The hydrogen company Nel has raised NOK 1.5 billion

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The hydrogen company Nel has raised NOK 1.5 billion in fresh capital in a private placement, the company writes in a stock exchange announcement on Wednesday night. The issue was announced earlier in the day, right after the stock exchange closed.

In comparison, the company’s market value is 24.6 billion.

The issue price was set at NOK 15.3, in a book-building process where Carnegie and Morgan Stanley were brought in as advisers. There is a discount of nine percent to the closing price of NOK 16.81 on Wednesday.

The money the company raises will be used to increase production capacity, to expand the organization in terms of order intake and tender activity, and for general company purposes, Nel writes in the report.

“Nel is experiencing an ever-increasing interest and opportunities in the hydrogen industry,” the company writes, emphasizing that it has more than doubled the list of possible projects to $ 12 billion in the last quarter of last year alone.

– Nel has a tradition of not collecting money when we have to, but when we can. We have a lot of cash, but will build more factories and then it makes sense to have a strong balance ready, says the company’s outgoing top manager Jon André Løkke.

The stock up this year

The Nel share had an adventurous development in 2020, like many other so-called growth shares and green companies. In 2021, this type of investment became less popular, but this year the share has had a positive development. Since the bottom at the end of January, it has risen by more than 50 percent.

The bottom in January was reached after Løkke, who has been with the company since December 2015, announced his departure as CEO earlier that month.

In February, he dumped half of his Nel shares for 12.9 million kroner to an average price of NOK 12.86 – in time, however, the price has risen 30 percent.

Løkke explains his own share sale in February with the fact that it is impossible to time such things, as he as top manager and primary insider only has a few windows during a year, preferably in connection with the presentation of annual results, where he has the opportunity to sell shares in the market.

However, the Nel CEO has no plans to sell his remaining one million Nel shares when he eventually makes a role change from the CEO’s office to the boardroom.

It lies in the fact that he still has great faith in the company’s plans for the future, not least now that the tragic war in Ukraine has provoked “a European awakening to self-sufficiency in energy” as he describes it.