CPFL Energia S.A. (BVMF:CPFE3)
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May 18, 2026, 5:07 PM GMT-3
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Earnings Call: Q1 2026

May 15, 2026

Giovanna Rovere
Investor Relations Manager, CPFL Energia

Group. I'm going to be master of ceremonies of our event. Today, we have Gustavo Estrella, our CEO, and other executives of the company. During the event, you can use the button Interpretation for the channels English or Portuguese according to your need. I'd also like to inform that at the end of the presentation, we will start the Q&A. All the questions will be asked live, and all you have to do is click on the button Raise Hand, which you can find at the bottom part of the screen. Also, I would like to remind you that this event is being recorded. I'm now going to give the floor to Gustavo Estrella for him to start the presentation of results.

Gustavo Estrella
CEO, CPFL Energia

Thank you, Giovanna. Good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for your participation in our call of Results of the First Quarter of 2026. I'm gonna start now on the slide three with our highlights. We're gonna start with the results. The EBITDA, which reached BRL 3,860 million, growth of 0.2% in relation to last year, and the profit of BRL 1.9 million. Our net debt is BRL 30.6 billion, with a leverage, stable leverage, close to the previous quarters of 2.31x, all the criteria of our financial covenants. Our CapEx is BRL 1.3 million, a growth of 1.9%. We still have the annual investment plan of six-point-something million reals. This, I think the main highlight of this quarter is the concession signed contracts, the renovation of our distribution, Paulista, Piratininga, and RGE. I don't think there's anything new.

There was huge expectation of the market for the signing of these contracts, but I think the consolidation is an important topic, and I think it brings us calm to continue investing like we have. Now looking at the perspective of another 30 years beyond our original concession. Here we have the satisfaction, and we have good news in Santa Cruz RGE. They were recognized in consumer satisfaction in the southeast and the south. Important recognition of everything that we've done to the clients here in the group CPFL. Lastly, there's an ISE ranking of sustainability, and CPFL is in the top 10. One of the companies that as a highlight in this ESG topic. We went from eighth to seventh position. This is very positive. The main number here has to do with the rating.

We had an increase, a significant increase, but not only ours, but in the market in general. This is a good thermometer to evaluate the engagement degree in this topic, in this agenda. Not only CPFL, but we see other companies that demonstrate that there's an evolution in this actually with better practices, with better programs. I think this is good news, and we continue as the same main companies and show It shows the evolution of the market in general. Let's move to the next slide, please. Well, now we're going to the energy consumption, the quarter. The consumption was almost flat in relation to 2025, a drop of 0.07%. If we look at residential and commercial, there's a calendar effect, but the main one is temperature.

Lower temperatures in relation to 2025, this brings a negative reflex in our growth in the consumption of energy in these two classes. We also have a highlight here in the commercial class, 6.7%. This is within the performance of the data centers in our concession area. If we look on the right side, we can see a growth of 8%. No, sorry, 23.9% in relation to the previous year. This already corresponds to 8% of the whole commercial class, that perspective that this growth is gonna continue. Basically, the approved projects and those under development in our concession area. Our expectation is that we will have a higher participation in this data center market more and more. There's demand, we still have a big challenge in the connection, especially in the transmission and high tension contracts.

As possible, with the connections, it's what we've been doing. We've connected new data centers, and we can show expressive growth, almost duplicating in the last 10 years. In the industrial class, we see a small drop if we isolate the calendar effect. The real effect of the performance of the manufacturing, it's a drop of 0.4. It's a performance which is very much aligned to the previous quarters. We see that manufacturing is sort of going sideways in the consumption of energy. There are some differences between the different segments. We see there's a higher growth in food and vehicles, a reduction. In general, we feel that the industrial or manufacturing class has a flat growth compared to the previous semester. An important number on the right side of our slide is the contracted demand.

We continue growing the demand, the contracted demand, and with a growth of 4.5%, not only the new clients that come into our client base, but also increases of contracted demand. There's a growth here of 4.5%, and the main driver of the market that talks to our result is invoice demand. This is a positive number. Now let's go to the next slide. Here we're gonna talk about delinquency and losses. We're undergoing a pressure of increase of delinquency 14.6%, 1.30087, and I think this is a reflex of a series of the economy in general, an increase of the debts, family debts, the maintenance of high interest rates. All this cooperates for us to have higher pressure. We have developed a plan, an action plan to reduce this number, and we know of all the challenges that we have.

Vitor Fagali
Chief Operating and M&A Officer, CPFL Energia

Guys, Gustavo has had a technical program. I will continue until he comes back. The PDD, we've increased this indicator. We had a bit of a decrease. We had an increase of about 15% in the PDD of the quarter. We have here a degradation of the macroeconomic scenario. Families are indebted, making these payments more difficult, and also a reflex of the lower volume of that we did in the last months, the power cuts, and putting teams in other activities, emergency activities, attending other services, and so forth. This is a point of attention, a point of concern due to delinquency.

Even with this worsening of the indicators, we still continue the PDD of revenue, and it's a low level for the average. As for losses, different to PDD, we have a better performance, a reduction of the loss levels. I believe that Gustavo is back. Gustavo, I'm gonna give you back the floor for us to continue as of losses.

Gustavo Estrella
CEO, CPFL Energia

As I said, I think here in the PDD, these power cuts, I think there is a big challenge in the control here in this year of 2026, remembering that we have additional pressure, which is are the increases of the tariffs, the readjustments, and also the change from green to yellow. This would also pressure our delinquency. Also we have a positive effect.

We know that there's a correlation, a large correlation between delinquency and that loss rates, but we do have good results reducing our losses in this quarter from BRL 977 to BRL 955. Let's move on to the next slide about hydro performance. Here, when we look at PLD, we've had a large growth. The hydrological scenario, even though we had a small improvement in the last months, even so, below the long-term curves. An average of 160 MWh. We close here the GSF with 90%. Let's move towards the wind farms' performance. In wind farms, we had a reduction of 2.3, 12.3% in the net generation compared to 2025. Basically, two effects. We also had the containment effect over the total generation, 2/3 coming from the performance of less wind than 2025.

I think this is an important number. We have an effect of less megawatts generated, there is a compensation, especially in the state of Ceará, where we had better winds. We have a positive financial result due to our contracts. It's stable. 90 point something percent compared to the previous quarter. Let's move on. Now we'll be talking about the performance, EBITDA performance per segment. We're gonna talk about results. Let's continue here. I'm now going to give you the explanation of the economical financial. We show the variation of the EBITDA in the quarter, which was 0.2%, BRL 9 million. We have positive effects in the segment of generation and management with BRL 85 million and services and others with BRL 10 million.

On the other hand, we had a variation, a negative re-variation in distribution with BRL 60 million and in transmission with BRL 26 million. In the next slides, I'm gonna explain in detail each one of these. Let's move towards distribution. This negative variation of BRL 60 million, it is due to the asset, the VNR, which had a variation of BRL 102 million negative. This was because of the IPCA, which was lower this year, 1.37% compared to 2% in the first quarter of 2025. We also had an increase of BRL 42 million of private pension plan and the PDD of BRL 11 million.

On the positive side, we have a gain of BRL 79 million relative to the market and tariffs, and basically the effect of the higher IGP-M, which was passed over on the tariffs last year, and also BRL 15 million from other impacts. Let's move to the next slide. It's about generation. Here we had a growth, a positive variation of BRL 85 million, and It's the main fact, the readjustment of the energy contracts. This is also a reflex of IGP-M and IPCA, stronger than last year. The second item here is wind generation, BRL 34 million.

Vitor Fagali
Chief Operating and M&A Officer, CPFL Energia

Also, as Gustavo said, in spite of the volume being lower, we had positive generation in the state of Ceará, where we have wind farms and more wind. When we look to this consolidated number, we have a positive contribution of BRL 50 million wind performance and a BRL 16 million negative effect from the curtailment. Negative impact of BRL 16 million of GSF or [FSG], and BRL 9 million, the other effects on generation and management, energy management. Next slide we have transmission. IFRS had a drop of BRL 26 million.

Basically here we have a margin effect because of the lower inflation in 2026 compared to last year, and also due to a reduction of the CapEx during this period. We have the [PMC] with a gain of BRL 10 million because of the reversion of contingencies, especially due to this. In the regulatory vision, here we have a growth of BRL 33 million reflecting the readjustment of the RAP that happened last year and the same BRL 10 million of the PMSO.

In the next slide, we have the services and others. A variation of BRL 10 million, especially due to CPFL Serviços that had an increase of BRL 7 million, and also a variation of BRL 2 million. Next slide. We now bring you a profit demonstration. We'd had an increase of 18.2%, BRL 295 million, BRL 94 million. A contribution of the financial results, where we had an improvement of BRL 139 million, very much due to the, say, CDI and Selic variation here and the update of the assets and also the fiscal credits. We also had a positive effect of the market, a gain here of BRL 40 million, market- to- market. It's because the spread curve went up in this period compared to a decrease last year. We register here this gain, this extra gain.

On the other hand, the variation of the CDI and also an increase of the debt impact negatively in the expenses with net debt, BRL 52 million, and we have another BRL 10 million of other effects. Another contribution which is important for this effect and this variation in the profit is the income tax. We had here a lower value in this period due to the deductibility of tax credit passed through to consumers. Let's move to the next slide, which we're gonna talk about leveraging. Here's the evolution of our debt. It's very similar. As the fourth quarter, BRL 30.6 million with a leverage of 2.31. Here we have BRL 4.4 million with an average timeframe of five to six years, the CDI cost - 0, -2.

This is a cost lower than the average of the market, showing our efficiency when we are able to fund resources. Here we have another slide. It shows our indebtedness with a cost of 12.8% nominal costs. The real cost is 8.3% in relation to the composition of the debt. We have 70% indexed to the CDI, 29% indexed to inflation. On the right side we show a little bit of our amortization, the debt amortization schedule. You can see the next year's, how we close the cash with BRL 5.8 million. This is sufficient to cover over once our short-term amortizations. The 31st of May, it was four point something years. It's important to highlight that with the renewal of the concessions, 4.23 years, this was concluded.

Some of our debt contracts have been automatically extended. We'll have an extension of about one year in this timeframe from the next months on. Now let's move to CapEx. Here we have the CapEx as was already showed in the beginning, a variation of 1.9% going to BRL 1.3 million. These resources were destined mainly to the segment of distribution, BRL 1.1 million, a growth of 7.1%. In the other segments we have a reduction in the period. Generation less 14%, transmission less 23%, services less 5%. It's important to highlight there's a lot of seasonality. The beginning of the year always has a lot of variations. These reductions do not mean a CapEx reduction from the group. On the contrary, we have a commitment that was announced recently of investing more than BRL 31 billion in the next five years.

Gustavo Estrella
CEO, CPFL Energia

Now we're gonna move to our next slide, this is about a smart project. We're going to detail this smart meter. It's called Be Smart Project. I'm gonna tell you a bit of the story. We have a long story with smart metering, so for a long time we've already had this in the Group A ever since 2020. In the sequence we developed a project, a pilot project of the Group B in the town of Jaguariúna, which is close to us, where we were able to test technology, understand the logistics, understand how everything should be done. As of last year, we then started in a more effective scale to invest in smart meters in our concession area. Up to now, we've invested BRL 85 million.

We have almost 300,000 units of smart meters installed in our network, and just this year we have installed over 100,000 smart meters, and the expectation is that we install more than 900,000 units this year. You can see on the table at the side on the chart our forecast, over 750,000, the same number in 2027, and then a forecast of 1,000,200 smart meters during the next few years. This type of investment, it brings a gain to us in terms of operational efficiency. We will be able to do the power cuts remotely. We'll have better control over the losses and especially generate more quality in the service for our consumers, for our clients.

It is a project that's been taken care of with a lot of attention by the group, and we are here, even though we have some restrictions. We do this in a lower, slower rhythm than what we would like with the tariff revision, we have to invest in, during the period, always at the end of the cycle of the concession, the tariff cycle, to be able to have an adequate return for this type of investment. We are here projecting an improvement of efficiency and again, with this investment, besides all the return that it can bring for the company, it is very much aligned to our strategy, our ESG plan that has, as a goal, supply energy in a sustainable and reliable way for our clients.

Giovanna Rovere
Investor Relations Manager, CPFL Energia

Having said this, we end our presentation and now we are going to the questions and answers. The questions will be live, and if everyone wants to ask a question, please use the button raise hands to raise your hands, and then we will open your audio so that you can be heard. Well, we have a question. Question comes from Ricardo in the Safra Bank. Ricardo, we're going to open your audio.

Speaker 4

Thank you for answering my questions. I have two questions. First of all, I'd like to know how you're imagining the next transmissions and also the regulation of the battery market. What have you been discussed? Study of the technology of this market. The second question is about public consultation of CVaR that can change the risk parameter and can affect the price curve. It's already affected it. We have heard this from other players in the market. How have you positioned yourself about this subject, and what do you believe is going to be more debated between the associations and the companies that are contributing to the consumption?

Vitor Fagali
Chief Operating and M&A Officer, CPFL Energia

Good afternoon, Ricardo. I'm Vitor Fagali. Thank you for your questions. I'm able to reply to the three questions. First of all, starting with the transmission auction. Our expectation has not changed much from the previous auctions. We will have a lot of competition. It is a segment that is consistent, it's stable, and it's a leverage for the sector. We don't have any expectation different to the past for this auction that should take place now in October. About batteries, we're still waiting for the final regulation of ANEEL.

Our expectation is that we still have a auction, a battery for this year, and this delay can impact, and this auction can go to next year. On our side, we're studying, ever since last year, a project, a potential project for batteries. There's a lot of new technology, and we've been deepening our studies on this. The expectation of the company for the battery auction is high. I think this is a focus for us, but we are waiting for the final regulation and the guidance to see when the auction is in fact gonna take place. I'm going for your next question about CVaR. Our position is of maintaining the 1540 parameter, especially because this parameter contributes to keep the levels of the reservoir, and we also avoid using thermal.

The main factor is also due to the stability of the rules. It's a parameter that was introduced in the beginning of 2025, so we don't have even, not even one year and a half. Change of this parameter can bring instability. This is a complex and discussed topic. We think removing this uncertainty and this volatility, this uncertainty of changing rules, this contributes positive to the sector. We believe that this current rules should be maintained. I think this is a discussion you mentioned here at the end. I think it's a discussion that is warming up in the sector. There are different points of view, and this is gonna be decided short-term, but we understand with our positioning of maintaining the rules. Thank you.

Giovanna Rovere
Investor Relations Manager, CPFL Energia

Thank you, Vitor, for your answer. Well, folks, we don't have any more questions.

We will now end the Q&A session. If there's any question, if you have any doubt or something, the Investor Relations team is available to clarify whatever is needed. I'm now gonna give the floor to Gustavo Estrella for his final considerations and to end our session.

Gustavo Estrella
CEO, CPFL Energia

Thank you, Giovanna. Well, as I said, we will now end our results of the first quarter, highlighting the importance of the renewal of the distribution concessions, and this is a challenge, as we said, about batteries, et cetera. I think there is a huge challenge in order to deal with this intermittent, topic of the sector. I think it's important to have the battery auction and obviously understand how the dynamic of the market is going to pan out. I think this market continues growing.

It continues bringing more intermittency for the sector and more recently with the challenge of the generation. These are different challenges we're gonna have here in the next months. The sector has to unite itself to mitigate risks that will allow us to expand correctly without bringing losses to the operation and/or financial impacts. I thank you very much for your participation, and good afternoon. Thank you.

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