capacity that meet the IRS definition of qualification through 2029. And we have this development portfolio consisting of a mix of solar, wind and storage, slightly more weighted towards solar in the near term. So moving forward well.

We now have a question from the line of Louis Boujard from ODDO BHF.

Maybe remaining a little bit on the efficiency measures. I think that you mentioned that you recorded also DKK 600 million of cost of implementation. Is this the total cost of implementation for the redundancy measures that you plan? Or shall we forecast additional costs going forward? And on top of it, I think that you mentioned as well that you are taking some initiatives into the trading and revenue division or activity. I would like to see -- to know if you could provide eventually some example of where you could eventually make some improvement on this topic in order to reach and to converge towards the DKK 2 billion savings that you previously mentioned?

Thank you, Louis. You asked 2 questions, and we were simply not able to get the first part of your question, but it sounded like it was for Trond. But I will answer the latter, the second part, and then I would ask you to ask the first one more time. Sorry about that. It's a little bit of a dotty line. So you asked about trading and revenue and examples and so on in terms of the efficiency measures that we are talking about.

So just as a reminder, as part of the rights issue, we communicated that we expect DKK 0.5 billion to DKK 1 billion of incremental EBITDA from '27 and onwards full year effect. And sort of a few examples. One is increased value from selling and buying certificates. Another one is increased activity day-to-day in today, day ahead. Another one is more third-party origination of PPAs, 3 examples. Our focus is on our core, which is power in Europe. So you should not see this as us increasing our risk appetite across gas or elsewhere, but we focus on our core. But those are a few examples of where we see the uplift. And then I would have to ask you to ask the first one more time.

Yes. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to reask the first question. So the question was about redundancy measures and potentially, I think that you mentioned DKK 600 million of cost that you have recognized in Q4 regarding indeed the rightsizing of the company. And I was wondering if you could confirm if it is the total cost that should be expected for the redundancy measures or if there is other additional costs that we could expect in '26 and eventually 2027?

Thank you, Louis. It's good to hear the question. Yes, it's -- just to recap, what we say is that we have approximately DKK 750 million charged in '25 for rightsizing and restructuring. Of that, the provision is slightly more than DKK 500 million of that and the DKK 200 million to DKK 250 million is what is cost relative to the rightsizing effects that we did in '25. Accounting rules has its limitation relative to providing for restructuring and how concrete they have to be. So I would say that we have catered for the ones that we have decided and have clear sight on how to do. There might be some additional. We do not, as of this point, see it as significant. But of course, as we go along and look at the road map towards '28, it might come up, but we will be transparent on it.

The next question comes from the line of Dominic Nash from Barclays.

The question I've got is looking at your 30% cost reduction in wind costs by 2040, I believe. Do you think that, that's achievable without a Chinese supply chain? And could you let us know how advanced you are in discussions with sort of Chinese providers of turbines and offshore wind products and where you think that puts you relative to your -- the competitive disadvantages and advantages against your sort of developer peers?

Thank you, Dominic. So in short, the first part of your question, yes, I do believe that the European supply chain is able to deliver on the commitments put out Monday last week. The European supply chain is quite robust. And only the last 3 years, it has invested more than EUR 14 billion across 20 European countries in the supply chain, 50% roughly on manufacturing, 20% in vessels, 30% in ports.

And with the predictability that is now sort of there from the North Sea offshore wind investment pack, we do expect to see further ramp-up from the supply chain, roughly EUR 10 billion required to get our numbers to get to 15 gigawatts per year, and we believe that, that is possible. As for our own sort of approach. We are a global company present across 3 continents, and we do operate in a business with a global supply chain.

And of course, the robustness and diversification are important priorities for us, and we do assess different technologies and suppliers. And when we do it, we do it based on quality, technological maturity, capability, ESG, regulatory, et cetera. And -- and we do also follow the development in China on the turbine side, as you are alluding to as part of our normal market sort of surveying. But we have no projects in our portfolio or in our pipeline using Chinese turbines. So we are following the development in the market like any other developer would do. And as I expect also most of our colleagues are.

Sorry, can I just follow up? Apologies. I know that probably like a second question, but it's similar. I presume that if someone were to use Chinese products in the North Sea and it were seen to be cheaper, that once that's been sort of derisked, then other developers would follow them? Or do you think they'll still remain the European supply chain?

That becomes a bit too speculative for me, Dominic. I think my -- our view is, as I stated before, I can best speak on our own behalf.

We now have a question from the line of Ingo Becker from Kepler Cheuvreux.

First, I have a question, please, on your DKK 35 billion divestment. I think you broke it down before in terms of the total program, but I'm interested in the balance sheet date with the view of your fiscal year-end balance sheet, how much of the DKK 35 billion has been cash effective booked in the balance sheet and how much is left in the cash flow statement?

There's a DKK 12.5 billion figure which would mean DKK 22.5 billion cash effective would be left, but I'm not sure that's the right way of looking at it. And my second question would be on your '28 EBITDA. I know you have not given guidance, but you gave us a helping hand last year by helping us with the likely composition of that number and the consensus made out of this, something like DKK 37 billion. Not asking you to confirm that DKK 37 billion. But if we assume for one second that DKK 37 billion is the right figure, does this change with the proceeds moving from DKK 35 billion to DKK 46 billion, taking potential accounting effects into account. So would the EBITDA still be the same? Or would it change?

When it comes to the cash effects, what I would -- it's basically it's basically Changhua and European onshore that has not been a part of the cash effects per the end of '25. So if you look at the debt effects going forward, the effects that's going to happen, it's 2 elements on Changhua. It's because we have 100% of the assets until COD. When we sell off 55%, we will, of course, deconsolidate the project and the project has then approximately DKK 20 billion in debt. So that debt will be then deconsolidated as a part of the transaction.

In addition to that, there will be approximately DKK 5 billion in proceeds. And then in addition to that, it's around DKK 10 billion coming out of Europe onshore sale when it closes. That is the 3 elements of the sort of the transaction elements that is not included per year-end '25. When it comes to the '28 numbers, we have not guided on those numbers. So I will, of course, not take your hypothesis as a starting point.

What we can do is that we are still saying that the numbers is between [ 11 ] and [ 12 ] for the 8.1 gigawatts for the first full year EBITDA effect of those projects. And relative to have an understanding of the elements, we also said during the capital increase, we said that the U.S. projects is around DKK 4.5 billion of that. The DKK 4.5 billion consists of approximately around DKK 1 billion for Revolution, our 50% ownership and our 100% ownership of Sunrise is about DKK 3.5 billion. So just to be clear that we can reiterate those numbers for the full year -- the first full year of the COD year for those projects.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Rasmus Errboe for any closing remarks.

Thank you all very much for joining. We appreciate the interaction and the interest. And as always, if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out. Our IR team will be here to answer all of them. Thank you. Stay safe, and have a great day.

Welcome to this Ørsted's Q3 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Today's speakers are Group President and CEO, Rasmus Errboe, and CFO, Trond Westlie. Speakers, please begin.

Hello, everyone. During the third quarter of the year, we have continued our focus on the execution of the 4 strategic priorities that we presented in February. These will continue to be the core focus as we execute on our strategy.

Let me start by going through our progress across the 4 priorities. Our first priority is to strengthen our capital structure. And with the completion of the rights issue in early October, we have taken a significant step on this priority. The rights issue strengthens our financial foundation, allows us to focus on delivering our 6 offshore wind farms under construction, provides the financial robustness to manage the ongoing challenges and uncertainty as well as the financial strength to pursue upcoming attractive opportunities within offshore wind. I am very pleased and grateful for the strong support that we received from our shareholders in the rights issue, including from our majority shareholder, the Danish state.

Also, we announced on November 3 that we have entered into an agreement with Apollo to divest a 50% ownership share in both the project and associated transmission asset for our 2.9 gigawatt Hornsea 3 project in the U.K. The total value of the transaction is approximately DKK 39 billion, and the transaction supports a further strengthening of our capital structure and marks a significant milestone in our partnership and divestment program.

Another important element in supporting our capital structure is the continued performance of our operational portfolio. Even though wind speeds have been below the norm thus far in the year, we have delivered DKK 17 billion of EBITDA for the first 9 months of the year, which is mainly driven by the increase in the availability across our offshore portfolio due to strong performance every single day by our generation team. We remain on track to deliver earnings in the range of DKK 24 billion to DKK 27 billion for the full year.

Our second priority is to deliver on our 8.1 gigawatt offshore wind construction portfolio. And we continue to make good progress across the projects, which upon completion will contribute with an annual EBITDA run rate of DKK 11 billion to DKK 12 billion. I will shortly go through the construction progress details. But first, I want to mention the stop-work order, which Revolution Wind received in the U.S. during the third quarter, instructing the project to hold offshore activities, pending completion of the Interior Department's review required by the executive order issued on January 20. Revolution Wind continues to seek a complete resolution, both by engaging with the U.S. administration and other stakeholders as well as through legal proceedings. As part of the legal part, the project filed a lawsuit and sought a preliminary injunction, which was granted on February 22 by the court while the lawsuit is ongoing. The offshore activities have resumed and since then progressed well.

Our third priority is to ensure a focused and disciplined capital allocation, always prioritizing value over volume, where our focus going forward primarily will be on offshore wind in Europe and select markets in APAC. As part of these efforts, we will move towards a more flexible partnership and financing model in order to improve value creation and ensure risk diversification. On this basis, we recently entered into a memorandum of understanding with KOEN and POSCO for our 1.4 gigawatt Incheon offshore wind project in Korea. The aim is to explore cooperation on joint development, construction and operations, including potential equity participation.

Finally, on our fourth priority, we have also taken steps in improving our competitiveness with the announcements of adjustments to our organization. Due to the sharpened strategic focus of our business going forward and the fact that we will be finalizing our large construction portfolio in the coming years, we will adjust our organization accordingly to become more efficient and flexible. Once all efficiency measures have been implemented, the annual cost savings are expected to amount to approximately DKK 2 billion from 2028. The cost savings related to these efficiency measures have been incorporated into our business plan.

Let's turn to Slide 5, where I will talk through some of the operational highlights for the first 9 months. First, I am pleased with the operational performance with our EBITDA, excluding new partnerships and cancellation fees amounting to DKK 17 billion for the first 9 months. Despite the fact that wind speeds have been below the norm so far this year, our strong generation performance ensures we remain on track towards delivering our full year guidance of DKK 24 billion to DKK 27 billion of EBITDA. This is mainly driven by high availability within our offshore business, which stood at 93% for the first 9 months. Compared to same period last year, this is an increase of 7 percentage points and thus ensured a material earnings contribution.

Market-leading performance of our 10 gigawatt offshore wind fleet is a key priority for us, and we are progressing several measures within our generation organization to improve our output and lower cost base through portfolio and operational efficiencies, technological innovation, standardization and generation excellence. During the quarter, we also made progress on the renewable share of our generation. For several years, we have had a target that renewables should consist of 99% of our generation by 2025. And this has been the case during the first 9 months of the year. The increased share of renewables was driven by the closing of our last coal-fueled CHP plant in the second half of 2024, which marked another important milestone on our decarbonization journey.

Lastly, our continued and relentless focus on safety have continued, and the total recordable injury rate for the first 9 months of 2025 is at 2.5, which is in line with our target. This remains highest priority for us, and we are continuing an internal program across the full organization, which is intended to further increase training, safety awareness and management focus, all aimed at lowering the incident rate and bringing our people home safe every day.

Let's turn to Slide 6 and an overview of our construction projects. I will cover the more advanced projects individually and, in more details, as usual on the next slides, while putting a few remarks on the remainder of the construction portfolio here. For Borkum Riffgrund 3 in Germany, we have installed all foundations and turbines. Commissioning of the grid connection for Borkum 3 has started according to plan. We expect first power before the end of the year, and the project is expected to be commissioned towards the end of Q1 2026.

For Hornsea 3 in the U.K., construction is progressing well. The onshore works at the landfall cable route and converter stations have progressed in line with the schedule since last quarter. For the offshore scope, the project will be using 2 HVDC offshore converter stations. The first platform is undergoing final equipment installation in Norway, which is progressing well. And the second platform completed its scope in Thailand and is currently in transit to Norway to complete the same final works.

We have continued with the offshore activities where we completed the removal of unexploded ordinances across the whole site during the third quarter. We continue to closely monitor a number of items related to the delivery of the project. This includes the installation schedule of the project's grid connection where we are working closely with National Grid on our onshore grid connection works to support planning of our commissioning next year. Further, we continue to focus on manufacturing of turbine monopile foundations to ensure it is delivered according to plan, enabling us to commence installation in 2026. The manufacturing has started as planned, and there are multiple suppliers contracted for the scope. And if relevant, we can utilize the flexibility gained from this to mitigate risks if they occur.

Next steps in the project will be commencement of the main offshore installation activities in early 2026, which start with the installation of the offshore export cable as well as monopile foundation installation. In Poland, our Baltica 2 project is moving ahead according to schedule, and we are progressing the first phases of the construction work. In the third quarter, we have continued construction work at the onshore substation site, which includes the installation of the first part of the export cable. The manufacturing of turbine foundations is progressing well with 22 completed so far. The manufacturing of the 4 offshore substations is progressing and manufacturing of the offshore export cable started mid-October. With this progress, the degree of completion for the project has increased to approximately 15%, up from 10% in Q2.

There are a number of items for the installation schedule that we are closely monitoring. This includes progress on the manufacturing of the 4 offshore substations and fabrication progress of the key components for onshore and offshore substations. We remain on track for earliest possible sail away mid-2026 from Vietnam for the 4 offshore substations. Progress on the turbine installation harbor in Poland is still on track. We are closely engaged with contractors and regulators to ensure that we progress according to the current schedule. Next steps are preparing of -- preparation of the seabed, sorry, ahead of turbine foundation installation, which is planned to commence during mid-2026.

Now turning to Slide 7 and a more detailed update on our Greater Changhua 2b and 4 project in Taiwan. Overall, the installation of the remaining scopes of the project has made good progress during the quarter. Greater Changhua 4 has commenced generation, and this will continue to ramp up as more turbines get energized during Q4 of this year. For Greater Changhua 2b, the damage to the export cable means that we will only be producing power again from mid-2026, once the damaged export cable has been replaced.

Looking at installation during the quarter, we have made progress across several scopes. This includes the installation of turbines where 58 turbines of the total 66 positions are now installed, and the rest are expected to be completed by end of 2025. We have installed array cables for 50 of the 66 positions, and we have mobilized additional vessels during the quarter to strengthen the installation progress or process of the remaining cables as weather conditions are expected to be more challenging during the winter season. With the progress achieved during the quarter, the project has now reached a degree of completion of approximately 65%, up from 55% in Q2. The focus of the project remains on installation of remaining turbines and array cables as well as replacing the export cable for the Greater Changhua 2b section.

Turning to Slide 8 and an update on our Northeast program, starting with Revolution Wind. During the quarter, the project has made good progress as we have completed both the installation of the replacement monopile for the second offshore substation as well as the installation of the offshore substation itself such that both of the projects, 2 offshore substations are now installed.

On turbine installation, we continue to make progress as we have now installed 52 of the 65 turbines for the project, and array cable installation has commenced and is progressing well. With progress achieved during the quarter, the project has now reached a degree of completion of approximately 85%, up from 80% in Q2. The project continues to progress on a number of scopes that are critical to the delivery of the current schedule. For the onshore substation, we are continuing to progress construction activity according to the current schedule. We remain on site to manage the continued installation of the project and expect energization of the onshore substation early next year. For turbine installation, we will continue to monitor the installation rate closely as we enter into the winter season where weather conditions impact speed of the installation rate. First power is expected during first half of 2026, and the project remains on track for commissioning in the second half of 2026.

Now turning to Slide 9 and our Sunrise Wind project, where we have also continued to see good progress across the different scopes. We have completed the installation of the project's single offshore converter station in September and continued the installation of turbine foundations with 50 -- sorry, 44 of the 84 positions installed now. This work will soon be paused as planned due to time of year restrictions of when turbine foundations can be installed and will be resumed when next installation season starts in the spring. The turbine installation will commence following completion of turbine installation Revolution Wind. For the onshore substation, the commissioning works are progressing according to plan with installation of nearshore section of the export cable expected in the coming months.

With progress achieved during the quarter, the project has now reached a degree of completion of approximately 40%, up from 35% in Q2. The focus remains on the items that are critical to delivery on the current schedule. The fabrication of remaining turbine foundations is progressing according to plan, and we expect to have all remaining turbine foundations completed by the end of the year. On the export cable, we have completed the final factory acceptance tests for majority of the sections, with the final ones expected to be completed by end of the year. And we will start the installation of the nearshore section at the end of this year as well. We continue to manage the risks related to the installation of the project, and we remain on track for commissioning in the second half of 2027.

With this, let me hand over the word to you, Trond.

Thank you, Rasmus. And good afternoon, everyone. As always, unless I state otherwise, the numbers I refer to will be in Danish kroner.

So before covering the third quarter development, let's go to Slide 11. And I want to start with our announcement from Monday. As we have entered into an agreement with Apollo to divest 50% stake in our 2.9 gigawatt Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm in the U.K. The transaction balances the key objectives for partnerships and divestments with an emphasis on capital management and represents a major milestone in our funding plan. The transaction supports further strengthening of our capital structure and ensures significant progress on our partnership and divestment program. The total value of the transaction is approximately DKK 39 billion and around DKK 20 billion of the total transaction value will be paid upon closing of the transaction. The remaining amount is expected to be paid under the construction agreement upon achievement of certain construction milestones.

In terms of our targeted proceeds of more than DKK 35 billion across '25 and '26, it is the DKK 10 billion received under the SPA agreement, which counts towards this target. The total transaction value covers the acquisition of 50% equity stake -- equity share -- ownership share, sorry. And the commitment from the partner to fund 50% of the payment under the EPC contract for the wind farm and the offshore transmission costs, assets. The upfront noncash EBITDA effect of the transaction is in line with the expectation outlined in the prospectus of the recently completed rights issue and including the other aspects of the transaction such as the expected earnings under the construction agreement and service contract between Ørsted and the project. The expected EBITDA impact of the transaction is broadly neutral over the lifetime of the project.

With that, let's turn to Slide 12 and the EBITDA for the quarter. In third quarter, we realized an EBITDA of DKK 3.1 billion. Let me walk you through the main developments for the quarter. For our offshore business, the overall earning came in at DKK 2.2 billion. The earnings from sites decreased, driven by lower wind speeds and step-down in subsidy levels from all the wind farms as well as lower power trading earnings. This was partly offset by full contribution at Gode Wind 3 compensation for Borkum Riffgrund 3 and higher availability rates across the portfolio.

Earnings on existing partnership decreased as a result of updated costs for array cable installation for Greater Changhua 4. Over the summer, there were challenges -- challenging weather conditions, including a typhoon, which slowed down our planned installation speed. As a result, we have, during third quarter, strengthened our setup for the installation of the remaining array cables by mobilizing additional vessels. This has led us to revise the earnings that we expect under the construction agreement. As communicated earlier, we did not anticipate any material earnings under the construction agreement. So taking into account the strengthening of the installation setup and costs relating to extending the installation period leads to an impact in our accounts. Following this revision, the business case continued to have a comfortable headroom.

Other costs, which includes unallocated overhead and fixed costs as well as expensed project development cost increased compared to last year, in line with our expectation. Part of the increase is driven by a change in our cost allocation methodology and does not impact the total EBITDA. This cost reallocation is reflected in our full year guidance for '25. For onshore, the EBITDA decreased by approximately DKK 200 million, primarily driven by lower wind speeds, which were partly offset by ramp-up generation from new assets.

Within bioenergy and other, earnings from our combined heat and power plants were higher than last year, driven by higher power prices. Earnings in our gas business increased slightly driven from -- driven by higher offtake volumes. We did not enter into any new partnerships in the third quarter of '25.

Let's turn to Slide 13. In the third quarter, total impairments amounted to DKK 1.8 billion. The impairments primarily relate to our U.S. offshore projects and are driven by higher tariffs and increased cost as a result of the stop-work order for Revolution Wind, partly offset by decrease in long-dated U.S. interest rates. The impairment related to higher tariffs amounted to DKK 2.5 billion, in line with the range that was included in the prospectus released in connection with the rights issue. This amount reflects recent changes to the U.S. trade policies, including the increased tariffs on steel and aluminum.

The impairment related to the stop-work order amount to DKK 500 million and is also in line with estimates that was included in the prospectus in connection with the rights issue. This reflects the higher cost for both Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind due to extension contracts needed to complete the installation of the projects. These effects are partly offset by a reversal of DKK 1.3 billion due to the decrease in long-dated U.S. interest rates, leading to lower WACC level across our U.S. offshore and onshore projects.

Our net profit for the quarter totaled a negative DKK 1.7 billion and was impacted by both the decreased earnings as well as the impairments. In Q3 '24, net profit amounted to DKK 5.2 billion, of which DKK 5.1 billion were related to a reversal of a provision related to Ocean Wind. Adjusted for impairments and cancellation fees, our return on capital employed came in at 10.2%, which was a decrease compared to last year, driven by the higher capital employed. The reported ROCE came in at 2% and was impacted by the impairment recognized over the last 12 months.

Let's turn to Slide 14 and our net interest-bearing debt and credit metrics. At the end of Q3 '25, our net debt amounted to DKK 83 billion, an increase of approximately DKK 16 billion during the quarter. The increase was predominantly driven by gross investments of DKK 15 billion into the construction of our renewable project portfolio. The contribution from -- of our operating earnings in our cash flow from operating activities was more than offset by costs relating to the construction of transmission assets in the U.K. as well as seasonally in other working capital items. This was also the case for the same quarter last year. As the rights issue was completed on 9th of October '25, the proceeds of approximately DKK 60 billion will accordingly be reflected in our accounts by full year.

Also, subject to the closing of the transaction before the end of the year, the proceeds from the Hornsea 3 transaction will likewise be included in the net debt numbers. Finally, the project financing package for Greater Changhua 2 were closed in July, yet had no impact on net debt as the proceeds received were matched by a corresponding increased debt. Upon closing of the planned equity divestment of the project, the asset and associated project financing package is planned to be deconsolidated, which will then have an impact on the net debt position.

Our credit metric, FFO to adjusted net debt stood approximately at 14% at the end of the third quarter, which is a slight decrease compared to the previous quarter. The higher funds from operation in the 12-month rolling period was offset by the increase in adjusted net debt. The metric will expectedly increase to well above target of 30% in the next quarter as the incoming proceeds from the rights issue and closing on the Hornsea 3 transaction will be reflected in our accounts.

And finally, let's turn to Slide 15 and look at our outlook for '25. With our solid operational performance for the first 9 months and heading into a quarter with seasonal higher wind speeds, we reiterate our full year EBITDA guidance, excluding new partnership and cancellation fees of DKK 24 billion to DKK 27 billion. We also maintain our gross investment guidance for '25 of DKK 50 million to DKK 54 billion. The gross investment guidance is sensitive to milestone payments being moved between years and the level of tariffs. We continue to follow the development regarding potential tariffs and other regulatory changes, particularly affecting the U.S. and are continually assessing any possible financial and wider impacts.

So with that, we will now open for questions. Operator, please?

This concludes the presentation, and we will now open for questions. This call will have to end no later than 15:30. [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Kristian Tornøe from SEB.

Yes. So my question is about the expected lifetime of your offshore wind assets. So with the Hornsea 3 transaction, the other day, I understand you are looking at up to 35-year lifetime of this asset. So previously, you've been talking more to a 25-year lifetime of your offshore wind assets, which at least what I've been using in my model. So my question is essentially what would be the appropriate lifetime we should apply to our valuation of your offshore assets?

Well, on the lifetime of the capitalized investments that we have from the starting point, we do use just short of a 25% year depreciation. So the economic value of that is, of course, we use the short of 25-yard -- years depreciation. When it comes to the business case as such and the lease period, that is sort of a different aspect. And that's what is included in the agreement that we have been clear, very transparent about with Apollo. And that, of course, the lease is a long period. And as a result of that, the business case is, of course, longer than the economic value that we capitalize as a start, basically, due to maintenance programs, repowering possibilities and so forth relative to the long lease of the area. So that you have to probably distinguish between how we capitalize, how we depreciate and also how we actually see the business case.

The next question comes from the line of Harry Wyburd from BNP Paribas.

Can I focus on the Hornsea 3 sell-down? So thank you for the call yesterday where you educated us a bit about the cash flow profiling. My question is, given that Apollo have the rights to the majority of the cash flow in the CfD period and given that you have the majority -- there was the rights to the cash flow after that, have we opened up a new thread of book value risk or volatility here? Because presumably, you might review the NPV of those cash flows in terms of time depending on discount rates. And also your future reversion power price assumptions for the project. So is this something where we should expect some book value updates on a quarterly basis going forward? And if so, can you give us any kind of sense as to how material those changes might be relative to the other sort of impairment pluses and minuses that you typically put through over the quarter?

And then an allied question, when we're modeling cash flow, we're all looking to 2028 when you got all these projects up and running. And perhaps now that the rights issue process is over, maybe you could throw in a bit of a guide for 2028 EBITDA guidance might be, given that's really the key year when everything is up and running. But should we apply a haircut to that for cash flow given that, as I understand it, the majority of the cash flows in that year would be going to Apollo?

Then -- well, let's take the first one first. When it comes to the sort of the uncertainty of the fluctuations on the starting point of the provision that we actually do going forward on the sort of asymmetry, yes, it is correct that we have to evaluate that every quarter. Those evaluation will come as today's rules in IFRS. Those adjustments will come under the financial income line.

Second part of this is, of course, that since we have both payable and receivable in this, there is an incorporated hedge as a result of that in addition. So I would not -- so in essence, yes, there will be elements to this being sort of adjusted every quarter. We do not expect that to be significant. And we are presenting that under IFRS rules today. It will come under the financial line.

On the outlook of '28, we will not do an update on the '28 expectations so soon after the rights issue and the prospectus that we issued. We will, of course, comment more back to that and be more granular when we come to the yearly update in February.

Okay. And the comment on the cash flow haircut. I think actually in the first years of the projects, I think it was -- for 3 years, it was 50-50, and then thereafter, it reverts to 70-30 in Apollo's favor. But should we be making a cash flow adjustment? Is that how we should be thinking about it? We need to reduce a little the EBITDA you report on a proportional basis to reflect the fact that you're getting less of the cash flows in the short term. Is that the right way to think about it?

Well, that's going to be the difference between the P&L -- the EBITDA P&L and the cash flow statement. So of course, in the P&L statement, that will, of course, and the adjustment that we're making right -- the loss adjustment we're making right now, will, of course, be reversed under the EBITDA. But of course, in our operational cash flow statement, we'll, of course, address that and be very specific of the noncash elements within it.

We now have a question from the line of Dominic Nash from Barclays.

A couple of questions, please. Second one should be quite quick. The first one is on utilization levels of your offshore wind. You always quote output, but I believe you don't give us an update on the actual potential output pre-curtailment. And I was wondering what sort of level of curtailment are you sort of seeing in your offshore fleet? And what would that do if we were to adjust for sort of likely proper underlying output capability?

And the second question is a simple one here, dividend policy. You've got -- you're not giving any sort of firm numbers yet. I think in 2026, you're going to start paying a dividend. Consensus, I think, in Bloomberg is DKK 4 per share. Are you happy with that consensus number?

Thank you, Dominic. On the sort of the utilization levels that you talk about, we don't guide on specific curtailment of our offshore wind farms -- of onshore/offshore containment of any nature. We -- what you can see is that we have delivered a very solid availability performance during the year. 93% park -- or sorry, production-based availability for the first 9 months and 94% for Q3. So therefore, I'm very, very pleased with the underlying performance, but we don't guide on the curtailment levels. And also just reminding you that there are different frameworks in different countries for curtailment. And as an example, in Germany, we are compensated for the vast majority of curtailments from the onshore grid.

As for the dividend policy, we have confirmed for a while now that we expect to pay out dividend again by 2027 for accounting year '26. We will stick to that. But we will not comment on the level of the dividend.

The next question comes from the line of Mark Freshney from UBS.

Rasmus, if I could pick you up on some comments you made about a month ago at a conference. You mentioned that there were 2 tracks to managing the stop order on Revolution. There was the legal track and there was the negotiated settlement, the dialogue track. Clearly, there was -- your big shareholder announced some deals with the U.S. Department of Defense. Clearly, a negotiated settlement that would protect Sunrise and Revolution would always be preferable to winning in court. So can you make any comments on how that -- those negotiations may be proceeding?

Mark, thank you very much. You are right. We are pursuing 2 tracks. One is the legal track where we received the injunction on the 22nd of September that allowed us to go back to work. And then the other track is a dialogue track with the relevant people in the administration. I -- it is not sort of my approach, Mark. So this is the same as it has been all along and that is that I don't go into details about the conversations that we may or may not have in terms of making a deal. Our focus is to get to a, you can say, complete solution for Revolution Wind, where we still have the stop-work order claim outstanding.

Our focus is on the projects, and I am pleased with the progress that we have seen in terms of construction on -- across both Revolution Wind and Sunrise where we have seen that we have completion increasing from 80% to 85% on Revolution Wind and from 35% to 40% on Sunrise Wind, including the installation of all the substations. So that is really where we have our focus.

I respect that. And if I may have a follow-up just on the credit rating. I mean, I think S&P were waiting for the transaction that we saw yesterday. Can we expect some news on the rating? And does your modeling suggest that the Hornsea 3 farm down gets you where you need to be on that S&P tripwire, so to speak?

Well, Mark, we are aware of the comments or the statements that S&P made in their update on their rating in August. And of course, we expect them to be more comfortable as a result of having managed to actually sign this agreement and basically following our time line as both signing and closing before year-end. So hopefully, it will have some effects. We are a bit uncertain about the interpretation evaluations of S&P because they are sort of the odd man out in the 3 ratings that we do have. So we just have to refer that sort of evaluation to them, Mark. I'm sorry.

We now have a question from the line of Alberto Gandolfi from Goldman Sachs.

I guess the first part is perhaps more for Trond and perhaps the second for Rasmus, it's on capital structure and capital allocation. So the first part of the question is following the DKK 20 billion you're going to receive from the transaction and you announced this week and the rights issue technically in the 9 months, you're basically debt free. And of course, the company remains cash flow negative. But I guess my question -- the first part of the question is, is your balance sheet now fully derisked? And is there any scenario where you see the risk of having to implement incremental measures to avoid the downgrade to junk? I'm just thinking, for instance, if the U.S. project never start, can we say that even in that scenario, your balance sheet is now okay?

And the second part of the question is that if you can elaborate on the first, I guess, then the question would be if the U.S. projects start to contribute, then you could say that in '28, your FFO to net debt is incredibly strong. So can you tell us how you are beginning to work for the repositioning of Ørsted at that point in time? What's your priority? Is organic growth at that point because you need to start winning awards in the next 12, 18, 24 months, I guess? Or is it more wait and see to see what happens in the United States?

Well, I'll take the first one on the capital structure. I think your numbers is fairly correct relative to where we are and where we're going to be at year-end. So in starting to say that, of course, a lot of the discussion during the rights issue has been, of course, the downside risk relative to what's going to happen in the U.S. And we have been sort of elaborating a lot about that because of the stop-work order and the sort of the risk of getting more stop-work orders.

I do think that along with the rights issue, we have explained the reason why we thought the DKK 60 billion was the right number. We have communicated that we expect this Hornsea 3 transaction to be signed and closed during the year. So that has been a part of our base case all the time. The downside risk is, of course, that things may happen of uncertainties in the U.S. that we cannot sort of put a probability or an estimate on.

But as we have said all along, we have committed so much money into the projects of Sunrise and Revolution that closing it down is not really a good case for us because our commitment cost is almost as high as the total cost of the project. That is why we have looked at these structures and also the capital raise in this context. It is hard now to see situation that we will come into a -- that we will be downgraded into a noninvestment grade. So the scenarios you need to develop to actually get us there is now, of course, much more difficult when we have the Hornsea 3 in place.

So over to you, Rasmus.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Alberto. Yes. So I think probably 2 parts to the answer on repositioning of Ørsted on the other side of '28. First part is, Alberto, that it is for us to deliver on our plan. That is really our main focus. We have a plan with -- centered around 4 priorities to have a robust capital structure, to construct our 8.1 gigawatt of offshore wind projects in the best possible way, to stay focused and disciplined on capital allocation, always prioritizing value over volume and then also improve our competitiveness.

And if you sort of look at our progress across the board on -- across these 4 priorities in Q3, you can see that, that is really where we focus. So the best way, in my view, to position us for '28 and onwards is by delivering on our plan. We will be in a very, very different position, and we will be able to meet the market from a position of strength at that point in time when we deliver on our plan.

Second part is sort of how do we then think about 2028 and onwards. You talked about different kinds of sort of growth measures and what is out there. We are -- remain very bullish about the prospects for offshore wind in Europe in particular. We see the rebasing happening in the market. And the growth pockets for offshore wind in Europe, in my view, span across 3, if you will. One is, of course, the centralized tenders. There are -- '26 is probably going to be a little bit on the low side in terms of numbers of tenders that are being put out there, but then from '27 and onwards, it would take a bit of a step change. So that is one pocket that we could pursue.

The other one is, of course, to mature our proprietary pipeline. And then the third pocket is more -- I would not call it inorganic, but a more, you can say, project-by-project collaborationships or M&A. Those are and basically have always been the pockets that we are looking for when we think about offshore wind growth, but we will be patient, and we would prioritize value over volume.

Rasmus, you've been so interesting that can I ask a follow-up? I appreciate if you say no.

Go ahead.

I'm very -- this is all very clear. I'm just very intrigued by the comments you made about refocusing on Europe and potentially openness, project-by-project M&A. Would this also include potentially bigger platforms? I think it's no secret that probably lots of people on this call are thinking about the offshore portfolio of Equinor that would take out a competitor. And at that point, your balance sheet is very strong. Would this be an option worth pursuing, you think?

That is not in our plans.

The next question comes from the line of Lars Heindorff from Nordea.

The first one is regarding the correlation between EBITDA and operating cash flow. You had a few questions about this already, so maybe it's sort of a follow-up. But you've been guiding for '25 to '27 operating cash flow of DKK 50 billion. If we take the midpoint of the EBITDA guidance this year and then the minimum guidance that you've been providing for '26 and '27 that will add up to DKK 86 billion of EBITDA in the same period and a conversion ratio, which is less than 60%.

So how should we think about the correlation of -- between EBITDA and operating cash flow going forward? First and foremost, in -- up and until '27, and I think given the development in Hornsea 3 and the first 3 years with a 50-50 split, that should be fine. But beyond that, that's maybe too far out. But just to get a sort of sense for what you expect in terms of operating cash flow for the coming years? That's the first part. And then the second part, just a housekeeping, which is, Trond, you mentioned the Changhua transaction. How much exactly would that impact the net interest-bearing debt for this year?

Very well, on the operational cash flow relative to the EBITDA, there are 3 sort of buckets of elements that comes into the difference. It's the taxes paid. It's the reversal of noncash tax equity in EBITDA, and it's basically a working capital after changes. That is the major bucket. That's the 3 buckets. And then there is, of course, ups and downs relative to working capital changes that goes in there. But those 3 elements, taxes paid, reversal of noncash tax equity in EBITDA and working capital after changes is the 3 elements that really drives the bridge between the DKK 50 million and the EBITDA element. So that's those elements.

When it comes to the Changhua 2b and 4 and the transaction, we still have the ambition to sign the transaction during the year. But since we're not able to close the transaction during the year, that there will be no transaction as such. So there will be not debt reduction as a result of that. So the statements that we have made earlier when it comes to the DKK 35 billion of the proceeds guideline that we have for '25 and '26, we have the DKK 7 billion that we did before half year. We now have the DKK 10 billion from Hornsea 3. And then the 2 outstanding elements is the around the -- short of DKK 20 billion left. And that's basically evenly divided between the Changhua and the EU onshore transaction. So -- and as I said, Changhua will not be closed during the year, so no effect.

Okay. And just a follow-up on the first part, which is the conversion between EBITDA to operating cash flow. Is that fair to assume that when you get to '28, which will be the first year, at least as we look right now without any offshore CapEx, that you will have still the same relationship, which is around slightly below 60% cash conversion from EBITDA to operating capital flow?

I need to get back to that -- on that because the DKK 11 billion to DKK 12 billion coming out of the 6 projects is not going to be evenly divided as a result of how much of tax equity that comes into that gross up. So not quite sure I can guide you on that right now.

We now have a question from the line of Deepa Venkateswaran from Bernstein.

I wanted to quiz you a bit on what the Equinor CEO has been saying about offshore wind and Ørsted, where he's been talking about new business models, the need for consolidation and industrial cooperation with Ørsted. What are your thoughts on any cooperation with Equinor and what form and over what time line? So that's the question. If you can't answer that, then I have another question, which I'd like to ask.

I will give it a go, Deepa. Thank you very much. So I think first of all, we are, of course, very pleased with the support that we continue to receive from Equinor as the second largest shareholder. We have no doubt about it. And of course, I have also noted the comments that you are alluding to. Our focus right now -- my focus right now is to deliver on our plan, is to deliver on our strategy quarter-by-quarter centered around the 4 priorities that I mentioned before. I -- of course, as any responsible management team, if you look further out in time, of course, you will look at all options that would improve value for your shareholders, no doubt about it. I am confident that we still have a very well-suited business model for offshore wind.

The next question comes from the line of Jenny Ping from Citi.

So 2 questions I have are somewhat linked. Firstly, just on the negative construction EBITDA that you printed in 3Q that you say is linked with the Greater Changhua 4 project. And given some of the cost overruns that you highlighted, are we expecting this to be this magnitude effectively until the close of the project at COD in 2026, so DKK 300 million, DKK 400 million negative each quarter?

And then just linked to that, I guess, going back to the Apollo deal, Rasmus. Clearly, this is a fully EPC wrapped project, which you will take on any overspend and any delays risk. So what sort of comfort can you give to the investors that this project has been operationally derisked as we go into the full construction phase to minimize any of the delays and overruns, which ultimately will be borne by Ørsted?

Just taking the negative of the construction agreement provision that we made in the third quarter. That is, of course, the full amount of loss that we expect to have on the construction agreement on Changhua 4. So it's not a repetitive element. It's an estimate of the full loss on the construction agreement.

Jenny, and as for Hornsea 3, you are right that the way we have done the CA is, you can say, our normal model where we wrap sort of parts of the construction risk the same way as it is also our normal model on the OMA part where we do O&M for our partner. We are progressing very much according to plan on Hornsea 3. It's, of course, a very big project, 197 positions. But it is in our core market, and it is in a zone that we are comfortable working with. Some of the things we have been focused on in the beginning from a construction risk perspective, if you will, are going quite well. The onshore converter stations and the cable landfall is progressing. That is a key focus point for us, also making sure that we get -- that we can deliver and also National Grid can deliver on time. We have no reason to believe not to.

When we get to that point in '27, monopiles has been a key focus for us. We have now sufficient robustness on the supply chain for that project on the monopile side. We have sort of roughly a handful of monopile suppliers on the project, SeAH, EEW, Haizea, Steelwind to name a few. And we have a great deal of flexibility in terms of making sure that if one is not exactly on time, then someone else can deliver. And we are starting to see monopiles being produced with a couple of them. So that is very much on track.

Half of the export cables have been produced, the offshore monopile installation will start in Q2. And also, as I said before, the 2 offshore converter stations are progressing according to plan, 1 already in Norway from Thailand, the other 1 on its way. One thing that we and I have been focusing on, and that's my last point, Jenny, from the very beginning has also very much been on installation vessels. We have 3 installation vessels that will do the work on Hornsea 3. And 1 of them is now done here in September. So during Q3, that is very good. The other 1 is working on other projects. So 1 of the 2 turbine installation vessels, the Wind Peak is now working for Sofia and on the East Anglia THREE. So that is all fine. And then the last 1 is being produced, and we expect for it to be done by the end of the year. So I would say across the board, construction and thereby construction risk is progressing according to plan.

We now have a question from the line of Jacob Pedersen from Sydbank.

Just a question for me regarding Baltica 3. You still have it as a part of your pipeline in offshore in your presentation. What is the status on this project? And will it play any role in bridging the standstill in new installations after 2027? Or will it be more attractive for you to go into other [ auctions? ]

Thank you, Jacob. Baltica 3 is a project that we jointly own. As you know, together with our partner, PGE. We continue to be very, very pleased with that partnership, and we are also moving forward with PGE on Baltica 2. As you know, we put Baltica 3 under reconfiguration a few years ago now. And the reason being that we didn't see sufficient value as the project stands in our portfolio to move it forward. That is still the case. The project is under reconfiguration. And we will only move it forward if we see a significant improvement in the value. So it is one of the options that we have in our portfolio. But as I said before, it would also have to stack up against the other opportunities. We are very strict on value over volume and also on capital discipline and allocation. So that is what I can say about Baltica 3 right now.

Okay. If I may, a second one, just housekeeping. The rights issue cost, will we see that in financing costs during Q4? Or is it already in the Q3 numbers?

It will come in the Q4 numbers. But having said that, there was a good estimate in the prospectus. So I think you can -- if you want to have an estimate, you can use that.

The next question comes from the line of Olly Jeffery from Deutsche Bank.

My first question is that my understanding is that Judge Lamberth [ and Revolution Wind -- so ] Judge Lamberth, who put in place the preliminary injunction is likely to be writing a detailed opinion, which we haven't received yet. I mean if the Trump administration were to appeal the injunction that will most likely happen after that detailed opinion is being written. Would you agree with that broad assessment?

And then the second question is just on the Section 232 investigation into wind components. Has there been any development on that? And are you able at all to say if were to lead to further tariffs, would that be of any material consequence in terms of impairments? Or is that not such a risk key?

Thank you, Olly. I can take the appeal, and then I will leave the tariff question to Trond. And I will be quite brief, Olly. I don't want to speculate in potential legal outcomes and whether or not something will be appealed. And if so, when. We rely on the injunction that we received on the 22nd of September by Judge Lamberth. And we were immediately back to work, and that is very much our focus. But as I said before, we are pursuing 2 avenues still, the legal track and also the conversation track. And our aim is to get a complete solution for Revolution Wind.

Just to be clear, firm -- or have a clear view of where the tariff goes in the U.S., it's quite difficult. So -- but what we have taken into consideration is, of course, the June 4 announcement, the 19th announcement and the 21st announcement. That means that we have looked at the inquiry of the specific imports for wind turbines and associated parts. We have included more than 400 items that they have included on the list. As such, we have also considered the 50% level. And that is really the elements that we can do as best estimate as of now. And that is what we have included in our best estimate that gets us to the DKK 2.5 billion of impairment effect in the third quarter.

We now have a question from the line of Roald Hartvigsen from Clarksons Securities.

On gross investments, you keep your DKK 50 billion to DKK 54 billion guidance unchanged, and given that you've already spent about DKK 40 billion so far this year, the low end of your guidance would suggest only an additional DKK 10 billion for the last quarter, which is like quite a material step down compared to the DKK 15 billion this quarter, especially given the fact that reported CapEx figures historically have been quite high in the end of the year quarter and that the full Hornsea 3 project will still be on your books, I guess, at least part of the quarter or so. So can you help us reconcile the expected drop in the investment level from the third quarter and give some color on what assumptions are embedded in especially the lower end of the gross investment guidance range here?

I do think that you had to take the full guidance into perspective, basically DKK 50 billion to DKK 54 billion. And that if you take the upper number, it's actually going to be around the same number in gross investments in fourth quarter as in third quarter, if you take that as a sort of a possibility. Having said that, I think the important element to this is not necessarily the timing whether the payment is done the 20th of December or the 10th of January.

The important thing is that our investment level for all the 3 years is around DKK 145 billion, as we have said earlier. We expect that to be DKK 50 billion to DKK 54 billion this year. And that means that it's going to be sort of in the DKK 50 billion range for the 2 consecutive years of '26 and '27. So I think it's important not to sort of be razor sharp on 31st of December. But our best guess as of now and the sensitivity we have relative to timing of payments at the year-end is between DKK 50 billion and DKK 54 billion.

The next question comes from the line of Rob Pulleyn from Morgan Stanley.

Lots of questions already answered. So if I may just ask something a bit nitty-gritty. On Slide 23, I noticed some of these numbers have changed since 2Q. So when we look at the 10% ITC bonus, sensitivity impact, Sunrise and Revolution now add up to DKK 6 billion. And previously, I think that was DKK 4.6 billion. And the sensitivity to a 50 basis point move in WACC is now DKK 2.1 billion and previously, it was less. I'm just wondering what was going on there? And if I can just ask a clarification from earlier because the audio was a bit crackly. Did you confirm you hope to announce the deal on Changhua 2 in 2025? I know you answered that you expect to close it in 2026. But is the disposal still going to happen this year?

When it comes to the Slide 23, the reason for changes is, of course, changes in some of the CapEx levels. So the elements, I don't have the sort of the gross numbers in the top of my head. So you have to contact IR to actually get the more detailed level in that. When it comes to the Changhua transaction, yes, we still have the ambition to sign the deal during this year and then close it when we have COD in the third quarter next year.

We now have a question from the line of David Paz from Wolfe.

Just wanted to follow up on Revolution Wind. Just 2 quick questions; a, is the DKK 5 billion, has that been updated since August in terms of the remaining investment? I think that was your share. And then b, what of those 3 items you've listed, onshore substation, the remaining turbines and the array cables, which are the -- would you say they're like first and last? In other words, like what is the critical path, I guess, if you can just give us some color, particularly given the comments on the onshore substation being substantially complete, just what gets you to second half 2026 COD?

When it comes to the CapEx on Revolution, yes, our total CapEx -- our 50% share of the CapEx is DKK 20 billion. And as last quarter, we had spent about DKK 15 billion of that. So the remaining DKK 5 billion for us, DKK 10 billion in total for Revolution has sort of been paid during the time. And basically -- but I think it's more important that we have come so far on the Revolution that the commitment we have on the whole value is there. So whether we have paid it or not, doesn't really matter relative to the timing of the -- it's more the timing of things.

And with respect to the critical path for Revolution Wind, it is still the onshore substation that is on the critical path. It is moving forward well, as I said, on both the turbine installations with 52 and on array cables with 41 out of the 65. So -- and we -- as I said, we expect energization of the onshore substation early next year. But the reason that is still on the critical path is that following the energization of the onshore substation, you then basically go area by area in the wind park, starting with the export cables, then on to the offshore substations and then the turbines in terms of the electrification and the hot commissioning of the turbines. And that takes -- that brings us into our expectations for COD. so still on the critical path, the onshore substation.

We have a follow-up question from the line of Mark Freshney from UBS.

Just regarding security of some of the subsea cables, we know that there's a lot of work being done at the industry and government and NATO level on protection of those cables. But from your perspective, have any of your subsea cables being knowingly sabotaged? And when you think about that at board level as a risk to the business, how are you tackling that from your own internal perspective?

Thank you, Mark. Mark, as I'm sure you can appreciate, I will not be super granular on this question. So I'm not going to comment on sort of impacts on individual cables and what have you. What I can say is that you can say, security and working with the governments and also you mentioned NATO before, is something that has been part of the way we do development in Europe for a very long time. Governments are asking for conversations and solutions for defense coexistence, and we see very good cooperation between the relevant authorities in the markets that we are in and also the sector, including us to develop successful mitigations from a coexistence perspective. That is as far as I can take it in terms of defense.

We have a follow-up question from the line of Dominic Nash from Barclays.

It's actually on Hornsea 3 and the numbers announced sort of yesterday, I just need some clarification on them, if you can help me out, please. So could you work out whether my math is right, you basically said that you've spent DKK 20 billion to date. Apollo are paying you DKK 10 billion for what you spent today, so fine. You also say you're doing DKK 70 billion to DKK 75 billion of CapEx still to go for the project, so DKK 90 billion to DKK 95 billion in total. And you say about 1/3 of that is transmission, I think. But you then -- if you then take Apollo's DKK 39 billion contribution and DKK 10 billion has been used for buying into the project for historics, at least DKK 29 billion remaining, how does that DKK 29 billion fit into the DKK 70 billion to DKK 75 billion still to go at 50% ownership? And on that, I think the transmission might be the one that's a bit odd, is that in or out of the amount of cash that they're paying into? And is that the sort of debt associated with it? Or have you got some other way of getting that one financed?

Dominic, just a starting point for -- it's a bit difficult to follow sort of your math over the phone. But I think one material element in your math is that DKK 70 billion to DKK 75 billion is the total project and not what is remaining. But I do think that if you take the rest of your math together with the IR, I think they will be better of guiding you through it.

We have a follow-up question from the line of Deepa Venkateswaran from Bernstein.

So the question I have is on the legal process in the U.S. for Revolution Wind. So the stop-work orders allowed you to start construction, seems to be going well. What happens if you finish constructing the project, but you've not resolved the underlying challenge of the stop-work order? Can you start already selling the power and so on and energize? Or will it kind of come to a standstill? And in some scenario, I don't know if you lose the appeal at a later stage after 1 or 2 years, will you then be forced to decommission? I'm just thinking about what happens given that now you are constructing and so far, the legal process might take much longer to settle -- might take longer than your construction time line. So if you could just elaborate on those scenarios.

Thank you, Deepa. I would be brief. The impact of the injunction relief allows us to continue the project, to continue constructing and also to produce power.

We have a follow-up question from the line of Lars Heindorff from Nordea.

Very fortunate to be after Deepa's question because it's also regarding Revolution Wind. Now you got the stop-work order on the 22nd of August. You got the injunction filing on the 17th of September. That is now 47 -- sorry, 49 days ago. And if I'm correct, you have installed roughly 7 turbines in that period. You have 13 turbines left to install for Revolution Wind. How long do you expect that will take?

Thank you, Lars. So the guidance we gave on progress is that we basically guide on COD. But of course, it is also -- as it always is, it is also relevant when you install all the turbines and also when you can have first power and that we expect during H1.

But is it fair to assume normally, I think installation of vessels taken 2 -- 1.5, 2 days and then maybe winter period, it will be longer, 4 days, something like that. Is that a fair assumption?

Lars, I look forward to telling you about the construction progress on -- when we are done with the year. And there I will be very specific about how far we have come on the turbine installation as well. It is moving forward quite well right now. But of course, we are also entering a period with more uncertainty on the weather. But right now, turbine installation on Revolution Wind is going really, really well.

We have a follow-up question from the line of Rob Pulleyn from Morgan Stanley.

Yes, sure. May I ask on the onshore U.S. business. I know this is a bit different to the vein we've had so far. During the rights issue process, you talked about effectively separating this out legally and financially into its own stand-alone entity. Is that still the case? And any further strategic plans for this given, of course, there is a somewhat shortage of power in the U.S. and quite a lot of optimism around that market?

Thank you, Rob. You are right that we have progressed our separation of our U.S. onshore business. And as of 1st of October, our onshore business has become a separate business unit reporting into our global development chief. And the Americas onshore business will then continue to focus on development and operations of the projects within the U.S. We have a pipeline of 6, 7 gigawatts of projects with capacity that meets the definition of sort of IRA qualification through 2029. And there are envelope opportunities in the market. And also the 2 projects that we have under construction. So Old 300 BESS in Texas and also Badger Wind in North Dakota are moving forward really well.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to CEO, Rasmus Errboe, for any closing remarks.

Thank you all very much for joining. We appreciate the interaction and the interest as always. And if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to our IR team, who will be here to answer all of them. Thank you very much. Stay safe, and have a great day.