Mercury NZ Limited (MCY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Mercury Annual Results Analyst Briefing 2024 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Vince Hawksworth, Chief Executive of Mercury Limited. Please go ahead.

[Foreign Language] and welcome, everybody, to the FY '24 Mercury Full Year Results Presentation. I'm Vince Hawksworth. I'm joined by our Chief Financial Officer, William Meek. I want to start just by saying that this presentation really has three major elements to it: a reflection on FY '24; some observations about FY '25 and the events surrounding our current situation; and plotting a way towards the future and the opportunities that Mercury continues to pursue. There's a lot of material in this presentation. So William and I are going to canter through that at a reasonable pace. We know that questions are always valuable. So I'm now on Slide 3, which is the overall highlights slide. We produced 8.8 terawatt hours of renewable generation from hydro, geothermal and wind, wind obviously up reasonably significantly. We completed the integration of the Mercury and Trustpower businesses all under the one brand, one set of people, processes and systems, and that we're really pleased about because that creates a great platform as we look to the future. We completed Stage 1 of Kaiwera Downs under budget and in advance of time and agreed a contract with the aluminum smelter, which allowed us to go to final investment decision and start Kaiwera Downs 2, which is now under construction. We also have Nga Tamariki geothermal expansion of 50 megawatts under construction and materials are being delivered to site, and we're pleased with the way that, that has set off. Obviously, the scale of the business that has delivered what is a record EBITDAF result of $877 million; ordinary full year dividend of $0.233 per share, 16th year of dividend growth. However, we have also acknowledged that with a significant impact on our ability to generate from our hydro assets, we do face into a more difficult period over the early part of this year and have issued guidance for FY '25 at $820 million. We also note we have two new projects in our projects list, being a grid-scale battery at Whakamaru and another wind farm west of Huntly. Moving to Slide 4 and our people. We just note that we've continued with those backward-looking views to have delivered a good health and safety outcome. But as I always say, we're only one event away from breaking that record. So we still acknowledge we've got plenty of work that we can do to reach the gold standard of safety citizenship and continue creating a very safe health and well-being situation for all of our staff, contractors and visitors. Our employee stats show that whilst we make progress, we still have opportunities to build the capability and opportunity within our business. Just want to note on here, on Slide 5, that we continue to update our strategic framework. What's particularly changed since the last time we spoke is our focus on our 3-year objectives, having completed the period through to FY '25. We're now sort of focused on FY '25 to '27, broken those down into six areas. Two of those seem incredibly relevant as we speak today, delivering more reliable renewable energy to Aotearoa and accelerating the shift to a low carbon future or electrification depending on how you like to talk about that, and that really will help us achieve what matters. To support that, we're very focused on part ships, creating success with others on the culture and adaptive ways of working. In other words, how our people can deliver for us, our organization, our shareholders and to continue to innovate using the technologies that are available to us. On this slide, we have represented some of the actions that we have taken to deliver value, but also to do that across our five areas of aspiration for 2035. I particularly want to point out the work we've done on working with customers in hardship later in the presentation. We talked to some of that. I'd call out the work we've done with [ Mari ], with our [ EV ] partners and with [indiscernible] more generally where we interact on the river and in the Central North Island and now, of course, down in the South Island. Investment in our hydro assets under Kaitiakitanga, very important. And as we speak, we are coming to the end of comissioning our second upgraded machine at Karapiro, which is again positive for our future performance. People, I've talked about, particularly empowering talent and pursuing safety. And obviously, in terms of continuing to be able to deliver that ongoing financial performance, really important that we execute on our new generation opportunities. So that slide covers some of those things in some detail. For the next slide, I want to pass on to William, who will start to talk through some of the financial opportunities that we have been able to take and those that we phase into.

Thanks, Vince, and welcome to our listeners on this call this morning. So we're on Slide 7 of the presentation. This year, a strong performance, and it follows a very weak year last year. So last year, we had 28% higher than normal hydro generation, so it was very wet. And if you've scanned the deck, you will see that FY '24 is dry and has got particularly dry as we headed into the start of FY '25. On labor trading margin, operating expenditure and EBITDAF on this slide because we've got further bridges to come. But yes, a good strong performance of EBITDAF at $877 million for the FY '24 year. NPAT, at $290 million, is 2.6x higher than last year. Again, NPAT is not a great performance measure for companies like us and certainly with changes to IFRS even more so. So significant movements in the fair value of financial derivatives, which essentially bring those fair values to be in the current financial year. And last year, we did recognize some revaluation decreases and impairments. So that's explaining that significant movement in net profit after tax. Operating cash flow of $612 million for FY '24. Again, a strong performance. Pleasing to see almost 50% of that operating cash flow invested back into the business. So existing assets or into the construction of new assets this financial year. And obviously, operating cash flow also paying for dividends to our shareholders, so dividend up from $302 million to $325 million for this financial year. Slide 8. So it's the bridge between FY '23 and '24. As noted, '23 benefited significantly from [ 1,150 ] gigawatt hours more water than the prior year. So year-on-year, we're down 21% in terms of hydro generation, but generated a pretty, pretty average level, slightly about 1% higher than average despite the lower-than-normal inflows. So we started the lake high at the beginning of the year, finished below average by the end of 30 June. Our GSM also saw an 11% increase in performance, which was good. Some challenges across the fleet in '23 and the big turnaround at [ Codo ] for the -- to affect the permanent repairs from the issues we had back in 2021. Wind, we saw a significant lift in our wind generation, so wind was up 40%, almost 600 gigawatt hours for the year, reflecting a full year of Turitea South and KD1, Kaiwera Downs 1 coming online this financial year also. We have seen lifts in customer end-user prices, so $9 and $8, respectively, between mass markets and C&I customers. We did receive benefits from bidder our WAP -- GWAP so that's essentially code for whatever it cost you to buy the energy from the market versus what you're selling it for. So that was favorable during FY '24. And we've talked previously around the higher-than-normal loss in constraint rent rebates being now returned from line companies to retailers, offset by about $10 million by increases in our transmission charges from Transpower. Other income, we recognized a $17 million benefit from our second provisional claim for the [ Coto ] outage with -- and you'll see in the accounts, we've got a final claim still pending, which we expect to see in FY '25. So that bridges our $841 million to $877 million EBITDAF. Just focusing in on OpEx, proved fairly simple bridge here. So we saw OpEx rise $39 million for the financial year against $23 million. Those new wind assets coming along saw our wind generation operating costs left [ $11 million ], another [ $11 million ] in other asset maintenance. Inflation was relatively high, adding $15 million, bridging the $39 million from [ $346 million ] to [ $385 million ]. You'll see in segment notes, those OpEx are broken down somewhat differently between employee-related maintenance, explaining again a lot of that $39 million difference. EBITDAF, so a different bridge in terms of bridging EBITDAF to changes in debt. So we saw an increase in debt of just under $50 million, taking us close to [ $2 billion ] net debt for FY '24. But 42% of cash, [ $366 million ] going into cycle investing CapEx, which is mostly either in the existing generation assets or into new ones. $268 million paid in dividends with cash. So that's active DRP, saw the cash cost of dividends reduced by $43 million for the year. Interest and tax very similar at -- in the low [ 120s million ] range and the net working capital movement bridging for the change. So this year was our sixth year of consecutive growth in ordinary divs, which is great. Talk now on Slide 10 around just our capital expenditure. Certainly, CapEx has lifted as we locked bill resilience in our fleet, particularly in geo and hydro capacity. We resumed drilling. So we started drilling with IDC earlier in the year. We had some challenges and have employed a new drilling contractor. So we saw essentially a $30 million increase in drilling from the prior year, but almost $50 million in the year in drilling wells. It's great to see those wells finishing successfully and providing production capacity to our [ geothermal ] plants. The Kaiwera turnaround is continuing. So we're working through the second unit. That synced to grid earlier this week, and we expect to see that fully commissioned by early September. So great to see be 2/3 of the way through a full refurb there at Karapiro, our last station on the river. In terms of the other breakdown, you see something there with about $20 million invested into our retail business and $11 million in enterprise. So that's mostly tech related, so just above [ $30 million ] invested during the financial year. Now moving to sort of market perspective. So we've got the three charts here and some key messages. So we'll start with national hydro storage. Yellow line is this year, the dark blue line at the top is -- represents last year, which was wet. And the black line is the average since we seen its wet back in 2000. So we do that somewhat because if we go back to presplit, ECNZ, an integrated portfolio, so operated the lakes in the thermal capacity quite differently to the way it is operated today. So last year, the South Island received 22nd percentile inflows. That's helped our Kaiwera catchment got [ 30th ]. You combine those two together and you get essentially a national inflow percentile of 23rd, so slightly lower, slightly less than the lower quartile. So it was a dry year for the system. And we can certainly see that reflected through into that yellow line. So as we speak, it's been helpful that we've seen inflows into both the South and North Islands over the last weekend with that suddenly front rolling up. That being said, national lake levels are close to the lowest they've been since that split. And to get worse, we really need to step back to 1992 when we had the power crisis. So it's certainly positive to see the system is working, prices clearing the market, customers now, there is no loss of supply to customers. So in that respect, the market is delivering the reliability demanded. South Island storage is over 1,000 gigawatt hours lower than it would normally be at this time of year. So again, at least we see strong inflows into the South Island. We'd expect to see hydro generation over the coming months to be lower. They won't otherwise have been. Everyone is aware of the challenges in the gas sector and daily deliverability to not just to generators but also to customers. So there's a call out there. We can see a very strong correlation between the increase in the spot gas price and the power price. So gas is the marginal supply for the system, particularly during winters. And so we've seen a very strong correlation there as gas prices rise, that flows through to spot power prices. So particularly important call out around hydro storage is increasingly being utilized as backup generation, as that [ thermal ] generation reduces. So most of the thermal stations are underfilled at the moment, which is creating some challenges, particularly in regard to price. And then the electricity futures curve has remained elevated. This financial year, we're staring at a curve that's tracking at the moment of $276, next year is at [ $199 ] and FY '27 still elevated at [ $177 ]. So we are seeing expectations that we'll still have high wholesale prices, largely reflecting tightness in thermal fuel supply for the country. Next slide, this is familiar to most. Just this is concentrating now back on our hydro catchment like Taupo. So again, you can see the track there. The shaded area is the -- shows the range of storage levels we've tracked since 1999. And again, you can see the yellow line tracking down close to minimums over that time period. So we have seen acute dries, we've had 4 percentile inflow since May to today. Earlier this month, we had a week that was producing inflows at the 0 percentile. So the driest we've seen. The challenge for Mercury is we are a winter peaking catchment. At this time of year, we'd normally expect to be receiving our peak inflows, and that hasn't been the case for the July, August period. National is tracking at the second percentile since May '24. Some other interesting data, you can see that the year started, it was dry. We had a slightly wet period through summer and then it went acutely dry, as you can see on the data on the table. Also some interesting observations around how the futures prices -- or the futures market sort of 3 months ahead. We're seeing relative to where spot prices were. So certainly, earlier in the last financial year, the productions were quite good. And then we saw quite a divergence as those debt dry conditions, but -- and therefore, the futures prices were generally understating the impacts of the dry conditions and that became particularly acute in August where 3 months ago, futures were packing [ 260 ], and we were closer to À, obviously backing away with the transactions with Methanex. Finally, for me, before I hand back to Vince, in terms of FY '25 outlook, there's a big number on the right-hand side, $820 million is our guidance for this year. So $57 million lower than our outturn for this financial year, again, reflecting three key impacts. We're forecasting a full year decrement of 200 -- almost 280 gigawatt hours in terms of hydro production, so sitting at [ 3,800 ]. That assumes that we will go back to 50% of inflows from next month. So it sort of gets us away from the assistance that we've seen for quite some time. Gas market has impacted Mercury. Most of our gas has been secured on a short-term basis. So we're seeing quite a significant increase in the gas cost to Mercury. So that's about two PJs, which we supply to our residential customers. And then we've had some pricing impacts on the portfolio over the last couple of months, at $28 million. So there's a call out there. We expect our trading gains. We normally plan for around $16 million a year. And at the moment, we are forecasting no outcome for the year. That is highly volatile. Obviously with power prices, the way they are and the volatility, it certainly can be advantageous to traders. So we'll see how we track for the remainder of FY '25. Back to Vince.

Thanks, William. So we sort of as I said at the start, we've covered the year that's in review. We've set some background to the year that we're in. And the next few slides really want to deal to our progress against the electrification opportunity that we have been pursuing for some time. So this slide sort of look, it sets out what we're doing. We've commissioned significant generation projects and -- when Turitea was first entered into, many people were a bit surprised and said it was ahead of any demand and uncertainty about NZAS. We believe that, that was the right thing to do, and we've executed on that. Similarly, we're now delivering two more projects, and we have Nga Tamariki and Kaiwera Downs 2. And as signaled, we expect to move to investment decision on Kaiwera in this calendar year. If you add all of those together, that takes us well beyond the $1 billion. But it's also what comes next. We've added two new projects that we're excited for Whakamaru for a battery and a wind farm west of Huntly. That means that we are in a position to continue to move through these project development cycles in a continuous basis for the next while. And if we go to this slide, that sort of shows a bit of buildup of how all of that looks. And obviously, Kaiwaikawe, Mahinerangi Stage 2, Puketoi on there. And subsequently, no doubt, we will add those two additional projects as we firm those up, but we're quite excited about both of those. And as I say, a lot of that is about trying to continue a development program that works closely with the supply chain as well, both onshore and the offshore supply chain, which is one of the big challenges for New Zealand as we look to further electrify. Giving a bit more color on those four wind farms. Kaiwaikawe, I've talked to, we're well positioned. Puketoi, which has been in our portfolio for some time. It's -- currently, we are working through some resource consent, some changes. And also, we have reoptimized the layout of that wind farm in order to reduce the check capital costs of civil engineering. We expect to work through that sort of stuff over the next year or so and so that we can move into FID. Mahinerangi Stage 2, again, subject to some resource consent changes, largely due to the fact that technology has changed since Stage 1 was built in 2011. Again, a very strong project once we've worked through that. And west of Huntly, where we're well progressed with studies and also landowners, and we would expect that to appear quite strongly in our forward portfolio. Getting into the nitty gritty of what we're doing at the moment, some photographs there of Nga Tamariki. Look, at the moment, that project is going pretty well. But we're in the early stages with lots of materials being delivered and you're going to see stacks of air core condensers there and the associated steel work. Currently on time and on budget and highly motivated contractor who's mobilized lots of people to site, and we're pleased at the moment that remains over 100 consecutive days of safe operation, and that's obviously a big priority for us. Moving to the second project that we've got under construction at the moment. Kaiwera Downs Stage 2. Obviously, we were pleased with Stage 1. We learned a lot from that. That has given us great ability to bring the same contractors to bear on this price who we are pleased to be working with again. They're pleased that another project in the other worlds going ahead. It's -- the picture of the digger there is one of quite a number of new pieces of machinery that one of the contractors is purchased in order to make sure they deliver the project to the time expectations we set. And that project is going well. The weather when we kicked off was pretty favorable. It's been a bit chilly down there over the last couple of weeks. The main thing is we're in earthworks at the moment. And there, this -- we just repeat here a slide that we put in when we announced Kaiwera Downs Stage 2, which is being absolutely clear about the metrics of the project. I think a really important bullet point in all of that is the reference to long-run marginal cost of KD2 based on the LCOE at Gore and comparing that with a firmed price. Why we think that's important is it can be really difficult in this game to compare project to projects. So what we're trying to do here is to give more insight into that from our perspective. We're pretty pleased with where this project will land overall in our portfolio and as part of delivering for the aluminum smelter. This slide attempts to capture the fact that Mercury has up and down the river, a large number of machines. So compared with some of our competitors, we have many, many more units, and each of those units is reaching an age where we have to make sure that, that fit for the next 50 years. We have a sophisticated program of doing that work, and we're currently working with suppliers to look at what the next decade of work actually looks like to optimize that. But at the moment, we're at Kaiwera and has been mentioned a couple of times, we are almost complete on the second of three machines at Karapiro. Every time we look at one of these projects, we are all looking at what we can improve both in terms of energy from the existing resource, but also in terms of capacity to meet peak capacity. The Waikato River remains one of the best peaking plants available, and being good at doing that is the best use of that storage as we continue the transition. William mentioned the fact that we have changed drilling contractors. This is absolutely key to the long-term performance of our geothermal assets. We're really feeling pleased with the change that we've made. We continue to drill and thus far the holes that we have drilled have been successful in terms of targeting what we were looking for in terms of capacity. As we connect those, that sustains the long-term ability to produce from those geothermal assets, which our key baseload component of what Mercury produces in its portfolio. This next slide is sort of a balance across our supply and demand. It breaks down supply into hydro, which obviously last year at 4.1 terawatts was a good year based on a previous year that was very wet, and we've talked about what we're looking into going forward. It's geothermal at 2.6, an improvement based on the fact that we've done a lot of work on the way we maintain and operate those assets, wind broken into spot and PPA because of the arrangements that we inherited through the Tilt transaction and then our financial position. And then on the other side, our demand being from customers, large businesses, financials, PPAs and our spot sales. We look to be strategically long in our portfolio, but obviously, that is more challenging when you experience what we've experienced over the last 3 months and particularly, as William described, in the first 2 months of this central year. So turning to retail. Again, I won't dwell too much on the micro detail of this. But effectively, retail integration has completed. And I think sometimes it's something we've talked about for a while, but it offered it said as if, well, that was just a job to be done. There are many businesses we have been through these types of mergers and acquisitions in the energy sectors, in the telco sectors and elsewhere who are still on the two sets of technology, a decade after doing the transaction. We're really pleased that we're on one technology platform because that creates massive opportunity for the future. We made a conscious decision not to push acquisitions as we did the customer transfer. We wound things back up in the last 3 or 4 months of the financial year. But obviously, in the current situation, like everybody else, we're being very careful about how we manage our book. Our C&I yields continue to reflect forward prices. But I would say that in the context of everything being said that there are many customers of ours who chose to take longer-term contracts over the last 4 years who are insulated from the immediate high spot prices. And I've made the point in the recent weeks that 98% of our sales volume is to customers who have fixed prices. And that is sales volume. If we look at customers, it would be well above 99% of customers. But I prefer sales volume because it's, I think, some more transparent measure. This slide sort of talks more to the integration, sets out the monies that we have spent and as it finishes up with, we pretty much hit what we said we were going to do from a point of view of spend to get to where we've got to go to. And we're now focused on delivery. And this slide talks to delivery of synergies. So we have delivered synergies to date, and we have built synergies in. Of course, this whole plan never anticipated the levels of inflation we've seen over the period. But that said, the changes that underpinned all those synergies both in terms of technology and people and the ability to offer new products are all playing out pretty much as we expected them to. Obviously, there's a change occurring. And this will be the last full year I present. And when you get to the half year, Stuart will be presenting. I think it's -- I think I've left him in a great position. He's sitting opposite me at the moment grimacing. But it all truth, in the medium term, Mercury is well positioned. The Board are pleased that we have internal succession which is going to be seamless in terms of what Mercury can achieve. And certainly want to thank William and the team, but particularly William today for keeping me safe in this type of environment. And as we hand over to -- as we hand over to Stu, who will no doubt we'll be speaking a lot more over the next few days as we meet with various people, but will also be presenting at the ASM. This slide -- one thing I want to point out on this slide, which is a really important slide in terms of how we think about those environmental, social and governance goals. But I won't belabor through the slide. I point to point 2, there's been a lot of discussion about disconnections. On our post-pay brands, we have reduced disconnections by 76% year-on-year, even an environment which has been highly inflationary and there's been cost of living crisis. That is entirely due to the work our people do with customers to help them through their most difficult period. And we'll continue to work hard at that. Internally, people that lead in this area want to get to 0 discounts. But we'll do that in a supportive way that helps people to get on top of any budget problems they have. We've also supported Nau Mai Ra and Toast Electric through these high price periods to ensure that they can continue to make their offers. So those who are really the most vulnerable in society and find it very difficult to deal with larger corporates. So we're pretty proud of the work we do in that space. But look, there's one thing for certain about the electricity or energy sector is never short of people with good ideas. I think we've had every possible opinion over the last couple of months, many of them based on a paucity of analysis or a hugely vested interest. We're strong believers that a whole of system approach is the best way to go, not breaching to Commerce Act, of course, but a collective effort to deliver great outcomes for Aotearoa New Zealand that allow us to electrify. And we think the sector has done a good job of that. William mentioned 1992. In 1992, hydro inflows were lower than they have been this year, and we had brownouts and blackouts, rotating power cuts. This year, under a market-led system, we have been able to manage that. Yes, spot prices have been high, but few have been exposed to those. We strongly believe that everybody also needs to assess the transition by supporting our colleagues who produce thermal-backed generation. So we are an active purchaser of market security options and Huntly firming options because ultimately, it's the big picture that matters, not the individual picture. And the graphs there show how the lines component, energy components have tracked vis-a-vis CPI. So I'm going to pass back to William now. He will take us on the final stretch of the [ cantor ].

Thanks, Vince. So we're on Slide 29 talking about our balance sheet. So as you can see, our net debt has tracked relatively flat since 2022, slightly under $2 billion. Our credit metrics remain very strong at 2x. Obviously, FY '22 saw us acquire renewable business in the Trustpower retail business, leading to the increase there in our gearing metrics. The balance sheet definitely supports our ambitious development program. So we're in a strong position to deliver new capacity to the New Zealand power system. Just after the end of the financial year, we redeemed our Mercury [ 020 ] capital bonds and refi-ed those with our [ $50 million ] upside at -- for the [ Mercury 070 ]. So again, that was well-timed and successful debt raised by the company. So it's just the last slide for me before we get to Q&A and a wrap from Vince. We've already talked to the guidance at $820 million EBITDAF on the back of lower hydro generation. That comes obviously with the normal caveat that stuff can change, but right here right now, that's our best number. Ordinary dividend guidance up 3% to $0.24 per share. We're guiding higher capital expenditure for FY '25, at $160 million, with longer-term spend business CapEx sitting at $150 million, reflecting the geothermal drilling requirement and ongoing hydro rehab programs. Back to Vince.

Thanks, William. Quick summary slides there. I don't propose to read out every bullet point. I think the message is a great outcome for FY '24, a tough start to FY '25, but we've tried to be really transparent about what's moving there. It will rain, it always rains at some point, and really well-positioned for continued investment into the future with a financial structure that backs that investment and we look forward to the future on that basis. I'll throw back to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from Stephen Hudson from Macquarie Securities.

Just a couple from me. Just interested in your comments, Vince, on the market-led response today. I guess if we look at an aluminum smelter being down for an excessive [ overlay, ] one potline of an aluminum smelter being down for sort of in excess of 200 days and a whole methanol train going down for a couple of months. Do you kind of see it as a sort of a scary experiment? Or do you have confidence that these demand responses either fuel or power simply the way forward for New Zealand and the rest of the world?

Yes. Thanks, Steve. Great question. I think I will deal with the first one first. The aluminum smelters arrangements are a reflection on their desire to stay in a fully renewable market because they value that and their realization that every prices over time either reflect full firming or reflect some form of interruptibility. I suspect I didn't expect this particular standdown to occur so quickly afterwards, but it is built into the contractual relationships and from what I've read, is 1 of 4 opportunities to do this over a 20-year period. So I don't see that as anything other than normal functioning of the commercial arrangements between parties in a market that's not connected by cable to anywhere else and is highly renewable. I think the Methanex one is a much more complex question. Look, at the end of the day, I'm sure that Methanex are being suitably financially rewarded for not producing methanol; however, that isn't what their core business is. We have a much more complex discussion debate to be had at a national level about how a gas resource that has been -- we all know the history to how we got here. But what do we do now about domestic gas, of which there is still, I think, a reasonably strong belief. There is guess there, but it's a bit about how does money flow to get to that gas. And how does that compare with the LNG debate that seems to have fired up. I think we do need a very careful degree of conversations around that plus also how we use coal in the mix, which has obviously been very important because knee-jerk reactions have consistently proven to be expensive and have rarely delivered a good outcome. So much more complex debate to be had, which I'm sure will be had.

Can I just add to that? Steve, I think it's -- our view is encapsulated in our comment about our whole system response, then to connectedness between the gas market and the power market is deep. Two years ago, the forecast for gas supply were over 200 PJs and we're sitting at 140 a year. That is where a lot of that reduction is falling. It is falling to Methanex and it's also falling on generators in terms of daily gas availability. So that's the fact that we have had second percent of national wind flow since May, so almost 4 months combined with the constraints in the gas market, and we're going to get out of here in terms of a reliable system, albeit with high prices. I think that's still a tick to the market. The primary purpose of the spot market, which people forget, is real-time dispatch. It does that very effectively, and you've seen responses. Methanex is responding to essentially a high-power prices and an opportunity to essentially push us back into the market. We've seen commercial customers make decisions to curtail load and enjoy the hedging they have from the fixed price contract. So you won't read about some of that stuff in the papers, but the market is responding. And so not just on the supply side, but also on the demand side, which is to sort of services offer reliability. Because reliability out of the 3 legs of the trilemma, you've got to keep the lights on. And despite tightness of thermal fuels and dry weather, the lights stay on. The challenge for the sector will be continuing to build into that. And certainly, I expect to see with our peers producing results over the next week or so that the commitment from the sector will be high to deploy capital into New Zealand renewable energy to bring prices down and maintain reliability, increase decarb in New Zealand.

And then just one last one from me. You would have seen the EAs dashboard release last night. I just -- it's obviously suggestive of an industry that's over earning, I suppose, given its narrow focus. Have you read it sort of differently? Or do you see it as a constructive initiative on their part?

Well, I'll start and William might well have add-on views. Look, I think, first of all, it's a very narrowly framed question that has very little context to it. So I think it's quite difficult to draw conclusions about such a small data set, some initial -- an initial thought that we have had, as we have looked at the data that what it definitely shows is that margins go down as spot prices go up. So it would seem to me that it is showing that a market is sending spot price signals because of a scarcity of fuel, whether that's water or either of gas or coal or whatever, available to meet demand and prices are being pushed up to try and manage that scarcity, but the margins are not increasing with those. In fact, they've gone the other way, but it's not just small data set and it's such an ill-defined question, which I don't think has been well thought through. No doubt there are a million different conclusions one could conclude.

I'd just add, I don't know whether increasing the cadence of disclosures actually tells us a lot. The problem they're trying to solve is very unclear. Clearly, Mercury in terms of its guidance is down from last year. We're not -- we're clearly being affected by this. So it's not true that these costs are just falling to the consumers alone. So there are impacts on the supply side. Our results disclosures, operating stats, 2 of our competitors disclose results monthly. I just don't know what the context is in terms of does -- is the sector overcharging, earning surplus economic rents, those sorts of things. We've got some very long run sequences for 2 of the listed companies, particularly contact when you calculate the total shareholder returns over the long term. It doesn't look like it. So telling what trading margin in the absence of other costs, I'm just not sure what it tells you.

Makes sense. Well, we've got time to say goodbye to you later. But Vince, congratulations on your tenure and thanks for all your time and thoughts over the years.

Cheers, Steve.

Our next question will come from Grant Swanepoel from Jarden.

I'll reiterate Steve's comments. Vince, thanks so much for many, many years of great leadership in this sector. Two questions on outlook and one on operational capability. On your yield growth on slide that shows the uplift or down lift to $820 million. Of that $43 million, do we think of it as the retail book regaining $10 million from the gas increase? And then residential recovering the $11 million of transmission increases and the rest coming from C&I uplift as what normally happens with high wholesale prices?

The yield growth, that's just a price impacts for us over the current year.

So can I assume that your residential pricing is going to at least recover the transmission cost increases? Can I assume your gas book is going to at least recover the gas increases, et cetera.

Yes, our pricing principles are that we pass on our costs to customers. Our transmissions on the generation side of the business is not so clear cut. You can't just increase your offers because suddenly you get a higher fixed cost on your generation business because the way the auction process in the market works that it doesn't matter. It's just like a pole tax.

Okay. And then you indicated that there's a final claim on Kaiwera, the geothermal outage. Is there some of that in the $820 million guidance?

No.

And then my final question is more a general question. Referring to, I think, Slide 22, where you show your balance book and being slightly spot exposed in FY '24. Mercury seems to have always had a risk management of running a long CFD, short CFD type cover program. Is this going to become more and more difficult as we move forward with the lack of a capacity solution? And is Mercury a little more inwardly focused, where some of the others are getting deals like, for instance, Mercury -- I mean, Meridian's extra 20 megawatts from Tiwai recently. The latest option they got from contract on gas, contract on Genesis getting some gas from Methanex, but Mercury seems to be just doing it the hard way. And my question is, is your C&I book may be a bit too long in the environment we've been facing over the next few years.

Yes. I mean, they're all good questions, Grant. I think at the end of the day, you can't operate your business for the worst possible outcome in the market because that will leave a whole lot of money on the table for the rest of the time. So that's my first comment. We've seen some very dry conditions. I think I'm not going to talk about our competitors' books, but certainly, their lake storage is larger. So how you manage your lake is important. I don't think it's fair that you suddenly say, we can't handle the [ agenda, ] so therefore, we won't contract with customers because I think you're pushing an obligation to customers that have got even less levers to manage. We're in the business of ethically buying and well generating and selling power. Most of our customers, that's not their business. They're in the business of making stuff, providing goods and services to their customers. So I think there is an obligation on the sector to provide fixed price cover to customers. You do that at prices that if you're acceptable. You won't win every year, but you got to win more often than not. So the levers are -- there's no doubt that if you've got flexibility, we'll have value. If you can reduce your demand side exposure through agreements for people to curtail, that's fine. But as the Prime Minister says, it's not ideal that every time the power prices go high, that people stop production, which flows through to GDP, et cetera. So that's not the preferred approach. The preferred approach is the supply side to generally be managing the volatility in the market.

Our next question will come from Andrew Harvey-Green from Forsyth Barr.

A couple of questions for me, just following on, I guess, from Grant and I guess thinking around that the sort of the risk management practices going forward. I guess part of the -- what we've come here as we've seen some really historic high wholesale prices. Does it sort of, I guess, change your thinking of how you might approach risk management going forward? And I guess, clearly, I think about in the context of developing your guidance, 3,800 gigawatt hours hydro isn't actually particularly lower. We've seen much lower years in the past and in the recently recent past as well.

Yes, I agree in terms of hydro outcomes, but it's -- we're not even 2 months into the year. And July set a record for spot prices at $330, and then August is going to blow that out of the water. And that's coincided with us having come through a year, which was dry. So we had 30th percentile into a period where we traditionally wetter for us. So yes, I mean, I think you can revise your portfolio settings. I think -- and people will because the cost of dry now has got the high tide line. It's come up, but yes, that's something we need to work through. I don't think that's by just saying we couldn't run a longer book. I don't know how that -- where does that shortness turn up inside the market. Someone's got to -- it's a zero-sum game. Someone's got to pick it up. So -- and you can deal with that through price. As you sell power for a high number to customers, will then that compensates you for some of the risk of shortness over time.

Yes. And just a couple of questions, I guess, on the development side. So on the consenting, I think, you've indicated there's a number of consents that are still, I guess, required for those additional wind farms, but they are, I guess, sites that have been consented in the past. Are we looking at relatively straightforward thinking processes here, I assume, as opposed to something more substantive?

I think, should be relatively straightforward. We had to make some changes to certain parts of the consenting for KD1. We found that relatively straightforward. The process is for Puketoi sort of slightly more because we are relocating turbine positions to reduce civil costs. But again, doesn't really change any of the other issues within the consents. But I think one of the things that folks generally don't think about is consents are only one part of the total story. You've still got to work through all of the landowner requirements. Actually getting the equipment to site generally requires roading changes, which you also have to work through with the landowners and councils. And the delivery supply chain has been somewhat challenging on a global basis. So we strongly believe that building an ongoing strong relationship with all of the core suppliers actually makes quite a bit of difference. So look, none of it seems that insurmountable, Andrew, but it just adds time. Yes.

Yes. And the other piece that seems to be missing for most of them, I guess, is that transmission connection and just given the size of Transpower's queue and the workload that they've got. Do you see that as, I guess, more substantive concern or an issue or just need to work through and we'll get there in time and we shouldn't worry about it too much?

Well, I suppose that the issue is we can all see a very big queue. The question that has to be resolved is, is that people banking places in a queue with projects that will not reach final investment decision or not. So I think there is bound to be an emerging conversation about what's the progress the project has made since the time it got in the queue? How likely is it to turn up because I can see a time coming where you could have a project that is ready to go to FID and the only thing stopping you is certainty about your connection. So I suspect that Transpower are going to have to become more sophisticated about how they review the queue, where people are at because it can't just be you happen to pick a place in the queue, even though your project is a decade away from being able to go. So that is going to be a challenge. But we can't sort of pick on Transpower because to date, it hasn't stopped a project going ahead. It may well be an emerging problem, but it will get resolved. It has to get resolved, doesn't it? Because otherwise, we don't make the progress we need to make.

Our next question will come from Vignesh Nair from UBS.

A couple of quick ones. Firstly, just a clarification from the earlier question that Grant had. The $16 million of trading losses in the first couple of months, is that made up for as part of the yield growth of 43? So is that 43 effectively dissected across 16...

No.

Okay. So you're expecting a 0 trading gain outcome for the full year, right?

You got it.

And so that's aside from the yield growth. So where does that sit as part of the little bridge? On Page 30, you've got 43 of yield growth. Is that 16 within that?

It's in portfolio. So the 28, which is -- you go back to that earlier slide that talk to $820 million. It's in there.

Okay. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. And just on that, is a 0 style kind of trading gain outcome for the full year kind of a reasonable base case given the first couple of months of trading? Like what kind of line of sight do you have in the medium term on the trading business at the moment? Like I'm just wondering what the risk is on the $820 million from kind of short-term trading.

I had to answer that. I'll answer it like this. Volatility is a trader's friend. So I'll start with that. So when prices are $700 and the whole curve is elevated, the trade that you should put on is to sell the curve on the view that essentially prices are going to retreat. So that's the view. We just don't see them. As soon as it starts [ raining, ] the curve is going to come off like a bomb. And obviously, the thing that the [indiscernible] to do that is if the dry holes, well, then you're exposed to ever increasing prices. So that's the conundrum that ultimately the traders are grappling with.

Okay. Okay. That's clear. And secondly, I suppose a fairly straightforward one. Just on Kaiwaikawe, I suppose what's been the hold up? It feels like a project that's been perpetually delayed?

Gosh, have we got 20 minutes? Where do we start? Look, firstly, it wasn't helped by COVID, meaning that the resource consent process was abandoned and restarted several months apart by the people hearing the resource consent. It wasn't helped by the fact that government agency objective to it based on the alleged fact that there was an Australasian bittern somewhere in the vicinity, which was never found. It wasn't helped by the fact that their experts never went to site but still decided to go to a consent hearing making those claims. Subsequent to resolving all of those things and finally getting a resource consent, we then have faced into the challenges that as a lower yield site, capital costs matter. Higher-yield sites can stand higher capital. And Kaiwaikawe is a great site, but it's a lower yield than Aotearoa or Kaiwera Downs and, therefore, optimizing the site to that and its CapEx as being something we've had to do. And also because of its location, resolving the transport routes has been there. We are now in the very final stages of dotting Is and crossing Ts. But we also have an issue that the site where it connects into the transmission system is more challenged by the way that -- and it's really quite technical, by the way, that there are requirements around power factor. And this will be an increasing problem for many embedded wind projects. Now we think we're finding a way through that. We expect to make decisions around that very soon. And I think we remain confident that we will go to FID this side of Christmas.

And is the PPA with Genesis for an offtake still intact?

Well, it depends what you mean by intact. We continue to talk to Genesis about where that project is at, but the passage of time has meant that we've got to have a conversation about pricing.

And our next question will come from Cameron Parker from Craigs Investment Partners.

Just a couple for me. Just do you have any updates on turbine pricing at all, given you're going through these feasibility work? Directionally or...

We will. I mean, obviously, when we go to FID, we'll have an update on turbine pricing. And I'm not trying to be smart there, Cam. I'm just very conscious of the fact that we like to keep as much commercial pressure on our suppliers as possible right down to the last minute that they commit and we commit. So we are at a sensitive point in those discussions. But globally, the demand for this equipment is not going away. And globally, prices will reflect steel prices, rare earth metal prices, shipping costs and all of those things. And whilst globally, inflation is coming back on some of those things, I don't think we'll see the prices that we saw in 2018, 2019, 2020. Hopefully, we see prices that aren't going up like they were in '23.

Okay. Also bad debts, I wonder if you could just provide an indication on trends on bad debts, particularly, of course, C&I, but also mass market?

Yes. You can see that bad debt provision in the accounts, it's no different from what it was a year ago. So again, I think, our team that deals with vulnerable customers have been very good in terms of assisting to manage people's ability to pay their power accounts. C&I is a bit more binary. They tend to -- yes, they're a bit more spiky. So you don't tend to have C&I bad debt. However when it turns up, it just pops up. So that's much harder to predict. But certainly, there was no large -- there were no bad debts coming out of that C&I portfolio for us as of yet. So obviously -- and this is -- that's one of the challenges of demand side going on spot because obviously, their financial viability then is actually connected to the spot price. So as the spot price rises, their costs rise and, therefore, their viability reduces. So -- and that's generally unusual because most customers are not hugely exposed to power in terms of their total cost structure.

Those C&I customers that are on spot, are you finding they're coming back to the gentailers or yourselves for a discussion or...

Yes.

I don't know whether you've got a view that on risk management and so forth for those sort of users on spot?

Well, no. You definitely have conversations with them around the risk. I mean, actually, the code requires you to communicate every year with customers that have chosen to take spot price exposure around what that means. If they're a market participant, the EA actually requires quarterly exposures around what they call stress tests. So those also exist for the very largest of C&I customers. So they -- and they need to be signed off by the Board of Directors. So that's just -- that was implemented from -- in 2010. It's essentially because companies say, we didn't know, so they've got a reporting process. So for the large users, that's just -- well, you can't say you didn't know because you've signed these certificates that's required you to do these calculations under stress.

Last one for me is just the -- you're actively engaged with Genesis on the HFO. Are there other sizable kind of alternatives that you see in the market or you might see come to market in the future or anything you -- because it just seems like the ultimate unanswered question, right, the dry risk mitigation in New Zealand. So I don't know whether you've got any view on that.

Yes, I mean, it sort of goes a bit to a question that I think Grant was sort of implying about sophistication of your -- of the way you deal with these things. Yes, look, so I mean we strongly supported MSO. I think we were possibly the only gentailer who did. We support HFO. We continue to talk with other generators about different sorts of products. We're largely fuel agnostic on that. So we're not trying to pick winners. We do talk with some of our C&I customers. We have programs where there are on a much more micro scale the sorts of things that we've seen operating on a Tiwai. Tiwai is obviously very large, but we do that with other customers. And we have and continue to do trades with our colleagues. Of course, ultimately, as William pointed out, the nature of our asset mix means that the way the Waikato Catchment operates is -- we're just at a very, very dry period because when it's -- when we're in more -- in the normal range of situation, it very much acts as a peaking arrangement and gives us the ability to manage those sort of peaking and capacity risks. It can't ever protect us from an energy issue over a long period of time, but that's what we try and buy is energy products. Yes.

Okay. That's great. Thanks, Vince. That's it for me, really. And congratulations on a great stint at the helm. So I'll leave you to it.

Our next question will come from Nevill Gluyas from Jarden.

Just to continue with the theme as sort of the starting question. The EA obviously, consulting or trying to put together an expert group to conduct or construct standardized flexibility products, which they hope to start trading next year. I'm interested in what the Mercury view on what the right kind of range of products would be to sort of effectively tradable products to trade risk to allow retailers to hedge, to allow independent generators to sort of affirm their products. Kind of what's the house view?

I suppose -- look, we'll be willing participants in that conversation. There is no doubt. It will be interesting to see how the expert panel is, so-called expert panel is formed because -- and what the terms of reference are and what success would look like because, ultimately, those products have to end up being priced. And when those products are priced, you can't then say we don't like the price and, therefore, we're going to make some other form of market intervention having developed the product. We've seen the consequences of that in many, many markets in the world. I suppose we're seeing that with the narrative around spot prices and we've also seen it with the narrative around market making and then making sudden alterations. So I guess my concern is not so much the development of products. But having developed those products, is the market going to be allowed to play out what those products mean and do we all understand that. Of course, everybody who then is in a position of buying and selling those products has to determine what that means in terms of their risk position around the various scenarios. So in a scenario like the one we've seen at the moment, where in just, what I would call, normal operation of the market-making environment, as soon as somebody doesn't like it, we seem to have said we can't continue to operate. Well, there's one thing for certain in these sorts of products that are being described, what's going to happen if we get to the same position? So I think it's a much bigger position or much bigger philosophical discussion to be had about some -- how markets operate and what is important. And I think we started this presentation today with William talking about trilemma and fact that reliability is incredibly important. And we should not forget that under the current market settings, we have managed to keep the lights on under a set of stress settings with thermal fuels and water that have almost been never seen before I would suggest. Because even in 1992, it was -- the investigation into '92, which then led to the market we've got now, demonstrated that the water was used too fast and thermal couldn't then operate quick enough. Well, this has demonstrated the complete opposite. Anyway, that's my little ramble on that, Nevill.

That's useful color. Second question was going to be on PPPs. I see you made a good progress on trials on sort of demand response. And I'm interested, obviously, you've got the largest retail base. What do you think -- these will still be guesstimates, I'm sure. But what do you think is the scale you can get to in terms of megawatts of PPPs sort of across your base? Should we be optimistic?

Look, I can't give you a number off the top of my head, Nevill. We'll have a bit of a think about that. But look, should we be optimistic? Of course, we should be optimistic. There is an enormous amount of talent in this industry and it's dealt with enormous amount of challenges. And so I am sure that we will see things emerge and develop. At the same time though, we shouldn't forget that in the mid-90s, many people talked about the fact that we wouldn't need a transmission system because DER would be the thing and we all know what happened there. So what we shouldn't do is lurch from one end of the spectrum to the other. We should make sure just the environment allows the emergence of technologies and we should keep trying things, and we should do that with a whole of sector view in mind.

I completely agree. Last question for me actually was just on the fast track consenting and sort of how do you think we should be thinking about that process? Does that unlock a whole lot of new generation that sort of floods into the market on time frames? Or taking your point earlier about, there's far more to power projects than just the consenting. Is that really -- it's a necessary step, but certainly not sufficient for a flood of generation to come in? I'm just interested in thoughts on that.

I think the good thing about the fast track process is it becomes more of a one-stop shop from a consenting process. It allows things to happen. It doesn't, in my view, absolve you from the corporate responsibility to work with stakeholders, whether they're landowners or Tiwai partners, who actually can make -- help you make projects very successful. As I've said before, just because you've got a consent doesn't mean you've got a bankable project. But it can only be better than some of the things that we, as I described at Kaiwaikawe, went through. That is a complete waste of money and energy on everybody's part. So it will speed things up. But as we've discussed in this, that will know that show up other bottlenecks, one of which we've discussed which is Transpower queue. Another being the -- just the capacity and capability in the marketplace because there are only so many civil and electrical contractors in New Zealand and people who can do this work. And then there is in terms of sourcing equipment, there are only so many global players who will come to New Zealand and deliver wind turbines or transformers or other equipment.

Yes, outside that consenting framework, some of the national policy statements are really important. So where we get primacy -- hopefully primacy around renewable energy, but obviously, you run smack bang into biodiversity, coastal policies, freshwater, highly productive land, wetlands, it's just -- at some point, someone needs to make a decision about are you going to run that [indiscernible] every time against those policy statements that still matter. Or is it important to actually supply green energy to New Zealand? There's just too many drivers to a model.

Yes, yes. No, it makes sense. Well, thanks for that. Great color and echo everyone else's comments and loved your work, Vince. Are you lost in the sector? Or are you sort of maybe turn up again?

Is this an interview, Nevill?

I suppose so. I'll put it this way. Hope to see you again.

Yes, yes, yes. No, thanks for that.

And I am showing no further questions from our phone lines. I'd now like to pass it back for any closing remarks.

Okay. Well, thanks, everybody, for staying on the line for so long. Great questions. It just shows the high level of interest and insight that's in this sector. So we appreciate the opportunity. As I said at the start, yes, we've got some immediate challenges. We've traversed those, but it's on the back of a really positive year and also looking into massive opportunities. We appreciate the support of Mercury from our investors. Thank you.

Thank you.