Light S.A. (LIGT3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Light's conference call where we will discuss our results for the second quarter of 2023. My name is Rodrigo Vilela, and I'll be your host. This event is being simultaneously translated into -- in English. If you'd like to listen to the interpretation, you can click on the interpretation button on the lower bar. We have with us our CEO, Octavio Lopes, who will make our opening remarks; and our CFO, Eduardo Gotilla, who will go through our presentation and comment on our results. This presentation is available for download at our Investor Relations website, but you can also watch it here on Zoom. [Operator Instructions] This webinar is being recorded and will be available at our Investor Relations website. As per usual, this is our disclaimer. We'd like to clarify that any statements made during this presentation about the company's business perspectives as well as projections, operational and financial goals are simply beliefs and assumptions by the company's Board of Directors. They're based on information that is currently available for the company. Remarks about the future are not a guarantee of performance as they involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. They are referring to future events and therefore, look in current circumstances that may or may not come to pass. Investors should understand that the general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operational factors may affect the company's future results and may cause results that differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements. And with all legal announcements being made, I'd like to pass it over to Octavio Lopes. Octavio, go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our results call. Just a moment, please. So we're having a technical issue and we'll be right back. Good morning, everyone, once again, and welcome to our conference call. The figures we're presenting today continue to demonstrate the results for the efforts in this new management to contain the distribution company's cash consumption. Since late last year, we redefined the company's investment strategies to prioritize initiatives that bring us returns in the current concession. At the same time, there are measures that were getting in the way the company's cash or providing long returns that were discontinued. It's important to highlight that this investment reduction did not affect our customer service, our quality and safety. Our strategical focus on cost and expense management led to a reduction of 25% of our TOTEX, the sum of PMSO and CapEx in the distribution company in the first half of 2023. During that same time, operational cash flow measured as EBITDA minus CapEx was BRL 230 million versus a cash consumption of BRL 59 million in the first half of 2022. The consolidated results of the Light Group and cash generation grew BRL 365 million to BRL 591 million. In the first half of 2023, the company is reporting consolidated profits of BRL 217 million versus a loss of BRL 186 million during the same time in 2022. The company is maximizing its short-term cash flow, maintaining good operational indicators. In the first 6 months, Light was the best company in energy interruption frequency and the seventh in energy interruption duration considering all distribution companies in Brazil with over 1 million clients. Light is making all necessary investments to maintain its quality with its 11 million consumers in Rio de Janeiro. It is still complying to its industry and regulatory obligations with its suppliers and employees. The commitment that we took to fight the company's financial unbalanced and prioritized consumers and conception has been met. After 3 months of our digital recuperation request, we continue to operate normally, reaching all of the quality goals without any negative effects for the industry or for consumers. The effects of the steep period for the distribution company and the generation company would have led to a collapse without our financial restructuring and it would compromise our services to the population of Rio de Janeiro. We have paid over BRL 700 million in interest and amortizations in 2023 and over BRL 4 billion in the last 2 years. In the first half of the year, the net effect of PIS/COFINS credit return to consumers represented a cash consumption of BRL 496 million. In early June, Light filed for a concession contract renewal. Recently, in July, the company presented its initial plan with a number of options that will service the different profiles for our investors. And we are attempting to leave this legal recovery process and readapt our capital structure. I'll pass it over to Gotilla now, who will continue presenting our results. Thank you very much, and I'll be available for the Q&A.

Thank you, Octavio. Good morning, everyone. I'll start with the results for the second quarter on Slide 4, showing our continuing focus on financial stabilization for the distribution company in line with the strategy that we have for the fourth quarter of 2022. As we said in the previous quarter, the main driver for this current management has been to increase cash generation, adapting operational flows and prioritizing for term returns. The strategy has been very good since the TOTEX for the distribution company or our PMSO plus CapEx went down about 30% this quarter and year-on-year in comparison to 2022. This reduction was driven by a reduction in CapEx in our energy combat plan. PMSO increases are related to an accounting effect, which is proportional to this reduction in investments. Not only did our TOTEX improve, but the graph on the right shows our effort to improve cash generation, which is EBITDA minus CapEx. This quarter, cash generation went up BRL 87 million year-on-year. And for the first 6 months, it was BRL 230 million with a cash consumption of BRL 59 million consumption in the same time last year. So an increase of BRL 289 million. It's important to highlight once again that this strategic change in allocating capital does not compromise customer service, quality and safety. Our short-term operational losses are not based on lower sustainability or long-term results. Moving on to Slide 5. I'll talk about the main factors for this variation. Although we had a better cash generation this quarter, our adjusted EBITDA went down BRL 102 million versus the second quarter of 2022, and this can be explained by the lower net margin during this time. This reflection also reflects -- excuse me, this reduction also reflects our gross revenue being lower. And this had a positive effect in the margins last year, but reduced our EBITDA later on due to impacts in mass liabilities. PMSO also had a reduction of BRL 34 million. And the main driver for this was due to expenses and an accounting effect for our labor. This line also reflects expenses with benefits due to yearly readjustments and our loss combat strategies. We had an increase in PDA due to a change in methodology, which reflects the effects of defaulting and reregistering as we've mentioned in previous calls. In the first half, our adjusted EBITDA reached BRL 609 million -- excuse me, BRL 603.9 million, capturing a tariff revision but also offset by a change in methodology in PDA. Slide 6 discusses the EBITDA for our generation company and trading, which once again had a positive performance, increasing BRL 30 million this quarter and BRL 35 million in the first half. This can be explained by a higher net margin due to higher prices and portfolio management, which offset the reduction in volume. Looking at the operational context for the distribution company, I'll discuss some losses in our concession area. We see that nontechnical losses on the reference market was 59.85% this quarter. We can also see once again on this graph, the impact of the reduction in our market in this indicator. We finished at 25 percentage points above the regulatory percentage passed on through tariffs. The difference between regulatory and actual losses, the negative impact of about BRL 600 million in our EBITDA in the last 12 months. Nontechnical losses are related to stability. We saw an increase in the second quarter driven by higher average temperature, which, as a consequence, led to higher energy and nonbilled consumption. We also had populational reduction and the effect of distributed generation affecting us. So nontechnical losses still portrayed the complex dynamics in our concession area even with this effort in finding losses, which is an initiative that can bring sustainable results and will conserve our cash generation. Finally, Slide 8 has an analysis that will shed some more light on how our losses have evolved, especially in comparison to the reference area. This is something that affects us for many years. This is based on public data available on ANEEL's website, and we see the variation in the main distribution companies that have high complexity and a bigger size. When we compare nontechnical losses in 2022 with the average from 2014 and 2015 when we had our peak historical market, we were positioned among the ones that have the best results. On the other hand, on the right, considering the same group and the same time, we can see how the reference market had the worst decline with an 18% reduction. So as I mentioned in the previous slide, this reduction in the reference market has definitely been the biggest impact in nontechnical losses despite the company's efforts to improve its results. Thank you.

Thank you, Gotilla. We will now begin our questions-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Well, thank you all for participating, and we'd like to reinforce that our Investor Relations team is always available to answer your questions. Have a great day, and we'll see you next time. Thank you. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]