Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the REN 2022 first nine months results call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After speaker's presentation, there will be a question- and- answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to slowly press star one and then one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand over to our first speaker, Madalena Garrido, Head of IR. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you all. We would like to thank you for making the time to join us today for our third quarter 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 then move on to our Q&A session, on which we will be taking your questions. I will now pass the word to Rodrigo.
Thanks, Madalena. Good afternoon all. Being in mid-November, I feel like we are basically done with the year, but the truth is, we are not yet done. Even during these challenging times, we have always been able to maintain our operational focus and efficiency as well as our financial discipline. Not easy, but that's our core focus. COVID, the war, the coal generation ends, the drought, the energy transition projects, the rising inflation, the regulatory transformations, industrial disruptions and the cyber concerns. I think we should be allowed to say that we have a great team in place and we are doing a great job. The fact is, if we look to the TSOs around the world, we must recognize that we are able to do our jobs even under very challenging conditions.
Back to REN, we reported good numbers across all our activities locally and internationally. We have a strong pipeline of projects. The country energy transition ambitions will keep us very busy in the coming years. Not sure if you remember the key highlights of our last call results. The projects we mentioned are all moving on. On top of the already planned infrastructures for renewable generation, the government just announced they are requiring us to develop an extra underground storage. In fact, two new caverns. We are already preparing the projects. Together with governments of France and Spain, the Portuguese government also introduced a new challenge, the development of a green gas pipe that guarantees the three countries connection in support of the energy needs of Europe.
We are also improving our Sines terminal capacity for transshipment and ship-to-ship LNG operations in a way we can better support LNG transport in smaller tanks for the North Sea. We are supporting a series of studies that relate to green hydrogen production, as well as high energy demand projects, in particular in the Sines area. In the coming months, we should be able to share more information since we are still in the initial phase. It has been a really busy period, and the work pipeline for the coming years is very high, resulting in the need for engineering headcount growth. This is great news as we see a long-term increase of activity and the opportunity for our people developments supporting the country energy transition. On the finance front, we also have been busy.
Other than control and planning, a key area is how we manage our debt, and Gonçalo will take us through the details. The stability of our business helps our banking relationships, and you will be able to judge. One key topic we will cover is how the tariffs adjustments will play next year and how that will impact the government decisions regarding sales tax. Today, this is really fresh news, the Minister of Environment spoke about this issue, stating that the tax should probably be over as the tariff deficit goes away. Of course, he said should probably be over. We don't know exactly what that means, but we will find out soon. Without further ado, we have Gonçalo will follow.
Thank you, Rodrigo. Good afternoon to you all. This has been, as Rodrigo said, a challenging year in several operational fronts. A very, very busy year. Financially, I think we are presenting a strong set of results, and we are consolidating some growth quarter-on-quarter. I think that both the domestic and the international businesses have been contributing to this. You can see on slide number four that the EBITDA has improved a little bit over 5% to EUR 360.9 million. This is mainly on the back of asset remuneration, on ROEs impacts of new regulation, despite the fact that costs have gone up, mainly electricity costs. International businesses have also contributed with around EUR 5 million of additional EBITDA.
Net profit is around EUR 81.4 million, which is a growth of 19% year-on-year. That is on the back of not only the EBITDA, but also lower financial costs during the year. In terms of CapEx, although for the nine months you can see a small decline, the reality is that we know that we are going to have a strong year in terms of investment, and that CapEx this year should be broadly in line with the CapEx that we have done in 2021. Now looking a little bit at the operational side and passing on to João, we can go to slide number five. João?
Well, thanks, Gonçalo. Good afternoon to you all. Well, on slide number five, you have the overall picture of what's going on in terms of the sector. Many of these information, you might have it already. We are now analyzing the new directives that EU has been approving in order to cut the electricity demands and natural gas demands. You know that we have cuts on 50% on gas. Now we have to deal with this cut on 10% on gross electricity and 5% on peak hours. We are actually working on how this could be adjusted into our national system. Internally, the Portuguese government has reinforced several measures in order to cope with the security of supply issues that we are facing.
As you know, we are going through a very dry period, which is affecting the capacity on generating electricity from our hydro dams, and therefore, the government has had some ideas and measures to create a strategic reserve of water in our reservoirs in order to cope with the needs of the peak load during the winter time. As Rodrigo has already mentioned, we will need to build two new cavities in our underground storage of Carriço. These will be used for storing what is being called the strategic reserve of natural gas for the country and an increase in terms of reserve, as well as coping with other needs on the national natural gas systems.
The government has also released several decree laws in order to simplify the licensing processes for renewables. Although this is not directly linked to the grid infrastructure, this will additionally pose a challenge because these renewable plants, namely solar, will require new connections to the grids and will require the grid developments as we are foreseeing. In the meantime, the regulator has published their recommendation on the distribution assets plan, which affects our distribution assets of Portgás. Overall, the regulator advises some reduction on the CapEx that has been presented by the distribution by the DSOs.
Still, we are assessing and analyzing these recommendations because what Portgás is concerned, those CapEx plans are linked to an increase on consumption, and therefore, they bring a positive contribution to the overall costs of the system. We are assessing the impacts on this recommendation to present the ultimate proposal to the government, which is the ultimate entity to decide the approval of those plans. On the hydrogen side, we continue to work on this PRR program for our project in Sines, the H2 Green Valley. In Sines, which we believe to close these public funds until the end of the year.
We are also developing our works in terms of adjusting the natural gas infrastructure to cope with the need of incorporating some blending of hydrogen and natural gas. As has been already mentioned, we are now working with our counterparts in Spain and France to build this green corridor from Portugal to France, which will be ultimately applied for the transmission of hydrogen from the south of Europe to the north of Europe. Moving to slides number seven, you have the overall picture on the operational highlights. Just a couple of information. In terms of electricity consumption, we still are having an increase in consumption, basically a little bit below 3% comparing to 2021.
Adjusting this to the work days and the temperature, we have an increase in consumption of 2.7%. In terms of renewables share, there is a significant decrease versus last year from 61% to 44%. This mainly justified by the sharp decrease on the hydro generation, which dropped from 23% in 2021 to only 9% in 2022. The increase in solar was not enough to offset this decrease. In terms of natural gas consumption, we also see a slight decrease, and this results from the combination of two factors, a significant increase on the consumption for electricity generator, which rose by 38% versus last year.
On the other hand, what we call the conventional consumption, which in our case is mainly industrial consumption, that one decreased by 21%. These two figures combined give this overall decrease of 1.2%. In terms of quality of service, everything is going relatively well. We have the maximum levels on the gas transmission. We improved on gas distribution, and we also improved on the electricity indicators, namely the ones that are used by the regulator for our regulatory incentives on quality of service. With that, Gonçalo Morais Soares, back to you.
Thank you, João. Moving to slide number eight, just some financial highlights and comments. We beat the EBITDA here, as I said, growing around 5%. We should expect EBITDA to grow in the full year, but not, I would say not as much as we are growing here in the first nine months. I'd say the same applies to net income. We see net income growing at 19%. We should see a solid growth of this number in the full year numbers, but not as high as we are seeing now in the first nine months. CapEx, as I said, which is now dropping a little bit above 10%, should be more or less in line, if not slightly above CapEx last year, but with no major differences.
You can see that average revenue having grown 2.4%. We have extremely high transfers to RAV during last year also. That is a clear consequence of that. In terms of net debt, the number that you see here is the one exclusive of tariff deviations, because it's a number that tariff deviations sometimes may induce in some errors. This number you see that is broadly stable, decreasing a little bit over the first nine months, and that's what we should expect also over the course of the full year. Looking at slide number nine and looking at the overall EBITDA evolution, we see assets and remuneration going up. Again, namely it's the new regulatory TOTEX model and the ROEs. OpEx is coming down, and this is mainly driven by the electricity costs.
International segment is doing quite well, and both businesses are growing. International, which was last year around 2.8% of EBITDA, is now 4%, so it's still a small part, but it is also contributing in a healthy way to the growth of the company. In slide number 10, you can see the evolution of the rates. Although they corrected a little bit in mid-year, they have again gone up. The rates for this year, as you know, were set, and they've been already defined for the year. This is already contributing for the increase of the rates for next year. As you know, and they start to count on the first of October, so this is already contributing for an increase.
We are expecting an increase, even if everything stayed the same, because as you see, the rate of this year was still impacted by the lower rates at the end of 2021 and that kind of phenomenon you are not going to see from now onward. Looking at slide number 11 and at CapEx, what we see is in terms of transfers to RAV is a certain stability. Of course, stressing again, versus last year in the last quarter, you are going to see a main difference because last year we were recuperating a lot of things and there was still that pressure of having to have everything done by DRM, which in electricity does not exist anymore.
You are going to see a big difference, but it's mainly the carryover from 2020 into 2021. In terms of CapEx, there is a decrease, but as I said before, we are going to have a strong year in terms of CapEx, still ahead of the guidance that we have put now in terms of the business plan, and still driven mostly by decarbonization and by electricity. There is some upside that we should see materializing in the coming months and years, namely in hydrogen, in transshipment, like Rodrigo mentioned, in the new caverns that were authorized, and also in this new potential investment in the pipeline that was announced by the government, in terms of gas and hydrogen.
That, in our case, could translate eventually into the third interconnection with Spain. Looking at how each business evolves in terms of remuneration, all of them are increasing. Some of them, the increase in terms of rate of return is higher versus the increase in terms of asset base. You can see that the electricity asset base is evolving quite well also. The only one that is decreasing in terms of asset base is gas transmission, which is exactly the area where in the near future, we have some potential upside coming up. Looking at OpEx, we still see this increase over the nine months is of around 5% also, clearly in line with the evolution of the EBITDA number. Personal costs are increasing much less than core external costs.
Core external costs are increasing around 7%. This is mainly driven by the cost of electricity in the terminal they have basically doubled. That is what is going on. Let me also nevertheless tell you that there are also some additional revenues that you don't see on the isolated, but that are also linked to these additional costs that we have here. If we took those into account, the evolution of OpEx would not clearly be so high. That being said, we have been doing a lot of effort in terms of OpEx saving and cost saving, but the impact of the electricity costs in us, as in everybody else, has been felt. In terms of international business, we see that the contribution in terms of EBITDA increased 50%.
Last year it was around EUR 10 million, now it is EUR 15 million. This is a trend that we are going to continue to see in the last quarter. It's not that you can multiply, divide by three and multiply by four, but perhaps it will probably not be very far from what the share of the business will be at the end of the year in terms of EBITDA. Around EUR 20 million, a little bit below or around that should be more or less what we should expect. Very healthy growth. CapEx this year has still lagged a little bit because some of the constructions that we had anticipated were still delayed.
We should see, I'd say, next year a stronger year in terms of CapEx for Chile, although as you realize, both in CapEx and EBITDA, this is still a small part of our overall business. Looking below EBITDA and looking at depreciation is basically in line with evolution of assets. In terms of financial results, there was an improvement, and this is basically driven by the lower net debt that we have seen in during all of this year and also already last year. Although we already start to see an increase in the costs of debt that went up from 1.6% to around 1.7%. It should continue to grow a little bit during the rest of the year, so hopefully it should be slightly higher than this.
What we anticipate is that the increase in cost of debt should be felt mainly next year, where there you'll see, I'd say, a higher than normal increase in the average cost of debt as a consequence of this massive increase that you have seen during 2022 of the Euribor rates. In terms of taxes, nothing there to tell. The effective tax rate is slightly below the marginal as we have recuperated some taxes, but it's still mainly impacted by the special levy. As Rodrigo said, the government has again stated that this is linked to the tariff deficit, so we will see how this in the future translates into this tax going away. In terms of consolidated results, this is the increase that we see.
EBITDA depreciation, as you know, are linked, and depreciation is also inside revenues in EBITDA. Financial results improving a little bit because of net debt. The sales increased a little bit, and the income tax increases because we have more income than last year, but a very, very healthy increase in terms of net income. Looking at net debt, and to make it a little bit more clear, you see that there is a decrease of EUR 400 million. But if you look at net debt without the tariff deviations, you see that we are more evolving from the 2.6 number that is, I'd say, the more normal number in terms of net debt to around 2.45. There is still strong cash flow generation that is being achieved this year.
Of course, the numbers of net debt are higher, and I think it is important for you to know that this is a mechanical, almost bureaucratic, mechanism that impacts our debt. It is really not something that we are very interested in existing, but it is what it is. In this case it is, I'd say, artificially reducing the debt. I think that you can also understand by the evolution of net debt, the cost of debt this year, that we have been managing this in a very cautious and proactive way. We anticipated the renegotiation of almost 40% of our debt in the first months of this year.
On top of the fact that we have established a 70% fixed versus variable policy, on top of the two years of liquidity that allow us to go to the market when we want and not when we need, have been enabling us to manage this in a, I'd say, very optimal way. To be clear, we are not anticipating any bond issuance this year until the end of the year. We are now concluding some refinancing operations until the end of the year, but not a bond issuance. We still do believe that we can, through refinancing until the end of the year, still improve liquidity and increase a little bit our average maturity. We have now around EUR 1.6 billion of liquidity.
The normal liquidity, excluding the tariff variations, is around 1.1, a little bit of one to 1.1. I'd say that we have the normal level of liquidity that we have in the bank. Looking at how capital markets have evolved, we are broadly in line with markets. Markets in the recent months have been feeling a little bit of pain. We are not immune to that, and we are evolving with the markets. That being said, we still have clearly a better TSR than the EURO STOXX index relating to utilities. Moving on to slide 20, and to talk just a little bit about ESG, and this continues to be a main focus in our strategy.
We are now to give you a little bit more granularity of some initiatives, starting to implement some projects relating to self-production in some of our facilities that we can do in order to reduce the footprints. We are advancing in terms of Scope 3, not only in terms of calculation that were concluded, but also in terms of including these in new tenders. We are expanding mobility in our fleet, and we are actually developing new solutions that have to charge directly from high voltage. We have many new initiatives, and this, as you can see on slide 21, has been translating into improvements in terms of rating. This is a long-term process and a long-term improvement, but it is important to note that there are improvements.
We do not live for the ratings, for the ESG ratings. We do believe that what we do is what we think is right, but it is good to see that what we are doing is being translated publicly into the ratings, which are also important for the investors. Just in terms of closing remarks, I'd say that everything is broadly in line with what we expected. There is a little bit more growth than usual, and this is also, I'd say, what we expected for the year. One last remark, and anticipating the question that also you may have before passing on to Q&A, and this is relating to dividends.
As you know, in our publicly stated dividend policy, we are supposed to start with a biannual dividend policy this year. This is what we are expected to do. We have a board set up for the end of November, 30 November, exactly to decide the precise terms of this. As we have promised and stated in our policy, this is what we are going to do in the end of the year. By that time, you will know the precise terms of the exact amount of that interim dividend that should be paid still this year. Okay. Thank you, and with that, we will pass to Q&A. Thank you very much.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to slowly press star one and then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Once again, it's star one and then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We are now going to proceed with our first question. The questions come from the line of Enrico Bartoli from Mediobanca. Please ask your question.
Hi, good evening, and thanks for taking my question. First question is related to the potential additional investment that you could have in your businesses. You mentioned the agreement between the governments of Portugal and Spain for building this hydrogen connection with France. If you can update on the discussion that you're having with the government and the visibility that you have on the actual implementation of additional investments in the gas transmission business. The same, if it's possible to have some flavor on the potential that you could have in the electricity transmission, considering also some statements recently that the Portuguese system would need more investments in the electricity grids for the deployment of renewables. Second question is related to your international companies.
As you highlighted, the result was very strong from both companies in nine months. If you can provide some details on the drivers of that growth, and some more details on the evolution that you expect per quarter in 2023. Last on cost of debt, you mentioned that you expect an increase. If you can provide some indication of the average cost of debt expected for the full year 2022, and at the current conditions in the interest rate markets, some flavor on what the cost of debt would be in 2023. Thank you very much.
I will take the first question, João the second, and Gonçalo the last two. On these projects between France, Spain and Portugal, you know, we are still in a development phase. I would say in general terms, most of the investment will happen between France and Spain, because we are talking about a much bigger project. I would say that at the moment it's very hard to really give you a prediction because, you know, it's still in the beginning. We are in talks. You know, everybody heard what the governments said, and we of course the TSOs of the three countries are meeting and working, but it's really the very initial phase.
Just to clarify that, you know, our part of the project, you know, would be the one that is inside our borders, then it's, let's say it's a smaller piece of the whole project. I would say it's better to, you know, work a little bit more on the numbers and then, you know. I think by December there is a summit that probably governments will disclose a little bit more the timing and the scope and what they are really, you know, trying to get done and when. Something we need to understand is, you know, these projects, they will only happen if there is European funding for the project, which should be.
That will have an impact in the way we talk about the numbers. Because, you know, if there is a, you know, a 50% subsidy or a 70% subsidy or 100% subsidy, that will have impact in the way we invest, and that it's just too early to talk about that. João, do you want to talk on this?
Thanks, Rodrigo. On the electricity transmission and just perhaps before entering that on gas, bear in mind that we still have to do the two cavities, which is a significant investment versus what we are having in the previous years. Our expectation is that for the construction we should have roughly around EUR 40 million per cavity. In addition to that, we have the cushion gas, which, if you do the calculation on the current prices, is going to be much higher than our historical values. On the electricity transmission, for you to have an idea, we have a strong push for the next few years.
Basically, our forecast for the normal regulated assets, plus the ones that we have to build, due to these connections to solar projects, they will imply an increase of 1,500 kilometers in our grid. This is a substantial investment that we have to do, to create the necessary conditions, to cope with the Portuguese energy policy. Bear in mind that the government is pushing hard on simplifying the licensing process, which will push an additional stress on the needs of the grid for the whole connections of these solar projects and other renewables projects. Lately, we have started to assess these later announcements of the government that they want to increase also the offshore wind potential in Portugal.
We are still at a very preliminary phase, but this will necessarily imply additional CapEx on the backbone.
Thanks, João. On the questions on the international this year, that's also separating both. Electrogas is mainly driven by first higher tariffs because it's linked to inflation and to the evolution of exchange rate, but it's mainly the inflation pushing tariffs up. Volumes are up too. So that's what Electrogas are both up on the firm part of the business, the firm contract and on the interruptible, which is a variable contract. They are both increasing. So that has led to this healthy increase in terms of the business part. I would say that growth next year in Electrogas is going to be slightly lower but still healthy growth. In terms of Transemel, it's just new assets coming online.
There's also a little bit of tariffs playing there, but it's mostly asset base growing and new investments coming online. As I said, this year, you have three quarters, EUR 50 million, four quarters. I don't think that the rough math should be very far from where it would be. In and around EUR 20 million would be, I'd say a number that should not be very far from the truth at the end of the year. Next year, you should still expect clearly a double digit growth on that business in Chile, but slightly lower or lower than you had this year. This year was, I'd say especially a high growth moment for Chile.
That being said, we have, as you've seen, two additional options there to grow organically. Those will, in the next 2-3 years, allow us to grow and continue to grow in Chile in an organic way, in a conservative way, but continue to grow and to have a little bit more in Chile. In terms of cost of debt, as I said, we are now around 1.7%. I think that in the end of the year, we should be slightly above. I don't know if it's 1.75%, 1.8%, 1.85%. We should be a little bit above where we are. Okay?
Relating to the impact year-over-year, I think that, if you see that we have 70% of fixed debt and we have 30% variable, and given the increases on average Euribor year-over-year, if you do that simple math, you can see that there is going to be a, I'd say a visible increase in the average cost of debt from this 1.8% to clearly to the 2.5%, something like that. It is the normal increase in terms of cost of debt that you are also seeing on the remuneration rates above in terms of the assets. It's the normal logic, and I'd say that's what you are seeing now.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks a lot. Very interesting.
Once again, if you do have any questions or comment, please solely press star one and then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We are now going to proceed with our next question. It's from the line of Ignacio Doménech from JB Capital. Please ask your question.
Yes, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. The first one is on dividends. I assume we will have to wait until the end of the year to have some more color on the biannual dividend. Maybe if you could advance looking into 2023, what would be the time schedule of this biannual dividend? Also thinking on the positive evolution of net income, if we could expect an increase in the dividend or if this is subject to a decrease in the special energy tax contribution. My second question is on the tariff deviation. It seems like the tariff deviation has increased now during the third quarter. My question is basically when should we expect this deviation to revert?
This is tied to, or if it will depend on the evolution of electricity prices. Thank you.
Relative to the dividend question. In terms of timing to be as clear, but I don't want to anticipate particular decisions that the board will take. The board is on the thirtieth of November, and it is being done on the thirtieth of November so that we can decide based on the October accounts. We are expecting then following the board on the thirtieth of November to pay the special, the interim dividend somewhere in December. Okay. That is kind of the logic in terms of the date. We are expecting to pay it. If you wanted clarity, if it would be before the end of the year or in January, we are expecting to do it in December as it is being decided at the end of November.
Relative to your question of net income growing and dividends, we have a set dividend policy. We are not at this stage making any or considering any changes to the dividend policy that we have defined last year. Relating to your question in terms of tariffs deviation. Yes, what we are expecting is that this year it was defined based on the tariffs that the regulator defined last year. It applies more now as you see the prices of electricity are a little bit different now in these last few months. The pace at which this deviation has been increasing should slow down. It should still be a large amount relative for the full year.
This is the amount of money that we are expecting to give back to the system next year, and then next year it will depend on how prices evolve. Okay. That's the normal mechanics. As I said, as we have said, this is very, I'd say, mechanical and almost bureaucratic. It does create these kind of movements up and down, but it's something that exists. Fortunately, as you know, this is relating to this was related to two PPAs contracts. One of them has already ceased to exist, and the other one ends at the beginning of 2024 and not in the second. Hopefully, these more, say, strange movements that we see relating to that should end by that time.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
Once again, ladies and gentlemen, please press star one and then one if you have any questions or comment at this time. We have no further questions at this time. I hand back the conference to you for closing remarks.
Thank you very much to you all. We remain available of course to answer any questions you may have by phone or email. Thank you for your time. We'll continue here. Thank you.
Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.