EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG (EBK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome, and thank you for joining us for today's investor and analyst conference call on EnBW's figures for Q1 2022. As usual, our CFO, Thomas Kusterer, will guide you on today's presentation. And thereafter, we look forward to your comments and questions. I'd like to hand over directly to Thomas to take you through the relevant figures and slides. Thomas, over to you.

Marcel, thanks a lot. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome also from my side. It is just 7 weeks since I spoke to you on our 2021 results call. The ongoing war in Ukraine is a tremendous tragedy and continues to appall us. In the face of human suffering, the need [indiscernible] to provide humanitarian assistance remains paramount. We at EnBW continue to support the people in and from Ukraine with a comprehensive package of assistance, both immediate and long term and financial as well as practical. I can only reiterate what I said before, we fully support the measures taken by the German government. Obviously, the exceptional situation impacts our operating business as a provider of system critical infrastructure. As I've said many times in the recent days, we acknowledge our special responsibility as a large term utility to ensure security of supply in our country. As you're very much aware, EnBW's business model is predominantly centered around highly stable activities. This is due to our integrated approach along the entire value chain and our diversified lineup. In 2021, about 70% of our earnings were derived from low-risk businesses. Another contributor to our overall risk reduction is our prudent and forward-looking hedging strategy. We have hedged 100% of the expected electricity generation volumes for this year and already a large part for 2023 and the year after. In our systems expertise, we have a special responsibility to make a substantial contribution to climate friendly, secure and affordable energy supply in Germany. We set up a task force in the very first phase of the Ukraine war which coordinates all areas of EnBW that are relevant to energy supply within the company and with partners in industry associations, authorities and, of course, politics. This cooperation is working very well. As we said in our call in late March, our coal-related energy generation accounted for less than 5% of our group's earnings in 2021. And also our earnings contribution from the sale of and electricity generation from natural gas amounted to about 5% only. In the meantime, our teams have made significant progress in reducing our exposure to Russian gas and coal, taking into account high sustainability and affordability criteria. Looking at the coal business. As mentioned in our call in March, we began broadening our procurement base for hard coal already end of last year. Since then, we have significantly ramped up sourcing of non-Russian coal. So as of today, we are very confident to have contracted enough hard coal until end of winter 2022, '23 and are by now fully prepared for the embargo imposed by the EU Commission on coal supply from Russia from August onwards. Last year, our share of coal procurement from non-Russian countries was only 14%. While a few years ago, we had sourced the majority of our coal from Colombia and South Africa. This shows that procurement changes can be made in a relatively short time given the multitude of supply options worldwide. Turning to the gas business. We are also in the progress of further diversifying our gas procurement portfolio. In particular, the expansion of our LNG activities is progressing well. EnBW has many years of experience in LNG trading. At the end of March 2022, we signed an MOU with Hanseatic Energy Hub for at least 3 million cubic meters of natural gas, which corresponds to 33 terawatt hours per annum via the LNG terminal in start. Furthermore, we are pursuing a number of additional projects. Despite the ongoing volatility observed in the market, the EnBW continues to be well positioned in the current environment, thanks to its integrated business model. And so I'm now pleased to present our Q1 figures, which demonstrates this once again. So let us start with a brief look at our adjusted EBITDA and adjusted group net profit on Slide #3. Adjusted EBITDA increased significantly by around 46% to EUR 1.185 billion during the first 3 months of this year compared to the same period in 2021. The main drivers for this increase were favorable wind conditions and a substantial improvement in wholesale market prices. I will provide more details on the segment results in a minute. Adjusted group net profit attributable to the shareholders of EnBW AG went up by 45% to EUR 464 million in the first quarter compared to Q1 2021. If increase in net profit was mainly attributable to the significant increase in EBITDA and only slightly impacted by the decrease in the financial results. The latter was mainly caused by higher expenses from marketing securities to market as of the reporting date. Let us now take a closer look at our 3 business segments, starting with Smart Infrastructure for Customers on the following slide. Our adjusted EBITDA in this segment decreased by around 16% to EUR 103 million in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the prior year period. Higher procurement costs were the main reason for this decline in earnings, we expect this effect to actively reverse during the rest of the year. The System Critical Infrastructure segment on Slide #5, contributed about 30% to our overall earnings in the first quarter of 2022. Adjusted EBITDA decreased by about 5% to EUR 353 million compared to the same period of last year. The main driver for this development was significantly higher expenses for grid reserve in our electricity transmission grid. The exceptional market situation required substantially longer running hours of reserve plants at higher fuel and CO2 costs in order to ensure security of supply. This was only partially compensated by higher grid revenues. On Slide #6, let me turn to Sustainable Generation Infrastructure, our largest business segment in Q1 2022, which contributed nearly 70% to our overall results. Adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to EUR 821 million in the first quarter 2022 relative to the comparable period 2021. In Renewable Energies, the first of the 2 subsegments, adjusted EBITDA increased significantly by 41% to EUR 292 million. This was mainly driven by favorable wind conditions in on and offshore, both of which were particularly poor in 2021. And in some cases, the marketing of power above this fixed EEG tariff. In the second subsegment, Thermal Generation and Trading adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 529 million and therefore, increased more than threefold. This earnings trend was due to generation volumes sold at significantly higher prices compared with the previous year and to temporary valuation effects. This brings me to the development of our retained cash flow on Slide 7. Our retained cash flow increased by nearly 22% to EUR 883 million, mainly due to higher EBITDA. The main balancing factors compared to the previous year were the decrease in provisions, mostly from the reversal of a provision for onerous contracts relating to power purchase agreements as well as a noncash impact mainly from the valuation of gas storage. Let me illustrate the net debt development of the first quarter 2022 on Slide 8. As of March 31, net debt amounted to EUR 8.7 billion, which is pretty much the same level as of the end of 2021. During Q1, working capital increased by about EUR 800 million as a combination of 3 effects. On the one hand, working capital rose given higher receivables related to redispatch, which will be passed on to other transmission system operators and the buildup of inventories, mainly carbon allowances for the generation in our power plant in 2021. On the other hand, the bank account in relation to the German Renewable Energy Act increased by about EUR 700 million. Net investments amounted to about EUR 400 million, mainly attributable to projects that are included in the grid development plan as well as the expansion and renovation of the transmission grid. Moreover, projects in our renewable business achieved the completion of our solar parks, Alttrebbin and Gottesgabe, and secured lease option of the East Coast of Scotland to develop a 2.9 gigawatt offshore wind farm together with BP. The decrease of the equity credit for outstanding subordinated bonds was triggered by the repayment of 2 bonds, nominal value of EUR 725 million and USD 300 million, respectively, at the beginning of January 2022. And last but not least, pension provisions decreased because of the higher discount rate, which increased from 1.15% by the end of 2021 to 1.8% as of 31st March 2022. This brings me to our outlook on Slide 9. As already stated, our 2022 earnings guidance for the overall group as well as for the single business segment remains unchanged. It should be noted though that the war in Ukraine as well as the high volatility in the markets generally increase the level of uncertainty regarding statements about future developments. Therefore, we continuously monitor and evaluate the conditions regarding potential impacts on our business. In Smart Infrastructure for Customers, we expect adjusted EBITDA of between EUR 350 million and EUR 425 million this year, and that's an increase of between 2% and 24%. Overall, we expect higher operating earnings from growth in our new business areas. In the more traditional end customer businesses, on the other hand, uncertainty remains regarding the possibility of increased new customer sign-ups for basic service with currently high additional procurement costs. We may also have to recognize more bad debt allowances. In System Critical Infrastructure, we expect adjusted EBITDA this year to be between EUR 1.225 billion at EUR 1.325 billion, which is in a range between minus 3% and plus 5% relative to the previous year and hence, broadly in line with the level in 2021. Revenue from grids use will increase due to returns from increased investment activities from projects included in the electricity and gas grid development plan. By contrast, there's a risk that the increase in expenses for grid reserve and balancing energy since the end of 2021 will continue in 2022 and thus has a negative impact on operating earnings this year. Adjusted EBITDA in Sustainable Generation Infrastructure will increase further in 2022. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be between EUR 1.650 billion and EUR 1.750 billion, an increase of between 7% and 14%. Renewables are expected to contribute around EUR 900 million to operating earnings. After the poor wind here in 2021, the forecast for wind yields and hence generation volumes are based on the long-term average. Further additions to renewable generation capacity are also expected to have a positive impact on earnings. Moreover, we expect an increase in earnings from our thermal power plant portfolio in 2022 due to higher wholesale market prices and spreads. At group level, we expect earnings to increase by plus 2% to plus 7% in 2022 to between EUR 3.25 billion and EUR 3.175 billion. In this context, I would like to add that due to the current market situation, our coal-fired power plants are running at full capacity. This means that as being said today, we do not expect to reduce our CO2 intensity this year compared to last. I would like to assure you at this point that we remain fully committed to our sustainability goals. By 2025, we want our CO2 intensity to be between 15% and 30% below the 2018 baseline. That baseline level was 553 gram per kilowatt hour. Sustainability and security of supply continue to be the top priorities for EnBW. Our focus here is an accelerated expansion of renewables and high-capacity grids, ramping up electric mobility and accelerating development around hydrogen. These are the prerequisites for achieving a carbon-free energy supply in the long term while maintaining the balance between security of supply and sustainability. And with this, I would like to hand over to the operator to kick off our Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Andrew Moulder from CreditSights.

Yes, I wanted to start off with a sort of general question. I mean, I've been listening to some of the other German utility conference calls, obviously, as most people I'm sure have. And the German energy security law was a big topic on those calls. From what I understand on those calls, the law would potentially, if there's a cessation of Russian gas would make sort of existing contracts nonvalid and it would enable you as a gas supplier to sort of go into the market and then pass on the cost of buying in the market to your end customers. So I just really my question to you is -- have I understood that correctly? And is there perhaps any more information you can give us about how the German energy security law might work or when you're actually expecting it to become effective? Or indeed, do you know any more details on that? And perhaps just related to that, I just wanted to check on the VNG contract. On your first slide, you talked about VNG having 2 direct import contracts, something to about 100 terawatt hours. And then that one of them ends this year. So you've only got [ 60 ] year 5-terawatt hours contracted beyond 2023. So I guess my first question on that is the 65 terawatt hour contract, when does that actually expire? And secondly, how are you replacing the 35 terawatt hours that you're losing when the first contract expires?

Andrew, let me get started with your second question. Indeed, the 35 terawatt hour contract is expiring by the end of this year, and we will replace it by -- in the market. It's all back to back. So if we don't have any kind of additional volumes, we will not get into the market to supply customers. So it's more a question, actually, can we secure these volumes from other sources, be it the wholesale market price or from other countries or be it LNG. To your second question, the long -- to your first question, within the VNG complex, the 65-terawatt our long-term contract expires by 2013. So it's really a long-term contract running the next 8 years. Regarding the energy security law, your understanding is absolutely in line with my understanding of the law. I can unfortunately give you no more additional insight because that's exactly how we look at it. It was a fair summary of how we understand the law. When will it be effective? I don't know yet. However, what I set is actually within the next 2 to 3 weeks, it should be and become effective. So quite soon. Does that answer your question, at least...

Yes. I mean, that's good. I mean that's kind of a very similar answer to what I've been getting from the other German companies who've said very much the same sort of thing that they can't really add much more detail. It's just not clear how some things might work, sort of international contracts when this is a German law, how would that work? And what if you've actually managed to source gas from Norway rather than from Russia, would that gas also be subject to the German law? I'm just not sure, and I'd quite like to get some answers on those sort of things. But can I just ask on -- you talked about the 35 terawatt hours that you're trying to replace. Have you actually had any success in replacing that? Or is it proving to be pretty much impossible to replace those gas volumes?

Actually, VNG is in negotiations with various suppliers, including from Norway, for example, to replace these volumes. If that can be done and to what conditions mean that needs to be seen. But there are negotiations as we speak.

Okay. Good. And I've just got two questions on generation, if I can, and then I'll stop. I just really want to know about your guidance on the generation segment. I mean, obviously, EBITDA is up to EUR 825 million in the first quarter and you're at the bottom end of your guidance is only twice that number. So I mean, okay, I know that Q2 and Q3 probably won't be as good as Q1 and Q4, but it still seems a bit conservative to have your guidance that low. And I just wonder if there's any risk apart from the obvious volatility of Russia and Ukraine situation that make you cautious in terms of the German generation EBITDA for the full year? And just perhaps slightly aligned with that as well. a lot of the German companies are talking about changing their hedging strategy on the generation side. With the market being in sort of backwardation now and they're perhaps considering leaving larger volumes open going forward. Is that something you're also considering?

Regarding your last question, Andrew, we are constantly looking out at our hedging strategy. However, at this point in time, we do not see that it makes sense to substantially increase our market risks for the next years. But again, that's something we'll be constantly evaluating. But for the time being, we do not see actually that we fundamentally have to change our hedging strategy. And regarding our generation result for the end of the year, yes, on face value, it might be on the conservative side. However, actually, we less, I said that our power plants are running full capacity. And there's always a risk actually of unplanned shutdowns of these power stations. And in that case, you have to buy at high prices, the electricity. So that's why we are a bit cautious and there are some risks, and we need to take these risks into consideration. That's why we assume that we will stay at least for time being within the bandwidth we provided for this business segment.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Orlando Finzi from M&G.

Just really a couple of questions, slightly different angle, I think the, obviously, the Russian risk is the one obviously sort of dominant here, but I think you have to wait and see how that manifests, how it really does. It feels quite hard to predict what the impact might be. But just from a -- in terms of the impact on, I guess, first of all, energy consumers, whether you're concerned about bad debts in any way from the customer side? And I guess related to the obvious desire to accelerate renewables certainly at national level. And then I'm sure you'll be doing your best there, too, given as part of your strategy. Do you have any concerns on the supply chain in order to deploy that CapEx, and I guess this comes into the back end the situation here that it feels that obviously, the macro situation is more stressed for a while. So I'm very interested in your comments on those perspectives.

Orlando, thanks for the questions, actually, and great to have you on the call. Regarding the renewables, let me start with the third question. When we look at supply chain, indeed, what we currently see is that we see a price increase in some of the commodities, especially steel, aluminum and copper and also some price increases in principal products. So yes, there are some concerns as regard of price increases and also delays in delivery. However, what we currently see is it's not really a big impact on our overall projects. That's firstly. And secondly, -- we also see upside regarding the business plan in renewables because of the increase -- the overall increase in wholesale market prices and also when they look at PPA prices, they increased to over the last couple of months. So it's not straightforward to say that it might have a negative impact on the profitability of such underlying projects. But again, supply chain is a concern, and we are monitoring that constantly. Your second question, and correct me if I did not get that correctly, your question was around what is the impact of the current situation, especially gas and electricity prices on the customers? Was that the question, actually?

Yes, indeed, any problem of nonpayment or bad debt effectively.

Yes. That's really concerned. I think I said it during the presentation that due to the fact that we are going to see price increases, we might be running into a situation that we might have more bad debt allowances. So there is a potential risk. I mean we're currently seeing, and you might have seen our press release beginning of the week that we are increasing our gas prices beginning of July and many other suppliers already did so because of -- I mean it's very obvious, we have, at some point, have to forward the increased gas and electricity prices to our customers. And indeed, that's certainly something we need to monitor very closely. Your first question was around the overall gas situation. I think it was more common. And I can only agree to what you said. The overall situation is certainly hard to predict, especially the impacts we might be seeing. But then again, I think we are well prepared and with the energy security law and further act taken by our government, I think we should be able to have in the situation going forward. Orlando, does that answer your question?

Yes, that certainly does. And can I just maybe just check on that. Obviously, there is a force majeure or cessation and some disruption to the gas flow. So we have to see how that works. Just from a regulatory perspective, just to confirm there's no volume impact from regulation. So if volume drops, the volume of gas being transported, distributed declines -- there's no direct -- I believe there's no direct impact from that. But just to maybe confirm that with you.

Yes. I mean I think what you're alluding to is the so-called [ gas market ] situation, means a gas shortage situation. And if we run in such a situation, there is a legal framework here in Germany around that. At that point in time, we will not have a market anymore. At that point in time, the regulator is going to distribute the remaining volumes. So gas shortage situation would be -- for example, we wouldn't get any gas flows from Russia anymore. -- that would be such a situation. And in that case, of course, we do have a sort of situation, and it will be distributed by the regulator, [indiscernible], which means that we could immediately call our force majeure [indiscernible]. So there's no risk at that point in time for us, if you are pointing to any kind of financial risk as regards to EnBW. So indeed, that would be the case in such a situation.

And just to check with that, Thomas, in terms of the regulated earnings on the assets, they're not impacted.

No, no, no. Okay. That was just -- okay, I think that's right. No, there's no impact on the regulated earnings in the regulated business. Sorry, I didn't fully appreciate your question. Yes.

We have a follow-up question from the line of Andrew Moulder.

I just wanted to follow up on your answer there on the PPAs. You said that you're potentially being able to sign PPAs at higher prices. And I just wondered, really, is that the general behavior of customers in the PPA market? I mean -- or are they looking at the market now and saying, look, power prices are really high. I don't want to sign a high power price PPA. I'm going to wait until they maybe come down next year or something like that and then sign the PPA? Or are they happy to jump in now and sign a high-priced PPA? Or are you perhaps having to even restructure the PPAs to allow them to modify more if the power prices come down from the significant level they are? So that's my first question. And just my second question, I just wanted to check up on the LNG terminals that are being built. I mean you've mentioned [ Strada ], I think RWE has talked about Brunsbuettel and Uniper has talked about Wilhelmshaven. Are there any more? Or is it just those 3 LNG terminals that are proposed to be built in Germany?

To your first question, Andrew, I think a lot of companies currently think that might be well the case that power prices will, in the long term, be above the levels we have seen, let's say, at the beginning of 2021 or in the middle of 2021. And that's why PPA prices, even the long-term prices are going up. And I think it is sensible -- so that's currently what we see in the market. And as I just said, I mean -- and I would agree, power prices will be above the levels we have seen half a year ago on the long term. I think that's...

Sorry, Thomas, can I just follow up on that? So why are you saying there that when people are looking at getting into PPAs with you, they're not actually looking at -- and you're not basing your PPAs off of power prices right now. You're looking at the levels they were back at mid-2021.

It's what we saying is actually what we have seen before the crisis began. And before, we have seen a substantial increase in the supply chain prices. So that was the point I was trying to make earlier actually. When we look at the disruptions of supply chain when we see the increases in costs, material costs and so forth. And we look at, on the other hand, at the PPA and the power prices, we cannot immediately say that the profitability of these projects is going down due to the increase of prices because, on the other hand, we do see also an increase in power prices as well as long-term PPAs. And to your point regarding LNG terminals starting Brunsbuettel, Wilhelmshaven, that's the 3 currently in discussions. There might be a fourth one. There are discussions around [Rosenberg] in the eastern part of Germany, but that's the 3/4 currently being evaluated.

And how much of the German gas would they replace? Do you know that if they're sort of fully operational? I mean, would it replace all of the Russian imports or half of them?

So I think they can -- but I think it's 10 terawatt hours per 10 bcm, 100 terawatt hours per terminal. So you're talking about something like 200 to 300 terawatt hours. And the gas supply from Russia from is around 500.

Okay. That's great. So it replaces most of the gas from Russia, which I think, yes, is...

It's a significant change of it, at least...

There are no more questions at this time. I hand back to Marcel Ming for closing comments.

Thanks, Thomas, for your answers and comments and thanks to all of you on the call for tuning in today. We look forward to welcoming you all again when we present our Q2 figures, 2022 on our next earnings call, which will take place on August 12. All the best, and goodbye.