Earnings Call: Q1 2020

May 8, 2020

To the agenda. I will as usual present the highlights and the project updates. Mikael Koehle will go through the financials and I'll get back at the end for a summary and an outlook. This year sorry, this quarter, we experienced the highest production of We actually increased the We actually increased the power production by 162% from the same quarter last year. The EBITDA was SEK 346,000,000 up from SEK 315,000,000 in the first quarter. Most of that, 95% plus came from power production. In early April, we finished the last of 3 plants in Knappington that gives the total installed capacity of 258 megawatts. And we also last quarter secured a new bank facility of $75,000,000 and together with the NOK 90,000,000 revolving credit facility, we have a very good financial capacity to handle our operations going forward. In terms of the COVID-nineteen impact on our business, those I would consider as we have said before limited. But I'll get back to that on a separate slide later on. Just to dwell a little bit on Upington. Upington is in the northern part of South Africa. It's a fantastic place in terms of irradiation. It has more than 2,500 hours of solar radiation per year. If you compare that to Norway, we're around 1,000 hours. We installed 700,000 panels and we had almost 1500 people working on the plants during peak installation. If you look at the total portfolio that we have, it's almost 2,000 megawatts in operation and under construction. Yesterday, we publicized a new project that has reached commercial operation date, the Bogostar project in Ukraine, bringing the total in operation up to more than 1500 megawatts. We still have 3 99 megawatts under construction basically in Ukraine, Argentine and Malaysia. Now back to COVID-nineteen. We have had limited impact by this very tragic situation in the world. And if you look at operation our operations, our infrastructure is considered essential, meaning that we have had full operation of all our plants during the quarter and also up to today. We have had full manning of our operations center in Cape Town working 20 fourseven. In terms of construction, we are at the very end of the construction of our plants in Argentina, Malaysia and Ukraine. And we have had some delays on the finalization of these projects estimated to be between 2 5 months. This is natural as a consequence of limited travel and so forth. Plus in Malaysia, for example, we have had a lockdown. The project development is going ahead. Of course, by limiting the travel, we have had some impact on the progress in the backlog and pipeline. This is natural, but it means that the projects are moving ahead, but at a slower pace than in the past. This will change when things normalize in the future. Another point that I'd like to make as well is that in these in situations like these, also opportunities that we haven't seen before arise and we see some M and A opportunities that we are considering for the time being. Sustainability. We publicized our sustainability report and for 2019 and there you can see how we did last year with key results and we have also established the new targets for 2020. You can also follow us on our website where you can have direct access to our reporting data and policies. Now in terms of how we fare, we are being studied and monitored and examined by external auditor, so to speak, companies that are specializing in looking at how companies are doing in the environmental, social and governance aspect and ISS ESG completed an analysis that gave us an A- and excellent rating. Previously, we have reported to you that Sustainalytics have also rated us low risk, ranked number 1 out of 4 50 utilities. Now in terms of the work that we do, we, of course, start extremely early developing a relationship with the local communities. We established plants and these are further developed and are with us with the local community and the plants throughout the lifetime, meaning up to 20 years. Now with a crisis that is ongoing, in fact, in all the countries that we operate, we have also redirected some of the the presentation today some of the things that we have been working on. Now in general, the programs go as they have been planned and you will see the programs in the sustainability report. Key ambitions for 2020. We have established 22 sustainability targets and 2 of those being procurement, responsible procurement, where we engaged in the supply chain specifying how we would like our suppliers to behave, selecting suppliers that are meeting criteria that are important to us. This we will continue to do and even more so during 2020. Further on climate action, reducing our footprint of CO2. We only how should I put it, we emit 1% in terms of CO2 compared to 99% that we save. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't concentrate on reducing our footprint. So we will continue that work as well when we move further into 2020. I'd like to introduce Mikkel that will bring you through the numbers. Thank you. Thank you, Remi. So as already been highlighted, we saw record high production in the Q1, and operations have really continued as normal over the last few months. However, in Q1, the proportionate revenues decreased compared to the same quarter last year due to the lower construction activity that was only partly offset by higher power production revenues. And revenues reached $866,000,000 and EBITDA $346,000,000 on proportionate basis. So we saw a shift in segment mix with a higher margin power production business, creating a higher overall EBITDA margin in the quarter compared to previously. And I will briefly comment on the segments in a minute. Now if you look back over the last 12 months 24 months, revenues have been fairly stable around $5,700,000,000 and EBITDA has increased from $1,200,000,000 to $1,600,000,000 This is again reflecting the fact that we sell much more power now than a year ago and the quarters before. Now I also wanted to comment on the consolidated financials because we report consolidated net profit in the quarter of close to $300,000,000 and Skatek Solar's share of this was $235,000,000 The net profit in this quarter was affected by unrealized currency gains of more than NOK300 1,000,000. These currency gains arise from our dollar based intercompany funding and investments in solar power plants. And when the dollar strengthened almost 20% against the NOK in the quarter, we saw this currency gain in the consolidated financials. Now moving on then to the segments and briefly touching upon power production. 1.4 gigawatts were in production at the end of the quarter, and we added 172 megawatts compared to the end of last year, mainly then in Upington in South Africa. Production reached close to 3.50 gigawatt hours compared to 2.98 gigawatts hour in the previous quarter and 133 in the same period last year. Revenues reached $391,000,000 and EBITDA, dollars 331,000,000 dollars Operating expenses have been fairly stable, and depreciation and impairment decreased compared to the previous quarter since we had an impairment that we recognized in Q4 last year. The last 12 months revenues grew to 1,400,000,000 and EBITDA to SEK1.1 billion. And this was a doubling of both revenues and EBITDA compared to a year ago. Now we did a slight change to our Services segment. We're basically combining operation and maintenance and asset management into a services segment in this quarter. These are services that we in Skatex Solar provide to the power plant companies that we own together with our partners. And we saw the revenues from services increasing by close to 80% from the same quarter last year due to basically a larger asset portfolio. It was in Ukraine, Mozambique, Egypt and South Africa that we added services contracts in this time frame. Revenues reached $52,000,000 and EBITDA $16,000,000 in the first quarter. Over the last 12 months, revenues grew to SEK 191,000,000 and EBITDA ended at SEK 73,000,000 with a 38 percent EBITDA margin in this segment. Now development and construction. Projects are near completion. And in this quarter, we generated revenues from Malaysia, South Africa, Ukraine and Argentina. Accumulated progress across these construction projects was around 90%. And we completed, as I said, the Upington projects in the Q1. And we also completed our 1st solar hybrid plant in for the UN in South Sudan in the quarter with a fairly small contribution to the D and C segment was still an important milestone for us. So revenues reached $414,000,000 and EBITDA $15,000,000 in the Q1. The 11% gross margin is both a mix effect, but mainly reflecting an increase in estimated cost to complete of the remaining projects. And due to the delays that Raymond mentioned, 2 to 5 months of delays that we see caused by the corona situation. And without these delays and these extra costs, the gross margins would have been 2 to 3 percentage points higher than what we report today. And the guidance of 12% to 14% for the D and C segment remains unchanged. And now the EBITDA in the quarter is obviously impacted by the reduced gross margin combined with the operating expenses in the segment that remain fairly stable. If you look back at the last 12 months, revenues reached SEK4.1 billion and EBITDA SEK445 1,000,000. Now looking at our balance sheet. We continue to hold a strong financial position. And at the end of Q1, consolidated assets stood at SEK24 1,000,000,000, up from SEK22 1,000,000,000 at the end of last year, mostly driven by further investments, but also now currency effects with the NOK weakening against the dollar specifically. And cash in the group was SEK3 1,000,000,000, of which SEK718 1,000,000 was free cash at the group level. The group level book equity, as we define it in our bond and bank facilities, increased to NOK5.6 billion. And as Ramin also mentioned, in March, we secured a new credit facility of $75,000,000 and refinanced the existing $90,000,000 revolving credit facility. And we did this obviously to at attractive terms, we reduced the cost of the of our RCF compared to the previous one and gives us increased financial flexibility and obviously supports further growth for us as a company. At the end of the Q1, SEK1.5 billion of these facilities were undrawn. Now let's move look at the main movements of the free cash at the group level in the Q1. We received NOK 142,000,000 of distributions in the quarter from the operating power plants, and we invested another NOK350 1,000,000 of equity into Argentina, Ukraine and South Africa. And we've seen some further reversal of working capital in this quarter, and we did a drawdown of about SEK300 1,000,000 of the credit facilities at the end of the quarter. And we do drawdowns of the facilities from time to time to manage working capital. I'd also like to highlight that several projects now are being completed. We see further incoming EPC cash flows that will come our way as we are completing projects. And obviously, we're also continuing to work with additional equity partners on some of our projects in the portfolio. Now a bit of the short term guidance. The current projects under construction represents a total value of NOK1.5 billion, of which NOK400 1,000,000 is the remaining not booked value of this portfolio, meaning revenues mainly over the next quarter or 2. We will see further growth in the power production volumes, and production is expected to increase about 10% from Q1 to Q2. And the guidance here is based on plants in operation at the end of the quarter, and we have obviously connected another couple of plans now in April May. So this will increase even further. Services revenues, we shared guidance on this segment a month ago, dollars 230,000,000 in 2020 with an EBITDA margin of around 30%. I wanted to end my section to talk a bit about our relationships and partnerships with the development banks as we have discussed before as well. We are partnering with development banks for project finance, but also equity investments in our solar power plants. And we see that these partners are adding a value in the several different aspects, both through obviously competence and capital, but also through political risk mitigation. The multilateral development banks have for many years been providing the finance for public infrastructure across emerging markets. They have a lot of experience from the countries that we operate in and they have long standing relationships with the relevant authorities and also they know the legal frameworks that are in place. And since the DFIs are important partners for the governments, they also have leverage and influence on the authorities. Now with the corona crisis, we see the benefits of working with these institutions again. First of all, the banks these banks are really active in a dialogue with the governments to provide financial support to both the governments and utilities and others to ensure continued operation of critical infrastructure. They're also very proactive towards us as sponsors. They're proactively approaching us to see how they can potentially support us in the various projects that we are involved in. We have so far not needed that support, but of course, it's good to know that they are there to support us. And then lastly, I think it's important to highlight that we see continued strong appetite for financing of new projects also under these challenging conditions. These are institutions that we expect to see even further strengthened mandates for investments and financing of the green growth in the quarters years to come. So just wanted to mention that in the current climate. Thank you. Thank you, Mikael. Outlook and summary. I decided to show this market slide and you're probably wondering what how do we view the markets. For the time being, 70% of all markets in the world, renewable energy will be lower than any other type of technology, 70%, that's a lot. If you look at our markets, renewable energy, including solar, will be lower than any type of other technology in all markets, in 100% of the markets. So those are the markets that we're operating in. It has also been interesting to monitor and that is in mature markets in Europe, how the markets have been able to accept and sort of translate in renewable energy into stable energy in Europe. And I saw somewhere that 70% it was up to 70% renewable energy in Europe at times without affecting the stability. Of course, you had some swing producers. That tells me that some people saying that renewable energy will cause trouble at very low levels of penetration, I think we have a lot to add to that. I think it can go much higher if you look, for example, at Denmark. Now in our situation, we are not in those markets. We are in emerging markets. And some may question the lower energy prices that we're seeing today, oil down to $20, dollars 25, dollars 30 a barrel, gas also very low levels. We had a similar situation in 2014, although not so severe in terms of pricing. If you go back and look at the penetration, the expansion of renewable energy, you can see that it didn't really have an effect, meaning that already at that time renewable energy could be competing with lower energy prices, lower oil and energy prices. And that is the case now. So we do not expect any deceleration of installed capacity in the renewable sector despite the lower energy prices. We also see that the supply chain are starting to improve, meaning that we see lower prices on our equipment side. Again, that will reflect and have a direct impact on the cost per kilowatt hour of produced energy in the future. If you look at a couple of our markets, Africa, of course, in desperate need for more energy. So even though there is a slowdown in the world, slowdown in Africa, there is a gap in between the needed energy and the energy that is available. So those markets are ready as we speak. Of course, it's easy to say that because it's not straightforward to develop a project. It takes time. Have to do the financing, the project development, but the market is there. We have a broad pipeline in Africa. 50% of that pipeline is in South Africa, a market I consider our home market. If you look at Southeast Asia, we have more than 1.5 gigawatts of opportunities in our pipeline that we are pursuing. Vietnam is still extremely interesting for us. The pipeline represents 1,000 megawatt. We had the project in fact in our backlog there Hongfang that we removed last quarter. The reason for that is that once the feed in tariff was decided and approved by the government, we felt it was too little time left until the end of the year to complete the plant, including also having the financing in place. So we took it out of the backlog. Other opportunities, Malaysia, Bangladesh, we have projects there and Indonesia with the 1,000 and 1,000 of islands that you have there. Now if you look at our summary, the summary slide, We, as we have said, have seen limited impact of COVID-nineteen. In fact, going forward, we don't really see much impact either. We are expecting to pick up the completion of the plants that are in between 90% 95% complete as we speak by doing the final testing and start enjoying the long term revenues. Those plants represents 399 Megawatts bringing it up to 1900 Megawatts in operation when they're finished. And when they're finished, they will also start their 20 year journey, meaning that the long term cash flow will be there from now until 2,040. And you will see that manifesting itself into the power production numbers as we go forward. We are actively considering opportunities in the market, M and A opportunities and we are pursuing a couple of them as we speak. Mikkel mentioned the development banks and they are extremely supportive. We are extremely also happy with the relationship that we have with the banks. And I think all the banks that we are working with, almost all, we have been through projects with in the past. So they know us, we know them. Now with regards to the target 4,500 gigawatt by 2021. Due to the delays that we see at the moment in development and maturing the backlog, you will see that the projects that we will finish from now until end of 2021, more of them will be under construction in towards the end of 'twenty one then completed, but the target remains the same. I think then we're almost open for questions, but I think that I would like to share with you some few slides on what we are doing in fact. COVID-nineteen is of course very, very serious for some of these countries that are not developed countries that are in desperate need for support. We have together with our partners set aside and are spending as we speak NOK3 1,000,000 in helping out in Egypt nearby our plants in the Aswan area. That means that we are helping to deliver medical equipment, supplies, protective clothing and we have also handed out 7,500 food boxes. And of course, that is being appreciated and we will continue to be there and see how the situation developed to see if we can assist more. If you look at Ukraine, also there, medical supply, protective equipment are delivered to local health stations and hospitals in 7 regions. In Honduras, food supply, medical equipment, protective, I mean they all need more or less the same in all regions. Also food boxes there. In Malaysia, food parcels have been handed out to people in need. And in Brazil, we have actually established a manufacturing line to produce medical masks. I think this number is a bit outdated, but we are producing a lot of masks and are also providing local jobs by doing that. Here you see the last plant that we connected in South Africa in Upington. The tower in the background is not a part of our plant. That was something that was installed in the past. It's actually a concentrated solar plant, but it's nice to look at along with our plant. Thank you very much. Then I think we are open for questions. So Mikkel, if you would like to join me. Yes. We got some questions from the web and starting with 2 questions about Ukraine. So what is the main reason for focusing on Ukraine opposed to many other countries within the EU? I mean, there are many countries that are interesting to look at. We are an emerging market player, and we concentrate on those markets and Ukraine has been a market that is in desperate need for new energy. They had a very good feed in tariff program and that was brought to our attention. And so we decided a couple of years back that Ukraine is an interesting market for us. And then also on Ukraine, could you please provide some color on the Ukrainian government's evaluation of the current feed in tariff scheme and potential transition towards a tender scheme? And is there any impact on Skatex Solar's projects? The government in Ukraine has said that they are sort of looking at how the program should be further developed. I think the Burbank has been giving them some advice too. And along with a lot of other countries in the world that are moving from an initial program that relies on a feed in tariff program towards more a regular auction type of program. But in some economies, it's absolutely essential to create a situation that builds confidence for international investors. And this is what the Ukrainian government did when they established the feed in tariff program. You have other countries that did the same. In fact, Europe did the same. Germany, the leader in the early 2000 did the same. And if you look down the road, you will see that everybody is benefiting from those lower prices. The Ukrainian government is looking at the overall budgets and the Ukrainian program is also shorter than others. So it's only for 10 years. So that means that investors that are looking at Ukraine will have to sort of get back their investment in 10 years as opposed to 20. 10 years means a higher price. So what they're looking at the moment is how can they reduce the charge that they are seeing at the moment to a lower level possibly by extending the period of the feed in tariff. But those are negotiations that are not really happening. It's some discussions that we're having at the moment and we have had for quite some time. And it has also been stated that these changes should be voluntary, meaning that it should make sense to both parties to enter into them. Then we have two questions from Mikkel Nehalts Messing in Carnegie. You mentioned M and A. Can you elaborate on the opportunities? And should we expect part of the growth towards your 4.5 gigawatt target to come from acquisitions? And then what sort of IRR could we expect on this? Well, I mean, I wish I could say or share, I should say. We are doing, to a certain extent, a bit of M and A on a day to day business. In the past, we developed projects from the very, very beginning in looking at land, finding out where to go, how to develop, taking 2 to 3 to 4 years to develop. What we've been doing so far and in the later years is that we have looked at opportunities, for example, in Vietnam and other places that we have a developed project and we buy them. If you look at other opportunities, which was more what I was thinking about here is that we can think about the broader pipeline, we could think about other opportunities, but I don't really want to go into that at the moment. What I can say is that if we decide to go ahead with some of these opportunities, the return levels should fall within the brackets of what we are guiding. And then the second question from Nengi. Can you elaborate further on the D and C gross margin of 11%? And how we should think of this onwards? And should we assume this level as long as COVID-nineteen persists or may it go even lower? Yes, I can answer that. So we have made some accruals for extra cost for completing the current projects in the Q1. So there's no reason for us to believe that we need to do additional provisions for cost to complete these projects. So from that perspective, we have already then taken that cost into our estimates. And we also potentially see, as I said, the guidance remains between 12% 14%. And then that implies that we have a perspective on the margin that we expect to report over the next quarters. Then there's a question about when do you foresee construction start in Tunisia? Well, I mean the progress in Tunisia is going very well. We are developing the PPA with the authorities. We are negotiating with the banks and we are actually approaching the point that we're going to mandate the banks. The financing without me mentioning numbers, but financing the project, the debt financing is also a process that have produced very good results. So if I should I mean, there are many things that needs to be lined up and completed, but construction start towards end of the year, beginning of next year, give or take. And another one. How is the interest rate from developing bank loans impacted by current COVID-nineteen? Is the interest rate going up in the future? Well, I don't think we haven't I mean, as we Tunisia is maybe the latest example of ongoing discussions on financing and pricing. And there's certainly no COVID-nineteen impact on those discussions. It's fair to say that to the margins that we pay for project finance from development banks is fairly high compared to what you see in from commercial banks in the Western world. So no, I don't think we will expect to see any impact on those margins due to COVID-nineteen. And as I mentioned, I think we see more appetite and reinforced mandates from these institutions to support new projects, especially now in this after COVID-nineteen. Yes. We have seen that some of these development banks are actually out there to support some utilities in these development countries with liquidity, which I think is a very good sign that they are present and they're going to be there for a long time. Then about Argentina, in case of default in Argentina, how do you manage the impact on Skatek Solar? And who is your partner there and who provide the project finance? Okay. I can answer that. So we, 1st of all, have a long term PPA, one under an auction in Argentina with CAMMESA, which is a state owned utility institution, a government institution that buys the power. They have had a very strong track record on paying their bills that way for power over many years also through the last crisis in Argentina. So that's the first point. Secondly, our partner in this project is Equinor, which is already quite heavily involved in Argentina, and they have also provided a construction finance facility for this project. And together with Equinor, we are in a process of securing long term financing. And that would again be from the development finance institutions as we have talked about today, that we expect to secure this long term financing from. Obviously, the again, the World Bank and IMF is heavily involved in these processes, and that's what we see as a benefit as well from having these partnerships that we get good insight into those discussions on the public financing side also through the partnerships we have with these DeFi's. There is a question from Andreas Partheesen in Kepler Cheuvreux. Will you consider buying operating assets or only assets under development? Yes. I won't rule it completely out, but so far, we have benefited from the additional value that we gained from developing, constructing the plants. So of course, that is a very, very high value. If you look into operating assets, of course, we have the knowledge to assess them and to see if there are certain upsides. And you could I mean, in the future, you could look at refinancing them. You could look at them in a portfolio perspective together with our other plants. So I wouldn't rule it out, but it's not really particularly in our focus at the moment. And then there are two questions from Petter Nystrom in ABG. Can you please clarify if M and A is included in the 4 point 5 gigawatt target by year end 2021? The target that we have established was based on sort of what we have done in the past, meaning that we have acquired smaller projects that we have complete development and construction of. So that was the plan. And then excluding the projects you are currently finalizing, is it realistic that you will be able to finalize more projects by year end 2021? I think it's difficult to complete the construction of more projects towards the end. But I think that 2021. Sorry, 2021. Yes. Yes, of course. I was thinking 2020. And then on release, how is release developing? Are there orders coming in? There are small orders coming in. I have to say a bit of reduction in activity now for some of the potential customers that we're looking at, because those are our mines that in many regions, in many parts of the world that we are addressing have been shut down or closed, temporary, but dialogue continues and we are hopeful that we will be able to include more projects very soon. Okay? That's all. Well, thank you everybody. Thank you.