Nel ASA's 224% Order Surge Can't Mask the Red Ink — or the Leadership Vacuum
Published on 08/06/2026 at 19:42 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The Norwegian hydrogen specialist Nel ASA is giving investors a masterclass in contradiction. New orders are flooding in at a pace not seen in years, yet the share price keeps sliding and the balance sheet keeps bleeding. It is a disconnect that has left the stock trading roughly 46 percent below its May peak, with little consensus on when — or whether — the narrative flips.
In Oslo on Monday, the shares fell 6.03 percent to NOK 2.18, a sharp reversal after a 9.02 percent gain the prior session, and a move that pushed the stock back below its 38-day moving average. The whipsaw action underscores just how skittish the market has become around the stock. In Frankfurt, the paper was changing hands at EUR 0.1974 on Thursday, down 0.20 percent on the day, with a monthly decline of 5.10 percent. The distance to the 52-week high of EUR 0.3655, set in May, now stands at 45.99 percent — though the shares remain 14.04 percent above their February low.
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A Pipeline That's Filling Fast
The most striking number in Nel's second-quarter report, published mid-July, is the order intake: NOK 230 million, a 224 percent jump from the NOK 71 million booked in the same quarter last year. PEM electrolysers accounted for 96 percent of the new business, and the order backlog swelled to NOK 1.213 billion by the end of the quarter. The momentum in the PEM segment is the clearest bright spot in the company's otherwise murky outlook, and it is the metric that analysts at JPMorgan appear to have weighed most heavily — even if it did not spare the stock.
The bank trimmed its price target on Nel to NOK 1.80 from NOK 2.90 on Wednesday, keeping a "Neutral" rating. The revision lands at a moment when the stock is already trading well below its yearly high, and when investors are demanding clearer evidence that order momentum can translate into revenue growth.
The Other Side of the Ledger
The revenue picture tells a less flattering story. Customer contract revenue fell 12 percent to NOK 153 million in the second quarter, down from NOK 174 million a year earlier, while total revenue slipped to NOK 182 million from NOK 215 million. The EBITDA result came in at minus NOK 155 million, a figure that includes a NOK 70 million one-time charge tied to the settlement of a legal dispute with Iwatani Corporation of America, reached in early June.
That settlement also helps explain the shrinking cash position. Nel held NOK 1.328 billion in cash at the end of June, down from NOK 1.928 billion twelve months earlier — a roughly NOK 600 million drawdown that illustrates how losses and legal costs have eaten into reserves. The remaining liquidity still provides a cushion, but the trajectory is one that investors are watching closely.
Leadership in Limbo
Adding to the uncertainty is a change at the top. CEO HĂĄkon Volldal announced his resignation in mid-June and will remain in post through a six-month notice period while the board searches for a successor. Until a new leader is named, the question of who will steer the company through its next phase remains an overhang on the shares.
On the shareholder register, Samsung E&A remains the second-largest holder with 167,155,785 shares, representing a 9.09 percent stake. In April, board chairman Arvid Moss added 100,000 shares to his own position at an average price of NOK 2.2547 — a modest insider vote of confidence that has done little to arrest the broader drift.
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What's Next
Nel's strategic bet rests on its next-generation pressurized alkaline platform, the PA-Series, unveiled in the spring, which targets turnkey system costs below USD 1,450 per kilowatt for 25-megawatt installations. The US subsidiary Nel Hydrogen US has also secured an order worth roughly USD 7 million for PEM electrolyser equipment destined for a public utility in the United States.
Two dates now dominate the calendar. The European Commission is expected to announce results from its "HORIZON-JU-CLEANH2-2026" funding programme in early August, a process in which Nel and its partners are among 170 applicants vying for grants in green hydrogen production and storage — a potential catalyst for the order book. Then, on October 21, the company reports third-quarter numbers, which will show whether the PEM order surge is finally starting to show up in revenue. For now, the market's technical signals remain cautious: the relative strength index sits at 38.9, pointing to weak momentum without flashing oversold extremes.
