Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the REN's 2022 Annual Results Conference C all. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone keypad. You will hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Madalena Garrido, Head of IR. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and thank you all on the line here today. We would like to thank you for making the time to join us for our 2022 Full Year Results Conference Call. As usual, we have here our Executive Team, Rodrigo Costa, our CEO, Gonçalo Morais Soares, our CFO, and João Conceição, our COO. Rodrigo will start with his opening remarks, and then João and Gonçalo will guide you through the main operations and financial highlights. We will move to our Q&A session on which we will be taking your questions. I will now pass the word to Rodrigo.
Well, thank you, Madalena. Good afternoon, welcome to our call. I'm sure you already revised the numbers, I think they came aligned with the expectations on the positive side. Gonçalo will go through that in detail later. I just want to share a summary of what happened and how we will feel looking forward. We have our hands full with the end of COVID, the war and the disturbing consequences of the same, extreme drought until the end of October. It was also the first full year without coal generation, we had multiple challenges that we were able to address without any exception. I would say that one of the big challenges that remains at the top of our concerns is the licensing for new projects.
That includes new power lines, the substations, new interconnections, the hydrogen infrastructures that we have been talking about, the new renewable generation connections. The pressure to get these things done is immense. Although we are making good progress, we are still under pressure. We are working very hard to find ways to speed up the licensing phase. The projects are becoming more and more complex. The environment licensing requirements need to be fully addressed, and the network development and management needs to address all these changes. That's the Portuguese summary. On the Chilean front, we are also doing well. You saw the update. Electrogas is doing well, and Transemel also. We are developing new transmission lines as planned, and both financially and operationally are doing quite fine, and we are quite happy with the progress.
On our people management, to address all this activity, we have been recruiting more people than usual. You could see that on the numbers, too. Our big bet, as always, has been to attract young talent, and we are succeeding on that. We are quite happy in the way this is also developing. I believe the fact that we are betting more and more on innovation across all activities, engineering, maintenance, mobility, dynamic planning place, are playing an important role on our reputation, and that is also helping to attract and retain talents. Today, we will also provide more insights on what we are doing regarding ESG. We are very committed to improve the way we work and impact we have. This is an ongoing challenge, and we are moving in the right direction.
That, with that, I would move to Gonçalo.
Hi. Good afternoon to you all. Thank you, Rodrigo. Looking at just slide 2 to go over, we'll go through the overview, look a little bit more into in-depth on the business performance, look at how we have been doing on the strategic plan, look at our ESG commitment, and then have some closing remarks before taking Q&A. If you move to slide 4 with the key messages, and I think that the note that Rodrigo made, this was a quite challenging year on an operating side, on an energy market side, on a financial market side. It's the first year that we have a new regulation in electricity too. It was a year full of challenges.
I think that on all of the fronts, operational, financial, ESG, we have been delivering according to plan, and we have been delivering, and we deliver strong results. You can see that EBITDA rose close to 6%, 5.7% to EUR 487 million. This was driven both by domestic and international businesses' strong performances. Higher ROAs in Portugal pushed revenues and across the board performance in Chile also helped EBITDA go up. In terms of RAV, you saw RAV increasing slightly, and CapEx was slightly above EUR 200 million. This was a little bit below what we had expected, but I'll go into depth that this is, I'd say, completely in line with our expectations for the business plan and for the regulatory period in which we are.
In terms of net debt, even if we adjust for tariff deviations, there was a reduction of more than 3% to EUR 2.543 billion, given our strong cash flow. Again, there we have recently signed two long-term tranches of loans with EIB of up to EUR 450 million. That is going to give us a really good boost in terms of liquidity and of financing going forward. Finally, net profit increased around 15% to EUR 111.8 million. This was a little bit, let's say, offset in terms of higher taxes, higher levy, and already increasing costs. I think that the operational performance was strong enough to make this a clear increase in terms of net profit.
I'll pass to my colleague, João Conceição , that will go through the operating side now. João?
Well, thanks, Gonçalo. Good afternoon to you all. On slide 5, you have the sum-up of the most important message regarding the operational side. I would highlight the fact that it was already said that 2022 was quite a challenging year within the energy sector internationally, but also in Portugal. Due to the severe droughts, we have an important drop of the electricity generated from hydro generation, which basically was reduced to half of it was in 2021. That's the reason why you see the share of renewable sources decreasing from the 60% to 49.4%. In terms of natural gas, there was a compensation of this lack of electricity from hydropower.
This implies an increase about 26% on the consumption of natural gas for electricity generation. It was offset by the decrease of what we call the conventional segment, which in Portugal mainly corresponds to industrial consumption on natural gas. As a consequence of that, the overall consumption of gas reduces 3.2% versus 2021. On the electricity side, we saw an increase of 1.8%. In terms of our operational, we managed to keep the high standards of quality of service. In electricity, we managed to exceed the targets set by the regulator regarding the incentive, the IMDE incentive. Gonçalo will speak about that later on. On the natural gas side, we managed to achieve an availability rate of 100% in our infrastructure.
We keep our commitment to the innovation. The innovation is, for us, a key issue in terms of all this energy transition strategy, as well as it was already said, the incentive to recruit new staff, especially skilled for these functions that requires from network planning, engineering, and so on. Last but not least, the hydrogen. Lots of things are happening regarding the hydrogen. We are not an exception. We are working hard on this front, both on projects like the ones that it has been spoken, the Green Corridor, Portugal, Spain and France.
As well as a specific infrastructure internally in our system, both specifically applicable for 100% hydrogen, which is the case of this H2 Green Valley in Sines, as well as to the studies to cope with the Portuguese strategy of allowing a ramping up of hydrogen consumption by first blending with natural gas and using the infrastructure to transport and distribute this hydrogen. On the ESG side, I would like to highlight the fact that we started to include Scope 3 emissions and non-greenhouse gas emissions within our submission for targets, which was already taken for Scope 1 and Scope 2.
We managed an increase, an improvement in terms of the ESG ratings. We are quite happy about that. This commitment will stay for the next few years. Gonçalo?
Okay.
Well, the slide 7, you have again, some of the information that it was already spoken. The electricity consumption increased 1.8%. Natural gas decrease 3.2%. You see this gas distribution, the decrease is much higher because it's regarding our Portgás infrastructure, and here it reflects only what I spoke about conventional consumption. In terms of losses, electricity losses, a slight decrease in terms of losses within our infrastructure. The average interruption time and combined availability rate, which are the two indicators used by the regulator, to qualify our quality of service, they were quite positive and much above the thresholds the regulator sets for us.
In terms of natural gas, the availability was quite high, as well as our management of response to emergency situations within our Portgás infrastructure.
Okay, João. Moving to slide number 8, basically just the main highlights in terms of financial numbers. We already referred them. EBITDA going up 6%. Financial results already increasing a little bit in the sense that higher funding costs and net debt. In this case, this number here is the one already. Even if you include, let's say, the official one, the tariff deviation, you see a material increase. This impacts financial costs. As you know, I'd say that the most useful number is the one where you exclude tariff deviations. That's a more recurrent indicator for the amount of net debt. Going to slide number 9, you see the evolution of EBITDA, mainly supported by assets remuneration in the international segment, some additional costs that we'll go into.
What you see, is, I would say, a certain stability in terms of electricity, but then an increase in both, the weight of gas distribution, which is close to 10%, international, which is close to 4%, and a little bit, a decrease on the gas transmission part in terms of contribution to EBITDA. On slide 10, it's a, I'd say a well-known picture from the last few months. It's amazing the amount of increase that the average yield had from 2021 to 2022, and this has been reflected on, the base work that we have. It's an increase of 20 basis points in electricity and an increase of around 80 basis points on both, gas transportation and gas distribution. In terms of investment, we have seen, transfers and CapEx decrease.
CapEx decreased, mostly, given some delays at the end of the year, in terms of some licensing procedures. It's also important to note that for us now, in terms of electricity, since the start of the new regulation, we don't have that cut-off rate that we used to have at the 31 of December of every year. If the construction is ended in January or February, there isn't a material impact, as this is within the Totex framework. This is what kind of happened. A lot of this CapEx that didn't materialize at the end of the year is going to show up in higher CapEx in 2023. Okay?
The same flow will happen with transfers to RAB, where you see this decrease in this year, but you'll see a marked increase in 2023. I would say that we are clearly above what we have told you in terms of guidance for business plans. This year's CapEx is in line with that interval, but on average, will probably be at the top of the interval for the average of the years of the business plan. In terms of RAB evolution, you see this small increase, mainly driven by electricity, both premium and non-premium, both by then, and then gas transmission is the one, and we'll come to it because we believe there is a lot of upside in the near mid-future to sustain this asset base.
We'll come to that when we'll speak about the hydrogen and other products that we may have in this area. In terms of RAB returns, I'm going to slide number 13. It's basically driven by an increase of the rate of return. In electricity, it's also an increase in the asset base that drives it. In gas transmission, it's mostly a rate of return. In gas distribution, I'd say it's both. You see an increase in both the rates and the asset base. I'd say in line with what we've said, and with the investments that we've been making. When looking at OpEx, you see an increase in the core OpEx of close to 4.6%. In total OpEx, there's actually a decrease, but the one that interests us is core OpEx. You see this increase.
This is twofold. On one side, there's an increase in people, as Rodrigo mentioned, the amount of activity is requiring hiring new people. We increased clearly more people this year, and we increased the number of people this year versus 2021. Also in terms of cost, there was an increase. This was mostly driven by the cost of electricity, despite the fact that we have a reduction in operation and maintenance. Bear in mind that being this the fact, and there is also, and it's connected to this, an increase in our allowed revenues of electricity and revenues of electricity. In terms of net impact, it's actually quite not as negative as this looks on paper. Okay?
On the people side, you'll continue to see that on 2023, there's also continued impact of inflation, again, we will also have, on the revenue side, impacts of that inflation in terms of corrected revenues within the Totex framework and the gas framework. Looking at Chile, we see the very healthy performance, it is now close to 4% of total EBITDA. It's actually a little bit more in terms of net income, it's around EUR 20 million of contribution to EBITDA this year. 9 on Transemel and close to 12 in Electrogas. Transemel is growing quite well, but it's more organically driven. We won 2 more auctions this year. In terms of EBITDA, there were also some extraordinary costs that impacted EBITDA. I say that this is the trend.
It's going to be a good and steady increase for the coming year. Electrogas has an amazing year. It also came from a tougher year in 2021, but the reality of the energy market increase and drought in Chile also increased gas consumption, increased imports of gas from Argentina and all of that made a strong increase in revenues and in EBITDA, which we think is going to be maintained in this year. We are not expecting another 54% increase in revenues, but we are expecting to have another very strong year in terms of Chile.
Bear in mind that in terms of net income, and given the fact that we've operated some, I'd say one-off taxes and, given the fact that they're also this year a positive impact of exchange rates, it's not a lot, but a positive. In 2021 there was a negative. Actually, the contribution in terms of net income is close to EUR 23 million, which is actually higher than the contribution in terms of EBITDA. Looking at below EBITDA on slide 16, I'd say depreciation in line with the evolution of the asset base. Financial results we start to see, although still not at the pace that we will see in 2023, a small increase in the cost of debt. From 1.6, 1.57 to 1.21.
This is a much smaller increase than in the rates, given the nature of our debt being much more fixed. It kind of shows that we prepared well. The financial results also benefited from the fact that net debt was lower on an absolute amount, and that we received also more dividends mainly from our Mozambique holdings. In terms of taxes, unfortunately, we still have to pay the special levy. It's not, it hasn't gone anywhere. There isn't any news. The only good things that we notice is that every year that those two, the deficit comes down, and as the deficit comes down, I would say that the probability that this may go away one day increases.
As of now, and in order to anticipate any questions, there are no new, no further developments regarding the special levy. From slide 17, just the, kind of the full evolution of net profit driven by the operating results. This is 15% increase. In slide 18, looking at net debt, you see this very large decrease, and this was mainly driven as we spoke because of tariff deviations. Tariff deviations slightly decreased in the last quarter, but not materially. We do expect that they will decrease along the year in 2023. Even if we take this out, we see that there was a decrease of close to EUR 86 million in our net debt.
Even if we have been able to make those additional EUR 30 million-40 million in CapEx at the end of the year, we would still have a very healthy decrease driven by strong cash flow. On debt sources, you see that it's mostly bonds. To make an explanation that the EIB new loans that we did at the end of 2023 and then at the start of 2022 and the start of 2023 are still not reflected as they are still undrawn and not used, and so they are not reflected in the numbers that. Slide 19, to give you an overview of how we performed in capital markets. We did have an increase in our average price target.
I think it's being driven by the growth prospect that we've been delivering to the market. We have also been enabled to deliver total shareholder return quite above our peers with the stock utilities index that we can see here. They have actually a negative TSR in 2022 versus our 7.1% TSR in year trend. Looking at how we perform in terms of business plan and trying to move a little bit faster, I think the important thing is that we have been delivering. We have set these three pillars of additional growth, ESG, and solid financials, and we have been delivered against all of them.
You can see that on slide 22 on the financial side, we have delivered on EBITDA, we have delivered on net profit, we have delivered on net debt, even if you correct for tariff deviations, and we have delivered on total CapEx. This is not even the average. If we had put the average, and if we put the average, of 2021, 2022 and 2023, you'll see that we'll probably almost certainly end up above the upper part of the target as we had said. We are clearly delivering and over-delivering on the financial targets that we have set for you. This is being driven, and you can see that on slide 23, by growth in Portugal, by the ambitious energy policy that the Portuguese government have.
Part of it was already included in our business plan, the one we announced it, but part of it hasn't. We see that the direct agreements of solar PV promoters, that first part, those 14 agreements were already included in our business plan, the part that was done in the explicit forecast, part of it was done outside the forecast of or the time horizon of the business plan. Additionally, there is another wave of solar agreement that is coming. It is not concluded, but we are expecting to be concluded in the short term. This is an additional growth driver in terms of electricity. The second additional growth driver in that side that we have is the wind offshore. The Portuguese government have announced that they want to make an auction of 10 gigawatts.
We are still in the phase of understanding exactly what this means and when this is going to be achieved. This is clearly and this would be clearly another important investment opportunity at the site versus our business plan that we presented to the market. Let me pass it to João in the next slide so that he can go through the big developments also that we may have on the hydrogen side and gas side. João.
Well, thanks, Gonçalo. On this gas/hydrogen, much is going on. The hydrogen part is requiring from us significant upgradings in our infrastructure. The first one is to be assured that the transmission infrastructure, including the underground storage, is fully capable of assuming this blending strategy that the Portuguese government has set. I remind you that we are supposed to reach 5% blending by 2025, 10% blending by 2030, and we are working hard to comply with those targets or even exceed those targets. In addition to that, we have the goal of developing a specific infrastructure we call an hydrogen ring within the industrial site at Sines to connect producers and consumers of hydrogen.
This is a small pipe, but an important pipe to make this hydrogen a reality within this industrial area of Sines. Thirdly, we are also working hard together with our counterparts in Spain and France to develop this green corridor, which will connect Portugal, Spain and France in order to transport hydrogen from Iberia into the center of Europe. Our specific part will be involved in the interconnection together with our counterparts, Enagás in Spain, as well as what we call the enablers, which are a retrofitting of the existing pipeline in the Guarda ring, the Guarda Natural Gas pipeline ring, so that it become fully operational for 100% hydrogen in the time horizon of 2030.
In natural gas, we keep working to respond to the challenge that was given last year in terms of security of supply. The idea is to develop, in our underground storage site of Carriço, two new cavities to store natural gas, but to be fully operational for 100% hydrogen storage. The idea is to develop that in a five-year horizon time. Last but not least, to keep working on the possibility of using our infrastructure in Sines, the terminal, not only to work it as an import terminal, but also as a transshipment infrastructure, allowing cargos to be transferred from one ship to another, and like that to be an extra support to the provision of natural gas into the center of Europe. W ith that, Gonçalo.
Thank you, João. Let's go through the chapter four and looking a little bit at ESG. I'll try and move a little bit faster as these are a lot of slides. But just to tell you that this is one of the other key pillars that we have in our, in our business plan. We are clearly delivering on it. Emissions have decreased versus 2019 greenhouse emissions, around 37%. Our aim is to decrease them by 50% by 2030. We are, I'd say, well, in line and well ahead in pursuing this. We have also been striving in other elements like women in management and the way that we put ESG in terms of weights of top management performance.
We have been pushing and on the financial side, we have been pushing, I'd say, on all cylinders, to make certain that this is going according and above plan. In the next slide, I now want to go through this, just to mention that what you see in terms of a slight increase in greenhouse gases has to do also with the difference of scope. We included Transemel from Chile, which was not included. If it was not for Transemel, this would actually decrease. Bear in mind, in our case, greenhouse emissions depend a lot on the mix of production in the country. As João mentioned, that last year was a particularly harsh year in terms of drought that pushed gas a lot. This pushed a little bit greenhouse emissions above.
I would say, we are completely within the logic and within the scope and trying to achieve the targets that we have set ourselves in this area. Slide 28 gives you a little bit more in depth of what we are doing. We calculated Scope 3. We already calculated for 21 and 22. We are pursuing scope again and suppliers, and we have done several meetings with them, big meetings to try and pursue this. We submitted our science-based targets at the end of last year. We are expecting that by mid this year, we should have an answer on them. We are, I say, pushing on a lot of cylinders.
This has been reflected, as you can see on the next slide, on an improvement almost across the board on all the ratings. I think this is more than working towards the ratings. We are working to things, and you can see that reflected on the ratings, and I think that is important. Just some final remarks and the final slide, which is 21. Good performance on the EBITDA and net profit. Good performance on the financial side with the decrease on net debt. Good continuous increase in terms of investment. Although there was a slight decrease, but we are going to recuperate that on 2023. In terms of financials also, important signings of the IG loans at the end of the year, beginning of this year.
Finally, just to let give you a note, the board has proposed for the shareholder meeting them to approve a payment of EUR 0.154, or is going to approve that. As a reminder, this is a number that we have in the business plan. We already paid, approved by the board of directors in interim dividends of EUR 0.064. What you should expect that the board may approve and then communicate and be approved in the final general assembly is then the payment of the remaining EUR 0.09. The approval of the dividends to be paid again in anticipation of the end of the year will again be approved in the board of directors again in November of this year.
You'll have these two approvals per year from now on. We conclude the presentation and we open up for any questions that you may have. Thank you.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, to ask a question, you need to press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for a name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Now we're going to take our first question. The question comes from line of Tomás Reis Vaz from CaixaBank. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two if don't mind. The first one is regarding this CapEx of EUR 500 million that is talked about on slide 24. When you expect that this investment start? Besides hydrogen, do they also include investments in gas transmission and distribution? The second question, still related to this step up in CapEx, would you consider a change or in the remuneration structure or a potential equity raise down the road? Those are the questions. Thanks.
Well, thanks for the questions. I will try to answer the first one. Basically, this EUR 500 million or slightly above that, this is includes both the gas or natural gas and hydrogen. The time horizon is, well, starting from now, although the big investments will occur between 2026 and 2029. It will be in referring to all the necessary change and retrofitting of the existing infrastructure to pursue the 10% blending targets. It will include two new cavities as it we were mandated by the government by September to respond the energy crisis to cavities in our underground storage. Of course, the Green Corridor, the part that refers to Portugal, and that includes the new interconnection between Portugal and Spain, as well as the reinforcements and the retrofitting, what we call the enablers of some existing infrastructure to adapt it and for it to become 100% hydrogen-ready.
On the second questions, we don't, we don't foresee any need for equity raise. You know, we, you know, no plans, no need. We are not planning also any change in terms of remuneration policy. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes line of Enrico Bartoli from Mediobanca. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi, good evening, thanks for taking my question. First of all, I'd like to go back to the matter of the additional CapEx. I was wondering if you can elaborate on the level of confidence that you have of visibility on the EUR 0.5 billion additional CapEx in gas transport. If you can provide some details on the discussions that you had on this matter with the government and ERSE on the actual implementation. Always regarding the potential additional CapEx on electricity, if you can provide us some hint on the additional CapEx that would require from the new agreements on solar PV and the role.
I understand that you're still in the preliminary phase, but what kind of role you could have in the connection of the offshore wind, if you're going to expand the capacity of the inland transmission network, or you are going also to be involved in building the connection between the new facilities and inland. A question on CapEx for 2023. You have some delays understood. You're going to recover them in terms of execution of CapEx in 2023. What kind of level of CapEx you think is reasonable for this year? Last one is related to the regulatory view on gas.
If you can update us on the discussions that maybe you're having with ERSE on this point, and when you expect that we'll have the new regulation, if we think that also there, the TotEx mechanism is going to be applied. Sorry for the many questions. Thank you.
Well, thanks for your question. I will try to cover as much as I can, and if I miss anyone, please let me know. First, on your question regarding the level of confidence regarding this CapEx plan, I would say it's high because it responds to commitments that the Portuguese state has taken within Europe and together with our counterparts like Spain and France. Europe-European policy is clearly driving a push on hydrogen, so we are applying for these European funds. The feedback we have received from the European authorities is quite positive, so I would say that we can be as much confident as it's possible at the moment. We are having meetings, regular meetings.
We have with the other 3 TSOs, Enagás, GRTgaz, and Teréga. Things are going fast, so I think that's the level of confidence. Of course, we are speaking a time horizon that it's still speaking about 6 years ahead, but we are confident that this will go through. Regarding your question on the electricity, I would say that this new batch of direct agreements with solar generators, they will require an amount of CapEx that is proportionally equivalent to the ones that we have to assume in the previous batch.
We are expecting some adjustments, of course, but proportionally speaking, I think that it's a fair approach for the amount of CapEx we are speaking about. In terms of what is needed for the wind offshore, it's quite substantial. It's not only about the wind offshore, but it's about the connection between the wind offshore as well as the improvements that the government and the energy policy in Portugal is requiring from us in terms of CapEx development in the industrial site of Sines. The two issues are connected. Wind offshore, it will be CapEx to absorb this new generation of energy. Sines, it will be CapEx to connect consumers that will consume that energy.
That is not yet completely set, but it will be an a significant amount, because we are speaking about roughly an increase of 10 gigawatts of new generation or the approximate value of new consumption. Gonçalo, you want to-.
Just before João covers the other regulation you were talking about CapEx. We have a CapEx that was close to EUR 250 in 2022. This year was a little bit lower. I expect that we could have made EUR 30 million, EUR 40 million more this year if it wasn't for the delay. Versus what we had in 2021, those close to EUR 250, you can expect EUR 30 million more, something like that. We expect to recuperate a good deal of this, and that on average will probably within or above that level that we have on the business plan. João, you got a regulation?
Regarding the question on regulation, as you know, the regulator will publish its proposal for the new regulatory period by the first of April. Those discussions are covering what are the changes in the regulatory framework. Far, the information that we first conveyed to have is that it's not to be expected significant changes on the regulatory framework. Of course, this is these discussions are ongoing and we don't have the final position of the regulator. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes to line of Ignacio Doménech from JB Capital. Your line is open, please ask the question.
Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. My first question is on hydrogen infrastructure. You have outlined the EUR 500 million related both to hydrogen and gas transmission. I would like to know if you have any visibility on the remuneration mechanism for these investments related with hydrogen. If it's safe to assume that it should be similar to gas transmission asset. My second question is on the financial cost expected for 2023. Maybe if you could give us some visibility on the expected cost of debt in 2023 but also on the related costs associated to the tariff deviation for this year.
I assume it will depend on the schedule if the repayment of the whole amount is returned in 2023 or not. My third question also on Electrogas. If you can please elaborate more on the positive performance of Electrogas this year, and if we should expect the same contribution for 2023 or a gradual normalization on these assets. Lastly, on CESE, you mentioned no further development on the special energy tax. My question is if it's safe to assume a EUR 28 million impact this year in the first quarter. Thank you.
Well, thanks for your questions. I will try to answer the first one. The answer is quite simple. I think it's like you said, it's fair to assume, with the information that we have now that hydrogen will be treated with the same rules that apply to natural gas.
Okay. On the financial cost that you asked, and so, I mean, you see our funding structure. You see how the base rate has gone up in the, if you make that math and you start to calculate and you see what the impact is this year, you can see that we saw a 20 basis points increase this year versus 2021. You are going to see a higher increase, 40-50 basis points versus this year in 2023. I'd say that is what we have in line. You have to mention the increase, and you have to see how that stands versus the increase also in revenue, of financial cost versus financial cost. There are deviations. The negative deviations that is in our favor now is close to EUR 500 million still.
It's around 490, if I don't mistake, 489. We do expect this to come down substantially. If it goes to zero, perhaps it's a little bit hard, but I said that this is going to reduce materially. This is a belief. Unless something strange again happens in the energy market that make something go up, I would say that it should clearly. Does it come down EUR 300 million? Does it come down EUR 250 million, EUR 200 million? We don't know. I don't think it's going to be zero, but we do think that this is going to come down materially. In terms of Electrogas, you ask, we are expecting still a strong year this year.
As I said, there were, and I don't know if that was also your question, some below EBITDA impact of lower taxes that most of them are not repeatable. These were recuperations of taxes that we have. We also have these exchange rate impact. Those are things that are a little bit more. In terms of the operating business and operating, we do still expect the Electrogas even to grow a little bit, not to 60%, of course, but to grow a little bit next year. Finally, on the levy. Yes, I think that's what you should expect. That kind of odd number being on the account in the first quarter as we usually account for it in the accounts of the company. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a last reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management team for any closing remarks or comments.
Well, just a quick closing remark. We are moving to the shareholder meeting in coming up in April. You know, we expect an event that should be just a regular one. We are, you know, full committed to work on the new year. You know, today we spoke about the past, as I usually say, we are already working on, you know, fully in 2023. We have the hands full. We have a lot of projects. There is a lot of things going on. You know, the Portuguese government has, you know, a big plan for the country in terms of more renewable energy.
You know, we today we mentioned most of the projects, and I think, you know, we will be super busy and, you know, and we don't see any obstacle that we cannot overcome. Thanks for your time. Madalena?
Thank you very much all on the line. Of course we remain available for any other questions you may want to take offline. Thank you again. Have a good day.
Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.