Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Enlight and the IRA Transition Conference Call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Yonah Weisz, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. Our investor presentation entitled "Enlight and the IRA Transition" has been published on EDGAR and also appears on our website, and I encourage you to view it along with today's discussion. Before beginning this call, I would like to draw participants' attention to the following: certain statements made on the call today, including but not limited to statements regarding business strategy and plans, our project portfolio, market opportunity, utility demand and potential growth, discussions with commercial counterparties and financing sources, pricing trends for materials, progress of company projects, including anticipated timing of related approvals and project completion, expected impact from various regulatory and legal developments, completion of development, and the company's future financial and operational results and guidance, including revenue and adjusted EBITDA. Our forward-looking statements within the meaning of U.S.
federal securities laws, which reflects management's best judgment based on currently available information. We will reference certain project metrics and terms in this call, and additional information about such metrics and terms can be found in today's investor presentation. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from our expectations. Please refer to our 2024 annual report filed with the SEC on March 28, 2025, and other filings for more information on the specific factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. Although we believe these expectations are reasonable, we undertake no obligation to revise any statements to reflect changes that occur after this call. Additionally, non-IFRS financial measures may be discussed on the call.
Note that these non-IFRS measures should be considered in addition to, and not as a substitute for, or in isolation from, our results prepared in accordance with IFRS. With me this morning are Gilad Yavetz, CEO and Co-founder of Enlight; Nir Yehuda, CFO of Enlight; and Adam Pishl, CEO and Co-founder of Clēnera. Gilad and Adam will provide some opening remarks, after which our executive team will be available to answer your questions. Gilad?
Yeah. Hi, guys. Hi all. Thank you for joining the call. I think it will be best to handle this call as a Q&A session, as I believe all of you have questions and interest in the policy that was published and in the legislation process. We will be happy to answer and relate to your questions. I'll just say very briefly, as we publish the presentation, but in general, as you know, the legislation process has begun. The House of Representatives passed a version of the law now. It's going to the Senate today, so forth.
Although this legislation process is still not completed, it created a lot of interest from our investor base across markets, and we thought it is a good idea to refer to what we see as the current policy, even if it is not final, and to share with you information on how it impacts our specific business or specific plans of Enlight, and I would say in a broader manner to the utility scale sector of solar and storage where we operate in the U.S. In general, if we analyze the criteria that is now part of the legislation process, and Adam after me, I think, will maybe go over together what we understand is the criteria. It looks very favorable to us as basically under this criteria of project achieving COD by the end of 2028, coupled with the safe harbor conditions in the U.S.
that is added to this, I'd say, draft, the 60 days. We believe that with this criteria, if we analyze our mature portfolio and advanced development portfolio, we think that we have a potential basically to achieve COD with a total capacity of 6.5-8 GW in the U.S., including the 0.7 that was already contracted and connected and operational today, coming from a Tresco and Apex project, and of course, all the new projects under construction, the ones that are getting into construction. Altogether, we believe under this criteria we'll be eligible to full tax equity under the current, I'd say, theme of 6.5-8 GW.
If we translated that to revenues, total revenues and income run rate for the end of 2028, we believe that this has a potential to grow our revenues to around $2 billion per year or annually by a rate for the end of 2028, basically accounting of the full year of 2029. This is in terms of, let's say, what we call the transition period, as we see it. As the way we see it, this legislation is outlining the transition period until the end of 2028 with some criteria on safe harboring and so forth, and of course, some equipment origin from China that was mentioned. There is a new regime without tax equity beginning 2029.
What we believe is that in addition to the capacity that we can achieve until the end of the transition period that I just mentioned before, we believe that the market will be able to adjust for 2029 and onwards to the new regime without tax equity. Why? Because equipment cost is declining, I would say, quite sharply worldwide. We see it in the markets where we operate very significantly because they do not carry tax equity nor tariffs. We can see, let's say, the core prices or cost of equipment, whether solar panels or BESS. From the other side, we see a growth in the demand for electricity in the U.S. that is steady and healthy, primarily driven by the data center developments, but maybe to some extent also from other industries such as the EV and other electrification trends.
What we see is that this demand is driving a strong need for production or generation of electricity, and that currently in the queue, we see primarily renewable energy, and within that, of course, solar and storage. The utility scale sector, we believe, will basically answer most of this demand. In this regard, the combination of growing demand, increasing power price, and I'd say inclining power prices in the U.S. because of this equation of demand and supply, plus declining equipment costs are such that will enable transition of the U.S. market to a non-tax equity regime from 2029. Therefore, we continue to develop the 15 Gw portfolio that we have for the years 2029 and onwards currently, and that is being also all the time enlarged, and the 8 GW that we would like and believe that we can qualify even before.
Altogether, 22 GW. This is in general terms. I'll be happy to handle the call to Adam to talk a little bit about the criteria so we can be together, let's say, on one page, and this can serve afterwards your questions. Adam?
All right. Thank you, Gilad. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify and talk a little bit more about our focus on these projects that we have. Of course, as everyone's aware, that recent tax bill that was passed by the House of Representatives is still being debated in the Senate. We do not know exactly what the final outcome will be, but what we do know and what we're considering is as if this law was in effect, how it will impact the projects that we have in process. Under the proposed policy, projects will need to meet a couple of different requirements to receive the tax credits. Number one, beginning of construction no later than 60 days after the enactment of the law. Number two, commencement of commercial operations no later than the end of 2028.
The roadmap outlined in the presentation assumes that this legislation will be enacted into law within 90 days, and the requirements I have outlined here will remain unchanged. This implies that the deadline for attaining safe harbor by the end of construction is within approximately 150 days from today or by the end of October 2025. As we have looked at that and analyzed where we are in the projects and the acceleration that we have been doing for some time, within this timeframe and according to the current language in the bill, Enlight anticipates between 6.5-8 GW will achieve safe harbor. The breakdown of the overall gigawatts of projects meeting these requirements is as follows, 4.9 GW of capacity is estimated to have already met this requirement, which includes two projects that are currently operational and projects under construction.
1.7 GW of capacity is estimated to meet requirements in the coming weeks as we're working through and planning on starting construction. 0.5-2 GW of capacity is estimated to meet the requirements within the eligibility timeframe that I've outlined. I'll turn the call back over to Gilad.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Adam. Just a few comments on going just working as a workflow on the presentation slides. If we look on the, say, roadmap that we outlined as a result of this policy, one comment I would like to make is that the outline or the roadmap until 2027 is the same as we presented just a few weeks ago in the earnings call of the first quarter. We outlined 8.6 GW that will be operational by December 2027. This has not changed as we believe that we will be able to qualify those projects under the criteria Adam just mentioned. We added to this roadmap the year 2028 because we wanted to, for your convenience, basically to refer to the year 2028, which is part of the new policy.
Under these, let's say, I'd say assumptions, we believe that together with our global business, we will be able to bring to operation between 11-13 GW. The orange part in the slide in the graph refers to the U.S. market. You see there is a delta that is referred to the global market. We'll, of course, connect also projects in Europe and Israel. If we go to the left for the revenue and income representation, basically it refers to the same values. We believe that this portfolio or this capacity represents a growth to around $2 billion by the end of 2028 as an ARR that we will be able to achieve under this criteria, as mentioned by Adam.
This represents a CAGR of around 40%, as you can see in the presentation, which is very similar to the CAGR that we've shown in the last eight years. We are very happy that, and I think in this regard, we believe it's very important that legislation on the IRA is under process because we believe that in the last few months since the election, there was a lot of concern or interest within the U.S. and global markets regarding two main areas: the tariff policy and the IRA policy. Now that we believe that in these two vectors, there are still both of them still undergoing, but we see that we at least follow the trend. We believe that this clarification within, hopefully, the new coming months is something very positive.
The policy itself that allows this transition until the end of 2028 with, of course, the criteria of safe harbor in the 60 days after legislation is enacted is providing, we believe, enough clarity for us and room for us to construct the portfolio that we want to execute in the next two, three years. This is very positive. Another comment that we wanted to make is regarding the competitiveness of renewable energy and primarily solar energy in the U.S. This is the next slide, basically. The comment is the following. According to external sources, what we see is that solar energy is still economical together with storage in the U.S. versus fossil fuels, but more significantly in the WEC market, which is representing most of our activity as in Enlight U.S. or Clēnera.
In this area, the LCOE is estimated at $45 per megawatt hour, which is very competitive, but also shows that in case in the coming years and even in the regime without tax equity from 2029 and onwards, we believe that the low LCOE in WEC allows a good cushion in terms of power prices versus other segments in solar generation, meaning that the PPA prices that we signed together in WEC can be lower and represent the same IRR because of the lower LCOE that comes, of course, from the higher solar resource. This means that if it will take or if it takes more time for equipment costs, for example, in the U.S.
To adjust to the global values, maybe because of tariff policy or any other transitional, I would say, consideration, we believe that the WEC market represents a better flexibility in this regard and allows us to be the source of generation in the U.S. that is so required in order to meet the demand for electricity and primarily data centers. This is why we are optimistic first on, I would say, the U.S. in general as the growth for electricity demand must be answered. We believe that solar generation, solar and storage are positioned within the U.S., I would say, at the best place in order to answer this demand and are a big part of the interconnection queue until 2030 anyway.
Specifically within WEC, we believe that we represent the most attractive area in order to mitigate or, I would say, smoothen the transition period to economical values as we see in Europe and Israel. This is why we are positive about that as well. We presented or published additional slides on PPA pricing in the U.S. and the growth, but I think you are very familiar with that. Having said so, we will be very happy now to handle the call for you and refer to your questions if any.
Thank you very much, Gilad. Operator, can we please move to Q&A session?
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Just as a reminder, we will answer questions in the order that they are received. One moment, please, for your first question. Our first questions come from the line of Justin Clare with ROTH Capital Partners. Please proceed with your questions.
Hi, thanks, guys, and appreciate the update here given the potential policy changes. I wanted to start out here. As you look to accelerate the start of construction for some projects, I was wondering how you plan to qualify for the start of construction. You have a range here, 6.5-8 GW that could be eligible for the credits. Can you just kind of walk us through the scenario in which you get to the 8 gigawatts versus the hurdles that might prevent you from getting to the full 8 and the scenario where you may only qualify the 6.5?
Yeah. Hi, Justin. Thank you for your question. I would say that not necessarily we need to accelerate. Why? If you look and follow our roadmap in the U.S., I want to emphasize that as we already outlined in previous presentations, we have a very, very steep growth by the years 2025 to 2027 anyway, and also 2028, which means that we should focus because we worked so hard together with Clēnera, of course, on the execution of the portfolio, on the development, on conversion of the portfolio from development to construction. We achieved, I think, excellent results in terms of being able to de-risk a very large portfolio.
There is like an exponential growth anyway between 2025 and 2027 that if we execute, we get to $1.4 billion by the end of 2027 in terms of annual rate of revenues and income. By the end of 2028, yes, we may accelerate a little bit and qualify even more projects. This really more, I would say, is more referring to the 2028 year than the 2027, which we do not need to accelerate. Basically, we need to execute on the current plan. In this regard, we will basically consider whether we want to accelerate maybe procurement of certain elements in order to reach the safe harbor rules that are the same rules currently under the IRS or in certain projects to be able to get to physical works before.
This all applies to this margin between 6.5 and 8, which is not necessarily the case for the steep growth that we are doing anyway, which means that we can focus. This is the important part. I think this legislation, if it is finally enacted, provides for us the window to focus on a huge growth plan that we have anyway. If we can execute it, and we believe and we are confident that we can execute it, we have very good clarity to a huge growth that I believe puts the company in a totally different place. We are very proud in doing 40% year on year in the last eight years in Enlight.
In order to do that in the scale now of we are already with a guidance of around $500 million revenues and income for the year 2025 to grow to $2 billion annually by the end of 2028 is a huge growth. Now we can focus. We believe that the policy, as we understand it, allows us to do that under the regular regime. We do not have to do huge adjustments. It means that we have enough time in order to adjust to a non-tax equity regime from 2029. We are very confident on the market, not only on us, to be able to do that because of the equipment cost already in the markets, in the global markets today. I just would like to give you a data point. We are procuring panels, the same panels as we procure for the U.S.
We procure today for Europe and Israel in less than $0.09 per watt. We are procuring BESS cells, and not only us, but the market is procuring BESS or energy storage cells in now less than $100 in Europe and Israel in our markets. This means that the core equipment cost is such that can allow this transition. Of course, the U.S. market has to adjust to this regime. We believe that this window is enabling that. We believe it is important to do that. As much as the economy will be, I would say, based on the fundamentals, we believe it will be competitive.
Got it. Appreciate that. Just given that you may start construction on some projects earlier here in 2025, wondering if we should anticipate any meaningful change in the CapEx spend in 2025 or changes in expenses or anything that may impact the guidance for the year?
Yeah. No, because anyway, the plan was very, very, I would say, aggressive. As we outlined previously, we are already under construction of 1.4 factored GW in the U.S. market plus additional capacity outside of the U.S. this year. Our plan was to get into construction anyway of additional 2.8. It means to be under construction during 2025 for 4.7. We do not need to accelerate that. This is the exact plan. We do want to qualify as planned. Again, additional capacity in terms of start of construction or safe harboring, which is the initial works, but this is the first 5% and so forth. In this regard, we are under the same plan. We do not need, maybe marginal, but we do not need additional major funding in order to basically execute the same plan that we wanted to execute before.
Okay. Got it. Maybe just one more here. When we look out to 2028, you're looking to have 11-13 factored GW of capacity by the end of the year. Wondering if you could talk to how many of those projects have PPAs in place right now versus how many projects would still need to have PPAs signed? Maybe just speak to the timing in which you anticipate making progress on contracting that capacity.
Yeah. This is a great question. First, it's important to reiterate. I think it appears also in the presentation that for the year 2029 and forward, we have the full flexibility. We still did not procure the equipment or sign PPAs. For the non-tax equity regime, we do not have any commitments. It means that we have the full flexibility basically to follow the economical equation between power prices and, of course, equipment cost, tariffs, whatever will be the case. For the year 2028, which is the 11 to 13, we are not contracted in terms of PPA. We are contracted to all the capacity that is expected to reach COD until the end of 2027, so the 8.6. It means that everything above that is still not contracted. We have enough time to do that and still meet the criteria mentioned before.
It provides us flexibility. This is in terms of the numbers that you asked.
Okay. Sounds good. Appreciate the update. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Corinne Blanchard with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your questions.
Hi. Good morning, guys. Maybe just one question on FIOC and the requirements there. How do you think you're going to be able to navigate that? For the storage, I think you have about 20% that is still about exposed to that requirement. Just interested to know, yeah, how you can navigate about that in the next 6-12 months? Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. So first, of course, this is the latest development, is something that is very new, but in general, we cannot refer to the actual question of whether the administration or the Congress are the one to do the tariff legislation. What I can refer to is the actual policy of this administration that we followed in the last period. What we saw and also, I think, reflected in the earnings call last quarter is that the procurement strategy of Clēnera in the last two years was such that we were able to navigate it out of the dependence on Chinese sources on the panel side, or wherever we have Chinese panels, they are already delivered to the U.S. Basically, according to the current situation, not, I would say, under the tariffs.
On the battery side, we based 80% of the projects that are under construction right now on Tesla, which is exposed, of course, also to Chinese tariffs, but I would say comparably to the other tier one suppliers with a lesser exposure. I think we position ourselves in a good place. We provided slides to show that with all the different layers of protections that we have from what I just mentioned, but also from the tax equity that is compensating for CapEx increase and some adjustment mechanism that we have or believe will be achieved in the contract with utilities and with the suppliers. We believe that according to different scenarios we outlined in our presentation from 30%-145% of tariffs, the impact will be quite minimal.
We thought that we are currently quite protected from the current, I would say, different scenarios of the policy of the administration, whether it is after it is decided within the U.S. system to be finally decided by the administration or needs to be legislated, but anyhow. Then we saw that the policy or the administration itself is trending towards lower level of tariffs, which means that under the scenario outlined, we are under even better situation. All in all, we hope first the policy will stay as we see in the latest trends and will be calmed down. We will follow, of course, the way the policy will be executed in the U.S., whether under administration or legislation. In this regard, we will follow like all of you.
Great. Thank you. Sorry if I missed it, but can you talk about the PPA? In terms of pricing expectation, do you expect pricing to go further up in the next couple of years?
Look, in the presentation published recently, we are showing a graph of the development of PPA pricing in the U.S. between wind, solar, and blended in the last four years. We can see that it really fits the growth in demand, the growth trend, the soaring growth in demand in the same period in the U.S. between 2020 and 2021 to 2025, with demand growth growing from 0.5% period to around higher than 1.5% period. We are not analysts, but we believe that there is, I would say, a usual equation where higher demand than supply is driving the prices higher. We do not know if this remains the case, but we follow like everyone the development within primarily the data center sector. We have seen charts that show that data center electricity consumption in the U.S.
is expected to grow to around 12% by 2030, comparing to 3.7% today. It looks like this demand, and I don't know if this will happen or not, but this demand is really what is going to drive the prices in the sector.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Maheep Mandloi with Mizuho. Please proceed with your questions.
Hey, thanks for taking the questions under this call here. Maybe going to Corinne's question just on the foreign entity of concern, could you just help us understand what are you assuming on China content for your projects which will come online in 2027 and 2028? Is that the understanding that if they start construction within or before October, that you do not have to worry about the China content in modules or batteries or things?
Yeah. Thank you, Maheep, for the questions. In general, interpretation, the acceptable interpretation right now, and of course, nobody can know because it is still not legislated. According to the current wording and the acceptable interpretation that we saw from some of the leading legal firms in the U.S., they interpreted that if you meet safe harbor or start of construction criteria within 2025, your tax equity is basically protected even if you procure the equipment from Chinese origin. This refers more maybe to other sectors that will not meet, or other projects, I mean, that will not meet anyway the 2025, and then procurement in 2026 and on will not be eligible to tax equity if you procure from Chinese origin.
The fact that we anyway refer to projects that will meet the 60-day safe harbor period or start of construction means that they already include inside the protection in terms of this clause as well. This is the current interpretation. Of course, we will wait to see like everyone else the final wording.
Got it. Can you help us understand the start of construction? I know you talked about having a lot of equipment already in the U.S., but for 2027, 2028 projects, how do you plan to achieve that? Is it the transformer switch gears, or do you probably need to procure any other equipment in the 60-day period?
I think like Adam just mentioned, we believe that we already met the requirement for 4.9 GW out of the 6.5. An additional 1.1 are expected, according to our estimation, to meet the start of construction criteria within the following weeks. We believe that we have good probability to meet 6 GW already within a few weeks. Of course, we do not know what will be the legislation period, but just assuming, and this is as good assumption as anyone, we want to outline it. We took a 90-day assumption plus the 60 days, meaning 150. We believe that in the 150, we will be able to qualify at least 0.5 in addition. Altogether, summing up to 6.5. This is exactly to your question regarding different tracks. It can be transformers. It can be other equipment. It can be physical start of works.
According to the current IRS criteria, this is our estimation, of course.
Just to follow up on that, does you have a mix of strategies, but do you expect any cash needs if you're buying some of the equipment upfront? Do you expect any cash needs, or do you expect it to be financed through the warehouse or something else?
Yeah. Again, we do not see a material change in the cash needs of the company. We anyway planned 2025 to be an intensive capital, I would say, expense year, CapEx, in terms of the new project. We already arranged for that in order to be able to execute the very large portfolio, the 4.8 or 4.7 that we are planning to put under construction in parallel this year. We already arranged for that. In terms of meeting, say, criteria for safe harbor on additional, it was already the plan anyway for new projects. Again, for the majority, we do not see increase. Maybe there will be, of course, some additional capital in order to accelerate, but we do not see it as a material change in our capital needs for 2025.
Again, maybe thanks to the fact that anyway we planned a very intensive investment year for the company. Maybe because of that, we believe that this legislation is supporting our plan because I think we were in a quite unique position in terms of the growth that we planned for 2025 and, of course, reflecting afterwards in CODs 2026, 2027. This, I would say, policy is helpful for us in the aspect that it provides us the capability to execute our plan.
I appreciate that. Just one quick housekeeping on slide five, you show the LCOE for solar storage. Does that include the tax credit, or is that unsubsidized? The $45 per year?
Yeah. This includes the tax. To my understanding, of course, we use a source that we refer to as Footnote 6, but to my understanding, it includes tax equity.
Got it. All right. No, I appreciate all the color here, and definitely, you guys will find a better place with the transition here. Thanks for taking the questions.
Yeah.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad.
Thank you very much for participating in the call. We hope that we've been helpful.
One more question.
Okay. It's okay for today. We hope that we were instrumental and helpful in terms of reflecting the impact of the policy on our business, and we'll be very happy to address your questions, additional, whenever you need. Thank you very much.
Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day.