Hello, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Brookfield Infrastructure Partners Q3 2022 Results Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. It is now my pleasure to introduce Chief Financial Officer, David Krant.
Thank you, Andrew, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Brookfield Infrastructure Partners third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. As introduced, my name is David Krant, and I am the Chief Financial Officer of Brookfield Infrastructure. I'm also joined today by our Chief Executive Officer, Sam Pollock. I'll begin with a discussion of our third quarter financial and operating results, as well as touch on our recent capital markets activity and balance sheet strength. I'll then turn the call over to Sam, who'll provide an update on our strategic initiatives and concluding remarks. Following our commentary this morning, we will be joined by Ben Vaughan, our Chief Operating Officer, for our question-and-answer period. At this time, I'd like to remind you that in our remarks today, we make forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks, and future results may differ materially.
For further information on known risk factors, I would encourage you to review our annual report on Form 20-F, which is available on our website. Brookfield Infrastructure delivered another strong quarter with funds from operations, or FFO, per unit of $0.68, a 15% increase compared to the same period last year. Our favorable results were driven by organic growth of 10% and the contribution of nearly $2 billion of capital deployed over the past 12 months. Taking a closer look at our operating results by segment, FFO from our utilities business were 8% above the prior year at $196 million. The base business benefited from inflation indexation and the commissioning of approximately $500 million of capital into the rate base during the last year.
Results also benefited from the contribution of two Australian utility acquisitions completed earlier this year. These positive contributions were partially offset by the impact of increased borrowing costs at our Brazilian utilities and the fact that the prior year included the final contribution from our district energy operations. Within our segment, we continue to build out platforms in our North American and European residential infrastructure business. In North America, we completed the tuck-in acquisition of Quebec's largest rental water heater provider with 280,000 customers under contract. This investment expands our geographic footprint and will serve as a base for expansion into Eastern Canada. It also provides a platform to expand into new products and sales channels within the region.
During the quarter, we also advanced our growth plans at our North American sub-metering business with an agreement to expand operations into the Brookfield managed residential portfolio and take over the metering of over 45 multi-family buildings across 15 U.S. states. This strategy of leveraging the broader Brookfield ecosystem has successfully accelerated organic growth for us in the past, specifically at our district energy platform and more recently in our indoor wireless systems business. At our European residential infrastructure business, we are advancing the rollout of the heat pump rental product launched last quarter. Offering customers a financing solution to reduce the upfront cost has led to approximately 1,400 units sold in the first four months alone, well exceeding our expectations. We are now focusing on installation efforts as we continue to build up our rental backlog.
Moving to our transport segment, FFO was $203 million for the quarter, an increase of 12% compared to the prior year. Results benefited from strong organic growth driven by increased rates that were in line with inflation and stronger volumes. At our diversified terminals, volumes were up 7% compared with the prior year, driven by our U.S. LNG export terminal that commissioned a 6th commercial liquefaction train earlier in the year. Volumes at our rail operations were up 2% over the prior year, following strong performance in the U.S. and in Brazil. Rates across our rail networks were up 9%, highlighted by our Brazilian rail operation, which increased tariffs by 20% on average. Across our global toll road portfolio, traffic levels increased 3% compared to the prior year, while tariffs are now 10% higher than this time last year.
Prior year results included contributions from businesses that were sold, including our U.S. container terminal in the second quarter and our Chilean toll road operation in 2021. Our Australian export terminal recently announced that it had agreed on access pricing with all its existing users for a 10-year period to be applied retroactively from July 1, 2021. The new rate reflects a 29% increase to the previous framework, with all users subject to a 100% take-or-pay volume and annual price escalator for inflation. This outcome provides significant cash flow certainty while preserving the strong contractual protection associated with this critical infrastructure. Moving to our midstream segment, we generated FFO of $172 million, which is a 67% increase over the prior year.
This result was primarily due to the contribution from our diversified Canadian midstream operation, which only partially contributed in the comparable period. At a base business level, results continued to benefit from increased producer activity and strong market-sensitive revenues. I'm pleased to report that we remain on track with the ramp-up of our Heartland Petrochemical Complex. In October, our propane dehydrogenation plant, which processes propane into polymer-grade propylene or PGP, commenced production. Having completed commissioning of the back end of the complex earlier this year, this step completes the integrated startup and will begin ramping up production gradually over the balance of the year. Finally, our highly contracted data business continues to perform well in the current environment, with FFO increasing to $60 million for the quarter.
Underlying growth from additional points of presence, incremental megawatts commissioned, and inflationary price escalators were partially offset by the impact of foreign exchange during the quarter. The strong operational and financial performance I have just outlined is highly supportive of our investment-grade profile and access to capital. As central banks intensify their hawkish policy stance and commit to reduce inflation to target levels through future rate hikes, we continue to proactively access the capital markets to extend near-term maturities. Our three most notable financings completed recently totaled $1.7 billion. They termed out 2023 and 2024 asset level maturities at costs that are in line with that of the maturing debt. Our proactive financing strategy has positioned us well heading into 2023, as less than 2% of our asset level debt matures over the next 12 months.
Our corporate balance sheet remains well-capitalized with no corporate maturities until 2024. The high proportion of fixed-rate debt in our capital structure has largely insulated us from rising rates this year, and we continue to maintain an active currency hedging strategy to protect our cash flows and investment value. During the quarter, over 80% of our FFO was denominated in or hedged to the U.S. dollar, and that program remains in place for the next 24 months. In terms of corporate liquidity, we ended the quarter with $2.3 billion that will increase to nearly $3 billion following the completion of three secured asset sales announced earlier this year. These sales were in addition to the sale of our U.S. container terminal that closed earlier this year for approximately $350 million.
Of the three secured sales, the New Zealand Telecom tower portfolio sale closed yesterday. Our Brazilian electricity transmission lines are expected to close later this month, and the Indian toll roads are on track to close by the end of the year. In addition, several sales processes are underway that combined are expected to generate a further $1.5 billion of net proceeds to the partnership. I would like to thank you all for your time this morning, and I'll now pass the call over to Sam Pollock.
Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. As you just heard, our business generated strong financial results during the quarter, and we believe we will continue to perform well in all business environments. We've adhered to our financial strategy with a capital structure comprised of long-term debt and fixed rates, limiting the impact rising interest rates have on our business. Also, a significant portion of our revenue frameworks have embedded inflation indexation, which allows us to expand our margins during periods of higher inflation. These factors, combined with our substantial capital backlog, should allow us to continue to grow our FFO at targeted levels for the foreseeable future. In fact, our capital backlog has been significantly expanded through our recently announced partnership with Intel Corporation to invest in a $30 billion semiconductor foundry in Arizona.
Brookfield will be providing approximately $15 billion over the construction period for a 49% interest in the facility. Most of our capital commitment has been sourced from non-recourse debt, with our base interest rate exposure fully hedged concurrent with signing. Brookfield's approximately $2 billion equity investment, which will include approximately $500 million from BIP, is back-end weighted closer to the operational phase of the project. This investment is structured to achieve an attractive risk-adjusted return. We draw parallels to other data investments, such as hyperscale data centers, that are generally contracted on a long-term basis with high creditworthy counterparties, where we do not assume technological risk. In this instance, we view Intel to be a creditworthy and market-leading partner.
The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2022 and is an example of the large-scale capital required to support the onshoring of critical supply chains. This macroeconomic trend to deglobalize, combined with other trends to digitalize and decarbonize, were coined by us as the Three Ds and are expected to create significant investment opportunities going forward. Our successful capital deployment this year positions us well heading into 2023. We've effectively secured our capital deployment objectives for next year, underscoring our ability to remain disciplined and prioritize the pursuit of opportunistic transactions. During our 13-year listed history, we have made several opportunistic deep value investments in marquee regulated contracted assets. Examples include the privatization of Babcock & Brown Infrastructure in 2010 and the acquisition of two Brazilian utilities during a period of political turmoil in 2016.
These investments have provided unitholders with some of the strongest returns realized to date and are a direct result of our contrarian approach to investing, as well as our access to flexible and large-scale capital. We believe our competitive advantages will continue to allow us to make deep value acquisitions during periods of market dislocation like we're currently experiencing. Elevated inflation levels and rising overnight lending rates will remain the primary near-term macroeconomic factors impacting the global economy. The current tone for most central banks is that interest rates will continue to rise until rates of inflation have fully abated to their target levels. While lower economic growth and higher interest rates will be unpopular, given the recent events in the U.K., most governments will defer to central banks to achieve their inflation objectives.
Consequently, we believe the investment themes for the balance of 2022 and into 2023 will be centered around operating margin resilience and financial strength. This market environment should therefore favor companies that have strong balance sheets and access to capital, as well as business models that are immune to inflationary pressures like ours. That concludes my remarks for today, and I'll now pass it back over to the operator to open the line for questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. Once again, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. One moment, please. Our first question comes from the line of Cherilyn Radbourne with TD Securities.
Thanks very much, and good morning. My first question is, when you get a downturn in the public markets like this, what in your experience is the typical lag before that impacts the private market and results in value investing opportunities? Apart from transportation assets, which clearly have more volume sensitivity, are there any other areas where you think you might see opportunities emerge?
Hi, Cherilyn. Thanks for your questions. In regards to the lag, I think in our experience, it usually takes a number of quarters before we see the impact of lower liquidity impacting companies that have poor balance sheets and who didn't plan ahead. I think we're probably still a couple quarters away before those companies really feel the effects and need to look for capital. As far as valuations, that's typically when people are motivated sellers, that's when you might see some impacts on values in those sectors.
I'd say, you know, just as a caveat, you know, infrastructure assets as a whole tend to be pretty resilient. I think, you know, we likely won't see, for the most part, significant declines in the value of infrastructure assets like you might see in other sectors like private equity. That would be one thing. I think, you know, to your second question about where, you know, where we might see, you know, some distress and you obviously flag more GDP-sensitive sectors, which is a fair comment.
I think I wouldn't necessarily draw any lines towards sectors or regions, but mostly towards individual companies who, as I mentioned earlier, you know, have very weak balance sheets, where they've taken on too much debt, have you know near-term maturities. You know, the market does a good job of finding those companies and punishing them. I think you know that's probably the place to look. There are always a few that surface every cycle.
Okay. That's very helpful. Maybe just quickly, do you have any comments on the recent election outcome in Brazil and the impact on your own appetite and the appetite of institutional capital more generally to participate in that country?
Sure. I'll maybe take that one, and maybe Ben might add a few comments as he lived down there for a number of years. I think you know, obviously we watched the results very closely. You know, I think. Look, this is evolving you know, day by day, but our first impressions are generally positive in the sense that you know, the transition appears that it will go relatively smoothly, even though there are some protests going on. Bolsonaro you know, has you know, reaffirmed respect for the Constitution. You know, he's you know, he has positioned himself you know, as the leader of a strong opposition in Congress.
As I think most people may have seen a couple weeks ago, you know, Congress generally voted in more center-right legislatures. I think that will be a good counterbalance to you know, the new government that was voted in headed by Lula. I think the other thing that we take as a positive is that the Lula has nominated a well-known you know, a centrist politician, Geraldo Alckmin, as leader of the transition. I think that sends the right signal, and we expect that the ministers that get appointed should be reflective of a balanced cabinet. I think the other thing, as I mentioned, Bolsonaro's chief of staff has already started the process of you know, transitioning the government.
All the things we might have worried about with just noise around the transition doesn't appear like it's gonna take place. I think all the you know main you know are now planning for change. I think the big thing also is that any concerns we might have had about a big shift to the left, I don't think that's gonna take place. The last thing I might just mention is I think we're actually relatively positive on the outlook for Brazil in the near term at least. You know, and part of that is because, you know, Brazil actually got ahead of a lot of the inflation issues and moved rates up quickly.
Already we're starting to see that it feels like they've got inflation under better control than a lot of other places. It, in fact, may be starting to subside a bit. As a result, I think there could be stability in their interest rate and the FX rate, you know, for the foreseeable future. All in all, we're positive. I think that leads to a good investment environment. You know, we see lots of you know, potential activity with you know, renewed privatizations, particularly in the transmission sector in the coming year. I think it will attract a lot of capital.
That's both good for us from the perspective of deploying capital, but the extent that we recycling the capital, I think there'll be lots of interest in the country. Apologize for a long-winded answer, but generally, you know, we're mostly positive on the situation.
That was great. That was all for me. Thank you.
Thank you, Cherilyn.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Kwan with RBC Capital Markets.
Good morning. Just kind of coming back to your letter and just you highlighting the success you've had with the contrarian approach, BBI and Brazil. Just wondering if you can compare the dislocation you're seeing now with the past. You did mention balance sheet leverage, Sam, but I'm just wondering, can you compare the carve-out potential that you'd see at this point? Then I know that you didn't want to get too much into sectors, but maybe take it the other side, other than infra, as you highlighted, are there sectors that you just don't think you're gonna see a lot of opportunities in this environment?
Hi, Robert. Maybe, you know, dealing with your last question on, you know, is there any sectors that we don't see any, you know, any opportunities? I think the short answer is no. I think there should be deployment opportunities across all the Three Ds that we flagged. You know, what makes them, you know, very interesting for us is the fact that the capital required for all three of those trends is massive, and we're in an environment where capital is scarce. I think, you know, all the places that we are hunting and see as our, the main area for us to focus, you know, there should be opportunities for us to invest in.
In relation to, you know, deep value, you know, it's still a little early to make any comparisons to other points in time because, you know, we're obviously at the relatively early stages of this, you know, let's call it, correction, for lack of a better expression. You know, this could go on, you know, much longer than everyone today expects. I think there's maybe, I shouldn't say everyone expects, but I think there's lots of differing views on whether this will be a short period of tightening or whether or not it could be, you know, higher rates for longer. We'll have to see how this plays out.
If rates stay higher for longer and the recession is deep, then, you know, this could be a very attractive time for us. Obviously, you know, the one area where, you know, things could get a lot worse because of geopolitical issues is Europe. Clearly that's a market that we're spending a lot of time evaluating. North America at the moment feels a little more immune to some of the factors.
Got it. Can you compare your current deal pipeline versus maybe where you were earlier this year? Is there more on the front burner, or is this commentary really just flagging? Your past success, and if this, you know, continues to play out, as you mentioned, maybe a couple of quarters or so, that you're gonna be really well positioned, if the opportunities come up.
Well, our pipeline is always pretty deep, Robert. You know, we have a large group of professionals around the world evaluating opportunities and receiving lots of inbounds. We're never short of opportunities. I'd say what we are always trying to do is to hydrate them and pursue those that we think are the most attractive and take into account, you know, the current market conditions. You know, our pipeline is deep, I think, but you know, we also are prepared to be a little patient given the amount of capital we've deployed and the fact that we have a number of transactions closing that, you know, providing lots of growth for the business, you know, for the next little while.
You know, we're looking for, you know, some very interesting large transactions that could really move the needle. You know, we probably, you know, are just, I think, being mindful of that opportunity.
Okay. That's great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Hope with Scotiabank.
Good morning, everyone. First question is on the asset monetization pipeline of $1.5 billion. You know, in your prior remarks, you did mention that, you know, in a couple of quarters, you may see some softness in asset pricing. Just want to know if that has crept into your existing processes and whether or not you've had to alter your monetization plans, not necessarily just for the $1.5, but the next tranche behind that.
Hi, Robert. Rob. Look, I think part of my comment to Cherilyn was, you know, we do operate in a sector that, you know, is very attractive for, you know, all the investment attributes that we described, you know, for many years, you know, the resilience and predictability and the fact that these assets tend to weather, you know, environments like this. You know, for the most part, you know, we know there's a lot of dry powder out there, and so investors in this sector will continue to invest.
I think businesses where debt is portable will be much less impacted by the current situation than some businesses that might be carve-outs. To the extent that you're delivering someone a business and then they're stepping into your capital structure, for the most part, we don't expect to see too much in the way of declines in values. With that in mind, probably, yeah, our focus on asset sales will be to sell companies where we can deliver balance sheets that are portable. That obviously, as a result, we shouldn't expect any decline in values.
You know, as things unfold and we see the direction of interest rates and as we see them start coming down, then I think the extent that we have businesses to carve out or things like that where people have to put in their own capital structures, we might look at those businesses then. For the most part, I think to answer your question, selling businesses with portable debt would be something we would look to do.
Thank you for that. Maybe a shorter term question. You know, during the quarter, it looks like you had another strong quarter of volume growth on your more GDP sensitive businesses. Are you starting to see any softness there, or is the outlook for volume still quite good at this point?
Hey, hey, Robert, it's David. I can start, and Ben feel free to to layer on anything incremental. Look, I think if you look across our GDP sensitive businesses, which, you know, predominantly are in our transport segment, I'd say we've seen pretty robust performance throughout the portfolio. Roads have been strong in all regions we operate. Our rail networks have done well in the current environment with growth in Australia, Brazil, and the U.S. I'd say on the diversified terminals front, that's where you're seeing a bit of a mixed bag. I'd say our U.S. LNG facility is doing extremely well. Our container terminals in Australia are doing well. The one asset that has a bit of softness so far has been our U.K. port in PD Ports.
However, the one thing I would caveat is that, you know, largely this business is highly contracted, and as a landlord port, owns a lot of long-term leases, conservancy rights. So it's not as volume sensitive as some of the others that we would own. So I'd say that's the only place where we have seen volumes down, you know, in single digits, but not significantly. But that's where we've seen a bit of softness so far as a result of what's going on in the economy there.
That's it for me. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Catellier with CIBC.
Hey, good morning, everyone. You've answered most of my questions, but I'm curious as to how the macro view that you've discussed at length here, specifically, the availability of capital, might impact your approach to the distribution policy, specifically, distribution growth, given the fact that, notwithstanding the macro environment, you have set yourselves up for a pretty strong FFO per unit growth outlook here.
Yeah. Hi, Robert. I'm not entirely sure the question. I think what you're trying to ask us is, and correct me if I'm wrong, you know, will liquidity in the market, you know, impact, you know, the decision that the board ultimately takes on growth in our dividend, given that, you know, on the surface, we have very strong FFO growth, and would we dial that back because of the conditions that exist in the market? I think that's your-
Yeah, that's the question. Yep.
Yes. I would say, you know, look, the business itself has lots of liquidity, so, you know, I think, you know, generally the board takes a longer term view. I think one of the things they will look at is, you know, the capital allocation opportunities that we have within the business, you know, namely some of the organic growth in front of us, as well as, you know, new investments. It's possible, you know, those could weigh on, you know, how much of a dividend increase that we have. Look, I think, you know, we have a range. I'm highly confident that, you know, the board will be, you know, somewhere within that range.
You know, in any event, you know, we should be able to comfortably reduce our payout ratio at a minimum with these strong results. I think we're well-positioned, you know, from a unitholder perspective, either with, you know, both strong dividend growth as well as, improving our payout ratio, which we have been doing for the last number of years.
Okay. That's helpful. Maybe you can provide just a little bit more color on the North American submetering business and, you know, what partnering with the Brookfield Real Estate business can mean for the growth rate there.
Okay. Well, I love that business, but I'm gonna get Ben to talk about it and give him a chance to talk here.
Yeah. The, you know, I guess what we're excited about for that submetering business, it really, partnering up with Brookfield really allows us to enter the U.S. market and accelerate our growth in the U.S. market. We made a couple of, you know, tuck-in acquisitions in the business in the U.S., and then partnering up with our real estate business where it makes sense to just further accelerate that growth just adds really a growth wedge and access to buildings that need our service, that, you know, otherwise we'd have to approach it a different way. I would just say at a high level, it really just helps to turbocharge the growth profile of the business in the U.S. market.
Right now we have a good franchise in Canada, and we're relatively smaller in the U.S. and see a tremendous growth opportunity. That's really where we see an initial growth booster for that business in that market.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Kuske with Credit Suisse.
Thanks. Good morning. I guess the question is targeted at Sam, and it's really about just the partnerships. You know, this has been a consistent theme on the investor days, I guess, a couple months ago now and even on this call. Could you maybe just give us a sense of how you think this helps you expand the business on going in and buying certain assets or JVing, and then also on the disposition of assets in the future?
Hi, Andrew. Sorry, when you say partners, do you mean joining up with either our LPs or other investors in buying assets? Is that what you're referring to?
It's more broad than that. It's in the context of whether we look at Intel or the Deutsche deal most recently, where you've engaged in a different kind of partnership than you would do in the past.
Okay. Fair enough. Look, I would say, you know, partnering with strategics, and so maybe I'll go down this path first, and if you wanna add another question to it, feel free. Yeah, partnering with strategics has always been a key part of our playbook. You know, because at the end of the day, you know, those tend to be situations where we can do a bilateral transaction and really, you know, structure a deal that you know, meets their objectives. At the same time, you know, give us you know, better risk-adjusted returns. Often, you know, we can trade certain things that they want, and often that's, you know, various controls or operating decision-making.
You know, in return for that, you know, they may be prepared to give us, you know, some downside protection. You know, we have done that, whether that was with our transaction, you know, with Vale a number of years ago, with Reliance Industries in India. These are all, you know, bilateral transactions where, you know, we were, you know, able to come up with really, you know, large scale solutions that helped them and gave us, you know, really good deals. I would say, you know, the deal we did with Petrobras when we bought NTS was another example of a carve-out and where, you know, we restructured the beginnings of a new industry in Brazil.
That's, you know, that's been one of our best transactions ever. I would say, you know, we've always done it, and we think it's it could be some of our best transactions. We'll continue to look for those situations. In fact, you know, on the back of what we've, you know, recently done with Intel, it's allowed us. It's because it's so prominent, it's opened many doors for us around the world. I'm hopeful that it will lead to a number of other big transactions.
That's helpful. Maybe if I could just follow on with those kinds of strategic transactions. You know, their operational expertise and industry knowledge gives you probably better downside risk. I guess the one question is, at the top of the house for Brookfield, could you spread yourselves too thin by having too many balls in the air across too many business groups?
You'll have to help me on that one a little bit, Andrew. When you say at the top, there's too many balls in the air.
Yeah. Well, I guess.
Too many businesses.
Yeah, I guess if you just think of how many businesses you're running right now, it's quite different than it was at inception because you scaled the business quite dramatically. Do you have any worries about being spread too thinly across all the groups?
Well, no. Look, I think you know, we have scaled up the organization as a whole to meet the growth in the business. You know, you've known us for 20 years, Andrew, so you know, you probably talked to maybe five of us 20 years ago, and that covered all the investment team. Today it's 500, and the whole organization is comprised of 2,000 people. That's just at the top of the house. You know, we've grown our business to be able to deploy capital in scale, but also deal with the complexities of operating in different businesses and in different geographies. I feel very comfortable with our capabilities.
In fact, I think what's exciting for anyone who's invested across the Brookfield ecosystem is, you know, I think we have an unrivaled, unparalleled business other than maybe one or two others around the world. No, I feel confident in our ability to continue what we're doing.
Okay. That's great. Appreciate the color. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Naji Baydoun with Industrial Alliance.
Hi, good morning. Just wanted to start off with the capital recycling. I think you had a sort of a timeline in mind a few months ago about when that $1.5 billion could be announced or closed. Just wondering if that timeline's changed at all.
No, our expectation is that, you know, in the fourth quarter, you know, we should have, you know, the transactions signed or at least in the right direction. Next quarter, hopefully, we can provide more clarity on where we ended up.
Okay. That's great. Just going back to the topic of partnerships, I think you noted that you might look to pursue some CCS projects in Canada. Are there any, call it partnerships or synergies with some of Brookfield Renewables' recent investments in that market? Is that something you might be looking at?
Yeah. Ben, you can jump in here as well. You know, we referred to, I think, some of the, you know, they call it pore space where we lack units. Sort of use the industry jargon. Basically, area around the facilities in Alberta where, you know, we can inject the carbon. This is in relation to IPL. You know, Yes, I think the short answer is you know, as the technology gets advanced and we're lucky to have Brookfield Renewable investing significantly in those new technologies, you know, we'll be able to leverage that knowledge and expertise to apply to our existing businesses. We would definitely look to stay close to them as they make those investments and hopefully learn from them. Ben, do you wanna add to that?
Yeah. I would echo what you said. It's relatively early days on a lot of these strategies. To secure rights like the ones our businesses did just position us well. Like Sam said, the renewable business has a number of initiatives on this front. Over the years, hopefully we'll be able to partner up in some ways and commercialize these initiatives.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Just maybe a cleanup question. I think you mentioned that in the Australian export terminal business, there were some retroactive payments that were agreed upon, going back almost a year. Were those in Q3 results? And if yes, can you quantify them?
Hey, Naji. It's David here. The retroactive payments were agreed upon after the quarter, so they're not in our Q3 results. The only thing our Q3 results included the elevated rate for the quarter, which we knew of ahead of time. But other than that, the retro payment for backdated or prior to then will be in our Q4 results.
Okay. Is it too preliminary to maybe quantify what that could be?
Happy to. I think the company put out guidance that the total backdated payment was around between AUD 50 million- AUD 60 million, and we own about half of the business. On a net to BIP basis, I think it's between around $15 million-$20 million total.
Yes. Okay. Copy that. That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Devin Dodge with BMO Capital Markets.
Thanks. Good morning. Just wanna a couple of quick questions on the connections business in the U.K.. Maybe just to start with, I believe connections were up in the quarter, but are you able to give us a sense if you know if you started to see or you expect to see a bit of softening in construction activity that may slow those connection sales?
Yeah. Devin, at this point, we're seeing no slowdowns. You know, the business does have, you know, fairly normal variations in the pace of both sales and connections. At this point, we're seeing no broad-based slowdown. There's no trend that we're noting. The home builders continue to build out their portfolios in the country. We monitor it closely, but at this point, we're not noting any trends in any particular direction on that front.
Okay. Again, sticking with the U.K., just can you remind us how the rate adjustments to homeowners work, and any kind of restrictions on rate resets, if there are any? On the connections revenues, are these negotiated with the utilities or construction companies on a project-by-project basis that could give you know, flexibility to adjust those to compensate you for a higher cost of capital? Just any thoughts you can share there.
Sure. Ben again. I would say, first of all, to answer your second question first, we absolutely can adjust the economics of our, you know, our offering to the home builders, based on, you know, any economic impacts that we see. We can be flexible within that. You know, once those are secured, usually our economics are locked in and inflation protected over time. While we track the regulation very closely, I would think of it more as it could set a max rate for us.
Generally speaking, we are, you know, we can reprice our product over time in order to accommodate any variations in either supply costs, delivery costs, or financing costs generally over time in the business. I don't know if that answers your question, but at this point, there's no, you know, huge exposure to not being able to reprice.
Okay. No, that's good color. Thank you for that.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Frederic Bastien with Raymond James.
Hi. Good morning. Only, one question for me. Your contrarian approach to investing leads me to believe that Europe would rank pretty high on your priority list right now, especially with the geopolitical uncertainty and the related energy and currency crisis. Do you see opportunities to accelerate your capital deployment in the region, or am I barking up the wrong tree?
Hi, Frederic. Well, look, I think you're correct that you know there's lots of factors which would suggest that opportunities could and should arise in Europe. You know, we have you know over the last number of years scaled up our investing capabilities in that market. Last year, in fact, I think you know almost half, maybe slightly less than half the capital, excuse me, that we deployed went into that market. You know, we have already been seeing lots of opportunities. You know, I think there could be you know lots more in front of us.
You know, the only caveat being that, you know, as I mentioned at the outset, you know, distress tends to be company specific more often than not. Even though there could be, you know, more regional distress in Europe, you know, the large scale situations that we look for where distress occur might just be a company somewhere else, and because they, you know, they might have not managed their affairs properly. I just give you that cautionary thing that just because one region is where there's more problems doesn't necessarily mean that's where the opportunity will arise.
Okay. That's helpful, Sam. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Fred.
Thank you. Now I'm showing no further questions. With that, I'll hand the call back over to CEO Sam Pollock for any closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you, operator. And thank you to everyone who joined the call this morning. You know, we appreciate your support, and we'd like to wish you all happy holidays. I know it's a little bit early for that, but we won't be talking to you for another few months. Happy Thanksgiving and for Americans, and happy holidays in the upcoming season. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.