Hexagon Purus: A Breakeven It Can Only 'Approach,' and Equity That Went Negative
Costs are down roughly 50%, cash sits at NOK 220m, consolidated equity is minus NOK 224m — and the Type 4 China certification slipped a third time.
HPUR.OL · Earnings Call · 2026-10-20
Hexagon Purus: A Breakeven It Can Only 'Approach'
The quarter itself was almost a side story. Hexagon Purus reported Q3 2026 revenue of NOK 150 million, or NOK 143 million underlying after a NOK 7 million working-capital true-up on the U.S. divestment — down 20% year-over-year on a comparable basis. EBITDA was minus NOK 83 million against minus NOK 116 million a year earlier, an improvement of NOK 33 million on roughly NOK 100 million less revenue. Payroll fell to NOK 90 million from NOK 187 million. Total operating expenses were NOK 233 million against NOK 368 million. “the annualized cost base in Q3 is around 50% lower than in 2024” — Morten Holum, Group CEO · 2026-10-20, CEO Morten Holum said, and the mechanics check out: depreciation dropped to NOK 40 million from NOK 68 million simply because the asset base is smaller. Then the CFO got to the balance sheet, and the story changed. Total equity was minus NOK 224 million at quarter-end, against plus NOK 41 million at the end of Q2 and plus NOK 1.1 billion a year ago. Non-current interest-bearing debt sits at NOK 2 billion, mostly the debt component of two convertible bonds that accrete mechanically — NOK 74 million of payment-in-kind interest in a single quarter, plus NOK 144 million of total finance costs of which most is non-cash. “the Group now is in a negative consolidated equity position” — Salman Alam, Group CFO · 2026-10-20, Salman Alam said. “We are in discussions with the company's stakeholders on a financial restructuring” — Salman Alam, Group CFO · 2026-10-20. The keyword record tells you this is not a surprise twist but an arrival. convertible bond has been a top-ranked theme for Hexagon Purus in four of the last six quarters. What is new is the language around it: financial restructuring, debt burden, and a NOK 6 million line of strategic and consultancy costs — which, when an analyst asked directly whether a financial adviser had been engaged, drew only "we're, of course, supported by the appropriate advisers on that topic." In July the same question was answered with “that refinancing can take many different shapes and forms, we'll have to come back to the details of that when we're ready to talk about that” — Salman Alam, Group CFO · 2026-07-16. Three months later the shape is still unstated, but the equity is gone.The word doing all the work: 'approach'
Management's headline promise is that Q4 volumes give “a real chance to approach underlying EBITDA breakeven” — Salman Alam, Group CFO · 2026-10-20 at Group level for the first time. Read the rest of that answer: “Whether we get fully there or not, that's, implicitly in the way we state there is a risk to that assumption. And so it can go both ways.” — Salman Alam, Group CFO · 2026-10-20 The CFO had earlier set the stakes plainly — “Hydrogen distribution deliveries are concentrated in Q4, leaving limited room to absorb delays before year-end” — Salman Alam, Group CFO · 2026-10-20. EBITDA breakeven is not a fresh concept here; it has been a ranked keyword in earlier quarters and an analyst asked in July 2025 at what revenue level breakeven would arrive, receiving a polite non-answer (“We wouldn't want to comment specifically on that today” — Salman Alam, Group Chief Financial Officer · 2025-07-17). What has changed is the tense. After years of framing breakeven as a target to be reached, it is now something to be approached. Meanwhile the mature keyword sufficient liquidity appears again — NOK 220 million of cash after NOK 88 million of net outflow, and the standard "at least the next 12 months" formulation. That line has been said before on a very different balance sheet. In February 2025 the CEO's comfort was that “We entered this year with NOK 1 billion of cash... it prevents us from having to think about raising capital in the short term here” — Morten Holum, Group CEO · 2025-02-11. Roughly NOK 780 million of that buffer has since been consumed or written down.An order book that shrank but 'improved'
The sharpest exchange of the call was arithmetic. Holum claimed 2027 coverage was “more or less in line with where we were at this point last year” — Morten Holum, Group CEO · 2026-10-20. An analyst pointed out that the Q3 2025 backlog of NOK 974 million held NOK 390 million for the following year, while the current NOK 508 million holds NOK 203 million — i.e. roughly half, not in line. The CFO's answer is worth keeping:That is defensible, and the mix shift within the backlog is real — the 2027 share went from 15% to 40% in a quarter, and 55% of the book is now Hydrogen Infrastructure. But it also means a company whose equity is negative is asking investors to benchmark it ex-divested, ex-extraordinary-gain, and ex-true-up, while the reported top line has gone backwards. Year-to-date revenue of NOK 701 million is up 4% only because it includes roughly NOK 141 million of extraordinary transaction gains; like-for-like YTD is NOK 506 million versus NOK 515 million.what the order book that's being referred to for last year includes the divested revenue related to the U.S. business... So on a like-for-like basis, if you exclude that order backlog, the backlog for execution next year is broadly similar to that of last year.