Empresa Distribuidora y Comercializadora Norte Sociedad Anónima (EDN) Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome. This is Lucila Ramallo, Investor Relations Deputy Manager at Edenor. On behalf of Edenor, we would like to thank everybody for participating in this conference call to discuss the results of the third quarter that's ending September 30, 2025. We will also highlight important recent developments and advances in our efforts to strengthen our position as an energy leader. If you would like to receive our earnings release or presentation, you can download them easily from the Investor Relations section of our website located at www.edenor.com or contact our Investor Relations teams to request the documents. This event is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Disclaimer. Before proceeding, let me mention that forward-looking statements are based on the belief and assumptions of Edenor management and on information currently available to the company. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions because they relate to the future events and therefore, depends on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors could also affect the future results of Edenor and could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Now let me pass the call to German Ranftl, our CFO, who will guide us through the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you, Lucila. Good morning, and welcome to everyone. Your presence here is very important to us, and we hope to provide you with a good understanding of Edenor's performance during the third quarter of 2025. Highlights and relevant events. Before moving to the discussion of the details of our financial performance during the third quarter of 2025, I would like to take a few minutes to highlight that Edenor has demonstrated a major improvement in results over the last several years, led by a restoration of healthy regulatory environment and a substantial improvement in the economic situation of Argentina. These factors, combined with our focus on continuous operational improvements and modernization has positioned the company well to take advantage of highly attractive growth opportunities in Argentina. We are very optimistic about the outlook for the coming years. The key factors underlying our optimism are as follows: EBITDA rose for the 9 months ending September 2025 by 122% to $312 million, equivalent to ARS 440 billion, up from $139 million in 2024. Excluding the CAMMESA impact, EBITDA was up 23% to $171 million for the 9-month period. The 5-year tariff review was completed with important monthly tariff adjustments that are being taking place. These have contributed to the 26% increase in VAT year-to-year through September, which is above the 22% rise in consumer price inflation. Our working capital has also benefited from the improvement in revenue generation post the completion of the tariff normalization process. On October 21, regulatory assets claim -- on October 21, a regulatory asset claim was filed with the government for past differences in tariffs adjustments since 2019 up to date. The amount claims is 4x to 5x the current balance with CAMMESA in payment plans. Our payment plans to CAMMESA for current energy purchases are on schedule. Plus, we are able to fulfill honoring our payment obligations for the 3 payments agreements to regularize our past obligations. The signing of those agreements with CAMMESA early in 2025 had a positive impact -- accounting impact in EBITDA of ARS 199.4 billion. Our CapEx continues to drive modernization, sustainable developments and continuous gains in efficiencies with investments of ARS 283 billion for the first 9 months of 2025, a plan that was presented to the regulatory entity. Our debt ratings continues to improve, which has enabled us to lower our financial costs with lower rates and a new issue. Since September 2024, credit rating agencies have upgraded both national and global ratings by an average of 4 to 5 notches. In August of this year, we issued a $95 million bond -- local bond, sorry, and $80 million with an interest rate of 8.5%, which is the lowest rate of our debt outstanding. In September, we received a loan from ICBC for ARS 65 billion with an interest rate of TAMCORI adjusted plus 7.7% with a 12-month grace period and maturing in [ September 2025 ]. Regulatory framework. As already highlighted, the tariff increases with the 319% initial adjustment in February of 2024 and the average monthly increases of 3% in August of 2024, followed by the implementation of the 5-year tariff review process have driven a sharp rise in operating results with EBITDA for the first 9 months of a year rising 141% to ARS 440 billion from ARS 182 billion in the third quarter of 2024. The 5-year tariff review granted the company a base increase of 14.35% in 30 installments plus a monthly adjustment of inflation using a formula that is weighted by 67% with wholesale price and 33% with consumer price, considering IPIM 67% and CPI, 33%. This has contributed to the 43% rise in the VAD for August 2024 to September 2025 this year. Year-to-date, as of September 2025, tariffs have increased 26% against a 22% rise in the consumer prices index and a peso against devaluation of 34%. As we said, historically, wholesale prices follow devaluation effects normally. That's the case in Argentina always. CAMMESA debt. As I mentioned earlier, the tariff increases have allowed us to pay 100% of the current monthly invoice of energy purchases since April 2024 and to fulfill and comply with all the payments under our financing plans with CAMMESA. On May 21, we signed a plan to regularize the debt for energy purchase that had been not included in the existing plans over a 72 installments plan with 12 months of grace period and an interest rate of 50% of the CAMMESA interest rate adjusted semiannually. In addition, our prior existing plan whose installments were adjusted by -- on the domestic megawatt price, was converted into pesos at the energy price applicable to October 2024, with an interest of 50% of CAMMESA's interest rate with the same conditions as the current plan, 69 installments remaining as of September with no grace period. This is very important improvement because the debt was adjusted following the political decisions to reduce subsidies. The positive impact of these agreements resulted in a gain of ARS 199 billion, included in results for the first 9 months of 2025. On October 21, a regulatory asset claim was filed with the government for the past differences in tariff adjustments. The amount claimed is 4x to 5x the current balance with CAMMESA in payment plans. Financial results, revenues. Revenues rose 1% in real terms in the third quarter of 2025 to ARS 741 billion with -- versus ARS 733 billion for the prior year. This was mainly due to the tariff normalization as explained earlier. Energy sales evolution. As mentioned, the third quarter energy sales volume were down by 0.8% year-to-year to 5,958 gigawatts, led by the effect of lower temperature on demand from residential customers. Edenor customers base of the third quarter of 2025 reaches 3,380,000 clients, up 2% versus the third quarter of 2025. This rise was mainly due to the increase in residential and medium-sized commercial clients. The rise was helped by market discipline measures, including the installation of 7,571 energy meters in the third quarter of 2025, which are designated to convert informal and unreported connections into fully transparent connections in the electricity distribution system. Distribution margin. For the first 9 months of 2025, our distribution margin rose 8% to ARS 865 billion, mainly due to the increase in the tariff, partially offset by higher energy cost due to the reduction in subsidies. In the third quarter, the distribution margin was ARS 399 billion, 12% higher than the ARS 278 billion in the third quarter of 2024. EBITDA. Looking at EBITDA for the third quarter of 2025, EBITDA rose 121% to ARS 133 billion and improved from the ARS 60.2 billion registered in the third quarter of 2024. The total accumulated EBITDA for the first 9 months rose 141% to ARS 439 billion. This includes accumulated gains of ARS 199 billion due to the positive effect of the regularization agreement with CAMMESA for outstanding balances. Not including the CAMMESA gain, the EBITDA was ARS 239 billion, up 31% year-to-year. The improvement was due to higher revenues as a result of the 5-year tariff review and also the important adjustment that we received in February of 2024, plus the monthly tariff adjustments between August and September of 2024 that totalized 43%. Energy purchase cost for the 9 months due to the reduction in subsidies, which established a limit of 250 kilowatts in N3 category and 350 kilowatts in N2 category. I would like to highlight our efforts to manage costs, which contributed to raise the EBITDA. Personnel costs have declined due to the implementation of the development and retirement plan to promote talent, renewals and workforce optimization. Salaries increased in 2025 have been below inflation. Contractual costs have been helped by the positive effect of our client experience digital strategy and the continuing expansion of the digital customers' interaction channels, which are leveraging artificial intelligence tools, the [ new ] digital app, chatbot, contact center, digital invoices and social media. This strategy also includes the closure of 3 commercial offices as only 2% of the customers visit in person. Our goal is to be able to close all the commercial offices in the near future. This will help to reduce our footprint. We have also moved to reduce contractors' costs through efficiency gains and reorganizations of rentals, maintenance and service contracts. At the same time, IT-related expenses have seen some growth due to the implementation of SAP S/4HANA implementation. Material costs have benefited from reduced material consumption and improved inventory efficiencies supported by the use of climate and temperature data. Lower inventories levels due to the lifting of import restrictions. The acquisition of electric and new vehicles, which has helped to reduce our maintenance cost. Overall material consumption so far in 2025 did not exceed inflation for the period. The collection rates improved by 1% among Tier 1 residential customers. And penalties also saw a significant improvement because the regulator agreed to accept the motion for reconsideration regarding the valuation mechanisms of penalties in kilowatts, resulting in a net positive adjustment for the company. Net financial expenses. Net financial expenses of ARS 99 billion in the third quarter of 2025 compared to the profit in the third quarter of 2024. This was mainly due to higher interest rates, issuance expenses and foreign exchange differences, whereas in the third quarter of 2024, a gain had been recorded from the calculation of the balance with CAMMESA. Net results. On the net income line, posted a net profit of ARS 40.6 billion compared to a profit of ARS 152 billion in the third quarter of 2024. The difference is mainly due to a much lower accounting gain related to inflation adjustments due to the sharp year-to-year drop in inflation. CapEx. Through September 30, 2025, we invested ARS 283 billion, in line with our 2025 CapEx plan and in line of the CapEx that we have presented to the regulatory entity. Our investment spending reflects our firm commitment to improve service quality, which is reflected in a significant improvement in our main operating indicators. We highlight our key projects that are underway, including the expansion of Zappalorto Substation, the new 134 kilowatts, sorry, Zappalorto-Merlo electroduct, new step-down transformation in Puertos del Lago and a new substation in the Buenos Aires substation Martinez. We are also planning additional projects for 2026, including replacement of the Newbery substation with the new facility and the interconnection with Colegiales substation, both planned for April of next year. Also, we are planning a new substation in Moreno and an expansion of the Bancalari substation later in the year to reach 440,000 clients. We also continue to work to transfer our network into a smart network by installing increasing numbers of remote control points, telesupervision points and as well as smart meters. This allows us to quickly resolve problems arise in the network remotely, which we can isolate any part of the system experiencing a service problem and reestablishing the service very quickly. We can be very often to do without sending team physically to the locations, which can be enabled service to be established within few minutes. Sorry for that. Indicators. Now let's look at a few of the key operating indicators, energy losses. Our energy losses for the 12 months were 15.37%, which are affected by the effect of a higher consumption in winter season. Reducing energy losses is a top priority, and our multidisciplinary teams are working constantly to find innovation ways to combat energy losses. These efforts are complemented by our market discipline initiatives that are aimed at curing inefficiencies and irregularities. Also, analytical tools powered by artificial intelligence have improved inspection efficiencies. And our market discipline actions continue to detect and rectify irregular connections. It is important to remember that of the 15.37% total losses, a full of 9.61% are losses recognized by the regulatory entity in our tariff. Quality of service. As mentioned earlier, our investment plan is continued to contribute to improvement in service quality. We're reducing the degradation and frequency of outages, which have been a downward path since 2017. These levels are and have been comfortably exceeding the levels required by the regulator. For the third quarter, the SAIDI and SAIFI service quality indicators show continued strong performance at 7.1 hours and 2.8 hours -- 2.8 average outages per client at the record levels and down 74% and 68%, respectively, compared to 2017 levels. This recovery in services is mainly due to the strong levels of investment that the company has been doing since 2014. Investments have been focused on implementing improvements in operational process and adoption of technology applied to the operations and management of the network. Financial debt. A key positive has been improvements in our debt ratings in the recent years. With the improvement in our risk profile due to important changes on the regulatory front, as we mentioned before, S&P raises its local scale rating from BBB- to A+ with a stable outlook. Since September 2024, credit ratings agencies have upgraded both national and global ratings by an average -- sorry, since September 2025, credit ratings have upgraded national and global ratings by an average of 4 to 5 notches. Financial debt. In August, we canceled the notes Class C of $18 million, which make us a total of $54 million in notes canceled during 2025. In August of this year, we issued $95 million in local bonds with an interest rate of 8.5%, which is below our debt -- interest payment. In September, we signed with ICBC a loan of ARS 65 billion, sorry, with an interest of TAMCORI corrected -- adjusted by 7.7% with 12% -- with a 12-month grace period and maturing in September 2028. We currently have a total financial debt of $557 million, included our senior notes plus the loans denominated in pesos converted into dollars. Closing remarks. We remain highly optimistic about our future. Results have benefited significantly from the completion of a 5-year tariff review with an EBITDA rising 122% year-to-year to $312 million equivalent for the 9 months ending September 2025, up from $139 million last year. Even excluding the CAMMESA impact, EBITDA was 23% higher to $171 million in 2025. With the regularization of our debt with CAMMESA, all outstanding balances are now included in 3 payment plans to be paid over 72 and 66 installments and with a 2% -- 2 of the plans have 50% of the interest rate of the market. Our CapEx program remains robust with projected spending of close to $200 million as we seek to continue to adopt new technologies and take advantage of our growing market. Our improving financial results have improved the long-term outlook and provides more visibility to our debt rating. Since September of 2024, the credit rating agencies have upgraded both the national and global ratings by an average of 4.5 notches. Our operating indicators continues to improve. Our working capital is now positive and has benefited from the improvement revenues generation. And on October 21, a regulatory asset claim was filed with the government for the past differences in tariff adjustments. To conclude, I would like to take highly to recent pieces of importance of the regulatory news. The Secretary of Energy has approved our rules for the normalization of the wholesale electric market and its gradual implementation. This regulation aims to reform the Argentine electricity market moving from a system with heavy regulatory involvement in prices to a system based on marginal prices and market prices. This should, over the time, increase the level of competition and transparency of the electricity market. The National Electricity Regulatory Agency has approved a modification to the meter reading system for the users Tariff 1, small demand category to allow the measures of consumption on a monthly basis instead of bimonthly basis. With this, now we would like to open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Thank you very much for your support and your engagement as shareholder and bondholder. Thank you very much for participating in our quarterly conference call. Please do not hesitate to contact us on our Investor Relations team for any further inquiries you may have. Good morning to all, and have a nice weekend.

Andrés Cirnigliaro from Balanz is asking, we saw that in Article 74 of the '26 Budget Bill, there is a provision intended to resolve the debt of electricity distributors with CAMMESA. If the bill is sanctioned favorably, could you provide further information as to the extent of this provision?

Yes. Unfortunately, we cannot say much about that. That's why we filed -- as I said in the call, we filed a claim for the regulatory asset that we are claiming to the Secretary of Energy, but we don't have any things to say about the future of that process because we don't know if -- how the budget of the Argentine government will be approved. So we will remain after that to see exactly the results of that process.

Okay. We have another question. And what are your plans for possible new debt issuance now that the 5-year tariff review is completed and market conditions seem to have improved significantly in Argentina?

In August, we completed a debt issuance of $95 million in Class 8 and 9 notes, Argentine law. That $80 million was at 8.5% interest rate and a 12-month maturity and ARS [ 20,000 ] million in TAMCORI plus 6% 12-month maturity. We are constantly monitoring market conditions to determine if there is an attractive opportunity to improve our debt profile and especially considering actual market conditions where peers are accessing to the international market, so we are potentially reviewing the possibility of reopening the international bonds as soon as the market is available for that. So we are looking into the market all the time.

There is another question from [indiscernible] how much will the CapEx during 2026 for efficiencies in distribution?

We are expecting that total CapEx for the next year is going to be close to $200 million, very similar to the amounts that we are having on average in the last 12 to 13 years. So it's going to be close to $200 million. That's the CapEx that we are planning for 2026. Okay. There are no more questions for the moment. So thank you very much for your participation in our quarterly conference call. Please do not hesitate to contact our Investor Relations team, if you have any further inquiries or questions. We will be able to help you. Thank you very much, and have a nice day.