Nel ASA: A Powerful Alliance and a New Platform, Yet the Order Slump Deepens

Nel ASA shares fell 26% in a week as Q1 order intake dropped 73%, despite a Samsung-backed hydrogen platform. The stock remains up 35% YTD, but the market demands revenue proof.

Nel ASA’s stock has been spun into a two-sided story this week, with a shiny piece of technology on one side and a thinning order book on the other. The Norwegian electrolyser maker closed at €0.26 on Friday, wiping 12.8% from the share price in a single session. Over the full week, the loss reached 26.0% — a brutal correction for a stock that had soared to a 52-week high of €0.37 just days earlier.

Yet the year-to-date gain still stands at roughly 35%, and the shares remain 22.5% above their 200-day moving average. That suggests the sell-off is more about a reality check than a structural breakdown. The market, it seems, is demanding hard evidence that technology hype can translate into revenue.

Samsung’s Backing Gives the Technology a Boost

The most concrete operational development came from the World Hydrogen Summit in Rotterdam, where Nel and its largest shareholder, Samsung E&A, unveiled CompassH2-A+. The platform is designed for 100?MW industrial hydrogen production, built from containerised 25?MW stack modules. The system operates at 15 barg and claims to halve the footprint of competing solutions.

Crucially, Samsung E&A — which owns 9.1% of Nel and now has a seat on the board — is bundling the electrolyser stacks, balance-of-plant equipment and utilities under a single performance guarantee. That addresses one of the sector’s most persistent financing headaches: fragmented warranties. A long?term service agreement covers operation, scheduled stack replacement and real?time monitoring. The pre?engineered platform also shortens the pre?final investment decision phase by cutting early engineering work.

The message from the partnership is clear: project bankability is being improved. But the market is asking a harder question — where are the purchase orders?

The Order Book Tells a Different Story

Nel’s first?quarter order intake fell to just 85 million Norwegian kroner, a staggering 73% drop from the prior year. The order backlog shrank 24% to 1.113 billion kroner. The company’s own management has acknowledged that current backlog levels are insufficient to keep its factory properly utilised in 2027. That admission is the raw nerve in the investment case.

Revenue from customer contracts slipped 5% to 148 million kroner, while total revenue from all sources came in at 152 million kroner. EBITDA improved modestly to a loss of 100 million kroner, compared with minus 115 million a year earlier. Not enough to break the losing streak.

There are glimmers of commercial traction. Nel commissioned an off?grid green hydrogen plant in Korea in March, a reference project for its alkaline platform, and soon after secured a follow?up order worth $7 million for containerised PEM units. For the current quarter, orders of around 70 million kroner have already been booked. Still, the overall trajectory remains heavily skewed toward decline.

Financial Cushion and ETF Support

Nel’s balance sheet provides some breathing room. At the end of the first quarter, cash and cash equivalents stood at approximately 1.44 billion kroner. The operating cash flow was negative 165 million kroner for the period, meaning the cash burn rate remains a key metric to watch.

Two Global X hydrogen ETFs together hold more than 30 million Nel shares. As of 29 May, the US?listed fund allocated 5.12% of its portfolio to Nel; its European counterpart was close behind at 5.13%. That creates a layer of structural demand that is less sensitive to individual corporate news, but it offers no guarantee against further declines.

Technicals and the Next Catalyst

The stock is now testing its 50?day moving average at €0.26. The relative strength index sits at 40.5 — weak momentum but not yet oversold. With an annualised 30?day volatility of nearly 105%, the shares could snap in either direction quickly.

The next hard data point arrives on 15 July, when Nel publishes its half?year report. A two?week blackout period starts at the beginning of July, so management communication will go quiet. Until then, the market will be watching whether the Samsung?powered CompassH2?A+ platform can pull in concrete purchase orders. If it does, the recent rout might look like a buying opportunity. If not, the sell?off may prove to be a rational repricing of overly optimistic expectations.