Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Greencoat Renewables plc 2024 half year results conference call and webcast. 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 would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Bertrand Gautier, investment manager. Please go ahead.
Good morning, all. Welcome to our H1 2024 results. I'm here with Paul. If you have the presentation, I can see it. Let's jump to page three. Agenda for the day, we go to an introduction, but this time we'll step back a little bit to position GRP in the value chain we are operating within, which we thought was interesting given the macro environment, which has been quite dynamic over the last two years. And then we'll dive into the performance of the business, breaking up into the different segments, financials, the asset management that we know we are quite active on, which Paul will take over from, as well as capital allocation and what has been the different corporate actions that the business conducted.
But as an overall statement, I will emphasize that the business has continued to perform extremely strongly from a financial and operational standpoint. And we have unlocked, continue to unlock optionality from a value standpoint, corporate PPA being one of those key thematics that we talked to you about, as a way to A, further contracting the revenue profile of the business, but also deliver value over time. So, interesting development from a macro perspective. If I jump to page three, so what this is, what we see, and again, nothing will be surprising here. What we see to be four macro trends affecting different business models well beyond what we do as a business. GRP is benefiting strongly from one of those four trends around decarbonization.
Not a surprise, this is what the business has to do since IPO. Interestingly, in the world of decarbonization, energy security, specifically in Europe, has added to the attractiveness of the sector we're operating in. Part of those option value that the portfolio can unlock over time, and starting on the next activity now, we can see a link or positive linkage or benefit accruing from the data and AI boost the market has picked up on. We'll come back to this and how does it translate from a value perspective for the business. On page six, so this is stepping back and showing you the scale of the industry we are operating within. So without being a surprise, renewable infrastructure is now the largest part of the infrastructure world.
€800 billion has been the scale of the market from an asset perspective we're operating within. Still very strong growth, and just we have reinforced, although we have seen about two years, and you've picked up on some macro movement, which has creating some short-term headwind into the business, specifically when you are a developer. We can see with this normalizing. CapEx has now been reaching a level of cruising altitude, and the different options the market has addressed by increasing materially strike price for green electricity. On the other hand, we are seeing interest rates normalizing or de-escalating, which benefit our industry given how heavy CapEx it is.
Now, GRP is playing a long-term role in the space, and we are long-term beneficiary of those macro trends of this market build up. We are long-term capital building portfolio of assets, as you know well. Recycling party of choice for people building those assets, and we're benefiting about the long-term value creation associated to the cash flow that those assets crystallize, and you know, are operating commercially driven, we are to extract and maximize the cash flow generation of those assets over time, so our role, we see it as just reinforced the magnitude of the trend. The fact that institution like ourselves channeling capital into the space and well supplemented the capital which is supported by the government is positioning quite favorably on a long-term basis. Page seven.
So this is to illustrate where we are in the journey at seven years post IPO. The business has reached critical mass. This is something we have two years ago and continued to strengthen its position. Fair enough to say that the M&A activity has slowed down. We've been quite picky in terms of further invest capital to build our position. We're benefiting from price arbitrage in terms of enhanced returns in the marketplace. So where we are now, it's 1.5 gigawatt platform present across six countries. You can pick up on the blue dot on those maps. If we started to build a beachhead in Continental Europe, from which we expand the different markets. The diversification between onshore and offshore has continued as you can pick up this.
Solar and battery are quite small in the portfolio. This was by design. We'll come back to this, but we can see those trends in terms of accessing solar at better returns showing up, which we think is the direction of travel for the business. What has not changed is our focus on maintaining a very high level of contracted revenue into the mix of our profile, to ensure resilience into the business, which you will see translate into the functional performance of the business. Moving on, page eight. This shows you how the ranking of the pure play in renewable capacity is playing out across Europe.
You will recognize long-standing players like the utilities, which are exposed to operating assets, as well as developing assets, which came with some challenges as it unfolded in the last two years. But those counterparts, EDP, Orsted, as an example, are partners to the business, to GRP, which is focusing on the de-risk part of the value chain, by focusing on the operating and construction assets, and harvesting value over the long term. We are number 10 in this space, nine. We have been the fastest growing player in the space, and as we've picked up just before, with a well-diversified portfolio. So on page 9 and 10, starting with 9.
This is to show you how we have been scaling up the portfolio from a scale perspective, so 1.5 gigawatts being built being acquired. This correspond to an annualized production of 3.5 terawatt hour. Just to put things into perspective, this is equivalent to 10% of the electricity production of a country like Ireland. Very clear to the strategy we have indicating from the start, the diversification in a number of countries, now six across 39 assets, has been delivered in parallel to the scale-up. On page nine, ten sorry, you can see how it translated into financial performance, quite robust. We'll detail more what has been H1 specifically, but if you step back, you can see that the revenue profile has followed the additional capacity.
Business is now at 223 million EUR revenue for H1, which is our highest revenue, 29% up versus last year. Translating into strong cash generation. The key KPI for us in cash generation is also to convert this into dividend cover. When the business was set up structurally, we were targeting 1.5x dividend cover, which you can see on the bottom part of the chart, where we've been evolving between 1.2-1.7. We have a portfolio which benefits from upside, so optionality embedded in the portfolio, something that we talked a lot.
It translated in the last two years, or last three years, when power prices were elevated, the ability of the portfolio to capture those, upside, and you've seen the, dividend cover, in 3.2x, 2.7x. Still strong performance 3x, at this point in time, in spite of power pricing normalize. So we come back to this, but this is to illustrate the resilience of the cash generation and dividend cover, which is the highest in the peer group, thanks to our strategy on contracted revenue. Now moving on, on page 11, and, zooming on the H1 financial performance. You see a number of metrics here, the cash generation, EUR 140 million, translating it to, actually EPS cover on a gross basis.
This was in spite of the generation as a volume that we produce from the portfolio down 13% versus budget, vastly driven by low wind speed, but has been offset by the number of action we've taken and corporate PPA, which are translating their outcome. The NAV at 112.1 is flat versus December 2023. It is also interesting, if you look back, and we come back to this 18 months now backwards, it's been moderate and flat, in spite of periods through which power price since Q1 2022, so over this period, has material decline. So this will illustrate to us underneath our conservatism and also the cash flow resilience of the business.
Quite active management of the balance sheet, gearing, naturally and organically, going down at 51% currently. Our cost of debt, quite low, 3%. This is driven by some action we've taken to convert R CF into long-term debt, which was quite successful in H1. We'll come back to this point. The key one, and it's kind of the key USP of the business, directly linked to the high dividend cover. The business generate extra cash. Looking forward, EUR 400 million is what we expect the portfolio to generate, over and above dividend payout. This offer obviously a number of optionality in relation to a capital allocation. In the course of 2024, we expect to return in excess of EUR 100 million to shareholder.
Share buyback of 25, which is coming to an end. We come back to this and dividend payout. The last point, which will link back to this data center mega trend we've seen, and a good example we crystallized in H1. We have further contracted merchant revenue on very favorable terms above the baseload curve, which is an interesting and a new trend we see in the market, which is benefiting the portfolio, whereby data center off-takers are playing a growing role in terms of volume, but also in terms of pricing dynamic. Paul will talk longer about this. Moving on to page 13 and talking in more detail about the financial performance of the business.
So you can see here in more detail in this table, just how the cash generation has escalated over time. The use of the proceeds of organic cash through dividend payout, which has followed what we envisage. We have actually set dividend escalation in 2024 , the high end of the range. I remind you that it's 0% to CPI growth year-on-year, will be at the top range at 5%. In parallel to this, we're reinvesting into the business, either repayment down on the RCF or some of the H1 proceeds, EUR 25 million of those, which is continuing to H2, into the form of a share buyback of EUR 25 million. On the next page, fifteen. So this... Sorry, my fourteen, sorry.
What we're showing you is cash P&L for the business, so consolidated the portfolio down to a cash generation for the group. Revenue performance + 2%, volume went up, but power price, as we've picked up, has went down. In spite of this quite strong EBITDA performance for the portfolio, translating into the metrics we talked about, about dividend cover. To note, in H1, we benefited from prior years of 2023 , unwinding of some working capital. So even if we were to normalize for those, and this is something which is taking place period to period, but if we were to look at this in isolation, we still will have a dividend cover of two point four five X performance.
This performance remains at the high end of the range on the highest amount of peer group. On page 15, this is a simplified view of the balance sheet. Fair value of the investment we'll talk about now, which is one euro per share, but mostly flat. The gearing metrics have been stable in percentage terms, net gearing down to 49%. Borrowing reduced by EUR 33 million, recycling of excess cash into paying down the RCF. The buyback program as at June is 40% completed, and we acquired shares at 21% discount NAV, which was accretive to the business. On page 16, you can see the NAV per share bridge. So as they were indicating flat on the NAV performance perspective.
What was interesting is that if you look at the net cash generation of EUR 0.10, this to be offset by the depreciation of the portfolio of EUR 0.041, which tend to be higher than in the H1 period versus H2, given the highest cash continuation and unwinding of those cash flow in the portfolio. But you are enough creating scenario above the dividend, so NAV growth territory. The implied return or the equity return of the portfolio stand at 9.2%. I mean, this is an important metrics, and this is above what we can see in the peer group. This is on NAV. On a share price basis, this is 10.5%, given the share price discount to NAV.
This is based on quite conservative assumption with respect of gearing to be 40% versus 50%, what we currently price the business at. And a long term of cost of debt at 4.7%, whereas our current cost of debt is 3%. The latest refi we executed back in Q1 was 4.1%, five-year duration debt. So all of this to tell you that it's quite all this performance and NAV has been underpinned by a robust equity returns. On page 17, so the table show you on a forward-looking basis, how we see the dividend cover panning out. Power price has been normalizing, so we are. I think it's worth noting that the dividend cover is above 2x.
which again, is, a step up versus, the level of one point five where structurally we, set the business at reflecting, I would say, improvement into the cash generation, driven by operating improvement, but as well as our ability to, invest into higher returning asset that we initially sold off. The second, point of interest is what about the resilience of the business, translating into dividend cover? So we've sensitized the dividend cover and earnings of those years against achieved price in the market. We are currently around the EUR 60 real, curve for merchant, what underpins the projection for the business. If a disaster scenario was to take place, let's take EUR 30 per MWh , and this was to happen, I presume the utility space in Europe will be littered with, a number of, restructuring case.
But you can see that we are well above the 1x territory in any of this scenario. This, as we've talked about, translating to EUR 400 million of available cash to the business. And is underpinned by 77% constructed revenue profile, which explains the resilience of the dividend. Now, with this excess cash, this brings us to the capital allocation discussion and the optionality which stems from it. So Colin is going to walk us through this.
Thank you, Bertrand. I think what Bertrand's taken us through has talked about the resilience the business has in terms of our financial performance, not just over the last six months, but I guess over the last 5+ years since we've been listed, but as we look forward on slide 19, I think what you see today is a business that has great flexibility and optionality in terms of how we want to deploy the excess cash that we have unlocked or we will unlock over the next number of years, and with that EUR 410 million or so that we can see out to 2028, what that means is we have a range of options open to us.
Yeah, including deleveraging by way of debt repayment, potentially looking to sell down some assets and recycling assets to change the shape where we are on share buybacks, and obviously then supporting a growing dividend as well. In the first half of 2024, we believe, you know, in almost all of those, we continued to deliver, including repaying EUR 33 million of debt. We obviously bought back 11.2 million shares, and that continued out over the summer at an attractive discount to NAV at the time. We then supported a higher dividend by growing the dividend by 5% for 2024. I guess the outlook or the options that we have remains flexible.
And as you've seen the market improve, as you've seen the improving, I guess, interest rate outlook, and as we've seen the declining NAV discounts, you know, that provides different options for the business as we go forward. But I think it's fair to say that deleveraging will continue to be a focus of the business and using that organic cash flow that we are able to see a range of asset recycling. We would expect that to be something that we will deliver over the next period in terms of selling down some assets to free up capital.
In terms of share buybacks, I think the improved outlook for the business has probably changed in terms of where our share price sits today, in and around EUR 0.95-EUR 0.97, compared to perhaps where we were at the end of Q1, early Q2. And so that's something we are continuing to keep under consideration, and we definitely have the financial capacity to upsize if needed. And then finally, dividends and growing our dividend, which has been a hallmark of the business since we listed in 2017.
So the key message, I think, from shareholders in terms of our financial focus, is that we continue to have flexibility to support growing dividends, to reduce our gearing, and that then we have the decision to make as a business as to what is the best use of other proceeds, between options such as share buybacks and potentially looking at growth as the market improves. Turning, I guess, forward into the next section, section three, into asset management and contracting. I think it's fair to say as we look in the market today, that Greencoat Renewables benefits from having a platform that is essentially best positioned to manage these assets. Assets that require active asset management and that require deep expertise across technical, engineering, financial, as well as the full commercial team in place to unlock the value that we see.
And when you look on slide 21, you get a sense of some of the key KPIs that we achieved over the last six months, including, on the ESG side, 840,000 homes that we've been able to essentially power on a net zero basis, such as things as health and safety, which is a core focus of our business. 164 safety audits, 107 site inspections. We benefit from the fact that we have a locally based engineering team that is able to oversee and manage these sites to the level that's required.
And then increasingly, when we look to revenue enhancements, it's not just about improving the projects themselves and delivering value enhancements, but increasingly, it's the ability to unlock PPAs and to deliver the best value for the assets that we can see by being able to manage that PPA risk and unlock that upside. Turning then over the page to slide 22, I think just building on some of those points that I raised, you can see, I guess, the short, medium, and perhaps the longer term options that our business has today to perhaps unlock that future value. And in the bottom, starting from the bottom up, you can see over seven initiatives delivering EUR 10.5 million of value in the first half of 2024.
That includes technical improvements that we've done to some of our offshore wind farms like Borkum, which has improved the output between 1% and 2%. Including some software upgrades, again, delivering further output from the wind farms on a long-term basis, and I'll touch back on the corporate PPAs in a second. In the medium term, we have 32 projects identified across the portfolio, essentially over the next 18 months. This includes areas such as improving turbines, unlocking ancillary revenue services, managing the curtailment and constraint scenario of the wind farms themselves, and then finally, unlocking new revenue streams such as guarantees of origin. As we look on a more long-term basis, we can now start to see the case emerging for essentially hybridization of sites.
We see in certain locations the idea of co-locating batteries, the idea of co-locating solar panels or potentially enhancing the size of the projects themselves, is something that we are looking at ways to maximize the value of our existing assets, and essentially utilizing the existing infrastructure that we have to allow us to create further value on those sites. In addition to that, and as we perhaps turn to the next page, to slide 23. As Bertrand touched upon, we've seen, like, this mega trend of AI emerge in the last 18 months. In reality, what that means is we are now seeing a demand for renewable electricity emerge, which has a requirement in the near future to secure these assets.
And therefore, the demand for existing renewable assets, such as the assets Greencoat Renewables owns, we see as being much more robust and providing an opportunity for us to essentially lock away our renewable assets on a more long-term basis and to get that contracted revenue. One of the trends that we've seen in 2024 so far has been the higher pricing that corporate PPAs are securing, and essentially the decoupling of corporate PPA prices away from merchant power, and starting to be linked much more to where the levelized cost of energy is for new assets. Taking away that volatility and removing that long-term merchant power exposure, and perhaps locking that into a more contracted long-term position, will be a key opportunity for Greencoat Renewables, and it's something we've seen happen twice already in 2024 .
The first being when we put in place a new ten-year PPA on our wind farm in County Cork with the Keppel data center, and the second, where we recently signed a new fifteen-year PPA on a brand new solar park that's located in Ireland as well. We see with the growing data center demand that this opportunity for strategic deals with these data centers will grow. And having a stable partner like Greencoat Renewables, who has access to power across the six countries in which we operate, will provide a strategic advantage to the platform that we operate. That turns again to how we think about how we're going to manage our contracting strategy. And on slide 24, you can see today how the business is going to evolve from a contracted mix over the next eight to ten years.
With today, over 86% of our revenue is being contracted, and out to 2032, that's still remaining 67%. So that high contracted mix gives us a really solid underpinning for our business. It allows us to have certainty in our cash flows and the shape of our forecasts for the future. But increasingly, as these assets shift from being contracted to being more merchant, it gives us the optionality to then put these PPAs in place, while remaining flexible as to when we do that, and maintaining the ability to maximize value for our shareholders. So in summary, on our PPA strategy, I would say our focus is to continue to have a highly contracted revenues mix, and that the business is now benefiting very positively from the impact of these PPAs. So maybe turning then to financing.
Again, on slide 26, you know, we're very pleased with the mix that we have today in terms of our strength of our balance sheet. EUR 1.3 billion of aggregate debt, 51% gearing, 3.1% average cost to debt, and across 10 lenders. We continue to benefit from support of a broad-based group of lenders, all of whom understand the low-risk nature of the business that we have, and essentially are supporting the business on a long-term basis. We were pleased to put EUR 150 million of new term debt in place, and to use that to repay the debt.
We benefit from the fact that 98% of our debt is now fixed or fully hedged, and we're able today to use the surplus cash that we provide, that is being generated at our portfolio, both to organically de-lever the business and continue to support our dividend policy. The business is well positioned to essentially deliver what will be the first refinancing of the business in 2025, and make sure that we continue to push out our gearing onto a longer-term basis. Perhaps if I, as I turn to summarize the business and to bring forward, I guess, our confidence in where we see the opportunity today, as you can see on slide 28.
The business is structurally generating very high cash flow and benefiting from a very, very robust balance sheet, and so this positions us really, really strongly from a growth opportunity set. We generated EUR 145 million of Cash EBITDA in the first half of this year, and that's 2.9x dividend cover, post any project debt refinancing. That focus will continue to be allowing us to take a balanced approach to power price risk. We have a well-diversified portfolio, EUR 2.6 billion of cash generating assets, 41 assets across Europe, across wind and solar in these six different countries.
We have a clear outlook in terms of the high cash generation of our assets, which will support both earnings and NAV growth, with EUR 800 million of net cash to be generated between 2024 and 2028, and EUR 410 million of that to support our ongoing post-dividend operating cash flow. The business remains low risk in nature, and that focus will continue into the future. 77%, as you know, of our revenues are contracted out to 2028, and we expect EUR 390 million of dividends to be paid between now and 2028, supporting our strategy of a growing dividend base and the importance we know that has. Then finally, we think the business today is delivering attractive risk-adjusted returns.
We trade today at a 7.8% dividend yield, and our applied average return is 9.2%, which reflects the higher yield environment that we operate in today, and has allowed and has benefited from our ability to reset our discount rates to the rising interest rate. In summary, we have a very strong operating platform. The business continues to operate at and unlock our value opportunities, and we see significant opportunities to deliver future profitable growth for the business. With that, I'll hand back to the conference operator, and we'll be delighted to take your questions. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. Our first question comes from the line from Michael Mitchell from Davy. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, good morning, Bertrand. Morning, Paul. Two, if I could. Firstly, Paul, just digging into your comments on PPA pricing, please. I think the term you used was a decoupling from merchant power prices and a link to LCOE. So just so I understand the message correctly, I mean, maybe you just comment specifically on South Meath, which clearly was the last PPA you announced to the market, and how pricing there can kind of compares to Irish merchant prices and obviously RESS 3 and RESS 4 prices, both in the region of 100 EUR/MWh.
And then the second question, I guess, relating to, you know, the strategic valued assets that you're highlighting, be that the kind of potential to hybridize the sites, scope to increase scale of the sites, and obviously the greater potential around recontracting the assets. Can you just remind us what the rough depreciation cadence at the asset level from memory, you know, about 70% of asset value was depreciated by the end of the subsidy period? And if that's right, does that now strike you as conservative, given your success in recontracting assets and the potential to kind of add greater value post the subsidy period? Thank you.
Thanks, Michael. I might take the first question, and I'll let Bertrand pick the second point up. Yeah, maybe to be relatively specific, I think as you've seen in Ireland, you know, we've seen the pricing for government contracts for wind projects being, typically speaking, about EUR 100 a megawatt hour. And then we've seen the pricing for solar projects being roughly 20% higher, around 120, about EUR 120 a megawatt hour. So that today represents in the Irish market, specifically the LCOE that we're seeing for these type of projects. And it's reasonable to assume that the corporate PPA prices that then are emerging for that type of area are in and around the same level.
There are some differences between RES projects and corporate PPA projects, and in some cases, how compensation works for things like curtailment and constraint can be different, which can put slightly higher risk, perhaps, in depending on how the contracts are structured. But it's therefore reasonable to assume that kind of EUR 100 for wind, EUR 120 or so for solar is a good rule of thumb. When you look at that against the backdrop for where merchant prices are at today, they're roughly speaking, somewhere EUR 65-EUR 80 per MWh if you look across a rough five-year running basis. And therefore, there is a decoupling today between what we see merchant prices being at, which...
And then what we see long-term, LCOE for wind and solar projects, particularly in Ireland, to be at. And the opportunity for a business like ours is obviously to be able to operate at a close discount to those newer LCOE projects, and to look to secure those type of contracts on our existing assets. And that's the job that our team and the platform is working to unlock. The pricing in Ireland is slightly higher than it is in other countries, and the reason that LCOE is higher is you tend to see higher degrees of curtailment constraint, as well as you've got higher grid costs of operating and building out projects in Ireland, as well as in obviously solar's case, we have less irradiance in Ireland than we would have in other European countries.
And so what that means is we've tended to see today the LCOE in other European countries, such as sort of Spain and the Nordics, being probably closer to the sort of EUR 60-EUR 65 per MWh range. And then when you look in countries like Germany and France, that LCOE today is often between EUR 80 and EUR 90 per MWh, that type of range. So those are the pricings that we're seeing across the different countries today, where there's potential to secure higher PPA prices. Maybe Bertrand, you could pick up on the second element to that.
It's a good question, Michael. Listen, you know, on purpose, we have elected to be transparent and conservative on the way we are transparent. We don't ascribe terminal value to the asset. There's obviously an option value or terminal value to the asset as well. Take Ireland as an example, our onshore wind farms are depreciating over 30 years. The underpinning leases are 50-year+ , and they tend to be on the best windy best site, which means the most windy site in Ireland. So we do believe that there will be a strong wind, or it's common sense, there will be an option value associated to those. And this is true across.
However, the portfolio is already, is today, six years of average lifetime, so it's quite long dated, and we are lacking the visibility to make, I would say, data-based judgment in terms of what it should be, but again, it's we leave people, expert like yourselves, to help the market to form a view on what it could mean, and this is an obvious one. The corporate PPA and your ability to see, you are basically sitting on a option value associated to merchant assets, but again, pricing, either because the corporate PPA demand is getting to a supply/demand equation, which is beneficial for people like ourselves, and we can lock this in on a contract.
Which has been the case from selling from industrial corporates. But as you know, we have probably the largest corporate PPA, single corporate in Germany, and quite well return in German market, we see as quite positive GO plus type pricing. The AI trend is just accelerating this pricing and the decoupling, either value ascribed from green electron. This is baseline, is something we can see bringing another layer of positive value creation to the portfolio. Paul commented quite ... It's a good example on this.
Great. That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Joe Pepper from RBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, Paul. Hi, Bertrand. Thanks both for the presentation. I think just two from me, please. First on the dividends, historically speaking, growth has been loosely based around RCPI. That's obviously fallen a lot recently. So given the ongoing strong cover, and how important yield is to the sector, just wanting to see much scope to break away from the previous policy, with a significant divvy increase in FY 2025, or perhaps a structurally higher dividend growth in the medium term. And then also, secondly, on slide 19, you talk about European market conditions providing an arbitrage opportunity. I was just wondering if you could give a little bit more detail on that, please, in particular, where you think those opportunities are most prevalent in terms of technology and geography? Thanks.
Paul, may I take the dividend one? Let me pick up on the other question. Hi, Joe. On the dividend, so it's... You go back to the capital allocation decision framework that we are and this is one of the option to consider escalating the dividend beyond what the range we have set, again, 0% to CPI. We have what we published, that we were targeting the midpoint of this range with a view to also grow NAV, which is what you can do if you don't, if you are not in a full payout dividend model. We have applied the same rule of engagement.
It seems to us that the dividend is quite robust and is perceived as such, and I would say, besides the deleveraging, use of cash and/or looking at accretive acquisition in the market, where we see a broadening of those type of opportunities to emerge or emerging back, and we've seen now the returns reset at quite healthy level, with also an ability to pick some deals which are at, we say, above market returns, even in a reset environment, so it's one of these equations. We do believe that though we have enough flexibility in the current dividend policy to offer attractive dividend payout level, and NAV growth.
Against one of the three other potential buyback domains, probably where we'll more we're looking to consider allocation of capital.
I think just building on, onto that then, I think in terms of where we see greatest opportunities today. Look, Joe, I think the market is. There's a lot of opportunities out there today. It's very clear there is a shortage of capital in the market, in terms of people who can, and therefore, there's a much more focus towards bilateral transactions on an M&A basis. For us, it's not a regional specific. We see opportunities across the Nordics, into Spain, in offshore wind, as well as in Ireland. I think in our case, in Greencoat Renewables case, we benefit from the fact that we have frameworks in place with people like Future Energy Ireland.
We already have attractive pipeline, and I'll remind you, Future Energy Ireland have won three of the four projects in the most recent RESS auction. That gives the business, I think, great visibility in terms of pipeline that we'll want to be funding and supporting Future Energy Ireland. But beyond Ireland, you know, we see a lot of opportunity across each of the markets, and it's a good opportunity right now, you know, to be able to secure value in the market. Great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Markuz Jaffe from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Morning, both. Thanks for the presentation. Just a quick one from me. Do you have a target allocation by technology in mind, or where you would like to see the portfolio get to, in the coming years?
Let me jump in. The answer is, we have soft target. We don't have hard target. What I mean by soft, it's more, we see a benefit of being diversified geographically, which we've already embarked upon. Reason being that it enables you to get diversification in terms of wind corridors of resource, which is true. I mean, it's interesting to pick up the how in some periods, you are below of budget in some part. I mean, Ireland has been below, and some part of the portfolio has been above. Germany offshore has been above our budget this past H1, so it's one.
Two, it's giving you the opportunity to be exposed to different merchant market dynamics, which have different supply and demand dynamics, which enable you to create those opportunity to lock in at different points of the cycle, or lock in value in corporate pricing. Then beyond that, from a more strategic standpoint, your ability to be Pan-European enables you, when you engage conversation, which is emerging, with corporate to strike deal across Europe as opposed to be in a single country. We can see this being a benefit and a differentiating factors not a lot of platform can offer. These are the geographic points. In terms of the technology, the shape, so it's more market to market specific.
It can be complementary, and we see this more in the context of hybridization, whereby, as in Spain, we have wind site. We can see the benefit of adding solar site, like quite a discounted CapEx level, because benefit to the infrastructure. To have shapes which are more even enable you to deliver electrons across a larger portion of the day, and this attracts value in the corporate PPA world. But the most important point that we are driven when we make the investment decision on where do we see the best return adjusted for contracted revenue profile? There is no real difference in terms of operational risk. I mean, both is the same. We are backed with enough engineering capability to demonstrate and evidence this point.
So it's really, really driven by the arbitrage and the decision by the returns you can extract, which are quite dynamic country to country or technology to technology. We've mentioned it. Solar has been quite at a lower capture IRR. It's attracting lower cost of capital than wind historically to a 150-200 basis point delta. So we have put ourselves a 50% differential to compound. I mean, to unlock the benefit I just talked about. Beyond this, we don't think it's the right decision.
The reset in interest rate and the shortage of capital that Paul alluded to make us see that there is an uplift in, and the gap is contracting, so it's a positive, but again, it's, we are really high driven. We make those allocation decision.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Conor Finn from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Morning, both. Just wonder, can you provide some more detail on the availability issues in the first half, and when they're expected to be resolved? And maybe also, if you can give maybe some guidance on the overall impact on the full year 2024 generation, what that's expected to be?
I think I will leave Paul talk about this.
Sorry about that. We're in separate locations this morning. Yeah. No problem, Conor. Yeah, we don't see any significant availability challenges. I think we had some specifics in the first half of this year, all of which are essentially, you know, from our perspective, resolved to weeks, but we don't expect any changes to our full year availability numbers. In terms of, sorry, your second question, which was how we're projecting for full year? Yeah. So what... So it looks like, you know, the availability issue had about a 4% impact versus budget in the first half, and maybe what the full year expectation is, what that should be?... You know, we don't see any significant changes there.
We expect the availability to improve somewhat in the second half of this year, so to be above that 4% level, trending back towards our long-term target between 96%-97%, which is what we have in the business. So we don't see any reasons why that won't improve in the second half of this year, and availability won't be trending back towards our pro forma of 96%-97%.
Okay.
And so a number of those availability issues are covered by personal guarantee from the OEM. So the net impact on the cash and the revenue slash cash generation is less than the availability delta.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Iain Scouller from Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning. I was wondering if you'd talk a bit about amortization of debt, and I'm just wondering what your thoughts are around that, and how much debt you're expecting to amortize over the next year or two?
Hi, Iain. We have very limited amortization debt associated to a project on asset level debt in the portfolio. It's around EUR 110 million-EUR 120 million of the EUR 1.3 billion of book debt. The rest of the debt is as per slide. I don't have the number top of my head, which are bullet profile ranging from end of October 2025 to 2030. The next debt falling due is a five-year tranche in October 2025 to EUR 75 million. We are already in discussion with our syndicate of lenders to renew slash extend this maturity well in advance of when the debt is due.
We have, in Q1, converted EUR 150 million from RCS of draw down into five-year tranche of debt, which is maturing now in 2029, which enabled us two things. One, it was to confirm the appetite from the bank syndicate, and it has been oversubscribed. And two, validate the pricing assumption, which are, have been 4.1% full price, fixed price in. And this is well below our 4.7% long-term cost of debt. The current book of debt is 3.1% contracted term or fixed for 98%. So the latter also evident the strength of the credit profile. The spread margin that the bank accepted was 145 basis points over the swap rate.
145 basis points, if I'm not mistaken, probably the lowest spread margin we know in the space, in our peer group. And I will trust the credit committee, not being charities, reflecting on the strength of the credit profile of the business.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, so I'll hand the call back to Bertrand for closing remarks.
Thanks, all. As I think I will leave you with the conclusion that Paul brought to life. Business continued to perform strongly, if not actually ahead of what it was initially set to do, and well in target on NAV versus return, and demonstrating its resilient ability to perform regardless of the macro environment we went through, and as well is a way or perceived to be a way to play as investment stemming from two macro trends, decarbonization, which are here to stay and underpinning the long-term dynamic of the market.
But as well, some new trend which add to this, data digitalization slash AI being some things that strengthens the business case. So on this, thanks a lot, and hope to talk to you soon in more detail.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.
Thank you.