Thank you, Sam. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening to everyone who's joining from different parts of the world. Thank you for joining our conference earnings call once again. The purpose of the call, as Sam has mentioned, to review the results of the first quarter, which is the first three months of 2023, which has ended March 31st, 2023. Before we start the prepared remarks, together with Abdulhameed, I just would like to pass the word to our new CEO, Mr. Marco Arcelli, who is unfortunately not able to take the call physically together with us because he's traveling in China, and you can probably see on the screen that he's right now, hopefully not driving, but somebody's probably driving him. Without further ado, let me just pass the word to Marco.
I'm not introducing him because he will do it himself, he will have to leave.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Marco. Just go ahead.
Thanks a lot. Sorry, I am traveling to China as one of the first priorities that I took into this new job. I have been in the company for about six weeks now. I am really excited with everything that I am finding. In fact, if you are following me on LinkedIn, you will see all the travel and the different places that I have visited inside the organization. I think that the new governance that is being set up, with Raad Al-Saady as Vice Chairman and Managing Director, and the Chairman, is working perfectly. We are doing a great handover, transferring basically all the context, knowledge, network that was set up in the previous year to myself and to Raad. The first part of the onboarding, I am really excited with.
Before I move on to tell you how I spent the first month and how I will spend the second month, then tell you a little bit about the business, I wanted to introduce myself, just shortly. I have about 25, 30 years of experience in the energy sector, which I think is all very relevant to what we do. I started my career in project and construction management. I then went on to do dispute resolution, so everything that is relevant to our construction activity. Then I spent years in General Electric in the United States, where I was selling and doing development on turbines and compressors for energy projects. Then I was for 16 years at Enel, one of the largest utilities and one of the big top leaders in the industry. You may know Enel Green Power as a big success story.
Six years with EPH, a company that grew from being basically nothing, and in 20 years became the sixth largest electricity producer in Europe. I think all this makes my previous experience very relevant for what we need to do in ACWA Power. The first six weeks have been really exciting with a great welcome from all the management committee members and the rest of the organization, which is making my onboarding quick and swift. The first month, as I was mentioning, I focused on meeting as many people and visiting as many plants and offices as I could. I went to our Dubai office, Riyadh office, Beijing office. I met over 800 people at about a dozen plants, mostly in the Gulf. I started to meet now in the second month, our key partners in China.
We are talking both about EPC suppliers, potential co-investors in our projects. I unmistakably witness the value creation mindset at every corner in the organization. Really, I see the great people that we have in the organization. The quality of our plant is really good. The ingenuity that we put and employ in facing the occasional operational issues and looking at ways to improve our operation is really something that comforts me that we have a solid base to build upon. I have started to look at the ways to enhance and improve our strategy. You can expect an evolution, not really a revolution. We will look at potentially a few additional geographies, potentially a few additional technologies, but more or less, we are going to do similar things to what you have seen been doing by ACWA Power in the past few years.
In the meantime, ACWA Power in the first quarter and up to now, registered some solid results and successes. Abdulhameed and the team will focus more on that. Of course, you can imagine that I don't have all the details to guide you through the operations of our company after the first six weeks, but he's doing a great job, and so I will leave it to him. Operationally, I'm very pleased that Taweelah Water Plant in the U.A.E. brought the second group online and reached basically 830,000 cu m/ day capacity, which is almost the total capacity that it's going to produce. Jazlah or Jubail 3A Water Plant in Saudi Arabia came online also. The second group of design integrated gasification plant was taken over, and now we have all hydrogen and steam production fully transferred and 95% of the power capacity transferred.
This is one of the biggest project, if not the biggest project in the portfolio, so I'm pleased of the progress so far. In terms of growth, we signed the Water Purchase Agreement for the Rabigh 4 in Saudi Arabia, which is another 600,000 cu m /day facility, with the associated infrastructure and facility for the project tanks and so on, for 1.2 million cubic meters. We signed three PPAs in Uzbekistan for three solar PV plants for a total 1,400 MW and battery energy storage system for 1,500 MWh. We reached dry financial closes for Ar Rass Solar PV in Saudi and the NEOM Green Hydrogen, which is really, really sensational, I think. We got 23 banks that basically subscribed to the first utility scale green hydrogen, green ammonia plant in the world.
I think that that is really a milestone achievement, not just for us, but for the whole industry. We signed financing agreements for Kom Ombo Wind in Egypt with EBRD and other financial institution. It's been a great start of the year, and I can clearly see how we can continue to lead the role in the energy transition in the communities and in the countries where we operate by providing and enabling low, reliable water, power, and green fuel supplies everywhere we operate, so that ACWA Power can continue to be a global leader in the industry and achieve net zero by 2050 as we previously communicated. With this, I would like to leave you with, Abdulhameed and the team and Ozgur and the team.
I might have to disconnect because the line, I am in the middle of China, might not be reliable throughout the call, but really happy to have onboarded, and really thankful for all the support that I received so far by management and board, and really looking forward to talk to you more in the future.
Thank you, Marco. Thank you very much, and have a safe drive over there. Let me now hand over to Abdulhameed, and we can start our prepared remarks. Abdulhameed, it's over to you.
Thank you, Ozgur. Thank you also, Marco, for joining us, despite the time zone difference and also being on the road. I would like to take it actually from where Marco has left it. I think this quarter was a very exciting quarter for us within ACWA Power, not purely because of the financial results, but really what we have achieved when it comes to our business model. One, I would like to remind you on our business model, where we focus on the development, investment, operation, and optimizing of each and every single plant we have. During this quarter, we have done several great achievements, and some of them Marco has already touched upon. We had two projects financed, dry financial close. One of them is the second largest into our history, and also it is the first large-scale hydrogen project we touch upon.
We had also four different units in three projects that have achieved commercial operation, which is fairly good progress when it comes to the technologies that we are adding. We have added two units of CSP and also one unit of water, and again, one unit of PV projects into our operational fleet. When it comes to the PPA, during my experience with ACWA Power in the last 13, 14 years, this is the fastest PPA that we have achieved in our history. Three projects in Uzbekistan for 1.4 GW of power capacity. In addition to that, there is another 1.5 MWh of storage capacity that we are adding to this. This is purely to stabilize and give also an extension of grid of capacity to Uzbekistan on the short term.
With that, this has translated also to a solid contribution to the operating profit and net profit that we will touch upon also in the next few slides. When it comes to operation, it was also another good quarter. Last year, if you recall, on the power side, we did have some challenges in a few projects. I think we have fixed most of them, and we'll also touch upon it, where we have still the challenges there. From 82% of availability last quarter, similar quarter of last year, we had around 89%, significant improvement. On the water side also, an upgrade from 93% - 96% of availability we have witnessed during this quarter. Whatever we have reported in terms of net profit is the adjusted net profit. There is no adjustment for this quarter. Interestingly, we have done the second tranche of our Sukuk during the quarter.
We had launched earlier, if you recall, a SAR 5 billion program. We have completed the second phase, which is SAR 1.8 billion. With that, we are getting closer to the SAR 5 billion. We have completed the program, and we are continuing with the same program. What we have achieved on this project is actually a very, very competitive pricing, below 1% margin on this specific issuance. That has been a significant, say, track record for the market for the last five years when it comes to the corporate issuance. So, very well structured, very well priced, over-subscription of 2.24x that we have achieved. With that, I will go to the financial close and go specifically to the projects. What have been achieved in the first quarter of this year is two FCs.
One is Al Rass project, which is a 700 MW PV project. We have achieved the financial close, and this is a project that is total costs around SAR 1.7 billion. The project is part of the National Renewable Energy Program, which used to be called REPDO in the past. Also, we have achieved another dry financial close, which also have been announced separately. It is the NEOM Green Hydrogen, which is around SAR 32 billion. This is the largest green hydrogen project as a utility-scale project financed in the world. Today, this project have achieved around 74% of non-recourse debt that has been raised together by ACWA Power and the partners, NEOM and Air Products.
A quick reminder here of what we have achieved during the last quarter of last year, which is the three financial close of Bash and Dzhankeldy in Uzbekistan and the Shuaibah 3 IWPP. From financial closes to projects being moved from construction or execution to operation. So this quarter, we had 300 MW of CSP plants becoming operational, and this is significantly important for us. Why? Because the CSP projects is difficult and complex when it comes to execution. Once we move these projects from execution to operation, the risk profile will change a bit. Also it will give us a comfort when it's taking this project to the COD and being accepted by the offtaker. Jazan Phase 2 has also achieved in February the second phase or the second group of commercial operation. This is around 1.5 GW of capacity.
This has been delayed from October to February, but finally have achieved it in that quarter of 2023. We have also achieved 600,000 cu m/day of additional capacity in Jubail 3A, another water project that we have in Saudi Arabia. If you compare Q1 of last year to Q1 of this year, you will see significant plants coming into operation, including to what I have mentioned. There has been also several projects being communicated earlier, like Jordan DC. We had around 300 MW additional. Umm Al Quwain in water project in U.A.E. and Al Dur in Bahrain, full capacity came online together with Taweelah. Moving to the next slide, where we translate both the projects that have achieved financial close and the projects that has achieved operation into the operating income.
You will see here a progress of SAR 140 million coming purely because of the existing project that has came online. If you compare Q1 of last year to Q1 of this year, you will recall that in last year we had problem and challenges in few projects like Rabigh, Medco, NOORo II , and NOORo III . Three of these projects came into operation and proven stability in the operation. With the exception of NOORo III , while it is coming back and forth into operation, we are still facing the challenge in NOORo III . The challenge specifically related to the molten salt tank, where we have identified the track in NOORo III , and we are still in the progress of bringing that into full operation. There is another SAR 34 million that has been purely due to the new assets that came into operation.
As these projects move from construction to operation, there is a natural reduction on the development and construction management services from these projects as there is less project now under construction. That is the SAR -49 million that you have seen. To put the comparison into, let us say a Q1 of last year to Q1 of this year into a reality, you will notice that there is an LD that has liquidated last year, which is a SAR 66 million LD on one of the projects in Morocco that has not been reflected on this quarter. This is where you see the SAR 33 million different on Q-to-Q different. This brings us to a SAR 559 million operating income. Moving to the net income of the full quarter. This is where the SAR 27 million is built up from last year of SAR 152.
Adding to that, the SAR 37 million which we just explained, the higher operating income. There is also a small addition of SAR 20 million related mainly to incomes related to the gaining deposits and other bureaus as well. The additional SAR 125 million, that is mainly related to lower zakat and tax when you compare Q1 of last year to Q1 of this year. If you look into the details of that, it is mainly due to the deferred tax balances. There has been an appreciation in the Moroccan dirham which has reflected into a credit when it comes to the position of the deferred tax. If you recall same quarter last year, there was a deferred tax expense of SAR 60 million, whereas it is a positive in this quarter, and that is mainly the driver for this change on the SAR 125. Output for the year.
We have a few projects that we are expecting to bring them into full financial close. The first one is NEOM Green Hydrogen. With the full financial close, this project will move from LNTP stage to full notice to proceed. Kom Ombo is another project that we are also expecting to get to the full financial close very soon. This is a PV project. The full financial close is that we are expecting in the coming month a few of them, mainly in Saudi when it comes to Shuaibah 1 and Shuaibah 2. There is also another small PV project, which is Laylaa IPP. We have another water project that has been recently awarded to us, Rabigh 4 IWP. We are expecting also the financial close during this year.
In term of additional PPAs, we are also looking at the next round of PIF. We do expect that we achieve PPA signing during the course of the year. There is a very heavy and active pipeline that we are looking at, more than 20 projects over the 15 + countries that we are operating in. If you add them all together, 22 GW of power and around 1.5 million cubic meters of desalinated water. We are looking at these projects, different levels of advanced to early development phase, where we are expecting some of them to realize during the course of the next 12 months. Mainly a strong positioning on Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, also expanded to a few bits in other countries, including the U.A.E.
On the divestment, subsequent to the close of Q1, we have completely closed the divestment of Vinh Hao , which is our small PV project we have in Vietnam. Also, we are in the final stages of partially divesting our stake in [Tri G3], which is expected in the next quarter to be completed. Just to summarize before we open it for Q&A, how we are performing against what is our priorities during 2023. First in safety, [Non-English content], we have been on track when it comes to the LTI rates. We had unfortunately one LTI event during the course of the year in one of our assets. When it comes to the reliability of supply, it is ongoing progress. This is a big campaign that we are working that's going to take a long time actually to be completed and realized on our availabilities.
Having said that, we did have an improvement on the availability for Q1 as compared to the last quarter. We had been able to achieve several of our projects which was under construction into operation. This is important again because most of these projects have been impacted during COVID-19. Taking them from execution risk and bringing them to the operation is very important and very relevant for our stability. Two financial closes, 1.8 GW of power and 600,000 cu m/day of desalinated water has been added. The three PPAs have been signed, which is in line with our, let's say, priorities to add capacities to this year. Again, we will look forward to add more PPAs mainly in Saudi Arabia and also in the jurisdictions that have insights on area.
In our journey for decarbonization, we have added all the capacities on renewable. When it comes to the other projects that we have been adding, it is all high efficient and most of them had additional capacity or additional power coming from the PV project that has been added to it. This is in a nutshell our Q1 results. Happy to take questions from the audience. Thank you very much.
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Sam, it looks like there are no questions. Do you see anything on the written platform?
I can confirm there's been no questions submitted.
Okay. All right. In this case, everyone, if you end up happen to have any further questions, you know how to reach to us. I think we can close the call. Unless any one of you want to use the last chance to ask a question before we call it. Very well. Sam, I guess we can close it. Thank you very much for your participation and listening to us. As repeated once again, any questions, please get back to us either through IR's email accounts or individual accounts. All of you have those details. Thank you very much and have a wonderful day, whatever is left, wherever you are. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you