Enlight Renewable Energy (NASDAQ:ENLT) released first-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Tuesday. Read the complete transcript below.
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Summary
Enlight Renewable Energy reported a 54% year-over-year increase in revenues to $200 million, with adjusted EBITDA growing by 58% to $154 million.
The U.S. became the largest geographic segment, contributing 37% of total revenues due to new projects and supportive market conditions.
The company is reaffirming its 2026 guidance with projected revenues of $755 to $785 million and adjusted EBITDA of $545 to $565 million.
Enlight Renewable Energy’s U.S. portfolio expanded significantly, with key projects passing system impact studies, and construction started at the Cobar 3 complex.
The company highlighted its strategic focus on energy storage and renewable energy expansion in Europe and the Middle East, with significant growth in agrivoltaics in Israel.
Management emphasized strong financial positioning with significant cash reserves and credit facilities to support growth plans beyond 2028.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Thank you for standing by and welcome to Enlight Renewable Energy’s first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to Lamor Zohar Meir, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Lamor Zohar Meir
Thank you Operator Good morning everyone and thank you for joining Enlight Renewable Energy’s first quarter 2026 earning conference call. Before beginning this call, I would like to draw participants attention to the following certain statements made on the call today, including but not limited to statements regarding business strategy and plans are project portfolio, market opportunity, utility demand and potential growth discussions with commercial counterparties and financing sources pricing trends for materials progress of company projects including anticipated timing of related approvals and project completion and anticipated production delays expected impact from various regulatory development, completion of development, the potential impact of the current conflicts in Israel on our operations and financial condition and company actions designed to mitigate such impact and the company’s future financial and operational results and guidance including revenue and adjusted EBITDA are forward looking statements within the meaning of U.S. federal securities laws which reflect management’s best judgment based on currently available information. We reference certain project metrics in this earnings call and additional information about such metrics can be found in our earnings release. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from our expectations. Please refer to our 2025 Annual Report filed with the SEC on March 30, 2026 and other filings for more information on the specific factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward looking statements. Although we believe these expectations are reasonable, we undertake no obligation to revise any statements to reflect changes that occur after this call. Additionally, non IFRS financial measures may be discussed on the call. These non IFRS measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or in isolation from our results prepared in accordance with ifrs reconciliations to the most directly comparable IFRS financial measures are available in the earnings release and the earning presentation for today’s call which are posted on our Investor Relations webpage. With me this morning are Gilad Yavets, Executive Chairman and the Co Founder of Enlight, Adila Vayatan, CEO of Enlight, Niryahuddas CFO of Enlight and Jared Mackey, CEO of Clenera. Adil will provide a summary of the business results and turn the call over to Jared for a review of our US Activity and then NIR will review the first quarter results. Our executive team will then be available to answer your questions. I will now turn the call over to Adile Vaiaten, CEO of Enlight.
Adile Vaiaten
Adi, please begin Good morning and good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us to review Enlight’s first quarter 2026 results we are off to a very strong start to the year, delivering excellent financial performance and continued execution momentum across our global platform. Our results this quarter clearly reflect the strength of our operating assets, the scale and quality of our development portfolio, and our ability to consistently convert projects into cash generating capacity. Before diving into the numbers, I want to briefly address the broader environment. The first quarter once again demonstrated the resilience of Enlight’s diversified platform. Despite ongoing geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty, our assets continue to operate reliably, our projects advanced according to plan, and our financial performance remains strong. This resilience is the result of geographic and technological diversification and the fact that renewable energy and storage assets provide stability even in volatile conditions. Turning now to the quarter in Q1, revenues and income increased 54% year over year to $200 million while adjusted EBITDA reached $154 million, representing 58% growth year over year excluding the impact of the sell down of the Sunlight Cluster. This growth was driven primarily by new projects entering operation in the US alongside strong wind conditions in Israel and Europe, increased electricity trading activity in Israel and supportive foreign exchange effects. Importantly, this was organic operating growth and reflects the continued expansion of our income generating portfolio and the future potential of advancing projects in our development portfolio. Over time, the U.S. became our largest geographic segment this quarter, contributing 37% of total revenues following the ramp up of Roadrunner and Quail Ranch. This marks a meaningful milestone in scaling our US platform. Beyond the financials, Q1 was another strong execution quarter. During the quarter we grew our US portfolio that successfully passed system impact studies by approximately 2 factored gigawatts, reaching a total of 20 factored gigawatt, significantly increasing interconnection certainty. More than 60% of our advanced Development and Development portfolio completed the System Impact study. We expect additional projects to be Safe harbored in 2026, bringing the total to 15 to 17 factored gigawatt or about 80% of our U.S. advanced Development and Development portfolio. Our U.S. portfolio expanded by 2.6 factored gigawatt more than 10% sequentially and expanded in additional demand areas outside of WECC, supporting our medium to long term growth in the market. Last we started construction at Cobar 3. The 475 megawatt PV phase of the Cobar complex fully in line with our execution plan. These developments further reinforce our ability to deliver large scale solar plus storage projects with speed, discipline and attractive economics and supports our growth potential beyond 2028. In Europe, the opportunity is equally compelling. While renewable generation continues to expand rapidly, energy storage deployment has not kept pace, creating a systemic need for flexibility and balancing capacity. According to Wood McKinsey, this need amounts to 1.4 terawatt of storage capacity by 2034. Globally, this gap is structural, not cyclical and supports attractive long term economics for well positioned storage projects. During the quarter, we continued to advance our European expansion and are now in advanced negotiations to expand our business in additional markets including Finland and Romania as part of our strategy to deepen our presence in high potential storage markets. Energy storage remains a core growth pillar for Enlighten Europe with a vast portfolio of 14 GWh of which 4.9 GWh in the mature portfolio fully aligned with our focus on disciplined capital allocation and attractive returns. In Middle East North Africa, we’re deploying the full scope of Enlight’s capabilities, leveraging our position as a leading and trusted energy player. Israel remains a core market where we are active across utility scale, wind and solar and energy storage agrivoltaics and high voltage infrastructure. Enlight’s position in Israel, combined with our unique expertise in different energy generation applications enable us to significantly grow in Israel and develop new and innovative growth engines in agrivoltaics. Specifically, we continue to scale rapidly with dozens of land agreements signed over the past year representing approximately three factor gigawatt of future solar capacity while strengthening synergies between energy generation and agriculture, enhancing food security and energy security at once. The agrivoltaics opportunity in Israel is huge. We estimate more than 120,000 acres will be needed to meet renewable energy targets by 2050 with a market size estimated at several billion dollars. At the same time, we’re advancing high voltage storage projects in Israel totaling more than 2 factor gigawatts which enhance grid flexibility and resilience while enabling us to optimize revenue generation. Looking ahead, we believe Israel is on track to become one of the countries with the highest energy storage capacity per capita globally and we are well positioned to take advantage of this opportunity. Across the portfolio, execution continued at a strong pace. We advanced half a factored gigawatt into construction during the quarter, mostly attributed to phase three in the Cobar complex advancing to construction, and expanded our total portfolio to over 41 factored gigawatts, a sequential increase of 8%. Looking ahead. We expect approximately 7 factored gigawatt to be under construction during 2026, with over 90% of our mature portfolio either operating or under construction by year end. This level of visibility is the outcome of years of disciplined development, extensive grid interconnection work and proactive risk management. Stepping back to the demand environment, we continue to see structural growth in electricity demand driven in part by the rapid adoption of AI and data intensive applications and the resulting expansion of data centers. Industry forecasts indicate that U.S. data center electricity consumption could triple by the end of the decade, requiring more than 300twhour of new capacity that is fast to deploy, scalable and cost effective in this environment. Solar combined with storage stands out compared to other generation technologies. It offers shorter time to market, meaningfully, lower LCOE and the flexibility required to support modern grids. Enlight is well positioned to capture this demand, leveraging our large grid ready sites, proven execution capabilities and deep experience delivering solar plus storage at scale. The business environment in which we operate remains extremely favorable with rising demand, constrained supply and attractive equipment costs. Recent geopolitical disruptions together with the sharp increase in oil and gas prices have underscored the strategic importance of renewable energy as a reliable and competitive source. Turning to outlook, we are reaffirming our full year 2026 guidance revenues and income of 755 to $785 million and adjusted EBITDA of 545 to $565 million. More importantly, we continue to stand firmly behind our long term growth trajectory with approximately seven factored gigawatt expected to be under construction in 2026 and the vast majority of our mature portfolio either operating or under construction. We see a clear and credible path to more than $2.1 billion of annual revenue run rate by the end of 2028. This growth is anchored in projects already in hand, supported by strong and increasing returns and executed with discipline. Before I wrap up, let me summarize the key takeaways. We delivered a strong start to 2026 with excellent financial performance and execution momentum. We continue to expand and de risk our US portfolio, advancing key milestones including system impact study completion, safe harbor progression and the start of construction. At Cobar 3 we see utility scale growth opportunities in Middle East North Africa, a market in which we have a significant competitive advantage. We are well positioned to capture structural demand growth and systemic grid needs, leveraging the speed, cost and flexibility of solar and storage and we remain focused on disciplined growth and long term value …
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