Nel ASA's Waiting Game: A Rival's £275M Splash Sharpens the Focus on Oslo's Electrolyser Maker

Nel ASA's Q2 losses widen and CEO departs, while Ballard's GeoPura acquisition highlights accelerating hydrogen consolidation.

The hydrogen economy has a habit of rewarding the bold, and this week it was Ballard Power Systems cashing in on that principle. The Canadian fuel cell specialist confirmed on Friday that it had closed its acquisition of UK-based GeoPura, paying £275 million in a mix of £82.5 million in cash and roughly 49.6 million newly issued Ballard shares. For Nel ASA, the deal lands like a cold splash of reality: while a competitor buys its way to scale, the Norwegian electrolyser manufacturer is still grinding through an organic growth story that has yet to convince the market.

That contrast is hard to ignore. Ballard's move signals that consolidation is accelerating across the hydrogen value chain, and capital-rich players are choosing to acquire rather than build. Nel, by contrast, is leaning on manufacturing efficiencies and state-backed grants to close the gap — a slower path that leaves the company exposed to the very question investors keep asking: when does the order book actually start translating into profit?

The Numbers Tell a Two-Sided Story

Nel's second-quarter results, published back in July, capture the tension neatly. Revenue from customer contracts fell 12% year-on-year to 153 million Norwegian kroner, while the EBITDA loss widened to 155 million kroner and the net loss reached 189 million kroner. Those are sobering figures for a company still trying to prove its electrolyser technology can be a commercial success.

Yet buried in the same release was a genuine bright spot: order intake climbed to 230 million kroner, suggesting demand for electrolyser technology remains intact even if the revenue recognition lags. That gap between bookings and billings is now the central narrative for Nel — and the reason the stock has been drifting in a narrow band rather than collapsing outright.

A Stock Caught Between Headwinds

The share price action reflects the ambiguity. At the Oslo exchange, Nel closed Friday down 0.94% at 2.11 Norwegian kroner, even as the broader OBX index gained 0.54%. In German trading, the stock was changing hands at €0.1924, roughly 0.5% lower on the day and about 10% below its 200-day moving average — a technical signal that the medium-term trend remains soft.

Zoom out further and the picture gets more nuanced. The shares sit 47% below their 52-week high of €0.3655, a peak reached at the end of May. Yet over a full 12-month horizon, the decline is a relatively contained 3.0% — a reminder that the stock has been range-bound for much of the past year rather than in freefall.

Analyst sentiment has cooled accordingly. JPMorgan trimmed its price target for Nel from 2.90 to 1.80 Norwegian kroner in early August, keeping a Neutral rating on the shares. That call is now several weeks old, so it shouldn't be read as a fresh market signal, but it does capture the skepticism that has been building around the company's near-term prospects.

Leadership Uncertainty Adds Another Layer

Compounding the operational challenges is a vacancy at the top. Håkon Volldal, Nel's president and CEO, is departing to take the helm at Norwegian packaging group Elopak ASA no later than January 1, 2027. A successor has yet to be named, leaving the company without a clear hand on the tiller during a critical restructuring phase.

The timing is awkward, to say the least. Nel is in the middle of a cost-cutting and repositioning effort, and the leadership gap raises questions about strategic continuity. The company did provide some reassurance this week by publishing its financial calendar for 2026 and 2027, giving investors fixed dates for upcoming quarterly and annual reports. But a schedule is not a strategy — and the calendar does nothing to resolve who will be steering the ship.

The Long Game at Herøya

For all the near-term gloom, Nel's management is pressing ahead with its capacity expansion plans. The company is developing its next-generation pressurised alkaline platform, launched in May, with backing from a €135 million grant from the EU Innovation Fund. The goal is to reach an annual production capacity of 4 gigawatts at its Herøya site by 2030.

There's also evidence that manufacturing scale is starting to pay off. According to a market report, the delivery of the 100th unit of the pressurised alkaline MC-Series — expected by the end of 2025 — brought an 18% reduction in production costs compared with the 50th unit. That kind of learning-curve improvement is exactly what Nel needs to demonstrate if it wants to compete on cost with rivals who are buying their way to market share.

But these are long-cycle investments with no immediate contribution to the bottom line. The financing question remains front and centre, and until the order pipeline converts into revenue, Nel's balance sheet will keep doing the talking.

A Test of Patience

Ballard's acquisition of GeoPura is a useful benchmark for what's possible when capital meets ambition. Nel's approach — incremental cost reduction, state subsidies, and a slow build-out of manufacturing capacity — is more methodical, but it demands patience that the market has so far been reluctant to extend.

The next few months will be telling. The company's upcoming quarterly reports will show whether the order intake from Q2 is translating into actual revenue, and whether the leadership question gets resolved. Until then, Nel remains a stock for investors with a long horizon and a tolerance for unanswered questions — the kind of paper that rewards conviction, but only if the fundamentals eventually catch up with the narrative.