Scatec ASA

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Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q2

[Raymond Carlsen, Chief Executive Officer]

Good morning. My name is Raymond Carlsen. And together with Mikkel Tørud, I'm here to present the second quarter results for 2020. As usual, we will do the highlights and project update to begin with, then we'll review the numbers, and then I'll have a short summary slide towards the end. We have had a tremendous development of production of electricity, while at the same time, we are progressing development of some very large project opportunities. I'll refer to that a bit later in the presentation. Power production reached 406 gigawatt hours during the quarter. And if you just compare it to the last quarter, that is up more than 100%. We enjoyed an EBITDA of NOK 417 million, which is up from last quarter, NOK 346 million. If you compare that to the same quarter last year, we were then at NOK 388 million. During the quarter, we finished the last of 3 plants, our portfolio plants in Upington, South Africa and a plant in Ukraine, totaling 140 megawatts. During the quarter, we also raised NOK 1,968 million during -- through a rights issue to fund further renewable investments. And then the Board approved dividend payments of NOK 131 million, which is 50% of the dividends paid from the operating assets around the world. And just to reiterate what we have communicated to you all before, COVID-19 has a limited impact on our operations. Here, you see to the left, all the plants that we have in operation. And to the left -- sorry, to the right, the plants that are under construction. In Ukraine, all the plants are virtually complete in terms of installation of the PV part. What's missing or what's left to be done is finishing the high-voltage part of these plants. In Argentina, the PV plant is also finished, as you can see from the nice picture up in the mountains Argentina below. We are there waiting for the high-voltage cable to be connected. This is a supply that comes from the local utility. Malaysia, the plant is finished, both the PV and the higher voltage part of the plant. Here, we are waiting for engineers from the National Utility at Tenaga Nasional Berhad in Malaysia to be present during our testing. They have a lot of test work at the moment, so we have to queue up. This is a -- I think this is a very nice installation. This is the second hybrid plant that we have installed for the UN in South Sudan. Here, they used to fly in the diesel, extremely expensive. And what we have done here is we have reduced the diesel consumption by almost 80%, and by that, also reducing the cost of the electricity produced by quite a lot. What's kind of interesting that we haven't thought about is that the first feedback we got was that, all of a sudden, the camp was very quiet. Of course, they had turned off the diesel generators. We have another plant that will be finished in a couple of months, and we hope this is going to be an interesting market for us going forward. There is a tremendous need to power up and replace the diesel plants with renewable energy. Looking at the power production over the past few years. In 2017, we produced 627 gigawatt hours. And if you look at the estimate for 2020, we are almost 5x higher. And just keep in mind that the cash flows that are behind this gigawatt hour produced are cash flows that are going to be there for the next 20 years after the plant is connected. Now if you average these plants at the moment, we are around 19 years left, we have about 19 years left of revenues. So these are long-term secured revenues through the power purchase agreements that we have contracted. Now I like technology. And of course, you may think that these plants are so simple that they don't really need advanced technology. Well, it's partially true, but they lend themselves to optimization. And an area that we haven't talked a lot about is the operation maintenance area. And what we have done, we have automated the processes. We have analyzed various problems. We have summarized them and put them into use where you cross-fertilize the knowledge that you gain from these experiences. If you look more exactly what we're doing locally, of course, drone is all over -- drones are all over. We are using drones as well. We are using cleaning robots that are doing, as you can see one in the middle there, that are removing dust that have deposited on the panels. And then our operators, of course, they are digitized, meaning that they have equipment that connects them, we have the plant central to the control room in Cape Town, and where we can optimize maintenance, you can optimize spare part distribution, procurement and so forth. And of course, that is reducing the time for -- to make corrective actions. As an example, we have reduced -- and this is only since 2018. We have reduced the number of people or operators per megawatt from 2018 to 2020. Right now, we only need 1 operator to operate 10 megawatts. We needed twice as much in 2018. So now if you're talking about 100 megawatt, you need 10 people. And remember, there are shift workers as well. So this is the way it goes. You don't need a lot of people to operate these plants because they have a lot of assistance from the network of people that we have in the organization and also the -- how should I put it, the systems that we've put in place to optimize the operations. We have levelized the economies of scale, which I just mentioned. Real-time data are collected and treated in Cape Town and are being redistributed in an optimized way. And we are also using state-of-the-art analytics to take advantage of all the data that we are collecting. If you look at other things we are focusing on. Of course, we are really happy that we are now able to collect data from the bifacial installation that we have in Egypt, thereby, the Aswan Dam. This was, when it was connected last year, the largest of it kind in the world. So since then, we have been doing testing and collecting production data that allows us to optimize these data so that we can redeploy them, use them on future plants, with the motivation to be more cost competitive and increase production. When I joined the company in 2009, the PV modules, we're producing 500 watt peak, which is an expression for the electricity capacity of each module, 230-megawatt peak. Now it's twice as much. While there's not a direct link to this change to the plotted area that they take up, you can say that here, with the new modules, we save about 40% of the space required for a plant, which is substantial. And then that has a direct link to our ability to be even more cost competitive when it comes down to the electricity that we deliver. It's natural that you don't use external capacity, meaning electricity to drive these trackers. And of course, we have taken the consequence out of that. And we have installed these small panels that are operated in parallel wirelessly, and they are powering these racks of panels at the moment. So that is reducing the costs even further. And then we have some joint initiatives. This could be deposits on the modules, cleaning frequencies, behavior or bifacial modules. And there, we need the best expertise in the world. Of course, EFA in Norway is one of those institutions. We have also for years cooperated with the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. In fact, we have a large test facility that are testing out all sort of the latest and the newest technologies so that we can select the best going forward. We're also now looking at artificial intelligence, machine learning and as well testing floating solar, and as I mentioned a couple of times now, the characteristics of producing electricity from the front of the panel and also from the back of the panel that bifacial technology allows you to do. Now I showed you this slide as well on Q1, and I just want to reiterate a couple of points here. For 2020, we have established 22 sustainability goals. These are visible, known, so everybody understands what we're trying to do, and they will be reported on in our Sustainability Report that we will publicize in the beginning of the new year. Now, going one step below. Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3. That is how this has been defined when you are operating in this environment. And Scope 1 is greenhouse gas emission from sources that are owned or controlled by Scatec Solar or any other company. I mean, they are doing the same thing. Scope 2 are gas emissions that are coming from, if you purchase electricity, from a third party and that electricity is lurking, then of course you have to count that in as an emitter. Or from other sources, heating or cooling. And then you have the supply chain as an example. That is Scope 3. So everybody that supplies equipment to you and their whole value chain, how is that behaving in terms of CO2 emittance? Until now or last year, we focused mainly on emissions from flight travel. This year, we have established ambitions to also measure the indirect emissions from our suppliers. And we have engaged with many of our key suppliers to actually ask them to do what we expect them to do to analyze their supply chain, their production methodology and equipment to establish the emissions. And that will also be reported. We will come back later in the year with specific targets that when we also reported in our Sustainability Report in the beginning of the new year. Okay, Mikkel, we're ready for a financial review.

[Mikkel Tørud, Chief Financial Officer]

Thanks. So let me summarize some of the key financials for the quarter. And as we already have highlighted, we've seen very strong growth in Power Production. That's the main achievement for the quarter. And we've seen this development over the last few quarters really. And we now report proportionate revenues of NOK 925 million and EBITDA of NOK 417 million. We saw revenues declining somewhat from the same quarter last year as we've seen a lower construction activity in the last couple of quarters compared to what we saw a year ago. But then if you look at the EBITDA, we see strong contributions from the Power Production Segment, which more than compensate for this decline. This change in mix of contributions from the segments is also lifting the EBITDA margin quite substantially. So we report 45% EBITDA margin in the second quarter compared to 24% in the previous quarter or in the quarter a year ago. Now if you look at the last 12 months, we saw revenues reaching about NOK 5 billion compared to NOK 6.1 billion about a year ago, while we've seen EBITDA increasing from NOK 1.3 billion to NOK 1.6 billion. Now on the consolidated basis, we report a net loss of NOK 81 million in this second quarter. And this is, to a large extent, affected by a currency loss of NOK 169 million. And this, again, relates to movements of currencies related to intercompany funding. We saw a positive movement in Q1 of more than NOK 300 million, and now we had a loss of NOK 169 million. And if you look at this year-to-date, the net effect is positive NOK 150 million, and we report a net profit of NOK 217 million year-to-date. Now moving on to the Power Production segments. Raymond spoke quite a lot about how we work with the O&M and the plants, and plant availability is another figure we follow. It's more than 99%. It's been high for many years now and continues to be a very high number that we focus on. If you look at the numbers, we reached NOK 458 million of revenues, NOK 374 million of EBITDA in the quarter. We have now 1.5 gigawatts in operation, and we connected 140 megawatts of new plants during the quarter. Production, 406 gigawatt hours compared to 349 gigawatts in the previous quarter and 198 gigawatts last year. If you look over the last 12 months, revenues reached NOK 1.6 billion and EBITDA, NOK 1.3 billion. And this is more than a doubling compared to a year ago. Services continued to grow, with the asset portfolio also growing. In this quarter, we also had a revenue catch-up of NOK 14 million, which affected both revenues and EBITDA. Revenues reached NOK 75 million and -- or sorry, NOK 73 million and EBITDA, NOK 34 million. And again, if you look over last year, revenues of NOK 222 million and EBITDA of NOK 89 million, with a 40% EBITDA margin. On the D&C side, we see lower construction activity compared to historic quarters NOK 383 million of revenues, NOK 22 million of EBITDA. And this is then before we really start to see a new wave of projects that we expect to come over the quarters to come. And as we've said before, project development and construction is a lumpy business, so we need to expect some fluctuations on both revenues and margins. We report a 14% gross margin in the quarter. However, with a fairly stable OpEx in the segments, this is -- the lower revenue is, of course, affecting also then the EBITDA in the quarter. If we now look at the balance sheet, we've strengthened that significantly in the quarter. In May, we raised close to NOK 2 billion, and we now have NOK 3.6 billion of available liquidity, also through the credit facilities that we have access to. When we look at the consolidated balance sheet, we saw total assets of NOK 24.3 billion compared to NOK 21.6 billion at the end of last year. Now consolidated cash, as you can see, NOK 4 billion or so, and then free cash at the group level, NOK 1.9 billion. And the group level book equity increased also with the equity increase to NOK 7.4 billion. Now looking at the movement of free cash in the quarter. This graph is a bit dwarfed by the equity that we raised to the far right of this graph, but just highlighting that we received NOK 20 million from the operating power plants in the quarter. And we've invested more than NOK 200 million of equity in Ukraine, Malaysia and South Africa. And we are expecting to -- we're coming now to the end of equity investments in the current portfolio. So that's also good to mention. We also saw a negative working capital movement in the quarter, and we paid down on a credit facility that we had drawn upon in the last quarter. Now on the short-term guidance, when it comes to D&C value, the value of the portfolio under construction is about NOK 1.1 billion, while NOK 45 million is what is -- remains to be recognized as revenue in the next quarter. And we also expect then to see lower D&C revenues in the second half of 2020 compared to the first half. And we will, of course, get a strong growth again in revenues and margins in that segment as we start construction of projects in backlog and later in pipeline. When it comes to volumes produced, we expect another increase of about 5% in production volumes from the second quarter into the third quarter and further growth also in -- towards the end of this year as we reconnect, and we are expecting to grid connect the last 400 megawatts now in the second half of this year. And that will, of course, add to production and revenues in that segment. We did a slight increase in the guidance on the services from NOK 230 million to NOK 240 million of revenues this year and an EBITDA margin of 35% compared to 30% as we have guided on earlier. Okay. Raymond?

[Raymond Carlsen, Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, Mikkel. Outlook and summary. This is our world map. And we are and we will continue to be an important player in emerging economies where the need for electricity is going to increase tremendously over the next few years, next few decades actually. The pipeline, as such, since last quarter has increased by 300 megawatt up to, if you add backlog to that, 6,140 megawatts. We have and will -- we are just saying that we will continue to aim for the 4,500 megawatt, which is a very realistic target. And I just want to qualify that when we say 4,500, it will be probably more of those megawatts that are left to be -- to close the gap from where we are today. That will be under construction towards the end of the year than what we had -- when we planned when we set the target. But nevertheless, we are extremely optimistic about the future. And let me just spend a slide on the backlog and some of the pipeline projects. Tunisia, we publicized that win last summer. Since then, our team has been developing the projects, planning, looking at procurement, looking at the local sites. And equally as important, because a lot of our success remains -- resides on our ability to optimize the financing, and in this case, I have to say that I'm positively surprised how eager the banks have been to support us. If you look at the offers that we have received, I have to say, I've seen nothing like it. So when we're seeing interest rate that are sort of very low, that will, of course, have a very positive effect on the returns of the project as well. And remember, these projects are going to be producing electricity, as I've said many times before, for the next 20 years. So it seems like the projects in Tunisia and elsewhere in Africa are attracting financing institutions that have capacity, interest and are willing to support these projects in a very competitive manner. Industrial partnerships is something that we have worked on for quite some time. And we have also shared that with you that we believe that corporate PPAs have come to stay and they will be expanded in the years to come. In our pipeline at the moment, we have around 1,000 megawatts of such projects. But I think it's pertinent also to mention that we also are working on several large projects above 500 megawatts that are approaching the pipeline stage. And I hope to be able to get back to you in not too long to explain more about these projects and where they are more particularly. Some of them are in Brazil and South Africa. And these players that we are talking to right now are very serious players. Of course, they are not only looking at this scene from a sort of a renewable a CO2 reduction perspective. They're looking at this as something that is actually going to make them more competitive because the power that we can supply will compete with any other source of energy. Final slide. Well, we are continuing the upward ride in terms of production increases, but we're also progressing the large project opportunities. For those of you that were shareholders in Scatec Solar in 2017, you probably remember that for a while there, we didn't construct a lot of projects. But it was also important to mention then that while we're not doing any project, it doesn't mean that our development and project team are twiddling their thumbs. What they're doing is, of course, they are creating opportunities. They are planning. They are developing projects. They are developing and working on some of the projects I just mentioned, these several megawatts of large projects. And of course, when they reach financial closure, which we expect to happen within next year on some of them, then, of course, construction activity will go up, up. So as Mikkel mentioned, construction of projects will sort of taper out with the existing portfolio, but then it will be replaced with the new pipeline projects. COVID-19, I just need to mention that as well. It has an impact, of course, a short-term impact on some of the development work, which is natural because a lot of those activities are happening on the ground at location. Environmental impact assessments, negotiations with farmers, doing -- kind of getting licenses, interfacing with, for example, the land office in Bangladesh, in Dhaka. I mean these people may not be able to communicate, except in the office because they don't have a home office like we do here in Norway. So these things have -- may have a short-term impact, but the fundamentals are and will be the same. It will be strong growth adopting and installing renewable technologies. We will, as we have said, finish the plants. We have gone through that, the remaining 3 plants or 5 plants actually in the next few months. And then I think it's important just to reiterate something that we sent out a press release on in connection with our general assembly that we held on the 25th of June. You may have noticed that we decided to change the Articles of Association to describe more of what we think is going to be scope, our scope for the future. We have -- we will broaden the scope for new -- sorry, for renewable technologies, meaning that we will not only be a solar company. So that allows us to entertain wind opportunities, batteries we have worked on. And we think it's more appropriate then to align the Articles of Associations with the focus of the company going forward. And some of the bigger opportunities I've just mentioned fall into that category. Of course, part of that is mergers and acquisitions, opportunities that we are working on at the moment. And of course, in the extension of that statement, it is quite useful that we are right now in a very, very good situation with an available liquidity of NOK 3.6 billion. Reiterating again, by end of next year, 4,500 megawatts in operation or under construction. So I think that is what I wanted to say. And I think that we are then open for questions over the net.

[Ingrid Aarsnes, Vice President of Communications & IR]

Yes. We have 3 questions from Petter Nystrom in ABG. And first one, when should we expect to just start construction of the backlog projects, and which projects are you likely to start on first?

[Raymond Carlsen, Chief Executive Officer]

Well, I know at least the project I mentioned here, the Tunisia project, will probably start towards the end of the year and beginning of the new year. That's a big project. Then there are -- Bangladesh is approaching sort of a stage where we can -- we would be able to say more about the exact start. But there, we are hampered by some of these COVID impacts. In Mali, we're also sort of approaching the finalization of some documents there, but those who that follow sort of African and Malinese politics, there are some political debacles right there, but we wish to think that, that will not impact us, but I can't give you an exact date.

[Ingrid Aarsnes, Vice President of Communications & IR]

And then he has also has a question on, can you share some lights on how you are progressing on moving projects from pipeline to backlog? And what are the key challenges?

[Raymond Carlsen, Chief Executive Officer]

I mean it's the same thing. I mean these projects are very complex. And to capture a project, you have a lot of important elements. Of course, you have -- there has to be a need for electricity, which is pretty basic. If it is sort of a government motivated and control project, then there are certain procedures. If it is a private PPA, then, of course, you move into negotiations. There are many, many things that needs to be covered there. But of course, we are saying what we're saying because we know that we're moving closer to a conclusion on some of these projects.

[Ingrid Aarsnes, Vice President of Communications & IR]

And that was the questions that we have gotten so far. So I think maybe a lot of people are on vacation.

[Mikkel Tørud, Chief Financial Officer]

Okay. Should we end it there then, Ingrid?

[Ingrid Aarsnes, Vice President of Communications & IR]

Yes.

[Mikkel Tørud, Chief Financial Officer]

Okay. Thank you.

[Raymond Carlsen, Chief Executive Officer]

Okay. Thank you, all. Thank you all for listening.