Norway’s Aker Carbon Capture has reported strong demand for its design and construction services in the fourth quarter and for the whole of 2023 against the previous year, however, the issue of becoming profitable has remained elusive.
The company said that it recorded high commercial activity across Europe and the US in the fourth quarter, posting record quarterly revenue of Nkr573 million ($55 million), up 139% against the same period of 2022.
For the whole of the last year, revenues ended up at over Nkr1.6 billion against Nkr781 million in 2022.
A strong fourth quarter did not pull the company from the red zone, but marginally improved the bottom line.
Aker CC said it still had negative earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (Ebitda) of Nkr43 million in this period, with overall cash outflow of Nkr211 million.
The company has been reporting negative quarterly Ebitda since the first quarter of 2021, after it was spun-off from Aker Solutions the year before.
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However, Aker CC said that it still has a healthy cash and equivalents balance of Nkr1.1 billion that covers its liabilities and allows the company to continue building its business.
“Aker CC is experiencing an acceleration in market activity and strong interest in our growing range of modular carbon capture facilities,” chief executive officer Egil Fagerland said.
Highlights of 2023 included five Just Catch 100 modular carbon capture units ordered by Orsted, one Just Catch 400 front-end engineering design for Celsio and a Big Catch Process Design Package to Uniper, Fagerland said.
The company said its order backlog increased to Nkr2.6 billion up from Nkr1.3 billion in the same period last year.
Overall, Aker CC’s pipeline of paid equipment supply agreements, FEED and pre-FEED orders, mobile test unit campaigns and studies has doubled to about 40 million tonnes per annum of CO2 capture by the end of 2023 against the beginning of the year.
Customers have also paid for CCS research to be carried out on 50 units for onshore and 19 units for offshore installation, the company said.
However, no FEEDs have been ordered yet for offshore carbon capture installations, against FEEDs for 15 onshore carbon capture units.