Genesis Energy Limited (GNE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Foreign Language] and welcome to Genesis Energy's FY '22 Investor Presentation. I'm Marc England, the Chief Executive. And this morning, myself and James Spence, our new CFO as of March this year, will be discussing Genesis Energy's results as we look ahead and back on FY '22. We'll also cover some operational highlights and our strategic outlook. We'll be joined on the roadshow, as the slide says, by Tracey Hickman, who as well as being Chief Customer Officer today has agreed to be interim CEO when I step away after the ASM in October, ahead of a permanent CEO being appointed by the Board. So after mentioning a few highlights, James will cover off our financial performance, and then I'll come back on for the operational performance and strategic outlook. Slide 4 covers our highlights over the year across financial, operational and social metrics. Our reported EBITDA of $440 million is our strongest EBITDAF since listing and demonstrates momentum in the business that has been built up over several years. NPAT is up, too. However, those of you that have followed our sector for a while now know that it is materially impacted by fair value adjustments on derivative profits and asset revaluations, both of which are affected by higher wholesale price curve. This year, the swaption contracts, which conclude in their current form on December 2022, were a key driver of this NPAT improvement. More on those later. We continue to grow out our dividends and provide shareholder value with an $0.089 per share final dividend. So total FY '22 dividends were $0.176 per share. The full year dividend represents the eighth year of continuous growth. Operationally, the business is performing well with strong customer loyalty. Customer churn declined to under 13%, and the NPS score rose to 51 points over the year. Carbon emissions significantly declined in FY '22 after FY '21 was characterized by substantial dry spell and disruptions in the gas market. So Genesis was required to support the energy sector and increase our thermal generation that year. This year, with more normal conditions, our emissions significantly reduced, helped by a full year generation of the Waipipi Wind Farm. FY '22 emissions were also about 20% lower than 2 years ago before the Waipipi Wind Farm was up and running. As a company, we're also mindful of our impact on the communities we operate in and have highlighted some of the social impact we've had as a business. Power Shout gifting, for example, was piloted in FY '22. This gives Genesis customers the option of gifting their free hours of power to vulnerable people. For every hour given away by our customers, Genesis matched it. So Genesis and our customers gave away over 130,000 hours of free power. As an employer, we have worked to ensure gender equity to make sure all of the Genesis [indiscernible] are paid what they're worth and that women have equal leadership opportunities. I'm proud to now have a gender-balanced executive team. And the pay equity gap has also continued to decline in FY '22 now down to 1.3%. Finally, our Nga Ara Creating Pathways program was launched in FY '22. This gives young people opportunities at Genesis and apprenticeships, internships and work experience. We welcomed 21 individuals in FY '22 and look forward to continuing this program to help build the Genesis workforce of the future. Just like Po Limited, a collaboration with local Maorian in the Huntly area set up over the prior year, we see supporting career pathways in the communities we operate around as beneficial to both Genesis and those communities. I'll now pass on to James to discuss our financial performance.

Thank you, Marc, for the introduction, and good morning, everyone. It's great to be presenting my first set of results for Genesis. I've got 8 slides. You'll see here some formats consistent with previous reporting periods and some new formats, particularly as we look at gross margin and cash flow on later slides. To start, I'll run through an overview of Genesis' FY '22 performance on Slide 6. You can see revenue was down approximately $400 million in the year. This reduction was primarily due to lower generation volumes. In FY '22, Genesis generated around 6.5 terawatt hours, down from 8 terawatt hours in FY '21, with 3.7 terawatt hours from thermal assets, which was down from 5.5 terawatt hours in FY '21. EBITDAF performance at $440 million in FY '22 was up 24% on PCP or 6% after the FY '21 adjustments, the strongest performance since listing. I'll go into the drivers in later slides. The NPAT result of $222 million in FY '22 is up considerably versus FY '21. A driver of the NPAT result is the change in value of derivative contracts, which, again, I'll go into further on. The remaining items on this chart all go into further on later slides. So turning now to Slide 7, where we'll look at EBITDAF performance. On this slide, you can see that FY '22 EBITDAF improvement is driven by a $100 million increase in electricity and gas gross margins. This is a result of a combination of factors, including generation mix, gas pricing improvements and exclusion of one-off impacts from FY '21. I'll go into this further on the next slide. You can also see that OpEx is up due to inflation, specific projects and growth costs. Our strong EBITDAF performance was delivered across all 3 fuels. Kupe is down on the previous year despite higher gas production volumes, following inlet compression, and this is due to the reset of contract prices. Now I'll get into some more detail on the drivers of our gross margin. Turning to Slide 8. So we're presenting gross margin by fuel as it's a way to look at the business, excluding the impact of internal transfer prices between business segments. Well, in the bar chart shown on this slide are simple for those that want to see a breakdown into prices and quantities at a detailed level, I suggest you look at this slide in combination with Slide 33. So looking at the main drivers here. Electricity margin is up due to around 200 gigawatt hours increased generation from our hydro assets. The contribution from the 446 gigawatt hours from the Waipipi wind asset PPA and nonrepetition of the adjusting items from FY '21. The improved hydro conditions nationally meant there was less reliance on backup thermal generation in FY '22 and fewer swaption calls, which negatively impacted our results in FY '21. Our coal stockpile means we're protected in the short term against the global rally in coal prices, and our longer-term carbon hedging program leaves us with an advantaged position for the foreseeable future. On the retail side of electricity, we've seen some improvements in pricing, particularly in the SME channel. Turning now to gas gross margin, which is up $45 million year-over-year. The story here is strong gains in retail and wholesale. In retail, we were able to improve the rates across C&I and SME as the market moved to follow the higher wholesale and carbon prices. In wholesale gas, there were several factors in play. Firstly, legacy sales contracts concluded in December 2021, which were not renewed. This enabled Genesis to focus our sales on higher-value channels at better margins. We benefited from a lower transfer price from Kupe in FY '22, but this was offset by relatively high prices incurred from Methanex last winter to support the market during a period of constrained gas availability. LPG margins have improved, driven by better wholesale prices, where many sales are linked to global pricing benchmarks. LPG has also benefited from a lower transfer price from Kupe, although that's partially offset by inflationary pressures we're seeing in bulk delivery charges. At Kupe, production volumes increased following inlet compression, which completed in September 2021, and gross margin was $100 million in the year. In the second half of the year, daily production declined. Although gross margin was strong, it was down versus PCP due to the lower transfer prices from July 2021. So now I'll move to Slide 9 to look at operating expenses. The business has experienced inflationary pressures and has continued to invest, which has resulted in higher operating costs in FY '22. With inflationary pressures due to the competitive job market and increase in headcount in growth areas, employee-related expenses grew by $9 million in the year. Our digital transformation project has been ongoing through FY '22. This has included bringing on specialist staff to ensure successful implementation. We launched Frank Energy earlier this year and have already seen strong customer number growth with over 90,000 customers at 30th of June. We've also invested in our future-gen strategy as we develop opportunities with our solar partner, FRV. Other cost increases include higher software and insurance costs, consistent with inflationary pressures across the economy. To touch on NPAT on Slide 10. The key point to note on this slide is the large gain in fair value movements, mostly driven by the roll off of the existing swaption contracts in December 2022. With expiry only 6 months out, these now have a significantly lower liability. Our PPAs also improved in value as the wholesale market lifted. So let's now move to Slide 11 to look at capital expenditure. In FY '22, capital expenditure was down moderately and we've seen a switch from CapEx at Kupe following completion of the inlet compression to increase the CapEx at the power stations. A major achievement for the year was the completion of the first of 3 generator refurbishments at Tuai, part of the Waikaremoana scheme. Approximately $6 million was invested in this project. This was a significant achievement in the current environment given constraints on logistics, particularly in the second half of calendar 2021. This new generator increases capacity by 2 megawatts. The other 2 generators will be upgraded over FY '23 and FY '24 to increase total scheme capacity by 6 megawatts. Not included in the CapEx number is our investments in associates. While our primary focus is to reduce emissions, we're mindful that the costs of the ETFs are likely to grow, so it's important we hedge our long-term exposure. We continue to invest in DrylandCarbon and have recently committed to a second partnership with Forest Partners, to grow our investment in forestry and secure long-term carbon offsets. Now moving on to look at cash flow and balance sheet considerations on Slide 12. Starting with the chart on movement in net debt on the bottom right of this slide. You can see that net debt increased by $76 million in FY '22 with working capital movements being a key driver. Coal stockpile of around 900,000 tonnes on 30th of June has been acquired at prices well below current market levels. This and some other small inventory movements has resulted in a cash outflow of around $110 million in the year. You can also see that there was the cash impact of the beach settlement in early FY '22. Now looking at our interest rate hedging position. You can see in the chart on the top right that we have 64% of current gross debt hedged in FY '23, providing good protection against interest rate increases. Inevitably, we will see interest cost increases in FY '23, given the current market conditions. The debt-to-EBITDA credit metric has improved to our lowest level in the last 5 years due to the strong EBITDAF performance. This will assist Genesis in any future investment opportunities while maintaining the ratio within the target bands. So finally, turning to Slide 13, where we look at dividends. This year, the Board has declared a final dividend of $0.089 per share, represents continued growth in our dividend payments, and this is the eighth consecutive increase in dividend. To remind you, last year, we updated our dividend policy to a range of 70% to 90% of free cash flow. The total dividend of $0.176 per share continues to reward shareholders while retaining cash on hand for future investment and growth. We continue to offer the DRP, which is offered at 2.5% discount to those who participate. With that, I'll hand you back to Marc to discuss our operational performance and strategic outlook.

Thank you, James. As many of you heard me say before, deepening our engagement with customers is important to our strategy at Genesis and our Energy IQ platform is key to this. We've just rolled out our latest version, which transforms the user experience, creating customizable features so people can feel at home on the app. As well as being able to choose an image of your home or business from a range of options and tag electric vehicles and solar panels to it, new features include LPG order tracking, more insights for EV customers, Power Shout history and hourly gas use for those on a new gas smart meter. We currently have 12,000 gas smart meters installed with 25% of the customer base expected to have one by the end of FY '23. Understanding when you consume your gas is a key step towards providing customers much more knowledge and advice on how they might choose to reduce cost and/or reduce emissions in their home of the future. The rollout of the new app has seen more customers than ever engaged with Genesis beyond receiving and paying a bill. And with help of our digital transformation program, we expect this to continue. On to residential. In FY '22, we saw continued growth in customer satisfaction and loyalty, demonstrated by the highest ever interaction NPS and churn continuing to decline. Total customer numbers were steady in the year, but it was pleasing to see growth in Q4 as we build momentum into FY '23. Netback across residential electricity was slightly low in the year as we did not pass through any wholesale or network price changes. Conversely, gas netbacks grew strongly as higher wholesale gas and carbon costs are passed on to residential consumers. We also successfully transitioned from an extended loyalty provider or external loyalty provider, I should say, in FY '22 to fully focus on Genesis' Power Shout. Our customers have supported this, as the bottom left chart shows, with more customers citing Power Shouts as a reason for joining Genesis than on the previous scheme. And on to the business market, which unlike the residential segment, on Slide 16, shows that SME electricity netbacks grew as we contracted a significant number of customers and higher wholesale prices were passed through. Multilateral partnerships such as Farm Source and the Capricorn Society continue to be a key focus for the SME segment where we can build on enduring relationships. Energy Services, which drive energy efficiency and lower carbon outcomes, continue to be the focus for larger industrials where we can work in bilateral partnership for the longer term. We also saw a significant growth in C&I gas netback where the market is more responsive to wholesale prices. In FY '22, Genesis launched Frank Energy, succeeding our previous challenger brand, Energy Online. Slide 17 indicates Frank offers customers affordable no contracts for customers looking for an offering that sells it to you straight. We launched the marketing campaign in February 2022 with a series of irreverent ads across digital media and billboards across the country. We've had some real success with these campaigns with the brand preference rising to 76% since launch. There's also a big focus on digital sales mix, with the proportion of digital sales rising from 38% to 56% over FY '22. We're really pleased with how Frank has performed since launching, with churn declining to below the rest of the Tier 2 market in FY '22 and growing Frank's customers by nearly 5,000. Now on to Slide 19 and the wholesale segment. In 2020, Genesis set out our 1.5-degree science-based target to reduce our portfolio's annual emissions by 1.2 million tonnes by 2025 and 1.8 million tonnes by 2030. We never expected the reduction to be linear due to the nature of weather-dependent wholesale market and the backup role coal plays. However, as mentioned on the highlights slide, after higher emissions last year due to hydro conditions and gas availability, we were able to significantly reduce emissions in FY '22. And while our primary goal is reducing our missions and supporting New Zealand in decarbonizing, we're mindful of the near-term cost of emissions under the ETS. In FY '22, we extended our carbon hedge position through the purchase of long-term contracts and are now fully hedged through FY '27 as well as part of FY '28 and '29. The short-term wholesale market conditions will always impact our longer-term hedge position, but we are well placed to continue to perform as a business even as the ETS costs fluctuate. Beyond our current hedges, we have continued to invest in forestry, as James mentioned, following on from the success of the DrylandCarbon partnership, and we've invested further in a second fund called Forest Partners. These 2 forestry investments will provide Genesis a significant volume of long-term credits. The supply of these units will build up through the back end of this decade and be fully producing by the early 2030s. Moving to Slide 20 and Genesis people. In the type market for talent, Genesis remains committed to keeping our people safe, motivated and valued. An example of our commitment to this is the Rainbow Tick accreditation that we were granted in FY '22. Our employee NPS remains strong at over 65 throughout the year, and we remain a living wage employer. We've always been committed to gender equity leading the way with our Minding the Gap policy in 2017, which has ensured women have are paid fairly and that every 6 months we consider where in equities may have emerged to close them. The pay equity gap has continued to decline to 1.3%, and we now have a gender-balanced executive team, thanks to several years of focusing on the cross-functional as well as leadership development of some of our most promising people. At the same time, the proportion of women in senior leadership positions fell slightly, but still remains above our 40-40-20 goal. The number of injuries did increase in the year, primarily in our LPG delivery operation, as it continues to grow to support customer demand and new drivers are brought on board. Most injuries were preventable sprains and strains associated with the manual handling of LPG bottles. Each injury is assessed to identify how we can prevent similar injuries from occurring in the future. And we've seen the lost time associated with those injuries reduced over the last 2 years as minor strains have picked up earlier. A comprehensive program of work is underway to reduce injuries focusing on safety culture, ergonomics, early intervention and reducing risk through engineering design of equipment used in the delivery. At Genesis, we've aligned our sustainability objectives to 5 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which are most aligned to our business and the impact we can have. In FY '22, there were many highlights, and we've grouped them into 3 pillars. A low-carbon future for all, which, as discussed before, we have a significant reduction in emissions in FY '22 due to full year Waipipi and more normal hydro conditions. And we're also focusing on supporting industrial decarbonizing through our pilot of Energy-as-a-Service with an increase in the number of customers also buying an energy service more broadly. Onto a more equal society. We are mindful of a major employer throughout the country that we have the ability to ensure everyone has the opportunity to benefit from decent work as well as our efforts on gender equity and the living wage we rolled out on our Creating Pathways program in FY '22. This program provides Young Rangatahi the opportunities to work at Genesis and opportunities in stem fields. And then a sustainable business. This year, we celebrated a decade of partnership with Doc in our effort to support the conservation. We also launched our sustainable finance framework and now have $660 million across green bonds and sustainability-linked loans. And of course, running a sustainable business also means sustainably meeting the needs of customers, employees and shareholders year-on-year, much of which this presentation has been focused on. Now on to Slide 22. We've also released several new documents today, providing investors and other stakeholders more transparency over sustainability aspects of our business. This slide draws your attention to them, and I recommend a good read through when you have time. All these documents are available for review on our Investor Center. I'll just speak briefly on the climate risk report. We launched our first report in 2020 and have continued to develop this framework. Considering the risks from the physical and transition risks of climate change are a core part of Genesis strategy formulation. While we see risk to our business, there are also ample opportunities. Our focus to become a more sustainable business is about positioning ourselves to minimize the risk and capitalize on the opportunities through supporting New Zealand's energy transition. Now moving on to our strategic outlook. To remind you all, our company purpose at Genesis is to empower New Zealand's sustainable future. In the wholesale market, our vision is to be an active enabler of New Zealand's energy transition through our Future-gen program and more. And across retail markets, we intend to engage our customers to inspire millions of sustainable choices. The 3 strategies of delivering more from the core, building for the future and navigating the transition are what we are doing as we drive towards those vision statements. So as many of you will know, we've had several changes to our executive team at Genesis. While externally, it may look like a big change with 3 internal promotions, there is continuity within the business. When I move on in October, Tracey Hickman will be stepping in as interim CEO. The Board is well underway with the formal recruitment process for a permanent CEO. And Tracey has been in the energy sector for almost 3 decades and has had executive experience at Genesis across generation, wholesale markets and is currently our Chief Customer Officer. She'll be an awesome interim and ensure stability. She'll be joining James and I on the roadshow and look forward to meeting many of you then. You've heard from James this morning. He brings a wealth of experience from CFO roles in 4 markets, and you'll meet him in person on the roadshow, if you haven't already. James has had a big and positive impact already on the business, and many of you will notice some of that throughout the slides he has just presented. And I'd briefly like to touch on the other new members of the executive team. Peter Kennedy is our Chief Digital Officer. He has 15 years of digital marketing and customer experience. And prior to joining the executive team with Genesis as GM digital and new services, Peter is responsible for all Genesis technology and digital operations, including our digital transformation program. Pauline Martin is our Chief Trading Officer, an electrical engineer by trade. Pauline was previously GM of Electricity and Carbon in our wholesale markets team. And prior to coming to Genesis, pulling work for several years at Mercury. We won't hold that against today. As CTO, Pauline is responsible for our derivatives and spot trading, fuels procurement and future-gen contracting. Rebecca Larking has been appointed COO and is responsible for our generation assets, LPG operations and solar development. Rebecca has been at Genesis for nearly 20 years and has had a number of roles across environmental generation, trading, sales and retail operations. Matthew Osborne is another pillar of continuity, having joined Genesis as General Counsel in 2018 and then taking the broader role of Chief Corporate Affairs Officer. He brings a wealth of experience to legal, regulatory and sustainably communications and governance. And finally, Nicola Richardson, who has been supporting me as Chief People Officer over the last 6 years and helped drive our cultural transformation to help make Genesis the vibrant and powered innovative culture today, is leaving in September to take up a similar role with ASB. Nick will be sorely missed across Genesis as in her time we've become a living wage employer, driven for gender equity across our business and successfully navigated the challenges of keeping staff safe and productive across the country during the pandemic. We're proud to see her progress in her career though, and the process to replace her has started. So we refreshed our retail strategy recently under Tracey and Peter's leadership, as one of New Zealand's largest and most diverse energy providers, we understand the role we play in supporting our customers to make sustainable choices. We firmly believe that empowering customers to make the choices that matter to them is part of our role, which includes giving them the tools, services and products to help them make more sustainable choices. There are a few examples on Slide 25. And we're making the transition to EVs easier and more cost-effective for our customers through our soon-to-be-launched product everywhere. The add-on to our EV plan, which already offers a 50% lower rate at night, will be to enable energy roaming for our customers so they can fast charge at roads largest EV charging network for the same rate as charging at home, all in one Genesis bill. I mentioned Power Shout gifting earlier, and we're now considering how we can build on that initial pilot. Looking ahead to new developments, we're thinking carefully about how we can support the transition to renewable fuels by building on the platform we've already created to offer more knowledge and advice to our customers through digital means. Today, we already tell our customers what the carbon emissions for their home are in real time. In the future, I hope Genesis will be advising customers on how they can reduce their emissions footprint, as well as reduce their energy costs through time-of-use choices, energy efficiency and actions around fuel choice that they make for heating, cooling, hot water and cooking. And of course, our digital transformation, which is underway, also hopes to build a retail business that we can accelerate in the future. On Slide 25, we explain how we intend to empower our customers with millions of choices. In the sustainability journey, our wholesale strategy on Slide 26 explains how we are actively enabling New Zealand's energy transition and continuing at pace to clean up our own backyard. We finalized the joint venture with FRV in February and have been working to identify sites and potential opportunities for good scale solar. We've made good progress in building a team and identifying potential sites and have 4 opportunities currently under detailed consideration. We hope to announce a lead development by the end of the calendar year. Like many other businesses, we are seeing increased costs and some delays to generation development. This has meant some extension to our solar pipeline timetable, but we're confident of a successful development through to FY '27. The PPAs that support Future-gen have also been delayed, with Mercury advising us that Kaiwaikawe financial close is now at risk. While we would be disappointed that this contract cannot be concluded as previously agreed, we do have other opportunities available to us and will make the most appropriate business decision for Genesis. We continue our investigation to biofuels at Huntly and the role this fuel could have in supporting decarbonization across New Zealand more broadly. Our work so far has shown that biofuels could be a credible option for New Zealand if government, the energy sector and forestry can work together collaboratively. We see a real opportunity for New Zealand to solve the dry-year storage challenge as well as transition industrial production away from coal. Unfortunately, the trial burn of biomass at Huntly that was planned for this year has been delayed due to complications around international shipping and the availability of the raw material as the global energy crunch hit early in the year. But Genesis is optimistic that trial burn will occur sometime in FY '23. So the next 3 slides, starting on Slide 27, our view on the risks and opportunities that lie ahead for the sector. While New Zealand has seen moderately higher electricity prices this year relative to the rest of the world, we have so far been largely insulated from the extremes of the global energy crunch. Europe particularly has seen a very significant rise in energy costs with wholesale electricity prices up by 5x or more. In retail energy markets, European consumers are likely to see their annual energy bills double or triple in the next year. Australia, too, has experienced significant volatility, some are driven by global energy markets, but also compounded by unprecedented interventions in the electricity and gas markets over the last 10 years and more recently, which should act as a warning to market participants and policymakers here in New Zealand. For the electricity sector and, in effect, the gas market, New Zealand's only direct price link to global energy commodities is through importing of coal for the Huntly coal stockpile. In FY '21 and '22, Genesis imported significant volumes at prices secured well before the global lift in commodity prices. While I'd love to claim that was a masterful strategy, at the time, it was driven by fears of a dry winter that last year never materialized and our need to support fixed-price swaption commitments at the time, too. The result of having access to low-priced coal has been short-term price protection for New Zealand's electricity markets. If Genesis had been importing coal at this year's market price, the impact on the running cost of marginal thermal plants in an energy-only market would have resulted, we believe, in somewhere between a 50% and 100% increase in the wholesale price of electricity versus what we've actually seen. And as you can see in the bottom right chart, while our stockpile is at the highest level it's been since well before the IPO in 2014, the cost of replacing it is substantially higher at today's prices. As any prudent business would do, we will need to start to consider the cost of replacement as we continue to maintain this critical energy security asset for the market and also protect value for Genesis shareholders in the process. So as Genesis continues to consider how it can support energy security, we plan to launch a replacement for the old swaption product, which we made available for all wholesale market participants, and we're going to call it a market security option, as outlined on Slide 28. The existing swaptions expire in December 2022. And while these have been a useful product for the market to date, they're not cost reflective in the current market. Recent discussions with competitors have fleshed out that no one wants to take the price risk on coal. And as such, the terms of the market security options will be more flexible. The products will provide the flexibility for market participants to plan ahead to ensure they have sufficient backup generation for dry periods. Genesis will manage the complex logistics, plant management, maintenance and dispatch of the thermal units. Ensuring unit reliability and fuel availability takes months of planning and therefore requires an upfront commitment. In the current global environment, Genesis cannot be expected to provide short-term backup without an upfront commitment from other market participants. We, therefore won't be providing free optionality to market participants who have the capacity to manage their own risk but choose not to. We believe that doing this is also the best way to insulate large and small consumers from the spot price volatility that has been seen in energy retail markets overseas. In addition to the solution I just spoke about, there are several other issues at the sector, regulators and the government need to consider, which we have laid out on Slide 29. This winter, we have seen an increase in peak demand to levels not previously experienced. There are a number of factors driving this, but regulatory settings need to support the cost and consequences of high load over winter periods. Recent changes to transmission pricing regulations have exacerbated this and made it more challenging for generators to forecast and deliver the appropriate load. With overall electricity demand forecast to increase, it is important that regulatory settings send the right incentive to major consumers. The ETS is an important signal to all of New Zealand that decarbonizing is not only the morally right thing to do but is also economically rational. We have planned for higher carbon prices at Genesis for a long time, and it's one of the key reasons we're committed to decarbonizing our portfolio. With carbon today at over $85 a tonne, it has nearly doubled in the past year and is over 4x the price it was 5 years ago. The higher price is already sending signals to the market, electricity market, and that's why we're seeing so much renewable development come on stream. The consequences, however, of even higher carbon prices, like the settings recommended by the Climate Change Commission, are likely to reverberate through the wholesale electricity market and really start to impact consumers. While thermal generation is a small and decreasing component of the generation supply, as the marginal plant, it is very often the one that sets the price for all electricity sold. The consequence of this is, while thermal generators such as Genesis will face increasing costs, all generators will receive more for the energy they produce. On this basis, it is important that the consequences of significantly higher carbon prices on the price of highly renewable electricity for everyone are fully considered when adjusting the ETS settings. Finally, the RMA reforms appear to not be going far enough to make it easy to build new renewables. While it's important to consider the impacts of renewable development on local communities they operate in, this needs to be balanced with the already high cost of construction in New Zealand and the urgency required for the country to meet our 2030 and 2050 emissions targets. Right now, New Zealand is building the assets for our low-carbon future, and the energy sector will play a transformational role. If we can get the settings right now and plan ahead, I'm optimistic New Zealand can lead the world to net zero. That's all for me now. I'll pass on to James to provide some detail on our guidance, and then we'll open up for questions.

Thanks, Marc. So finally, to summarize with our guidance. FY '23 EBITDAF is expected to be around $455 million, subject to hydrological conditions, gas availability and any material adverse events or unforeseeable circumstances. The current swaptions contracts will end in December 2022. Depending on the outcome of negotiations and market conditions across the second half, there's potential for more variability in current year results than in previous years. Guidance includes an allowance in operating costs related to the implementation of the new sales, service and billing platform. This is subject to final vendor selection and implementation time frames. FY '23 CapEx is expected to be around $80 million. Long run outlook to stay in business CapEx is $50 million to $70 million. Key capital expenditure projects in FY '23 include Huntly Unit 4 cold survey, Tuai generator refurbishment and Huntly Unit 4 -- Unit 6 refurbishment. Also capital to support LPG growth and enhance customer experience and CapEx for the digital transformation program. No investment decision has been taken on the Kupe well. Any significant expenditure associated with the new well would be incurred in FY '24. So with that, we'll now open up the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes through from Grant Swanepoel from Jarden.

Congratulations to Marc on a great tenure at -- I don't know -- over the years at Genesis. My first question is just on this new swaption-type arrangements you're talking about. In that detail when you talk about pricing will be based on marginal cost generation, spot coal and common costs at the time, is that at the time of going into the contract? Or is it the time of actually activating the swaption?

Yes. So there will be 3 decision points for a counterparty grant. The first will be to reserve megawatt capacity, and that will be this year for the next 2 years, a commitment. The second decision point is when to contract at a fixed price for a certain gigawatt hours of generation based on fuel costs at the time. That's the cost reflective point. And then the third will be with some lead time, when to run it. So it will be flexible, but it will require increasing commitment: first, for megawatt capacity; second, for gigawatt hours of fuel; and third, to actually run the units.

Now all your swaptions, I think, had about 200 megawatts of swaptions again from the cross counterparties. Have you got a line of sight on what you think you'll be running on average on those based on having built this new product?

No, not yet. So we're going to launch it to market at the end of August, and a lot will depend on who signs up. So I can't give you that answer yet.

And then you spent quite a bit of time on appropriate regulatory settings. It's really about who's going to provide capacity over time. Now Contact and Meridian have gone into a bit of partnership together on this swaption takeover from where you guys were, I don't know, if you're a small part of it. But why are you not engaging more actively with them? Or are you and we just as a market are not realizing that something is going on behind the scenes?

No, we've been engaging. We've always said we're open for business. I think the difference between what they're calling a swaption and what we're talking about is ours is a net increase in fuel and gigawatt hours into the market. I'm not sure if theirs is, we can only see some detail on it, but it's a time swap, but we're not sure it's actually a net increase in fuel. So when the lakes are low in the future, where we've always provided a role with our existing swaptions and our plant at Huntly, as you know, is to fill that energy gap. We think that energy gap will still need to be filled in the future. So we've been engaging where we can, but the problem with the existing swaptions, putting myself in their position, is to commit to a strike price now for the next 2, 3 or 4 years will be very difficult. Because for Genesis, it's going to have to be at market price. And for them, that's a very high price to pay. And so I think this new mechanism, we believe, will provide more flexibility, more optionality, but will also ensure that the market doesn't become too price volatile when we go through our next dry period, which will eventually come. So we think it is really critical that the industry running around on this because the alternative consequence isn't great.

And then just a segue from the future curve and all the rest. So the solar build expectations we pushed out a little bit. Can you talk about what the costs in solar in terms of longer marginal costs you require a wholesale price to be running at in order to justify a solar spend? Or is it still too early days for that?

Well, we have a view based on early analysis, but we're not disclosing it. But we're confident that we will be able to justify solar build in New Zealand, and it will be cost-competitive with other forms of new generation.

Okay. So you haven't taken a view yet on whether Meridian -- I mean, Mercury's $80 lower marginal cost or Contact's plus marginal cost is required to get those -- that kit away.

No, I haven't taken a view yet.

Perfect. Then on electricity netbacks, mass market's flat and C&I flat despite the healthy price increases. There are some lines drops in the PCP. Can you please talk us through that? And then what we should be expecting in terms of price increases into FY '23?

Yes. So you're probably referring to residential electricity primarily. We took the decision to absorb line increases and not pass through a material price rise this year. That was a competitive decision based on where we believe we set versus everyone else in the market. Looking forward, there will be a price rise at some point for Genesis customers on electricity, but that hasn't been decided yet or the magnitude of that has not been decided yet.

And then in terms of, my last question, on dividends, unlikely that the $100 million of net working capital will be repeated. What do we have to look for to hope for a mid-range payout that beats the incremental dividend growth?

Maybe James, yes?

Look, I think we'll take several factors into consideration as we look at our dividend policy going forward, we have -- or a dividend payout going forward. We haven't taken any decisions on this. Clearly, we're mindful as we take the dividend decision on future capital needs, level of profitability, as you'd expect. We're also mindful of the rating and interest rate environment. So it's difficult to answer that question, Grant, with any certainty.

Our next question comes through from Andrew Harvey-Green from Forsyth Barr.

Marc and James, [indiscernible] U.K., and welcome James for of all and all of this for your move over the ditch at Marc. A few questions from me. Just first of all, just looking at the FY '23 guidance, and you're talking about an OpEx allowance and therefore the digital transformation project. Are you able to sort of give us a sense of what that is? I assume it's an uplift on the FY '22 number.

Andrew, thank you. Look, we're not going to give any guidance on that specifically. And the reason for that is we're working through our options at the moment. And clearly, we're in commercially sensitive discussions. So the number itself will depend on the vendor selection and the timing. So we can't -- we're not able to give you a number on that at the moment.

Okay. Second question, I guess, just following on a little bit from Grant in terms of looking at retail prices next year. Are you able to just give us a sense of when you typically put through your retail price increases? Is it sort of throughout the year as I think a lot of people did on the 1st of April each year? Should we perhaps expect some of that?

A few years ago, Andrew, we moved from the April rise to considering it late in the calendar year for a January change. So we don't -- as you've seen in the past, our track record is we don't just cost plus price. We don't just look at the network cost and increase it. So we think about it more strategically, and we'll make a decision later this year for a January price rise on residential electricity. Obviously, on C&I and SME, it's more ongoing. And then on gas and LPG, we're doing changes between now and year-end.

Great. Next question is a little bit of a detailed question, but on your slide on the hedge carbon price. I noticed that actually that goes up and then dips again in FY '28. So I was just slightly curious as to how you've managed to achieve that as much as anything else.

Yes, that's more a function, Andrew, of the timing of the -- we participated in an auction at the end of the year, and it's the relative weighted price movement as a result of the timing of the units for that period, which pushed FY '27 up. But as we get more towards the outer years, we start to get more benefit from lower cost units from our forestry partnerships as well. So it's about a weighted average movement. But if you look back on prior disclosures, you'll see FY '27 wasn't as high. It's gone up partly because of the auction price.

And just lastly from me, just around, I guess, the smelter, which is recently topical at the moment, a couple of questions here, I guess, I'm just confirming have you had an approach from the smelter in terms of opening some sort of discussions around that? And then secondly, your views on the EA announcement yesterday as well and the implication to that.