Naturgy Energy Group, S.A. (NTGY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
July 22, 2020
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Abel Arbat
executiveGood morning, everyone. First of all, we hope you and your families continue to be well, and we thank all of you for joining our first half results presentation. The results will be presented by our Executive Chairman, Francisco Reynés, together with our Capital Markets Director, Steven Fernández; and our Controlling Director, Jon Ganuza. Finally, we will be heading to conclusions and live Q&A. Now without further ado, I will hand it over to our Chairman.
Francisco Reynés Massanet
executiveHello, good morning to everyone or good afternoon already. It's a pleasure to address you in today's conference call on results for H1. I am going to share my presentation together with Jon Ganuza and Steven Fernández as you know both of them very well. And we will not go one by one on the slides, but we would like to highlight the most important topics that we think may help you to understand how our results for the first half has been and -- which are our expectations for the year 2022 and the next years to come. First of all, I would like to make a special consideration on the COVID-19 impact. First, as you have seen in our presentation, there is a significant economical impact expected and uncertainty about some of the different countries' geographies. We have been highlighting the most important ones for us, but it's not different for any other company. We are suffering one of the most important economical crisis across the world. In particular for our business, this is considered even more important when you go into the ForEx because in our countries where we operate out of the Eurozone, in particular Latin America, we have been seeing dropping in the exchange rate of the Chilean pesos, Brazilian reals, Argentinian pesos, Mexican pesos and Panaman (sic) [ Panamanian ] currency. What this demonstrates with figures, all of them significant compared to last year, that ForEx has been taking a very important part of reason for the deviation versus 2019 H1. In terms of demand, what we have seen in the first half is drop in both energy consumption and gas consumption. I would like to highlight more the decline in gas consumption, in particular in Spain, Mexico and Chile, but it is important to consider that on top of the COVID-19 effect, we have been suffering one of the most warm years in the last decade. Of course, this energy demand is clearly impacted by the slowdown in the economy. But what we are seeing, and you can see that in the graphs, is that recovery has just started for the H2. But in parallel of this drop in demand and probably as a consequence of it, what we have seen is an important evolution in the [ raw ] direction on the main energy markets reference, the Brent price, NBP, Henry Hub, JKM, together with the electricity pool price in the Spanish market and CO2. We are probably living one of the most important perfect storms in our industry, and in particular one that affects the main important indicators for our business. The company has been trying to overcome this situation, which impacted on a very important scale on our results, as you have seen. Also being more conscious and social responsible vis-à-vis all our groups of interest. I will not repeat what we have already explained during our AGM, but in particular what I would like to reinforce the idea is that this company is clearly committed with all our groups of interest: employees, society, clients and suppliers. And also with our employees, we have been trying to adapt ourselves to the new circumstances and focus the company in managing on a day-by-day case as it would be easy before the COVID-19. We have enhanced OpEx control. We have reviewed our operations. We have reinforced our financial structure, in particular our liquidity. In general terms, this crisis, this COVID crisis, has found the company much better prepared than it was before it. This is thanks to the first 2 years of implementation of our plan that has been explained to the market in June 2019, 2 years ago. And thanks to all the different initiatives that have been taken into account, we today can see that we have overcome this situation in a much stronger position. I will hand it over to Steven Fernández to take a general overview about the key highlights on the results for the entire group. Thank you. Steven?
Steven Fernández
executiveThank you, Paco. Good afternoon, everyone. If we move over to Slide 11 of the presentation, we wanted to start with some key highlights of the H1 2020 results. And I think as the Chairman has made it abundantly clear at the beginning of this intervention, the impact of the COVID-19 has been particularly acute during the second quarter of 2020. And that has come in the form of lower gas and power demand in Spain and LatAm, obviously a more challenging scenario in gas and international LNG, and of course as you've seen before, a relevant FX depreciation in the key LatAm regions where we operate. It's true that performance has also been affected by the new regulatory framework in Spanish electricity distribution as well as volume capacity step down in EMPL, which you may remember we flagged both at the full year '19 results and obviously in Q1 of 2020. As a result of the above, ordinary EBITDA for the period stood at around EUR 2 billion, and that's down around 11% versus the previous year, while ordinary net income reached just shy of EUR 500 million in the period. That's down 30% versus H1. Also, please note that following the recent shutdown of our remaining coal plants in Spain, we have restated our accounts to show these as discontinued operations alongside with our gas distribution activities in Peru, both of which have a combined negative impact of around EUR 47 million in the first half of the year. Total CapEx for the period amounted to EUR 552 million. Obviously this has been impacted by months of confinement as you could imagine. And finally as of the end of the period, net debt amounted to just shy of EUR 15 billion. That's even after considering the EUR 764 million of shareholder remuneration during the period. So clearly cash flow and liquidity management have remained our priority during this period. If we move over to Slide 12 and we look at the EBITDA evolution by business unit, you can see that the devaluation of currencies in LatAm has had a noticeable impact, and you can see there of around EUR 87 million. And this comes on top of the lower volumes in gas distribution in Spain, part of which has been linked to the current health crisis and the other effects that we mentioned, including the new regulation and the step down in EMPL. The restructuring costs for the period amounted to around EUR 167 million. And it's worth highlighting that around only EUR 10 million of those were incurred in the second half of the -- second quarter of the year. We've also decided to include a new bridge here that hopefully provides you more granularity as well as to the performance of the company. And this includes an EBITDA evolution by key drivers, where you can see clearly a negative impact in terms of demand and FX and the other elements that we mentioned before. I think it's worthwhile highlighting on this slide that some of the impact that we have seen during the first half of the year are impacts that should be recovered as time goes by, so they are not structural declines in the overall results. It's also worth highlighting the positive evolution of OpEx, which is a result of course of a number of elements, including very importantly the efficiencies, efforts that we have been putting in place. If we move over to net profit and net income in Slide 14, you can see pretty much the cascade coming on onto the last line. And on this particular slide, we will highlight the improvement in financial results and others. This is a function of a lower cost of debt as a result of some of the [ LMs ] and some of the bond issues and debt issues that we have been executing over the first 6 months of the year. From a cash flow perspective, where we go to Slide 15, you'll see that the company has been successful in managing some of the cash outflows including OpEx and discretionary nonremunerated CapEx. And this is as a result of our desire to adapt to the current environment and lower demand. As I've mentioned previously, we've also improved the cost of financial debt. And there have been other measures as you can see as well, including the optimization on -- further optimization of our working capital. All in all, net debt in the period amounted to around EUR 14.9 billion. And that's again after the shareholder remuneration policy. There is also a positive effect as you can see from the FX translation. If we move on to Slide 16, we are incorporating ESG into our results. It is a function of the company's operations, of course. And beyond the efforts undertaken by the company to support our stakeholders and society as a whole during the COVID-19 crisis, we've also taken other steps to further our ESG commitments. And in particular we have -- we would highlight the efforts to reduce our greenhouse emissions and CO2 intensity in power generation, while increasing the share of our generation capacity from renewable resources. And it's true that part of the decline over the H1 is linked to lower production, but it is also as a result of the gradual shift in the company's generation portfolio. And in this sense, the recent shutdown of the company's coal power plants and the plans to replace them with renewable developments will further contribute towards improving these metrics. It's also worth highlighting the fact that we have made other progresses. For example, we've created a Sustainability Committee at the Board of Directors level, which is going to supervise the role the company is going to play in the energy transition alongside with the environmental health and safety aspects and indicators. And finally during the first half of the year, we also continued to progress on governance and particularly in gender parity. And as you can see in this slide, at present 25% of our Board of Directors is of the female gender. So we continue to progress on ESG metrics. This is going to be a cornerstone of our strategy moving forward, and we expect to continue reporting progress over the next few quarters. And with that, I hand over to Jon Ganuza.
Jon Ganuza
executiveThanks, Steven, and good afternoon, everyone. Let's start with Gas & Power on Page 18. Ordinary EBITDA declined 15.4% during the period, driven especially by depressed energy prices and lower demand. Gas, power and service sales has seen a differentiated evolution by segment. In the residential segment, we have been negatively affected by the decrease in customers in gas and electricity. Milder weather has had an additional impact in gas residential demand. But the residential segment, the only impact that has had from COVID-19 was in the P&L has seen an increase in delinquency. Industrial sales have been affected by the decrease of demand due to COVID-19 and lower gas margins due to a depressed gas price environment. In the case of international LNG, the loss of competitiveness in our open position has been compounded as our open position was front-loaded compared to previous year. In this respect, it is noteworthy that in the second quarter 2020, the spot prices have been at historical lows. To give an example, NBP was on average at $1.60 per MBTU, lower than the Henry Hub and relative to Brent 603 was at 2.8%. We have made nevertheless substantial progress, and as of June 30, 2020, contracted sales for 2020 and 2021, '22 stand at 98% and 79%, respectively. As we said in the previous results call, we continue to progress in our gas procurement contract renegotiations based on the ordinary and extraordinary review mechanisms contemplated in most of these agreements to better align our procurement costs with the prevailing market conditions. With regards to Europe power generation, higher renewable capacity coming into operation and improved hydro production compared to last year has been offset by higher taxes and lower CCGTs and nuclear production. Also, as Steven pointed out earlier, coal plants in Spain recently shut down has been restated as discontinued operations. The impact it has had this semester is of minus EUR 35 million and to have no further negative impact as the dismantling costs have been already provisioned. Finally, international power generation has remained relatively stable compared to last year, driver -- driven by higher margins in Mexico PPAs on the back of increased availability associated ordinary maintenance schedule. This has been offset by lower sales and margins in merchant activities. All in all, depressed energy scenarios, especially in gas, has impacted the performance compared to last year. Turning to infrastructure EMEA on Page 19. Ordinary EBITDA decreased 7.7% vis-à-vis first half of 2019. Gas distribution in Spain was negatively impacted by mild weather and COVID-19, which has had impacted the business twofold. First, by decreasing the gas demand, which was already low due to a mild weather, the decrease has been of 11.4%, although since the back -- the bulk of the decrease was mainly in industrial customers, the margin reduction has been of 4.2%. And secondly, the lockdown decreased activity, like for example, periodic inspections with associated margin reduction. Electricity distribution has not been negatively affected by the COVID-19 on an EBITDA level, but has the negative impact of the regulatory framework that started in 2020. In EMPL, we see the decrease following the expected capacity step down from February. In summary, the combination of lower demand, the EMPL step down and regulatory changes explain the underperformance vis-à-vis first half 2019. Moving on to infrastructure South LatAm on Page 20. Ordinary EBITDA was 16.2% lower than the first half 2019, primarily due to negative FX evolution of 82% -- of EUR 82 million. It is important to stress that net of the FX, the business in LatAm South have had stable results. Besides the FX, COVID-19 is having 4 main impacts in our LatAm businesses: first, demand reduction, which depending on the country and the client mix, ranges from minus 1.2% to minus 29%, although the impact in margin and EBITDA has been far smaller as the bulk of the reduction is on the big industrial customers with lower margins. As an example, Mexico and Brazil have seen a demand reduction of 14% and 29%, respectively, but margin reduction on both cases has been of around 6%. The second effect is an increase in delinquency, mainly in Chile electricity and Panama. Third, CapEx has been reduced due to lockdowns. And lastly, it has an effect in working capital increase due to the obligation to finance vulnerable customers, so this impact is being partially offset by sharing the burden of the financing with the suppliers and the transporters. Moving back to the infra South LatAm businesses. In Chile electricity, higher margins from tariff indexation have been offset by an increase in the cost of losses and perimeter changes since the divestment of Transemel. In Chile gas, the impact of lower demand due to COVID-19 were only partly compensated by the positive tariff indexation. In Brazil, lower gas demand due to COVID-19 were also partially compensated by a tariff update in Rio and lower energy losses. Finally in Argentina where the negative FX impact was the greatest in LatAm, and it also overshadowed the rest of the operational FX. All in all, performance was negatively impacted by FX and a lower demand as a consequence of COVID-19. Finally, turning now to infrastructure on North Latam on Page 21. Ordinary results in the period remained stable supported by tariff updates, despite the overall slowdown in demand linked to COVID-19 and the FX depreciation in Mexico. Mexico and the positive evolution of the business was mainly driven by higher margins and tariff update, partially offset by lower demand. As regards to Panama, lower demand and margins were partially compensated by U.S. dollar strength. To summarize, LatAm North has remained solid despite the negative effects from COVID-19. I will now turn it over to our Chairman for conclusions and outlook.
Francisco Reynés Massanet
executiveThank you, Steven. I think that we -- sorry, Jon. He just showed me that it was Jon, not Steven. Thank you, Jon. I think that as a first conclusion on these first half results of the year, I would like to highlight 4 comments. Comment #1 is that they are clearly not very good results, but they are, of course, strongly impacted by what is happening in the economy and in the environment. And depreciation of currencies or commodities in the energy sector or energy demand are clearly affecting our results. While #2 is, of course, these results are also considering the adaptation of changes, which are mainly around regulation, in particular, electricity distribution in Spain or other impacts in our asset base. As for example, the EMPL which is clearly affected by lower demand in gas and low traffic through the pipeline. The most important thing that we have done from the management point of view during these first 6 months has been to conserve and take care of cash, liquidity and cash flow generation. We think that at the present time, being on top of the cash, it demonstrates strength for the company and being prepared to accept other opportunities that may arise. And finally, and probably the most important thing is that the company has responded to the situation, has responded to everyone. Employees, taking care of them and preparing the company to continue operating from home, and being sure that all our employees were safe enough and their families to continue the operation of the company in any circumstances. On our clients, considering that the clients of today are also the clients of the future, and taking care of them is a warranty of our important goodwill. Of our suppliers because the situation is not good enough, and some of the small and medium-sized companies which are good suppliers that the company should continue to be taking their consideration on the company, and we are committed to them as well. On our shareholders, we have continued remunerating our shareholders as committed. And as I will explain to you later, we are following our retribution (sic) to shareholders as stated in our strategic plan. And to society, because we are a committed company engaged with ESG objectives, and our response to society is or should be understood as a response of a company with a very important soul. We are not seeing a very good year, 2020, and I don't want to come back again to the circumstances that we are facing. But you know that I had been criticized a little because I haven't given any guidance for the year 2020 at the beginning of the year. But the situation demonstrates that generating prognosis of our results at that time, it would have been too much -- too premature. The reality is that today, as to what we have seen, we are today with a committed figure to be around EUR 4 billion on EBITDA. And of course if situation changes, we will update you in the Q3. What has been -- or what is going to be our reaction to all these changes? I want to start by saying that when we highlighted our strategic plan just 2 years ago, we committed on a 5-year horizon, where normally companies in our industry are committing around 3. The reality is that after 2 years, our reaction is that we need to revisit what we have made. And first, we need to be clear enough saying that on the first stage of our strategic plan, we have achieved a lot of things. One of the pillars was about making the company more simple and more accountable. That's what we have been working. The second pillar was trying to optimize our operations in terms of OpEx. We have done it. Being more capital disciplined in our investments to ensure that our pillars of value creation are well protected. And finally, committing with our shareholders a stable and sustainable remuneration policy. And we haven't done anything more than what we have committed in terms of dividends per share. To be prudent, we have decided to cancel the second tranche of the year on the share buyback. And we will revisit it in the future, depending on how circumstances move. The most important thing that we have done in these 2 years is that we have delivered our commitments. But we need to transform ourselves more. This is our reaction to the changes in the environment, and this is our reaction to the changes in the world. And we will accelerate the transformation in 4 different directions: One is about reducing the risk profile, redefining operations, strengthen the competitive position of the company, and reinforcing the management team. All of it, we are committed to present it to you in a Capital Markets Day to be disclosed soon on the date, any date in the third -- in the fourth quarter of the year 2020. This would be an important step forward. We will clarify to you all the different strategies, industrial strategies by different business units. As you know, they are forming part of our portfolio. We talk about networks, we talk about renewables, we talk about commercialization, and we talk about the energy management. We will update you as well on financial objectives. And we will update you on different other matters that you may consider to again see that we are reacting to the changes of the world. But I want also to be clear on 2 things. This [indiscernible] strategy will not put on risk and on question the 2 most important pillars of our strategy: one is value creation orientation and second is our dividend policy. These are 2 cornerstones that we will maintain in our future strategic plan. And as you will see very soon, they will be much clearer for you to understand. Thank you very much for your time, and I hand it over again to Steven.
Steven Fernández
executiveThank you, Paco. I think we'll open now for questions.
Operator
operator[Operator Instructions] And please note, any questions from the media should be directed to the communications team of Naturgy Energy. Our first question on today's call comes from Javier Suarez from Mediobanca.
Javier Suarez Hernandez
analystThree on my side, the first one is on the Slide #15 and on the working capital impact on your cash flow. There is a positive impact of EUR 720 million. That is an acceleration versus the positive net working capital impact during the first quarter. You can help us to understand the reasons behind this positive impact and what we should expect by the year-end in terms of that net working capital? That is the first question. The second question is on probably on a bigger issue. There is plenty of debate on the possible significant development of hydrogen in Europe and in other places in the world. You can elaborate on your initial thoughts on the implication that hydrogen development may have for your -- on your business models and market positioning. And the third question is if you can update us on your current negotiations for gas contract renegotiation with Egypt and Colombia.
Francisco Reynés Massanet
executiveSo I will start with the working capital. Regarding to the why, we have to keep into always in mind that if we look at our net -- our revenues, our revenues have been reduced by 2 -- almost EUR 2 billion compared to last year. So that's one of the main drivers. And actually if you look at which are the businesses that have been the greatest improvement on the working capital on the commercialization in the LNG business, which are the sales on which sales both in volume management price have decreased the most. So that's what explains most of the improvement in working capital. Also in gas distribution in Spain, there is a transitional effect due to the transitional [indiscernible] that we've had in gas distribution. Regarding to the outlook, there is a certain level of seasonality in the working capital. So therefore we don't expect to finish to end the year with the level of EUR 720 million that we have. And this is also something that happened last year. If we looked at which was the level of working capital improvement that we had by the first half results, it was lower than which we end up having at the end of the year.
Steven Fernández
executiveJavier, this is Steven. On hydrogen, look, we are very encouraged by all the interest that is being generated around hydrogen. As you can imagine, a company like ours has assets that have often been classified or qualified as stranded assets, mainly the gas distribution networks that we have. And we've always believed that these assets are valuable and that they have a very key role to play in the energy transition. And in this respect, we are very closely monitoring all the developments in hydrogen. In fact internally, I can tell you that we have teams analyzing any opportunities that could arise. But I think it's also fair to say that we have to be mindful of the timing of the development. I think one thing is to inject and blend hydrogen into your natural gas network right now. Some of our peers are doing that. We have run some tests ourselves as well. But I think it's going to take a little bit of time for hydrogen to become mainstream. Among other reasons, because it's still not economically feasible. It's true that the costs have come down, but they are not yet at a stage where we could expect a mass rollout. Notwithstanding that, we believe that the fact that the European Union is privileging this puts us in a well position to capitalize on any opportunities that may arise in the future. And without spoiling some of the context of the content of the Capital Markets Day, you can expect Naturgy to address this issue a little more in detail when we do present it in Q4.
Francisco Reynés Massanet
executiveAnd finally regarding Egypt, as you know we had an agreement with our partners to solve the situation friendly. But due to COVID, we were not able to reach the non-stop date that would have made the agreement forceable. And at the same time we are, as we have said many times, we are open and continuing discussing with them trying to find another solution. And on Colombia, we have just been set by the end of the year, we should be expecting an arbitration resolution. And things are now on the table of the ones that should dictate this resolution, and the level of influence is 0 until that date.
Operator
operatorOur next question comes from Meike Becker from Bernstein.
Meike Becker
analystI have one. Continuing with the topic of hydrogen, could you just update us on how you are involved or what you see here in the discussion in Spain developing its hydrogen strategy? Have you give input or how you see the discussions involved here?
Francisco Reynés Massanet
executiveSo we are, as you can imagine, deeply involved with the ministry and all authorities designing the energy transition of the country, where both hydrogen and renewable gas will probably play an intricate role. We are engaging in those discussions [ to see how or not ] if we can contribute to the transition into those changes. As you can imagine, this is preliminary, but we are encouraged by the signs that we see on the government side. And from other players, by the way, because we have to think about the fact that a transition in terms of hydrogen, for example, it's not going to be done by Naturgy alone, so we welcome the cooperation of other peers. We think that together we can move forward. But at this stage, again I would emphasize that, again we hear a lot of interest in hydrogen. I think it's [ co-founded ] interest, but we have to also manage the expectations. In our view, this is not something for tomorrow. It is something where the company will be very well positioned in the future, but we have to be patient.
Operator
operatorNext, we have a question from Harry Wyburd from Bank of America.
Harry Wyburd
analystTwo earnings-focused questions, just first, I thought I'd try my luck at seeing if we could get some kind of guidance on net income. So just taking the EBITDA delta of what you've guided versus consensus for this year and taxing it and dropping it down to the net income would suggest for me something around EUR 1 billion or just over EUR 1 billion for this year. So just interested to get your view on whether you think that's fair for net income for 2020. And then secondly, just looking forward a bit, I'm trying to just understand and consider whether this is really a trough year for earnings because a lot of things have already moved. So oil has recovered. Even from the FX rates have started to improve. You've had very big increase in your restructuring costs. So they're 70% higher than they were last year, so clearly increasing the pace of removing costs from the business. So looking forward to 2021 and including sort of gas contract renegotiations, what are you thinking right now in terms of where earnings should go? Should we assume that this is going to be the worst year and that we're definitely returning to growth next year? And is there any way of sort of giving us some kind of quantification of what we could expect on some of those things I mentioned?
Francisco Reynés Massanet
executiveSo I mean regarding to give you some guidance to net income, as you said at the beginning, you are going to try your luck. But I think that it is not going to be -- we are not going to give that guidance. So maybe regarding the 2021 outlook, I think that I would appreciate a little patience. I think that we need to realize that when the company is foreseeing the Capital Markets Day, it's not going to address just 2021 but also longer than that. And considering what is going on, our reaction is not going to be purely financial. It's also going to be industrial. That's what we want to go into more detail. As the first 2 questions regarding hydrogen has put on the table, there are different projects that we are now working on that may give more visibility on that when we will disclose our industrial strategy on the Capital Markets Day. But before then, it will be premature because all of these different impacts. You should consider that they form part of also a European and Spanish political direction in terms of transition -- energy transition. They are forming also part of the different projects that are part of the agreement made by the EU just before yesterday, which means that we will get, for sure, some type of helps by the EU to continue in this direction. And in particular in Spain as you know, our ministers have been very active in enhancing the energy transition, which are finding us on a very well position to understand what -- which other implications and opportunities may arise. And altogether, we are going to explain that clearly in our Capital Markets Day. Before then, we will not disclose any look -- forward-looking figure.
Operator
operatorNext, we have a question from Manuel Palomo from Exane BNPP.
Manuel Palomo
analystI've got a few questions. One is on the dividend policy. It looks like payout ratio will be well above 100% for this year. And you said that, well, that one of the focus is to keep the current dividend policy in your forthcoming CMD. Could you explain -- at least give us a hint on how you find this sustainable? Second question is on CapEx. Contrary to, I would say, most of the sector, your CapEx has been cut. I've seen that growth CapEx in the first half is down 30%. And my question is to what extent will this jeopardize future growth and maybe the currently stated guidance for 2022 of EUR 1.8 billion net profit? Third one is on Chile. I would like to have, if possible, an update on the situation of the Chilean regulation and your expectations in terms of returns for the year 2021. And lastly, one on the bad debt level, that has increased clearly as a result of the COVID-19. I wondered to what extent you believe that it could be, or this figure could be, recovered through maybe regulatory measures adopted by the different governments.
Francisco Reynés Massanet
executiveOkay. Thank you for your question. First, on dividends, that is probably the one that I should answer very clearly. If you remember when we established our strategic plan, we defined our dividend policy based on euros per share, DPS, and not on payout. Because we have always considered cash as king and not accounting. We -- as we will have seen, we are generating free cash flow, and we have our limits of cash flow generation strong enough to support the dividend policy that we have established for the period. And accounting-wise, this is not going to be the key driver as we stated in -- during 2018. Then our intention, of course, is to maintain this approach, and that's the reason why we are clearly saying that we will hold it.
Jon Ganuza
executiveSo regarding the first question, CapEx, I think that's one thing that we must always bear in mind is too is our CapEx this first half of the year has been negatively impact due to, first of all, lockdown which has impaired some of the activities that's done. And therefore we have not been able to invest as much as we would have liked. And secondly, FX which has not only impacted negative EBITDA, but also has impacted negatively our CapEx, so I think that, that's something that we always do bear in mind when seeing the CapEx evolution. And as the Chairman has already said, I think that when we move in the Capital Markets Day in the fourth quarter with industrial plan, we also will put forward how the CapEx is going to evolve the next 2 years. And moving to the third question to regulatory regulation. On the table right now, we have the transmission review and the distribution review. On the transmission review, we are almost with the final preliminary report. But in gas energy distribution, the process is going to still -- it will take time. So therefore I think that right now, the only thing that we know is that the regulated return should be decreased, but let's not forget that that's only one of the levers that must be taken into account in this regulatory review. And until we have the final, final reports, we don't have -- know exactly what the impact is. And in the case of Chile, the economic and the political situation, it doesn't make it easy to have any outlook. On the fourth question?
Abel Arbat
executiveYes, bad debt.
Jon Ganuza
executiveBad debt, we are seeing an increase in the bad debt in commercialization in Spain, electricity distribution in Chile and Panama. And that's why one of the reasons why the credit loss that we have this first half has increased from EUR 52 million in last year to EUR 101 million this year. So yes, we're seeing an increase basically in those 3 countries. The outlook will depend on how the COVID is going to evolve.
Operator
operatorOur next question comes from Alberto Gandolfi from Goldman Sachs.
Alberto Gandolfi
analystAnd a few on my side, the first one is that just so that I'm really 100% clear. In your EUR 4 billion ordinary EBITDA guidance, is there any chance you can provide -- maybe I missed, apologies if I did -- a figure that can summarize the COVID-related impact that you do expect? Maybe excluding FX, but like the operating impact, so just trying to understand any potential rebound in future years. The second one is a bit more strategic. Can you maybe dig a bit deeper and...
Francisco Reynés Massanet
executiveExcuse me. We cannot hear you well. Could you speak louder, please?
Alberto Gandolfi
analystYes. Sure.
Francisco Reynés Massanet
executiveWe haven't heard you even the first question.
Alberto Gandolfi
analystThis better. Okay. Apologies about that. I repeat the first one. In the EUR 4 billion ordinary EBITDA guidance, can you maybe single out, and apologies if you already did, what would be the COVID-related impacts for the year? Just trying to understand the potential rebound of the profits in future years. The second one on your effectively asset rotation, let's call it transformation strategy, can you maybe dig a bit deeper? Would you, for instance, be willing to rotate assets that have lower-growth still infrastructure, maybe not in your core market? I don't know, it could be gas distribution in South America, for instance. And I guess the focus would be on renewables. So it would be interesting to see if your focus -- if your idea is mostly thinking about small developers with big pipelines or you're open to big transactions, bigger transactions. Next question is a little bit on the payout. Again, some of this will be addressed in November, but just conceptually without asking numbers, renewable companies yield 2% to 3% or less, and integrated are yielding between 4 and 5. And I was just wondering on the back of this rotation, where would you think about positioning yourself on the spectrum? I.e., a company that is going to chase growth, and therefore in '23, we would expect a significant adjustment in the payout ratio, or you will still try to balance shareholder remuneration with earnings growth? And the last, last, last follow-up on what I just heard, I've noticed that your bad debt provisions are up 40 million. Most of that was in the second quarter. Should we assume a similar figure for Q3, given that LatAm is still unfortunately in the middle of the crisis?
Francisco Reynés Massanet
executiveOkay. Sorry for my ask before, but we could not hear you very well, and sorry for asking you to repeat your questions. I don't know if we will go one by one on the same order you have stated because we are getting a little bit confused. But hopefully we will answer everything all your questions to you. On the first one regarding the COVID effect, I think that if you go to Slide #24, as you may imagine, COVID is not only impacting demand. Of course, it impacts demand, but I'm really convinced that there is some explanation of ForEx depreciation that is due to the economic downturn and this is also due to COVID. And on the others, which I'm talking about 200 million, there should be other impacts on the COVID as well. But in general, COVID is impacting overall the P&L. Then considering COVID effect of one specific item, I think that is not serious and cannot be isolated. I have seen other companies explaining that what COVID has made, but I think that they are pure speculation because the reality is that it's much, much more complicated. Second that probably touches me was about yield. What is the reasonable yield that you may expect from a utility? You have stated your figure. The question is why are we now trading on a higher figure? But this is more a question for the market than for ourselves. We will do, and I can tell you very clearly, we will do whatever is necessary in the Capital Markets Day to address all these topics. But of course, we are opening -- open to consider other portfolio rotations exactly because of the reasons you have stated. Assets with no growth, to exchange by other assets with more growth. Our intention is to work on the asset rotation side in order to capture value, monetize and crystallize existing values, and trying to deploy this cash into other projects that may expect more growth and clearly more value for the future.
Jon Ganuza
executiveMoving to the credit losses question. One of the main effects, or one of the main causes that we think is driving the increase on delinquency is the fact that in most countries, we are not able to cut customers. And as these measures go down, we think that also the delinquency rate should go back to more normal levels. In this respect, our base assumption and the one that is in the guidance that we gave, and although this goes below EBITDA level, we think that the level of credit losses that we'll see in the second half of the year will be more in line with the credit losses that we've seen in the second quarter of the year. But again, that's highly dependent on the COVID scenario. And we saw that in many of the governments, the first measure that was undertaken by many governments was to not allow cutting customers. Not allowing cutting customers is something that immediately has an impact in delinquency.
Steven Fernández
executiveSo just to clarify on the asset rotation question that you had, would we be willing to rotate assets that are low growth in your scenario, in LatAm markets even though there maybe grids and to use their proceeds to reinvest in higher-growth assets. The answer is yes. That at least depending on the valuation as always. But I think when we discuss asset rotation, I think we need to remind you guys some one of the ideas that we had in mind. One of them obviously was less EM exposure or lower EM exposure, higher cash flow visibility, et cetera. So we have to lay all those elements in deciding what assets could be put up for sale and what assets we will be deciding to buy. But I think again to summarize your hypothesis that you put here, this scenario is something that we could definitely contemplate? Yes.
Operator
operatorOur next question comes from Jorge Guimarães from JB Capital Markets.
Jorge Guimarães
analystI have two. Firstly, regarding gas networks in LatAm, is it possible to provide us with view if volumes are already recovering? And related to this, could we see in gas network anything similar to electricity networks where some not -- I would not call it recovery measures, but helping measures for distribution companies are being worked out? And this would be the first one. The second one is related to the timing of the gas contracts and the impacts on supply margin, without entering into the questions about the renegotiation of gas contracts. Just based on the typical time lag between the pricing of the benchmark and the pricing of the contract, when should we expect an improvement in gas supply margins [ since then ]?
Jon Ganuza
executiveRegarding the gas demand evolution, I would say that the picture that we have is that we have seen a slight pickup in improvement and slight improvement in, for example, the Spanish and the Argentinian market and also in Mexico. But in Brazil, the lift improvement is not so big this past week. So I think that we're seeing generally an improvement but it's still slow. And I think that what will be important is what we see after, at least in Spain, after we come back from the summer. And that's going to be highly dependent on the evolution of the economy and how the COVID-19 evolution is. So I think that there's a level of uncertainty. But to be the guidance that the Chairman gave, we are looking at a second half gas demand evolution that is more or less in line with the cash demand that we've seen in this first half. So we, to a certain level, have gone on the sales side there. So I must say that no one knows exactly how the impact of the COVID-19 will finally be. And I didn't quite understand the part on the supply contracts, what I can tell you is that we have already explained today that we have reached an agreement to sell 20 terawatts of contract per annum. And we are now working on progressing with other suppliers that are quite close to be an agreement with. But because of the confidentiality of these discussions, and discussions are not yet finished, we cannot explain you more. Of course, there will be forming part of our Capital Markets Day in terms that we will consider the new prices and the new conditions in the forecasts of the future '21 and '22 figures.
Operator
operatorAnd now we have a question from Jorge Alonso from Societe Generale.
Jorge Alonso
analystA couple of questions on my side, please. The first one is on the guidance of the EUR 4 billion of ordinary EBITDA. That -- should we consider the 167 million of restructuring costs on that, or the 300 million you mentioned that could be accounted in 2020 figures, just to clarify that? And the other one is related to the cost-cutting measures. If I'm not wrong, in the last 3, 4 years considering 2020 probably would be close to 700 to 800 just within costs accounted. Can we say that in 2021 we should be, all else equal, an impact on EBITDA due to this? And by how much? 10% of that, 15% profitability on the cost accounted?
Jon Ganuza
executiveSo first of all, regarding the guidance, the guidance is on an ordinary EBITDA basis, that does not include any capture costs. So the EUR 4.0 billion guidance again is ordinary EBITDA, therefore, it does not include capture costs. And the capture costs should be on top of the ordinary EBITDA guidance that we've given. And we still hold to the figure that we gave 2 presentation results ago where we said that it would be in the order of EUR 300 million capture costs. As far as the moving to the second question, cost-cutting measures, the commitment that we had initially for 2022 and that we said that we were going to achieve it in 2020 was EUR 500 million, everything being [indiscernible] so on a going basis. So EUR 500 million yearly. But -- and we still stick to that commitment that we said that we're going to reach those EUR 500 million by 2020 in efficiencies. But for 2021, we have not given any guidance. And I think that we would have to wait until the Capital Markets Day in order to have a clearer view of which is level of efficiencies that we aim after 2020.
Operator
operatorNow we have a question from Javier Garrido from JPMorgan.
Javier Garrido
analystI think most of the questions have already been answered, but I have still a couple. First, on your LNG business -- actually, it's 2 questions on this business. Firstly, if you could elaborate on the dynamics of the impact of timing adjustments in your purchasing costs versus your selling prices for your oil price contracts? And whether the mismatch created by the sharp drop in oil prices should start to be corrected in the second half of this year, or we should wait for next year to see any improvement there? And secondly, on the LNG business, if you could clarify in which contracts you are already in arbitration and which contracts you are still in negotiations? And then the second question would be on your buyback, your decision to suspend the buyback. If I remember correctly, when you announced it 3 months ago, you were talking of this decision being made due to both the uncertainty, but also because you were going to evaluate asset rotation opportunities and M&A opportunities. Now you have mentioned only the uncertainty as the main reason for the decision to continue to suspend the buyback. Has there been any change in the approach? I know you have mentioned that you are still looking at asset rotation. But is this a message that in the current circumstances in the -- 400 million annual expenditure in buybacks would not be enough or would not be available for M&A because of the uncertainty of the economic situation?
Francisco Reynés Massanet
executiveI will start with the first question, one, regarding the lag that we have in our Brent contracts and how it impacts the competitiveness. As I've said in the results presentations, if we look at the NBP compared with the Brent 603, that it would be the one that best represents the lag of our contracts, the figure that we've seen in the second quarter was 2.8%. If it would have been NBP compared with Brent on a pure spot basis, that figure could have been 5.5%. So that shows that the lag has a decrease -- almost half the competitiveness of our contracts compared with what would be a pure Brent spot. If we look at the forward prices and only looking at the forward prices, that figure changes. And in the fourth quarter, NBP to Brent would be 8.7%. But if we look at NBP compared with the Brent 603, they could be 10.4%. So actually we would be saying that the lag that in the second quarter has led us to our competitive business being 170 point basis worse than pure Brent spot in the fourth quarter. Actually, it means that we are 170 basis points better than would be pure Brent. But moving forward in 2021 and 2022, those figures would more or less look the same. So I would say that yes in second quarter. The first quarter, it has played against us. Already in the third quarter, and especially in the fourth quarter, it would improve our situation. The lag would be better than having a pure spot. And in 2021 and 2022, more or less, it would be equal regardless of the lag or not. Which contracts are the ones that are being actually negotiated? The ones that do have some ordinary extraordinary price will be closed. That is mainly most of the Brent oil-indexed contracts that we have, not all of them but most of them. And moving to the last question, do you want to...
Steven Fernández
executiveJavier, it's Steven here. On the share buyback, apologies for perhaps not being clear on this. The same reason is that we interrupted the share buyback in the first quarter are still valid today. I think we could all agree, we are reading every day in the press some worrisome news. So I think it's good to be prudent from that perspective. But secondly, and it's very important to highlight, we've always said that the EUR 400 million that we could invest, we could dedicate either to buy back shares or to invest. That same logic is still present, with one little caveat that again perhaps we haven't explained correctly on the presentation, which is when we think about investments, we not only think about investments from the perspective of the EUR 400 million that we have allocated either to a share buyback or to investments, but also within the context of the more than EUR 10 billion that we have in liquidity right now. And I think this is an important point that we'd like to stress once again because clearly there are concerns. And I think one of your colleagues expressed the concern previously regarding our CapEx programs. This is a company that wants to grow. We want to grow, but we want to grow responsibly. And we are looking at opportunities. When we do execute those opportunities, they'll be done because they meet our minimum equity IRR requirements. Good examples of these that perhaps have not received as much press are recent successes in Australia in renewables, for example. So we continue to look at this. I think one of the cornerstones of the Capital Markets Day, and this is hitting your concerns by the way, yours from the sell side, from the buy side is that people want to see what the company is thinking from an industrial perspective. And we do have a view, and we want to share it with you, and that's one of the targets of the Capital Markets Day. Hopefully, we'll do it successfully in a way that gives you a better sense of the direction this company is taking moving forward. But this is some industrial project and one where we will be investing. And again going back to investments, I think drawing conclusions from the investments that may have been done in the first half of the year at a time when we had a second quarter in confinement, not only in Spain but in most of the geographies where we operate, I think that's not fair, to be quite honest. I think we can draw conclusions on CapEx when we move forward and especially when you guys have all the details. And we'll provide them to you at the Capital Markets Day.
Francisco Reynés Massanet
executiveJust to add to Steven's words, I think that it has been quite clear, but I want to reinforce the idea that we are an industrial company. We have an industrial project that wants to be sustainable and long-term focus. And this is what we are going to reinforce in the Capital Markets Day. This is the reason why we are safe in defending our dividend policy and our value creation orientation. We are not here to grow for growth. We are here to grow for value creation. And we have always said that our priority is value over size.
Operator
operatorOur final question on today's call comes from Lillian Starke from Morgan Stanley.
Lillian Starke
analystI just have a couple of questions. One is just a follow-up to the LNG business. I was just wondering if you could provide a bit of color on the contracts that you canceled, the 20 terawatt hour. Are those canceled in order to be replaced with others, or they're effectively being taken out? And also, if you could just provide a bit of color whether these were gas-linked contract or oil-linked contracts? And then the second question I had was just on the commentary that you've provided in your remarks regarding the recovery of some of the costs you had incurred through the first half of the year, that you were expecting some of these to be recovered. If you could just provide a bit of color on how much is this amount, and as well what could be the timing to expect that recovery?
Steven Fernández
executiveSo on the LNG contract, the one -- the 20 terawatts that we have canceled, so the answer is no. It won't be replaced, and it's oil-linked. And we haven't said, by the way, whether or not it's LNG or not. So when we discuss gas renegotiation, gas procurement, contract renegotiations, they could be LNG or they could be pipe, okay? On the remarks made about some of the negative impacts, we expect to recover in the second half. No, we're not going to quantify them. But I think you can probably appreciate that some of them, they do make sense. Namely we see for example, demand, demand in the second quarter has been impacted. That could be something that potentially is recovered a little bit, okay? Prices could be recovered, FX. So there's a number of elements where if you look at it from a second half perspective and you compare them specifically to the second quarter, it's reasonable to assume that there will be some recovering.
Abel Arbat
executiveOkay. So thank you, everyone, for joining. This was the last question. And with this, we terminate our first half results presentation. As always, the Capital Markets team remains at your disposal for any additional questions or queries you may have. And thank you very much to everyone for joining, and keep safe.
Read the full transcript via the API
You're viewing the first half of this call. Get the complete Naturgy Energy Group, S.A. transcript — plus 248,000+ transcripts from 12,000+ companies, speaker segments, AI summaries and full-text search — through the EarningsCalls.dev API.
Get the API View API docs →This call discussed
For developers and AI pipelines
Programmatic access to Naturgy Energy Group, S.A. earnings transcripts and 248,000+ others is available through the
EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments,
full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.