Earnings Call: Q2 2021

Jul 27, 2021

Good afternoon, everybody, welcome to Ferrovial's conference call to discuss the financial results for the first half of 2021. Just as a reminder, both the results report and presentation are available to you on our website. As in previous results, although some restrictions to mobility have been lifted during the first half of 2021, we would like to highlight the financial information included in our report has been impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak, mainly since the second half of March 2020. Given the uncertainty regarding the speed and the extent of resumption in activity, it is not possible to predict how the health crisis will affect Ferrovial's group information and performance for 2021. Ferrovial will continue to closely monitor trading conditions and further evidence of wider economic impacts. I am joined here today by Ernesto Lopez-Mozo, our CFO, and the CFOs of our business units. If you have any questions, you may ask them through the form included in the webcast. During the Q&A session at the end of this call, we will be reading out your questions and who they are from. With this, I will hand over to Mr. López-Mozo. Ernesto, the floor is yours. Thank you, Begoña, and welcome everybody to the 1st half results conference call. Starting with the highlights, I would like to start with the Texas Managed Lanes, where we have seen in June, traffic already above June 2019 for the NT, up 6.4%, and NTE 35W was up 19.4%. LBJ is still short of those pre-pandemic levels in terms of traffic, 13.6%. We have to remind you that the numbers here you'll see, May was impacted by weather conditions, but the traffic performance is strong. More important, there is a strong revenue per transaction growth in all the managed lanes. We are seeing this growth in revenues from the higher toll rates and the better mix in terms of a higher proportion of heavy vehicles. Also, we got €48 million in dividends from NT and LBJ. In the 407, we have seen a lot of restrictions really with the stay-at-home orders until June 2nd, traffic has really been improving since the reopening. In the last seven days, the rolling performance was 32% drop vis-a-vis 2019. This is July 20th numbers. We are now in July, in step 3 of the phase reopening. We'll see more on that in the presentation. In the I-77, we also saw a strong recovery in this second quarter, the traffic is already at pre-COVID-19 levels, if we take February 2020 as pre-COVID. By June end, we were achieving these numbers. I would like to say that it's not only traffic, I will stress the revenue performance that reflects the possibility of changing tariffs and really taking benefit of a strong economic recovery or even inflation tailwind in our assets. If we move into airports, the main highlights, Heathrow published yesterday, also some days before it updated the investor report, with an estimated traffic for the year of 21.5 million passengers as the base case. Of course, it provided a range of scenarios where a stress case reached 13 million passengers. In light of this, let's say, volatility of expectations, Heathrow has launched a preemptive waiver of the group interest coverage ratio covenant for 2021 at the Heathrow Finance level, the holding above Heathrow. In AGS, a refinancing was completed. We call it amend and extend, and the debt maturity is now June 2024. In contracting, we've seen a strong performance. Construction reached 2.4% EBIT margin. This is including the impact of divestments. I would like to underscore the strong performance at Budimex. The sale of non-core assets in construction is finished or on track with a very positive cash flow impact around EUR 350 million in the first half. The main one was the divestment of the real estate business in Poland, Urbicsa in Spain. We have other transactions that have been closed in July or are expecting closure in the coming days or weeks. One of them is Nalanda that closed in July, and we also have Figueras and the recycled aggregates at Webber that is pending final authorization, the same as Figueras. All this should happen, let's say, in the third quarter. In terms of services, we have solid operating performance across the board and also strong cash flow generation. There was an agreement reached for the sale of the environmental services in Spain and Portugal for an enterprise value of EUR 1.133 billion. We just announced that before market opening today. This is part of the business in Spain. More on that later on the presentation. After all this first half, we have a strong financial situation with a net cash position ex-infrastructure of EUR 1.859 billion, and a total liquidity ex-infrastructure of EUR 6.5 billion. We move into the operations and starting with the toll roads, we see that there was a very strong growth vis-a-vis last year. As I mentioned in the opening, the restrictions have been lifted in the U.S. and also toll rates in the managed lanes have been raised, and also helped by a higher proportion of heavy vehicles. The U.S. has a strong presence in these numbers, 77% of toll road revenues and 92% of the EBITDA. We have assets under development that will come into, let's say, operation in the coming months or years. I would like to highlight the NTE 35W Segment 3C. You'll see in a minute the performance of these road segments, A and B, that go for a stretch of around 10 miles. This project will add 6.7 miles. It's a 66% addition of a concession that ends in 2021. We are aiming to open at the end of 2023, with a pending investment of EUR 73 million. You see the importance of this asset, given that the catchment area is very similar to the one of the previous two segments. This project should add a lot of value. Also very important one is the A-66. That is longer, it's 35 km, 50-year concession. Construction is expected to finish at the end of 2022, 70% complete. This project, that is this big one, is the one that is driving most of the cash outflow in investment this year, in particular in the first half, EUR 150 million were invested in this project. We still have a little bit more than EUR 450 million pending. Then we show others that are advancing well. Some of them are quite near completion. You can see all the data there. Ruta del Cacao in Colombia is traffic risk. The other three are availabilities. We can move to discuss more of the managed lanes. Next slide. Here we see the traffic performance that I was mentioning in the opening. Of course, you have a big trough in February with the winter storm, and also you had heavy rains in May. I think that it was something like 60% higher, let's say, rainfall than in the previous year. That affected traffic. If we look into the end of the period, in June, as I mentioned in the opening, you can see traffic above 2019 levels pre-pandemic. Not yet in the LBJ, but also the LBJ is kind of slowly catching up. We move to the next one. Here we can see a very important message. As I mentioned, traffic is recovering, is at pre-pandemic almost or pandemic levels. Look at the revenue performance. This shows that there's this capacity to change tariffs and adapt to the demand, optimize the revenue flow and the value of the assets. If we move on to the next slide, we can see also very interesting patterns emerging. Here we compare, in gray is the first quarter of 2021. In yellow we see June 2021, and we have in a kind of blue, between blue and gray, we have the pre-COVID graph that refers to June 2021. We can see some emerging patterns that are quite interesting. If we look into NTE 35W and NTE, of course, the afternoon traffic is clearly the peak, is the higher. There's quite a spread in terms of traffic distribution. We see that the midday is clearly above pre-pandemic levels, and I would say that it's quite flat along the day in both assets. As the economy grows, we could probably see more of this. Peaks are spreading and traffic is clearly on an excellent performance. If on top of that, we add the ability to change prices and inflation as a tailwind, you can see the prospects of these assets is excellent. We have the I-77 where we can see that kind of pattern, very similar, midday is really performing well. LBJ has some catch up to do yet, but still we can see some similar patterns emerging. Peaks are spreading. Overall level of traffic is going to be quite interesting along the day. This is a reflection of more logistics and commercial travel and also people taking use of flexibility, maybe work from home or other sort of changing patterns, but they are moving. They are just choosing to do that in a more varied way. If we move into the next slide, we can see the more specific data where we see the growth in transactions in NTE, LBJ, and 35 West, the growth in revenues ahead of that, and offer EBITDA even higher. You see the kind of margins that this is achieving. The traffic performance, really strong activity since the reopening in March 10th, with heavy vehicles showing more resilience and a good example of the kind of traffic levels we have is that we are achieving or running into mandatory mode events at even higher frequency than in February 2020 pre-COVID. In the NTE 35W, we see the TMPs that are above, as we showed in the slides prior to this. Okay. Strong with the usage. All this is the reflections of what I commented before. We see the average revenue per transaction on the right-hand top side of the slide. We can see the level of increase that you can achieve. This flexibility in tariffs is great in an area that is growing economically. The region update is there at the right bottom corner of the slide, and you can see that schools are not 100% in person yet. There's really no restrictions in terms of opening of businesses and facilities. Still, you see that vaccination advanced a lot, and is probably high compared to other regions. It's not as high as other countries as we see in a minute. Right? Canada, that was lagging behind, has overtaken these levels. It's very important that Texas is leading the back to work pulse in the U.S. according to Kastle Systems. If we move on to the next slide, we see the I-77 that clearly has done a very important catch-up since reopening of the region, and you can see that traffic is now at the February 20 levels, and also we have seen quite an increase in revenue per transaction. In May 14 is when we saw really North Carolina lifting restrictions, so it's clearly a little bit behind Texas, but it's there. We can see that now close to 60% of the population at least has the first dose in vaccination. Moving on to the 407, we see the comparison to 2019 levels, and we've seen that it has been, let's say, subdued because there has been a lot of restrictions. That's what we reflect on the inside of the slide with all the different dates and restrictions. You see that throughout the first half, there's been a lot of restrictions. Now in July, we see reopening, and we'll see more of the traffic performance when schools go back to in-class education in September. The main message here is that Canada is really overtaking other countries and leading probably among the leaders in the world in terms of vaccination now with 70%-80% with the first dose and 25% fully by July 16. This keeps going. Probably this will leave a better situation of immunity that could enhance mobility going forward. If we move on, we can see the traffic comparison, how, as I was mentioning, the reopening the last seven days up to July 20th, sorry, and you have a 32% drop vis-a-vis 2019. As I said, it's slowly catching up. Vaccination is clearly the main driver of immunity, and that could help mobility going forward. If we move on, please, we can see the financial data on the 407. The 407 published some days ago. Here we can see how traffic has been affected by all these restrictions. We've seen in the case an increase in the, let's say, revenue per trip, and the tariffs have not been changed since February 2020. One of the messages that no dividend was paid in the first half of 2021. The performance for the second part of the year should keep improving, and we see that the asset has a lot of liquidity, right? We see that it has close to CAD 700 million of cash and equivalents, and it has EUR 800 million in undrawn credit facility. There's plenty of liquidity. There's few maturities coming up. You have EUR 18 million in 2021. In 2022, it's close to CAD 300 million. In 2023, CAD 20 million. It's a very benign maturity profile on an asset that has lots of liquidity and is recovering traffic. We also include here the Schedule 22 information that the 407 has provided. Most of you will know this information, but it's good to keep it there for you to check if you need to check it. We move on to the next slide. We can see Heathrow's performance. Clearly, we published yesterday, you can see that the restrictions to air travel have been really impactful, and we can see that Heathrow has been doing a great job in containing costs, optimizing revenue, and optimizing CapEx, of course, always with the safety priorities. CapEx has been constrained and focused on safety and resilience, and it has been preparing the airport for a reopening. The pent-up demand is there. In July, when the government lifted restrictions to travel to amber countries without the need of a quarantine if you were vaccinated, had a great uptick in traffic. We have to keep an eye on that. Clearly Heathrow prepared for that surge on traffic, reopening Terminal 3, and also opening T4 as a red list arrivals facility for people from red list countries. Okay. Clearly affected, Heathrow great job in terms of cost controls. The outlook is probably the most important thing to mention now, given that Heathrow has done its homework in terms of liquidity and cost containment. Right? Regarding the outlook, I would just like to remind you of the latest investor report that points to 21.5 million passengers. There could be a stress case or a scenario where you could go to the lower part of the range, that is 13 million passengers. Just in case that happens, it's not the base case, as I said, it's not Heathrow's expectation. If that happened, just preventing that waiver for the ICR group covenant at Heathrow Finance was launched. Expansion, we still think it should happen, and clearly the ANPS is lawful, and Heathrow will reopen the interim property and hardship scheme, and is consulting with government, airline customers, and regulators on the next steps, because eventually this should get done. Regarding regulation, there's not much to talk, but a lot is coming. Okay? Heathrow asked for a RAV restatement. It got a minor interim adjustment of GBP 300 million. The understanding is that much more should be done. We'll have to wait to see how the CAA addresses H7 with all the different considerations of RAV restatement and allowed return for the asset. As I said, no point in discussing now. Feedback will come in the fall. We'll update investors as things develop. Just remind you that the next regulatory period starts in January 2022. Maybe there could be a potential gap, but it should start there. Moving into AGS Airports, the performance again, has been affected by restrictions. The main news is that the refinancing was successful, amend and extend of the debt facility going into June 2024. Here there was additional commitment of funds in this refinancing, EUR 20 million, that is 100% of shareholders injected GBP 20 million, and there's another additional EUR 30 committed. The net external debt is left at GBP 708 million. A successful extension on refinancing and really waiting for the reopening. In terms of traffic, probably worth mentioning that Aberdeen is performing better. Aberdeen, that is related not only to oil and gas, but probably to offshore wind, has this better relative performance. There is pent-up demand waiting to travel. Right now, everything is affected by these restrictions. We put in the slide some of the initiatives that the management has been doing to contain costs and CapEx. We move on to construction that, as we mentioned in the beginning, had a strong showing, and we compare quite well to last year. Remember that last year, the first quarter was affected by COVID-19, with probably an EBIT impact of EUR 44 million. This year has been better, of course, leaning on Ferrovial Max's strength, with a EBIT margin of 8.3%. Here, there was an extraordinary component because when the real estate division was sold, there was a release of the results of the civil works department with the real estate division that was reflected in this quarter. In terms of, we take this into account, the ordinary EBIT margin is 6.2%. That is quite remarkable in the construction sector. We have excluded in these numbers the contribution from the real estate business. In terms of asset sales, as I mentioned, different projects have been going on, the main one being the real estate that has been discussed already, €330 million post-transaction cost in euros. Also, Bixsa was completed. This is €17 million. We have Nalanda is another €17 million. This is a sale of a digital platform for documentation management for suppliers. This was closed in July. We have just pending some final approvals, also on availability concession in Figueres, that was agreed for EUR 41 million, and it's just about to be approved. That should be the case. We also have the competition authorization, the Hart-Scott-Rodino, for the Services business that is agreed for USD 140 million. In terms of operating cash flow, clearly as we mentioned in other conference calls, the production advance in the U.S. and other countries means there's a cash drain. From an operational point of view, the new businesses that have been closed, you can get some, let's say, down payments or, let's say, advanced payments could help in operating cash flow at year-end. Otherwise, we should be consuming cash, in particular in the U.S. Activity cash flow is positive on the back of all these divestments. I was mentioning before the possibility of some advanced payments. Awards have been higher than other years in these late months. You can see that not in the backlog, we have some big projects, like there's this I-35 in San Antonio, EUR 1.3 billion, or Sydney Metro, that is EUR 620 million, or Budimex contract for EUR 630. Usually, that's quite higher than the normal pending signing for the backlog. If we move into Services, you can see that the comparison to 2020 is quite outstanding. It's a very good recovery in terms of revenues and the EBITDA margins. Higher activities really across the board in the U.K. and Spain. In Spain, both activities are growing revenues and EBITDA, environmental and infra. Environmental is the one that was just agreed to sell. Infra is related to infrastructure maintenance, be it in civil works or hospitals, and it also has some additional businesses related to energy maintenance, lighting and so on. In terms of international, also we saw improvement in Chile and North America. In North America, in particular, road maintenance is really performing well. In Chile, remember that it's related to services to mining companies. In terms of cash flow generation, also very strong. EUR 184 million with very good collection terms and activity. Cash flow, that is EUR 149 million, does not include any impact from asset divestments yet. I'd like to mention waste treatment in the U.K. As we said, we are keeping that for, let's say, some reshaping of the business. In particular, we are looking at the potential to improve the York Waste Recovery plant. We are trying to convince client and other potential clients of really treating more tons, so trying to buy capacity here, because in the U.K., as in other places, there's waste going to landfills, and from an environmental point of view, we think we have a good proposition, right? This is the kind of proposition that is being done to turn around some of these contracts. If we move on to the next slide, we have more information on these numbers regarding the disposal of the environmental services in Spain and Portugal. Environmental services is mainly waste treatment and collection, also recycling of plastics. This has been agreed to be sold to PreZero, that is a company from the Schwarz Group. The enterprise value is EUR 1,133,000,000, with an equity value taken into account, the balance sheet at the end of 2020, an equity value of EUR 950 million. Here we have some numbers for you to assess the transaction. The EBITDA for 2020 was EUR 130 million. This includes some EBITDA from projects, around EUR 29 million of EBITDA, that usually gets dividends, is the way we portray them in our results. You can see that on a recurrent basis, this EUR 29 million EBITDA produces something like EUR 10 million of dividends. We expect closing of this to happen this year. We can move on to the next slide, please. Here we have a rundown of the main items of the P&L account, where the higher revenues are really held by all the divisions, construction and toll roads. Remember that we don't consolidate Airports business, that is the one most affected by restrictions. EBITDA. It's also quite higher than last year, close to 89%. This is also helped because last year we took a provision for the restructuring of the support functions. In terms of financial expenses, it's very similar to the first quarter when I mentioned that in the infrastructure projects, we have the effect of the mark-to-market change on the inflation swap of Autema. Remember that Autema has pretty much negligible value for us. It has a book value of negative EUR 135. For it to be sold for, let's say, EUR 1, it would have that sort of positive P&L impact. Ex-infra projects will also have some additional costs, is the impact of lower cash remuneration and higher average gross debt. The higher average gross debt should be sorted out with the repayment of EUR 500 million of a bond in mid-year. We should have more comparable gross debt in the remainder of the year to last year than this first half. Okay? Gross debt is going to be reduced slowly along the year. We have the equity accounted results. Here, we have lower results in the 407 ETR that we already mentioned. You have Heathrow with all the limitations in traffic affecting. In AGS, we also have an impact, and it's basically for the equity that has been injected in the company that has to be provided, right? We have now zero book value for Heathrow and AGS, and that should kind of freeze the impact of results until we recover above that yield value. In terms of net profit from discontinued operations, we have EUR 208 million. This is almost evenly split between the impact of the real estate business divestment and the positive impact of Ferrovial Services in Spain. Remember that as long as you have offers, as is the case with environment, that are above the fair value that you have in your books, you can keep recording these profits. That's the reason why we are recording them now. We have some minor adjustment in international Services. Some of them are related to the waste treatment that we discussed in York that we are trying to turn around. We took the view of taking a provision and see if we can get the turnaround that I was mentioning of treating more tons that would be good for the environment. We move on to the next slide. We see the cash flow evolution. I will comment on some of this breakdown. Well, the dividends from projects we already mentioned, mainly coming from LBJ and NTE. You have the working capital evolution that usually in the first part of the year happens, is affected by construction, kind of unwinding some of the advanced payments at the end of last year. We have investments that are higher this year than the past, in particular with the I-66 being invested, deployed. You have divestments and shareholder remuneration, when most of it is share buybacks. In other financing cash flows, the main impact is the deconsolidation of the cash from the real estate division at Budimex, it has to be seen in conjunction with the number of divestments, right? We end the semester with the first half of the year with a very strong position of around EUR 1.86 billion. If we move on to the sustainability part, here we will have a more detailed rundown of KPIs at DRN, but I think it's worth mentioning some of the different milestones achieved or awards. I already mentioned that we have two new independent board members, female, that I commented in the first quarter results. We also had at our AGM, our climate strategy presented to our shareholders that had a 96% votes in favor. We also published on our website the supplier code of ethics, and our different businesses are also launching their sustainability strategies. AGS in particular, there's a lot going on around Heathrow. I encourage you to visit that website where they have a lot of info on that. Of course, there's some awards for Europerio. We can move on to the concluding remarks, and here, very important messages. I mentioned in the past that the economic recovery and vaccination are very important to recover mobility, and also the flexibility in tariffs is proving very beneficial and with some sort of inflationary pressure more so. In airports, restrictions are still there, but we see some light of some reopening. Pent-up demand is there. We really need to get more vaccination and health passports working for more traffic to recover. Contracting is performing well. We cannot say it's affected by COVID-19 now. It's performing well with good margins and excellent contribution from Budimex. In Services disposal, we had a major step with the waste business in the Iberian Peninsula being divested, and the rest of the processes are ongoing. As I mentioned in the other conference calls, we want to have most of them signed this year, even though closing could be slipping to next year. We'll try to accelerate if the market is there after, let's say, the kind of COVID stoppage last year. We close with a very strong financial situation, now have good dividends from the managed lanes and the asset divestments. I already mentioned some of the ones that will be coming in the second part of the year. Okay, thanks for bearing with us, and let's open the Q&A session. Thank you, Ernesto. Good day, everybody. The first set of questions come from Alejandro Vigil from Bestinver. Please, could you update us on the strategy to sell the remaining assets and Services after the Spanish media's comment about a potential combination with other companies in Spain? Well, thanks, Alejandro, for the question. I'll take this one. This is Ernesto. Well, the remaining Services in Spain are related to infrastructure maintenance, I mean, from hospitals to roads, bridges, tunnels. It also has other things like some energy efficiency parts from lighting. It has a variety of Services and capabilities that are differential. We are open to different alternatives. We think that it could make sense given that the market is with quite a number of players. Market shares, even though we are one of the leading companies, we are short of 7%. Adding differential capabilities from a technical point of view and scale could make sense. We are open to that, and the assets should grow. We should reduce our exposure, but should grow with the help of, as I said, these differential capabilities and also the possibility of platforms. Why not? It could make sense. That's the only thing I can comment on. Thank you, Ernesto. From Alejandro, could you comment on the use of proceeds from the sale, and priorities in terms of reinvestment versus dividends? Okay. Here, we remain saying that the preference for management is to create value with industrial investment. We know that we are kind of advancing with sales and generating cash and maybe not investing that much, but the whole company is working on different strategic initiatives from the Horizon 24 plan, and we expect to deliver. If there's a preference, there's a preference for that, but of course, always keeping an eye on balancing with remuneration to shareholders. Last question from Alejandro. When do you expect Ferrovial dividends to its shareholders to return to pre-COVID-19 levels? We'll have to see. The board is looking at that. No decision yet. That will come probably more update in the next quarter or at year-end results. Is looking at the pipeline, the different opportunities, and also the results. No decision yet, but we are on the path to that. Thank you, Ernesto. The next set of questions come from Charles Maynadier from Kempen. How much, roughly, does Portugal represent from the EUR 130 million EBITDA of the environmental services which is being sold? Is this part included in the international segment that you report? Okay, thanks. It's quite small. I mean, it's I would say slightly below EUR 6 million of EBITDA, like EUR 5.6 million or something like that, if I recall correctly. Yes, previously it was reported in the international part of the business. Thank you, Ernesto. Also from Charles: what is the book value of the business that remains after the transaction? The book value for the total Services was just north of EUR 1 billion, like EUR 1,030 million. The one that has been agreed, environmental services in Spain and Portugal, had a book value at the end of 2020 of EUR 600 million. Just doing the simple math, the remaining is EUR 430 million. Thank you, Ernesto. Also from Charles: post this divestment, what type of activities do you have left in Spanish Services? Well, as I said in a prior question, the main ones are infrastructure maintenance. That means an integral approach to buildings, hospitals, industrial maintenance, also infrastructure maintenance like roads, bridges, tunnels. You also have other additional services that are related to optimization from an energy point of view, lighting, that sort of thing. The main ones are the ones that I mentioned, even though there's some other minor activities. Thank you, Ernesto. Finally, from Charles: what is the status on the rest of the sale for Services? Can we expect any news flow soon? Yeah, we have a variety of processes here, well, also some activities. For instance, in the Services portfolio, there was a concession that is a shadow toll that is called the Autovía de Aragón. As I said, it comes with a maintenance contract, the main value driver is this shadow toll concession. This shadow toll concession has an EBITDA of around EUR 30 million in 2019 and on a non-COVID-19, it's quite resilient. As I said, it's a shadow toll. Given that it's a shadow toll concession, we think it fits more with Cintra rather than being sold. That part is carve out for Cintra. We will see it with Cintra going forward. As I said, it's a shadow toll. The infrastructure services for maintenance of infrastructure in Spain is another process. We have one in Chile, and the other one is maintenance in the U.S. Of course, we have Amey that has main Amey, the core, and also has a separate process that is for, let's say, utilities maintenance. Okay, we have a variety of them. As I mentioned, also waste treatment in the U.K., that is being, let's say, overhauled and will come to the market later on. The others that I mentioned are all scheduled to be signed in 2021. Thank you, Ernesto. The next set of questions come from Luis Prieto from Kepler Cheuvreux. Can you give us any update on the high complexity concession pipeline in North America? Are you detecting increased competition in those projects in which you would be interested? Thanks, Begoña, and thank you, Luis, for your question. This is Pedro Losada from Cintra. We keep on following the market with the feeling positive to see new opportunities coming to the market. With respect to high complexity, it's a little bit soon, but we know that some of the DOTs, as the one that has been announced from Georgia, are planning to bring new high complexity projects to the markets. We know that in the short and medium term, some of the DOTs are going to bring back also some of these projects. With respect to competition, it depends on the type of the projects. If we are talking about these high complexity greenfield projects, managed lanes. Dynamic tolling. There's not too many out there, the usual suspects, and we don't see too much competition. As you know, we feel that we have still a high competitive advantages to understand much better this type of projects. We don't see too many players coming soon to these complex projects. Now, there are some other type of projects, as the ones that we have been pre-qualified already in Miami or I-10 Calcasieu in Louisiana, and working on the pre-qualification of the Pennsylvania bridges, where there are different risk profile, and potentially we can see other type of competitors or more competition coming from both infra funds and developers as well as construction companies. Thank you. Thank you, Pedro. The next question also from Luis. What is your view on the current iteration of Biden's infrastructure plan proposal now that it seems that 3 Ps or PPP approach could be explored in order to finance some of the projects? Thank you, Luis, again. We see the Biden's infrastructure plan quite optimistic and very good news for our company. As we have said many times, at the end of the day, the final decision used to come from the federal government, are the ones that needs the political green light to go on with the projects. From the central government, they could provide some critical help from the developments of many projects, as with the TIFIA program and other flexible financing and that kind of stuff that definitely could boost the final stage of the projects to make them available and to make them profitable for the developers and, at the end of the day, to make them possible. That's the main idea from us behind the central government's support. Perhaps it's too premature because we don't have the exact details of that plan. Thank you, Pedro. The next set of questions come from Elodie Rault from J.P. Morgan. How do you explain that traffic on LBJ is still lagging compared to 2019 levels despite Texas reopening? Do you see risks on the structural impact of this toll road specifically? Thank you, Begoña. Hi, Elodie, this is Pedro Losada again. Thanks for your question. Let me start with the second one. We definitely don't see any structural problem in this road. As we have said, and we keep on improving in things like vaccination, economic recovery from GDP perspective in the area, unemployment rates. It's true that there's some differences between LBJ and the NTE 35W. Some of them are the ones that is impacting more in the performance and the speed of that performance with respect to the other ones. Things like the proportion of white-collar workers with the ability to work from home are higher among the LBJ users than in the NTE areas. More demand lack due to less density, vehicles per mile recovery on LBJ general purpose lanes compared to NTE and NTE 3, and perhaps also lower proportion of trucks in the LBJ. Remember that also it's been impacted by construction works on the 635 East, that is going to have some negative impact probably in the coming years during the construction, and positive one in the long run. As soon as we recover traffic, particularly on the peak hours, the revenue per transaction will increase, and we will see probably some acceleration on the LBJ recovery. That recovery estate will be driven by return to office in that particular area, and in Dallas particularly. Most offices are planning to full or hybrid open in fall 2021, and also many school districts have announced that this next school year starting at the end of August will be 100% in person. Again, coming back to the argument of the increase in revenue transaction and the increase in traffic in peak hours help us to understand that we need to feel a little bit more positive on LBJ. Thank you, Pedro. The last question from Elodie. Given your comments on likely recovery in the second half at the 407 ETR and the strong liquidity position at the asset, can we expect the 407 to pay a div-The third quarter, or do you think the fourth quarter is more realistic? Thank you, Elodie. Thanks for the question. I think that what we have shown in this presentation is that as soon as restrictions are lifted, we are showing quite a clarity recovery from the 407 with respect to 2019. We are still under stage 3, that will end probably by mid-August. After all the restrictions are lifted, it's probably the right time to evaluate when the company is ready to distribute dividends. Good news is that an acceleration on the recovery and the better performance in the first quarter of the year, and also a good and healthy liquidity position that give us the opportunity to do so by the end of the year. I don't know if it's going to be in the Q3 or Q4, but now that we feel optimistic also that we are in compliance with the debt service cover ratio and the rest of the covenants that we need to comply to distribute dividends, and having the cash in our accounts, we believe that we are going to be able to distribute dividends, but not sure yet if it's going to be Q3 or Q4. Thank you. Thank you, Pedro. The next set of questions come from José Manuel Arroyo from Banco Santander. First question, Dallas is showing that traffic patterns are changing, with morning peak hours flattening, but afternoon peak hours becoming more meaningful than pre-COVID. Is it reasonable to assume that a similar traffic pattern could materialize in Ontario 407 ETR post-restrictions? If so, how would this impact the 407 ETR in terms of meeting Schedule 22 traffic thresholds? Thank you, Begoña. Hi, José Manuel, this is Pedro. It's true that we see some changes in traffic patterns with respect to peak hours and AM/PM traffic. It's true also that we are seeing these different traffic patterns with some of the restrictions still there, for example, with respect to schools and offices. When it comes to your question on whether it could materialize in Ontario and whether this has an impact on Schedule 22, I would like to remember the way it's measured, the Schedule 22, and it's based on the highest two peak hours of every segment independently, if they occur in the AM or PM peak. If the PM peak are now higher than the AM, they will be the ones used for the Schedule 22 calculations, then having a neutral impact. Actually, if I remember properly, most of the average segments flow rate were calculated with the PM peak hours as the highest values. Thank you. Thank you, Pedro. The last question from José Manuel. Raw material prices inflation. How concerned are you about rising raw material costs hurting construction margins in the foreseeable future, and what can be done to offset this inflation? Thank you, Begoña, and thank you, Jose Manuel. This is Iñaki Garcia from construction. Yes, actually, we are observing increases in prices in raw materials like bitumen, cement, or steel, and we are constantly monitoring this in our main markets. U.S., Poland, and Spain. As you know, these impacts are very regional and very specific in each one of the areas. Whatever you see cannot be extrapolated from one area to another. The way we monitor this is in two ways. First, in our backlog, and of course, as you know, in Spain and Poland, there are indexation formulas with public administrations, which limit the impact of this inflation. Also, in the early stages of every period, we try to close long-term contracts with our suppliers. Somehow the prices are fixed in most of our backlog, and we don't expect a huge impact in our backlog. Regarding new contracts, Ferrovial is using quite advanced tools to better estimate this inflation. We are using data analytics and also artificial intelligence in every new bid that we are bidding. All these new contracts are factoring these increases in prices. We believe that all the new contracts and those that you have seen that are not now included in the backlog, have considered this even from the early stages of the design. Thank you. Thank you, Iñaki. The next question comes from Philippe Leite from CaixaBank. At EBITDA, the line others recorded minus EUR 13 million in the first half of 2021 versus plus EUR 15 million in the first quarter of 2021. What is the reason for such a difference in the second quarter? Thanks, Begoña and Philippe. Here, there's two main items that change from +15 to -13. One of them I already mentioned is the provision for the waste treatment York plant, that is like EUR 12 million. There's another provision of EUR 15 million because there has been an agreement regarding the SH 130 litigation, and we've taken that in others ahead of the signing. Thank you, Ernesto. The next set of questions come from Nabil Ahmed from Barclays. First question, on the managed lanes, since traffic is broadly back to pre-pandemic levels, could you please maybe elaborate on the mix? Are heavy vehicles much higher and cars maybe still well below pre-pandemic levels, and therefore, is the average revenue per transaction still strongly influenced by this mix? Can you please give us an idea of average revenue per transaction versus 2019, excluding the vehicle mix? Thank you. Thanks, Nabil. The heavy vehicles has grown versus pre-pandemic. Light vehicles are also at the same levels as pre-pandemic, except on the A.M. peak, and we are expecting to recover that traffic once offices and schools are hopefully back in September. With respect to the mix, we do not provide that breakdown, but we can share the last part of your question with respect to the comparison with 2019. That mix, with respect to the revenue per transaction versus 2019, is kind of one-third from the mix of vehicles, and two-thirds comes from toll rate increases. Thank you. Thank you, Pedro. From Nabil, about Schedule 22, could you please provide details as to what exactly triggers the end of a first major event? Does the 407 ETR need to recover to pre-pandemic traffic of the majority of the network or all of the sections, and for how long? And what is the pre-pandemic reference exactly? Thank you. Thanks, Nabil. The company and the province agreed that the first major event terminates when the traffic volumes on Highway 407 reach pre-pandemic levels, measured as an average of 2017 to 2019, 407 and the interchanges. When there is an increase in toll rates or user charges. That's basically the agreement that we have reached. If any of those two things happens upon the termination of the force majeure event, the company will be subject to Schedule 22 payments commencing the subsequent year. Thank you. Thank you, Pedro. The last question from Nabil. Net working capital consumption seems to be lower than the seasonal drag that we have seen before. What is the reason for this? Well, in general, I would say that the collection performance or days of sales outstanding in the Services division has been outstanding. I would say that in construction, it's more similar to what we've seen in other places. In general, we see that public clients are really paying well. Better than in the past. Probably there's a kind of a trend for keeping that sort of liquidity and good payment terms. That has been the main help. Also, in Services in the U.K., we were expecting to pay back some of the VAT and other taxes that were delayed last year. That also has been postponed, so that has also helped. I would say that the main component is a very short days of sales outstanding in general. Thank you. The next set of questions come from Tobias Werner from Stifel. First question, can you give us a bit more color on the opening steps in Canada, also in terms of dates? Thank you. Thanks, Tobias. Canada started in 3 different stages. The reopening started on June 2nd, as far as I recall. We started a few days ago, the final stage of the reopening ending in mid-August. After that, we are hoping to see almost full reopening of the country, assuming that also schools are going to be open 100% physically and also hopefully to see a lot of offices coming back physically again as well. Thank you. Thank you, Pedro. The next question also from Tobias. The 2.4% construction margin would be where when adjusted for all of the one-off effects? Thank you, Tobias. Iñaki again. Just to be clear, the 2.4% in EBIT doesn't include any surplus of the divestments of Urbicsa or the real estate business of Budimex. The only one-off effect included in the number is what Ernesto mentioned at the beginning, that is the EUR 50 million margin with the real estate business that was adjusted in the consolidation once the business has been sold must be included in the construction business. Excluding this EUR 50 million, the 2.4% will be around the 1.9% EBIT. In the trend of the 3.5% that we will get in our Horizon 24. Thank you. Thank you, Iñaki. The next set of questions come from Patrick Creuset from Goldman Sachs. How do you intend to use your significant net cash position, especially including the announced divestment proceeds? What is the scope for increased shareholder remuneration and potential timing for a clearer dividend buyback policy? Thanks, Begoña. Thanks, Patrick. Here, the preference that I mentioned before is to create value from an industrial investment point of view. Of course, that value creation gets reflected in the increased shareholder distribution along time. Being specific now is something we're not doing. We're looking at different things and potential for investment on the wake of the pandemic, and we cannot be more specific at the moment. We'll try to provide more clarity as we clinch investments and materialize the divestments, but not for now. Apologies for that. Thank you. The next set of questions come from Martin Watkin from Bank of America. First question, what is your dividend policy for the NTE and LBJ? Will they distribute 100% of their free cash flow? Thanks, Martin. We don't have a dividend policy for NTE, neither LBJ Express. We need to comply with the financial covenants when we pay the debt service that comes under the months of June and December. Based on the performance of the assets and the decision of the BOD, the board of directors, we decide on the levels of dividends to be distributed. There's no dividend policy per se. Thank you. Thank you, Pedro. Also from Martin, do you expect any of the cost savings that have been achieved in your toll roads in the last 18 months to become permanent? Thank you, Martin. We constantly looked for efficiencies in our operations. As traffic recovers, most of the traffic-related costs should go back to pre-pandemic levels. There's different scenarios in different assets. It's not the same for all of them, but I would say that this would be the broad answer to your question. Thanks. Thank you. The next set of questions come from Alexis Bila from Schonfeld. First question, could we see price increases in the 407 ETR already in 2022? Thanks, Alexis, for your question. Remember that, as we have explained, the way it works with respect to the force majeure event that give us the possibility not to enter into any Schedule 22 payments also is related to our ability to increase prices. Perhaps it's too soon to understand whether we are ready to increase prices in 2022 and then face potential Schedule 22 payments. We are constantly monitoring traffic performance in the facility and main alternatives and making estimates of the Schedule 22 payments, as I mentioned before. If we see that there is a market value on increasing toll rates versus accepting Schedule 22 payments, it will be analyzed and obviously considered. Thank you. Thank you, Pedro. The last question from Alexis. Could you give us some visibility on greenfield or brownfield projects or M&A pipeline over the next six months? Thank you. Hi, Nicholas. This is Pedro. I'm going to give you some brief or additional visibility on the already mentioned with respect to our pipeline in the U.S. I mentioned some of the projects that we have been pre-qualifying in Florida, in Louisiana, trying to find those who pre-qualified in Pennsylvania and waiting for other high complexity projects coming up in the form of managed lanes from some other states, we are quite positive that is going to happen. Outside U.S., we are following also opportunities in Latin, particularly in Peru and Colombia with Accesos Norte or Ruta Setenta y Ocho, 78, as well as other projects in Europe, particularly in the U.K. and some other alternatives in Australia that has been also core market outside our primary market, which is North America, we are operating two different concessions there in Australia. Let me give the floor to Iñaki to comment on the rest of the pipeline. Thank you. Yeah. More than the pipeline, regarding M&A transactions, and I think it was mentioned in the previous conference call, we are looking carefully into bolt-on opportunities in water and construction, particularly in the East Coast of the U.S. Also we mentioned that Budimex, taking part of the proceeds of the sale of Budimex and FBSerwis, we are thinking in expanding, probably in Ferrovial Services, I mean, the Services division, but also analyzing opportunities in energy and maybe looking to other opportunities in closer markets or closer countries to Poland. Thank you. Hello, Alexis. This is Ignacio Castejón from Ferrovial Airports. Just a few comments from my side on your question on pipeline. Just to confirm that we are monitoring the market. There are opportunities on global basis. We are indeed working on 4 projects. Additionally, we are doing preliminary work in several projects that once the vaccination progresses for COVID-19, they should be unwinding. With respect to specific opportunities, Brazil is producing a very active pipeline with respect to privatizations and potential retenders, and we are also following opportunities in Asia, Turkey, and the U.S. should the opportunity arise. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. There are no further questions. Thank you. Well, thank you all for bearing with us, and I think we keep delivering on the milestones that we set ourselves to do. Well, please enjoy a healthy rest, and see you soon. Bye.