Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Capital Power 2025 guidance conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Roy Arthur, Vice President of Investor Relations and Strategy.
Thank you, Operator. Welcome to Capital Power's 2025 guidance and outlook call. The format for today's call will be a formal presentation followed by Q&A for the research analysts. I'd like to remind everyone that certain statements about future events made on the call are forward-looking in nature and are based on certain assumptions and analysis made by the company. Actual results could differ materially from the company's expectations due to various risks and uncertainties associated with our business. Please refer to the cautionary statements and forward-looking information, disclaimer slides, and ratios in the presentation or on our regulatory filings on SEDAR+. Before we begin the presentation, I would like to acknowledge that Capital Power's head office in Edmonton is located within the traditional and contemporary home of many Indigenous peoples of the Treaty 6 region and the Métis Nation of Alberta Region 4.
We acknowledge the diverse Indigenous communities that are in these areas and whose presence continues to enrich the community and our lives as we learn more about the Indigenous history of the lands on which we live and work. Presenting on today's call will be Avik Dey, President and CEO, Sandra Haskins, SVP, Finance and CFO, and Jason Comandante, SVP and Head of Canada. In terms of focus areas, Avik will lead the call by providing an update on our company and key priorities for 2025, followed by Jason, who will provide perspectives on the long-term fundamentals driving the power sector. Thereafter, Sandra will discuss our 2025 guidance. We'll conclude with remarks from Avik before we start the Q&A. With that, I will turn it over to Avik.
Thanks, Roy. 2024 was a remarkable year for Capital Power. We are proud and excited about what we achieved in the year and what's in store for 2025 and beyond. We will talk in more detail about 2024 as part of our year-end presentation in February, but to kick us off, I'd like to share some achievements from the past year that have positioned us for a bright future. We've strategically grown and diversified our fleet with key U.S.-based acquisitions of La Paloma and Harquahala. We significantly decarbonized our portfolio through the Genesee Repowering Project, which achieved COD in December, resulting in a reduction of 3.4 MT per annum of CO2 emissions.
Furthermore, we enhanced our financial flexibility and crystallized returns on our renewable assets through a sell-down transaction for CAD 340 million of gross proceeds, in addition to the execution of a successful bought deal financing where we upsized and executed the option for a total gross proceeds of CAD 460 million. In 2024, we continued to invest in our assets, and for 2025, we are positioned to grow with strong liquidity. This set of achievements is a testament to the fantastic team of people that run our business. We are extremely grateful for the contributions all our current and past employees have made and the grace that they've demonstrated in the face of rapid and significant change. As we look to 2025, our exceptional team is ready to capture the enormous growth opportunity we see unfolding across North America with agility, innovation, and excellence.
Where does this set of achievements leave us today? We are the fifth-largest gas IPP with a stable foundation of contracted cash flow that is positioned for growth. As Jason will discuss in the next section, power market fundamentals are incredibly strong. While we believe they justify material investment in new natural gas thermal generation capacity, the market sentiment currently favors existing generation based on speed to market and overall cost. This includes assets in our current portfolio and those we hope to acquire in the future. In terms of existing generation, we have a large and diversified footprint capable of delivering 10 GW of capacity with roughly an even split between Canada and the U.S. Our access to attractively priced capital is driven by our strong contractual underpinning and investment-grade credit rating.
This, along with our strong liquidity, underpins our ability to continue acquiring and optimizing thermal generation assets using our in-house operational expertise. We have established and maintained this expertise through our unwavering commitment to reliable, affordable, and increasingly cleaner power generation. Our track record of acquiring and optimizing these types of assets is crystal clear. We have executed 11 transactions for CAD 6 billion of total gross value over the last 10 years. In each and every case, we have been able to uprate, optimize, or recontract those assets. We have considerable opportunity in front of us as an organization. However, I would like to provide greater clarity regarding the specific subsets of opportunity that you will see us focus our time and attention on. From a flexible generation standpoint, you will see us focus on three key things. Firstly, contract optimization of our existing assets.
This is not a question of if we can do this, but rather a question of when and at which price level and for what duration. The other key question will be who will want to contract with us as we will selectively look for opportunities to contract with data centers. Secondly, optimization and expansion of our existing fleet. We are currently evaluating this on a site-by-site basis for future potential beyond what we have been able to do already. Thirdly, we are actively looking to acquire more facilities with a near-term focus on U.S. thermal natural gas. As we have discussed in the past, we continue to believe that M&A represents a compelling opportunity. In addition to the ability to generate upfront cash flow per share accretion, it enhances the opportunity set for future recontracting, expansion, and optimization.
Lastly, from a development standpoint, we will continue to selectively look for opportunities to grow our renewables portfolio. Now that I have given you a brief overview of these priorities, allow me to provide some greater color for each one. Contract optimization. Starting with contract optimization, the priority for this avenue of shareholder value creation will be our U.S. flexible generation assets. Natural gas will play a key role in the energy expansion, and we expect to be able to recontract assets for longer duration than we have seen in the past and at potentially higher pricing. As a reminder, we have approximately 4 GW of capacity across our U.S. flexible generation fleet, with contracts expiring between 2029 and 2032. We will focus recontracting on the assets that are at the shorter end of this range or assets that could benefit from a blend and extend.
We are excited about the opportunity to recontract these assets as this recontracting offers incremental cash flow with longer duration with little or no capital. It also means we would not have to wait until the expiration of an existing contract to see a benefit if the revised pricing is higher. It's the most compelling net present value per capacity uplift opportunity for us. I cannot give you a definitive timeline to when we expect to recontract our assets or at what price, but what I can say is that overall, we see an environment where capacity pricing remains short of what is needed in order to drive investment in new generation. Given that the cost of new entry is meaningfully higher than where our assets are contracted today, we believe there's material upside potential to our existing assets.
Furthermore, our practice of continuing to invest in our assets to maximize their efficiency, operational life, and cash flow positions us well to extract more value for longer. Lastly, we believe it positions us well to work with data center customers as part of our overall value maximization effort for our portfolio. Next, optimize and expand. In terms of optimization, these efforts have served to maximize net present value per capacity. We have realized annual benefits from our optimization efforts across our portfolio and are in the process of advancing improvements, notably the Ontario Uprate projects. At York and Goreway, where we are adding approximately 80 MW of additional capacity and blending and extending the original contract terms for the underlying facilities. In each case, we are doing this at a cost that is significantly below that of greenfield construction.
Another example of realized benefits includes the Decatur CT turbine upgrades, which increased capacity at that facility by 90 MW and reduced emission intensity by approximately 1.5% and increased EBITDA by approximately CAD 8 million on an annual basis. This is tangible evidence of our continued effort to invest in our assets, mitigate costs, and maximize the net present value of our capacity. This is only possible thanks to the expertise of our highly qualified team. In cases where optimization and expansion are executed at our sites, the returns exceed our threshold and provide the highest return relative to greenfield or M&A. Acquisitions. We have discussed at length our historical track record of impactful M&A. So rather than focus on the past, I would like to look forward and talk about where we are going and why.
At Investor Day, we talked about our capital allocation priorities as being 70% flexible generation, with the balance being towards renewables and other initiatives. Our focus on M&A will be on U.S. flexible generation, specifically natural gas. We continue to prioritize areas where we already operate, such as U.S. WECC and MISO. Additionally, we're looking at PJM and ERCOT as areas to diversify and gain exposure to fundamentals we think are additive to our portfolio. To provide you with some data points, the U.S. is a large and fragmented market with over 3,000 natural gas-fired generation facilities with over 900 GW of total generation capacity. In the U.S., we see a market with a significant number of financial owners whose capital has defined timelines.
This means that despite longer-term strong fundamentals that Jason will speak to, we see these names as being motivated to sell and return capital to investors. More than two-thirds of U.S. natural gas capacity that is sold in the past five years has been bought by financial buyers. The last point I will make here relates to cost, certainty, and timing. We think M&A is compelling because you can acquire existing capacity for substantially lower cost faster than it could be built. We have used dollar per capacity as proxy, but we have been able to acquire strategically positioned assets for 20%-50% lower than the estimated cost of greenfield construction. While competition for these assets can push valuations higher, we will be disciplined and continue to focus on strategic underpinning and cash flow accretion per share. Development.
The last area of growth that I wanted to touch on is development. Power demand growth warrants continued power growth across multiple forms of technology. From a development standpoint, near term, we will focus this on select renewable projects. As many of you know, we have 1 GW of panels pursuant to our agreement with First Solar. We are already making headway on deploying these panels. Of our projects under construction, approximately 180 MW are fully contracted solar facilities. We have approximately 620 MW of additional panels we intend to deploy and numerous other potential development projects we can pursue long term. We look forward to providing further updates as we progress these initiatives. Now that I've given you a sense of the overall priorities we're focused on to create shareholder value, I will now outline our priorities for 2025.
Capital Power is focused on maximizing the value of our flexible generation fleet. This means, where appropriate, recontracting our existing assets with existing customers. We will also selectively look for opportunities to contract our assets with data center customers with a focus on Genesee as this asset is uncontracted. We will also continue to advance long-term opportunities at our other assets for data center co-locations. We will continue our focus on safe and efficient operations by investing in our assets with a sustaining capital program that closely resembles our 2024 efforts. This will consist of 39 planned outages for a total of 493 outage days. Additionally, we will look to expand our portfolio of flexible generation assets through acquisitions. We remain extremely proud of our track record, successfully acquiring and optimizing flexible generation assets. Lastly, we will grow our renewables portfolio in alignment with our overall strategy.
We continue to believe our renewables and flexible natural gas assets complement each other as part of our approach to providing balanced energy solutions supported by our trading and origination business. I will now hand it over to Jason to walk through the market fundamentals.
Thank you, Avik. Over the next few slides, I'm going to discuss what we're seeing in the North American power space and why we're so excited about our prospects. In short, power market fundamentals across North America are bullish and are being driven by several independent themes. This all bodes well for entities that are focused on providing a balance of reliable, affordable, clean supply entities like Capital Power. Power sector fundamentals are stronger than they've ever been.
What we're seeing is multifaceted demand growth from commercial and industrial customers due to trends like electrification and reshoring and residential customers due to population growth and transportation via EV charging. Of course, the data center narrative has also taken hold, and I'll address that in more detail in the coming slides. Natural gas will be required to meet rising North American demand as it represents the best mix of what today's customers want and need: a clean source of supply that is both reliable and affordable. Capital Power's portfolio is uniquely positioned to serve those customers with our geographically diverse mix of merchant and contracted natural gas-fired generation, coupled with renewables and a strong pipeline of growth. This growth will come from expansion of our existing fleet, as well as through M&A activity that continues to represent value relative to greenfield development with superior risk-adjusted return potential.
Demand growth is coming from multiple sectors, but none more exciting than from data centers and hyperscalers. What's important to note, however, is that data center load growth isn't new. Over the past number of years, we've seen steady growth in power demand from data centers to deliver support for a growing number of apps, continue to disrupt the entertainment and other industries with on-demand streaming video, execute financial transactions, and cloud compute. The use case for data centers is clear and established. They form a part of our everyday life. More recently, it's been the rise of artificial intelligence that has really paved the way for extraordinary incremental power demand from the data center sector. AI-focused entities are racing to train and ultimately deploy better models faster, driving the need for more power reliably delivered and delivered now.
But even without AI use, data center power demand growth has been and is projected to continue to grow by 15%-20% annually. Whether for AI or other use cases, data center customers are focused on reliability, speed to market, cost, and ideally a pathway to carbon reduction. That focus on reliability and speed can only be met by existing uncommitted baseload generation, of which there is a finite supply across North America. Capital Power's long-standing strategy of building, acquiring, and optimizing reliable generation has put us in the unique position of holding those exact types of assets. Across various jurisdictions, we have reliable power available in the near term and in several cases with the potential to be expanded and decarbonized in the future.
While we are believers in nuclear's ability to play a prominent role in providing reliable clean power, we believe considerable time will be required for this technology to get to where it needs to be. Recently constructed conventional nuclear facilities in the U.S., Sweden, and France have had costs of $7,500-$15,000 per kilowatt and took up to 18 years to complete. In our estimation, greenfield generation, even abated thermal, would cost only $4,000-$6,000 per kilowatt-hour and would require roughly six years to complete. Compared to those costs and timelines, Capital Power has been acquiring reliable generation at $500-$1,000 per kilowatt, a material portion of which is uncontracted. Our existing uncontracted generation offers more immediate timing and ultra-competitive costs, making it a very compelling value proposition.
Over the past year, we've taken stock of how the existing uncontracted capacity in our portfolio might be optimized to make data center and hyperscaler consumers Capital Power customers and partners. What we found is that what those consumers need can be delivered by several assets within our existing portfolio. First, data centers need extremely high levels of availability, often referred to as five nines, meaning 99.999% availability, which cannot be served from single assets. That type of reliability must come from grids, assets backed by grids, or other unique configurations. Capital Power has assets in markets and on grids that can deliver on this reliability need. Second, data centers need land to lay down infrastructure. How much land, of course, depends on the size of the data center, but a general rule of thumb is that they need one half to one whole acre per megawatt of utilization.
A one-gigawatt data center, therefore, requires upwards of 1,000 acres of land to co-locate on. Capital Power has assets on land or near available land with that type of footprint. Third, data centers require related infrastructure such as water and access to fiber. Again, our sites have or can be relatively easily equipped to have those features. And finally, we've heard from data centers that while speed to market and reliability are critical, future pathways to decarbonization are also very important. A prime example of how Capital Power can offer this is at our Genesee site, where through 2021, 2022, and 2023, we developed the Genesee CCS Project that was discontinued for economic reasons, but absolutely has the potential to be brought back to the table. After applying the screening criteria to serve data centers and hyperscalers, we've identified seven primary assets and have been marketing them.
While we are not in a position to disclose details today, we have been engaging in detailed negotiations with major global firms around how sites like Genesee in Alberta, MCV in Michigan, and others in the Southwest U.S. can serve needs for balanced energy solutions. To be clear, Capital Power does not intend to build or operate data centers. Our efforts have been focused on entities with financial and operational wherewithal to do that on their own. Capital Power's portfolio contains roughly 10 GW of capacity, and of that, upwards of 3 GW is available today, and that figure doubles later in the decade. There are multiple ways for us to win in this environment.
For example, we can contract one or more assets in whole or in part that can lead to future opportunities for growth, or benefit from others contracting with data centers that will accelerate load growth, tightening supply and demand, bringing prices for power closer to the all-in cost of new production, or we can use our experience and expertise operating base load generation to partner with data centers or hyperscalers that are considering vertical integration. The path for enhanced value and accelerated growth for our company is clear and is within our grasp. Just like artificial intelligence isn't the only driver of data center-based power demand, data centers aren't the only driver of North American power demand. Roughly 70% of power demand load growth will come from sources other than data centers. This is another expression of how Capital Power has multiple ways to win.
If it's not our balanced energy solutions business capturing data centers and hyperscalers, it will be our long-standing origination platform that will continue to capture load, allowing us and our customers to manage a commodity risk. But to be clear, we don't need either of those businesses, both of which are very well positioned to execute, to succeed in order to see upside. Load growth is the tide that lifts all boats with exposure to power prices. In several jurisdictions, some of which Capital Power does have power price exposure to, the data center narrative is arguably not yet baked into forward prices. For example, in Alberta, one year ago today, forward spark spreads for 2027 and 2028 were roughly CAD 39 per megawatt-hour. These are the years that we're most likely to see early data center demand first start to show up.
Today, forward spark spreads for those same years are almost unchanged at CAD 42 per megawatt-hour. On a fixed price basis, those spark spreads translate into prices in the CAD 70 per megawatt-hour range, which is well under a benchmark CAD 100 per megawatt -hour levelized new cost of entry. A common theme we're seeing across the board is one that affirms our strategy of combining flexible generation with renewables. Customers, whether they be residential, C&I, or large-scale data centers or hyperscalers, want balanced energy solutions. Solutions that are reliable, affordable, and clean. Society's needs at large are similar to that of our customers. Natural gas's versatility, allowing it to act as a complement to renewables and compete with nuclear on an abated basis in the future, is a very compelling combination. Capital Power's portfolio is incredibly well positioned both now and into the future. Our asset base across Canada and the U.S.
offers flexible, reliable supply from efficient units that have capacity to expand and opportunity to decarbonize through carbon capture and storage or hydrogen blending. We have built our way up to being North America's fifth largest gas-fired power producer and are poised to become the leading supplier of choice for those seeking reliable, affordable, and clean balanced energy solutions. With that, I will hand it over to Sandra to walk through our 2025 guidance and what the fundamentals I have walked through here will mean for Capital Power.
Thank you, Jason, and good afternoon, everyone. As we look ahead to 2025, I will provide our financial guidance for the year, highlight our stable and predictable Adjusted EBITDA that is underpinned by our contracted base of capacity and energy, and the upside that can be captured from our non-base load assets that benefit from scarcity pricing and merchant trading.
I will also provide information on 2025 funding strategy prior to handing it back to Avik for closing remarks. Before we dive into guidance, I want to highlight our total annual shareholder returns. Over the past 10 years, we have delivered superior total shareholder returns from a compounded dividend growth of approximately 7% and share price appreciation of around 9%, resulting in a total annual return of 16%. This performance demonstrates our commitment to creating long-term value for our shareholders. We saw exceptional results in 2024 with a TSR of approximately 80% driven by share price appreciation as the market responded to the strong thematic tailwinds that drive their strategy. As a reminder, we updated our long-term total shareholder return target to 12%-14% and remain confident we can continue to meet or exceed this in the future.
Our 2025 guidance summary outlines our expectations for Adjusted EBITDA, AFFO, and sustaining CapEx. Adjusted EBITDA in the range of CAD 1,340 million to CAD 1,440 million reflects a modest increase relative to our revised 2024 guidance range. The Adjusted EBITDA range reflects our strong contracted asset base and a significant volume of long-duration hedges, most of which are C&I contracts that were entered into in anticipation of lower Alberta power prices as we move to the bottom of the commodity cycle. On the next slide, I will get into more detail on the composition of Adjusted EBITDA to provide greater clarity on the stability of our business. AFFO is expected to be between CAD 850 million -CAD 950 million, reflecting a material increase relative to our 2024 guidance range, largely driven by favorable tax impacts.
We anticipate Sustaining Capital to be between CAD 195 million and CAD 225 million as we continue to invest in our assets. This will occur over 493 outage days and 39 planned outages, of which 24 are at flexible generation sites and 15 at renewable sites. Overall, the guidance ranges reflect our confidence in our business strategy and our ability to generate strong financial results. The graph on this page provides a breakdown of the composition of Adjusted EBITDA of our business, providing a different perspective than we have previously shared. Our base Adjusted EBITDA, which is expected to be between CAD 1,265 million and CAD 1,315 million, is made up of three main components: capacity-based contracts, energy margin contracts, and other long-term hedges and C&I contracts. This cash flow is stable with potential for relatively minor movements due to variances such as capacity factors of renewables and unplanned outage events at our facilities.
Our enhanced segment is comprised of shorter-term hedges and optimization of non-base load assets that are dispatched during periods of supply shortages, which realize premium pricing. For 2025, this amount is lower than in recent years due to an oversupplied Alberta market that will have a lower frequency of high-price events driven by weather and operational offsets. In summary, we have a diversified portfolio that includes a strong base of Adjusted EBITDA making up the majority of that total, which is stable and predictable, supports our investment-grade credit rating, and provides a strong foundation for growth. The potential for incremental upside from peaking assets and intra- year trading and our prudent approach helps mitigate risks and maximize value.
Our year-over-year Adjusted EBITDA reconciliation highlights the contributions from new assets, including full-year operations of La Paloma and Harquahala and new renewable and battery energy storage units, which will reach commercial operations during 2025. We are also seeing some cost savings at the corporate level on a normalized basis after realigning our business for growth in the U.S. market. In addition to this, we see material declines in our energy margins, primarily in Alberta, as the market absorbs the new base load supply and to some extent at La Paloma. These factors contribute to our projected Adjusted EBITDA range of CAD 1,340 million -CAD 1,440 million for 2025. In terms of AFFO reconciliation, our 2025 AFFO is expected to be between CAD 850 million and CAD 950 million, reflecting a material increase relative to our 2024 guidance range of CAD 770 million -CAD 880 million.
This increase is driven by higher Adjusted EBITDA and tax shield eligibility stemming from the efficiency levels achieved from our significant investment in Genesee Repowering Project. This is partly offset by short-term increases in new sustaining capital expenditures that have increased with the recent addition of new assets, increased capacity factors accelerating outage timelines, LTSA milestone payments, and current year procurement of long-term lead items required through future outages. Finally, our 2025 funding strategy outlines the sources and uses of funds. As you saw from our 2024 execution, we have access to multiple sources of capital, including cash, credit facilities, capital markets, asset recycling, and partnerships to fund growth. For 2025, we have fully funded capital spend consisting of committed CapEx to advanced projects already announced, dividends, and repayment of debt. This can all be funded using internally generated cash flow and cash on hand.
Furthermore, our liquidity position has been significantly enhanced by recent efforts Avik mentioned at the beginning of the call. Specifically, we have sold down renewable assets generating CAD 340 million of gross proceeds and closed a bought deal equity financing for CAD 460 million of gross proceeds, including the exercise of an over-allotment option. This positions us better than ever to pursue acquisitions as part of our growth strategy while maintaining financial stability. With that, I will hand it back over to Avik for his concluding remarks.
Thank you, Sandra. I would like to conclude this call by quickly reiterating some of the key themes we have discussed. From a market standpoint, we believe that the strong fundamentals that are seeing natural gas play a permanent role in meeting the needs of society and our customers. We also see this dynamic benefiting existing generation today and requiring more generation in the future.
As it relates to existing generation, we have a large and diversified footprint of strategically positioned generation assets. We will seek to optimize these assets through our in-house commercial and operational expertise. We will look to augment our footprint through acquisition, building on our well-established track record. Lastly, the funding of this growth and optimization will be aided by our access to low-cost capital, underpinned by our investment-grade balance sheet and strong contractual underpinning. With that, I will hand it back over to the operator to start Q&A .
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. One moment for questions. Our first question comes from Robert Hope with Scotiabank. You may proceed.
Good afternoon, everyone.
First question's on one of your key priorities for 2025, and that being to acquire some assets specifically in the U.S. Following the capital raise in late last year, just can you give us an update on kind of the landscape you're seeing? How many opportunities are popping up and your confidence on the ability to transact on something in 2025?
Thanks, Rob. With regard to the M&A activity in the U.S., we continue to see a number of opportunities. Markets are coming to the market. And as we discussed in the presentation, two-thirds of the space is actually held by financial owners. So in terms of rotation of those assets, because that capital largely holds those assets on finite timelines, we continue to see more opportunities in that space.
We're seeing more buyers as well, but we remain confident in terms of our ability to transact and that we have a differentiated ability to transact. Does that answer the question?
Yes, that's great. And then maybe just take a look at the nitty-gritty of the 2025 guidance. So if you're expecting Alberta margins to decline, can you maybe give us kind of a range of Alberta power pricing or utilization that you're using, as well as maybe a sensitivity?
Thanks, Rob. Yeah, so I'd say that what we have used is our locked-in power prices for our hedge positions in the high 70s. And on the open position, we're looking at forwards that were around that CAD 50 per megawatt hour for the non-hedged part of the book.
On capacity factors of generation, with repowering just being recently completed, we're using a capacity factor of about 80% for Genesee 1 and 2 next year, which is below the long-term run rate, if you will, of more in the low 90% range. So although last year it was lower because of construction, when you do have a new asset, there are sometimes some disruptions or hiccups as you come online. So there was some conservatism in there just to reflect that in our assumptions. So on the hedge, year-over-year hedges are probably pretty consistent, but I'd say it's more on the open book that you'll see lower pricing from 2024. Likewise, the amount of volume that you would see on the peaking facilities is significantly lower.
And that's kind of what we were looking to demonstrate in the base versus your enhanced piece of the business that we have in and above our contracted assets locked in margin in Alberta on a significant portion of our base load. But that variability, so that enhanced piece is more or less the sensitivity, and most of that is around Alberta. To some extent, there's variability in La Paloma as well on what's not covered under the RAs. But I'd say that CAD 50 million-CAD 100 million that we show as enhanced is more or less your sensitivity on what might be available in Alberta for incremental earnings. And certainly, that is much lower than what we've seen, just given the expectation around the lack of volatility in the market, given the oversupply.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Patrick Kenny with NBF. You may proceed.
Good morning.
I just wanted to ask, there's a pretty large data center campus being proposed up in Northwest Alberta, and as you mentioned, the Alberta market is currently oversupplied, not to mention the backlog for new large-scale turbines, so I'm just wondering if you could maybe provide a bit more color as to what gives you confidence in Genesee being uniquely positioned to deliver the speed to market that hyperscalers are currently looking for.
Yeah. Hey, Patrick. Jason here. Thanks for the question. What we're really excited about with Genesee is its available capacity and available capacity now, so don't want to speculate on other data centers or data centers co-located with new generation elsewhere in the province, but what we're so excited about with Genesee is, again, that ability to deliver megawatts now in a market that, as Sandra mentioned, is oversupplied.
This was mentioned during the presentation as well, is that another unique element of Genesee is the CCS project that we went through from a feasibility pre-FEED and FEED study. Technically, we are very comfortable with that decarbonization pathway for that asset, and I think those are the things that make us really confident about Genesee's ability to deliver for a data center in Alberta.
Thanks for that, and how much of the timing aspect would you say revolves around the market redesign? Perhaps you have an update on timing there and some of the key parameters that you expect to be implemented and whether or not they could be considered tailwinds or headwinds for contracting with data center customers.
Yeah. There's still some uncertainty as we're going through the restructured energy market and design there.
As far as we understand, the AESO remains on track to implement the restructured energy market in early 2027. What we're seeing so far is that market design and elements that might change in the market don't give us any pause as it relates to our ability to sign and bring a data center to Genesee.
Okay. And then last one for me, just on the recontracting initiative for your U.S. assets. I know we can't get too granular, Avik, on timing, but perhaps just an update on how the customer demand profile has shifted over the past few months or the appetite for extending existing agreements well before expiry.
Yeah. Thanks, Pat. I would just reiterate what I said at the last quarter, which is the big thing that's changed for us is, as we said on the call earlier, we have expiries that extend through 2031.
And we are in active dialogue on extensions that would go well beyond that for contracts that are expiring outside of two years from now. So as we've been socializing this, I think the key message I would leave you with now is that it's not a question of if, it's just a question of when and for what duration and at what price. The opportunity is there and available to do that. We've just got to find the right economics where we optimize NPV per kW on each and every asset. And that's what we're focused on. In terms of the breadth and depth, it's not just existing contracting counterparties, but it's other parties.
I think one of the key messages I'd leave you with on that is, as Jason stated, the balanced energy solution platform is about combining what we're trying to do with balanced energy solutions and what we've always historically done around origination. And so finding that sweet spot where we're canvassing the most number of potential counterparties and finding the right deal for us and for our shareholders is the focus.
Okay. That's great. I'll leave it there. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Benjamin Pham with BMO. You may proceed.
Hi. Thanks, Sam. We just had a last topic on recontracting assets a bit earlier than expiry or your reference to been and extend. Can you provide some context on why a counterparty would be paying a higher price than existing ahead of time?
Yeah.
Look, I think the very nature of these and the fact of the matter is, then, is the recontracting conversation is no different today than it has been in the history of the IPPs. And what I mean by that is we're trading short-term access for long-term investment when we're talking about expansion. And on recontracting, it's the counterparties wanting long-term security and the generator looking for economics. So generally, all of these contracts will look backwardated because we're trying to maximize NPV short-term and the off-taker is looking for long-term security. And so we get paid upfront, we maximize NPV, and we're trading some lower price over longer duration to do that. So that, for us, is actually the most hotly contested commercial discussion we have internally day in and day out, week in, week out. Because the calculus for us is, should we wait or should we contract?
Getting a market sense for where we see dispatch, where we see pricing, and where we see integrated resource plans landing for new generation capacity. I do think that that and like I've said in past earnings calls, the difference now is counterparties are eager to engage long before the expiry of the contract because they're seeing market forces as we all are.
Okay. Interesting. Maybe just a couple of ones on some of your comments on the data centers. You referenced the vertical integration angle. I guess that's something like Meta wanting to build the gas power plants themselves right now. Does that mean that you're basically effectively have a much broader business development opportunity now that you're agnostic on location, the data center brings the site and you build the power?
I believe so, Ben. The funny thing is, is that's where we started.
We saw the broad opportunity to be a solution provider for off-takers being hyperscalers requiring powered land. And then as we dug into it, it's why we put page 17 in front of you. That page looks like a simple schematic. That's the culmination of 18 months of work going through detailed site needs for hyperscalers, data center providers, and coming up with a framework for how we could be the solution provider to provide powered land. And what that resulted in is us determining that we have sites today that could deliver powered land to those off-takers. But yeah, we do see this as a broader opportunity. At our Investor Day last year, I mean, we knew this opportunity was coming when we came to the market with our Investor Day last year.
That's why the context of what we're saying today to you is very consistent with what we laid out then. The big prize here is becoming the partner of choice for hyperscalers, data center providers to allow them short-term access to power while key counterparty stakeholders, load-serving entities, utilities on the other end need long-term investment in supply. And our role is being the conduit to facilitating those investments. So we do think it's a broader opportunity set, but our focus is very heavily on our existing sites and trying to get them across the line for off-takers.
Okay. Got it. I'll leave it there. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Jarvi with CIBC. You may proceed.
Yeah. Hi, everyone. Thanks for the time today.
Just on the recontracting, Avik, you brought up that dynamic between term and pricing as you go now? Do you wait longer in the market then? What's going through your mind to go a bit shorter on a contract, or what's the advantages to lock in for 10, 12 years? How do you see that playing out? Or is this the expectation the market just continues to get tighter as you go shorter term? Just maybe any other color you can share on that.
I'd be surprised if we landed in a place where we go shorter term. I think that would be a decision where you might be penny wise and pound foolish. I think it's why I made the comment that we're really focused on optimizing NPV per kW.
I think given the market structure and demand tightness that we generally have, and this is a bit of a market-by-market conversation, so I am speaking generally now, but I think we see the firming up of contracting for longer duration gives us the ability to then focus on how do we upgrade and expand those same facilities, and so part of the context under which we're looking at these is if you can firm up duration under the existing contract through a blend and extend, then it lets us to re-up on looking at what additional opportunities are there for us to create more value. Because as I've described before, we really have four ways to make money in this business. First one is to upgrade and optimize. The second one is to expand existing capacity. The third one would be to repower those same facilities.
And the last one would be doing outright greenfield. And that last one is the one that we're not focused on. But on existing facilities, we look at the ability to recontract as an enabler to going and doing other things, which is why it's such an important decision for us as we look at that opportunity set.
Okay. And then for the expectations for that capital that was raised through the minority wind asset sale and the equity raise, is the vast majority of that earmarked for acquisitions, or do you think there'll be some meaningful greenfield or brownfield investments in 2025?
Hi, Mark. No, I would say it's more or less earmarked for M&A. To the extent you had any greenfield or brownfield, it would be something that would take a period of time to construct and deliver on.
What we wanted to do with the raise and the sell-down was to make sure that we had funds on hand to do something in a process sooner than later. So when you think about the market coming to a close at the end of 2024 and then us going into an earnings blackout, our ability to raise capital kind of disappears until you get into the back end of this quarter. And so by going to the market when we did, allowed us to make sure that we would be able to put in meaningful bids into processes that could come our way as we go through the beginning of the year. On the asset sell-down, it's been something we've been talking about for a period of time and always wanted to have a use of proceeds.
As you get into M&A transactions, your ability to execute a sell -down in a meaningful timeframe to be able to fund that is very disjointed in that a sell -down takes at least six months to do. Coming into 2024, we had just done the three large acquisitions and sort of shifted our focus to a sell -down and sort of advance that process just to be opportunistic given where those assets were in their contract lives to maximize value and to be able to execute that and have that cash available knowing that the M&A market was heating up. As we were completing the integration of those previous assets, we would be once again looking quite seriously at more growth.
Does the 2025 guidance assume that that cash you now have in the balance sheet earns something, or I'm not sure what your assumption is on that?
No, it doesn't assume that there is an acquisition. So what's in the guidance is strictly the assets that we own today.
I meant, is the cash balance earning at 5% or 6% if you parked that money somewhere? Is that factored in to the assumption?
Yeah. It would. It would. So we would look at a draw on our credit facilities versus getting interest on the short-term investment on that.
And my last question, just as on Genesee, obviously, I think the recontracting and data center opportunity is well laid out.
What's the view in terms of committing more capital either at Genesee or broadly in Alberta to do something if it's sort of a framework agreement where you'd see upside opportunities? That's something you could see play over the next couple of years, or do you think fully contracting at Genesee is largely the opportunity set in Alberta and other things would be in the U.S. market?
Look, I think on balance, as we stated in the 2025 priorities, our focus is on recontracting and acquiring new capacity in the U.S. With respect to Genesee, it's very focused on optimizing through contracting on data centers. So I think we're very open-minded, and as our actions have indicated, we see a great expansion opportunity there over the medium term, but it's going to be very opportunity-driven based on if and when we can catalyze a customer on the data center side.
Okay. Thanks for your time today.
Thank you. Our next question comes from John Mould with TD Cowen. You may proceed.
Hey, thank you very much for taking my questions. Just a couple on the guidance details. Just starting with the cash tax uplift on AFFO, I know we're not doing 2026 guidance today, but just how long do you expect that the tax shield could persist at that general magnitude?
Thanks, John. So yeah, most of that would be realized in 2025. We do see some of that benefit last year in 2024, but it pretty much is completed this year with COD. We will have some accelerated tax benefits with respect to Halkirk 2 that would be realized in later years. And to the extent that there are other ITC-eligible projects, we'd see that in later years.
But from the Genesee project, it's primarily going to be this year.
Okay. Great. That's very helpful. And then just on the Genesee's output, you targeted increasing the output of units one and two to 566 megawatts around mid-year. Is that contemplated in the guidance, and is that still on track for a mid-year uprate?
So it still is in the guidance. So we do assume mid-year that we'll have that incremental 560 MW. As far as the capacity factor, as I mentioned earlier, we are assuming about an 80% capacity factor on the assets throughout the year. As far as it being on track, I think we'll have an update as we get further in, but at this point in time, that date still seems reasonable.
Okay. All my other questions were answered. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
And as a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Our next question comes from Maurice Choy with RBC Capital Markets. You may proceed.
Thanks, Dan. Good evening, everyone. Just wanted to come back to the renewable strategy here. In the past, the renewables were built and held for a long time. And obviously, it offered you the contract ed EBITDA and helping you with the credit rating requirements. But if you look at Slide 11, it sounds like future sell -down of renewables is a strategy that you've adopted. The Axium deal obviously is an example of that. So I guess instead of a build -and -hold strategy, philosophically speaking, are the renewables now more like a capital recycling business to you? And then a quick follow-up to that, is it just renewables, or are non-renewables also considered for sell -down?
Yeah. Thanks, Maurice.
So as far as the sell -down, no, we're not in a position now where we're looking to sell -down all renewables. We've talked about it as being just one of the tools in the toolkit, and we do think it does provide us incremental value and a source of funding. The sell -down of the assets we just did was a one-time. We have formed a partnership where we're looking at having to sell -down all current or new assets. It remains a tool. Likewise, disposition of any asset we deem at some point to be non-core or on a thermal asset, if we wanted to entertain that, that would be all opportunistic. So I don't think that you would see that we really have kind of a strategy any different than what we've articulated in the past.
That being for larger flexible generation acquisitions, the opportunity to bring in a partner remains on the table as a way for us to kind of grow, diversify our risk, and be able to take on larger acquisitions. And likewise, the sell-down of renewables unlocks value to the extent that we're able to build them at a value that is below what we're able to get through bringing in a partner.
And you, Maurice, I would just add, at Investor Day last year, we said we were targeting 10%-12% levered returns on our renewable business. And I think what we've observed, and we also said we would evaluate asset recycling, and we delivered on that through the sell-down. But I would say that asset recycling is a key part, in particular on U.S. renewables, to being able to generate those returns.
And our ability to demonstrate that we can, in fact, generate those returns on our existing portfolio should hopefully give credibility to the fact that we can achieve those return thresholds for our renewable business, which we intend to keep doing and intend to allocate capital to it.
So just to clarify, so as you mentioned, U.S. renewables as part of the capital recycling and Sandra said Axium deal was a one-time. Is the one-time element therefore just related to the fact that the Axium deal was Canadian assets and moving forward, it's more U.S. assets that people sell -down?
No, what I was referring to was that we haven't developed a long-term partnership where we will continue to sell -down assets. This was a one-time process for that.
So to the extent we want to execute on more, we can do that as Capital Power deems the timeline to be right versus being in a position where we've developed a strategy and a strategic partnership to continue the sell -down of assets.
Understood. Thanks for that. And just to finish off, coming back again to the data center theme, do you see any of the ongoing political or policy uncertainty on either side of the border affecting your initial view of data center timing? And with that, how do you think your customers view U.S. versus Canada, given what's happening on the political and policy side?
Yeah. Look, on the political side, and I would focus down on tariffs as probably the key economic issue and political issue that's facing the Canada-U.S. relationship.
We have not seen any feedback to date since really it's only been a few weeks that would say it's affected decision-making processes. The threat of tariffs is real. It's an issue that ultimately needs to be resolved. It's a hotly contested political one. But to date, we haven't seen that deter interest in Canada, for example, by U.S.-based developers. I think the prevailing sentiment is this is a risk and an issue. Ultimately, with a solution, that may result in a renegotiated trade agreement. So at worst, it's a short to medium-term issue, but it's absolutely a concern among all stakeholders on both sides of the borders because it can have a far-reaching economic impact in the short term on both sides. So that's the and in terms of the energy market, as Jason stated earlier, we're on track for 2027.
And where Alberta is an energy-only market and we have the ability to contract, we don't see that as a major gating item to being able to enter into a long-term arrangement there.
Very helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Roy Arthur for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Operator. With the Q&A now concluded, this brings to an end our call. So we thank everyone for joining and for the continued interest and support in our story. Have a great day. Bye now.
Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.