Good afternoon, welcome everyone to RE Royalties Q1 2023 conference call. Joining us today is Bernard Tan, CEO, Peter Leighton, COO, Luqman Khan, CFO. All company executives will participate in the Q&A session after the management's formal remarks. As usual, before we get into opening remarks by management, I would like to remind our listeners that our comments and our answers to your questions will contain forward-looking information. This information, by nature, is subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause the stated outcome to be different materially from the actual outcome. For further information on these risks and uncertainty, I encourage you to read the cautionary note that accompanies our Q1 MD&A and related news releases, as well as the risk factors of our company.
I would also like to point out that we will be using various non-GAAP measures during the call. You can find explanations and reconciliations regarding these measures in related news release. Following opening remarks, we will address some previously submitted investor questions, as well as those who come through Teams. If you'd like to submit a question, please use the Q&A function in Q&A. If we do not get to your question today, please email us at info@reroyalties.com, and we'd be happy to follow up with you with the answers. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to the CEO, Bernard Tan. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Melanee, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today, and welcome to the RE Royalties 2023 first quarter results conference call. I would point out first that we have many forward-looking statements today, and I would draw your attention to our disclosure and our materials on this, and certainly reaffirm that we seek safe harbor to our comments today. Joining me today is our COO, Peter Leighton, and CFO, Luqman Khan. I will first highlight some of the key accomplishments for the quarter, and then we'll pass it over to Luqman to discuss the financial results, and to Peter to discuss our update on our portfolio of investments and backlog, and we will wrap it up with questions from the audience.
The first quarter of 2023 continued to be another quarter of great progress in the evolution and growth of the company. We saw our highest quarter of revenue and income and continued the trend of growing our cash flow and EBITDA. We completed the offering of our Series Three Green Bonds and issued a total of 16,423 Canadian dollar Green Bonds at 1,242 United States dollar Green Bonds, for aggregate gross proceeds of over CAD 18 million. The Series Three Green Bonds will have a maturity date of January 30th, 2028, and bear interest at a rate of 9%, payable quarterly. This additional capital raised from our Series Three will give us the runway to complete a number of targeted investments that we have executed term sheets for and are currently under due diligence.
We also completed an additional investment with Teichos Energy, an existing client, in February of this year, for $1.8 million on phase II of the Jackson Center solar project in Pennsylvania. We are pleased to see the success the Teichos team has made on this project, and we value their trust in us helping them reach their goals for this project. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Luqman, who will discuss the financial results of the quarter.
Thank you, Bernard. Good afternoon, everyone. I will start with the financial position. During the first quarter of 2023, the company's total assets increased by approximately CAD 14 million, representing a 33% increase during the quarter. This increase was mainly a net effect of cash raised from the Green Bond financing and cash used in repayment of certain convertible notes. The proceeds from the new Green Bonds issued were partially utilized during the quarter in advancing additional loans, including the second loan to Teichos Energy, as mentioned earlier by Bernard. The company's loan and royalty portfolio increased by approximately CAD 3 million. With the issuance of new debt, there was a corresponding increase in total liabilities. Total equity also increased as the company recorded a net income during the quarter.
The company issued certain compensation warrants in relation to the Green Bond offering that were recorded within equity at their fair value. In terms of operating results, in the first quarter, the company recorded CAD 1.8 million in income and revenue. This represent 225% increase compared to the first quarter of the prior year. This increase was a result of approximately CAD 17 million in additional investment completed in 2022. The increase in net income helped the company to record its highest net income so far. The company's EBITDA for the first quarter was CAD 1.3 million. I would like to highlight here that our MD&A includes a reconciliation and related disclosure for this non-GAAP measure. I would briefly link the foregoing discussions with the company's cash flows.
During the quarter, cash used in operating activities was mainly due to changes in working capital. This include an increase in the balance of a reserve maintained to cover six months of interest payments on the green bonds. Note that the cash reserve is maintained with the trustee as per the green bond trust indenture. Cash used in investing activities represent the aggregate amount of loans advanced in the normal course, and as mentioned earlier. Cash provided by financing activities included the net proceeds from the green bond offering. Cash used in financing activities, on the other hand, included prepayment of convertible notes, cash distributions to the company's shareholders, and interest payments to the bond holders. With that, I will now pass it back to Bernard.
Thank you, Luqman. Peter will now provide some updates on our existing portfolio and a brief discussion on our back.
Thank you, Bernard, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. Currently have 110 royalties under contract, covering projects that generate solar and wind energy, projects that convert waste to energy, storage projects, and energy efficiency projects. Cumulatively, these represent approximately 331 MW of clean energy capacity and generate approximately 779,000 MW hours of clean energy. This is enough clean energy to power approximately 101,000 homes, offsetting approximately 317,000 tons of CO2 emissions. There are three specific investments that I would like to note, given their progress during the last quarter.
The first one, SWITCH Power, has completed the commissioning of their fifth battery project in Ontario, meaning that all of our storage projects with SWITCH are available to reduce energy consumption from the Ontario grid during peak hours of peak energy demand. Outagamie Clean Energy Partners have completed construction on their farm waste methane capture project at a dairy farm in Wisconsin. The biogas from this animal waste is now being upgraded and delivered to the natural gas system to displace traditional natural gas and diesel transportation fuel. Thirdly, Revolve Renewable Power Company has completed the commissioning of all three of their Cancun battery storage projects. These projects will enable Revolve's hotel operator customer to time shift their energy consumption to off-peak hours, driving substantial reductions in energy costs. I would also like to provide an update on our current project pipeline and backlog.
We look at about CAD 1 billion worth of projects on an annual basis, a combination of new projects with existing clients and new projects with new clients. These projects span the diversity of the renewable energy industry. We currently have approximately CAD 100 million of investment opportunities, where we are in the process of completing detailed evaluation and analysis. Our backlog, which we define as investments where we have executed term sheets, currently stands at CAD 40 million. These are projects where we are in detailed due diligence, including site visits. Historically, we have a closing rate of approximately 70% of all projects we get to the executed term stage, we end up funding. I'll now pass it back to Bernard for final comments and wrap-up.
Thank you, Peter and Luqman. I would like to thank everyone for the time that they took today to join us on the call. This concludes the formal part of the conference call. We will now turn it back over to Melanee for any submitted questions.
Thanks. Okay, our first question is: Please explain the loss brought about by the de-recognition of the company's interest on FC OCEP Invest, LLC.
Thanks, Melanee. For clarity, this amount was recognized in the year-end financial statement, as opposed to the Q1 financials. In reality, this amount represent purely accounting adjustment, and there is no cash implication or impact on the company. The background on this, adjustment recorded in last year, is as follows: When we first completed the OCEP investment in March 2022. Despite the fact that we had 97% interest in the economics of the investment, accounting rules dictated that we did not have control of the entity. In August 2022, we amended the investment agreement to provide us, with full control under the definition of IFRS.
This amendment triggered a fair value event, which resulted in accounting loss, despite of there was no change in economics for the company or the status of the project. As mentioned by Peter, the construction of this project is now complete. RNG is being produced, and methane gas is being upgraded to transportation fuel, and investment is performing as expected. Thank you.
Next question, Melanee?
Yep. Thank you, Luqman. The next question is: Please explain the credit loss relating to FuseForward facility.
Thanks, Melanee. Similar to the previous question, this amount was recorded in the year-end financial statement and not in the Q1, 2023 financials. The credit loss for the Fuse Forward facility was due to a delayed payment caused by working capital constraints, which in turn was caused by a recent acquisition that Fuse Forward made. We are currently working with.
... moves forward to catch up these outstanding payments. We expect a resolution in coming quarters. For conservative purposes, we took a provision to the facility last year. Thank you.
Thank you, Luqman. The third question is, can you explain why the quarterly royalty revenues has remained relatively flat compared to the financial income?
I'll take that question, Melanee. In the past two years, we have added approximately 35 new royalties to our portfolio. In 2022 alone, we established several new additional royalties with Outagamie, NOMAD, Revolve, SWITCH, and Delta. Some of these investments, with Outagamie, Revolve, and SWITCH in particular, were in the construction stage and basically was going through construction in the past 12 months. As such, we did not recognize any royalties because they weren't cash flow producing yet. As provided in Peter's update, certain of these investments that are made in 2022 are now coming online, and as such, we do expect that in upcoming quarters, we would see a proportion of royalty income relative to finance income begin to ratchet up. That's our expectation.
The other sort of interesting aspect is, as well, is based on IFRS rules, some of the royalties that we actually have, makes us recognize the income on those fixed royalty payments, again, such as Outagamie and Delta, as interest income rather than royalty income. For us, typically from a management perspective, we do sort of view the royalties and the interest as sort of a blend in terms of our cash flow.
Thank you, Bernard.
Thanks, Melanee.
Thank you, Bernard. The fourth question is, RE refers to time-limited royalties, you know, 10 to 15 years, while Altius Renewable Royalties, a similar business, prefers perpetual royalties. Can the company please explain the difference?
Sure, I'll take that question, Melanee. One of our, I guess, closest competitors, Altius, focuses primarily on development stage projects, where they can take a much longer-term view on project success, whereas we do prefer projects that are already in operation or near operation. Because we do feel that near-term cash flow is paramount when we screen for potential opportunities. Our time-limited royalties are also tied to items like a power purchase agreement or, sometimes the asset life, such as a battery. Part of the reason we have not acquired perpetual royalties is that there is an elevated level of uncertainty when it comes to, say, repowering an asset.
For example, there is no assurance that we can get from an owner of a solar park, who won't simply just move the solar panels outside of a pre-established royalty boundary, and thus rendering those royalties worthless. Also, we have found that the price of these perpetual royalties that are being asked for an evergreen royalty was difficult to value, and we didn't really want to take on the risk of overpaying for it.
Thank you, Bernard. Our fifth question is, RE has issued approximately CAD 40 million in green bonds. Given the actual trends, how does the company expect to pay back the debt with interest in only five years?
I'll take that question as well, Melanee. For most of the investments that we make, especially the loan component in our structures, they tend to be much shorter in term. On average, they're about two years among our portfolio. When the green bonds are five years in duration, effectively, this allows us to recycle that green bond capital roughly about two to three times. When the bonds are due to be repaid in five years' time, we can utilize the proceeds from our maturing investments to repay back the bonds while keeping the royalties that have been created. However, realistically, what we would likely do is refinance the entire or partial portion at maturity.
Even though we have approximately CAD 40 million in green bonds issued, we do have an additional capacity to issue approximately an additional CAD 50 million in new green bonds without raising any additional equity.
Thank you, Bernard. We have a question. We're going to unmute Sean. Go ahead, Sean. Oh.
Can you hear me?
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There we are.
Can you-
Sorry. Yeah, all good. I was just wondering, Bernard, I wanted to ask you about what's happened with the lending environment and the regional bank centers in the U.S. in the middle market. Have you seen a change in the pipeline or an uptick in projects looking for funding because of that? Has it been pretty steady state, and you haven't been, you know, impacted by that? A derivative question from that is, how are the higher rates out there impacting you?
Yeah. No, thanks, Sean. Those are great questions. In terms of the bank situations down there, in particular with some of the regional banks and the issues, I think most of the folks on this call would have seen, you know, definitely the headlines. It hasn't really materially impacted us. Most of the banking relationships we deal with are, you know, our corporate bankers are CIBC. So we haven't seen it on sort of our own balance sheet side of things. What we do have noticed, however, is that the constraints being caused by the banking system has created new opportunities for us. In particular, because there are less lenders.
We have noticed, especially in the last few months, an uptick in additional deal flow coming from the United States in particular. We're looking at about three or four opportunities currently that Peter referred to in our backlog that we are in active due diligence on. That, I would say, is, you know, it's, it's unfortunate to see, but frankly, it has created an opportunity for our business on that front. With respect to the second part of your question, Sean, maybe you can just clarify again just before I sort of answer that.
Well, I guess overall, just the higher rate, the rate environment.
Yeah.
You know, how has that been impacting your returns, you know, capital costs, things like that?
Sure. In terms of the rate return, the increase in rates, definitely, as you can probably see on our green bonds, has escalated from about 6% on the green bond raise that we made in December of 2021, to roughly 9%. There's been about a 300 basis points increase. What we have actually done with our group of clients because of the increase, we have been able to pass some of those costs along to them. Part of the reason why they are actually able to absorb some of those increase in costs, is mainly because power prices, in particular the US, and we actually see this globally, has actually gone up. Our clients in essence, have been making more money.
They've been able to bear some of the costs that we passed to them. I think on a net basis, even though the financing environment and the costs associated has gone up, but it hasn't really materially impacted our business, per se.
Thanks. Our last question, Bernard, is are you seeing Inflation Reduction Act benefits in projects you're looking at today? I'm just trying to understand the timing. I mean, we hear a lot of chatter about, you know, obviously people looking at projects, the changed economics that this brings. It's material. It's very real. Are you seeing projects, leveraging, the Inflation Reduction Act already, or is that something that still is going to come down the pipeline with more projects coming your way?
Yeah. Sean, I'll take that. It's Peter here, and absolutely, we're seeing the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act. It's piling on the impact of the continuing decline in cost to produce energy using either solar, wind, or battery storage technology. All of those technologies, we've had price reductions. We're seeing enhanced movement away from the fossil fuel productions. Add to that the Inflation Reduction Act, and it has created a, you know, quite a gold rush in the U.S. I would say for our Canadian investors, we're seeing the same thing happening in Canada, particularly in Alberta, where there's an open merchant market for power. The Canadian government has said, "Well, we wanna tag along." They haven't defined their investment tax credits yet.
They've just said that we're gonna keep up with the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. We're seeing that same. I would say there's definitely a bit of a fever of new projects on the horizon.
Great. Thank you.
That concludes our Q1 2023 conference call. I want to thank everyone for joining us today. Bernard, I'm just wondering if you have any last remarks?
Sure. Again, just wanted to reiterate, thank you everyone for taking the time. We really appreciate you taking time out of your day to attend the call. Should you have any questions, you know, definitely please feel free to submit it. As Melanee indicated, we have a inbox at info@RERoyalties. I also wanna note that our management team will be in Toronto on June the 8th presenting at the Canadian Climate Investor Conference. For those of you that are based in Toronto or around the surrounding area, definitely come, you know, visit us and some of the other clean tech and renewable energy companies that are presenting.
The conference is free, and the registration to sign up, is available on our website and also some of our recent news release. Thanks, Melanee. Melanee, you're on mute.