Nel ASA's Double Squeeze: A Bleeding Spinoff and a Vacant Corner Office

Nel ASA's order backlog hits 1.21B kroner, but Q2 revenue falls 12% and net loss widens to 189M kroner amid CEO departure and weak Cavendish results.

The hydrogen equipment maker Nel ASA finds itself in an uncomfortable spot: its order book is swelling even as its share price wilts. The company booked 230 million Norwegian kroner in new orders during the second quarter, lifting its backlog to 1.21 billion kroner — evidence, on paper, that demand for its electrolyser technology remains intact. Yet the market is paying more attention to what's going wrong than what's going right.

The numbers underneath the headline bookings tell a grimmer story. Revenue from customer contracts slipped 12 percent year-on-year to 153 million kroner, while the EBITDA loss ballooned to 155 million kroner. A 70 million kroner legal settlement with Iwatani added to the damage, dragging the net loss to 189 million kroner for the quarter. The Iwatani dispute itself is now resolved, but the financial sting was substantial enough to leave a visible dent in the quarterly results.

The market's response has been muted at best. The stock changed hands at 0.1934 euros in German trading on Friday, down 0.6 percent on the day and roughly 47 percent below its 52-week high of 0.3655 euros set in May. Over the past seven days, the shares have shed 1.0 percent — a tepid reaction that suggests investors are neither panicking nor celebrating. The equity sits just 12 percent above its February trough, hugging the lower end of its twelve-month range.

The Cavendish complication

Adding to the gloom is the weak performance of Cavendish Hydrogen ASA, the refuelling business Nel spun off some time ago. Cavendish reported second-quarter numbers on Thursday that did little to reassure: revenue of 4.4 million euros and an adjusted EBITDA loss of 2.1 million euros. A new contract did land — a refuelling station in Luxembourg developed with partner Mesure Process — but for investors who treat Nel and Cavendish as two sides of the same hydrogen coin, the operational shortfall outweighs the single deal.

The technical picture offers little comfort. The share price sits roughly 4.1 percent below its 50-day moving average of 0.2017 euros, and the relative strength index of 41.3 points to persistently weak momentum, even if the stock is neither overbought nor oversold.

Leadership limbo

The clock is also ticking on the corner office. CEO Håkon Volldal is set to depart for Elopak ASA by January 1, 2027, a decision announced over a month ago that continues to hang over the stock. The search for a successor is underway, but no candidate has been named. For institutional investors, an unresolved leadership question during an already difficult operational stretch is a double dose of uncertainty.

The divergence between Nel's struggles and the broader Oslo market is striking. While the OBX index recently touched a three-month high, buoyed by cyclical sectors like healthcare and utilities, Nel has shed roughly a fifth of its value in just two weeks. That gap underscores that the company's problems are company-specific, not market-driven.

A sector in motion

The hydrogen industry itself is hardly standing still. In South Korea, Korea South-East Power and the Saemangeum Development Agency have signed a memorandum of understanding for a 320-megawatt green hydrogen complex in Buan, designed to absorb surplus solar power from a one-gigawatt installation. Projects of this scale suggest the long-term demand for electrolyser technology remains intact — an opportunity Nel can only capture if it sorts out its internal mess.

For now, investors are left weighing a growing backlog against persistent losses and an open leadership question. The central test will come in the coming quarters: whether the surge in orders translates into actual revenue and, eventually, profit — and whether a new CEO steps in before the uncertainty takes a further toll. Until then, the stock looks caught between technical weakness and a long-term story that refuses to die.