Kia ora tātou. Welcome everybody to Infratil's annual results announcement for the financial year ended 2022. I'm Jason Boyes, the Chief Executive of Infratil, and I'm here, as usual, with Phillippa Harford, CFO in the Wellington boardroom. We're going to talk through a few things today. The presentation and all our annual results related material has been released to the NZX and ASX this morning. We're gonna run through the presentation. I'm gonna take us through some financial highlights and a few other announcements, take a quick look at the portfolio, and then Phillippa and I are gonna take you through our major investments. Phillippa is going to then run through some key financial metrics, including our guidance for the year coming up, which we hadn't released yet.
I'll sum up, and we'll go to some questions and answers. Our ambition is to do our bit in 20 minutes. It may take a little bit longer. We're gonna try and then leave a good gap for Q&A. Plenty to get into. Let's get started. Firstly on the highlights. As we've released this morning, it's a record result for Infratil with more than a NZD 1 billion net parent surplus. That's been flagged well in advance, of course, because of the Tilt Renewables sale, which contributes mostly to that. We guide on our earnings on a proportionate EBITDAF basis, our share of our underlying investments EBITDAF. That has landed at NZD 513.9 million, as you can see on the slide there.
That's just above actually the middle of the narrow guidance range we put out at the half year. That you need to adjust for some new guidance on software as a service customization costs that came out during the year. We're really happy, obviously, to land above the midpoint I think we were guiding earlier in the year towards the bottom end. Reflects a really strong operating performance from Vodafone, which I'll get into, and also actually Wellington Airport and RetireAustralia, which Phillipa is going to talk to. Also this year, really strong investment within the portfolio and in some new investments, which I'll talk about in a second, but NZD 1.4 billion of CapEx our proportionate share across the group. The balance sheet is in really excellent shape.
More than NZD 1 billion of available capital as a result of those Tilt proceeds coming in, which I think is a really nice place to be in in this environment. Excellent shareholder returns. Total shareholder returns over the year of nearly 20%, which is kind of in line with our history, but still a very, very good outcome. All of that's leading us and giving us confidence to raise the dividend again this year to NZD 0.12 a share. We're announcing that final dividend. This one's actually fully imputed. Last year, we were partially imputed, so the increase is a little more than 4% if you include that. Obviously pleasing to be able to do that in this environment as well. Maybe some other announcements.
Phillipapa will delve into some of those numbers a bit more later on. You might notice today we're sporting a new logo. It's a simplified, I think, more modern version of the old one. We felt like it was time for a refresh. We wanted the logo to reflect, I think, a slightly more approachable type of language and way of presenting Infratil, which you might have seen over the last year or so. But also a more modern look to match and reflect the modern infrastructure that we're focused on and investing in today. Hope you like it. There's also a new website that will go live later today, technology willing, which reflects all of those things I hope you'll find as well. See what you think.
We've also released today, as usual, our annual report. In that, we've got outlined for the first time our sustainable investment strategy. That sets out at a high level the six, as it turns out, sustainable investment areas that we're focused on and the high-level goals we have for those areas. A next step of work for us is to develop and put out to you detailed targets that we're gonna use to measure our progress on achieving those objectives. You can expect those to include detailed carbon and net zero commitments, and we look forward to bringing those to you later this year. Lastly of all, in the announcements section, yesterday, we announced the transition of the chair of Infratil.
Mark Tume, who's been our chair for about nine years, he announced he's going to retire as chair anyway, at the end of this month, at the end of May. Alison Gerry will take over from then as well. Mark has been obviously an excellent chair for that period and presided over a remarkable period of growth for Infratil. We wish him well. We're really looking forward to working with Alison in her new role. Obviously, she's been on our board for seven, nearly eight years now and has been the chair of your Audit and Risk Committee for most of that period as well, so she'll be well known to you. She's a very well-respected director around New Zealand as well. I think that's all I wanted to cover in the announcements.
Maybe just one last look before we dive into the major investments. This presents familiar picture to everyone, the portfolio as it stands today. You can see, as we've talked about before, our sort of high conviction approach in our three plus one four, say, focus sectors of digital infrastructure, renewable energy, healthcare, and we have the airport. As well there. You see a strong position in digital infrastructure, in particular, our largest sector, and the others are growing. During the year, when you look at that slide, we've added Kao Data to digital infra, Gurīn Energy in the renewables sector, and Pacific Radiology, Auckland Radiology Group, and Bay Radiology in healthcare diagnostic imaging businesses. We'll talk about them a bit more, later on. Good investment across all the sectors during the year. Good geographic diversification, coming in.
We think the portfolio is still really well-positioned, heading into what looks like a reasonably volatile macroeconomic environment. We see, as Phillippa outlined at our half years, good inflation protection, across a number of these assets within CDC's revenue contracts, for example, with the way renewable energy developments are priced and financed, you know, the list could go on. That's a nice place to be. We also see good growth in all of these areas, which is less correlated to, general economic growth. We're gonna need more renewable energy projects, whether the economy is growing or not. People will continue to use more and more digital tools, and people will continue to need more and more healthcare as we age. Nice position to be in, I think, heading into some uncertainty. That's the top-level view.
Let's go into some of the investments, and I'll start. First one is CDC, as always, our biggest investment. They have produced an EBITDAF within their guidance range, albeit towards the lower end of it. That's actually a really strong performance from our point of view. Their revenue was really impacted during the period by a lot of those COVID lockdowns across all of their sites, of course, but importantly for construction sites. We're building four data centers at the moment across two countries. That's meant a little bit of a delay in revenue contracts starting as customers can't move in for a little bit longer. It's also harder to get new customers through your data centers to show them where they could move into and then get them into the data center.
Actually a real credit to the team to land that result in that year. The outlook still remains really strong. We're forecasting at the bottom of the slide, you'll see a 40% uplift at the midpoint in their EBITDAF, which is on track with what we described last year. That comes from those four data centers I mentioned, completing construction. We're actually opening a new data center just about every month, I think it is from here to August, which is an amazing feat. That means our customers can move in and start paying us rent, and that will then turn up in the revenue. It's quite predictable. The vast majority of that revenue is already contracted, so really need to complete those centers and get our customers in there.
The outlook is good as well. We mentioned earlier in the year at our Investor Day that, CDC had acquired some land in Melbourne, quite a lot of land, actually, and was looking to expand there. We expect to commence construction of our first data center there later this year, based on good demand signals from our customers. We've also acquired more land in Auckland and Canberra, so we're expecting growth there. We continue to look at other jurisdictions as well. The growth outlook and approach from the business is definitely not slowing down. That is turning up in the independent valuation this year. The valuation over the year has gone up about 30%.
That's reflecting that a bit of that Melbourne expansion, but also those four data centers getting closer and closer to operation, and so much less riskier. That gets reflected in the valuation the closer you get to that revenue coming on stream. That's a good outcome from an Infratil investor perspective. I think that's all I wanted to say on CDC. I think it's a strong performance. I think they're well-placed with that sort of indexation I mentioned before in their revenue contracts, a bit of inflation protection and a good growth outlook with strong demand signals and good land positions to enable them to take advantage of that, as and when they need to. The next one I want to talk to is Vodafone, another biggie. This is a really good result from the team.
They've come in above the guidance we gave at the start of the year. The top of that guidance was 510. At the time, that didn't include the new guidance that came out during the last year on Software as a Service customization costs. We normalize those out. There's also been some one-off costs for transactions that we normalize out. Once you get through all that, they've come in well over the top of their guidance, which is fantastic. That reflects really strong cost control, which we flagged last year as well, but also decent trading. When you look at the business and how it's running, that strong cost control obviously required some pretty tough restructuring within the business. The business has got through that.
The organizational health scores and culture related measures are all really strong, and they're hiring well, which is nice to see. I think that new approach to cost is getting embedded. On the trading side, our contract mobile has been really pleasing, certainly not what we would have had in our original investment case. It's driven by all these investments we've talked about for a while and improving customer experience through network investments, IT investments, and things like that. That's starting to pay dividends. Fixed broadband still remains a really challenging market as everyone will have seen. We're managing to stabilize our own metrics through rolling out fixed wireless access that we've talked about in the past. We're not unhappy with where our position is, but the market is still, to be fair, very tough.
We're also seeing growth in what we call ICT, which is sort of selling connectivity services mainly to enterprises, which is driving that uplift and actually some top line growth. That investment I talked about in customer experience in particular, but also that ICT growth, the business is seeing that, I think continue for the next two or three y ears as they roll out what we wanna do in that space. That means we're seeing CapEx excluding spectrum at an elevated level this year from, I think, what a normal case for this business will be. We're at about 14%-15% there. Normally wanna be in that kind of 12% range. We see that continuing for 2 or 3 years as those improvements continue to be rolled out, and we continue to make that investment.
Also in there's some sort of one-off costs finishing the separation from the Vodafone Group. I think last year, they replaced their enterprise system, ERP. This year, I think they've still got payroll. You know, things like that are still going on. That should be completed at the end of this year and put them on a steady footing. Next year, the outlook looks good. It's not as strong an uplift that we're forecasting at this stage as we saw last year. They've got a 5% uplift in their guidance. Middle of the range, but over NZD 500 million. We think there's a bit of conservatism in there, but that's probably appropriate in this environment. We're looking forward to updating you on that and how they're tracking at half year.
Also in the period, for the first time, we've had an independent valuation of that business, which was done for various purposes within the business. That's coming out with a midpoint, as you can see on the screen there, at around NZD 1.7 billion, which really reinforces what an exceptional investment this has been for Infratil. You know, trading will come and go in this business. It's a competitive, tough market, but if you stand back as an Infratil shareholder, you can be nothing but incredibly pleased, I think. Last thing to mention on there, we talked about it, and Vodafone's talked about it as well. They're looking at whether they should sell their passive mobile tower infrastructure, and Spark's doing the same thing. That process is progressing well, and we expect to update on that before our half year.
Certainly, I'm still on track for, I think, the middle of calendar year or a bit later than that. That's Vodafone. I think I'm nearly done on my piece. I'll talk about renewable energy now and then hand over to you, Phillipapa. Manawa Energy, they released their own results obviously, so I'm not gonna repeat all of that. Here we like their new name and their new logo. Sort of the season for doing new logos obviously. Their focus on renewable generation development we support, but obviously at a large scale in New Zealand, there's quite a bit of uncertainty around that, while the New Zealand Battery Project hangs out there over the market. Maybe there'll be some news on that this afternoon, the budget. Who knows? We're supporting that generation development push with resources here from Morrison & Co.
No issues with the direction of that business from our perspective. It's also really shown how valuable it is in the portfolio performing that role of producing our kinda steady operating cash, particularly with the airport out of action, and Vodafone going through a heavy investment period. A key part of the portfolio. If large scale renewable development, generation development is uncertain in New Zealand, it's the complete opposite in the U.S. for Longroad Energy. There's sort of an unprecedented need for more projects over the next period and also support for developing new projects in that environment.
There's no doubt, it's been tough with supply chain impacts and cost pressures and volatility on that side of the ledger, and you really need a really high-quality team to execute well in that environment, which we believe Longroad has proven it is. Through that tough environment this year, we sort of only developed 530 MW of solar in the U.S. We've sold half of one of those projects, and we've retained the rest of them. That's meant that sort of the balance of the projects we hope to develop this year and the pipeline has all been pushed into future years. None of those projects have gone away. Over the next year, we're on track to deliver 1.3 GW. That's 1,300 MW, if you like.
An enormous amount of generation in terms of generation and storage over this next year. To give you a feel for how well progressed those projects are, they're all name-specific projects. The power purchasing arrangements for all but one of those projects is negotiated and agreed, and the last one is actively under negotiation now. Those projects are highly likely to happen. In the plan as well, we've got another 3.2 GW. This is almost an unfathomable number. You know, 3,200 MW of specific projects for the following two years. The total pipeline over the next three years is a really astonishing number and quite a step up really from where we've been able to develop in the past. Roll back to the start, unprecedented need for projects, unprecedented support.
As long as you have a team that can meet that demand, these are not crazy numbers. Those projects are all specific projects again. We're actively negotiating offtake arrangements for half of those. This is two and three years out already. High conviction on the approach. I think we're feeling really good about how on track they are to deliver their plan over that three-year period. The plan gets bigger after that. We all know we're gonna need more renewable generation. We're also looking to retain more of these projects, and what you should see through that is we'll be able to, and we haven't this year, but we're on track towards this sort of guide on EBITDA growth or EBITDA growth for this business over time.
You can get a feel for how it's growing, and I think that'll make it easier for people to value, which has been tough in the past. Retaining more projects will require more equity, obviously. We're not selling them. You know, over the next three-year period, that looks like, as Paul Gaynor outlined at our Investor Day, another half a billion US dollars. Now, we're up for that, and I know our partner, New Zealand Super, is as well. We really support the approach and ability of the team. When you kind of roll forward, these numbers get really big. We think, as we've announced, it's worth looking around to see if we can find new minority investors, that'll give us more funding options and capital options in the future.
That process is underway, like the Tower One, and we expect to update on that before our half year or so, certainly around the middle of the calendar year. Definitely one to watch. The aim here for Infratil is to develop this global renewables platform, and we're pretty well progressed. We know we've had Galileo Green Energy in Europe for 2.5, nearly three y ears now. We established Gurīn Energy in Asia last year with a 30-person team lifted out of their old shop with, you know, decades plus of experience in the region. Galileo is progressing well. You know, in Europe, the development timelines are much longer than in the U.S., so it can take five to seven years to get your planning approval.
In Texas, that's sort of, you measure that in weeks. It's always gonna take longer to build up your pipeline and execute it, but to compensate for that, development margins and power prices are higher because to recognize that. Although also the projects are a bit smaller, so again, you need the margins to compensate. We see that happen in the market, and so it still remains attractive. Actually, we're on track for our first projects in Italy to reach ready to build later this year, which will be a great moment for the platform and really prove that all the work that's been up to has not been in vain. It certainly hasn't been at all. Gurīn is really underway, and we expect that to follow a similar path to Galileo and Longroad in the long term.
That's all I wanted to say. Now I'm gonna hand over to you.
Thanks, Zach. Thanks, everyone. Well, you know, I'd like to start out with Wellington Airport, and I've gotta say, it's really pleasing to be at the end of the financial year and actually be talking about some international passengers. Actually, as much as that talking about how those international passengers are expected to grow for the next financial year. If we start out just with the result, I think the first thing to note is we've had two full years of COVID impacting the airport. You know, EBITDA for the airport before COVID was about NZD 100 million a year. We had 5.2 million domestic passengers and nearly one million international. You know, if you look at the result for FY 2022 in that context, we've still got a wee way to go in terms of improvement.
You know, a really great result of NZD 56.8 million EBITDA, up NZD 20 million from the prior year. Really largely, that's been contributed to by the domestic passenger numbers. That's been able to be achieved notwithstanding the lockdown that happened late last year. Also we've clearly had the implications of, you know, Omicron variant in the community and the way that people are traveling or not traveling. I'd say great result all round. The airport, as you would imagine, has been quite circumspect in its CapEx spend. There's some things that they've had to carry on with, and which we've fully supported them in doing. One example of that is they're actually redoing Taxiway Bravo. That's the first time that that's actually happened since 1959.
Quite a bit of work to do there, and it's actually a great opportunity to get that work underway now. I think, though, the most thing that people will be interested in about is what we're seeing the traffic looking like for FY 2023, and some of that actually is even just about how it's performing at the moment. The airport's expecting about 350,000 domestic passengers through in May. That's about 75% of pre-COVID levels. We are expecting domestic capacity to get back to about 100% in July, and what that means is at the moment, there's not as many flights coming into Wellington, you know, as you would have had pre-COVID. Some of those planes are bigger, but essentially, we're not operating at full capacity on domestic yet.
The thing to note about international is, I don't know how many of you have been on an international flight lately, but they're actually almost at full capacity. We've got 88% load factors and so essentially there's as much demand there as the airlines can supply. The number of flights is going to increase shortly because we'll have Qantas coming back to the airport in May. The good news on that front is actually it'll be moving to three flights a day on peak days, two flights to Sydney and one to Melbourne. We're really pleased to see that. What that reflects is, for FY 2023, we'll see an uplift in guidance to NZD 65 million-NZD 70 million. Clearly there's COVID risk around that.
We do feel that New Zealand's coming through the other side of that. We're comfortable that that's an appropriate guidance level at this stage of the year. One thing I do wanna just note before we leave Wellington Airport is we've also seen some big changes, or some, you know, passings or changing of the guard there. Steve Sanderson stepped down as CEO recently, and we've had Matt Clarke take up that role, previously having been chief commercial officer. Just really wanna say a big thank you to Steve. You know, it's no mean feat having been the CEO of that airport for 10 years and navigating COVID over the last couple of years, so a shout-out to Steve. Also just to note that Tim Brown stepped down from the airport, he's no longer chair or director.
You know, Tim brought with him a wealth of knowledge and a really strong passion for the airport, and we'll definitely miss his contribution, but I'm pretty confident that he'll continue to give us his advice as a shareholder of Infratil. I don't think we've seen the last of Tim. Now, going on to diagnostic imaging, and as Jason said, you know, this is a sector that we've really put some focus into over the last probably financial year. We first invested in Qscan in June 2020, and last year, you know, we achieved our goal of actually taking that initial investment in Australia and managing to expand that into New Zealand. We've done that with the acquisition of a 50% stake in PRG and with the partnerships with Auckland Radiology and with Bay Radiology.
Putting that into context, I think it's just worth noting that what that platform's delivered to its customers, it's essentially had over one million customers in that period, and those customers have received over 1.7 million scans. How that's delivered is the platform's got over 270 radiologists, and obviously a significant number of sonographers and support staff following in behind them. It's an extensive footprint and, you know, certainly a leading position within New Zealand and with strong growth aspirations in Australia through the Qscan group. In terms of where that performance has landed, I think we'd signaled at the half-year and at the full-year Investor Day that there had been COVID challenges, as you would expect.
It's difficult to get patients in, either when there are, you know, restrictions, but also as the variant has gone through communities, you've got staff down, and issues like that to deal with. Our reported result is EBITDAF of NZD 125 million across those two. We're pleased with that. Just worth noting that Qscan was also impacted by the significant flooding in Australia through New South Wales and parts of Queensland. They've responded really well to that, but, you know, if you saw the images, it was quite, you know, stunning to see exactly the impact and the damage from those floods. In terms of looking to the outlook, you know, we're confident about where that business will operate for the full year.
We've got an EBITDAF guidance of 190-205. That obviously includes a full year contribution from the New Zealand business, and that would largely account for the step up that you're seeing. We're being relatively cautious in that guidance given that we do still have COVID to navigate, but we'll see how that goes. The other things to note, though, is with the borders opening, one of the most exciting things is to actually be able to get these groups of people together and start to talk about the synergies and initiatives that really we had in mind when we bought these two businesses. You know, there's a lot of commonality between the Australian and New Zealand practices from a radiologist profession perspective. Clearly they've got IP on procurements.
They've got shared IT systems or knowledge on IT systems that they can basically work to get the best result and therefore get the most of it across that platform. That's something that is well and truly underway and something that we're really excited to sort of see be able to take sort of physical form, if you like. I'll just quickly jump to RetireAustralia. Really, I just wanna note that the performance of that business for the year can really only be described as tremendous.
I think it's worth reminding ourselves that, you know, generally what has had to happen is you've had the RetireAustralia communities move from a stance where they were trying to keep the virus out of their villages to a stance where they needed to support residents who had contracted the virus, but at the same time try to minimize its spread. The RetireAustralia team did a fantastic job in achieving that and achieved it well. Putting that first priority aside, what they've also managed to do, though, is really execute on their strategy. The proof of the pudding of that is they've had a record year of resales, and they've also come through and had over 76 new sales. Really happy with the sales achievements.
Again, just to note, that's happened despite the challenges of what COVID means in terms of people being able to visit villages and get to see the look and feel of what that offer is. That's been great. I think the other thing I would just focus on is that they are well underway with development and, you know, we're really pleased to see that. That, of course, has also been informed by their revised strategy, you know. What I mean by that is that's looking at what their built form is and what best serves their target clientele. A really good result from RoE. As we indicated in March, we are undertaking a strategic review of RetireAustralia along with NZ Super, and we haven't got anything to update at this stage, but it's certainly underway.
Just quickly, I won't spend too much time on this because we wanna get to questions, but as Jason noted, you know, we've had a record net surplus of NZD 1.17 billion. That's been largely driven by the Tilt Renewables disposal. I think it is worth noting that that was many, many years in the making. We had that business within Trustpower. Really proud of the result, but certainly a long time in the making. Thank you for that contribution. As Jason explained, our proportionate EBITDAF of NZD 513.9 million, that was taking into account some adjustments. We've talked that through on the slide. If you look at it on a continuing operations perspective, the result was NZD 475 million.
We're very pleased with that. I'm not gonna go through too much more of the detail on the capital deployment. We have actually put some information back into an appendix. Annual incentive fees of NZD 100 million, and I will talk to that in a moment. Then I'll also talk to available liquidity. Let's just move on quickly to that. You know, just as a recap for people, we have to get independent valuations undertaken in order to determine the incentive fees. We've done that for all of the entities that were listed there other than the realized incentive fees, which obviously are based on what the assets were actually sold for.
The management agreement essentially provides for an incentive fee if the performance of the asset exceeds the 12% hurdle, and thereafter, 20% of that outperformance accrues to Morrison & Co. With regard to the annual incentive fee, however, it's actually payable in 3 tranches. The first installment is paid, but the two residual tranches only become payable if the value of the relevant investments holds for the next two financial years. What you'll see there is a summary of what those independent valuation outcomes were. CDC is broadly in line with the 31 December valuation, which we disclosed in January, with a slight reduction in discount rate and then really just a roll forward of cash flows.
Longroad we can talk to, but not a lot of movement there, and clearly we've got, you know, a lot of confidence in the outlook for that business. The only other thing to note, I think, is Galileo Green Energy. It's the first time that that business has been subject to an independent valuation. Clearly a lot of activity going on in Galileo, and we think we'll see more from that in the current financial year. For the purposes of the independent valuation and incentive fee assessment, there's no incentive fee payable. Right. Turning now to the dividend, I won't really cover that too much other than really just to focus on the dividend outlook. You know, we really are seeing strong cash flows from CDC, Vodafone, and from our diagnostic imaging platform.
For that reason, we are able to say that we continue to have confidence in modest CPS growth for that dividend for now. Then debt capacity and facilities. We covered some of this at the half year, so I won't go into too much. We've got available cash at the moment of NZD 773 million as at 31 March. Some of that is ring-fenced for the payment of incentive fees. We've noted that there. But really the, you know, the great thing from our perspective was we've refinanced all of our bank facilities during the period. We have about NZD 900 million of undrawn facilities, and we think that we've got improved terms that will serve us well going forward.
Just to highlight Infratil's gearing, we're sitting at 9.4%, obviously well down on the target range of about 30%, but a really good place to be for now, given the backdrop that we're facing. Just two more things from me, Jason, then we can hand over to questions. Really just wanted to note that we have got an upcoming bond which is maturing in June. The Infratil board is considering making another offer of a bond. At this stage, we're expecting that we may offer an eight year bond with a four year rate reset. We'll provide some more information on that next week. Yeah, just obviously what we really do want to do where possible is to provide those maturing bondholders with the opportunity to reinvest.
We're also going to enter into a book build process for this bond, so we'll provide more detail on that next week. Just wrapping it up really, and this is FY 2023 guidance. I think in some respects, you know, comparing this guidance to the FY 2022 guidance is not straightforward. The first thing to note is this is proportionate EBITDAF guidance on a continuing operations basis, which just means really that it excludes Trustpower Retail. It also assumes that the portfolio change is that there's no change to the portfolio, so has RetireAustralia in there, for example. What we're guiding to is a range of NZD 510 million-NZD 550 million.
Some of that uplift is coming from the fact that we've got a full year contribution from our diagnostic imaging business, and we've also got a full year contribution from Kao Data and from Gurīn Energy. I think it is worth noting that, you know, risk remains on the performance of some of our portfolio of assets. You know, we do have the lingering effect of COVID. We've set this guidance based on what we know year to date and, you know, our current expectations of those activities and how they will ramp up. We'll see how roaming comes back for Vodafone, for example, Wellington Airport traffic resumption, but the signs are positive at this stage. With that, I'll hand it to you, Jason.
Nice. Thank you, Phillipapa. Thank goodness your forecast is better than mine on how long I would take. But really helpful, I think, overview of those points. Let me wrap up and we go to questions and answers. Summary from our perspective is so obviously a record result, but also a strong operating performance from Vodafone and outlook, we think for CDC, as Phillipapa outlined. There are risks to that. COVID is around and all the consequences of that we know about. We've tried to be a bit conservative, I think, in our guidance, but we'll see how we go. There are obviously processes underway around a number of those assets that could demonstrate value above where the market currently has us.
Again, there's no guarantee any of those transactions will happen, although they are well progressed. Balance sheet is in amazing position, given the environment. I think the portfolio is in a great position to deal with things like inflation, and even a recession, right, with demand drivers not as correlated to GDP as others, I think. It's given us confidence to raise dividend, which is a good outcome, I think, and pleasing to do. Looking ahead, we obviously have some capacity. We're still seeing plenty of attractive opportunities within the portfolio as we saw over this year, and the sectors we're in and new investments, and we continue to scan outside of it. We're really happy with that.
No, no issues or loss of confidence on that front, but we will continue to be disciplined and patient. We took a look at something quite large last year, but remained disciplined, and we'll continue to look because there are plenty of interesting things that we're seeing. I'll leave it there, and we'll go to questions, operator. Thank you.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Owen Birrell from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to start very. Apologies for the very quick start. With a guidance clarification question. Just wanted to confirm that that includes the SaaS accounting change.
Yeah, that's right. It does. We've basically moved to include that expense in guidance.
Okay. Sorry. Now I just wanted to touch on a couple of sort of, I guess, the bigger macro dynamics that are playing out, across the markets at the moment and how that possibly impacts, the portfolio and portfolio valuations. The first one for me is just around the rising interest rates. I'm wondering if you could provide us a bit of clarity around what risk-free rates are used in the valuation calculations for your various assets and how sensitive they are to any rises in those interest rates.
I don't think we have those, like, off the top of our heads, Owen, but that's something we can take away. They tend to use a long-term rate rather than a spot one. I can give you some assurance around that. They tend to be conservative. We haven't published sensitivities to that, but I understand the question. I think the way we're thinking about the interest rates is no doubt that will impact discount rates in some way. What we're trying to talk to and increase clarity over is the extent to which there's inflation protection built into these assets. That's a stream of work that should act to counteract some of that. We don't have the exact statistics on that for you analysts now.
Just to clarify what I was talking about there, that's what we were trying to say.
Okay. The second, I guess just looking at some of the broader geopolitical.
Mm.
Impacts, and in particular, the events in Russia and Ukraine, I'm wondering if there's been any major impacts to some of your assets. I guess the two that I'm alluding to, one is CDC, whether there's been any change in cyber activity therefore that you've had to react to. The other one is just in the renewables front. Whether there's any major changes in demand for renewables given the rising energy costs.
Yeah. Cyber is definitely a focus at CDC, and the Australian federal authorities have been incredibly strong on that. We haven't seen a massive uptick there, but it is definitely sort of a high alert situation across those businesses, an important area for us to continue to invest in with our customers, but nothing really to report. In Europe, definitely demand for renewable energy has gone through the roof, but it's not any easier to build them, unfortunately. Not only the planning restrictions, but also just getting solar panels and the like is uncertain and transmission will become uncertain as well. I think medium-term outlook is really good.
It's really, there's a big lump, I think, to get through for Europe, to try and get the developments actually rolling. Hopefully, that will free up the planning, and I think global supply chains will respond. We're optimistic on that, but really the regulatory environment is gonna be the issue. While demand might be great, you still have to wait seven years to get your project through.
That's great. Thank you.
Thanks, Owen.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Matt Montgomerie from Forsyth Barr. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Good morning. It's actually Aaron Ibbotson. Just to use the better quality line. I've got a few questions. If I may, I'll just rattle through them. First of all, you know, you alluded to that your Vodafone guidance, quote-unquote, "may be a bit conservative." I was just wondering specifically what you are assuming around roaming return, if anything.
I can cover that if you like. I think, Aaron, as you'd expect, notwithstanding where we are seeing traffic come back into Wellington Airport, you still only get a fairly short-term view of that, and it will get greater confidence in that as we get to see airline schedules. You'd expect that to be the case for airports across New Zealand. I think it's fair to say that the assumption around roaming is, you know, pretty conservative, but we're comfortable where it lands for now.
It's like 10%-20% of normal. Like, it's quite conservative.
Okay. Thank you. Jason, maybe I misheard you, but just to clarify on the Longroad comment.
Yes.
Because in the release you sort of, if I understood the comment correctly, you said you expected news around the half year, which you know is either September or November, depending if you mean, you know, when it ends or when you report. But then you sort of said around mid local calendar year, if I didn't get that right?
Yes.
When you talked. Just, you know, when sort of do you think we should hear some news on the potential minority investor into Longroad?
That it would be definitely before 30 September, as I understand your question. Yeah. You don't have, you won't have to wait till November. It'll be definitely before 30 September.
Okay. Thank you very much.
No worries.
Around debt, and how you're thinking and what you're seeing, I guess. You know, there's no secret that, you know, debt costs have gone up quite dramatically over the last, you know, few months. I've got two questions. You know, how are you thinking around that? Does that make you wanna sort of potentially run with slightly or continue to run with slightly lower leverage for a more extended period? You know, how does it make you think around Longroad and may, and I guess the other.
Mm.
renewables platform. More importantly, you know, how does the investor discussions go? You know, it's quite a different world when you're looking at potential 5% versus 2.5%.
Mm.
You know, the 80% or so that is funded with debt.
That's it.
You know, presumably this must have an impact on what people are willing to pay for the asset.
Yeah. Understand. Do you wanna deal with it at the portfolio level?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, certainly. If I start at the corporate level, as you said, Owen, we are fortunate to be sitting on the position that we are with regard to bank debt. Clearly, we've got a significant portfolio of bonds, but, you know, a nice maturity profile there, and that's essentially largely fixed, so that interest cost is what it is. At the portfolio level, I think the way that we look at it is to have regard to what that sort of corporate cost is when we're making decisions about where we deploy capital. You know, our target is to have that 11%-15% return. How we deliver that and what we achieve it through, and the kind of interest cost associated with that is really the overlay we need to do when we look at portfolio composition.
That's where I would see it come through.
That in renewables development specifically, no doubt it's a big input cost among a number that are increasing, I would say. For our near-term projects, we've hedged a lot of that, which is a helpful and quite cheap product, so we're okay in the near term. In the longer term, I think it gets treated like all the other input costs into a development. You have to see the power price kinda react to maintain margin. It's all really about that margin. So far.
Mm-hmm.
We have seen that right. There is a real scarcity of projects and a real demand for them, particularly in systems that really just need them for balance. The ones we're developing in Arizona are all going into California, which needs a heck of a lot of that power. We're okay as long as the market continues to be rational, right? If there's a big glut of projects like you get at the end of the tax credits rolling off that happened sorta last year, then I think you would see an issue with the economics. Just for now, it's so hard to develop projects without managing to maintain them.
Okay, thank you. Just finally, I'm sorry to go on about this same topic. Just around the, you know, tower assets for Vodafone. I mean, that presumably is the one deal that is most exposed to long bond rates that have moved quite a lot. You know, I appreciate you probably don't want to give much detail, but if you look at the discussions you've had, you know, I find it difficult to believe that there hasn't been a change of pricing expectations from a potential investor into that asset over the last few months. I'm keen to hear if you've got anything that you're willing to add to the picture.
Okay. Wouldn't say too much, but I would say you would think so. If you look at some of those transactions in Australia, the 38 times one, you know, I'm not sure it necessarily applies if you look, if you're really long term and you're thinking about your portfolio in that context. I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure that's playing out in the market, necessarily.
That's very clear. Thank you.
Thanks, Owen.
Okay. Sorry, thank you. Next question comes from Phil Campbell from UBS. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. Just had three quick questions. The first one was just on CDC. Jason, obviously, noticed that the valuation, independent valuation went up to NZD 3.1 billion. We have had bond yields going down. I was kind of curious as to what was driving that. I suppose the next question is kind of how much confidence do you have in that valuation? Like, if you were to sell, say, a stake of CDC, you know, is that kind of a realizable value, do you think?
Mm.
The second question was just on Longroad, and obviously I think there's been a couple of Hawaii projects which have been delayed because they couldn't negotiate the PPA prices.
Right.
with Hawaiian Electric. I was just wondering if that was just more of a Hawaii situation. Doesn't sound as though it is impacting some of the other projects in the mainland, but I'd just be interested in your thoughts on that. Yeah, just following on both the telco, obviously you kind of mentioning these Aussie transactions. Obviously, the TPG transaction, you know, last week
Quite an impressive valuation on that telco business. Again, can we assume that those type of valuations could potentially be translated into New Zealand?
Cool.
Do you want me to start with the first one?
Yeah, great.
Yeah. Phil, just with regards to the CDC valuation, I had noted that there's really been a relatively modest movement since 31 December. Taking your point though about bond yields going down, I think that the movers in CDC are those four data centers that Jason referred to are getting closer to completion. The other thing to note is that, you know, there has been a slight reduction in the discount rate accordingly. We don't see that as a big mover. I think it's something in the order of 10 basis points. There's just been a walkthrough of the cash flow, as I mentioned.
I suppose, going to your point about the CDC valuation and whether or not we think that's a realizable value, I think from our perspective, we're very confident that that valuation is probably at the lower end in terms of where the market would see the value of CDC at the moment. The way that that valuation builds up the value of the development pipeline, you know, if you were to compare to the way that even renewables are being valued right now, that pipeline's not being valued that far out, would be my response to that.
No, I agree. There's pretty impressive comp up in the U.S. with Switch. With a pretty extensive multiple. I think it's conservative as usual, which is right for those sorts of valuations.
Mm.
Hawaii, you mentioned that is definitely one of those ones. Freight costs to Hawaii are like crazy high. There, you can't actually ship direct to Hawaii. You have to go to a mainland U.S. port and then bring it back. That has impacted the economics of all the projects that were actually awarded in that round where we won our projects. We had been negotiating with HECO, the local utility. They actually had agreed to a new price, and then it all changed again. Freight got even worse. Actually what the utility decided to do is, rather than doing these kind of one-off negotiations, let's just run the round again with a new set of economics so everybody can start again.
They brought forward their next tender, and we just sort of let those projects go in terms of the negotiations we're having, and we'll drop into that tender. It is definitely a theme. It is showing, I think, how margins are able to react in this environment at the moment. What was the last question?
TPG.
Oh, towers, yeah.
Mm.
Yeah, exactly. I think fundamentally, there's not a lot of reason why the businesses in New Zealand should be valued in any different way. Certainly the contract structures, you know, the way these things are being built.
For the financial year end 2023 for Infratil's capacity. Just secondly, going back to Vodafone, just the NZD 30 million guidance range. I know it's similar to that you've just gone past range, but what are the sort of main moving parts there? You've covered operating, but are there any other moving parts you can talk to there? Thirdly, Manawa. I just saw that you're slightly at odds with company. I think you're sort of NZD 4 million or so lower in terms of the guidance bounds. I just wondered if you'd normalized for anything there. Then just the last one on dividend.
Are you expecting sort of modest dividend growth to move toward, you know, the dividend growth that we saw sort of five years ago of 10%, you know, within a few years? Can you give a bit of a feel for how you see that trajectory, Jason?
What was your question on CDC? Did you say it says installed 268? Is that true? Sorry.
I think he was talking about adding 104 MW this year.
Yeah, yeah.
Whether or not that's gonna change anymore in FY 2023. We've got the four data centers coming online within the next four months.
Mm-hmm.
Anything beyond that.
Yeah, we'll have Melbourne starting construction, but that's not installed, right? That's constructed.
No, yeah.
Sorry, Steve, maybe we might have to come back to you on that question. I think I missed it. On the Vodafone guidance. No, there's not much else we're gonna talk about in terms of where we see the pockets of conservatism here, Steve, but there are a couple of other little areas. I understand the question. On Manawa-
Manawa. I can cover.
That's you, yeah.
Yeah, Steve, the difference between our guidance for Manawa and their guidance is essentially that they've included one month of contribution from the Trustpower Retail. We just decided that it was easier to exclude it to save ourselves explaining it later. That's all the difference is.
Yeah.
Your dividend.
Dividend, look, I think it's exactly as Phillippa has said. We're seeing that trajectory, but within the underlying businesses supporting that modest CPS growth. We also are balancing that against the attractive opportunities we're seeing internally and other new businesses in our focus sectors or maybe others. Trying to strike a balance there. We don't want people to get too carried away. Equally, you know, when we raise money for Vodafone and essentially raise money for our diagnostic imaging businesses, we wanna reward people for the operating earnings and growth that we're achieving there in some way as well. We're trying to get a bit of a balance there.
Sorry, Jason. I missed the very first part of your response on CDC. Thanks for the other responses. Was there a number that you gave for the 268 by the end of financial year 2023?
No, actually I didn't. Is that installed or built? I actually asked you a question.
It's in the annual.
Yeah.
It's in the annual report. You're sort of saying what the installed capacity is gonna be middle of the financial year, but not at the end.
Oh, okay.
You've obviously provided, you know.
Yeah, sorry.
It's the same.
It'll be the same.
Mm.
In these numbers, yeah.
No additional traffic there in the second half.
Just those four data centers within the first four months.
Okay.
That's right. Melbourne won't come on till next year. We'll start this year, but it won't come on till next year.
Okay.
Yeah.
I shouldn't say just.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe the better question would be, if you stepped up by 104 MW this year, would you expect a similar sort of step up for FY 2024?
No, no way.
You know, given COVID's kind of
Yeah. Yeah.
Settled down.
No way. That's a massive lift, right? We've done that over 18 months. We'd have to be building that already now to achieve that. The only one we're really talking about today is Melbourne, but there are others in advanced sort of planning.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's useful. Thank you.
Yeah. All good.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Wade Gardiner, from Craigs Investment Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi there.
Hi, Wade.
Look, don't wanna harp on about the CDC valuation, but
Yeah
It sounds like the increase from December was really around, I guess, a change in the risk profile that was being applied to those properties that were coming or the developments that were coming on.
Mm-hmm.
That sort of outweighed anything around risk-free rate increases. I guess, therefore, the question is, if all of those properties were developed, because it doesn't sound like you said closer to completion. If all of them are developed, what will that add to the valuation? Like, will we see over the next four months a further increase in that valuation? Also how is the valuer incorporating, I guess, you know, the future development, the other sort of 500-odd MW that's to be developed, you know, and greenfield land?
Yeah, yeah.
I can start if you like.
Mm.
My instinct, Wade, is that the actual completion of those developments, given that they are quite, you know, really close now, that the actual completion wouldn't move the valuation too much from here. What will be looked at is how they fill up and how that capacity profile looks for those data centers. That's already been taken into account, but it's a bit like what, you know, Jason was saying, once you actually have the facility built and you're able to take people through it, that's where we'll also see additional velocity on any capacity that is available. That's what I would see is coming through the valuation. With regard to what it's assuming around future development pipeline, it's a lot lower than the 500 you referred to.
Mm.
There was an element of development pipeline in that valuation, but it's nowhere near the 500.
No, no, it's definitely not taking all that land position into account. That's more for, I guess, comfort that they're planning around further growth rather than saying that just turns up in the valuation immediately.
So land-
Sorry, I thought that was why you had the big uplift last year, that you were actually including, you know,
Bit of Melbourne.
An assumption that it was getting developed.
That was a bit of Melbourne. Do you mean at 31 December? That was a bit of Melbourne, basically, and some contracts.
Probably this time last year there was a big uplift and my understanding.
Okay
with that was because, the independent valuer
Yeah
incorporated the greenfield and assumed that it was being developed.
Not all greenfield. The question will be.
How much of
Yeah. Sorry.
Yeah, I understand the question. I don't have that number, but I know the question.
Okay.
They've not included any more greenfield since they did last year, so they definitely did include some. What we're referencing is we bought a whole heap of land, and what we're trying to tell you is they didn't just turn that land into MW in the valuation. All that underlying stuff about additional MW development beyond this 104 hasn't really changed except Melbourne in December. I know what your question is. How much future MW have they got in the valuation, right?
Yeah. That would be quite nice to know versus sort of what the greenfield land
Yeah
potential is.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
In relation to that, the first part of the answer about, you know, capacity changing, and surely the valuer makes assumptions around-
Cadence
You know, the capacity being taken up over the next year or so, and it's really just about the timing that, you know, could be brought forward or slower, and that really shouldn't change the valuation by too much.
No, it doesn't. I mean, things happen from a contractual perspective, even within the space of three months. All I'm saying is that the valuer will be given up-to-date information about contractual developments, and those will feed into the valuation.
Yeah. We have seen in the past, if big contracts are landed, that can move it, is all Phillippa was saying. Yes, normal cadence, it wouldn't-
Okay
move it a lot. Yeah.
Just a couple of quick questions on Longroad then. In the annual report, it says fair value of your stake is $236 million.
Yeah.
How is that calculated?
Same as before. We didn't touch on it in the preso, but it's basically the same methodology as before, where they're looking 12 months ahead. The big movers there are basically those two projects that are coming on. Yeah, still very conservative, not the way we expect it to be valued in sort of market, for market purposes.
Just looking at the you know, for example, the two solar farms that you
Mm
that finished this year. You sold half of Prospero. Why was that? Should we expect that going forward in terms of, you know, there'll be some that you keep and some that you-
Mm
... you sell some, and therefore, the new equity that's
Mm
Essentially coming in is not necessarily gonna be from one partner. It might actually be from a
Exactly
you know, a number of different players buying stakes in these developments.
Development. We look at our own portfolio and decide where, how much risk we want in particular areas, particular contract structures. We should definitely expect some optimization over time for that. That one we paired with another one in California, so it was actually quite an attractive pairing that enabled us to essentially reduce our exposure to Texas. We've obviously got Prospero one there, we've got El Campo there. That was enough Texas, it felt. Mainly we'll be looking at it in terms of health of the portfolio going forward, rather than needing to recycle those projects to get the capital back and put it back in as the shift.
Okay, thank you. That's all from me.
Okay.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Boyes for closing remarks.
Thank you. Perfect timing, everyone. Just one final word from me. We wanted to acknowledge Brian Gaynor, who sadly passed away earlier this week. He was a really big supporter of Lloyd, our founder, when he was coming through the New Zealand financial markets system. Also a great supporter of the business, an astute investor and commentator, and he'll be sadly missed, so our sincere condolences to his family. That is it from us. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you soon.