Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the REN's 2026 first quarter results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I will now like the conference over to your speaker today, Madalena Garrido, Head of IR. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to REN first quarter 2026 results conference call. We appreciate your time and availability this morning. Joining us today are the members of our REN's Executive Committee, Rodrigo Costa, our CEO; Gonçalo Morais Soares, our CFO; and João Carreira Faria Conceição, our COO. Rodrigo will begin with his opening remarks. This will be followed by a detailed overview on REN's operation and financial performance for the first quarter. Following the presentation, we will open the floor for your questions. Thank you again today for your attention and continued interest in REN.
Thank you, Madalena. Good morning, all. First, thanks for accommodating the schedule change. We had the need to anticipate the call due to a time conflict with an external meeting. We really appreciate your effort. We had another busy quarter. On the last results call, we went through most of the key events. We will try not to repeat too much ourselves. In April, we had our annual shareholder meeting. All proposals were approved by almost 100% of the participants. As expected, all the first quarter figures came aligned with the analyst positive expectations. Again, as usual, no surprises. Our Q1 EBITDA grew slightly. On the tax front, we had a significant positive impact on our net results. We will explain that with detail. Overall operations are going well, including the Chilean operations.
The Spanish regulator made an important announcement regarding their final conclusions on the blackout in Spain that caused our blackout. We are now waiting for the Portuguese regulator report. For Portugal, the situation that causes more concern at this point is the Middle East crisis. For the moment, there is no shortage of supply on the oil and natural gas front. Reserves are fine. Supply flow is regular, but the outlook is quite negative. If the crisis persists, as we all know, disruptions beyond price may happen. As you know, REN does not have any benefit from the oil and gas price increase. In fact, what we see is an overall growing inflation that will have a negative impact in the country infrastructure costs, both from a CapEx perspective and operations. We may talk about that a little bit more during the call.
With that, I would invite Gonçalo to move with the call.
Thank you, Rodrigo. Good morning to you all. I'd say another set of positives and in-line results for the first quarter. If you move to slide number four, you see the main numbers, basically, positive evolution in EBITDA, mainly supported by the Portuguese operation. This is on the back of the change of regulation for electricity that started to have a positive impact of more than EUR 10 million on this quarter already. International also with some positive impact. On the net profit on top of this, you see a positive impact on the tax part. Most of this related to the sales that went away on the gas, another EUR 10 million. If you add these two impacts together, you get the explanation of most of what happened in this quarter.
There's some other positive news flowing on the tax. We received and finalized another court case that we have on the front of the levy. I'll go into a little bit more detail on that. Net debt basically flat, going up a little bit. Cost of debt coming down slightly more than we anticipated, but I'd say within the expectations. CapEx decreased, but this is not only the first quarter, and so seasonality sometimes change. Storms also caused, I would say, some temporary delays in construction, but we see this more as a very focused event. We don't really think that it will have a material impact on the overall CapEx that we believe. In moving on that, I'll move to the operations side and ask João to comment on those.
João?
Thanks, Gonçalo. Good morning to you all. On slide five, you have the summary of the main points on the operational side. I would highlight the fact that we kept a very high level of renewables penetration in the Portuguese electricity system. In this first quarter, 80% of the total consumption of the country was supplied by renewable sources. This mainly driven by very high level of hydro capacity with 38%, following by 32% from wind and solar picking up with 6%. Another important point is that we keep consistently seeing a trend on increasing of demand.
We got this highest level in the first quarter, with an increase. Quarter by- quarter, comparing to the previous year of 3.8% or 3.9%, if you consider the adjustments on the weekdays and the temperature adjustment. This is a trend that we are following, and this is not yet considering what is expected to be a highest increase, with the start of these new industrial consumers like data centers and some big industrial sites that are foreseen for Sines area.
As Gonçalo mentioned, in this first quarter we had these extreme events with the several storms. Some of them affected significantly our operations in the sense that we had to mobilize temporarily all our teams to respond to the infrastructure that was impacted by the storms, namely the big storm on the 28th of January. That caused a very short interruption on one of our substations, and that's what the reason why you see an increase on the interruption time that is presented in the following slides.
Another point I would like to highlight is the fact that we are doing the necessary calculations and to give our inputs to the Direção-Geral de Energia e Geologia, the formal body of the state following the energy issues regarding this security of supply methodology. As you are aware, security of supply become again on the top of the issue of the energy sector. We are finishing this European Resource Adequacy Assessment, which is the new EU methodology, quite robust one, in order to give the necessary inputs for policy makers and regulators to decide what will be the scope and of the future landscape of the electricity and natural gas sector.
Moving to slide number 7, you have the summary of the operational indicators. As I mentioned to you, we saw this 3.8% increase in the electricity. On the gas sector, we also saw an increase in consumption, 13.8%, mainly driven by the fact that, following the storms in the beginning of the end of January, as well as the measures that we were taking since the blackout of last year, there is a higher consumption of gas for electricity generation. This corresponds to an increase of 53.6%, whereas what we call the conventional consumption, which is the industrial one, because in Portugal, residential is not really significant. The conventional consumption kept mostly constant. It didn't decrease. In all this caused an increase on 13.8% on gas transmission.
In what concerns to quality of service, no big issues to report. We kept a very high level of quality of service, apart from this interruption time where you see a quite big increase, almost everything comparing to previous previous period in 2025, these 3.08 minutes. As I mentioned, this was caused by the interruption, the slight interruption we had in Viseu substation. If we do not consider that interruption because this event is considered an exceptional event, then the interruption, the average interruption time was only 0.01 minutes. With that, Gonçalo, I give it back to you.
João. On slide number 8 is just the main summary of the indicators. I'll go through it and go directly to slide number 9 and comment on EBITDA. On EBITDA, basically you have the main impact, as I said, coming from Portugal in assets and OpEx remuneration. This is not only the change in the RoR that you see impacting, it's also the increase in allowed OpEx and revenues from allowed OpEx that we have. All of those add up and were expected. Additionally versus last year, there's also an impact on the incentives. We were, I'd say, even more conservative last year in the way that we account it. Typically what we account is that we divide by 4 the number that the regulator has put in the tariff.
Last year it was lower. This year they have put EUR 15 million in the tariff, so this is what we are accounting. That represents an increase of around EUR 2 million versus the last year. In principle, what we are expecting is that full year it will be lower than what we have last year. As of now, in this quarter, you see it will be higher. On top of that, apart from some increase in OpEx, there is an increase in international that is also performing well. What you see is clearly the gas segment coming from 30% last year to below 27% this year, and the electricity increasing quite a bit and also international increasing a little bit. In slide 10, no major comments.
Just saying that rates have been increasing, increased, but as of now, rates of return of gas, both in transmission and distribution, are aligned with last year. Of course, electricity is going up around 1 percentage point, which was what we expected versus last year. In terms of investment and in slide 11, as I said, it's a little bit too early to take any conclusions. Most of these numbers are impacted by the storms that João said. Of course, there continues always to be some licensing challenges, but that I would say is the more day-to-day things that we, that we face. The storms I think were the more out of the ordinary that caused some delays. I would say that most of these will be recuperating.
We are still expecting a very strong year in terms of investment and an increase versus last year on the electricity side. In terms of RAB returns and on slide 12, no major news. You see electricity going up, and gas transmission coming down and distribution more or less flat, going up a little bit. Very much in line with what we had in previous quarters. In slide 13, you have the details of the OpEx. As we said, most of the impact in this quarter comes from the personnel costs. Some of these will kind of blend away in the next quarters, but it's basically an increase of EUR 1 million, EUR 1.2 million versus the analog quarter last year.
Bear in mind, the increase in a lot of costs that we have in revenues is actually above what we are having in terms of increase of OpEx. The other external costs are mostly flat. There's some increases in IT, decreases in other things. It's mostly flat. I'd say things also following what we expected in this area. Moving to Chile, slide 14, same things evolving positively, given the small acquisitions we did and given that some of the organic CapEx was concluded last year. We see on Transemel on the electricity side an increase. Basically, there is almost a 66% increase, although the numbers are small. This is being driven both by the organic assets and by the ones that we bought, okay?
This pushes the EBITDA also a little bit further up. Electrogas is mostly stable, coming down a little bit. This changes quarter-on-quarter. It changes with inflation, it changes with a lot of things. I'd say very stable overall Chile, doing its step-by-step trajectory of growth and of increase within, as you know, the being kept as a small piece of the overall business of REN. Below it on slide 15, depreciation evolution is in line with assets. Financial results, as I said, slightly higher there, but actually a decrease versus the end of the year. Very much in line with what we expected. Average cost of debt a little bit below with what we expected, but nothing.
We are still expecting costs to be aligned with what we told you between 2.5, 2.6, 2.7. They should be full year on that range. On the tax part, what we should expect was actually an increase in taxes because of the increase of earnings before taxes. You have 2 impacts that push taxes down. One is the EUR 10 million that go away. As you may remember, we always account for the full amount of levy in the first quarter. Given that this EUR 10 million go away, the impact is fully felt on the first quarter of this year. Secondly, there's another levy legal proceeding. This one was related to a court case that we won in Portgás, on gas distribution related to the year 2022.
We had already won that last year, but we were waiting for the final decision. Actually, not only that final decision came, but we also received that money. Not only we received that money, which is around EUR 4.1 million, which is what you see here, but on the previous item, on the financial results, we also received the interest relating to that money, which was around EUR 750,000. What you see is that it's almost 20% of the amount of the tax that we have to receive. We received in interest, which makes sense for those 4% a year that we told you and we've been telling you. These are the first interests that we also account for and we received from the authorities.
We have much more that we haven't still accounted for in interest, relative to other court cases that we have already won but have not yet received the notice, relative to the interest. In terms of net profit, in slide 16, what you see is the impact of these several things, okay? Mostly EBITDA and tax. Mostly it's related, as I said, this EUR 22 million increase. If you take away the increase of regulation plus the EUR 10 million of the levy, it basically explains everything. The rest are smaller positives and negatives that you see. Slide 17, in debt, as I said, there is actually a decrease of overall debt versus the end of the year.
This is on the back not only of stronger operating cash flow, and because you also have, and specifically you have slightly lower CapEx on the first quarter. The tariff deviations continue to come down and are now not at zero, but at a very low level, which is, let's say, a good sign also. You are decreasing a little bit when your expectation for a full year may be that this will actually increase a little bit as we start to spend more money on CapEx. Cost of debt came down, as I said, a little bit more than anticipated. We don't really have any other major refinancings. The refinancings you see are short-term revolving credit facilities that we are always refinancing every year. Maturity clearly above the five years at 5.4.
Fixed rate is around two-thirds of what we have, so I'd say that we continue to enjoy a very comfortable funding position. In slide 18, just to comment on share price. We still have a positive and continue to have a positive evolution this year. We close around 16% up versus what we have. We continue, I'd say, to perform in a positive way this year in terms of the stock market. Looking at ESG very fast and on slide 20, just to tell you. That's the main, let's say, aspect that I would highlight is the increase on Scope 1 and 2 emissions.
This, as I said, João already explained several times, is linked to the blackout and to our more conservative management of the system, and so more use of gas fired electricity production generation. That creates this increase. I say not only that, it is a temporary thing that we find should resolve itself. Apart from it, I say things are moving along quite well in line with our plan here in this area. You have more detail on slide 21. I am not going to go over this. On slide 22, what you basically see is that we are still improving in some cases, but in a lot of the ratings, we are stabilizing. Some of them we are already at the top.
We continue to work on this, not specifically on ratings, on ESG. We take this seriously, but I think ratings reflect that. We are expecting that some discrete improvements in ratings continue to happen in the future. In conclusion, I think it's a good start of the year. As I said, you are already seeing the impact of regulation as was expecting. You are seeing the improvement of the tax as was expecting, actually a little bit more. On the CapEx front, apart from these slight delays, we are, and we believe we are on track to have still a year of good growth in terms of investment this year, namely in Portugal. Thank you very much for your time, and we will open now to questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. We will now take the first question from the line of Alessandro Di Vito from Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, all. Thanks for the presentation and thanks for taking my questions. I have two. First one, you mentioned before that electricity consumption could further accelerate from the development of data centers and electrification. I wanted to understand when do you expect to see this further acceleration and whether the current CapEx plan is already fit for this new scenario? The second question is on regulation. Of course, the regulatory update on gas is still far from now. I wanted to understand first, if you have started preliminary discussions with the regulator. Second, if you believe that the attitude of the regulators have changed on gas regulation as already proved by the recent, let's say, document proposed by the CNMC.
If you believe that maybe the recent energy crisis could trigger a more constructive attitude from regulators also on gas regulation. Thank you.
Well, I will try to answer your first question regarding the electricity construction acceleration. We see it happening from now on because we are already including
Several projects, both driven by the regular asset base as well as for the solar agreements. We have this approval from the government of some extra CapEx for security of supply purpose after the blackouts. I would say that this is something that is going to happen or is happening now, and this will continue to happen on the next few years.
On regulation, João can also compliment. These preliminary discussions will start more or less a year from now, so it will still take some time. Apart from the very recurrent conversation that João and his team have with the regulator, I wouldn't say on a daily basis, but on a weekly basis, and where they also talk about these issues. The conversations will only happen most of the time next year. I mean, relating to what you asked, I mean the proposals made in Spain are, of course, a good sign. I think that it's important that regulators also give a fair return on the gas assets. This is what we will be asking as we did in electricity. João, I don't know if you have any other comments?
Just to complement that yesterday there was a formal event by the regulator to listen to the perspectives of the different stakeholders on the natural gas sector. I would say that this is the, between quotes, the official kickoff of this preparation of the new regulatory period. We will continue to deal directly with the regulator and through the entities like the Tariff Council and so on. This is a process that will start picking up from now.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Ignacio Domenech from JB Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. On my side, the first one is a clarification on CESE, on the gas recovery. I just wanted to clarify if the guidance you provided in March on net income, if that includes a gas recovery, not only the end, okay, of the EUR 10 million per year on gas CESE. Also, if you can give us some detail or any calendar or any news that you might have on further cases. Okay? The second question is related with the Iberian blackout. I think I've seen some statements, you know, from the Portuguese government, which could look to request for a compensation from the blackout.
Just wanted to get a sense on how could this be channeled, and if you have an estimate maybe of the compensation that the country as a whole could be looking to seek. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ignacio. I'll answer the first one. Relative to these numbers, the recoveries, they are not in the numbers and in the updates that we did. All of these recoveries are always at 5. I'd say that the only other one that we have on the radar as of now is the last one that we didn't account for in 2019. We had an overall ruling regarding that year in the constitutional court in our favor, but we still haven't had a final decision on that one. That is around EUR 5.4 million from 2019. All That one was also not in the accounts. We are waiting for that. All of the other amounts relating to gas, it's pending, so we don't know.
That's the only concrete one that we know that may this year still come about. Nothing of this, neither the numbers nor any values relating to interest were on those numbers that we told. João , do you want to-
Yeah. On the blackout, well, what the minister said about compensations, I think she said what, you know, it's a Let's say it's a justifying comment regarding, you know, if people want to seek compensation, they can seek for compensation. It's a right that any company or individual have. I think it's important to understand that clearly, and also it's the same conclusion from the government, that the blackout was a blackout caused by Spain, not by Portugal, we are not expecting to be liable for any type of compensation here. You know, we are waiting for the conclusions of the regulator. The regulator said they should come soon.
We are, you know, very comfortable with, you know, what happened, what we did, and, you know, we're pretty sure that the compensations, you know, will not cause any harm to REN.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Flora Trindade from CaixaBank. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. The first one is if you could guidance on how should we think on net debt evolution throughout the year. You have accounted for EUR 76 million of subsidies in the first quarter. Can you clarify whether you would have further subsidies in the upcoming quarters? Also the expected evolution in terms of tariff deviations on the cash flow impact. My second question is on this resilience study requested by the government following the storms in Portugal. Do you have any visibility on how much this could mean if there is incremental CapEx for REN? I assume this is not in your full year disclosed CapEx guidance.
I assume it also might be too soon to have an idea, but if you can help us understand whether this could mean potential CapEx upside, it would be helpful. Thank you.
Okay. Relating to your first question, what we are expecting in terms of net debt at full year should increase a little bit. Okay. The subsidies are mostly related to the solar agreement. As we are implementing, we are, as you know, receiving the money. Those are the ones that you are seeing. Tariff deviations are now at a low amount, around EUR 25 million, which actually is an amount which is below what we normally have. You should not expect, I'd say, much further positive impact. We can, but it's I'd say that it can be slightly positive, it can be slightly on the other side.
We are still expecting and guiding to have a small increase of net debt in the full year, maintaining credit metrics given the increase also in EBITDA and in FFO. Okay? Regarding storms, João, you want to comment?
Yes, Gonçalo. Thanks. What concerns to this resilience study, obviously the biggest question is if grids should go underground or not. Actually, when we are speaking about the transmission grid, this is not really the focus. The focus is more related to downstream to the low voltage grid, eventually mid voltage grid. We have a couple of increases. We are foreseeing some possible couple of deviations in terms of right of way. I would say that this is not substantial change to what is the CapEx plan that we have presented. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one and one. We will now take the next question from the line of Fernando Garcia from RBC. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I have three. In terms of data centers, no? I was reading recently about the initiatives taken by the Portuguese regulators in order to try to speed up data center developments in Portugal. There I have a couple of questions. I would like your view about how you see this development of data centers. As well, when you think this could have, we could have an indication about potential CapEx for REN. The second question, clearly, in terms of the extraordinary tax, this that is the processes well advanced in the constitutional court in terms of gas, but electricity is kind of stopped.
Do you know the reason for that and when we could have news about this front in the constitutional court? Final question is, I would like to know an update, how you see all-in returns in electricity when we are incorporated to the base return, things like incentives or efficiencies. Thank you.
Thank you, Fernando. Relating data centers, as you know, the government had launched and is in the process of studying, and we are helping them, a process of high demand areas. These are mostly related to these data centers. They are, of course, keen to speed this up. The CapEx that we have related to this, apart from the ones that we already told you about in Sines where you have already some data centers, the other one is now being determined exactly with the government to tell them so. It's an upside that you have on the numbers, but also it's something that is not going to happen this or next year. This is something that will happen in the following years.
This is as fast as people like to do things, then you have to build lines and poles, and João has to deploy teams, and things don't happen in months, but they happen. I say that we are eager to help them to promote, but it takes time to develop not only the infrastructure, but also the energy necessary for the data centers to function. Okay? This is ongoing. This is ongoing on the government, and we are helping them decide this, but there's no visibility yet on timings and amounts. Okay? It's all an open upside. On the levy, on the electricity, no news. You ask if there's any We don't know. It's taking much more time at constitutional level for them to take decisions on this.
To be honest with you, we don't have an answer to give you. There's no news there. Again, it's an upside that we have versus our numbers. On the gas side, it's evolving well. The reality is that this is also much linked to the evolution of the tariff deficit on the electricity side, which is having a positive evolution. We do think that as time goes by and there is this positive evolution, this will continue to push positive pressure for this to get solved in our favor. I don't want to create any further expectation. Relative to the allowed returns, we don't really have any other numbers to give you additionally to the ones that we gave you. This base RoR of 6.2.
We know that between incentives and the previous premiums that we have, this was increasing this to around 7.1, 7.15. We don't have any visibility yet. It's too early to tell if this is going to be. Of course, we are working tirelessly to have some efficiencies on the electricity side, so there could be some added on top of this, but it's really too early to tell if it's 10 basis points more or 40, but we don't know. We should expect something, of course, on top of that base case, but it's a little bit too early to tell. Okay? Thank you for now.
Many thanks. Very clear.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Madalena Garrido for closing remarks.
Thank you everyone on the line, and as always, we remain available for any additional questions that you may have on REN's support results. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Have a good day.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.