ENGIE Energia Chile SA

SGO:ECL

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Operator]

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Engie Energia Chile's Fourth Quarter 2020 Results Conference Call. If you need a copy of the press release issued last week, it is available on the company's website at www.engie-energia.cl.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call is being recorded, and that information discussed today may include forward-looking statements regarding the company's financial and operating performance. All projections are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. Please refer to the detailed note in the company's press release regarding forward-looking statements.

We would like to advise participants that this call is dedicated to investors and market analysts, and not for the press. We ask all journalists to contact Engie Energia Chile's PR department for details.

I will now turn the call over to Mr. Eduardo Milligan. Please go ahead, sir.

[Eduardo Milligan Wenzel, executive]

Thank you, Gary. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for attending our annual presentation. So we hope you're doing well. And today, Marcela Munoz, Head of Investor Relations, and I are very pleased to be once again with you and present our annual results for this complex, and I hope, one-timer 2020. So we have updated our corporate presentation in this line. I hope you find interesting the new information and additional elements on our transformation plan. So we continue on track to deliver what we promised some years ago. We'll go through most of these plans during this presentation.

So first, we will focus on the key messages for 2020. Second, we will go through the main events of the year. Then, we will go through our projects under development. We will continue on section 4 on the financial update to end, as always, with the main key takeaways we want to share with you.

So now please turn directly to Page #7 to go through the key messages. First, I want to highlight the operational results of 2020. Our EBITDA and recurring net results were within the guidance we provided for 2020 before the COVID crisis started. And I think this is remarkable and shows the operational and business resilience of ECL, mainly driven by our strong contractor portfolio of clients, the tremendous efforts of Gabriel Marcuz and his team in our operational sites to keep running our plants, and also from our teams at home, facing, like probably most of you, a new challenge to deliver a solid performance in 2020. And of course, we are still underway. We have several operational challenges ahead, but we believe we are on the right track to transform ECL in several dimensions to become more efficient, increase our competitiveness and bring further growth.

Second, as you already know, in 2020, we completed the transformation of AMSA PPAs into green corporate PPAs. But in addition, we signed new green PPAs with other clients like CAP, Parque Arauco, CCU or Enaex for additional 0.8 terawatt hour per year. This means we have added almost 2 terawatts hour per year of green corporate PPAs to our portfolio.

If I can use a couple of KPIs, I can say we have added, in 2020, close to 50 new clients with an average contracted life of 8 years. Our commercial team led by Luis Meersohn is preparing the company to increase our client base and provide additional infrastructure solutions to our clients.

Third, in 2020, we continued with the development and construction of renewables and transmission assets. I'm glad to be in 2021 because this is the year in which we will start having the operation dates of new renewables that are currently under construction. In 2021, we will have the commercial operation date of Calama wind farm, Tamaya PV and Capricornio PV. Well, we just gave the notice to proceed for fourth renewable project called Coya PV.

I will present the status of each of them in a few minutes. This will be a key milestone in our transformation plan, of course. Since 2021, our plan is to continue adding new renewables and other cleaning technologies to our generation portfolio to replace the thermal units we will be closing very soon and to support the new contracts we want to capture in the market.

And fourth, let's talk about our capital structure. In 2020 and even during the COVID crisis, ECL was upgraded to BBB+ by one rating agency, which reflects the sound financial situation of the company and its ability to finance our transformation plan. So in this line, we also approved into 2020 a $67 million promissory dividend that was paid last November, representing 50% of ECL recurring net results of the first 9 months of the year. Our objective under the current CapEx program is to at least keep this 50% ratio.

Now let's continue to go through some details, and please turn to the next Page 8. In this page, we can see on the right, some interesting periods comparing 2020 with the previous 2 years. We continued to grow in energy sales. Total energy sales in 2020 reached 11.4 terawatts hour, even considering the end of an important PPA by mid-2020 with Zaldivar. This is possible by adding new clients to our portfolio and a small growth in our regulated demand, which should have been even bigger, but the expected growth was impacted by the recent crisis.

Our EBITDA and net results came in line with our guidance. The main difference between 2020 and 2019 is explained by a one-off income we received in 2019 from IEM contractor to compensate the delay of startup of these projects. These $75 million received in 2019 are mainly explaining the difference between 2020 and 2019 in both EBITDA and the recurring net results. Marcela will explain in detail the evolution of our financial results in some minutes.

On Page 9, we present a snapshot of this year results comparing 2020 with 2019. Total revenues reached $1.3 billion, down 7% compared to previous year despite the 3% increase in physical sales, I mentioned before. This is the -- or this was because average prices decreased in turn due to the decrease in fuel prices, but costs also decreased.

Our generation increased mainly due to the commissioning of IEM in May 2019. So in 2020, we have a full year for IEM production. The increase in generation led to an increase in fuel costs despite the drop in fuel prices. However, our spot energy purchases decreased from 5.5 terawatts hour, as you can see, to 4.6 terawatts hour, or in other words, decreased to 16% compared to previous year. This decrease should have been bigger.

If you remember, when we presented our 9-month results, we mentioned a 30% decrease in spot purchases. But we had in the last 2 months of 2020, a failure in CTA unit, and this made us buy additional energy in the spot market. The unit is almost ready to come back. We expect to have it back in the system in the coming weeks. The property damage insurance will be called as well as the business interaction. And both impacts will be known in a couple of months. And it's recovery should occur on a later stage as is usual in this process with the insurance plan.

In summary, EBITDA was 15% lower compared to the previous year. We had a positive recovery in the last quarter. As you can also recall, the EBITDA was 21% lower back in September, and this impact was minus 29% for the first half of 2020. So this means we recovered some ground during the second half of the year, and I hope this economic recovery will continue in 2021.

Despite there is a COVID impact embedded in these results that could be around minus $25 million, the relevant decrease in comparison to 2019 is mainly explained by the $75 million LDs registered back in 2019, paid by IEM contractor due to the delay of startup. Excluding this impact, EBITDA in 2020 is almost in line with the EBITDA of previous year, which would be something to highlight in the current context. In some minutes, we will also discuss our updated guidance for 2021.

In the same line, the recurring net income was $181 million, mainly explained by 2 effects: the LDs from IEM and higher interest expenses because interest expense ceased to be capitalized upon the completion of the IEM project back in May 2019.

So in summary, physical energy sales had a positive performance considering the current context with an increase of 3% compared to previous year. However, as we explained, during 2020, we were expecting a higher growth when we provided our guidance for 2020, and the lower-than-expected growth is explained by the lower regulated demand impacted by COVID.

EBITDA then fell in line with the average lower energy sales price because of the indexation to fuel prices and the lower regulated demand, but -- which were also partially offset by lower costs of energy and fuel prices. Therefore, ECL margin, after excluding LDs received in 2019, remained almost stable.

Now on Page 10, we present ECL's supply curve, which as every quarter, very useful to understand how we are managing energy needs for our clients. As you can see, IEM, CTA and CTH continue to operate as baseload units. The lower production of CTA is explained by its unavailability during the last 2 months of 2020. Our 2 combined cycles running with natural gas represented close to 20% of our energy supply, while the rest of ECL's coal units were marginally dispatched, as you can see in the table on top of this page.

Just a reminder, we already announced closure of Units 14 and 15 in Tocopilla by the end of this year, and for CTM1 and CTM2, around 2024 or it could be sooner if conditions are good for that.

Finally, ECL supplied about 45% of its clients' needs between spot market purchases, a supply agreement with another generation company and gas generation through Gas Atacama. Once the 3 renewable projects, I recently mentioned, reach commercial operation date, our purchases in the spot market, together with the supply agreements with other gencos, should reduce to around 30%.

On Pages 11 to 13, we present ECL main strength. It's a long-term portfolio of clients and PPAs. We show the evolution of ECL portfolio and how the average life of our portfolio is currently reaching 11 years.

If we move to Page #13, we can see how the green area in the graph continues to increase. This is explained by the new PPAs we signed during 2019 and 2020. While we continue working in potential alternatives to transform into a green corporate PPA, the only remaining coal-linked PPA signed with Codelco.

I just want to highlight that what we promised 3 years ago is underway. We have transformed 75% of our portfolio of regulated PPAs into green corporate PPAs, and we can move to the next stage, which is to grow in our portfolio of PPAs and in other infrastructure solutions for our clients.

So now please turn to Page 14. In 2020, we spent close to $180 million in CapEx, most of it in renewables. We have updated our CapEx forecast for 2021, and we expect investments for almost $400 million during the year, mainly focused on our renewable and transmission projects as well as maintenance. In this forecast, we are including a new PV project called Coya with installed capacity of 198 megawatts. But we plan to finance these capital expenditures with a mix of internal cash generation and bank finances.

In this line, our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio increased in 2020 to 1.8 and should continue increasing in the upcoming years to optimize our capital structure. We intend to keep our leverage ratios not exceeding 2.5x on a structural and regular basis. Last quarter, we said that in this equation, we need to consider a negative impact related to the regulated tariff stabilization mechanism, which will need to be financed by ECL until these long-term receivables were collected in 5 to 7 years.

Now I'm very glad -- very, very glad to mention that we have concluded the implementation of a monetization structure to sell these receivables with Goldman Sachs and Inter-American Development Bank, with the IDB Invest. We have already executed the first transaction, and the results will be announced in the upcoming days. So in this line, we will be able to monetize in the -- during the next 2 years, the amount of receivables we were supposed to accumulate between 2019 and 2023. The nominal amount would be close to $265 million as we informed before. This structure will certainly provide additional liquidity since it will be a true sale on a nonrecourse basis and will not account as financial debt in our balance sheet. I will further explain the transaction in a few minutes.

Let's talk now about our guidance for 2020 and 2021. Please turn to Page 15. As I mentioned at the beginning of this call, I'm glad to mention that ECL has shown an operational resilience during the year that allowed to reach the low end of the EBITDA guidance we gave for 2020. For 2020, as we explained in the previous quarters, we were expecting a higher contractor demand compared to 2019, but a lower operational and recurring EBITDA during the year, mainly explained by the termination of the Zaldivar PPA during the second half of the year.

Those were the 3 main business impacts in 2020 compared to our guidance. Here, I can mention that our regulated demand marginally increased compared to 2019, but we were expecting a higher increase. We ended around 0.4 terawatts hour below the expected consumption. We were included in our guidance. In other words, between 7% below the expected regulated demand pre-COVID crisis. Therefore, the impact of the current crisis and regulated demand has negatively impacted our results during 2020 in around $25 million, as we can see on Page 16 at the bottom left. The unregulated demand was almost in line with our projections. So I think nothing important to mention in this case.

Second, from a cost of supply perspective, the lower demand, lower fuel costs, and consequently, lower spot prices helped to partially offset the negative impact in regulated demand. This positive impact should have been even better, but we had 2 months in which the unavailability of our own efficient units negatively impacted our average supply cost.

And third, operational expenses continued to be optimized. Part of this savings were negatively impacted by the additional expenses the company had to incur to adapt our operations to the current context. The additional OpEx we incurred due to the COVID crisis could be close to $5 million.

Now let's talk about our guidance for 2021. We are glad to say that since we started giving our guidance 3 years ago, the company has delivered solid results. And every year, we were within the range we announced 1 year before, even during the recent crisis, which is something to highlight, and shows the operational resilience and solid portfolio of clients the company currently has.

Now for 2021, we expect a slightly higher contractor demand compared to 2020 and 2019 and a slightly increase in our recurrent EBITDA. This means we are increasing the EBITDA guidance range to $460 million to $480 million and the recurrent net result to $170 million to $190 million.

Now let me explain some of the main variables we need to consider for 2021. So in 2021, most of the PPAs, we structured in the last 3 years when we started this announcement back in 2018 will become green and will start to be indexed to coal, while an additional discount in the energy tariff will be applied. You can see these changes on Page 12. We explained most of these changes during the last 2 years. So now the second phase in these contracts will start.

On the other hand, in 2021, we will have the commercial operation date of our first 3 greenfield projects, which should reduce the amount of energy purchases in the spot market. Hence, we will replace spot purchases at, let's say, $40 by producing with our own renewables at, example, given $5. This means we will start seeing an increase in EBITDA coming from the CapEx we are investing. Between the first and the second impact, we are forecasting our EBITDA and the recurring net result could be slightly above 2020 under a conservative, let's say, scenario.

What is unknown and an important -- and it is an important variable will always be the marginal cost. We have seen an increase in the recent months, explained by higher commodity prices and the, unfortunately, lack of gas coming from Argentina. So this is an important variable we need to have in mind since we will continue supplying our client needs with around 30% purchases in the spot market, together with the specific supply agreements we have with other innovation companies.

To the left side of this slide, we show the main variables you should consider when analyzing the evolution of our results, prepare sensitivities or forecast different scenarios. Once again, I think we are glad to confirm that our guidance was achieved in a very complex year, while we continue working very hard in our transformation process to bring additional value to all our stakeholders.

If we move now to Page 16, we present the slides we prepared last year to provide some color on the potential impact of COVID in our results. I really hope we will be able to eliminate these slides very, very soon. The estimated COVID impact for 2020 was minus $25 million compared to our guidance, mainly explained by the lower regulated demand. Then we present in this page, 2 simple scenarios as sensitivities for 2021, 5% and 7.5%. I was very reluctant to use more than 7.5% in this sensitivity because we need to be optimistic on the Q2 recovery. Both sensitivities for regulated and unregulated customers follow the same principles we have explained in the previous quarters.

Now considering that our guidance for 2021 is already using a lower base for regulated clients, we can consider the sensitivities as downsides to the base case. I hope the economic recovery will continue and that these downsides will not materialize during this year.

Now on Page 17, we are summarizing an updated view of the asset rotation plan. First at the bottom, we can see the 6 coal units we already committed to close until 2024. Second, on top, we present the different renewables that will replace those coal units. In summary, we have committed a 1-gigawatt plan, and we are preparing an additional set of renewables for an additional gigawatt.

As I mentioned before, more than half of the first gigawatt is already committed between the plants we acquired and the 4 projects that are under construction and that will reach the operation date in the upcoming months. Well, 3 of them, the recently project we launched will be during the first half of 2022. The other half of the program will be announced soon.

What is new in this page, as I mentioned before, is that we have added PV Coya, an almost 200-megawatt solar project. We just gave the notice to proceed a few weeks ago. And these 4 projects will bring our renewables plan to an overall progress of almost 70%.

If we turn to Page 18, we can see a snapshot of how we see our portfolio will evolve between 2018 and 2022. In 2018, coal power plants represented almost 60% of our total installed capacity and renewables represented only 1%. By 2022, only 4 years after, renewables will represent at least 42% of ECL capacity, while gas will continue playing an important role to manage the intermittency, and we represent 25% of our generation portfolio.

Now let's move to next section and go through some specific events impacting our operational results during the year. On Page 21, you can see the main terms and conditions of the agreement signed with Antofagasta Minerals during the first quarter of 2020. As I explained before, this agreement, together with the new green corporate PPAs that we present in next Page 22, represent almost 2 terawatts hour per year of growing PPAs for our portfolio.

On Page 23, we can see the main conditions for the recent acquisition of Eólica Monte Redondo. We expect a $15 million EBITDA contribution in 2021, already included in our guidance, and $10 million for each of the next years 2022 and 2023. Well, afterwards, these assets will become uncontracted and will be part of our portfolio to support our 11-year average life portfolio of PPAs.

Now on Page 24, we provide an overview of our financing activity that has kept us very busy during the year. First, in previous calls, we talked about the issue of a new $500 million 144A/RegS bond, mainly used to refinance the old $400 million bond, which matures in January 2021. This new 10-year bond with a coupon rate of 3.4% allowed us to raise $100 million additional debt, while at the same time, saving around $5.5 million per year in interest expenses and extending our average debt maturities to 7.7 years.

Then you may have seen some news during the last 2 days in the press about the green instrument we were structuring together with the IDB Invest. One year ago, during the COP 25, we signed an agreement of understanding with IDB Invest to develop an innovative financial instrument that would allow us to finance investments in renewables, while at the same time, accelerating the reduction of emissions.

So last December, we closed the final documentation of this $125 million loan with a total tenure of up to 12 years, which, as I said before, has an innovative structure. The loan has 2 tranches, a $110 million loan to be funded by the IDB and China Fund and a $15 million loan from the Clean Technology Fund.

This financing seeks to finance the construction of renewable projects. In this case, the 151-megawatt Calama wind farm in combination with an incentive to accelerate the closure of coal plants. The idea is to monetize the actual displacement of CO2 emissions from coal plants, the generation will be replaced by the Calama wind farm through a lower interest rate in the loan provided by the Clean Technology Fund, or CTF. We have not yet drawn this loan. So it remains fully available. We will do this during the next probably 12 months as part of our needs to finance our CapEx program.

As we explained yesterday in the press release, this is the first instrument of this type in the world, and we are very pleased to have contributed to make it possible since it could be replicated by other companies in Chile or in other places to accelerate the transformation of the energy metrics.

And finally, what most of us were expecting, too, in January, ECL, together with the other main 3 generation groups in Chile, signed agreements with Goldman Sachs related to a financing operation for the accounts receivable related to the tariff stabilization loan. Under this transaction, ECL will be able to sell without recourse, accounts receivable from distribution companies for up to a committed amount of $162 million to a special purpose company called Chile Electricity PEC. The sales of receivables will be perfected in groups once the CME publishes each average node price decree, or the PNP decree, including the corresponding charge with the balances owed by distribution companies to the generation companies.

Right after that, we signed a similar agreement with IDB Invest, under which we will be entitled to sell to Chile Electricity PEC, accounts receivable for a total amount of almost $75 million. We estimate that the total amount of present and future accounts receivable, considering those already accrued and those to be accrued until the mechanism's cap is reached no later than July 2023, could be approximately $266 million.

All the parties are working on increasing the facilities to complete 100% of the financing needed to buy all these receivables. But as you can see, we are almost there. This transaction will help us enhance our liquidity and ensure financing for our investment in renewables. As I mentioned before, we are executing the first sale, and we will be able to communicate these results very, very soon.

Finally, on Page 26, we are sharing the main regulatory topics that will be in the agenda for the medium and long term. There are no relevant changes compared to the main topics we presented in our last quarter.

So now let's move to next section and discuss where we are with the projects under construction. On Pages 28 and 29, we can see the full picture of the current plan to develop renewables. First, the total decisions in 2019 and 2020 of Loros and Monte Redondo, totaling 137 megawatts. Second, the 3 projects under construction, we announced 1 year ago. And third, our fourth new project with installed capacity of 188 megawatts. Between all these projects acquired or under construction, we reached almost 0.6 gigawatts. Then, we have additional wind projects for 359 megawatts that are getting closer to its implementation phase, and other projects under development for at least 1 gigawatt.

The last row shows the estimated total CapEx for the complete -- or to complete the first gigawatt of renewables with a total investment of almost $900 million. This amount is below the initial estimated CapEx of $1 billion for 1 gigawatt we paid at the beginning of this process.

Next Pages 30 to 35 show the detailed status of each renewable and transmission project under construction. In summary, with Calama on Page 30 has a global advance of 75%. Its global advance back in September was 49%. So it's progressing very well. We maintained its commercial operation date during the third quarter of 2021.

Capricornio solar plant has also a global advance of 86%. Three months ago, it was 75%, and we expect a full commercial operation date during the second quarter of this year.

Then, if we go to the next one, Tamaya has a global advance of 78%. Three months ago, it was 61%, and we expect its commercial operation date by the end also of the second quarter.

The new one, Coya, the next page, is located in the north, close to our mining demand. And this project was recently approved and will require a total investment of $117 million, and its commercial operation date is expected during the first quarter of 2022. So this is the current progress of our now 4 projects under construction and more will, of course, come soon.

Then for transmission projects, the first 4 projects described on Page 34, with a total investment of $53 million will be ready very soon, too, on budget and schedule. Well, the 6 additional projects awarded this year, described on Page 35, should start construction once the decree is issued by the authority. These additional 6 projects will require a total investment of approximately $43 million and have an estimated commercial operation date for 2023. So this shows that we continue to be interested in the transmission business and that networks represents an interesting business opportunity for us in Chile.

Now we can move to the final section. Marcela will give us more details on our financial results. Marcela, are you there?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

[Eduardo Milligan Wenzel, executive]

If not, well, I can continue. I will continue. So I'm now on Slide 37. Our EBITDA decreased by $80 million to $455 million in 2020. As I said before, this was within our pre-COVID guidance range. As mentioned in previous calls, $75 million of the EBITDA decrease can be attributed to the liquidated damages that we received last year from the main contractor of IEM plant to compensate for the delayed startup of the project.

What helped our EBITDA was the electricity margin, which improved by $41 million. We could see an increase in energy purchases, an increase in physical sales despite the pandemic, lower fuel costs and lower capacity purchases, which all together contributed $116 million to the company's EBITDA.

Let's go one by one on the factors that contributed to the electricity margin increase. We first generated more than in 2019 as IEM reported its first full year of operation in 2020. So we bought less from the spot market, while spot prices also decreased. Spot prices averaged around 40 million -- 40-megawatt hour at the Crucero node in 2020, down from approx 45.5 in 2019. The estimated positive effect on EBITDA was around $52 million.

Despite the pandemic, we reported an increase in our physical sales. The demand from our free clients increased 4% despite the end of the Zaldivar PPA last July. This was because mining clients continued operating. While in 2019, they had been affected by a hard Altiplanic winter, strikes and stoppages for the upgrade of emission reduction systems.

Sales to regulated clients increased by 3% in the first quarter before the pandemic, an increase in physical sales reflected Engie's larger pro rata share of the PPA with the distribution companies in the south. Then the COVID effect began to be noted in the second quarter. In the third quarter, demand from distribution companies began to recover, given the gradual relaxation in lockdowns, although they flattened again in the fourth quarter as lockdowns tightened due to the second wave of the pandemic.

Please note that in the second half of 2020, our regulated sales includes approximate 6 gigawatts hour of Eólica Monte Redondo's sales under its PPA with a distribution company, CGE. Overall, in 2020, the COVID effect was completely offset by the increased pro rata of the pool of contracts with distribution companies and the addition of EMR sales.

Although our generation increased in 2020, the decrease in coal and gas prices in 2020 explained decrease in fuel costs, which had an $18 million positive impact on EBITDA. Lower capacity purchase provisions had a $16 million positive effect also during the year. All these positive effects were partially counterbalanced by the drop in average realized prices, which costs $75 million EBITDA decrease.

Prices dropped because the indices to which our tariffs are linked, coal prices, Henry Hub and CPI, fell significantly compared to 2019. In addition, last March, we signed a PPA renegotiation with Minera Centinela controlled by AMSA. So this negotiation not only involved the commercial terms of the PPA but also the transfer of control of Inversiones Hornitos or CTH unit.

Under the agreement, the PPA has a bigger price discount in 2020. Through this bigger discount every month, Engie's paying for the acquisition of a 40% stake in Inversiones Hornitos. The tariff decrease affected our electricity margin but it was offset by the income related to the acquisition, which amounted to almost $32 million in 2020. So the AMSA PPA negotiation effect on EBITDA was almost neutral in 2020.

Now please turn to...

[Marcela Lagos, executive]

Martin?

[Eduardo Milligan Wenzel, executive]

Yes.

[Marcela Lagos, executive]

Yes. Out of time.

[Eduardo Milligan Wenzel, executive]

Okay. You can continue with Slide 38.

[Marcela Lagos, executive]

Yes, okay, no problem. Sorry. Now please turn to Slide 38 to discuss the evolution of net income. In 2019, the net income was impacted by the impairment of 4 coal-based units, 2 in Tocopilla and 2 in Mejillones. If we had backed the corresponding $174 million asset-backed nonrecurring impact, we would have reported a $445 million recurring net income in 2019. This result is shown in the box at the center of the slide. The bars inside the box show the evolution of net recurring income.

The main reason for the decrease were the one-off income from the LD paid by the IEM contractor, which had a positive 5 -- $55 million after-tax impact on 2019. Other effects included increased depreciation cost as a result of the start-up of IEM and higher financial expenses, given the decrease in capitalized interest.

We also reported some nonrecurring effects in 2020. This was due to the make-whole paid to bondholders in the liability management transaction in the first quarter and impairment related to the planned dismantling provision. Finally, we can see that minority interest disappeared. As according to the IFRS rules, ECL took full control of CTH upon execution of the agreement with AMSA at the end of March.

In Slide 39, we can observe an increase in net debt. During the year, we financed capital expenditure in our renewable and transmission projects in addition to the acquisition of Eólica Monte Redondo. We also paid a $14 million premium to holder of our whole $300 million [Foreign Language] bond that was refinanced in January 2020. We paid $65 million in dividends and $78 million in income and CO2 taxes. Interest and other financial costs accrued during the year reached $38 million. All of these uses of cash were financed with a mix of cash sources.

Internally generated cash flow, while gross bank and bond debt increased by $70 million, and we received an $8 million payment from them. We also note that a $57 million increase in financial leases, primarily corresponding to land concession for our project, which qualify as financial debt per IFRS leases. We ended the year with a strong cash balance at $235 million.

In the Slide 40, we provide detail of our liquidity and debt structure. The main changes are the following: the net debt-to-EBITDA remained at 1.8x. Our gross debt increased basically due to the $70 million net increases in our bonds and bank debt and $57 million increase in IFRS 16 leases.

We also show the loan from IDB, described earlier during this call, which remains fully available to be drawn as of today. In terms of rating, Fitch Ratings upgraded our international rating and our local rating, both with a stable outlook, while Feller Rate maintained the local rating with a change to positive outlook.

On Slide 41, we first highlight that after a prudent decision of not paying dividends in May in light of the uncertainties brought about by the pandemic, on November 30, we paid a $67 million provisional dividend on account of 2020 earnings. This amount is equivalent to 50% of the net recurring income reported in the first 9 months of 2020. Also, despite our good results in this difficult environment, our stock price fell 24% in 2020, while the IPSA dropped by 11%.

Last December, Engie purchased an additional stock package in our company, which alone increased its share to almost 60% as a demonstration of true in the long-term strength provided by our PPA reprofiling and decarbonization strategies.

This is all on my side. And now I will leave you with Eduardo for the final remarks. Thank you.

[Eduardo Milligan Wenzel, executive]

Thank you, Marcela. To conclude this presentation, I want to summarize the main key takeaways we present now on Page 42. First, despite COVID negative effects, ECL has shown an operational and business resilience during the year. We reached the low end of pre-COVID guidance, which is something remarkable in this context for any company. We are also glad to mention that this is the third consecutive year our guidance was met, and we need to be optimistic for 2021, of course.

Second, we continue signing new green corporate PPAs. In 2020, we signed new PPAs for approx 0.8 terawatts hour. We are working together with Codelco to find a win-win solution for the remaining PPA. And finally, our business structure and organization is ready for additional growth, expanding our strong base of customers with additional long-term PPAs and other energy infrastructure solutions that we want to implement for our clients.

Third, we continue with the development and construction of renewables and transmission assets. We are glad to mention that we have added an additional projects. And now we have 4 renewable projects under construction, totaling 0.6 gigawatts, while additional 0.4 gigawatts will be announced soon.

Fourth, ECL rating upgrade to BBB+ reflects the responsible and sound financial situation of the company that is key to finance our transformation plan, and at the same time, keep an adequate dividend policy. We approved, in this sense, a $67 million provisional dividend in 2020 that represented 50% of the recurring net income of the first 9 months, as Marcela just said, and we expect to keep this new benchmark if our cash flow generation allows us to do it in the future.

So well, with these final messages, we are finalizing our annual presentation. As always, we hope this presentation is helpful for you. Thank you, and we are ready for any questions, recommendations or any comments that you may have for us. Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Murilo Riccini with Banco Santander.

[Murilo Riccini, analyst]

This is Murilo Riccini from Santander. Eduardo and Marcela, I have some questions for you, guys. The first one is related to the guidance. Could you explain the details in corporate in your EBITDA guidance in terms of demand regulated in free customers in this case, energy prices and other relevant talks that you are considering, if?

And the second one is related to receivables. Do you expect to monetize more than what was agreed so far? Or should we assume that the remaining amount to be accumulated in the future will be funded with own resources?

And regarding the new instrument with IDB, do you expect more funding with these innovative conditions for higher amounts?

And the last one, do you evaluate -- well, how do you evaluate the proposal on inflexible gas dispatch? And is that in line to what you were expecting? That's all.

[Eduardo Milligan Wenzel, executive]

Murilo, thank you for your questions. So I think I have 4. First, I will start with the demand for our guidance. For regulated clients, we expect the regulated demand should probably be, I mean, in line with 2020. And this is a conservative approach considering that we could expect some additional migration from some specific entities based on the new regulation. If this is not materialized, it could be a bit higher. But again, with regulated clients, it depends a lot on how GDP and how the economic recovery evolves. But if we want to use, let's say, a ballpark number, we expect to keep it flat during 2021.

And then for mining and industrial clients, we do expect some growth, considering the new PPAs that we have signed. Of course, the margin in these PPAs is lower than the margin in the regulated PPAs. Well, in mining, we could see a small increase in some specific clients. But all in all, we could also consider conservatively that the mining demand will be very similar in '21 compared to 2020. That was the first one.

The second one was related to the tariff stabilization mechanism and what we expect to monetize in this regard. So as I was explaining during the call, we could have around $265 million of receivables to be accumulated between 2019 and 2023. We expect to monetize all this amount. As of December, what we accrued in our balance sheet was close to $140 million. In 2021, we could expect to accrue an additional amount. And considering that we can only sell this receivable once the decree is published by the CNE, we could expect 3 sales during the year.

The first one, as I mentioned before, is already under the process. We should have news very soon. So the first one includes an amount close to $70 million. The second one should accrue once the second decree is published, and this should accrue during the next 2, 3 months, I expect that. And the third one should take place during the second half of this year, and it could add between $20 million and $40-additional million. So we can say that around $160 million to $180 million should be monetized during 2021. Of course, this is the nominal amount. The final amount will need to consider the discount at which these receivables are monetized.

And in this sense, what I can say is that the average or the overall cost of this discount could be close or is expected to be close to 4%. So if you make the math and put this in a model, you will see that we should receive around the nominal amount with a total discount of 25% to 30% on that amount every time we monetize these receivables during 2021. That's a, let's say, ballpark calculation.

I have one more related to IDB. If we expect to do more of this type of financings, I hope so. I hope so because this is a very interesting structure, the green loan that we just announced. This is a market that could be developed not only in Chile but in the region or on a global basis. And it's very interesting because it allows to mix the closure of thermal units with new investments in renewables and to monetize the costs of doing this in advance. So we hope this market could be developed, and it's something that we will, of course, have in mind in the future.

Not sure if I answered the 4 questions. If I missed one, please, if you can help me with that one?

[Murilo Riccini, analyst]

No, actually, I had one more. And how do we evaluate the proposal on inflexible gas dispatch?

[Eduardo Milligan Wenzel, executive]

Yes. Yes. How we evaluate the proposal? Well, I think we still need to see how this will evolve. It's difficult because every party could have different interests. What we do know, what I can say is that the Chilean system needs gas. And that this system and this current system helped during the last years to secure long-term contracts with gas suppliers. So hope, we can have -- in a perfect world, everything, and we need to consider that if we give -- we want to give a good signal to companies that will need to enter into these long-term agreements, we need to have some flexibility in the operation. So we will need to see how this evolves. Of course, we are all working on this. And I'm sure we'll find a solution that will make these something feasible and economically viable for every party in the business.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Showing no further questions, this concludes the question-and-answer section. At this time, I would like to turn the floor back to Engie Energia Chile for any closing remarks.

[Eduardo Milligan Wenzel, executive]

Thank you. Well, from our side, we have been very happy to be with you again today, and we will see you the next time, hopefully, in 3 additional months. Stay safe, and enjoy your day. Thank you very much.

[Marcela Lagos, executive]

Thank you. Bye.

[Operator]

Thank you. This concludes today's presentation. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a nice day.