Lhyfe announces approval for its IPO project on Euronext ® in Paris, ambition to become a European leader in the production of green hydrogen.
Lhyfe (the “Company“), an independent producer of green hydrogen to decarbonize industry and mobility, announces the approval of its registration document by the Autorité des marchés financiers (the “AMF“) under number I. 22-009 dated April 21, 2022.
The approval of this registration document is the first step in Lhyfe’s proposed initial public offering on the regulated market of Euronext® in Paris, subject to market conditions and the issuance by the AMF of an approval on the prospectus relating to the transaction.
Matthieu Guesné, Chairman and CEO of Lhyfe:
Hydrogen is an energy source, which has all the advantages of oil and gas without their disadvantages.
“It is a major pillar of the energy transition to reduce CO emissions2 and thus support the decarbonization of industry and mobility by reducing greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30%. As demand explodes over the coming decades, Lhyfe aims to become an independent European leader in green hydrogen production.”
“Our strategy is based on a rapid and massive deployment of production sites in order to develop units that can reach up to several hundred MW beyond 2025, equivalent to the production of hundreds of tons of green hydrogen daily.”
“Large-scale projects are already being launched in France and internationally, particularly in Denmark where we are developing one of the three most advanced projects in Europe. To date, our commercial portfolio consists of 93 projects, representing a total installed production capacity of more than 4.8GW (i.e. a green hydrogen production of more than 1615 tons/day).”
“Our objective is to have a total installed capacity of 55 MW by 2024 and to achieve, for the 2026 financial year, a consolidated turnover of approximately €200 million with a balanced Group EBITDA, based on a total installed capacity of 200 MW.”
“By 2030, we set ourselves a total installed capacity of more than 3 GW. In the long term, Lhyfe is targeting a Group EBITDA margin of more than 30%.”
“I created Lhyfe because one day I had an idea that could have a very strong impact on the future of our planet.”
“This is the daily mission of the 82 women and men who work at Lhyfe today. And this will soon, I hope, be the ambition of all French and international shareholders who will invest in Lhyfe on the occasion of the proposed IPO on Euronext in Paris.”
Lhyfe, a French pureplayer independent of the production of green hydrogen to decarbonize mobility and industry
Born from a project launched in 2017 by Matthieu Guesné, former Director of CEA Tech Pays de la Loire et Bretagne, Lhyfe is a pioneer in the production of green hydrogen entirely from renewable energies (ENR).
Made from the electrolysis of water, green hydrogen is a major pillar of the energy transition. It plays a key role in reducing CO emissions2 and thus support the decarbonization of industry and mobility by replacing carbon-grey hydrogen and fossil fuels.
The green hydrogen produced by Lhyfe comes from local and decentralised production units, in direct connection with renewable energy parks where possible.
It is sold directly to the end user, including mobility players (agglomerations, transporters, logistics platforms, etc.) and chemical manufacturers (ammonia and methanol production), steel or glass.
Thanks for staying up to date with Hydrogen Central. As a central player in the green hydrogen value chain, Lhyfe is thus the link between renewable energies and the decarbonisation of the uses of these sectors.
Green hydrogen: an industrial response to the challenges of energy transition
With global demand expected to increase 6-fold between 2020 and 2050[1], reaching 530 million tonnes by 2050, hydrogen is a major pillar in the decarbonisation of many activities. But today, 98%[2] of hydrogen is made from fossil fuel sources (oil, natural gas and coal), with a highly CO-emitting production process.2.
Making hydrogen with fossil fuels therefore only shifts the problem. Green hydrogen, made exclusively from renewable energies, is the only fully decarbonized solution that can replace fossil hydrogen (also called grey hydrogen) in industry and become the clean fuel of the mobility sector.
Green hydrogen is therefore at the heart of national decarbonisation strategies. There are currently 522 projects7 of green hydrogen worldwide, half of which is in Europe.
At European level, the Horizon 2050 project foresees an investment ranging from €180 billion to €470 billion until 2050[3] and in France, as part of the Recovery Plan and the National Strategy for Carbon-Free Hydrogen, public support of €7.2 billion is planned until 2030 (and an additional €1.9 billion announced in November 2021[4]).
The 1er site in the world of green hydrogen production in direct connection with a wind farm
In September 2021, Lhyfe inaugurated the world’s first industrial site in direct connection with a wind farm and a seawater supply for electrolysis, and has since started delivering its first kilograms of green hydrogen.
Based in Bouin in The Vendée (France), this site has a current production capacity of 750 kW, or about 300 kg of green hydrogen produced per day, which will be increased to 2.5 MW in 2023 (about 1 t./day) to meet the increase in demand.
The green hydrogen produced in Bouin supplies public and private customers in the mobility sector, including a hydrogen service station of SYDEV (Departmental Union of Energy and Equipment of the Vendée) in La Roche-sur-Yon for heavy mobility uses (buses, dumpsters, service machines) as well as the refueling station of a logistics platform of the Lidl distribution group to power its handling machines.
A commercial pipeline consisting of 93 onshore projects[5] with a total installed generation capacity of more than 4.8 GW
Lhyfe is experiencing sustained development and its technical and commercial skills have enabled it to take an important place in its market in the space of a few years. The Company is present in 10 European countries and has 82 employees to date, including more than 25 dedicated to business development.
With a proven industrial capacity to produce local and competitive green hydrogen, Lhyfe has already won multiple international tenders and deploys many emblematic projects in green hydrogen:
- GreenLab & GreenHyScale projects (Denmark): 1ers Lhyfe’s international projects, GreenLab and GreenHyScale aim to gradually deploy two green hydrogen production units, with an initial capacity of 12 MW in 2023 (about 4 t./day of green hydrogen), which will be increased to 124 MW in 2025 (about 38/day). The green hydrogen produced will be used for industrial (methanol production) and mobility uses. GreenHyScale is in the top 3 of the most advanced projects in Europe[6] and benefits from Green Deal funding from the European Union.
- H2goesRail (Germany): Lhyfe has been selected by Deutsche Bahn, the German national rail operator, for the construction of a green hydrogen production unit with an annual capacity of approximately 30 tons to ensure the supply of the hydrogen train manufactured by Siemens Mobility and operated by Deutsche Bahn.
- VhyGo (France):VhyGo (Vallée Hydrogène Grand Ouest) aims to build the 1era supraregional infrastructure for the distribution of green hydrogen in France. The objective is to have 5 production sites with a capacity of more than 5 tons of green hydrogen per day, to deliver about twenty distribution stations that can supply up to 500 hydrogen vehicles daily by 2024.
- Storgrundet, Söderhamn (Sweden): Lhyfe and Wpd Offshore AB, one of the world’s largest onshore and offshore wind energy developers, aim to install a green hydrogen production site based in Storgrundet and connect it to Wpd’s planned offshore wind farm in Söderhamn. The goal is to reach a total installed capacity of 600 MW (about 240 t./day), making this the largest project for Lhyfe to date and one of the most ambitious announced in Europe. The proposed site is expected to be built in phases, starting in 2025.
In addition to these emblematic projects, Lhyfe bases its development on a solid commercial portfolio: it currently totals 93 onshore projects[7] across Europe, representing a total installed production capacity of more than 4.8 GW (an estimated production of more than 1,615 tonnes of green hydrogen/day) by 2028.
Of these 93 projects, 20 projects are at an advanced stage of development (in “Tender ready”, “Awarded” or “Construction” phases), for a total capacity of 380.5 MW.
Leading development partnerships: Plug Power, Mitsui, etc.
In March 2022, Lhyfe also entered into a Memorandum of Understanding for a strategic alliance with Mitsui & Co Ltd., one of Japan’s leading trade and investment conglomerates, which is accompanied by mitsui’s investment of approximately €10 million in convertible bonds (which will be automatically converted into shares in the event of the Company’s IPO).
Beyond this investment, the strategic alliance aims to support Lhyfe in its international development in new strategic markets.
To support its development, Lhyfe also initiated discussions in October 2021 with the American company Plug Power, one of the world’s leading suppliers of electrolysers, for the joint development of green hydrogen production sites across Europe.
The objective would be to install a total production capacity of 300 MW in operation by 2025. This target is not taken into account in the 2026 target (an installed capacity of 200 MW) as the draft collaboration agreement is still being finalised.
Lhyfe, an integrated organization and a high-visibility model
As a central player in the green hydrogen value chain, Lhyfe is at the heart of the global ecosystem and collaborates with the main independent power producers and equipment manufacturers (electrolysers, compressors, etc.) to build and operate its future production units.
From its first industrial site, Lhyfe has demonstrated total control of the value chain thanks to an integrated model across all its operations, in order to ensure better cost control and efficiency of the industrial process:
- Development: origination, licensing, design, project engineering;
- Construction: financing, engineering and project management;
- Operation: production of green hydrogen, storage and maintenance of facilities;
- Marketing: sales and delivery contracts.
Lhyfe has placed the use of data and artificial intelligence at the heart of its industrial process. Through its proprietary software and algorithms such as:
- Qualifhy, making it possible to design virtual sites adapted to each situation: analysis of enr parks (price/performance), parameterization of green hydrogen production (depending on intermittency, electrolyzer, etc.) and establishment of a production forecast according to demand;
- H2 Management Systems, ensuring minimized energy consumption during the production process; or
- Loghystics, to optimize production based on customer consumption profiles and eventually establish forecasting models based on artificial intelligence algorithms.
Like the Bouin site, whose production capacity will be increased to meet the increase in demand, the Company is developing sites whose modular structure facilitates their scale-up as demand increases.
The green hydrogen production solution developed at the Bouin site can also be replicated on a higher scale at future Lhyfe production sites, initially by networking several electrolysers (cluster) on the same site, then by grouping several clusters per site.
A leading business development team, ready to support growth
Lhyfe has a leading team commercially. It is made up of 27 international employees to date and combines sales and engineering profiles, spread over 10 countries.
Its strength lies in its ability to match the supply of energy from the available renewable energy sources with the demand for green hydrogen according to the basins of use and potential customers.
This team of experts, accompanied by Lhyfe engineers, masters the entire value chain and all electrolyzer technologies (alkaline, PEM (proton exchange membrane), pressurized alkaline, etc.).
A clean-account producer model with high visibility
Lhyfe’s business model is based on the sale of green hydrogen produced from industrial units owned by the Company (wholly or mostly).
Lhyfe relies on power purchase agreements (PPAs) with a duration ranging in principle from 3 to 15 years with renewable energy producers in the vicinity of its units and favours, where possible, a direct connection to electricity generation assets.
In parallel with energy purchase contracts, contracts for the sale of green hydrogen to customers are concluded for a period aligned with 3 to 15 years according to different pricing models depending on whether they are units dedicated to mobility or industrial uses.
Lhyfe’s revenues are thus based on multi-year contracts that give the Company visibility on its revenues and a security of its cash flows over a long period, comparable to that of IPP (“independent power producer“) energy producers.
An asserted CSR commitment with an extra-financial rating well above the panel (71/100) and full alignment with the European taxonomy
Since its creation, Lhyfe has been committed to promoting an ethical dimension rooted in its DNA, whether vis-à-vis all its stakeholders, with its employees, at the environmental level or in terms of governance.
Lhyfe’s activity is fully aligned with the European taxonomy, thus respecting the various criteria defined for the “hydrogen production” category: “100% of Lhyfe’s activity is part of an eligible sub-sector identified by the European taxonomy as contributing directly to the atté climate change mitigation. In addition, the activity of the company complies with all the selection criteria listed. » EthiFinance – March 2022.
The Company’s desire to be part of a CSR approach is also materialized by obtaining in March 2022 an extra-financial rating of 71/100 (against 46/100 for the panel[8]), corresponding to an “Advanced” maturity level, awarded by the extra-financial analysis agency EthiFinance: “Lhyfe’s extra-financial rating corresponds to a level of performance” Advanced”, a promising level of ESG maturity and already significantly higher than what is observed in comparable companies, in terms of headcount and sector of activity. » EthiFinance – March 2022.
Become an independent European leader in onshore green hydrogen production
In order to establish itself as a major player in the decarbonisation of the heavy mobility and industrial sectors and become an independent European leader in the green hydrogen market, Lhyfe is developing a strategy based on a rapid and massive deployment of onshore green hydrogen production sites in order to develop units that can reach up to several hundred MW beyond 2025.
Building on the 93 projects currently in its commercial pipeline, representing a total installed generation capacity of more than 4.8 GW (i.e. a green hydrogen production of more than 1,615 t./day), Lhyfe has set itself the goal of having a total installed capacity of 55 MW by 2024 from onshore units alone.
Based on the assumptions set out in the registration document and on the basis of a total installed capacity of 200 MW, Lhyfe aims, for the financial year ending 31 December 2026:
By 2030, the Company has set itself the objective of positioning itself as a reference player in the green hydrogen production sector and more specifically to have a total installed capacity of more than 3 GW.
In the long term, Lhyfe is targeting a Group EBITDA margin of more than 30%[11].
Lhyfe pioneer on the offshore: key to the massification of green hydrogen production for industry with a pilot commissioning from 2022
Replacing the use of fossil fuels with green hydrogen in industry requires massive production that requires very large amounts of renewable electricity. Offshore wind, the most abundant, most powerful, least intermittent and therefore most competitive source of renewable energy, is the most suitable solution to meet this high demand and the massification of hydrogen for industrial uses.
Since its creation, Lhyfe has embarked on a major research program for the development of green hydrogen production at sea, as close as possible to offshore energy sources.
From the beginning of the 2022 school year, Lhyfe will put into service on the 1ster pilot device for the production of offshore green hydrogen in real conditions from 1er Floating electrolyser in the world, with a capacity of 1 MW, connected to a floating wind turbine, making the Company the only player in the world to have operational experience in the offshore field.
At the same time, Lhyfe collaborates in the development of several offshore green hydrogen production concepts: modular topsides with a capacity of 50 MW to 100 MW in partnership with Les Chantiers de l’Atlantique, offshore hydrogen production plants from existing oil platforms with the Aquaterra and Borr Drilling groups, or floating wind turbines integrating a green hydrogen production system with offshore wind turbine designer Doris.
By 2030-2035, offshore could thus represent an additional installed capacity of around 3 GW for Lhyfe.
Provision of the registration document
Lhyfe’s registration document, approved by the AMF on 21 April 2022 under number I. 22-009, is available on the Websites of the Company (www.lhyfe.com) and the AMF (www.amf-france.org), as well as free of charge and on request at the Company’s registered office, 30 rue Jean Jaurès, 44000 Nantes, France.
The registration document contains a detailed description of the Company, including its business, strategy, financial condition and results, as well as the corresponding risk factors.
Highlights:
- A french pure player independent of the production of green hydrogen from renewable energies
- An industrial site in France already operational: 1era unit to the world in direct connection
with wind turbines producing green hydrogen for mobility - A proven ability to win leading projects such as the Danish GreenHyscale project, a future green hydrogen production unit with a capacity of 100 MW,
one of the 3 most advanced projects in Europe with commissioning expected in 2025 - A commercial pipeline of 93 projects representing a total capacity of +4.8 GW
- Objectives
- 2024: 55 MW of installed capacity by the end of 2024
- 2026: €200 million in consolidated revenue and a break-even
Group EBITDA for the 2026 financial year based on an installed capacity of 200 MW - 2030: +3 GW of total installed capacity
- Group EBITDA margin above 30% in the long term
- An ambitious roadmap for offshore green hydrogen production: 1er offshore pilot device in the world put into service from the beginning of the 2022 school year and ambition
an additional installed capacity of 3 GW offshore by 2030-2035 - A CSR maturity illustrated by an EthiFinance rating of 71/100, higher than the average of the actors in the sector and 100% of the activities aligned with the European taxonomy
Lhyfe announces the approval of its registration document by the Autorité des marchés financiers as part of its proposed initial public offering on the regulated market of Euronext® in Paris. An ambition: to become a European leader in the production of green hydrogen, April 22, 2022
