Auren Energia S.A. ($AURE3)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Auren's conference call to discuss the results for the first quarter of 2026. This conference is being recorded, and the replay will be available on the company's Investor Relations website, ri.aurenenergia.com.br. The presentation is also available for download. [Operator Instructions]. Before proceeding, we would like to emphasize that the forward-looking statements are based on Auren's management's beliefs and assumptions as well as on information currently available in the company. These statements may involve risks and uncertainties as they relate to future events and therefore, depend on circumstances that may or not occur. Investors, analysts and journalists should consider that events related to the macroeconomic environment, the industry or other factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Joining us today are Mr. Fabio Zanfelice, CEO of Auren; and Mr. Mateus Ferreira, CFO and Investor Relations Officer. The Investor Relations team is also with us. I would like to pass the floor to Mr. Fabio Zanfelice. Please, Fabio, go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to thank you all for your attendance in this results call with regards to the first quarter of 2026. So now the highlights for this quarter. First, we are dealing with the company's portfolio. There -- for the first time, we were able through the modulation to more than compensate and offset the impact of curtailment and our wind and solar portfolios. We had BRL 86 million against BRL 97 million in modulation gains and BRL 87 million of curtailment. So BRL 11 million in the effect of the company's portfolio diversification. Another highlight for this quarter is that we advanced with our reorganization. We approved the first phase of our corporate reorganization. The main focus here is to consolidate all assets in a single entity, especially hydropower as a way to simplify the company's corporate structure and also to improve cash and debt management. With regards to the company costs, the costs have grown in this quarter with regards to the first quarter in 2025 and 3.8% against an accumulated inflation of 4.2%, which shows the company's discipline not only in capturing synergy and integration with AES, which was our objective last year, but also to continue presenting actual gains and cost reduction. With regards to the adjusted EBITDA, we have closed BRL 926 million in the first quarter, 23% lower than the '25 first quarter, mainly due to a lower commercialization results, reduced wind and solar resources we observed in the first quarter of '25 and also the hydroelectric generation given that the hydro scenario in this quarter was worse than what we observed on the first quarter of 2025. With regards to financial discipline, the BRL 135 million net debt reduction, closing the quarter with a net debt adjusted EBITDA of 5.2x. We -- our deleveraging trajectory remains on track with expected stabilization in 2026. But as we have said, in 2027, we will have an expressive reduction in this leveraging. And on the expansion side for the company, we have the Caju na 3 project with almost 70% of the physical progress fulfilled with the expected operation in December this year within the expected program and also with our financial planning. Now let's go into the energy market. This quarter is very atypical. We have started the period of 2025 a bit apprehensive because we saw at the end of last year, there was an ENA against of 90% of LTA in the first quarter of 2024. Even though '25 had closed with a 45% as we see here in the right side, this hydro recession that we saw in the beginning of -- the end of 2025 and the beginning of January, it was one of the worst years in history. We -- this caused a little bit of apprehension to understand how the quarter would close. Fortunately, in February, there was a change -- a complete change in the scenario. Therefore, our ENA has increased, reaching the quarter with 79% of LTA below the first quarter of 2025. But it was enough for us to reach the level of reservoir of 79% by the end of March, really aligned with the same levels we had at the end of March in 2025. Even though we started with a gap of 8 percentage points in the closing of 2025 against '24. There was an important recovery throughout this quarter, which gives us a greater -- better scenario for the next quarters. On the next slide, we have what we had in terms of energy mix evolution and energy source. So we can see here that the demand in Brazil and consumption in the first quarter was close at the same consumption we had in '25, 86 gigawatts average. These are more better temperatures with regard to 2025. Given the hydro scenario or backdrop that we observed last year, we had a generation of 5 percentage points lower this quarter. And also, we had an impact in the wind generation, even though it was aligned with the first percentage of last year, it was in absolute values, it was lower in this quarter. And given also to the growth of micro and mini generation and a greater availability of thermal production, 4 percentage points above what we saw in the first quarter '25, given a higher PLD. Given the hydro profile, prices were higher and also they addressed a greater share in this period. The conclusion of all this is that GSF that was observed and that was overcome 100% of the first quarter of 2025 closed the quarter at 91%, and we have two explanations. The first one has to do with what I said, the backdrop of the hydro generation that was 4 gigawatts average below what we observed in the first quarter of '25. And also another impact is that the seasonality of the physical guarantee of hydro plants was in this first quarter of '26 above the seasonality we observed in the first quarter of '25. So the first quarter of '26, we had the 57 gigawatts average of allocated physical guarantee against 52 gigawatts average in the first quarter of '25. So when we look into the gap of GSF reducing 107% to 91%, half of this value practically is due to the lower generation -- hydro generation and the other part is a difference in the physical guarantee. On the next slide, we maintain the different sources than to show you what happened with PLD. For this quarter, it was an average of 308 gigawatts against 162 megawatts in 2025. Another important characteristic was the higher volatility since the standard deviation was 19% in the first quarter of '25. So this will have an impact both in terms of modulation as we heard, and we will talk a little bit more about this result as well as an impact on the different prices in the market. The market price difference for this quarter in 2026, has a high PLD in all regions. It was BRL 21 megawatt hour between -- the difference between North and Northeast and South and Southeast against BRL 103 in 2025. So the first quarter of 2025, North and Northeast had very -- had lower values than the South and Southeast. And this last quarter '26 -- the first quarter '26, this assessment was different. And this is explained, of course, for a greater thermal dispatch, therefore, a higher price in all markets. On the next slide, GSF, again, we have -- no, not GSF, it's curtailment now. The curtailment for this quarter was basically in absolute values, it's very close to the curtailment we observed in the first quarter of 2025. It is important to highlight in the first quarter of 2025, we had a high impact of thermal availability for transmission lines of the Xingu system. And this made the curtailment for this quarter higher, especially with power availability. And we also -- what we see is a characteristic between the quarters is an increase in curtailment. And this was 53% of the total of the energy-based curtailment against 20% of what was observed in 2025. So this is already a characteristics of the evolution of curtailment motivated by the growth of micro and mini generation, which makes the curtailment more severe due to energy availability. Here in the total -- we have the curtailment of wind was 15% and solar was 16%. Now operational performance. As we said, the generation performance was lower in all different sources. However, the availability of the wind power is still very high, given the figures that we had before the integration with AES, closing the quarter with 94% and wind power was generation 85% of the percentile of -- with park diversification. However, the potential when we add was 97% of P90. The curtailment as we heard was -- for the wind was 14.9%. In our case here, even with the same comparation or comparative [indiscernible] , we have 14.8% of the curtailment. Excluding the compensation of curtailment for availability, we closed the quarter with a curtailment of 13.4% for a wind power. For solar source, the total generation was 79% of the P90. And if we add here the curtailment, we would reach 98% of P90 and the curtailment in Brazil was 16.2%, and we presented a curtailment a little bit above it was 16.4% with regards to SIN and the equivalent net time of availability was of around 16.2%. So very close to the curtailment of the gross curtailment. On the next slide, we have our commercial performance, and we start to present a bit of a change in our characteristics in this quarter. What we see here are four charts. The two higher above ones are the curtailment repurchase value plus the cost of purchasing of energy to compensate or offset the curtailment in the market. And consistently, we have seen that this purchase is below the PLD prices due to the curtailment features for energy reasons that happen mainly on weekends and in the middle of the day when you have a smaller price. But the most important feature here is that we have observed a greater gap in the last quarter, especially in the month of March. You can see here that we have much higher prices in this quarter. However, the cost of purchasing this curtailment here, especially for solar sources was below PLD. The same thing applies for the purchasing of energy for the wind and solar parks that are also deployed in the Northeast region. This is an important feature to highlight when we have curtailment. Curtailment really will bring about a reduction in revenue for the company. But with an increase of energy curtailment, this cost with regards to PLD ends up being inferior than the market curve. So we look forward to the future curve -- market curve. This -- as this chart shows the cost of curtailment for the company, especially for assets that we see in the market has a lower value than the average market curve. On the two lower charts we see here on the slide, we have an average -- daily average of prices for January 2025 against April, January 2026. So just to show you the difference in the features of these two quarters, the first difference is a difference in the market. We see a more active market and slower now in 2026, given the change of the price level that is connected to the hydro availability. But also this explains the impact of the modulation results, modulation change given the change in the profile that we can see in 2026 that really increased our modulation gain in this quarter. On the next slide, we will talk about the systemic effects on the portfolio, the modulation gains. We have this measurement in time of the actual value of megawatt hour of the gain of modulation for each one of our assets. So you can see here the gain without a curtailment and on the full line -- that was the dotted line. On the full line, we have the impact with curtailment. So we have an interesting impact because curtailment, as we said, it changes in the middle of the day. So this brings in the wind power of gain in modulation and also for solar, an improvement, but still solar will have a modulation gain that is negative. And for hydro, it is slightly positive, and we can also see that there is a consistency in terms of modulation and time, and that is recent. And with a change of the profile, with a change of the price profile, as we saw on the last slide, the trend is that the hydro will advance in modulation gains. And here, we can see on the chart to the right, how we see the evolution of curtailment and modulation in time. And we are able, therefore, to show for the first time on this quarter that the modulation gains went above the impact of curtailment in company -- in the company's portfolio. On the next slide, now we are referring to generation energy balance. And so we have a 55 megawatts average here in terms of sales. This is the greatest production between the different quarters. This production was not a fixed price. It is linked to the long-term market rates and also the market curve and plus the spread. So this is a different model of production, and this is a greater production associated to the long-term market price curve. This is the trend, as we can see, is despite to go down in time and the sales will be also advantageous because it will follow the spread of BRL 58 per megawatt hour, showing that in the long term, we are uncontracted and the company is well positioned to also benefit from an eventual increase of market prices in the longer term. On the next slide, we will talk about the financial performance, and I will pass the floor to Mateus to talk about our financial results. Thank you.

Thank you, Fabio. Good morning, everyone. So now the financial performance reinforces what we talked about in the beginning of the presentation. We had a result that was a bit weaker compared to the first quarter of 2026 -- 2025 and because of lower operations, because of resources, and both wind and solar as well as hydro. [ Resources ] had a performance operationally worse than what we performed in the first quarter of 2026. Not only that, we had a result for the commercial side a little bit weaker. In 2025, we had a very strong result, especially because of the supermarket prices, which did not happen in the first instance -- in the same intensity this year. On the positive side, also, as Fabio said, we had important gains in modulation and also maintenance of our control on costs of our company. As Fabio said in the beginning, we had a growth in expenses in a percentage lower to the period's inflation rate. Also important to highlight that on this page, but it is in the company's release, this is the first quarter where we open our EBITDA. We start opening our generation EBITDA per source. We did a long work after the transaction with AES in order to have an adequate separation of the different portfolios of the company. And in this first quarter, we go back to opening the results in EBITDA for the company, not only per generation and trade, but also breaking it through different sources in generation. On the next slide, we see the financial performance, and this is a disciplined capital structure management. We have 5.2x, so marginally above what we had in December, which was 4.8x, in line with what we had already communicated to the market in 2026 will be a plateau year. As we have already said, we will close the year around the same leveraging and then we will have a deleveraging in 2027. We have no dues in any year until the next few years, as you can see in the lower part of this chart. We have already important in 2026 of around BRL 1 billion, and then we have another BRL 500 million until the end of the year. And we will do in one single funding, we already have generation -- cash generation and cash what we have today is already more than enough to make the payment of the BRL 500 million in 2026. We will only do some kind of funding if we see a good market opportunity. The debt market, as you know, in these past few months has been a bit more stressed. So the chances of us not having kind of going to the market is very big. We paid from December until now BRL 1 billion. We can see in the chart on the upper part of the slide and with a gross debt of BRL 23.7 billion with an average cost that is quite competitive, which is CDI minus 2.9%. And we remain, therefore, with a AAA according to Fitch and Moody's. If we follow now, we're going to talk about our corporate reorganization. This is a well-known topic. We already announced in the previous quarter, what was the company's plan to do what we did. It was the beginning of the execution. So we have approved in the different governance entities and both in the Board as well as in our assembly, the execution of what we call Phase 1. Phase 1 was the incorporation by operations of Auren participation. And therefore, we eliminate holding -- open capital holding, and we will then go into Phase 2, which is the final phase where we will incorporate Auren operations by CESP and therefore, reach our objective of concentrating all the hydro assets in one single company that will be CESP. We hope to conclude Phase 1 in the first quarter, and our expectation is to conclude Phase 2 at the end of 2026, beginning of 2027. So there, I would like to pass the floor to Fabio to conclude the presentation.

Just a 2026 outlook after a great effort by our team in integrating our AES assets in 2025, the company now has a focus on the operational efficiency topic. And to have a continuous improvement, the company will be working throughout 2026 and the implementation of the base -- zero-based budgeting or ZBB. We also have an intense work and introduction and the use of artificial intelligence in all areas of the company. We continue with the operations team working and the availability of the assets with work still to do and the work. With regards to the positioning for the company in the future, we have today a portfolio with an energy balance that is well contracted of 130% until 2030, and this will increase throughout the year. So the companies also have a price increase in the longer term, which is already what we can see in the operations observed beyond 2027. With regards to the deleveraging, as Mateus said, this is a year in which we will maintain this leveraging stable as we presented in this material and with a consistent expectation starting 2027. With regards to the regulatory topics, we will continue to publish the company's result in the Ministry of Mines and Energy with regards to the correction of the CESP investments and ANEEL has approved BRL 500 million, and this value has to be corrected in time since 2015. So this is a regulatory -- and also the 2010 public hearing. And also the commitment of the company to see how we will address the other topics with regards to curtailment, which today is the main topic for the sector. As Mateus said, with regards to corporate reorganization, this is ongoing. We will concentrate all our hydro assets in CESP. And then after 30 years, they will go back to the original company, CESP when it was privatized, gave origin to AES and CESP -- Tiet and then CESP [ Paran ] and all part of this -- everything will be concentrated in a single company. And the purpose is to have a better cash management and company indebtedness. So this will become a single asset, and this will have an [ important ] impact for all of us in our daily operation. So very well, we conclude here our presentation. We will now go into the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions]. Daniel, go ahead, ask the question.

Can everyone hear me?

Yes, we can.

Well, I have two questions here. The first question is about the balance of energy. Does Auren still has a short position consolidated here. And I'd like to understand the perspective of how this position advances during the year of 2026 and the next year? What is the strategy of the company? Could you please talk a bit about this? And the second point, when we talk about leveraging this quarter, it went up to 5.2x. And I'd like to understand how you're dealing with the issues of debt related to covenants, related to this high leverage level.

Well, first of all, I'm going to answer the last question, and then I'll go to the first question. Well, thank you for the question. The company today has three debts in operations, which has some type of covenant related to the EBITDA net debt. And it also has a waiver process. One of the topics was to remove the covenants once the incorporation is done by CESP. We'll no longer have any more debt related to the EBITDA. We only have three debts that have a type of covenant and they are in operation, which today has a leverage lower than two, which does not concern. The limit is 4x. In the consolidated energy Auren where we have 5.2x, we don't have any type of covenant.

The first thing that we would like to clarify, we have taken the decision when we acquired AES to work more and to remove anything that has to do with the market price, any interference. Of course, the price went up. If there were more contractors, the company could benefit itself. But if we had a more favorable period, we will be discussing another topic if we had energy left over. So as per the design for two, three years, '25, '26 and '27 working with contractors, what originated our deficits in the margin we sell energy in the Northeast. This is the strategy of the company positioning itself short in the Northeast, reduce our position in the Northeast. We have assets in the Northeast. Do not have a market risk as we saw in the prior years. Another topic is the [indiscernible] , which is now more -- we're managing to see how it evolves and the GSF margin have a small impact. But these are the effects that we observed in the energy balance. Now we're looking the Northeast in the last day, 50-60 megawatt hour. Today -- so net short, North and Northeast and long in the Southeast. So we have a benefit of this firs decision. The curtailment we also showed that the cost of the curtailment is much lower. So this is the variable, and we're going to manage this with time. And if the price is high, perhaps it could be lower with a positive impact. And the GSF impacts the margin -- hardly impacts the margin. So what was our strategy for 2026? First quarter, we left the position short for the third and fourth quarter because we had a perspective of improvement. So from now on, we have the expectation. If we look at the configuration of the system today, the subsystem Southeast, North and Northeast reservoirs full. And what is pressuring the price is the [indiscernible] system with lower reservoirs. We also need good rains in the South to recover this. So looking again at our position, we have a favorable position of the short position now from the second quarter because of these characteristics and how the composition of this exposure is, as I mentioned as depending on the hydrological scenario.

The next question is from Jo o Pimentel. He comes from Citibank.

I'd just like to take the queue from Daniel's question about this expectation. The [ NOAA ]agency says that now the expectation of the second semester is 62%. The difficulty is to forecast the intensity of the El Ni o, but we are still looking at the price of the tariff is because of the scarcity in the South, very high. In the second semester of '26, we see BRL 280, BRL 300, BRL 330 for the tariff. I'd like to understand from you what do you -- what base scenario are you working on for this PLD scenario in the second semester and also to understand how this affects the gains of -- modulation gains that you -- or that we saw that are present here in the first quarter. So what are you expecting from these modulation gains for the rest of the year? That is my question.

Well, you painted the correct scenario. The price, the tariffs are more pressured in relation to the expectation of the hydro. There's liquidity that cannot be discarded. So the model round has a spread of liquidity. The market has not turned around a lot. We can explain this in several different ways, but I think all the forms what we look, well, there's liquidity in one company and another or today, we have a bit more aversion to risk and to closing deals. We could discuss hours here what's the origin of this lack of liquidity. The fact is there is a liquidity premium, this dissolves itself with time when the hydrological scenario configures itself. So that's one reason that we understand that why the price is above our expectation. The second topic, which is modulation. Modulation is a behavior that we've seen here in increasing the modulation result due to the insertion of the micro distributed energy. So this is going to continue pressuring the price, and it's going to pressure even more at the end of the day. So we really can see a change that has been happening with time, and this benefits those who have the vertical portfolio, not only hydrolytic but wind profiles as well. So we can see a continuity of this modulation profile during the year.

The questions and answers has ended. We'll now give the floor to Mr. Fabio for his final considerations.

Well, thank you very much for your availability. Thank you for participating in this call of results. Your presence is very important. If you have any questions that were not clarified, our team is totally available to answer any questions you might have. And we count on you to publicize the results of the second semester of 2026.

Good morning, and thank you very much. Auren's conference has ended. We thank you all for your participation, and we wish you a wonderful day. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]