Hello, and welcome to the Mercury Interim Results 2026 Investor Call. We've got Stew Hamilton, Chief Executive, Richard Hopkins, CFO, presenting, and will be followed by questions. Start, Stew.
Well, kia ora, everybody. Welcome to the presentation of our interim results for FY 2026. Very excited to be here with Richard to presenting a strong set of results. This slide, which I'll cover off, really talks to our strong H- first half 2026 performance. Shows that we're investing at scale and growth, and that we're performing very well. The three themes you'll see across the results for the first half are resilient earnings, our disciplined growth, and our strong balance sheet management. This all brings together our strategy of being better today, building tomorrow, and brighter together. Starting with resilient earnings. For the first half, we have delivered an EBITDAF of NZD 337 million. That's up 28% on the prior comparable period, driven primarily by higher renewable generation and a very good cost discipline.
From a customer perspective, we now have 40% of our customers with multi-products, continuing to show the strategy since we have merged and acquired with Trustpower. From investing in our core assets, we're pleased to communicate that we have reached final investment decision for NZD 590 million investment back into the next 3 hydro stations on our river. That will take place over the next decade, adding additional 76 MW of capacity. From a growth perspective, our geothermal OEC5 unit at Ngātamariki, near Taupō, is commissioned, and that commenced in January 2026. It's delivered on time and on budget.
Our two wind projects, the first one at Corriedale Two in Southland, second one at Kaiwaikawe , are both under construction and tracking to deliver, and first, basically by, the first part of FY 2027, the second part of this calendar year. Those two projects combined will deliver enough power for 140,000 homes, which is the equivalent of Christchurch City. Moving towards the next consent for our next wind farm project. That is a project that many will know as Mahinerangi Stage Two. We have named it Puketoi, which means the hill that catches the wind, and that is targeting final investment decision in the first quarter of FY 2027, so the middle of this calendar year.
From a balance sheet perspective, we've got strong financial in place with our debt to EBITDA ratio, giving liquidity and headroom to support investment and further investment at scale. We have an ordinary interim dividend up 4% to NZD 0.10, and importantly, have invested just around half of the EBITDAF, NZD 270 million, into new and existing assets. Looking ahead to the full financial year of 2026, our guidance remains on track to deliver our EBITDAF guidance of NZD 1 billion, deliver our OpEx of NZD 370 million, deliver our sustained business CapEx of NZD 150 million, and deliver our guided dividend of NZD 0.25. Overall, shows delivering for shareholders and also delivering for New Zealand. This covers off the progress against our strategic priorities, our five key aspirations.
I won't go into detail of it except to just share that this is the strategy we shared in June 2025 at our Investor Day. The target 5 objectives, shown in blue through the middle there, are all progressing well. The scorecard shows traffic light, performance for each of those. I'll touch briefly on a couple. Starting with generation development, I'll talk a bit more to our geothermal pipeline coming up. We now have a, a team in place to keep delivering in that space, and there's a slide later in the pack on that. In terms of capturing energy transition growth, we've commenced a number of long-term contracts with Fonterra, with Whakatane Mill, with Fizzy, which is very exciting in terms of capturing the electrification growth.
We're also progressing with further smart hot water control programs that bring more, another 20 MW of control under management, which supports increasing flexibility. In terms of rebuilding sector confidence, there's no doubt that we have been doing well in this space but still have a way to go. There's confidence growing. There's still a lot for us to be done, and we'll keep pushing on that area as we progress this year, particularly as we head towards the trilemma, which is making sure we have affordable, sustainable, and secure electricity for New Zealand. The final point I'll cover on that slide, just down under Earning Transformation, is the work we're doing around cost discipline and cost management. Very pleased to say that we're on track to deliver our reduced OpEx target of NZD 370 million for this year.
Over the second half of 2025 or the first half of financial year 2026, we've welcomed two new executives to the team. Soraya Peke-Mason joins us most recently from Suncorp into the Chief Customer Officer role and has had the team running really well. I look forward to her over the next little while, sharing with you the work that we're doing around transforming our retail business. Kathryn Thompson also joined us in the last part of 2025. Kathryn joins as the Chief Sustainability Officer, having held executive roles at a couple of other gentailers in the past. Enormously experienced and adding enormous amount of value to Mercury already. Then, as we head into April, I'll also welcome Michelle Major to the team. Michelle's joining from Vocus in Australia. She'll be joining Mercury as the Chief People Officer.
We continue to make really great progress in the maturity of our health, safety, and wellbeing systems. We've been implementing a number of world-class programs, and those programs are starting to deliver results. Results show up ultimately in our total recordable injury frequency rate, TRIFR, and for the calendar year, it's at 0.39 and showing just a consistently better result over time, with the number heading further down, which is great. We also have teams and talents that are developing skills in a number of areas. The key areas that we're developing strength in is really in the strategic opportunities ahead of us, so in the retail, the technology, the generation development, and the asset resilience areas. I'll hand over to Richard to cover some of our result information.
Thanks, Stew. Look, you've seen the half, half year 26 delivery scorecard, ticks off and our progress against our, our strategic priorities. What I'm going to take you through is what drove the results, what it means for cash and investment capacity, and how we're staying disciplined on balance sheet while continuing to grow our dividends. Look, the sector's been under a fair bit of scrutiny since the low hydro year in 2024. Our response is really simple, to deliver and keep on delivering. From my side, it comes down to cash conversion and discipline, fund growth within guardrails. Let delivery do the talking. Looking at the slide, look, Stew and I are really proud of what the team has delivered in the first half.
We've delivered a record EBITDA of NZD 537 million and an operating cash flow of NZD 531. What matters to me is the quality of the earnings, earnings converting to cash and the cash funding delivery and dividends. When you sort of look high level across the slide as a whole, you see everything's moving in the right direction. Trading margin up, OpEx down, EBITDA up, NPAT up, operating cash flow up, stay in business CapEx pretty much in line, growth investment up, and dividends up. Doesn't get much better than that. We've invested NZD 208 million in growth during the year, NZD 64 in stay in business CapEx, and declared a NZD 0.10 interim dividend.
The NPAT was NZD 20 million, that's driven by the negative non-cash fair value movements on electricity derivatives across the existing long-dated contracts and three new contracts signed during the period, including the Huntly HFO. Look, the story is really simple: resilient earnings, disciplined growth, and balance sheet strength. Moving to the drivers of EBITDA, the bridge from NZD 418 million to NZD 537 million is mainly higher generation volume, +NZD 113 million, lower OpEx, +NZD 24 million. Generation volume was up 0.5 terawatt-hour, hydro really did the heavy lifting there, and we converted conditions into earnings and earnings into cash. Customer yields were modestly positive. Mass market VWAP up NZD 11 a megawatt hour, 7%, CNI VWAP at NZD 1.2 per megawatt hour.
Look, our net position reflects, lower wholesale prices and our net CFD position with high generation, and it moves with conditions and portfolio settings. On to the next slide, costs and cash discipline. Look, OpEx was lower, and what's that been driven by? Well, we, we talked at year-end about the savings and the initiatives that we've put in place. The main savings were through people, through a little bit on maintenance, which is mainly timing and other operating costs, as major projects completed and consulting reduced. We're tracking to the FY 2026 OpEx guidance of NZD 370, down from NZD 396 last year, easing inflation, and it's all been around delivering through the operating model and tighter cost control.
Despite investing at pace, you can see our net debts moved only NZD 60 million, so up to NZD 2.243 billion in December. 50% of our EBITDA went into investing, and that's the discipline point, funding delivery without stretching the balance sheet. Turning to stay in business CapEx, we sort of break down what's been going on there. Stay in business CapEx is all about reliability and protecting long-term earnings quality. The mix includes geothermal drilling, hydro rehab and resilience, Arapuni left abutment and Taupo control gates, plus other sustaining CapEx. It was 64 versus 73 last year, mainly lower drilling, drilling, and major hydro resilience spend, such as Karāpiro completed. The Rotokawa drilling progressed as well. The key point is planned, sustained, sustainable investment and not maintenance being cut. Next slide, please.
Look, the hydro inflows were elevated at the 80th percentile. Hydro generation was really strong during the year, during the 6 months, with record generation in July. We've set out what's been going on with the spot prices there, and we've managed a reasonable amount of spill, so over 400 gigawatt hours there. Hydro is increasingly our flexibility engine, supporting the systems through volatility. We've committed, as Stew's touched on, to more hydro rehabs and investing there. NZD 590 million has gone through FID, all approved by the board, which is protecting the long-term future of those assets and also generating more power as well.
look, I'll hand, hand you back to Stew now to run through the hydro investment program in a bit more detail.
Thanks, Richard. Yeah, as, as you mentioned, definitely the hydro system on the Waikato River is the core of our portfolio, and I believe it's one of, if not the most flexible renewable asset in New Zealand. So it's great to see the work we're putting into this, this very valuable asset. Firstly, we completed the upgrade of our Karapiro Hydro Station. That's, that was a 3-year program that's completed, and Karapiro is now fully operational and uprated from that. We've now got a strong team in place and really strong supplier relationships from that 3-year program. They're well established, and that now sets us up to move into the next 10 years of the program. We have now, as Richard mentioned, committed to three further hydro upgrades, with the third in play approved for $590 million.
They'll enable the upgrade of Maraetai One, Ōhākurī, and the Ātiamuri stations. The design and prep work for that is now underway over FY 2026, FY 2027, FY 2028. That'll include the procurement of early lead items and the design and construction, manufacture of various parts, including turbine and generator. We'll kick into the actual replacement process through the late part of FY 2028 into FY 2029, and that overall, that program will take us through to about FY 2034 and provide increases in capacity by 76 MW spread across the three power stations. We're also maintaining resilience of the core set of assets. That's really vital to delivering our strategy. Part of that is the approval of the FID investment to strengthen the Arapuni Dam , with construction underway, and you'll see a big part of that coming in in the next half.
This is really about reducing risk, strengthening asset resilience, and the Arapuni left abutment is a key component of that. The Arapuni Dam is our oldest operational dam, constructed in 1927, and so for us, it's making sure that that asset is resilient for the next century ahead of us. Also, over the last couple of years, we've re-established our geothermal development capability. The focus has been on rebuilding our capability and the design, the build, and the commissioning of geothermal power stations. That includes and is demonstrated through the successful commissioning of our 50MW Ngātamariki plant. We've also now have a team that's successfully been executing on a drilling program, and so over the last couple of years, we've completed the 8-well geothermal program, which has spread wells across Kawerau, Ngātamariki, and Rotokawa.
We'll also combine that with the project capability and the project management that we're supporting in the supercritical geothermal project that's being driven by the government. With that capability in place and the delivery of new production and a drilling team, we'll now turn our attention to the future and how we can utilize those teams to deliver future growth and build into the potential five TWh that we've identified. We'll provide more detail on that plan in May, and all of you are welcome to join us at that investor event. Mercury's wind development team, I think, are the leading wind farm growth team in New Zealand, if not Australasia. We've developed five of the last six wind farms in New Zealand, and the team is doing a great job at the two current projects underway.
Both are on track for delivery on time and on budget. If you look at Kaiwera Downs, we now have, I think actually today, we might have nearly 12 of the 36 turbines up in the air, which is fantastic. First generation's expected in May, and then that'll flow through to the end of the year with all those turbines coming on stream. Up at Kaiwaikawe, the first parts have been delivered to site earlier this week, and first generation for that project is expected in August. Our generation pipeline continues to grow as well as the team continues to explore, identifies, and develops these prospects, so our total pipeline has expanded further to, by another 2 terawatt hour.
The bulk of our pipeline options exist in the North Island, as you can see from sort of third blue bar along on that chart, on the first chart there. That's great to have those options located near the load in New Zealand. Our team now has the job of progressing those various projects through a disciplined set of stage gates, really making sure that the most valuable projects are progressing, so we can make the right choice for a final investment decision at the right time. Overall, if you come back, we come back to the projects that are nearer term and those that are in construction and closer to those final investment decisions, we still remain on track to deliver the 3.5 terawatt hours by 2030.
We've got the balance sheet capacity to do that, we've got the team capability to deliver. Our project pipeline is critical to make sure that we hit our FY 2030 EBITDA aspiration of NZD 1.15 billion-NZD 1.25 billion. As I mentioned, we have a pretty disciplined project gate process to take these projects through. We have about 65 Mercury team members in the generation development team embedded across Mercury, their role is to make sure that we're bringing the best projects to the fore and then delivering on those. Our fully renewable asset base does require firming to support not only our current set of assets, but also our growth ambitions.
Part of our wholesale team and our generation development team inside Mercury, big part of their focus is on developing the firming to support our renewable growth assets and their aspirations. We've several diversified solutions currently in place, shown on the chart in the bottom there, but also we're looking out to the future, particularly as we head towards our 2030 and what's required to support our growth plan to 2030. We are, as part of that, targeting a battery energy storage solution or a BESS. We have a consented BESS at Whakamaru, and we're targeting final investment decision round about this time next year. Moving through to the regulatory and political part of our ecosystem, there's been extensive focus in this area and a market review that was conducted late last year.
Ultimately, that independent advice confirms that the electricity sector is performing well. However, further evolution is required, particularly with the declining indigenous gas situation in New Zealand and the requirement to firm dry years. The key themes that we take away from the various reviews that have taken place, the first is that electrification continues to grow, and with that comes demand growth. We also see strong theme around security supply, and of course, the final one, which is a major focus for New Zealanders, both businesses and households, is in affordability. Our approach and the choices we're making around those three areas include, when it comes to demand growth and electrification, the delivery of our renewable generation pipeline. Through that process, we're committed to developing those projects in consultation with iwi, communities, and stakeholders, always considering environmental impact through the consenting process.
We're also seeking to help increase demand by supporting large industrials to transition and to electrify. When it comes to security of supply, we've been supporting market mechanisms, and that includes entering into the firming supply agreements with the Huntly Firming Option. Then from an affordability perspective, the three key focusing on: firstly, around delivering greater clarity and transparency of our bills and our pricing; secondly, providing consumers with control, and that includes the work we're doing over the next six months for Time of Use products for our customers; and finally, making sure we have the care in place for those customers that are in situations of hardship or vulnerability. I'll hand back now to Richard, just to touch on the customer work that we've got underway.
Yeah, thanks, Stew. Look, I just think that's an awesome program of work we've got going on. It's so exciting to be part of Mercury in delivering for New Zealand. When we look at the customer side of things, just a couple of few points from me. Multi-product continues to build, so we've got 40% of our customers now are multi-product. That's two or more products, and that's improving value per customer. Our connections are up at 30,000 versus prior calendar period. Our fiber's now ticked over 150,000, and we're over 94% of the broadband base. OpEx per connection is down, and you can really see that in the yellow bars at the bottom, bottom chart.
Yeah, it's really great to see down 4% versus prior calendar period and 16% below HY 2024. Big, big progress there. Unit economics are improving through multi-product pricing actions and, and customer value initiatives and really disciplined cost to serve. Making some good progress on Time of Use, and it's good for customers, good for system resilience, and we're on track to have that delivered by the end of the FY 2026. Lastly, we've got a great new leader in Soraya leading the customer business. We're really excited to see what she can achieve, and you should be looking forward to hearing more from her as we talk to you going forwards.
On the, the next slide, look, we're disciplined and we're careful, with our, with, with our money and the choices that we make. We, we target a debt to EBITDA of 2-3 times S&P adjusted, and that's consistent with the BBB+ rating. At half year 2026, we're at 2.2, and net debt has gone up slightly to NZD 2.243 billion. It's really well within the guardrails, while we invest NZD 1 billion across OEC5, KD Two, and Kaiwaikawe, and get those online and delivering money and cash to the bottom line.
Look, we've got undrawn facilities of NZD 465 million, and we're proactively considering the refinancing options for our NZD 200 million Green Bond, which matures in September, and looking to go to market and get that done during March. We've got, you know, NZD 1 billion, as I mentioned, committed into new wind and geothermal, we're also investing significantly in hydro, including the NZD 590 million rehab program that Stew mentioned, 76 MW, 87 GW hours per year. The big point here is that we can deliver the program on balance sheets with conservative debt to EBITDA settings, with liquidity headroom to manage volatility. We're in a good, good place. In terms of dividends, look, interim dividend is NZD 0.10, at 4%, dividend guidance remains NZD 0.25.
The payout is towards the low end of the range 'cause we're in peak investment period, and balancing progressive dividends and our long-track record of growth with funding value-accretive growth and maintaining balance sheet resilience. Our half-year operating cash flow supported dividends and growth investment with balance sheet headroom and portfolio flexibility. 2026 guidance, this is pretty simple, unchanged. Full year EBITDA remains at NZD 1 billion. It's based on 4.4 terawatt hours of hydro generation, obviously subject to hydrology and wholesale market conditions going forward. We're confirming our OpEx guidance of NZD 370 million, our SIB CapEx guidance of NZD 150 million, and dividend guidance of NZD 0.25, up 4% on last year. We're starting the second half in a strong storage position, there's still a long way to go to 30th of June.
The key point here for us is, is discipline. That's the point. We want to keep on executing, stay conservative on guidance, and build confidence through delivery. We'd rather let delivery do the talking. Look, with that, I'll hand back to you, Stu, to run through the final slide, and then we can open up for Q&A.
Thanks, Richard. Yes, absolutely. To summarize our half year 26 interim results, we are very much demonstrating the delivery of our strategy with strong performance in terms of better today, building tomorrow, and brighter together. That's showing up through our resilient earnings, through our disciplined growth, and through our balance sheet strength. We're leveraging our strength in wind and geothermal, in particular. We've got a superior project pipeline ahead of us and a strong financial position to start with. That'll enable us to make smart, disciplined investment decisions focused on the delivery of our performance. I look forward to sharing the continued delivery of those results as we head into the second half. With that, I'll head back to Paul to open up for questions.
Okay. Thanks, Stew. Thanks, Richard. Okay, I'm just gonna bring Grant Swanepoel on from Jarden. If you can unmute your microphone, Grant. He's on mute. Grant, do you wanna unmute your microphone?
Is that working? Sorry.
Yes, we've got you.
Thank you. First question, just on this hydro spend, do we think of it as the maintenance CapEx going from NZD 150- NZD 209 million for the next 10 years? On that, investment, the 76 MW and 87 GWh on your long run, wholesale expectations, what does that, deliver you in terms of extra EBITDA?
In terms of the investment grant, that's all sitting between in our stay invest in business CapEx. Even the sort of growth element, we don't do anything cunning there and call that growth, we just call that stay in business. It's all within NZD 150, and we continue to expect to stay within NZD 150 going forwards. This was all baked in when we, when we've been talking about our sort of forecast and the guidance out to FY 2030. This is all baked into that. When we look through, we're still remain very confident of the range that we've provided for FY 2030.
We still remain confident that we'll be peaking our debt to EBITDA at 2.6 x, which is what we talked about at the Investor Day last June, and then leverage will be falling away from that. Look, we've got plenty of plenty of funding capacity to do everything that's in our pipeline and to do more. Equally, we can see what others are doing as well, so we're gonna be disciplined about that and make sure only the best things make it through, that have great LRMCs and, and deliver great returns to shareholders.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Sorry, on the value of your question, Grant, very much that, that additional megawatt capacity really feeds into the firming part of our portfolio, so that the kinda slide that shows where our capacity requirements are. That'll enable us to have the firming, which means we can continue with confidence to keep building our wind portfolio out, for example. Then, if we look at sort of our expectations of where the gigawatt hours show up, it hasn't really changed in terms of our expectation of the long run marginal price being somewhere between that sort of NZD 110-NZD 125 region. As these projects come online, that's what we're considering them against.
Well, that's very clear. Thank you. You did mention that you will be watching all the other build programs. With Contact and Genesis now having raised a bit of capital and accelerating their programs, do you have enough of a culture in your company that you can shift from just growth, growth, growth, to something that's a bit more subdued?
Yes, absolutely. Our plan for our pipeline is, and Matt Tolcher and the generation development team, to bring these projects, so they're execution ready, ready to go, and then it's, then it's for us, we take these projects through a pretty discipline process with our board to make sure that when we do head to FID or final investment decisions for those projects, we're considering where the project is and what the demand and supply situation is in New Zealand before we actually press the button on those projects. A big part of that is also looking at our wholesale part of the business to try and work through developing a load or a long-term supply agreement that actually back-to-back with the supply that we're gonna provide.
You see that a little bit with the Kaiwera Downs 2 project. That largely came off the back of a long 20-year contract with the Tiwai Point Aluminium Smelter, and that's something which we watch very closely as well.
Thank you. My final question is just a short-term one. Your OpEx improved materially first half, great outcome, and not material improvements set for the second half. Is there no run rate in that OpEx out in the first half that would see you reducing the NZD 370 million for the FY 2026 outlook?
Look, when we look at this, Grant, there's a lot of it was has come through in that first half. There are swings and roundabouts as we go through the year, so it's always interesting to look at the first half, but there's other overs and unders as we go through. Look, we think NZD 370 million is a good number to be hitting. We've still got a way to go, and what's the risk? Well, the risk is something goes bang and creates a bit of a maintenance blip for us. We've got contingencies in place for that if it happens. Look, we think the NZD 370 million is the right number to be guiding on.
If everything goes really well, can we come in lower? Yeah, a bit, but not materially. Wouldn't be doing anything wild on that front. The main thing for us is to be setting ourselves up for this year and for the next two years as well.
Thanks, I won't ask about your conservatism in not changing your NZD 1 billion forecast for this year, considering that was such a good first half. Thank you for answering my other questions.
No worries.
Thanks, Grant. Thanks, Grant. Okay, I would like to bring Vignesh Nair onto the screen, if you can unmute. Vignesh is from UBS.
Hey, morning, Stew and Richard. Well done on a really strong result today. Couple of questions. First one, just can we get a bit more color? I think you said you can sort of, so you snuck in a geothermal project of 30 MW in the pipeline. Understandably, you're probably providing more details on the 14th of May. Can you sort of talk to that a bit? Is this the only project, yeah, from a geothermal perspective in the pipeline that can be delivered pre-FY 2030, potentially? Or are we still talking to post 2030 new geothermal?
Yeah, thanks, Vignesh. Yeah, good question. We have, I think, previously talked about a geo project one, which is the most likely project which we'll deliver before 2030. Whilst we have a really strong pipeline of opportunities ahead of us, and we'll share a bit more of the detail of those projects when we get to May, the target for us is to deliver a project before 2030, whilst we continue to grow the potential projects, which will likely be delivered in the 2030s. That 5 TWh, the bulk of that will require us to do exploration, including drilling and development over the next few years. That will lead into then the execution and delivery of those projects beyond FY 2030.
We're certainly gonna be pushing pretty hard to get the first one of that project in place and operational before 2030.
Yeah, that, that project wasn't, wasn't new, though. That's, that's something we, we had in our investor stuff, back in June last year. Yeah, there's a, there's a few different options behind that, so we'll just need to see which of the options we can, we can get done in time. Yeah, we just think geo is great. It's got really attractive... We, we understand it well. If you look at what's happened on OEC5, delivered on time and on budgets. LRMC, when we've been talking about 82 before, it's gonna, touching wood, 'cause we're, we're just doing some final reliability testing now, but it's gonna come in below that. Yeah, show me someone else who's delivering any, any sort of value like that.
Awesome. Thank you. Secondly, I can see that you've changed your stance on the Whakamaru BESS slightly from 150 MW to a range of 100MW- 150 MW Just keen to hear your maybe broader thoughts on the New Zealand battery market. Many of your peers are sort of obviously quite, quite bullish on it, medium to longer term.
Yeah, yeah. There's so much to cover in that question. From our perspective, when we look at batteries, there's sort of three broad areas that we see the value show up. Firstly, is in the area of arbitrage from an electricity pricing perspective, the second is in reserves, and the third is in portfolio benefits. From the first, the kind of the portfolio benefit is the one that's most likely to drive us looking at the construction of a battery in our portfolio of assets. That's sort of what we tried to show a bit on that slide 18, where we've got enough in our current portfolio to support what we are currently operating in our gen dev pipeline at present.
As we head towards the bringing on stream the next set of wind farms, we will need batteries in our portfolio to help firm that. That, that's largely our thinking around the value will show up for us in terms of the portfolio benefits and firming the other projects. That's why we, we're sort of working through the best size of that project and the best time to stagger that investment. We might stagger that up. We've got a consent for up to 300 MW of Whakamaru, but the likelihood is that it will be staged, potentially 100 MW first stage or 150 MW. Basically stage it to make sure it matches the renewable generation projects that we're building at the same time.
We're, we're not sitting on our hands there. We've done a lot of thinking, a lot of work. We're gonna be moving forward into procurement in the not-too-distant future. Expect to be, you know, building it certainly this side of 2030. We can see some real value in our portfolio to it, but we're just doing it at the right time where it delivers most value.
Okay, awesome. That's all from me, gents. Thank you.
Thanks, Vignesh.
Thanks, Vignesh. Okay, next, we've got Andrew Harvey-Green from Forsyth Barr. I'll just bring you on screen, Andrew, if you can unmute. He did mention he might have some issues with this particular call, so I'll wait a couple more seconds, and then I'll just take you off, Andrew, and then hopefully bring you back later. Next, we've got Josh Dale from Craigs. Bring you on screen now. If you want to unmute, Josh.
Morning, guys. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, we can.
Yes, we can. Thanks, Josh.
Brilliant. Thanks, thanks for the presentation. First question, just on your FY 2030 EBITDAF target, you know, we have visibility on most pieces of the build up to that, with the exception of maybe Waikokowai and Puketoi. Do you have any indication on timing for those? I guess, are there any risks of not having that generation come online for a full FY 2030 contribution?
Yeah, in terms of timing for that, we're progressing at the moment. We're aiming to get consent in place for that project sometime over the next 12 months or so. That from a Waikokowai perspective, we certainly see that as the most likely next project to get off, off the ground in terms of consent through to final investment decision. It's a potentially really valuable project and a great location, so it's really key for us. That 's certainly a project that we're pushing pretty hard at, at the moment. Puketoi is another one which we've done a lot of work around over the last couple of years just to try and optimize that. There's already a consent in place for that project, but it's not a consent which is, I'd say, commercially valuable or viable.
The key thing for us is to make sure that those projects are progressing at pace, but equally, we won't push the button on those projects if they're not going to deliver good commercial outcomes. Yes, we're still targeting that. We expect that we'll, we'll, we'll have an aspiration. If those, one or two of those projects don't come off, then we have another pipeline of projects which will fill that gap. Our idea is to push those projects as hard as we can, but equally, we've got a number of options that sit underneath it to plug the gaps.
Yeah, when we, when we sort of put up that forecast, back in the day, we weren't assuming everything actually happened on this table. There was some optionality around Waikokowai versus Puketoi.
Yeah.
You can hear well which one we think is the most likely today. Yeah, when, as we look forward, I'll keep on the theme of under-promising and over-delivering. That's what we think we're doing with the, the range that we've given for 2030.
Okay, that's helpful. On the NZD 590 million of hydro refurbishment spend, I appreciate you've got the phasing on Page 12, which is helpful. Is that CapEx deployed fairly evenly across those rehab periods, or is it more front or back-end weighted? I guess, adding to that is the NZD 124 Arapuni as well. Just an indication of phasing would be helpful.
Pretty, pretty evenly spread over time. I think the big bits for us is actually there's I think there's, as you look around the world, there's a lot going on with turbines. We've been working with Andritz for a long time now, and the big bet is to have an agreement in place with them, to have manufacturing slots booked with them, to have the long lead time stuff starting to get ordered. So, yeah, we're expecting at least in theory, Josh, a pretty smooth smooth path through all of that within that sort of NZD 150 guardrail that we've been talking about.
We think, we think it's a good place to be committing long term to those things for our own asset resilience, but also committing long term with, with our key partners as well, to make sure that we're at, at the front, not the back of the queue.
Yeah, I'd say the Arapuni left abutment, definitely the, the spend on that will be focused on the next couple of years, primarily. Then the, the hydro upgrades or, it's the Maraetai One, Ātiamuri, and Ōhākurī are largely spread out across the next 7 years-8 years.
Thanks. That's, that's helpful. Last question, out of interest, did you toy at all with upgrading FY 2026 guidance, you know, given Lake Taupo's full OEC5 has progressed pretty well?
Look, we had a, we always have a good look at our guidance and make sure it's in the right, right place. We have had some discussions and agreed that this isn't the time to be upgrading. There's a. Yeah, if only life was as simple as a flat line and what you think is gonna happen, happens. We've got hydrology, got wholesale prices. Yeah, look, we're comfortable with that. Yeah, but no, we haven't upgraded the guidance because of that. We think we've made it pretty clear where we stand, and yeah, it would be disappointing from here not to be delivering it.
No, thanks very much, Richard. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Josh.
Thanks, Josh.
Andrew, I'll just bring you back on screen. You can unmute your microphone.
Thank you for those messages.
Andrew's not normally this quiet. Okay. I'll, take you off screen again, Andrew, and we'll go to Steve Hudson from Macquarie. Steve, would you like to unmute your microphone?
Thanks, guys. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes, we can. Thanks, Steve.
Thanks for the prezo. Just a couple from me, on your South Island development options, perhaps, Stu, should your old employer push go on sort of bringing back potline 4 and perhaps a greenfield potline 5? How well placed are you to further supply into that kind of demand?
Definitely, if we look at, for example, as I mentioned, Kaiwera Downs two is largely set up to support the baseload at Tiwai. As we look for Puke Kapo Hau, or as we know it, Mahinerangi Stage 2, that's a project which is also in the lower south of the South Island, and certainly would make sense to have a load in the south, whether it's a smelter, whether it's a data center, or whether it's frontier electrification. There are a number of quite large potential opportunities in the south, which is why we're still progressing some of those projects, because PKH or Puke Kapo Hau is a really good project with a great LCOE.
It's obviously in location, which isn't great, but if we can find loads such as Tiwai's line four or line five and beyond, all those other things I spoke to, then it's really well suited for those.
Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks, Stu. Richard, maybe one for you. Very clear sort of messaging on the, on the balance sheet. You've got a 0.8 turn on, on EBITDA sort of headroom. I just wondered how the credit rating agencies look as you're going through a significant build phase at some sort of forbearance above the 3x ceiling.
Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure that's not, that's not on my bucket list. Look the down stat is, look the credit rating agencies will, will, will look through, if there's a short-term increase over and above, it's, it sort of varies depending on the reason that you're above, as to whether there's sort of a negative outlook or not. There's... Yeah, companies have the possibility of, of getting into the low threes for, you know, 12 months or so, 18 months, if there's a clear plan to get back under over time. Yeah, no, we're, we're a long way away from that, peaking. Yeah, just the same as I, what I said back at the Investor Day back in June last year, sort of 2.6 times.
We're, we're pretty, pretty good and got a good amount of headroom there. My constant thing is to talk to Stew and talk to Matt and say: We want to do more, because we've got a great pipeline. We, we don't need to, we don't need to accelerate what we've got. We're moving fast. We're, we're the ones building stuff and having three coming online. I would love to build some more. Yeah, so we don't, we don't need more capital to speed up. We're going as fast as we can. What, what, what's slowing us down? Well, it's the normal stuff around consenting, but we're pushing through that as, as quickly as we can, and we'll, we'll keep on building where there's great value.
We sort of, we sort of look at Steve, as, as every sort of terawatt hour to build is around about NZD 1 billion worth of investment. When we look out to the our goals in terms of 3.5 terawatt hours by 2030, it gives an, an idea of the sort of money that we want to be spending, and then that's built into the, the, the capital headroom, which, which Richard and the, the-
Yeah
team look at.
That's right. Look, it's, big assumptions is how, how lumpy is it? Yeah, it's nice and easy to say, well, NZD 600 million a year broadly, and that's what we'll spend this year. Yeah, there might be some lumps in there, even if there's a big lump, NZD 2.6 billion still looks like, well, we'll peak.
Sense. Thanks, guys. Just one final one. We've often quizzed you about the GWAP, TWAP factors that we might expect over time from the wonderful Waikato hydro peaking assets that you've got. Do you think you might be in a position to share a little bit more of your thinking around that, come your Investor Day? Or, do you think it'll be largely geothermal focused?
Yeah, the idea is very much for the May session, is very much geothermal focused, and sort of opening the covers a little bit to create a bit more clarity around what that looks like over the next 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. Certainly it's something we can, we can take away, Steve, and think about even for our full year results, if that's something which, might add value for us to be presenting, to help.
Yeah, look, I mean, I think it would be 5 terawatt hours is a big number as well, but, yeah, we'll just add that to the wish list. Thanks, gents.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thanks, Steve. That's the end of questioning. Pass back to you, Stew.
We'll talk to Andrew later, will we?
Yeah.
Look forward to catching up when we, we talk later on, Andrew. Thank you very much. I just really wanted to take the chance to thank the Mercury team. It's been a really great start to FY 2026. There's still a lot of work for us, a lot of work for us to do, whether that's in delivering our new, our new projects, whether it's in the work to support the regulatory and government space, all the way through to the core assets, which include, you know, the 1,300 people inside Mercury that are servicing customers and supporting our assets on every day. Thanks very much for your time. Look forward to catching up through the day and over the next few days and sharing the results of the second half of FY 2026.
Thanks, everyone.