to the Octopus 2025 annual results investor presentation. Throughout today's recorded investor presentation, attendees will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time just using the Q&A tab on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please simply type in your questions at any time and press Send. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll, and I'm sure the company would be most grateful for your participation. Just to say that throughout, on the right-hand side, simply type in your questions and press Send. I'd now like to hand over to Head of Investor Relations Charlotte Edgar. Charlotte, good afternoon.
Thanks, Mark. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm joined here today with my colleagues, Chris Gaydon and David Bird, Co-Fund Managers of ORIT, and also my colleague Genevieve Legg, who is a senior portfolio manager. To kick off, just going to do a little recap of the business model and strategy. We develop, build, and operate renewable energy assets across wind, solar, and complementary technologies. We invest across operating, construction, and development stages, which allows us to provide a combined stable income today with capital growth over time. Underpinning this is a diversified portfolio, contracted revenues, and active asset management, and all of these are designed to deliver long-term value for shareholders. To go into more detail, I shall hand over to Chris Gaydon.
Great. Thanks, Charlotte. So we hear a lot of negative political rhetoric about renewables, but our experience on the ground is that this continues to be a dynamic and fast-growing sector. Electrification, affordability, and security of supply, in particular now with events in the Middle East, all of these things continue to drive demand for new build renewable energy projects. Now, ORIT is neatly positioned to meet that demand with our growth-focused mandate allowing us to reinvest in new construction projects and our operational fleet, which underpin an attractive and fully covered dividend. At the current share price with dividend yields over 10%, we think now is an attractive entry point for this platform. What makes ORIT different to the other renewable-focused investment trusts? Well, first of all, we have a younger portfolio, and what that means is slower NAV erosion.
We have a higher degree of fixed-price revenues, which drives predictable and resilient cash generation. We have a portfolio that we've demonstrated through our asset sales has demand in the market. We also have options to restructure our debt and create a more flexible capital structure. What does all this enable us to do? Well, it's an opportunity to grow NAV rather than just fighting to stand still. It also means that we continue paying an attractive and covered dividend, and it means that we can reinvest and aim for higher total returns overall. With that, I'm gonna hand over to Jen to cover the financial results for the period.
Thanks, Chris. Starting at the top left with NAV. Closing NAV was GBP 495 million, down from GBP 570 million last year. That movement reflects movements in market assumptions over the period, which I'll come back to in a bit more detail later on in the presentation, as well as the impact of share buybacks. On a NAV per share basis, NAV was 93.8p compared to 102.6p last year. Gross asset value was GBP 897 million, down from just over GBP 1 billion last year. Again, that largely follows the same valuation movement across the portfolio but also reflects the asset sales that completed at the end of Q4.
Putting that together with the contribution from dividends paid throughout the year, NAV total return was -2.8% for the year. Now, clearly, that is a negative outcome, but it's important to recognize that this is not out of line with what we've seen across the sector peer group and given the wider market backdrop and, in particular, downward pressure on power price forecasts. Total shareholder return over the same period was -1.5%. Again, stepping back, this has been a challenging period for the listed renewables sector as a whole. Discounts to NAV have remained wide, driven by elevated interest rates, power price expectations, and broader market sentiment. Overall, this is really a reflection of the wider market environment and isn't anything specific to ORIT.
Turning to income, we delivered a 6.17 pence dividend for the year, which was in line with the target set out at the start of the year, and this translated to a 10.1% dividend yield based on the closing share price at year-end. That dividend was 1.86x covered before scheduled debt amortization and 1.14x covered post those debt repayments, demonstrating continued strength in the underlying cash flows and ORIT's well-supported income profile. Looking forward to 2026, ORIT has increased the dividend target to 6.23 pence.
This is a 1% increase over the 2025 dividend and in line with the company's progressive dividend policy. We'll cover operational performance in a lot more detail in the coming slides, but operationally the portfolio continues to perform well even after a period of asset sales. Despite performance being slightly below budget, primarily due to lower than expected wind resource and other external factors, we still saw generation revenue and EBITDA all improve year-on-year. The proportion of near-term fixed revenues has also improved year-on-year, and this is improving confidence in the coming year's dividend coverage. I'll hand back to David, and we'll talk through some more of these headline metrics over the next couple of sections.
Thanks, Jen, and good afternoon, everybody. Looking back around a year ago, we set three clear objectives for 2025. Firstly, an increase in the share buyback program to a total of GBP 30 million. Secondly, a target to reduce debt to 40% or less of gross asset value by the year-end. Thirdly, a target of GBP 80 million of asset sales in order to fund the prior two objectives. During 2025, we delivered strong progress across all of these targets. On the buybacks, GBP 26 million has been completed, and the remaining balance is available to the board to use as necessary. On debt, we have reduced the absolute amount of debt, as well as materially reducing the cost of those borrowings. The movements in net asset value during the year meant that gearing remained flat at 45%.
On asset sales, we have broadly delivered on target with GBP 74 million worth of sales agreed and completed before year-end. Of that, GBP 70 million of cash proceeds have been received by the end of the period. We've delivered in what's been a challenging market environment, particularly for asset sales across the peer group. Looking a bit more closely at debt, you can see that we reduced the absolute amount of the borrowings within the company and its underlying portfolio by GBP 56.3 million over the period. That includes GBP 23.6 million of scheduled amortization on the debt facilities in the underlying portfolio of assets. We also successfully reduced the cost of debt from 4% at the end of 2024 down to a weighted average of 3.3% at the end of 2025.
That's as a result of some proactive refinancing of our UK solar assets and wind, as well as a reduction in the higher cost revolving credit facility borrowings following repayment after the asset sales. However, gearing did remain flat year-on-year at 45%, driven principally by the NAV reductions in the period. You can see that we did bring it down from the peak level by around 3%. Looking at how we've allocated cash through the business during the year, you can see here the strong cash generation from the underlying portfolio of assets, and that figure is net of the scheduled principal repayments of GBP 23.6 million. In addition, we had the GBP 70 million realized from the disposals during the year.
That gave a total of around GBP 108 million of cash that we had available to allocate. The largest component, of a little over GBP 50 million has been returned to shareholders through a combination of dividends and buybacks. Next most significant component has been debt reduction with almost GBP 50 million there. That leaves the smallest component being the selective reinvestment that we've made into the portfolio. This shows the clear prioritization during the period of returning capital to shareholders and strengthening the balance sheet. Looking at the portfolio activity during the period, recycling has been a key theme, and this is a strategy that's been ongoing since 2023. The GBP 74 million of asset sales agreed during the period takes the total since 2023 to GBP 235 million.
All of those agreed at or above the holding value of the assets prior to the transaction. We chose to exit our investment in HYRO, which is a green hydrogen developer focused on the U.K., because the opportunity in green hydrogen and e-fuels is one that we don't feel aligns well either with the project sizes or the timelines on which we want to focus our developer allocation. Similar is true of Simply Blue. Simply Blue Group successfully sold an 80% interest in their floating offshore wind business to Kansai Electric, and that gives the business an investment partner that can help develop those projects through to the next phase.
The majority of the GBP 74 million, a significant majority, came from the sale of our 51% stake in the Crossd ykes onshore wind farm in Scotland, as well as a 49% stake in the Breach Solar Farm in Cambridgeshire. Both of those sales to Tokyo Century were achieved at or in fact slightly above our previous holding value, and they really reaffirmed the robustness of our valuations. The ability to find liquidity in a challenging market for asset sales, particularly in the U.K., where others have struggled to sell at NAV or even at all. This activity has given us headroom to reinvest for growth while maintaining a strong balance sheet. On the investment side of things, we have been highly selective and focused on assets which we believe can deliver attractive NAV growth for shareholders. That growth can come in a number of ways.
For example, by buying at attractive valuations, and that's what we think is the case at the Irishtown solar farm. This will be the sixth site in a portfolio of assets near Dublin in Ireland. Because of our pre-existing investment in the five sites that we already own, we effectively have control of the grid access for Irishtown, which meant that we were able to negotiate what we think is an attractive price. The other area where we have invested into the portfolio is in supporting existing developers, namely Nordic Generation, who have focused on wind, solar, and storage in Finland, and BLC Energy, developing solar and storage in the UK. Both of those developers have well-advanced high-quality pipelines with assets approaching ready-to-build status over the coming year. Overall, this approach shows our disciplined capital allocation designed to support growth for shareholders.
With that, I'll hand over to Chris.
Thank you, David. On this slide, we wanted to present a snapshot of ORIT's portfolio at the end of the period. We have 39 assets and a total of 740 MW, and that's down from 41 assets and over 800 MW at the end of the previous period. As you can see from the map, we continue to have a high degree of diversification across both geographies and technologies, very much despite the recent asset sales. Why do we think diversification is important? Well, it helps us reduce exposure to concentrations of risk, whether that be grid connections, regulation, or weather patterns.
As our portfolio evolves over the years ahead, you will increasingly see diversification being shaped by the tools that our data science team have developed to ensure we have the right technology mix across the right markets, trying to capture as much of a natural hedge as possible between the technologies and ultimately delivering a better risk-adjusted return to our investors. Now, on these charts, on the left, you can see that we're now present across five different markets. I think going forward, it's unlikely we would add materially to these markets, but instead probably go deeper within each individual one. On the center ring, you can see that we continue to maintain a roughly even split between solar and on and offshore wind. At some point, I'd expect to be seeing some batteries move into the mix.
On the right-hand side, we remain fully operational, except for the small investments into developers. On our fixed revenue. We continue to maintain a high degree of fixed revenue certainty with 88% of our power pricing hedged over the two years, and in fact, a degree of fixed revenues extending out into the 2040s. Now, this strong revenue visibility, coupled with the limited merchant power price exposure, gives us strong income certainty and confidence in delivering fully covered dividends. Likewise, we continue to believe that maintaining inflation linkages are important, otherwise ORIT may just end up looking like a bond. The high degree of inflation linkage helps support real returns for investors and also contributes towards dividend growth. Finally from me, just touching on our development portfolio.
Just by way of reminder, the reason why we invest in developers is to, A, deliver an attractive risk-adjusted return from that development investment, but also to deliver a proprietary pipeline for ORIT to invest in if it wishes to do so and avoid the need of participating in competitive processes. Our exposure to developers is limited to 5% of gross asset value. We don't really see any need to go beyond that in the foreseeable. Overall, we have preferential rights over a pipeline of 3.3 GW on a gross basis, and we hope that around 800 MW of that will be ready-to-build during 2026 to 2027. That will come principally from our investments in BLC, Wind 2 and Nordic Generation. Maybe just to pull out a few key highlights from both during and after the period.
Simply Blue Group won a CFD for one of only two utility-scale floating offshore wind farms in the U.K., and we hope to be able to get that to FID early next year. BLC, on the other hand, has around 400 MW currently in the U.K. planning process. That includes two projects which have a pre-2030 grid connection date, and we are hoping to receive planning determination on those around the middle of this year. As David mentioned earlier, we have exited our hydrogen development platform, as well as selling down a stake in the Simply Blue Group platform to Kansai Electric. With that, I will hand back to David to cover the operational highlights.
Thank you, Chris. During the period, we saw generation from the portfolio of assets as well as revenue and EBITDA all increase year-over-year, and that was driven by the underlying increase in output of 5%, notwithstanding the sale of certain assets from the portfolio. That said, generation was slightly below budget, and I'll go into the details of that over the coming slides. Particularly notable was the strong performance of solar, significantly up in output from the prior year, and that was driven partly by the fact that this was the first full year of having all five sites in the Irish solar complex connected and fully operational. On the wind side of things, performance was weaker.
Again, that partly reflects the sale of the Ljungby Wind Farm in Sweden, which was sold midway through 2024, so it didn't feature at all in the 2025 numbers. Also we saw weather-driven variants, effectively lower than expected wind speeds. One thing that's important to note about the operational performance during the period is we saw a significant improvement year-on-year in the underlying technical availability and performance of the assets. You can see here that this is a continuation of a trend that's carried on since IPO of all of these metrics, generation, revenue and EBITDA increasing year-on-year. That allows us to support the progressive dividend policy of the company and have confidence in growing the dividend year-on-year.
Looking technology by technology, you can see that 2025 was a strong period for solar in terms of irradiance, particularly in the U.K. and Ireland. The main detractor from performance was curtailment on the Irish grid. Some of this was compensated, but not all. However, there is potential upside from an ongoing court case through the European courts, whereby the only partial compensation of generators is being challenged. Should that court case find in generator's favor, there could be additional revenue coming through, but none of that is included in these figures or in our valuations. Another notable variance was at the Cougé site, a small site in France. At that site, it has been offline, awaiting replacement of panels under warranty from the manufacturer, and that site is on track to be back operational during the course of 2026.
The stronger irradiance on the solar portfolio shows once again the value of having a technologically diversified portfolio, offsetting the negative weather variance that we've seen on the wind portfolio. Looking in a bit more detail at the wind side of things, you can see that the weather variance was the biggest component of the under-budget performance. You can also see the benefit of geographical diversification within the wind portfolio. Whilst the wind blew less than expected on average across our onshore wind portfolio, we actually had windier than expected conditions at our Lincs offshore wind farm in the North Sea. Another thing to note about the onshore wind performance is that we're not seeing any structural issue with the quality of the equipment or the performance of the sites.
Indeed, you can see on the onshore wind portfolio that most of the technical downtime that's included within the other component here was in fact compensated under the operation and maintenance contracts, whereby the supplier is warranting the availability of the sites. Beneath that, we saw a material year-on-year improvement in the technical availability across the portfolio, and that is as a result of the active management that we, as investment manager, apply to the sites and in making sure that the on-site contractors are delivering in accordance with their requirements. We've also maintained our focus on impact during 2025, and that's something which should only increase as we move forward and get back to investing in construction projects which deliver new clean capacity onto the grid. It's important to note that we continue to see no compromise on returns in having this impact focus.
Indeed, in the long term, we think looking after the communities and environment around our sites will maximize our ability to in fact add value through potential life extensions or repowering. During the period, the clean electricity generation from the portfolio avoided 320,000 tons of carbon emissions by displacing dirtier generation, and that's equivalent to planting around 1.6 million new trees. Beyond that, we have been active in supporting communities and the environments around the sites we invest in. For example, sponsoring a free-to-access online skills platform to enable people to get into careers in clean energy, particularly offshore wind in this case. I'll now hand over to Jen to go through the valuations in a bit more detail.
Thank you, David. This next slide walks through the movement in our asset value over the year. We start at GBP 570 million or 102.6 pence per share at the end of 2024 and move through each of the key valuation drivers to arrive at GBP 495 million or 93.8 pence per share at year-end. Starting on the left-hand side, revenue fixing and hedging had a small positive impact, and this reflects additional hedging put in place during the year, which reduced merchant exposure and strengthened near-term cash flow visibility. Changes in economic assumptions, which are mostly made up of inflation effects and tax changes over the year, also provided a positive contribution, and I'll cover that on the following slide in a bit more detail. Moving on to the negative drivers.
Adjustments to developer valuations reduced NAV. That reflects a mix of delays in some platforms alongside conservative dis-conservative discounts that were applied to deferred consideration, amounts arising from exits made in the year, and this was partially offset by positive developments on other platforms. The largest impact comes from power prices, green certificates, and capacity market assumptions, and this reflects more conservative market revenue forecasts, particularly in the UK. We then had a GBP 5 million reduction from ROC indexation following the government's decision to move from RPI to CPI, which we have fully reflected in the year-end valuation. Discount rates were also a modest negative, reflecting the higher interest rate environment and portfolio mix changes. Moving further to the right on the bridge, but the balance of portfolio return is positive, and that is the expected return from the portfolio as cash flows unwind over time.
This was partly offset by lower than expected cash generation and some updates to near-term and longer-term cost assumptions. At the fund level, we then have dividends paid, financing costs, and running costs, all of which reduce NAV, as part of the normal course of business. Finally, share buybacks, which while reducing NAV in absolute terms, were accretive on a NAV per share basis, delivering a GBP 0.014 uplift. I'll now start a few of those key valuation assumptions over the next couple of slides. Going back to macro assumptions, as mentioned, this resulted in a GBP 0.029 per share uplift, and this was driven by some benefit from higher short-term U.K. inflation, movement in sterling against the euro and the reduction to Finnish corporate income tax, all of which benefited the valuation in the year.
On power prices, during the period, there was a combined valuation decrease of GBP 23.4 million, driven by updates to the various market revenue forecasts. The movement can be broadly split between updates to power prices and green certificate curves. On power prices, in the short term, forward prices fell marginally across ORIT's core markets. While longer-term consensus forecasts also reduced, reflecting updated expectations to renewable energy build-out, demand growth, and commodity trends. A negative movement also followed the adoption of more conservative long-term green certificate curves, which aligned the longer-term pricing more in line with what we're currently seeing in today's market. We also update capacity market curves on a regular basis, but this had a negligible impact on the valuation during the year.
Turning lastly on the valuations to discount rates, the weighted average operational portfolio discount rate was at 7.8% at the year-end. This increases to 8.2% after including the expected return from the development portfolio and also the leverage impact at the fund level in the RCF. During the first half of the year, discount rates were increased modestly to reflect the prevailing market conditions and continued high interest rate environment. In the second half of the year, no explicit changes were made to discount rates, but the changes reflect small changes in revenue mix and portfolio mix following the asset sales that concluded at the end of the year. With that, I will hand back to Chris.
Okay. Thank you, Jen. In September last year, we announced our ORIT 2030 strategy, which sets out our plan to invest for growth, delivering scale, higher returns, and greater positive impact in the communities where we're operating. By way of reminder, we're aiming for a 9%-11% per annum total return over the medium to long term, and our plan is that we'll be doing this by delivering GBP 100 million-GBP 120 million per year of investment in growth-focused opportunities, and they'll be funded principally by the continued recycling out of existing assets. Now, although we strive to keep debt below 40% of gross asset value, there are times when it might increase as we acquire those assets, only for it to fall later on as more assets are recycled.
What does ORIT 2030 look like in 2026? First of all, we're gonna continue our asset sales program, although we haven't set a target on that as of yet. We aim to deploy the proceeds into new construction assets. Now, as I said on the previous slide, that may mean that gearing might increase in the short term before it goes down again in future years. It also means that well, the nature of construction assets means that NAV growth can be expected from 2027 onwards. Throughout the delivery period, we fully intend on paying a covered dividend in line with the board's guidance. With that, I'll hand back to Charlotte.
Thank you, Chris. Just a couple of slides from me by way of wrap up. The case for renewables remains strong. The listed market sentiment remains weak, but the underlying fundamentals have not changed. Demand continues to be driven by the need for energy security, electrification, and cost. Renewables remain the cheapest form of electricity, and significant investment is still required to meet that need. To conclude, despite the challenging backdrop, ORIT has built a resilient platform that continues to deliver a fully covered progressive dividend. We took decisive action in 2025, recycling capital and strengthening the balance sheet, and now our focus is firmly on execution as we move forward with the actions to deliver our 9%-11% total return target. That ends the presentation, and we will move to Q&A. Please do keep submitting your questions.
I'm gonna take the lead on this and moderate here. I'm gonna start with some dividend questions. There are a few that have come in on the topic around how sustainable is the dividend. With all the asset sales and reduction, will the dividend still be fully covered? Why did the dividend only rise by 1%?
Shall I pick that one up?
Yeah.
This all ties in with the ORIT 2030 strategy, and we've been very clear in that we have every intention of continuing to grow the dividend from its current level, and we have every intention of ensuring that those dividends are fully covered by the operational cash flows coming from the portfolio of assets. Now, if you look at the expected revenue profile of the existing portfolio over time, you can see that there is an expectation of some revenue decline coming in the early- to mid-2030s. In order for us to meet that objective, we have to be very active in managing the portfolio, and that's exactly what we intend to do.
We believe that by investing in newer assets that have a flatter revenue profile over time, as well as giving the opportunity to deliver capital growth, we can set ORIT up so it can keep growing that dividend for the foreseeable future, and certainly through the 2030s. In short, we believe the dividend is sustainable. We believe that we can keep growing it and keep covering it, notwithstanding the active rotation of the portfolio. That's one of the reasons that we've set our expectation at delivering around GBP 120 million of new investment each year funded by asset recycling. 'Cause if we were to go further than that and seek to deliver even more growth, then the dividend might come under pressure. That's where we see the sustainable level.
To the question around the dividend rise, the company has always had a progressive dividend policy rather than any explicit linkage to inflation, albeit in the past there have been inflation-linked rises. That increase of roughly 1% was determined by the Board in order to balance the desire to show progress and growth in the dividend while emphasizing the slight refocus towards investing for growth and ensuring that the growth in the dividend remains sustainable over time.
Great. Thanks, David. Question here. NAV declined materially despite stable operational performance. How much further downside risk remains from the power price and discount rate assumptions?
I can keep going until someone else wants to jump in. The power price movements have been mostly in the long term. Obviously, what we've seen more recently following the period end is upward pressure on near-term power prices as a result of what's going on in the Middle East. Particularly, we saw markets jump quite significantly when the LNG terminals in Qatar were attacked. We've seen perhaps a reduction in the sensitivity there, but it's still very volatile. We are quite highly hedged in the near term, which means we probably won't see very material upside, but equally should something else happen that brings power prices down, we don't see much sensitivity to that in the near term either.
In the longer term on power prices, one thing that I think is important to note is that all of our long-term power price assumptions come from specialist external forecasters, economic forecasters who are projecting what new forms of electricity supply and electricity demand come through in the coming years. In those external forecasts, one thing that we think provides potential for upside as well as inherently there always being some risk to those forecasts, but one of the potential sources of upside is that those forecasts do not assume that all of the increased demand from new AI-driven data centers comes through. The demand forecasts are significantly less than would be implied if all of the data centers that are trying to get built actually do. The power price forecast can move in either direction.
In recent years, the trend has been down as prices have dropped more rapidly than expected following the energy price crisis that followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and also as new renewables got built out slightly more quickly than expected in certain markets. That's not to mean that it's inevitably a downward trend, and we could see upside in the future. On the discount rate side of things, it's one that we will watch very closely. One of the things that we learned through 2022 is that there was a bit of a lag between upward pressure on rates and that feeding through into discount rates. With upward pressure on interest rates, again, following what's going on in the Middle East, we are looking at discount rates closely.
I think, again, it's important to note that we're starting from a very different base than we were in 2022. In 2022, we were coming off more than a decade of very low interest rate policy. Our discount rates have increased substantially across 2023, 2024. Importantly, we haven't seen those discount rates come down since rates started to reduce over the last year or so. There's a lot more risk premium already sort of built in. Inevitably, discount rates is one that we will continue to watch. Clearly, the reason that discount rates might go up is because base rates rise to counter inflation.
as Chris touched on earlier, our portfolio benefits from a significant degree of inflation-linked revenues, which means that even if discount rates do rise, the fact that that's likely driven by power price increases and inflation increases means we will see, to an extent, an offsetting benefit in the underlying cash flows.
Thanks, Ed. I think you've actually successfully covered most of those questions on energy prices. We just had one more come in, I think. Question, do you anticipate any opportunity to participate in sector M&A?
Should I take that one?
Yeah.
When we announced our ORIT 2030 strategy back in September, we have set ourselves for some fairly ambitious growth targets. A lot of that growth will come from the continued asset recycling and redeployment into new construction projects that I discussed on my slides. We also think that there will be opportunities for inorganic growth through various M&A with other listed investment trusts. It's something that we are keeping a very close eye on, that we are working with our advisors to pursue any opportunities. What we have found in that process is that it is quite a small opportunity set. We need to always keep in mind that, you know, any addition to ORIT's portfolio is accretive to our various financial and risk targets.
Yes, as I say, it is something that we're continuing to investigate.
Thanks, Chris. Just another thing on energy prices and you might have covered most of this, but, you know, looking back to the last energy price rise in 2022, how does that inform how we might manage the portfolio if higher energy prices persist? Would that have a bearing?
I think what we did during 2022 was seek to lock in high prices where there was the opportunity to do so. That's something that we're watching very closely at the moment. As it stands, where we've seen power futures move has mostly been in the quite near term, the next two or three seasons, and we have such a high degree of hedging already in that period that there aren't many opportunities to lock in further. If we see an extended situation and those futures increase further out into, say, 2027 and 2028, then we will look to lock prices in because that's only helpful in maintaining increased confidence in dividend cover.
I think the other thing we learned from 2022 is perhaps when prices really peaked in around sort of September of that year, and asset valuations followed, things then came down faster than expected. What we're not going to do if prices do keep spiking is bake all of that into valuations immediately. Something we did a little bit of towards the latter part of 2022 was take some kind of discount to market forwards to reflect those markets, perhaps not really setting an expectation of what you might actually capture in 2027 or 2028, but just reflecting a distressed market with traders under pressure.
We will be cautious around baking in movements in volatile markets into our valuations, and we will be active in looking for opportunities to hedge and lock in high prices where we can.
Great. Thank you. There's a question on share buybacks, and I wonder if it's worth just pausing that and talking about our position on that at the moment. The question is: Is there a negative impact on NAV from shares bought back at prices higher than they were at year-end? I wonder if it's worth saying a few words on buybacks generally.
I might let Jen answer the accounting question, but on the sort of where we are from a capital allocation point of view, the buybacks are clearly an attractive way of investing in what we see as a high-quality portfolio at a cheaper price than going and buying those assets on the market. To fund those buybacks without increasing gearing to an unsustainable level, we would need to deliver asset sales. Continually doing buybacks will eventually shrink the company to a size where it might just not be of relevance in the market.
That's one of the factors that has led to the ORIT 2030 strategy an emphasis on investing for more medium to sustainable growth in NAV total return, in NAV per share, through a repeatable process of investing into growth assets rather than a one-off buyback or effectively sort of extended wind down by constantly shrinking the company. That's something that as the share price and the discount evolves will always remain under review because clearly at a certain discount level the math changes. Where we are today and where we have been, we continue to see investment for a growth as a better long-term outcome for shareholders in terms of the NAV total return that they experience.
Just on the question about the impact on net asset value. On an absolute pound basis, any pound spent on share buybacks would reduce the overall pound NAV per share. If you translate onto a NAV per share basis, you're effectively shrinking the number of shares that the pound NAV is divisible by. That is accretive to your NAV per share as at year-end.
Great. Thanks, Jen. A couple of questions on energy prices again. What would the impact on energy prices and earnings be if gas stops being the setter of wholesale prices for all non-gas renewables? We've got a couple on that topic.
I can have a go at that one. I guess maybe a bit of history. The way I think about the sort of evolution of renewables is that it's happened in or happening in three phases. The first phase, sort of at the start of my career, more than 20 years ago, renewables was heavily subsidy-driven, as the sort of levelized cost of electricity from renewables was higher than what the market price was in those days. We then moved into phase two after all of the R&D and the improvements in the performance of equipment started to come through and make renewables the competitive generator of electricity. You know, we saw a lot of merchant projects being built.
We saw CFDs and various subsidies set a little at or around the market price for electricity. Now where I think we are now is sort of moving into the third phase of renewables evolution, where essentially renewables is becoming mainstream. We're starting to see the impact of zero marginal cost generation, and we're seeing that through increased, you know, near zero and negative pricing across many markets where we're operating. The way I think the market will evolve is that we will increasingly see renewable energy projects go out and secure long-term sort of price fixing or price firming CFDs. It's gonna be in governments and regulators' interest to keep those mechanisms in play, because they will want to make sure that there is continued investment into energy generation.
How those prices are gonna be set rather than being set by gas being the marginal price in the market. I think those CFDs will be more set by the long run marginal cost of producing electricity from renewable energy projects.
Great. Thanks, Chris. One final comment so far. David, that's correct. You've stated that we have said that we'll deliver 9%-11% total returns. It doesn't say, but I guess you meant to say this is annual returns. Yes, that is an annual target. Oh, I think one more question has come in. Does the team see interesting opportunities to partner up and provide power to data centers?
It's the short answer is possibly yes. It's something that if you look at, for example, our Irish solar portfolio, that is under a long-term contract with Microsoft, it is not directly connected to any individual data center, but it is reflecting that a lot of large tech companies want to buy power from the grid, from new renewables to support their increasing data center demand. We have also seen some opportunities and are looking at more direct connection with data centers. Indeed, some markets like Ireland are requiring new data centers to bring directly connected green generation onto the grid in order to get permission for them to build, given the impact that they'll have. It's something that is just part of the jigsaw puzzle. It's an opportunity we think to...
Another way of getting long-term fixed price contracts for new build sites. It's another way potentially of dealing with some of the delays in getting grid connections both for generation and for demand by data centers. There's nothing immediate that we can point to, so I wouldn't want people to get excited to think that we're gonna connect to lots of data centers in 2026, but in the medium to long term, absolutely there's an interesting opportunity there.
Thanks, David. Further question. What valuation impact do you expect from rising power prices?
I think I touched on earlier that we are highly hedged in the next two years, 88%. People shouldn't expect a dramatic impact on our valuations from near-term movement in power prices. In terms of longer term, there are published sensitivities in the annual report, both in the sort of the bit at the front with some of the valuation movements around page 44. There's a sensitivity chart that says, if the entire forecast power price curve moved up or down by 10%, what that would do to valuations. There's also a wordier version of that in the notes at the back. Obviously what actually happens to power prices is rarely just a flat movement all the way along the curve.
I think that's the best indication we can give of how valuations track with power price movements.
Great. I think we've covered all the questions.
I could do this one.
Wait, I thought we'd covered this. Given your weighted average discount rate is now 7.8%, 8.2% adjusted, what observable market transactions give you confidence that this is still the correct clearing rate for your portfolio today? And what would NAV be if that moved to 8.5%?
In terms of, I'll let Jen or David answer the NAV to 8.5%. In terms of observable market transactions, we as a fund management business, we manage a number of private strategies which are out in the market acquiring assets. As a team, we have about 50 people in our investments team, who are all sort of dedicated towards acquiring renewable energy projects. We participate in many competitive processes. We don't often win those processes, but we participate in them for sort of price discovery reasons, and it's that information that really underpins our valuation processes.
The other point I would make is that we continue to raise a lot of capital in our private strategies, you know, into funds which have sort of similar return targets as ORIT. It's really that private capital that is setting values in the market, not the capital in investment trusts like ORIT. I'm just wondering, David or Jen, whether you have any comments on the NAV sensitivity.
Yeah. We've included in the annual report, on page 44, some sensitivities. Looking at the weighted average discount rate, you can see that a 0.5% increase on that is around a 5% decrease in the asset value. For you'd be looking at for a 3% increase and more like 2%-3% decrease in the net asset value. Yeah.
Then finally, again, we've sort of touched on this a little bit, but, what is the electricity price that you see this trend settling to at some form of stability? This is looking at forecast prices. Do you see long-term energy prices or do you expect to see long-term energy prices to fall?
Maybe I'll just take the second of those first. Absolutely we see long-term energy prices falling over the long term. That is what we have modeled in our valuations, and it is the logical result of an energy system electricity network that is dominated by renewables, which provide, you know, cheap and cost competitive electricity. In terms of where we see the electricity price trends settling, David, anything to add to that?
Well, I think that's a danger of drifting into economics language here, but in a world where we've sort of seen questions already about short-run marginal cost of gas and what happens when that doesn't set the price. That's where we see, because renewable energy, and in particular wind and solar, supported by storage and in particular battery storage, those are the most cost-effective way of delivering new electricity supply and firming that supply and providing flexibility. We would expect electricity prices to be ultimately driven by the long-run marginal cost of delivering that new supply. If prices fall too low to justify building new wind and solar, less will get built, and that will, you know, reduce supply and put upward pressure on prices. You find an equilibrium, and that's where we think we see things.
It's hard to put a particular number on it, and that's why we have these external forecasters who do the best job of anyone in the market can of predicting what that price might be. Ultimately, as we see the cost of equipment changing, as input factors changing, what does it cost to produce the materials for a wind turbine or a solar panel. What does it cost to transport them around the world? As those things change, the input cost of building new projects will change, and that will affect the long-term power price. Ultimately, we do see that shift, and Chris touched on it earlier, to being the, you know, the stabilized price that allows new wind and solar to keep getting built, to keep supporting the electrification of the economy and the increase in demand.
That's what will ultimately set the price because we will need this new supply to get built as existing supply comes to the end of its life.
Great. I think we have now gone through all the questions. I'll hand back to Mark.
That's great. Thank you very much, David, Charlotte, Chris, Jen, for taking all those questions from investors. Thank you to everybody for your engagement. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as we'll now automatically re-redirect you in order that you can provide your feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations. This may take a couple of moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the team from ORIT , we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation and wish you all a good rest of your day. Thank you for your time.