Romania after Satu Mare: Merchant pricing, storage, and whether Europe can become a real profit leg
The main article argued that Shuv Energy’s real test is no longer just expanding the pipeline, but turning it into profit and cash. This follow-up isolates Romania after Satu Mare: Europe contributed in 2025, but almost half of its revenue came from acceptance tests, and all three Romanian projects are exposed to market power prices.
Europe has started to contribute, but it is still not a profit leg
The main article argued that the question around Shuv Energy is no longer whether it has a pipeline. It does. The question is whether that pipeline can turn into profit and cash that remain after the development and financing layers. This follow-up isolates Romania after Satu Mare because it is one of the clearest swing factors for 2026 through 2028: a platform that can become a new earnings leg, but one that rests on merchant prices, storage, and timelines that still need to prove themselves.
The positive direction is clear. Satu Mare already entered commercial operation in August 2025, Simleu was energized in October 2025 and was still in acceptance testing at year-end, Costești already has a building permit and a binding grid-connection agreement, and the company signed storage-development agreements totaling about 1 GWh across the three projects. But the bottleneck is just as clear: in 2025 Europe still contributed very little to the reported results, and even that first contribution benefited from an accounting tailwind tied to acceptance tests.
In hard numbers, Europe contributed NIS 14.3 million of revenue, NIS 12.8 million of EBITDA, and NIS 9.9 million of FFO in 2025. That is a sharp step up from 2024, when the segment contributed only about NIS 0.1 million in each of those three lines, but it is still very small against NIS 1.58 billion of total segment revenue. In other words, Europe is now visible in the report, but it still does not drive the report.
| Europe in 2025 | Figure | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Segment revenue | NIS 14.3 million | Less than 1% of total segment revenue |
| Segment EBITDA | NIS 12.8 million | A first contribution, but still immaterial at group level |
| Segment FFO | NIS 9.9 million | There is cash generation, but not yet a meaningful base |
| Acceptance-test revenue | About NIS 6 million | Nearly 42% of annual Europe revenue |
| Implied operating revenue after stripping out acceptance tests | About NIS 8.3 million | The underlying run-rate is much smaller than the headline number |
That last line is the key. The annual report states explicitly that about NIS 6 million of Europe’s 2025 revenue came from acceptance tests, and in the same discussion it says that during the acceptance-test phase there are no operating costs. So the 2025 EBITDA line is not a number that can simply be rolled forward as a clean run-rate. It is a first contribution, but not yet proof of recurring operating economics.
Satu Mare: without storage it is a first contribution, with storage it becomes a different economic case
Satu Mare is the company’s first Romanian project, with 71 MW of capacity. It entered commercial operation on August 19, 2025, and the investor presentation explicitly says that its electricity is sold into the merchant market. That matters more than the 71 MW number itself. In Israel, a large part of the company’s core assets sits on tariff, availability, or otherwise more protected structures. In Romania, at least in the three projects that now define the story, the revenue base is market pricing.
That is exactly why storage shifts from being a technical add-on to being the economic story. In the project table, the company shows Satu Mare with 157 MWh of storage and a first full year of revenue of NIS 39 million to NIS 51 million, EBITDA of NIS 33 million to NIS 41 million, and FFO of NIS 23 million to NIS 29 million. But in the footnote under that same table, it also discloses the no-storage case: about NIS 22 million of revenue, about NIS 16.3 million of EBITDA, about NIS 8.4 million of FFO, and only about NIS 0.5 million of FFO after principal repayment.
That is a very large step-up. Put differently, the company’s own numbers imply that moving from Satu Mare without storage to Satu Mare with storage almost doubles revenue, more than doubles EBITDA, and changes the FFO picture after debt service quite materially.
The analytical implication is straightforward. Satu Mare without storage is a first proof that the company can build a Romanian project and get it into the reported numbers. Satu Mare with storage already looks like a project that can generate profitability and cash flow that start to matter. But even then the risk does not disappear. It only changes shape: less of a question about whether the project is online, more of a question about the quality of price capture in a merchant market.
Simleu and Costești: this is where Europe becomes either an option or a real engine
The next step is not just adding more megawatts. It is proving that Satu Mare is not a one-off. That is where Simleu and Costești come in.
Simleu Silvaniei is the company’s second Romanian project, with 104 MW of capacity and 193 MWh of storage. The presentation says it was energized in October 2025 and was still in acceptance tests at year-end ahead of commercial operation. In the annual report, the company shows a 2026 commercial start, market-based pricing, first full year revenue of NIS 51 million to NIS 65 million, EBITDA of NIS 42 million to NIS 52 million, and FFO of NIS 31 million to NIS 39 million.
Costești already sits on a different scale. This is a 368 MW project with 730 MWh of storage. The presentation describes it as a project that already has a building permit and a binding grid-connection agreement, with expected commercial operation in 2028. The annual report also presents it on a market-pricing basis, and the economic size is already large enough to change Europe’s weight inside the group: NIS 247 million to NIS 267 million of revenue and NIS 206 million to NIS 222 million of EBITDA in a first full year.
This is where the answer sits to whether Europe can become a real profit leg. If the three projects are taken together, the presentation points to NIS 337 million to NIS 383 million of revenue and NIS 280 million to NIS 314 million of EBITDA in a first full year, including the storage additions across all three. That is already a very different order of magnitude from the NIS 12.8 million of EBITDA that Europe contributed in 2025.
But the simple point still has to be said: most of the weight sits in Costești, and that weight is still far from the income statement. Simleu is supposed to move from testing into operation in 2026. Costești is targeted for 2028. So Europe can absolutely become a real profit leg, but it is not there yet. For now it is a combination of a first contribution from Satu Mare, a near-term operating test in Simleu, and a much larger medium-term option through Costești.
What really makes Romania different from Israel
The most important word here is merchant. Satu Mare, Simleu, and Costești are all presented on a market-pricing basis rather than a fixed tariff basis. At the same time, the company emphasizes in the presentation that Romania saw a sharp increase in power prices in 2025, with an average price of EUR 108 per MWh. That explains why Romania is interesting: there is room here for returns that can be higher than those of a fixed-tariff renewable asset.
But it also explains why Romania can become a volatility pocket. If Israel is often a story of availability, tariff, and coverage ratios, Romania is a story of price capture, timing, and storage. The company does not only need to build the assets. It needs to prove that the combination of generation and storage can translate a volatile power market into EBITDA and FFO that are repeatable.
In that sense, Satu Mare is not just another project that came online. It is an economic pilot. 2025 still did not provide a clean answer because the year included a partial operating period and acceptance-test revenue. 2026 will need to provide a cleaner answer: what a Romanian Shuv project looks like once it has more operating time, once the acceptance-test distortion is gone, and once the storage layer begins to mature.
Conclusion
Europe can become a real profit leg for Shuv Energy, but 2025 did not prove that yet. What 2025 proved was more modest: the company managed to bring Satu Mare into operation, lift Europe from almost zero to a first contribution, and build a Romanian pipeline in which storage is no longer a marginal add-on but part of project economics.
What is still missing is continuity. Simleu needs to move from acceptance tests into full commercial operation. The Satu Mare storage addition needs to move from agreements and connection approval into execution that shows up in results. Costești needs to move from permits and connection rights into a financing and construction path with much stronger visibility. Only if those three steps happen can Europe move from being an interesting medium-term option to becoming a genuine profit leg.
Until then, the right reading of Romania is this: not yet a proven engine, but no longer just a future slide either. This is the area where Shuv can show, over the next few years, both a higher-quality growth layer and a new volatility layer. Storage, more than any other single datapoint, is what will decide between the two.
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