Hello. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for attending REN's 2025 results conference call. Joining us today are the members of our executive committee, Rodrigo Costa, our CEO, Gonçalo Morais Soares, our CFO, and João Conceição, our COO. Rodrigo will start with his opening remarks, then Gonçalo and João will guide you through the main operational and financial highlights of the year. In addition, we will also provide an update on our strategic priorities for 2026 and 2027. After the presentation, we will open the floor for a Q&A session, and we're happy to take your questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Madalena. Good morning, all. 2025 was a very challenging but a good year, both from an operational perspective as well financial perspective. We believe we did quite well and achieved very good results. On my notes regarding 2024, just a year ago, I did a list of the challenges we went through in the last years, and they were many. We had COVID, we had, you know, a lot of local political turmoil. We had the beginning of the Ukraine war. We had a spike on energy prices, critical drought for a couple of years, and of course, the usual licensing processes delays to develop infrastructures, and some challenges in the front of regulation and also high taxes. In 2025, we had a blackout in Spain that took our system down.
We had multiple storms because not just the ones we had very recently, we had them also in the fall of last year. Of course, with all these we have been quite busy. The truth is that we have been consistently delivering in our plans. Quarter after quarter, the numbers speak by themselves. We keep delivering consistent results and meet the best expectations. On top of the good operational and financial work, we saw some important progress with CESE. Also, on the tax front, we were able to take advantage again of a regime that is now more favorable to business. We are also doing well in Chile, developing the business according to plans you are aware. We believe that our sector remains very interesting and full of opportunities.
Our government remains committed to the energy transition, and that of course is quite positive for us. Energy is at the center of the world development, and we are core for that development. We are a catalyst of the energy transition, and we are doing what we are supposed to do, developing projects, managing existing infrastructures, and being efficient and consistent. With that, I will move to Gonçalo.
Thank you, Rodrigo. Welcome to you all to the 2025 results presentation. Moving to slide number four. I think that what you have before you is a set of very positive results that consolidates the year 2024 clearly ahead of the business plan, and that we have assigned for you that year. EBITDA is growing 2% this year. Around that, this is both on the back of growth in Portugal and in Chile. Net income is growing a little bit more, almost 5%. This is the result not only of the increase in EBITDA, but better financial results and stable taxes. Almost EUR 160 million out of this growth of 4.8%. Net debt is stable, but we are improving metrics as the recent upgrade showed you.
In terms of CapEx, the signs of acceleration, we are increasing CapEx, and this is something that we are going to maintain, but this is already a positive sign, as Rodrigo commented. Before I go into a little bit more detail, let me pass to João, our COO, so that he comments more on the operating side. João.
Thanks, Gonçalo. Good morning to you all. On slide five, you have the summary of the main points from the operational perspective, and I would highlight the last one on the regulation point, which is the new regulatory framework for electricity. We will go in more details later on in a slide. To tell you that we got an improvement versus the previous regulatory framework on the different components. The most important one, the rate of return, which has a starting point of 6.19%, base rate, plus incentives and plus some other upsides that we will detail later on. Jumping to slide number seven, you have the main indicators.
I would highlight the fact that we increased the electricity consumption by 3.2% versus last year. This 53 terawatt-hours overall, 2025 was the highest consumption ever registered in the Portuguese electricity system. Renewable share is approximately the same as the one we got in 2024. There is a slight decrease, and the reason is very simple. As you may remember, we had these blackouts on the 28th of April, and after the blackout, we were forced to generate some electricity with combined cycle plants in order to ensure the necessary levels of security of supply of the system. This is something that we are evolving but affected the renewable share.
It's the reason of the increase on gas consumption of 11.1%, which is basically justified by these increased needs of generating electricity with gas sources. In terms of quality of service and, in summary, nothing special to report. We were in line with the previous years, obviously considering the blackouts as a special event not affecting the necessary indicators for quality of service. With that, Gonçalo, I give back to you.
Thank you, João. Slide number eight is just the main financial slides. Let me just go through a little bit more detail in them. In slide number nine, in the EBITDA, what you can see is this increase of 2%. On assets and OpEx remuneration, it's basically an increase in the amortization's revenue that we have due to the investments, plus also an increase in Totex revenues that did increase this year. Other revenues increased a little bit more this year, mainly driven by corrections from previous years. Okay. These are typically costs that were not accepted for some reason or some assets that were not accepted. This year, that impact is around EUR 6 million, so it explains almost everything in this line. It was a little bit higher than normal, but it happened.
It's unusual, I'd say, element, but it was slightly higher than normal. Core OpEx, basically it's a mix of increase in personnel costs, around EUR 2 million, and then basically it's also other costs, namely operation and maintenance. I'll go through those. In terms of the weights, you can see a slight increase in the international. As you know, we are slightly ahead there in terms of the weight that is held versus the business side. Okay. Moving to slide number 10, basically no news. We already knew the rates of return since October, here things are more or less stable. In slide number 11, as I said, this is clearly showing acceleration mainly in electricity.
We are growing transfers to around more than 10%. We are growing CapEx around 13%. Actually, if you look at the electricity, CapEx is growing close to 16%. These spikes, as Rodrigo Costa mentioned, several approval headwinds, so it's still difficult to approve certain CapEx, but we are still pushing through and accelerating the deployment, which will continue to happen in the next years, as we'll comment a little bit after. Okay. In terms of raw returns, I'd say in slide 12 it's very clear. Basically in electricity, the positive impact comes from the asset-based evolution, and in gas, there's a big decrease also from that asset-based evolution, nothing out of the ordinary. The only thing is that here in this line in electricity, you don't see the impact of solar, but it also exists.
Slide 13, in OpEx, as I told you, the evolution is a little bit linked both to core external and to personnel costs. Personnel costs increased around 3%. 1.2% of that is increase in headcount, so just more people, and the rest is more the general increases that we are giving. This increase in people, I'd say that in 2026 you'll see that happen. We'll start to taper off, eventually. External costs, it's mostly O&M costs, and this derives from, yes, a little bit of increase in price, but also the increase in the network as we are building more network. Bear in mind that these costs are then reflected in the regulation and recuperated versus the regulation, although sometimes the increases occur before then the reflection in regulation. Okay?
There's also a little bit of increase in IT, but it's mostly electricity O&M. Okay. Looking at Chile in slide 14, strong performance. The gas part, it's decreasing a little bit, but it's basically stable, and we are coming also from record year. I'd say stability is the key number here. Electricity growing quite a bit, so EBITDA growing almost 34%. This is on the back of the acquisitions also, that we did. Not only is the net income almost doubling or more than doubling, and this has to do with also an impact of exchange rates, that was positive this year. In 2024, it was slightly negative. Actually it has a higher year-on-year impact that then is one of the reasons why financial results are also better.
Here in Chile, we continue our focus of now integrating the small assets that we acquired in 2025 and continuing to pursue our organic growth agenda as we have defined. This is accounting almost for 5% now of our EBITDA. Okay. Below EBITDA, in slide 15, no major news in depreciation. As always, financial results, it's a mix of several things. As I said, it's first of all, an improvement in terms of the average cost of debt that came from 2.7%- 2.5%. But also there's a large impact of exchange rates, a +1 this year. It's slightly above EUR 4.5 million. Given the fact that last year was negative, the year-on-year impact is almost EUR 6 million.
That's why it also on a year-on-year basis impacts a little bit more here. I'd say that's perhaps the explanation that you are missing from the numbers. You have also the impacts from dividends that we received, but that's also a more normal kind of event. In terms of taxes, no major news. What we see is that this year we still pay the full levy amount versus last year, we have a difference in the levy because in 2024 we did have in the accounts some positive impact of court cases that we won. We already won more court cases during the year, but they are not completely final, and as usual, we rather be more conservative and not put it in the account.
We have not accounted for any court case winnings in 2025. That doesn't mean that there was any change. Actually, we continued to win court cases in the gas part. In the electricity, there are no new. In the gas part, we continued to win court cases, but since they were not completely finalized, we didn't put anything in the accounts. We are expecting that they will start to have an impact now in 2026 again. That's why in terms of levy, there's a difference in terms of the tax incentive for capitalization. It's now around EUR 34.5 million versus EUR 35.9 million the previous year. We actually had guided you to around EUR 30 million, so this year is slightly above.
We are not changing, I'd say, the overall estimate of around average of 30 because we think that in the following years this is going to come down a little bit more. I'd say that on average, the number that we gave you of EUR 90 million should be more or less the same that we are going to get. It's not going to be higher. I'd say that effective tax rate of 8%, very much in line with what we had in 2024, positive tax rate also in 2025. Slide 16, it's just basically the different impacts, okay? Positives of EBIT and financial results, depreciation coming down, as it goes up in EBITDA. Sales is slightly negative for the explanation that I told, okay?
In terms of net debt, slide 17, you see, very strong stability. Without the tariff deviations, which are now stabilizing slightly below EUR 100 million, you have a small increase of net debt, but really, slightly better than what we had expected and in line with expectation. Cost of debt improves as we only issued also the debt this year. It's normal that in 2026 and 2027 it may go up a little bit because of the issuance of the bond. Debt bond issuance have other impacts. You see that, at the end of the year, it has a maturity of 4.7. I can anticipate to you that this maturity, given the recent bond issuance will go up. It's already up to 5.4.
You saw we want to maintain it at five, so around five, that is the aim. You don't have it here in this slide, but we also have, at the end of the year, slightly more variable than usual fixed rate. We were also waiting for the bond issuance, and this is going to change, okay? We are going to have more fixed and variable. I'd say that it's going to set in the kind of normal range. We'll have around 60% fixed by perhaps the end of the quarter. As the interest rate environment also is changing, so we are now becoming slightly more fixed again, which was what we were aiming at. We have this. More importantly, also, we have this positive development with S&P. We were upgraded.
That shows that rating agencies are looking at the improvements in our credit metrics in a positive way. Okay? Slide 18 is just the share price evolution. You all know that we have a good share price evolution. Share price has continued to perform well in the beginning of 2026. We have been now in the range of slightly above 3.7. We continue to improve in the stock market in line also with the sector or slightly above the sector. Okay? Just going over our sustainability agenda and metrics in slide 20. We ended up the year stable or reducing slightly scope one and two emissions, and this is in the face of, as João mentioned, an increase in use of gas given the blackouts.
We were able to still improve a little bit, which means that we are now at -57% versus 2019 with new objective of -60% in 2030. We are well on our way to perform this. The same in Scope 3, we are -29%, and our objective is -30%. We are basically there already. Carbon neutral 2030, we are clearly on track. I think that this shows that we continue to deliver. You have the detail of this in slide 21. I'm not going to go in detail over this. In slide 22, you see the main standards.
We don't work for this, for the standards themselves, but it's true that they recognize the hard work that we do in this area and the commitment. Either we maintain because we are already at the top level, or we are continuing to try and improve mainly in S&P Global, okay? Okay, looking a little bit and doing a summarized version of what is the strategic update. This is important because we have been delivering numbers that are better. Bear in mind that this is a subset of the slides that you have in the longer form version of our presentation. Not all of these slides are here.
Of course, specifically to the analysts, we are going to be meeting you face-to-face, and you have that information already on the site with some additional information to what I'm going to say so that I don't have to go through all of the slides, but the main messages are going to be the same. Okay? But of course, when we meet you early next week and the following week, we'll be happy to go into all the detail that in this call is a little bit more difficult to give you, okay? So in slide 24. Before going into the update, before giving you the support, it's important to register that we are delivering and outperforming versus what we gave you.
This is something that nowadays is important to refer because it's not always the case. We clearly came on target in EBITDA. We clearly came very much ahead in net profit. We clearly came on the low range of net debt. We clearly came above the interval and within the interval and ahead of schedule on the CapEx deployment. This is important to give you that idea. Of course, only now we are only giving you some numbers for 2026 and 2027, not because we don't want to give more visibility, that this is the normal timing. Next year, we are going to revise the full business plan. We are not giving you now a new business plan.
What we are giving you is basically a limited revision of numbers for these two years, and then next year we will revise the business plan with all of these components, okay? Looking at slide 25, what can we see in the numbers that we are giving you now? First of all, is an acceleration of CapEx. Clearly we are giving you and telling you that we are going to be deploying more CapEx already in 2026 and 2027, okay? What we are saying is that this CapEx growth is coming basically from electricity. There is an increase in electricity CapEx, and there is actually a decrease in gas CapEx versus what we have in the business plan. This is extremely well aligned with what happened within our regulation.
This is what is happening now at the time where also regulation from electricity came out, positive, as we have already mentioned before, in the end of the year. We came out with a very healthy rate that allows us now to deploy CapEx with more confidence and to be able to accelerate knowing exactly the returns that we are going to have. I think that there's this kind of multiplication effect of both things happen at the same time, more CapEx and improved regulation. What I can tell you is that on the fiscal and funding, we are consolidating what we had before. Fiscally, there is a major upgrade in terms of the taxes.
That is what we have been seeing from the past years with the sales and gas now going away, with the corporate tax rate improving. There's a lot of small things that are improving tax and continue to improve and sustain tax. Unlike other companies, we are actually improving credit metrics that the best sign is the upgrade from S&P. It's a little bit unique versus other TSOs. We are actually improving the credit metrics, which also allows us to build flexibility into the metrics so that if there is, and we hope there is more, upside in CapEx coming from in the future, we are going to be able to capture that opportunity as it unfolds, okay? In slide 26, you have a little bit more detail on what the CapEx step-up is.
As you can see, it is basically a step-up in electricity, okay? We are increasing, in a material way, the electricity CapEx range that we have versus the initial targets, right? It's more than 50% of increase versus the target. We are decreasing the ones in gas basically because H2 development is growing at a slower pace. It's not something that concerns us. We are deploying it in a conservative way, and we are waiting for this to become a higher priority in certain agendas, so we are deploying it as it should. Again, let me focus on the electricity CapEx. This increase, these strong increases across the board, it's mainly linked to integrating more renewable capacity.
It's the power supply to these new high-demanding zones, and the fact that most of this is going to be done after 2027. It's more modernization of assets. It's more connecting to distribution network, so it's a whole range of things, and that is pushing CapEx to grow a little bit more. To comment specifically on solar agreements, they are, as I have already mentioned, slightly delayed in deployment, but we are expecting that between this year, but mainly 2027, we are going to be catching up and with the timeline that we have. Okay? In Chile, no major news. I'd say that the major change was that we acquired those last year, so there is a little bit less of organic CapEx that we deploy. Okay?
Slide 27, most of this is already you already know. There was a good improvement in electricity regulation, and base rate is close to 6.2% with a premium on all assets, and with a very conservative view on incentives. We should be at or slightly above 7% of return. That is a positive, and we had constructive development in terms of regulation. We are much more comfortable in deploying CapEx now in electricity, and I think that this is going to have a positive impact, as we already know in EBITDA. Summarizing, and in slide 28. What we are seeing and giving you as updated targets.
In EBITDA, we are giving you, and this is only for 2026 and 2027, a range of EUR 540-EUR 560. Bear in mind that before the maximum number in the interval was EUR 540, and this is now the minimum interval, so around an increase of 12%. We think this is consolidating what we already were giving analysts as guidance. In net profit, clearly a very large upgrade. We are putting it around EUR 150-EUR 160. This year, we were at EUR 160. We tend to be always a little bit more conservative in the intervals that we give you, but this is the number that we feel now comfortable for these years.
Although, as I said, we are already at 160 in 2025. Net debt slightly more. We are spending a little bit more CapEx. It's normal that it increases, but the relevant part is that the metrics behind it are improving, okay? It's not so much that the CapEx is improving or that the net debt is growing a little bit. The credit metrics are, despite this increase, actually improving a little bit, which, as I told you, is shown by the rate that we recently have. In CapEx, we have this interval of EUR 350 million-EUR 450 million. We're increasing it to EUR 450 million-EUR 550 million, so we are increasing everything EUR 100 million. We'll see. Again, we like to be conservative.
My colleague, João Conceição, has a lot of work in these past few months, just, redoing what was the impact of the storms in Portugal. It's a challenging year for his team on the construction side, that they have not only to do a lot of new CapEx, but now they have to spend a lot of time, redoing CapEx that was already. We are always, I'd say, conservative in the way that we approach these numbers, as we like to be. We are confident that CapEx is going to accelerate already in the next two years. Okay. Concluding on slide 29, accelerating growth. We are seeing this asset-based growth in electricity of around 9% when we put regulated and non-regulated assets and solar agreements. We saw this improvement in regulation with expected above 7% returns.
We continue to see these favorable developments in the fiscal part, and we are not accounting for, in these numbers, this EUR 40 million a year, is even being slightly conservative on the incentive that we have now at EUR 34 million. We are not considering in these numbers any recuperation of lags that we may have in the year. Again, it's a very positive number with a five on top. Hence, in funding, as I said, in a unique position of improving credit metrics, although we are growing and accelerating. Finally, slide 21. Very good set of results in 2025. I think that guidance shows you that we are committed, and we are seeing acceleration of growth.
As I said, although we are only giving you this for 2026 and 2027, this is something that we see continuing for the next years. We are only giving this for the next two years. Also, since this is not a new business plan, we did not update everything. One of the things that we did not update as of now, we will update next year is the dividend policy. We preferred also to maintain the current dividend policy. We have already anticipated growth one year, so we maintained the 2%, and we are proposing, the board is proposing to the AGM a dividend of EUR 0.16 per share.
Price has been performing very well and rewarding shareholders. I think that this is clearly keeping in line with what we have promised the market, a 2% increase. Okay. Thank you very much for your attention. This was a little bit longer than usual, but let's open up to questions that you may have. Thank you.
Thank you so much, dear participants. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw a question, please press star one and 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, and it comes from the line of Ignacio Doménech from JB Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for the presentation, and thank you for taking my questions. The first question is on the lower financial cost, you know, and the higher financial income in the quarter. I believe, Gonzalo, you mentioned a one-off of EUR 6 million, but actually looking at the quarter, we're seeing a decline in the financial cost but also an increase. No? I just wanted to understand what drove this one-off, which is quite material, and to understand if it was a cash impact, okay, if everything was cash.
Secondly, on your CapEx plans, you know, we saw a material increase versus the 2024-2027 targets which you outlined in the business plan. Just wanted to understand here as well, what is the... If this is the right level, you know, of investments that we should expect going forward or post 2027, we should expect this number to decrease, assuming that part of this CapEx includes the solar direct agreements. Just to see if there is any upside risk there. Thank you. Thank you very much.
on the financial costs, the main change in the quarter is the thing that I mentioned, the exchange rates. Because things in the last quarter changed a lot in Chile, okay? You have actually negative exchange rates until then on the third quarter, and then they became positive, okay? Because of the elections and on the follow-up of the elections, there was a very strong reversal that became very positive. That's why you see that change, which is a little bit, again, more abrupt than usual. Usually you would not see this change in this manner, but it's basically that, okay? That's basically, Madalena can then give you the details, but it's basically this. It came from being negative almost EUR 4 million to being positive almost EUR 4 million, okay? on the CapEx plan.
As I said, we were not giving you anything after 2027, but yes, we are not expecting any decline. We are expecting things to go up and to stay at a higher level depending on any given year. It's not going to be every year. It may be higher or lower. In 2026 and 2027 mainly, there's a lot of CapEx to be done still in the first part of the first solar agreement, and the second solar agreements will kick more in 2028, so in a few years. There is a lot of CapEx. If you go and check the years and the plans that are given, you can see that there is a lot of CapEx. That CapEx is reflected.
Part of it is reflected in the regulation already. That is the Totex model. It's already there. Yes, we are expecting that it goes up, and it stays higher, mainly in electricity, but it can vary on any given year, okay?
Okay. A follow-up question, if I may. On the recurrent net profit of EUR 150 million-EUR 160 million, I assume this includes the tax capitalization incentive, right? It does exclude any upside from tax recoveries from CESE. Is this correct?
It's correct. We are assuming capitalization there. As I said, we are assuming actually an average that is below EUR 30 million for 2026 and 2027, as actually in 2025 it was higher than EUR 30 million. It's around EUR 28 million, EUR 27.5 million that we are assuming for those years. It's just because we like to be conservative. We don't have the visibility. We have an expectation that it may come down a little bit, but again, we like to be conservative. On the levy, we are not assuming any change. We are assuming the same thing in 2026 minus the EUR 10 million of gas.
In 2027, basically, you are already assuming a small decrease in the electricity levy because according to the budget, the new assets, the ones that you deploy in 2026 are already not subject to it. You will only see that reflected in 2027 because their assets are being amortized. The old ones are being amortized and you pay less levy, and the new ones you are not paying levy. You'll see the levy come down, I don't know, EUR 1 million, EUR 1.5 million, EUR 2 million per year. That's what we are assuming, a very small decrease on the levy on average for the two years. On a yearly basis, you could see it decrease EUR 1.5 million-EUR 2 million a year. That's only on 2027.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
Understood. Thank you. Thank you very much. Bye.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you would like 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 from the line of Jorge Alonso from Bernstein. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Just a clarification in one of your slides regarding the CapEx. I know that you're not going to give us any figure for 2028, 2029. Just to understand the national transmission network plan that you put there, EUR 801 billion between 2026-2029, and then special CapEx for the Sines region to be deployed by 2031. Just to understand how that overlaps? Just to understand if basically the Sines CapEx are expected to be deployed already since 2026 or it will be more back-loaded starting maybe 2028 to 2030 to 2031.
That's the first question. Just to how to allocate that extra CapEx. The next. The other questions are regarding the tax breaks. If you can provide any color about if you think that this can be extended one year more, if not, if we have any news about that. If you had any view about the potential complete removal of the special energy tax on electricity in the near future. If you think that the mood in the political landscape have changed and this is now more likely than in the past. Thank you very much.
In relating to Sines, João can comment, but yes. It's clearly after 2027. Before 2027 and in the CapEx that we have this for these two years, we have not even 10% of that investment. I think that João is starting to going to be doing that in 2027, but very small amount. No.
Mm-hmm.
That's for the case. It's more 2028, 2029, 2030. Okay? The government also is coming out now with a new process for basically new high demand areas. These are basically links, as we have said in the past, to data centers and things like this. This is a process that is ongoing. We cannot give you any news now, so it can result in additional CapEx that we don't have in the network. But again, if it does, and this is clarified along this year, it's only going to be deployed in 2029, 2030, so it's not on the horizon for these two years.
Next year, when we come with the business plan for 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030, we are going to give you, and perhaps that is going to include most of these CapEx that we are talking about. But in these numbers you have basically almost nothing. Okay? It's an upside that is longer term. On the tax part, on the tax incentive, we don't know. It may be that it is expanded, we don't know. We only know is that, it was created by the previous government. It was maintained by this one for already more than two years. It is something that appears to have some kind of consensus that it is an interesting tax incentive for companies. That's the only thing I can give you.
We are not revising any expectation relating to that. Again, another upside, it may happen, it's an upside. We like to be conservative on this. On the CESE, there's no news, it's what I told you. On the electricity side, we are seeing there is nothing new on the port side. There's no new news relative to any of the court cases that we have on the electricity are moving. Okay. There has been a change in the mood of the court, so we will see. The reality is that the budget itself already limited, so no new CapEx is going to have the levy. Even if they didn't change it once and for all, it's already going to be declining starting in 2027.
Again, I think that there is an upside here that you may read into it, that in a few years this may change, but we don't know. I think this is following the trend of the gas. I think that they are now consolidating that gas has changed, and then I think that the court case, there is a point where the court will have to also say that this doesn't make sense. Well, we are waiting and hoping that this changes, okay? There is no specific new news to give you on this one, okay?
Excuse me, Jorge. Any further questions?
No. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Dear participants, just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question or make a comment, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Dear speakers, there are no further questions for today. Now we'd like to hand the conference over to the management team for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much for attending. As mentioned by Gonçalo, we are still gonna be able to take any of your questions offline, and we'll be discussing these numbers in the coming weeks. Thank you again, and speak to you soon. Thank you.