3i Infrastructure plc (3IN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to 3i Infrastructure's Full Year Results. And first of all, let me wish you all good health and a very warm welcome to those in attendance here at the London Stock Exchange. It's great to see you. And a welcome, too, to those of you who are watching this presentation via the webcast. The presentation and the slides will be available on the 3i Infrastructure website. Today's agenda is as follows. I will make a brief introduction, then hand over to Phil White, the Managing Partner of Infrastructure at 3i. He will talk about the portfolio and how the underlying businesses are faring. Scott Moseley and Bernardo Sottomayor, the recently appointed Co-Heads of European Infrastructure from the 1st of July 2022. We'll talk about the new investments made during the year. Then James Dawes will focus on financial matters. Finally, we will have a Q&A session chaired by Phil. The company has had another excellent year. I'm delighted to report that we have exceeded our return target of 8% to 10% in the year with a total return on opening net asset value of 17.2%. In a minute, Phil will take us through the key contributors to that performance. Our portfolio companies have performed well and continued to demonstrate resilience throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. And we've had a strong year of new investments in both our existing portfolio companies and new platforms. Also, we successfully sold Oystercatcher's European terminals and the European Projects portfolio. This morning, we have announced our final dividend of GBP 0.05225 per share. That delivers a full year dividend of GBP 0.1045 per share, an increase of 6.6% on the previous year and right on our target. Investing in infrastructure means we have relatively predictable cash flows, even in the current tricky economic climate. To remain consistent with our progressive dividend policy, we have set ourselves a target dividend for the coming year of GBP 0.1115 per share. That's an increase of 6.7%. James will talk more about dividends and liquidity. This slide shows how the share price and NAV have grown over the last year. Over that period and ever since our IPO in 2007, we have significantly outperformed the FTSE 250 return of 7.1%. And we've delivered a total shareholder return of 13.1% per annum. In the summer of 2021, Rothschild carried out an investor perception study with a number of the company's largest shareholders. The findings were very positive. The survey confirmed broad shareholder satisfaction with 3iN, in particular, the high regard they have for the Investment Managers team, and there was praise for delivering a clear, and well-executed strategy. In summary, this has been another excellent year, and we have confidence in the future of the company and our portfolio. So on that positive note, over to Phil.

Thank you, Richard, and good morning, everyone. This is a strong set of results, excellent performance from the portfolio, good realizations, and a high level of new investment. As you know, we aim to maintain a balanced portfolio of infrastructure investments, giving investors stable, predictable returns and a growing dividend. Through the worst of the pandemic, our portfolio proved resilient and delivered good returns. And now this year, we've seen portfolio company performance really pick up. That improved performance, together with the realizations we've made at attractive prices, produced the exceptional return of 17.2% we report today. 3iN has now met or exceeded our medium-term target of 8% to 10% per annum for 8 years running. We're always working hard to find new investments that would enhance the portfolio. Today, we are in extremely competitive market conditions with many other fund managers sitting on a lot of dry powder they're anxious to deploy. As always, we've stayed disciplined. And in the second half, we were successful in landing a number of new investments, taking the total of our new commitments for the year to GBP 980 million. That's a lot compared to last year, but 30% of that GBP 980 million involved further investment into businesses we already owned. And we really like the market positions and growth prospects of the new companies we've invested in. Scott and Bernardo will talk through our new investment activity in a few minutes. Over the years, you've seen us consistently realize investments when we can deliver exceptional returns for shareholders. This year, in October, we sold 4 of Oystercatcher's liquid storage terminals, delivering an excellent total return. We're talking about a money multiple of 3x and an IRR of 14%. And we still retain our 45% stake in the Singapore terminal, where we think the market prospects remain healthy. And in March, we sold the European Projects portfolio to 3i's European Operational Projects Fund, achieving a 20% IRR and a 1.7x money multiple. Several years ago, we earmarked that portfolio for potential realization. And we judged that now was the right time to sell it with interest rates on the rise and negligible inflation protection in those projects. James will talk through how the proceeds feed into 3iN's liquidity position. The portfolio overall has outperformed the expectations we set at the start of the year. For the year, the total portfolio return was an outstanding 19.8%. Aside from our realizations and the valuation uplifts in both ESVAGT and Valorem, the main contributors to that excellent result were Ionisos, TCR, Attero, and Infinis. Ionisos, our cold sterilization business, had a very strong year. Across all countries, Ionisos delivered significant volume and revenue growth. They increased capacity with the addition of a new electron beam facility in Germany, and in Kleve, also in Germany, a new ethylene oxide plant will soon start operations. The Estonian subsidiary uses Cobalt-60 for its gamma sterilization process, sourced in recent years from a Russian supplier. Ionisos is not sourcing further Cobalt-60 from that supplier, but until they find an alternative source, the capacity of that plant will gradually reduce. We are taking other actions to mitigate the effect -- the potential effect on revenues, which were 4% of the overall Ionisos business in 2021. TCR, our airport ground support equipment business, again outperformed our expectations. Its equipment is still essential, even at much reduced levels of passenger traffic. So while air travel continued to have a bumpy ride and hasn't quite -- and the recovery hasn't quite matched what we had hoped for, the TCR management team has done a great job of winning new contracts and managing operating costs. Attero, our Dutch waste processing business, delivered strong operational and financial performance. They got back to near normal levels of industrial and commercial waste streams, including imports, and higher power prices were also a positive. And while we took a more conservative view of future net gate fee revenues at the half year, subsequent contract renewals have been above our expectations. Infinis benefited from strong operational performance as well as from higher power prices. Its power response business got a lift from peaks in short-term power prices in the U.K. as low wind and generation outages reduced the capacity margin. And industry forecasts of future baseload power prices also increased, and that contributed to the valuation. Infinis also made good progress in their solar development program with 117 megawatts of consented sites and another 100 megawatts in the planning process. We've had another busy period of portfolio company financing. We completed major refinancings in the last few months of FY '22 for Ionisos, ESVAGT, Attero, and SRL. And we also raised additional debt for GCX to reduce our net equity commitment. That financing activity and the portfolio company refinancing work we've done over the last couple of years has extended debt maturities and locked in fixed rate debt on attractive terms. In fact, today, no portfolio company has any material debt maturing before 2026, except Tampnet, which we expect to refinance later this year. So we have mitigated our exposure to rising interest rates. A few words on inflation. We've been through a very long period of generally low inflation and very low interest rates. But right now, we are seeing sharp increases in costs and the start of central bank action to help moderate inflation through rising interest rates. Generally, we regard higher inflation as a positive for our infrastructure businesses. That's because of the essential nature of the services they provide, which gives them an element of pricing power. And it's also because they are part funded with debt that's not inflation linked. In fact, as I just said, their debt is often at attractive fixed rates. But in the short term, our portfolio companies do experience cost increases, be that for energy, certain commodities, CapEx procurement, or wages. Some have revenues that are directly linked to inflation. One good example are the revenues Infinis gets from Renewable Obligation Certificates, but for others we don't know how far any cost increases can be recovered through higher customer pricing. That will only be proven as customer contracts come up for renewal or as price increases are put through. We think most of our portfolio companies will ultimately benefit, but we are being a little cautious because we haven't seen economic conditions like this for a very long time. We're also focusing more on sustainability. In FY '21, all of our portfolio companies developed a sustainability strategy. For FY '22 we worked on a range of initiatives, both across the portfolio and for 3iN itself, to make further sustainability advances. Our Annual Report sets out some of those portfolio company initiatives, and Scott will highlight an important one when he talks about ESVAGT. Notably for 3iN, there's our new sustainability-linked RCF, which James will cover later. We've also set a key supplier policy on sustainability and tested 3iN's key suppliers against that standard. We've also reviewed shareholder and competitor attitudes and position statements relating to sustainability to further inform 3iN's own position, and we've made progress on climate scenario modeling and net zero thinking. Within the portfolio, all companies owned at the start of the year are now reporting Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, and we disclose those numbers in our Annual Report. So it's been a really successful year and another busy one for the 3i team. We believe that we have a portfolio that is very well positioned. Our approach is patient, long-term, and disciplined. And that distinguishes 3in from a lot of our competitors in the core-plus infrastructure market. We have again delivered outstanding results for shareholders, extending our excellent long-term track record, and we're really proud of that performance. Thank you. I'll now hand over to Scott.

Thank you, Phil. In December last year, we announced the successful acquisition of AMP Capital's 50% stake in ESVAGT. That acquisition followed a structured process where both shareholders invited third-party bids for up to 100% of the company. AMP needed to exit because it held its stake through a finite-lived fund. On the other hand, 3iN has long-term capital. We were clear throughout the 3iN retains the option to buy, to sell, or to simply continue as a 50% shareholder. At our most recent Capital Markets Day, we were also clear that our strong preference is to invest through portfolio companies. That way, we can back management teams that we know well. As businesses, we have real first-hand knowledge of the company's prospects. And that's exactly what happened with ESVAGT. Without delving into the details of the process, 3iN has acquired the AMP stake at a discount to the top end of the indicative bids received. During our ownership and under the current management team, the company has achieved a lot. Today, ESVAGT generates the majority of its earnings from the offshore wind sector. We see strong tailwinds in that market. As you may have seen, and as mentioned by Phil earlier, ESVAGT has recently announced that it has been awarded a long-term contract with Orsted to deliver the world's first service operation vessel capable of operating entirely on green fuels and batteries, leading to a yearly CO2 emission reduction of, approximately, 4,500 tonnes. That contract means that ESVAGT is establishing an important green credential and again demonstrating its market leadership through innovation. We don't expect that ESVAGT will win every contract that they bid for. But we do anticipate that it will maintain its market position, and that will allow the company to continue to grow value for 3iN shareholders. Finally, the market environment in the ERRV segment is currently more supportive than at any other time during our ownership. In the current geopolitical context, ESVAGT has an important role to play in securing -- helping to deliver secure energy supplies from the North Sea. So we are really confident in our commitment to ESVAGT and its ability to deliver attractive returns. Transitioning from an asset we know well to a new addition to the portfolio. I'd like to spend a couple of minutes talking about Global Cloud Xchange. As expected, we are still working through the necessary regulatory approvals for this one. But once that process is complete, we anticipate that GCX will be an exciting addition to 3iN's portfolio. A number of you will recall how close we came to acquiring GTT's infrastructure business back in the second half of 2020. It could be that when it comes to fiber infrastructure, some virtual clouds really do have a silver lining. The reputation gained by our team through GTT created the opportunity for a bilateral engagement with the GCX management team last year. GCX operates a network comprising 66,000 kilometers of subsea fiber infrastructure that's most heavily weighted towards vital Europe-to-Asia routes. Capacity on these routes, particularly the multiple landing sites, is difficult to replicate and more valuable than transatlantic equivalents due to the more attractive market environment. It's obvious to all of us that data consumption is on an exponential growth path. Prices on a per unit basis across the market are falling. But GCX's customers are demanding such material increases in capacity that the net effect is growth. We believe that 3iN has acquired GCX at an attractive entry valuation point. 3iN's entry price equates to a multiple of 6.5x actual cash EBITDA. We're confident that GCX will deliver strong yield as well as growth, particularly through network expansion, as we back the very high-quality management team to deliver on their growth plans. So we look forward to telling you more about both ESVAGT and GCX in the coming months. But in the meantime, I'd like to turn it over to Bernardo.

Thank you, Scott. The other new business we added to the portfolio last year was SRL. We see SRL as another great example of 3i's origination skills in finding infrastructure characteristics in new sectors and around specific themes, such as Equipment-as-a-Service businesses where we have gained unique knowledge over time. The first thing we liked about SRL was the parallel to TCR, our business that pioneered the rental offering in the ground handling equipment sector over a decade ago. In a similar way, SRL started as a manufacturer of temporary traffic lights. Then they saw the opportunity to offer rental solutions to their customers with a valuable element of service attached. Today, even after years of strong growth on the back of this innovative product, we estimate that only about half of the market is currently outsourced. That gives SRL a lot of runway for growth. The other parallel with DCR is the fragmented low-margin and highly competitive customer base where outsourcing capital-intensive equipment makes simple economic sense. Add a service component to that, such as installation and maintenance, and you get yourself also customer stickiness. Furthermore, SRL benefits from strong growth fundamentals in roadworks driven by higher spend in highways maintenance and in utilities networks. And also, major infrastructure projects such as HS2 and the FTTH network rollout that will generate work over many years to come. Finally, a difficult to replicate nationwide network of depots provides a unique customer coverage and response time, creating a meaningful barrier to entry. One final parallel to TCR is what we call spotting the equipment challenge. Over the years, we developed this habit of looking around for TCR equipment whenever boarding a plane. In a similar way, we now turn the frustration of driving into roadworks and impatiently waiting for the green light into the anticipation and joy of spotting an SRL traffic light at the end of the line. I've talked about the merits of the SRL business model. And I'd now like to say a word or 2 about how we successfully positioned 3iN as a preferred bidder with the management team of SRL because our approach proved to be the ultimate winning factor. In this case, we came across a highly successful and motivated management team and one very proud of their business achievements for that matter. Owning a meaningful stake in the business, management were clearly focused on choosing the right owner, one that could make the strongest strategic contribution to the business. So early on, the 3i team brought to bear its deep knowledge of the full-service rental propositions in different industries, such as TCR and Joulz. That 3iN experience and industry knowledge quickly resonated with the SRL management team. The other unique angle we brought to the table was 3i's intimate knowledge of the U.K.'s road sector through years of investment in U.K. road PPPs. So we felt this was the right approach to the right opportunity, and we are very excited with the prospects of SRL. Now A brief word on the situations Phil talked about where we continue to make investments in our portfolio companies. In the past year, we invested further capital in DNS:NET, Valorem, and Joulz to support their growth. As Scott mentioned, we are keen investors in businesses we already know well. In DNS:NET, following the acquisition at the start of the financial year, we invested a further GBP 33 million of equity this February, raising our stake to 64% to fund the planned rollout of its fiber-to-the-home network in the Berlin area, right in line with the original acquisition plan. As we continue to see the expected levels of customer take-up and robust ARPU levels, over time, we will build a hard-to-replicate central infrastructure assets that will deliver recurrent cash flows. In Valorem, we invested a further GBP 21 million, raising our stake to 33%, to help fund its growing pipeline of renewable projects. Today, that pipeline has now well exceeded our original investment case, and we are happy investors in those new projects. We are particularly pleased to see the company successfully expanding into new markets, such as Finland, where they have found large-scale opportunities with single projects sometimes exceeding 300 megawatts in size. These opportunities represent a material acceleration of the company's growth plan. Last but not least, we made a GBP 5 million investment in Joulz to help fund its growth. Since our acquisition, Joulz has acquired EV charging and rooftop solar businesses that allow them to offer complete and integrated energy solutions to their customers. It is particularly rewarding to see Joulz quickly capitalizing on these investments to become a real pioneer in building large upscale off-grid installations in the Netherlands. A good example was the recently won large-scale Google distribution center in the Amsterdam area where Joulz will be installing a full integrated energy solution, including rooftop solar panels and backup batteries and generators. This solution will, in fact, enable the construction of this high-load facility, which could not otherwise be connected to the congested grid area. We have delivered a significant amount of capital investment this year. But as we always point out, we intend to remain highly selective in making new investments and to prioritize opportunities in the portfolio, even if that means the pace of investment will be lumpy and hard to predict. Thank you. I'll now hand over to James.

Thanks, Bernardo. Good morning, everyone. As Phil, Scott and Bernardo said, we've been very busy this year. Our portfolio is resilient and has outperformed the expectations we had at the start of the year. That portfolio is much larger than it has ever been, GBP 3.2 billion, including commitments. And it's delivered the income we wanted to cover our dividend and costs in full. We've grown our dividend per share each and every year since the company started. And we met our dividend target again this year. That resilience, including the positive correlation we've got to inflation across the portfolio, gives us confidence in increasing our dividend target once again by 6.7%, a similar percentage to last year. I'll talk more about inflation later. We have a progressive dividend policy that you can see in this chart. Our new dividend target makes it 4 years in a row that we've increased it by around 6.5%. Our available liquidity gives us flexibility over timing of both new investments and realizations, and it gives us flexibility over if and when to raise equity. You can see our liquidity in this chart. Our cash balance is GBP 17 million, which will be used for operating expenses, and we're GBP 231 million drawn into our credit facilities. Total available credit is still GBP 1 billion. So GBP 769 million remains undrawn. I've shown that GBP 769 million in 2 parts here. On the left, we have the GBP 169 million available in the longer-term part of the facility. And the accordion and additional amounts of GBP 600 million are shown separately on the right because they mature in December and January, respectively. We're also due the remaining deferred proceeds from the WIG sale. That's around GBP 100 million, callable on 6 weeks' notice. And the realization of the European Projects portfolio will add about another GBP 100 million. We expect to receive both of these amounts before we complete the investment in GCX, which requires around GBP 300 million. After that, we will still be within the GBP 400 million longer-term part of the credit facility. Phil talked earlier about the real effort we made this year to refinance much of the portfolio, including our new investments in GCX and SRL at Scott and Bernardo highlighted. In addition to securing long-term debt funding at low fixed costs which enhance portfolio returns and reduced our exposure to rising interest rates, we also improved our funding headroom by reducing the equity checks of those 2 new deals. We will see how our investment pipeline develops before considering new equity. We don't need to do that right now, and we remain mindful of the cash drag that we experienced in the last couple of years. Total income and non-income cash was GBP 143 million. This chart shows income and non-income cash for this year against last year. After all our investing activity, the portfolio is larger. So interest income from our economic infrastructure assets is higher than last year. The European Projects are providing a similar level of income to last year. Dividends and non-income cash receipts this year gave us the amount we wanted to cover the dividend and our operating costs. So the dividend is fully covered this year. And we still have a substantial reserve available to help cover future dividends. In fact, that dividend reserve is GBP 794 million. That will cover over 8x the current year's dividend payment. Our net asset value is GBP 2.7 billion. This chart shows the progression in our NAV for this year. Working from the left-hand side, you can see our opening NAV was GBP 2.3 billion or 263.2p per share. That's after paying the final dividend for last year. We delivered a capital return of GBP 375 million, and we had a small FX gain of GBP 7 million after hedging. Our hedging program continued to insulate us from foreign exchange volatility. Overall, the portfolio returned 19.8% on the opening portfolio value plus new investments. The income I just mentioned added GBP 133 million. After we deduct costs of GBP 111 million and the interim dividend we paid in January, the NAV is GBP 2.7 billion, or 303.3p per share. All of our portfolio companies delivered a positive return, and they at least met our expectations. Many considerably outperformed, as you can see on the next chart. My colleagues described the performance of each portfolio company earlier and the particularly strong returns from Oystercatcher and TCR standout. The European Projects portfolio also performed well, reflecting the agreed sale price. The valuations this year reflect market expectations for inflation. As Phil said earlier, our portfolio company revenues are positively correlated to inflation. Our forecasts reflect higher inflation this year, falling back towards our long-term assumptions in 2023. In our results announcement, we have included our usual sensitivity analysis. That models the impact of a 1% increase in inflation over the next 2 years. Materially higher inflation would result in increased uncertainty and potential macroeconomic stress. And that could change other inputs to the valuation models, possibly including the discount rates. For the valuation of TCR, our assumption of a recovery in air traffic to pre-COVID levels in early 2024 is consistent with market forecasts and remains unchanged. The weighted average discount rate is now 10.9%. That's slightly higher than last year. Here you can see the movement over the last few years. The acquisition of DNS:NET at the start of the year, together with the investment in SRL, both above the weighted average, offset the small reductions we made in the Oystercatcher, TCR, and projects discount rates. Our outperformance this year that Phil talked about was mainly for reasons other than discount rates and macroeconomic factors, although they also helped. In fact, half of the capital return of GBP 375 million I mentioned came from asset outperformance. I say this every year, but it's fundamental to our investment case. If we deliver a portfolio return of 10.9%, and we deduct a couple of percent for costs, then we can sustain a net return to shareholders right in the middle of our target range of 8% to 10%. As you heard from Phil, Scott, and Bernardo, we have a resilient portfolio that has consistently proven its defensive infrastructure characteristics. It is well placed to continue to deliver our target returns despite ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty. And we think that there are opportunities to continue to outperform with considerable latent value in this portfolio that we can demonstrate over time. And as I said at the start, we have increased our dividend target for the next year once again by 6.7%. I'll now hand back to Phil for Q&A. Thank you.

Thanks, James. [Operator Instructions] First of all, Alex.

It's Alex Wheeler, RBC. 3 questions for me, please. The first one is just on existing portfolio assets and future growth opportunities. I wondered if you could give us an idea of what you expect the run rate to be in terms of additional incremental investment opportunities within the portfolio, given that you did around GBP 60 million this year across Joulz, DNS:NET, and Valorem. My second question is on the debt facilities, the GBP 1 billion. James, you talked about that being within the long-term facility. And I just wanted to get an idea of how comfortable you would be buying an asset that put you significantly into the short-term facility as well or whether that short-term facility is just for incremental investments within the current portfolio of assets? And then my last question is on market volatility. So I guess we've seen quite a lot of volatility in the market recently and quite a lot of uncertainty. I'd be interested to know whether you think that creates opportunities for 3i Infrastructure or whether it's a case that the market is shutting down a little bit in terms of further acquisition opportunities?

Scott, do you want to answer the first question on investing in the portfolio.

Sure. I guess it's difficult to try and pinpoint a number, but I think it's true to say that over the last couple of years, we've proven that the portfolio does create additional investment opportunities. And in fact, for a lot of the investment thesis that we construct, we actually seek investment platforms with the potential to follow existing management teams and businesses. So I don't think any of us would feel comfortable trying to pinpoint a number or give you any guidance. But I think we are confident that the portfolio will continue to generate additional investment opportunities.

James, on the funding.

So things move on all the time, Alex. We have drawn into the short-term element into the accordion in the past. When we made our second investment in WIG, we actually drew into the accordion feature. We had visibility of other funding that would repay that at the time. So there are always conversations with our lenders on the facilities I've set out what they are now, but things will move on over time. So it would depend on the opportunity, it would depend on the amount, depend on what else was happening at the time, but we have used the short-term funding in the past.

The third question on market volatility. I don't know that it specifically creates opportunity for 3i other than -- as opposed to other investors. Nor do I think we yet see any signs of the market shutting down. We have some interesting opportunities in the pipeline. Some of them are longer -- not further away than they would have been a year ago, but then we've done a relatively high amount of investments in the last 6 months. I'm sure there are -- there will be opportunities that we might decide not to pursue now given their particular characteristics because of the uncertainty. But I think we're still keen to invest in the right ones at the right price if we find them.

It's Iain Scouller from Stifel. I just wanted to ask about dividend growth, and this may be one more for the Board. Given the comments with having revenue reserves or dividend reserves equivalent to about 7 years cost of the current dividend. Given inflation is heading out towards 10%, might the Board consider growing the dividend by more in the future than in the past. Last couple of years it's been typically 6%, 7% dividend growth per annum.

Well, our growth, as James showed, has been around about the 6.5% plus level. You mentioned inflation growth at 10%. Of course, forecasts show that -- well, forecasts show that may drop off. Whether they're right or wrong, who knows, to back to the more normal 2%, 3%. The portfolio -- when we set the dividend, we look at the portfolio primarily how it's performing. It's performing well. We'll take a view next year when we have a look at that.

Just to add one more thing that the -- it's worth noting, it is fully covered, but it's 1x covered this year. So we -- bear that in mind as well.

Further questions? We've answered all your questions, which is fantastic. In that case, Richard.

I just want to close off. Thank you. As we announced at the pre-close update on the 31st of March, Phil is stepping down from his role as Managing Partner and Head of Infrastructure with effect from the 1st of July. Scott and Bernardo, who you've heard from this morning, will be appointed Co-Heads of European Infrastructure, taking on Phil's role within the company. Phil has contributed enormously to the company's success over many years. During his 8-year tenure as Managing Partner, the company's returns have been consistently ahead of the benchmark. And just as powerfully, under his leadership, the capabilities of the management team have grown considerably. That performance and the way he's built up the team is a truly magnificent legacy. I and the rest of the Board, and I'm sure many investors, really appreciate Phil's experience, wisdom, and commitment, and we're extremely grateful for all that he's done for the company. Phil, a heartfelt thanks. And a round of applause.

Thank you very much, everybody.