CEZ, a. s. ($CEZ)

Hello, everyone, and welcome on CEZ Group First Quarter 2026 Results Call. It's my pleasure to welcome Martin Novak, Chief Financial Officer; and Pavel Cyrani, Chief Sales and Strategy Officer. We will start the call with the presentation, and then we will have room to ask questions. Now I'm handing over to Martin.

Good morning, good afternoon. So let's start with Slide #3, where we actually summarize our quarterly earnings and compare it to first quarter of 2025. I think it's important to note the EBITDA number, which has reached CZK 35.3 billion, or 18% less than in the first quarter 2025. Our net income, on the other hand, has risen by 13% to CZK 14.5 billion and adjusted net income, CZK 13.5 billion, where we actually adjusted for noncontrollable interest from our shareholdings. Operating cash flow, somewhat higher due to especially accounting treatment of our investment into state bonds. And CapEx is significantly higher as we are actually progressing with our intensive CapEx program this year, and following year will be probably the record high in terms of CapEx. So we can see an increase of 130%. Our net debt is at very similar level, around CZK 200 billion. Next slide, you can see actually contribution of 2 segments of our business, 2 key segments. One is actually Generation and Mining segment, and the other segment is actually Distribution and Sales. And you can see that our Distribution and Sales segment is fairly stable, reaching around CZK 16.3 billion EBITDA, very similar to last year, as the Sales and Distribution business. So that's no surprise. On the Generation segment, there is a significant decrease of about 33%, actually in Generation, mainly due to lower power prices and a few other effects. So clearly, those 2 segments are almost even, and they will be even actually for the full year when you look at it going forward. One of the most important slides, Slide #5, where we actually explain the variation between -- our variance between CZK 43 billion that we made for the first quarter of last year compared to CZK 35.3 billion this year. By far, the most significant change is actually in Generation segment, Generation facilities, where almost CZK 8 billion is attributable to the decrease in power prices and sales prices. As we indicated many times in the past, this year, difference in prices is fairly significant. So about CZK 9 billion is coming from -- CZK 8 billion is coming from this effect. And another important effect is actually different schedules of planned nuclear outages. As you know, we have switched to more than 12 months fuel cycle at our power plants. So we enjoyed actually very little of those fuel replacement outages in 2025, and we reached 32 terawatt-hours of power generation. This year, we will be aiming at about 30 terawatt-hours because we will have those refueling cycles in place. So this is the effect of the first quarter, CZK 1.1 billion. Generation segment, trading is up by CZK 1.5 billion, CZK 1.1 billion is coming from temporary revaluation of derivatives, and CZK 400 million is actually higher margin due to prop trading activities. Another important variance is actually coming from Gas Distribution segment, where, as you know, we acquired actually as of January of this year, a company that we were missing in our -- geographically in our portfolio that was covering south of the Czech Republic or Bohemia, and it's called Gas Distribution. This company will be integrated into GasNet. It was actually acquired through GasNet. And this company brought us for the first quarter of CZK 400 million. And the remaining part is actually another CZK 800 million -- CZK 700 million to CZK 800 million attributable to higher allowed revenues of GasNet due to higher CapEx in the past years. Exactly the same amount of CZK 1.2 billion, but negative, is an impact of our Sales segment that is kind of -- that has somewhat declined back to kind of standard numbers so that the sales margin is, after a very strong year, 2025, coming back to normal, I would say, and actually CZK 600 million attributable to retail and about CZK 400 million or plus to ESCO activities, but mainly commodity sales, not the services themselves. Next slide are actually key drivers related to net income. We have somewhat lower depreciation of CZK 1 billion or 7%. This is mainly effect of accelerated depreciation on coal assets that we started to accelerate as of October 2024. 2025 was probably the highest level of depreciation of those assets. And now it will be declining down to 2030, where we will see the end of lifetime of those assets, or around 2030. So now there is a lower depreciation in 2026 versus 2025. Other items are pretty much the same as they were last year, although there are different variances that come to the same result. The most important effect of net income, and this is actually why our net income is going up versus EBITDA that is going down, is actually windfall tax that is not being accounted for in 2026. And it brings us about CZK 8.6 billion. It's not only windfall, it's also an ordinary income tax as our pretax profit is lower, and therefore, the effect of income tax is lower as well. So this is how we get actually to CZK 14.5 billion, and adjustment of about CZK 1 billion to adjusted net income is attributable to actually to the shareholding of minority shareholders, mainly in GasNet that we have to take out from consolidated numbers. Next slide are actually volumetric data that you can go through yourself on power generation, distribution and sales. Slide #8, our dividend, I think we announced on 23rd of April, our dividend proposal of the government -- of the Board of Directors, and it will be voted about at the shareholder meeting on June 1. We also announced actually the date of the shareholder meeting. All materials and documents for the shareholder meeting are out as of 29th of April. So they are available publicly. And the proposal is CZK 42 per share, which is 80% of adjusted net income for 2025. Important news, the day later, we actually announced one important point that is part of our shareholder meeting agenda. And this is actually optimization of ownership structure and management structure of the Group. We are proposing to create a new entity that will be 100% owned by CEZ parent company, and actually include into that entity or under that entity all non-power generation assets, or we call non-power generation assets, meaning distribution of gas, distribution of power, ESCO activities; CEZ Prodej, which is retail business; Elevion, which are ESCO activities abroad and carve out actually trading out of CEZ and put it into a special trading unit that will be, again, a subsidiary of the new entity. So that will actually allow us to have an independent view on the assets of -- or that are non-generation assets that are customer actually oriented. And why we actually do it, we already announced this, I think, in 2022, when the shareholder meeting, when we had a change or modification of our strategy that would actually allow this thing to happen. Now we feel there is the best time to do that, for many reasons. One of them is also that the segment has grown significantly. So now it's actually on par with the Generation segment in terms of future EBITDA. And it has many other advantages. I would name increase in value. We believe that actually by carrying out stable, regulated customer-oriented activities, from generation activities, would probably be very interesting for external investors, and they might put higher value actually on those assets versus combined company that we are today. We would also have improved efficiency and governance, and enhanced transparency and more targeted management on the segments. And one of the most important factors is actually improved financing. There is a big demand for us to be financed actually by external parties, but still many of them are limited due to our coal exposure, although we've been among 7% of best-rated companies in ESG area worldwide, for some investors, coal is still an issue. And of course, then this separate entity would be able to take -- expect its own debt, its own financing that would be coal-free. So this is something that we will actually ask shareholders at the shareholder meeting to approve. Next step after we do that is actually to -- after it is approved, assume it would, we would actually create this entity and make all legal steps that would actually make sure that this entity is fully functional, operational and all those assets are transferred into that entity by the end of first quarter of 2027. And then we will start exploring the market and work on potential divestment up to 49% of this entity. So that we could actually extract some value from this transaction. The proceeds could be used for future growth, new M&A activities, but also something that we have to take into consideration, that our government announced a few times, and actually it will be buying back shares of CEZ parent company using proceeds from sale of the minority in customer company that I just described. So all those options are on the table, and this is a step to get there. Important development on the nuclear side, especially in relation with Rolls-Royce SMR project. We signed a memorandum of understanding with Czech State, where we actually agreed that we would start working on financing process, meaning the investors model that are going to be important to make sure that we can go ahead on the notification by the European Commission and basically cooperating on those projects together. We also signed contract for preparatory work with Rolls-Royce, which is called Early Works Contract, and it is actually based on -- it actually allows us to continue with processing documentation for licensing, permitting process, construction process, paperwork basically for first SMR in Temelín location. Next slide, you can see actually what happened in March when the power prices, and gas prices and crude oil prices, of course, moved significantly. And this is one of the reasons that is actually impacting our numbers going forward even for 2026. And because of the move actually in the power prices, we have a positive effect on our entire portfolio of unsold electricity, where we will definitely enjoy a positive impact of those higher prices, although the amount of unsold electricity was fairly low, definitely below 10%, but this move will allow us to optimize on that. And also this move allows us to produce more electricity than we originally anticipated, which is important factor. And this electricity will be produced mainly at the coal plants, where we originally anticipated something like 14 terawatt-hours, or slightly above 14 terawatt-hours to be made. And now I think we moved our expectation to 15.3 terawatt-hours. So it's not only about selling power that is unsold for more, but also producing new power to be sold. And of course, also mining more coal to produce this power. So based on those expectations, we moved our EBITDA estimate from CZK 103 billion to CZK 108 billion to CZK 107 billion to CZK 112 billion. And net income from CZK 27 billion to CZK 31 billion to CZK 30 billion to CZK 34 billion. Now I will quickly cover Generation segment and Mining segment. Actually, on Slide #16, you can see more detail to what I already described that EBITDA development slide. It's important to note that a price effect is fairly significant and volume effect as well, of course. On nuclear, where we are down by 38% on nuclear, or CZK 7 billion, but even higher decline in percentage is actually in emission generation, where we went down from CZK 2.8 billion to CZK 1.1 billion only, or 61% decline, meaning that profitability of coal plants is really going down. Then on the next slide, nuclear and renewable generation of first quarter, it's actually down by 8%, but it's all coming from -- mainly coming from nuclear that I already explained. We had a longer scheduled outage on the Temelín nuclear plant due to extension of the fuel cycle. So 2025 was without fuel replacement, 2026 is with fuel replacement. On full year, we actually expect to produce slightly above 30 terawatt-hours on nuclear. And on the other hand, we plan to grow actually on renewables mainly due to standard hydro conditions in 2026 versus relatively dry winter of 2025. On coal and gas generation front, our power generation on those assets was, on the coal front, was very similar to Q1 2025. We made significantly more from gas, about 50% more from gas, which was mainly driven by favorable market conditions actually in our gas plant in Pocerady. And here, you have actually a change in estimate in our generation of coal, lignite electricity, and that's basically increased 11% year-on-year, but technically speaking, also versus original plan, which was basically on the level on par with 2025. Last slide from this section, actually hedging. You can see our hedges for 2027, '28 through 2030, average achieved prices, how much power is actually hedged. We actually used the opportunity of a significant increased in coal power spreads and actually locked in a significant part of our coal generation for 2027 and '28, where the spread turned from negative to positive. 2029 and '30 is still kind of around 0 or even negative. So the same slide is actually, on this current slide showing you how much carbon credits we have secured and at what prices. So now that's all for me, and I will hand over to Pavel to guide you through Distribution and Sales segment.

Okay. Martin, thank you. Let's start with Distribution. We saw a 12% EBITDA increase for year-on-year. I said that the story behind it is more extensive, I would say. It makes sense to look at the growth, excluding correction factors, which would be CZK 1 billion higher on electricity. So this takes into account the year-on-year growth will be about 19%, which is driven by fundamental changes in the investments and the underlying RAB as well as the increased WACC. We are in the first year of the new period. As you all know, the WACC has like a variable part based on the amount of investments we make, or we are making enough investments to achieve this bonus part of WACC, and that's driving the growth. On the gas side, as already mentioned also, the acquisition of Gas Distribution. The correction factors, mainly from year 2024 are having impact on the accounting results of the electricity distribution. But actually, that's the nature of the distribution business. In terms of the full year, we still expect around 11% growth without correction factors. So the first quarter, which is the quarter mostly affected by winter weather and so forth and so on, will not -- cannot be kind of multiplied by 4 for the full year. In terms of the accounting numbers, given the extensive correction factors from 2024, we are expecting about a flat number year-on-year. And you have all these numbers also in the backup to go through them. But anyway, what is to remember is that we see a very healthy growth of the fundamental business. In terms of the volumes, we see about 4% growth for electricity and 8% growth in gas, gas being more affected by weather in general, by the colder winter, together with also the acquisition of Gas Distribution. In terms of sales segment, on Page 23. Again, a topic we've discussed also when we are discussing the full year results, we see a 25% decrease for the overall segment. What I would like to bring to your attention is that if you compare the Q1 of '26 to Q1 of '24, so like looking 2 years back, you would see a 38% growth. The year 2025 was somewhat an outlier, especially on the sales of commodity, where the combination of a very low payment for ancillary services and, in general, for the fluctuations led to some extraordinary results both for CEZ Prodej and ESCO. But even without, this taking aside, we see a good underlying growth for the supply business. In terms of the volumes, we see a 7% growth for the sales of electricity, natural gas. And we see a stable portfolio of customers with a stable portfolio of customers. In terms of the revenues for the energy services, we see a slight decrease year-on-year for the first quarter, but we consider this temporarily driven by the somewhat different revenue trend in the years of '25 and '26, and we are still aiming for a healthy 9% growth year-on-year for the full year. And with this, I think we are complete. Barb, back to you.

Yes. So that concludes the presentation, and we are ready to take your questions. [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Petr Bartek.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

I would like to ask you if you can provide an update on the Distribution business in terms of regulated asset base, what is its value for this year, like the split to electricity, GasNet and the new subsidiary, Gas Distribution? Also do you expect that the WACC for the Distribution business would reach the savings at 8.4%, or it would be somewhere in the range from the WACC range? Second, if you can update us on the energy services part of the ESCO business? What's your midterm growth expectation for it and the target margin? If I recall, it used to be 10%, but you have exceeded this margin last year. So if there is any change on that. And last question, in terms of the say midstream gas business or the imports from the U.S. and other markets. If you can provide any outlook for this business. So will this be included in the customer services part of CEZ? What volumes do you expect there? And ideally, what EBITDA would you expect from this business?

Okay. Multiple questions. So I'll start with the RAB. We expect the RAB value for 2026 to be CZK 171 billion for the electricity part, for electric distribution, then around CZK 72 billion for GasNet and CZK 7 billion for Gas Distribution, okay? So all in all, about CZK 250 billion RAB for all 3 businesses combined. In terms of the WACC, we do aim to achieve the full WACC, including the bonus. So this is our target, and we consider this to be achievable. Now in terms of the target margin on ESCO business and the overall aim, yes, the overall target, as our ambition remains at 10%. Obviously, we try to balance the growth and profitability because it is somehow -- sometimes not fully correlated by acquiring new business you need to come at margins, which are somewhat lower, but 10% is the target. In terms of the overall growth, again, as a general target, we do expect a double-digit growth for our ESCO businesses on the EBITDA level. And...

LNG transport.

LNG transport. The LNG transport, the one that is backed by our contract with the government, would not be transferred to the customer business. That would be excluded and would remain at CEZ because it is government-backed.

Maybe one follow-up question on the supply business. If you think about any expansion from Czechia to foreign markets with the supply business?

If you look at purely commodity supply, so just for ESCO commodity side, no, we do not plan that. We -- I mean, we are expanding in the general ESCO services, but not the commodity business.

We can take the next question from Anna Webb from UBS.

I've got 2. Firstly, just on the impact from the current situation in the Middle East. Obviously, you flagged higher prices and also higher coal utilization, and in part the -- well, the kind of key drivers, I guess, for the guidance upgrade. I guess my question is, to what extent these are kind of one-offs right now while the prices are high that you're capturing, like you said, on the unhedged volumes and being able to like run the lignite that might have otherwise not run, but how much are you able to lock in potentially higher earnings in the future? I'm guessing not that material given that the forward curves haven't moved that much. But should we think of this as repeatable if prices went back to kind of a prior crisis level tomorrow, would we expect some ongoing benefit or not? That's the first question. And the second question is just on trading, because I think you posted quite a strong result in trading in Q1, and the kind of commentary we've heard from other European utilities has been that actually it's very hard to capture the current volatility and to profit in trading given the type of volatility in the market and it not being very fundamentally driven. So any kind of qualitative comments you could give on the trading environment and what we should expect there?

So first, impact of higher prices. As you know, actually, the impact of the Middle East situation was mainly on the short end, meaning 2026 prices, spot prices, kind of near future prices. It is less so for the following years, although there was an uplift for 2027-'28. In the meantime, there was also a decline of carbon credits. So as I said, positive window of opportunity for looking up our margin in lignite opened up. So we, I think, used it for '27, '28. '29 is already kind of close to 0. '30 is definitely 0 or negative. So you will see it in 2026, somewhat '27 and '28. But now the prices when you look at it, they are down to CZK 72 or something when I looked yesterday, actually in 2029 or '30. So I wouldn't expect it will be a significant impact, but somewhat better than originally anticipated. But impact of billions of crowns rather than tens of billions. So nothing that we experienced in 2022, '23, '24. And second, the trading results, Pavel will answer.

I will comment on that. And also maybe just to direct you where you can find this information, this effect. We did, as Martin mentioned, captured to the extent possible also this increase, although it was not that big for the years of '27, '28, you see that the average prices of our hedging went up for '27, '28 by about EUR 1 to EUR 2. And also, you would see that for single quarter, the volume that we sold were somewhat higher than we would normally sell. So this is about the impact we were able to capture for the lignite for years '27, '28. Now in terms of trading, so I guess 2 parts to it. Number one, the situation has improved for us. Our traders have been able to capture more profits than last year by about CZK 0.4 billion, but most of the year-on-year increase of CZK 1.5 billion are some temporary revaluations of derivatives. So about 2/3 are these temporary things, about 1/3 is the effect of higher margin that we will retain where the traders achieve better results than last year. So we do see some recovery, but not to the extent that you would see only from the accounting number comparison.

Can I just check, that expected to reverse in 2026, that derivative revaluation or?

Yes, mostly in 2026.

Okay, we can take the next question from Arthur Sitbon.

Yes. I was just looking at, yes, the share of EBITDA that you realized in Q1 compared to last year, comparing that to your full year guidance. It seems that you may be a little bit ahead of the guidance you provide for the year. I was wondering if you've basically done a full mark-to-market of commodity prices in your guidance or if you've kept a little bit of buffer in case prices reverse later in the year. And as well how conservative or not your assumptions on the trading side for the rest of the year?

Yes. So I would add to that, that our guidance is the best point of view that we have at a certain point in time. So we don't -- I don't think that we really are over-conservative in this position. A lot of power has been actually already sold, 1/3 of the year behind us. It's important to realize that our business is seasonal business, and also we make most money actually in the first quarter, and maybe last quarter, summer is, of course, a bit slower in terms of there is less need for power for heating purposes, for example. So that's a seasonal business, so it's kind of okay to have a strong first quarter compared to the rest of the year. And of course, many things can change with trading. It depends on volatility and whether we will be able to use this opportunity or not, as it was discussed in a previous question. But so far, CZK 107 billion to CZK 112 billion is our best estimate. And that's why we actually provide a range and not one number because we take all those things that are -- that can go, not wrong, but not materialize, but things that can materialize on a positive side, and this actually provides the range of our estimates.

What also you should note is that as the structure of our EBITDA changes internally, so growth on the customer side and a decrease in the generation side, the effects of the seasons are different for these two segments. They are always -- it's always the strongest season. But even -- it's even more so for the Generation and less so for the Distribution. So from this perspective, also the share of the first quarter vis-a-vis the full year will change with the changes in the shares of these two segments.

Okay. So it seems we have no further questions, so maybe I'll ask you one last time whether someone wants to raise your hand. Okay. So it seems there are no further questions at this point. So let me conclude the call. Thank you, everyone, for participation. And Investor Relations, as always, is available for any follow-ups. Thank you very much, and goodbye.

Goodbye.

Bye.