AKTOR Group's Second Act: From Greek Contractor to Infra Conglomerate
Ellaktor nearly doubled pro-forma EBITDA, banked EUR 950M of fresh capital, and quietly admitted its construction backbone is becoming a minority of the business.
ELLAKTOR.AT · Earnings Call · 2026-09-24
A Construction Company That No Longer Wants to Be One
For years the knock on AKTOR (the group formerly known as Intrakat) was simple: it was a levered Greek builder. The first-half 2026 call is management's argument that the label is now obsolete. The group runs six operating subsidiaries under a holding company that, in the CEO's framing, “does exactly what we said it would do. It allocates capital, and it does not operate.” — Alexandros Exarchou, CEO · 2026-09-24 Four of those units carry the growth plan — construction, concessions, renewables and LNG — with construction as the backbone, but a backbone that is deliberately shrinking relative to everything built on top of it. The mix shift is the cleanest evidence. The CFO noted that “Construction was about 90% of group EBITDA in 2024, 70% in 2025, and this half we are already around 55%” — Kostas Adamopoulos, CFO · 2026-09-24 — and that this happened while construction EBITDA itself grew. The stated target is for the three investment pillars to reach roughly two-thirds of group EBITDA over the long term. What defends it in the meantime is the construction margin, which held at 14%, the top end of guidance, supported by captive volume from the group's own PPPs where it is both contractor and owner.Two Numbers, Two Stories
There is a genuine tension on this tape, and it is worth naming. The CEO opened with “Turnover at EUR 649 million, up 44%.” — Alexandros Exarchou, CEO · 2026-09-24 Minutes later the CFO said, flatly, “Revenue is up low single digits year-on-year. The growth rate is not the message here.” — Kostas Adamopoulos, CFO · 2026-09-24 Both statements are true, but they describe different companies. The 44% reflects the widened perimeter (Elea, and eventually Helector and Thalis); the low-single-digit figure is the organic, reported reality for a construction-led group whose first-half revenue rolled off the completed Patras-Pyrgos and Thessaloniki Metro jobs faster than new awards ramped up. If you only read the headline, you overrate the underlying momentum. The same lens applies to EBITDA. Reported came in at EUR 91M (up 38%); the pro-forma figure management prefers is EUR 120M, up 85%, at roughly a 15% margin once Helector, Thalis and a full period of Elea are folded in. That pro-forma perimeter is, management says, the one you will actually see from 2027. Until the Helector deal closes — currently awaiting Competition Commission clearance, expected in Q1 2027 — the reported numbers convert to that profile only on paper. The real event of the half is the balance sheet. “we completed a share capital increase of EUR 650 million, a book that was 3.6x oversubscribed, and in August, the EUR 300 million five-year senior unsecured bond, 1.7x oversubscribed.” — Alexandros Exarchou, CEO · 2026-09-24 That capital increase plus bond — roughly EUR 950M — takes net debt to about EUR 429M, or 1.9x EBITDA pro forma, against a stated policy of under 4.2x through the investment cycle. With 80% of gross debt maturing from 2031 onward, the funding sits behind the heaviest CapEx years rather than in front of them. For a story built on a EUR ~3B, five-year CapEx plan, that is not a footnote — it is the whole enabler.The Wild Card and the Options Inside the Pillars
Where the call gets interesting is the stuff that was not in the plan. Two September transactions changed the scale of renewables: the acquisition of roughly 1 GW of licensed pump storage in Western Macedonia (~EUR 1.2B over five to six years), and a memorandum with DEPA Commercial for 51% of a ~470 MW hybrid and storage portfolio. Management is refreshingly candid that this is upside, not base case: “it is a wild card for us in the business plan. It came after the announcement, after the capital increase. Give us good optionality, good construction margin” — Kostas Adamopoulos, CFO · 2026-09-24 — and, pointedly, about EUR 1B of future construction work for the group's own construction arm. The self-dealing flywheel is explicit. The renewables segment's reported numbers, though, are ugly relative to the story. Revenue of just EUR 4.4M and EBITDA of EUR 2.7M, held back by spring curtailment and negative prices, plus later-than-planned energization. The CEO's answer is the thesis in one line: “if we manage, in as far as our parks is concerned, to limit curtailment to zero, we will have an immediate uplift of the valuation of our plants by 20%.” — Alexandros Exarchou, CEO · 2026-09-24 Greece already has ~19 GW of renewables against a 25 GW 2030 target; the policy answer is storage, and the group is positioning both its batteries and its hydro pumps as the answer. That storage-and-batteries theme travels well beyond Athens — the same week, other reporters leaned into flow batteries and utility-scale energy-storage buildouts — so AKTOR is riding a real global wave, not just a domestic one. The new pillars are where the incremental EBITDA lives. Helector and Thalis, acquired from Motor Oil, add a circular-economy and water leg with ~EUR 1B of backlog and ~EUR 41M of expected 2026 EBITDA. And while Atlantic Sea LNG posted a slightly negative EUR 3M EBITDA on its first physical cargo, the strategic logic is a 20-year take-or-pay of 1.5 BCM/year starting 2030, with regasification (the Dioriga Gas FSRU, 50%, from Motor Oil again) due to convert the group from trader to infrastructure owner.That word — conglomerate — is the tell. It is also the risk: the more pillars, the harder the holding company's job.The importance of the agreement for us is the market. We are actually securing a very strong position with significant leverage in a new market, which is recycling, waste management, and the water business-wise. This acquisition completes, in practice, what we want to create, which is an infra conglomerate. I think that was missing from our portfolio.