CPFL Energia S.A. ($CPFE3)

Hello. Good afternoon. You are very welcome to one more presentation of the results of the CPFL Energia Group. We're going to talk about the results of the first quarter of the year 2026. I'm [ Giovanna ] and IR of the group, and I'm going to be master of ceremonies of our event. Today, we have Gustavo Estrella, our CEO; and other executives of the company. [Operator Instructions] Also, I would like to remind you that this event is being recorded. I'm now going to give the floor to Gustavo Estrella for him to start the presentation of results.

Thank you, [ Giovanna ]. Good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for your participation in our call of results of the first quarter of 2026. I'm going to start now on the Slide 3 with our highlights. We're going to start with the results. The EBITDA, which reached BRL 3.860 million, a growth of 0.2% in relation to last year and the profit of BRL 1.9 million. Our net debt is BRL 30.6 billion with a stable leverage close to the previous quarters of 2.31 all the criteria of our financial covenants. Our CapEx is BRL 1.3 million, a growth of 1.9%. We still have the annual investment plan of BRL 6-point-something million. I think the main highlight of this quarter is the concession signed contracts, the renovation of our distribution, [ Paulisairatiniga ] and RGE. I don't think there's anything new. There was a huge expectation of the market for the signing of these contracts, but I think the consolidation is an important topic. And I think it brings us calm to continue investing like we have. And now looking at the perspective of another 30 years beyond our original concession. Here, we have the satisfaction, and we have good news in Santa Cruz RGE. They were recognized in consumer satisfaction in the Southeast and the South, important recognition of everything that we've done to the clients here in the group, CPFL. And lastly, there's an ISE ranking of sustainability and CPFL is in the top 10, one of the companies that is a highlight in this SGE topic. We went from eighth to seventh position. This is very positive. But the main number here has to do with the rating. We had an increase, a significant increase, but not only ours, but in the market in general. This is a good thermometer to evaluate the engagement degree in this topic in this agenda, not only CPFL, but we see other companies that demonstrate that there's an evolution in the SGE with better practices, with better programs. So I think this is good news, and we continue as the same main companies, and so it shows the evolution of the market in general. Let's move to the next slide, please. Well, now we're going to the energy consumption, the quarter. The consumption was almost flat in relation to 2025, a drop of 0.07%. If we look at residential and commercial, there's a calendar effect, but the main one is temperature, lower temperatures in relation to 2025. And this brings a negative reflects in our growth in the consumption of energy in these 2 classes. We also have a highlight here in the commercial class, 6.7%. This is within the performance of the data centers in our concession area. If we look on the right side, we can see a growth of 8% -- no, sorry, 23.9% in relation to the previous year. This already corresponds to 8% of the whole commercial class. So that perspective that this growth is going to continue basically the approved projects and those under development in our concession area. So our expectation is that we will have a higher participation in this data center market more and more. There's demand, and we still have a big challenge in the connection, especially in the transmission and high tension contracts. But as possible with the connections, it's what we've been doing. We've connected new data centers, and we can show expressive growth, almost duplicating in the last 10 years. In the industrial class, we see a drop of -- a small drop if we isolate the calendar effect and the real effect of the performance of the manufacturing, it's a drop of 0.4%. So it's a performance which is very much aligned to the previous quarters. We see that manufacturing is sort of going sideways in the consumption of energy. There are some differences between the different segments. So we see there's a higher growth in food and vehicles, a reduction. But in general, we feel that the industrial or manufacturing class has a flat growth compared to the previous semester. And an important number on the right side of our slide is the contracted demand. So we continue growing the demand -- the contracted demand and with a growth of 4.5%, not only the new clients that come into our client base, but also increases of contracted demand. And so there's a growth here of 4.5%. And the main driver of the market that talks to our result is invoice demand. So this is a positive number. So now let's go to the next slide. Here, we're going to talk about delinquency and losses. We are undergoing pressure of increase of delinquency, 14.6%, [ 1.30087 ]. And I think this is a reflex of a series of the economy in general, an increase of the debt, family debts, the maintenance of high interest rates, all this cooperates for us to have higher pressure. And we have developed a plan, an action plan to reduce this number, and we know of all the challenges that we have. [Audio Gap]

Gustavo has had a technical program. So I will continue until he comes back. So the PD, we've increased this indicator. We had a bit of a decrease. We had an increase of about 15% in the [indiscernible] quarter. We have here a degradation of the macroeconomical scenario. Families are indebted, making these payments more difficult and also reflects of the lower volume that we did in the last months, the power cuts and putting teams in other activities, emergency activities, attending other services and so forth. So this is a point of attention, a point of concern due to delinquency. But even with this worsening of the indicators, we still continue the PDD over revenue, and it's a low level for the average. As for losses, different to PDD, we have a better performance, a reduction of the loss levels. I believe that Gustavo is back. So Gustavo, I'm going to give you back the floor for us to continue as of losses.

Well, as I said, I think here in the PDD, these power cuts, I think there is a big challenge in the control here in this year of '26, remembering that we have additional pressure, which are the increases of the tariffs, the readjustments and also the change from green to yellow. This would also pressure our delinquency. And also, we have a positive effect. We know that there's a correlation -- a large correlation between delinquency and the loss rates, but we do have good results, reducing our losses in this quarter from BRL 977 to BRL 955. So let's move on to the next slide about hydro performance. Here, when we look at PLD, we've had a large growth. So the hydrological scenario, even though we had a small improvement in the last months, but even so below the long-term curves, so an average of 160 megawatt hour. We closed here the GSF with 90%. Now let's move towards wind farms performance. In wind farms, we had a reduction of 2.3 -- 12.3% in the net generation compared to 2025, basically 2 effects. We also had the curtailment effect over the total generation, 2/3 coming from the performance of less wind than 2025. I think this is an important number. We have an effect of less megawatts generated, but there is a compensation, especially in the state of Ceara, where we had better wins. So we have a positive financial result due to our contracts. Well, it's stable, 90-point-something percent compared to the previous quarter. Let's move on. Now we'll be talking about the performance, EBITDA performance per segment. So we're going to talk about results. Well, let's continue here. I'm now going to give you the explanation of the economical financials. So we show the variation of the EBITDA in the quarter, which was 0.2%, BRL 9 million. So we have positive effects in the segment of generation and management with BRL 85 million and services and others with BRL 10 million. On the other hand, we had a variation -- a negative variation in distribution with BRL 60 million and in transmission with BRL 26 million. Now in the next slides, I'm going to explain more in detail each one of these. So let's move towards distribution. This negative variation of BRL 60 million. It is due to the asset, [indiscernible] which had a variation of BRL 102 million negative. This was because of the IPC, which was lower this year, 1.37% compared to 2% in the first quarter of 2025. We also had an increase of BRL 42 million of private pension plan and the PDD of BRL 11 million. So on the positive side, we have a gain of BRL 79 million relative to the market and tariffs and basically the effect of the higher IGPM, which was passed over on the tariffs last year and also BRL 15 million from other impacts. Now let's move to the next slide. It's about generation. Here, we had a growth, a positive variation of BRL 85 million. And it's the main fact, the readjustment of the energy contracts. This is also a reflex of IGPM and IPCA stronger than last year. And second item here is wind generation, BRL 34 million. Also, as Gustavo said, in spite of the volume being lower, we had a positive generation in the state of Ceara, where we have our wind farms and more wind. So when we look to this consolidated number, we have a positive contribution of BRL 50 million wind performance and BRL 16 million negative effect from the curtailment. Negative impact of BRL 16 million of GSF or SSG and BRL 9 million, the other effects on generation and management -- energy management. Next slide, we have transmission. IFRS had a drop of BRL 26 million. Basically, here, we have a margin effect because of the lower inflation in 2026 compared to last year and also due to a reduction of the CapEx during this period. Then we have the PMC with a gain of BRL 10 million because of the reversion of contingencies, especially due to this. In the regulatory vision, here, we have a growth of BRL 33 million, reflecting the readjustment of the wrap that happened last year and the same BRL 10 million of the PMSO. Now in the next slide, we have the services and others, a variation of BRL 10 million, especially due to SSL services that had an increase of BRL 7 million and also the variation of BRL 2 million. Next slide. Here, we now bring you a profit demonstration. We had an increase of 18.2%, BRL [ 294 ] million contribution of the financial results, where we had an improvement of BRL 139 million, very much due to the CDI and SELIC variation here in the update of the assets and also the fiscal credits. We also had a positive effect of the market, a gain here of BRL 40 million market-to-market. It's because the spread curve went up in this period compared to a decrease last year. So we register here this gain, this extra gain. On the other hand, the variation of the CDI and also an increase of the debt impact negatively in the expenses with net debt BRL 52 million, and we have another BRL 10 million of other effects. Another contribution, which is important for this effect and this variation in the profit is the income tax. We had here a lower value in this period due to the deductibility of tax credit passed through to consumers. Now let's move to the next slide, which we're going to talk about leveraging. Here is the evolution of our debt. It's very, very similar as the fourth quarter, BRL 30.6 million with a leverage of [ 2.31 ]. And here, we have BRL 4.4 million with an average time frame of 5, 6 years and CDI costs minus 0, minus 2%. This is a cost lower than the average of the market, showing our efficiency when we are able to fund resources. Here, we have another slide. It shows our indebtedness with the cost of 12.8%, nominal cost and the real cost is 8.3% in relation to the composition of the debt, we have 70% indexed to the CDI, 29% indexed to inflation. And on the right side, we show a little bit of our amortization, the debt amortization schedule. You can see the next years how we close the cash with BRL 5.8 million, and this is sufficient to cover over once our short-term amortizations and the 31st of May was 4-point-something years. It's important to highlight that with the renewal of the concessions [ 4.2, 3 ] years. This was concluded. Some of our debt contracts have been automatically extended. So we will have an extension of about 1 year in this time frame from the next months on. Now let's move to CapEx. Here, we have the CapEx, as was already showed in the beginning, a variation of 1.9%, going to BRL 1.3 million. These resources were destined mainly to the segment of distribution, BRL 1.1 million, a growth of 7.1%. And in the other segments, we have a reduction in the period, generation less 14%, transmission less 23%, services less 5%. But it's important to highlight, there's a lot of seasonality. The beginning of the year always has a lot of variations. So these reductions do not mean a CapEx reduction from the group. On the contrary, we have a commitment that was announced recently of investing more than BRL 31 billion in the next 5 years. Now we're going to move to our next slide, and this is about the smart project. We're going to detail this smart meter. It's called B-Smart project. I'm going to tell you a bit of the story. We have a long story with smart metering. So for a long time, we've already had this in the Group A ever since 2020. And in the sequence, we developed a project, a pilot project of the Group B in the town of [ Jaguara ], which is close to us, where we were able to test technology, understand the logistics, understand how everything should be done. And as of last year, we then started in a more effective scale to invest in smart meters in our concession area. Up to now, we've invested BRL 85 million. We have almost 300,000 units of smart meters installed in our network. And just this year, we have installed over 100,000 smart meters and the expectation is that we install more than 900,000 units this year. So you can see on the table on the chart, our forecast over 750,000, the same number in 2027 and then a forecast of 1,200 smart meters during the next few years. This type of investment, it brings a gain to us in terms of operational efficiency. We will be able to do the power cuts remotely. We'll have better control over the losses and especially generate more quality in the service for our consumers, for our clients. So it is a project that's been taken care of with a lot of attention. by the group. And we are here also even though we have some restructuring. So we do this in a lower -- slower rhythm than what we would like with the tariff revision. So we have to invest in -- during the period, always at the end of the cycle of the concession, the tariff cycle to be able to have an adequate return for this type of investment. But we are here projecting an improvement of efficiency. And again, with this investment, besides all the return that it can bring for the company, it is very much aligned to our strategy, our ESG plan that has, as a goal, supply energy in a sustainable and reliable way for our clients. So having said this, we end our presentation. And now we are going to the questions and answers.

[Operator Instructions] So we have a question. Question comes from [indiscernible].

I have 2 questions. First of all, I'd like to know how you're imagining the next transmission and also the regulation of the battery market. What have you been discussed? So study of the technology of this market. And also the second question is about public consultation of [indiscernible] can change the risk parameter and can affect the price curve. It's already affected it. We have heard this from other players in the market. So how have you positioned yourself about this subject? And what do you believe is going to be more debated between the associations and the companies that are contributing to the consumption?

I'm [indiscernible]. Thank you for your questions. I'm able to reply to the 3 questions. First of all, starting with the transmission auction, our expectation has not changed much from the previous auctions. We will have a lot of competition. It is a segment that is consistent, it's stable and it's leveraged for the sector. So we don't have any expectation different to the past for this auction that should take place now in October. About batteries, we're still waiting for the final regulation of [indiscernible] our expectation is that we still have an auction battery for this year. And this delay can impact and this auction can go to next year. On our side, we're studying ever since last year, projects, a potential project for batteries. So there's a lot of new technology, and we've been deepening our studies on this. So the expectation of the company for the battery auction is high. I think this is a focus for us, but we are waiting for the final regulation and the guidance to see when the auction is, in fact, going to take place. Now I'm going to your next question about [indiscernible] . Our position is of maintaining the 1,540 parameter, especially because this parameter contributes to keep the levels of the reservoir, and we also avoid using thermal. So the main factor is also due to the stability of the rules. So it's a parameter that was introduced in the beginning of 2025. So we don't have even not even 1.5 years. And change of this parameter can bring instability. So this is a complex and discussed topic. So we think removing this uncertainty and this volatility, this uncertainty of changing rules, this contributes positively to the sector. So we believe that this current rules should be maintained. I think this is a discussion you mentioned here at the end. I think it's a discussion that is warming up in the center. There are different points of view, and this is going to be decided short term, but we understand with our positioning of maintaining the rules.

Well, folks, we don't have any more questions. We will now end the Q&A session. If there's any question. If you have any doubts or something, the Investor Relations team is available to clarify whatever is needed. I'm now going to give the floor to Gustavo Estrella for his final considerations and to end our session.

Thank you, Giovanna. Well, as I said, we will now end our results of the first quarter, highlighting the importance of the renewal of the distribution concessions. And this is a challenge, as we said, about batteries, et cetera. I think there is a huge challenge in order to deal with this intermittent topic of the sector. So I think it's important to have the battery auction and obviously understand how the dynamic of the market is going to pan out. I think this market continues growing. It continues bringing more intermittency to the sector and more recently with the challenge of the generation. So these are different challenges we're going to have here in the next months. The sector has to unite itself to mitigate risks that will allow us to expand correctly without bringing losses to the operation and/or financial impacts. So I thank you very much for your participation, and good afternoon. Thank you.