Romande Energie Holding SA (REHN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome you to this investor's conference live from Morges. I would like to welcome our guests who are in Geneva, Zurich or elsewhere. As every half year, I'm with you today with Nicolas Conne, our CFO; And we have Rene Lauckner in charge of cash flow; and Caroline Monod, in charge of communication, are already eager to receive your questions in English, French or German. We will be pleased to answer them. On this illustration, you can see this mountain [indiscernible] in the Vaud Chablais. I was fortunate enough to be able to inaugurate a new small-scale hydroelectric power station for Romande Energie, Bex-Glarey Power station, which can be seen here. It will produce 7 gigawatt hours of renewable hydroelectric power, which is equal to the consumption of 3,500 households. It's the second such power station that I've inaugurated this summer. I inaugurated one in Etivaz previously. And it's the fourth one during my term of office. So you can see that our plan is continuing. Our strategy is continuing, and we are adding considerable quantities of energy. We're talking now about 20 gigawatt hours. As you will have read in our media release, today's meeting is characterized by a special economic situation with, of course, situation this year, which is particularly low in terms of results. We had already announced this. It's not a surprise. And here we have to distinguish between 2 factors. First of all, the short term that we're in now, 2023-2024, results were particularly high last year. But the results this year are likely to be very low, particularly low if you do the average. You will find the more or less the level of profitability of the previous years, you really have to take these 2 results together and compare them with one another. We will explain to you the factors which are having an impact on this year's results as we did last year when the results were particularly high. What's particularly high for us is the long term. And that means our strategy. As regards to long term, we are optimistic about the implementation of our strategy. At the end of the meeting, I'm going to announce to you some new minor changes to this strategy. Our strategy shows us that we are emphasizing development and investment in renewable energies. And these are to be seen in a favorable context, which is the explosion of renewable energies, forms of energy and the electrification of society, but also in the context of new laws, which will be more in favor of our operations. I will now give the floor to our CFO, Nicolas Conne, who's going to be telling you something about this first half year and the changes in the market and regulatory conditions.

Thank you, Christian. The energy world is changing. And these changes are gaining pace in recent months. First of all, in terms of market conditions, which you can see on the screen. You can see the spot price in recent years. And you can see straight away there are 3 phases which are completely different from each other. First of all, before 2022 market prices, you can see the detail, April, May 2020. Prices didn't really very much, and it's very rare, they were negative. And we all -- then we all experienced the energy crisis in 2022-2023, which gave wild swings in prices we've never seen before. It was extremely special situation. It was due to the geopolitical reasons like Ukraine. We need to remember about the risk hanging over nuclear power in France at that time as well. And then prices started to ease in mid-2023. The world changed. Things are different from that time onwards. We can see -- if we spot -- shown the spotlight in April, May 2024, price volatility was much higher. This is due to climate conditions, rapid climate change and also a ramp-up in solar power which we hadn't seen before, which caused a surge in the grid, which created extremely high volatility in prices. If markets are changing, regulations are changing as well. We've seen in recent years, different initiatives in federal circles. We can -- the [ Solar Express, wind Express ], which were designed to speed up development of these infrastructure. Also seen in continual level different changes. The Renewable Energy Act, which is coming in 2025, we hope, which will give -- would speed up the renovation of the housing stock. But the highlight is the referendum in June, which told us the Electricity Act will come in or come in step-by-step in 2025 and 2026. We still need to see what the ordinances are going to be like, but we can tell you straight away some hard facts which will have a significant impact on Romande Energie. The first is the average price is going to be scrapped. This is where we combine purchases from regulated and eligible customers at the determined price. This method is very negative, and it will be scrapped, and they won't have any more effects on our figures in 2026. We also published our tariffs in 2025 a couple of days ago, and 1 new point is that we can switch to a quarterly basis for feeding tariffs for people producing solar energy. We can also mention there will be also local energy communities which will be introduced, which combines -- combining producer and consumer within the same community. These are already known facts. One key aspect of the law isn't ratified is how market resales will be treated when we have surplus energy and we need to get rid of it on the market, either how the loss -- at the moment, the loss or the profit from market resales cannot be taken into account when we determine future tariffs. Another element concerning federal council is also in consultation and new law about the grids. And so there's a doubt over how -- how the WACC will evolve for grids. That could decline in the future. The first 6 months of the year were marked by some success stories as well, there are achievements by our group. But also, we were -- we face a challenge in terms of our financial results. If we start with our achievements. If we look at Romande Energie Service. And as we said during the full year results presentation, a new company has been formed, ID GO Management, which started trading on the first of January 2024. And this is a company which provides renovation -- energy renovation services. It's a full-service company which helps owners of buildings or portfolios of buildings, that helps them to reduce the carbon output of these buildings. Because we know this is 1 of the main sources of pollution -- carbon pollution, 25% nationwide. Christian has already talked about Energy Solutions and talked about the hydro plants which have been inaugurated. I won't talk about that now, but there's also a flagship project, which started at the beginning of the year. And this was done with a company in Aigle. And it's a wonderful -- it's a circular economy in action because it's a ground-based solar plant, which is going to produce electricity and use electrolysis -- is going to produce hydrogen, which would be used on-site in the production process. So you can see the convergence of different fluid flows. You've got hydrogen on 1 side and electricity on the other, and we hope there will be more products -- projects like this in the future. And looking at Grids, you can see a smart meter. This is -- we're rolling out this quickly. 57% of planned smart meters have been installed. This is in line with our target to cover 80% by the end of 2025, which will be 2 years ahead of schedule. And also, we've also been able to take over the business of another DSO, the [indiscernible]. So we've taken on about 20 employees from them as part of that agreement. So looking at earnings, there are some challenges, as we said, it was expected. We had to -- after a very strong 2023 to catch up effects in energy margin, also because we had a land sale, which gave us -- or 2024 was expected to be untypically low result. Why did that happen? As you saw a few slides back, the market prices have dropped -- have eased, and you saw this volatility, which has increased significantly. These different impacts had a direct impact on our energy margin. I'll show a bit later on. But the main fact is this surplus energy, this excess energy, which we have to take on as a DSO which mainly [ for the solar ], but we had to -- it had to be sold on the market. And in the current context, in this bear market, it's been resold at a loss. And this volatility, I spoke about also cost for high balancing power costs as well. So there's negative side, but there's also strong support from EOS and Alpiq, as in 2023, which gives -- helps net profits hold up. 2024 is like time out from -- in the long view of our strategy. As Christian Petit said, so what we've seen in the first 6 months will continue. The regulatory impacts will continue in the second 6 months of the year. That's why we don't expect any material impact from EBIT in the second half of the year. And also, this positive momentum is expected in 2025 and especially since 2026 as the regulatory impacts lessen like such as the average price method and also the initial take back on our investment strategy and our growth strategy, which we started in 2021. So here in the slide is the main figures, the main KPIs of the group in the first 6 months of the year. First of all, we've decided to show you 2 years of comparison, which is not what we normally do. But as I said before, 2023 was unusually strong, 2024 was unusually weak. So it's important to see -- have a long view for the figures. What we need to do is like -- is do the average of 2023-2024, and we get similar figures to 2022. So if I start on the left-hand side, in terms of revenue, the revenue was less. We will find the impacts, the things that help energy margin like market resales, balance in power. Also the pricing policy and also the [indiscernible]. So this dropped at CHF 426 million. In EBIT impact, it was even higher because at the same time, energy purchases didn't decline in the same proportions. And in addition, there was also a temporary phenomenon which happens this year to bring it back in-house our customer service center, which is part of it in the 6 months. That's more than 50 employees that have come back into the group. But that also reduces other operating expenses because we've -- these -- so this is EBIT in CHF 20 million, which is a lot less than it was in 2023, but similar to 2022. Profitability was 5%, which is less than last time. But usually, we're normally around 7% or 8% in terms of operating margin. If I move to the right-hand side, and I can talk about Alpiq and EOS because these 2 companies produced a positive net profit for us. It's important to say in terms of book adjustment. And it is to do with the revised accounting standard. It's FER 30. This new standard requires restating of accounting -- accounts of all companies to ensure that they are compliant with FER or with Swiss GAAP. So -- so 2023 was adjusted. So '22 to IFRS. And then look at Alpiq had 3 -- Alpiq has brought in CHF 40 million over the first 6 months and CHF 8 million from EOS over the first 6 months in associate income. So that brings us to a net profit of CHF 66 million, which is 60% debt margin. In terms of looking at business units, there are 2 main messages. The first is stability, which we can see. In terms of Grids and Romande Energie Services, there's a very low reductions. This is not material in the first 6 months and obviously, we can then see how energy margin as Energy Solutions. We'll start talking about that first. Revenues is linked to energy margin. I'll tell you a bit more in the next 2 slides. We can also point out the other pillars, which are the other pillars of the investment like France and district heating are developing because that went up from CHF 1 million to CHF 5 million in the first 6 months of the year from France, heating networks and solar. And [indiscernible] lost is -- was hit -- that was hit by a different situation in this last 6 months of the year. It was -- it gained 6 months ago from income from the winter storage system, but that didn't happen this year. And another thing was the narrowing gap between peak and base load prices. Looking at Grids, the main thing is the corollary between regulatory constraints in terms of energy margin basically the average price, which also impacts the cost of -- cost of network grid losses, and that was CHF 3 million less. The other effects are immaterial and offset -- were offset by higher WACC. So looking on to Romande Energie Services. We had a small drop in revenues, but that's because the street lightning was shifted into the grid business unit. That was not significant also, but we're very happy. The backlog is full and is even growing, thanks to activities in property innovations through ID GO. In short, profitability is still around 2%. So if we look -- if we have shown a spotlight on the energy margin to understand how this -- how it has contracted from [ CHF 36 million ] in last year to CHF 3 million this year, first 6 months. You can see the in pink, you can see market resales. This is due to higher solar feed-in. The second, which is linked to the situation, is the cost of balancing power. When suddenly the sun appears or goes in, it wasn't expected, that creates a difference in terms of the energy arriving in the grid, and that gives rise to -- that gives rise to cost for balancing power costs, which are much higher this time around, CHF 5 million. Third factor is the pricing policy, which we can cut into 2 things. First is a regulatory constraint. It's a drop -- it's a reduction of authorized margin on the [ candle ] tower. And the other factor is CHF 4 million is the choice that we made in our 2024 tariffs to cut the price of the energy component to offset the higher grid usage fee. But there's something which you can't see on this slide. It's impact of the average price, basically how cost is -- we cost using the purchases of regulated eligible pricing, which gives us prices, same everybody. And it doesn't change very much. It's about -- it was [ CHF 15 million ] last year and CHF 50 million this year. But thankfully, there will be changes in regulations, which will cancel this out in 2026. 1 slide which we're going to try and explain to you how this works, what makes life difficult for us in managing energy, start on the left. You can see this chart, which shows in light gray, the main -- the first component of our supply, which is -- these are the purchases we buy forward 3 or 4 years before delivery. Sometime -- you can go from the first -- it can be half yearly, it could be quarterly, and it can be monthly. We fine-tune this and we buy this energy forward based on our forecast for consumption and also the generation from our own installations, which is a part you can see in turquoise. So what we can see here? On the left-hand side between January and March we can see the consumption that's by the black line is lower than what we expected. But the reason for that was a mild winter, so less demand. But then we also had a rainy winter, which gave us to an excess generation of our own [ generation ] facilities, and that's why it's higher than the black line. And if I look -- go to the right of the same chart, we can see -- we can see solar production, which is in yellow. And the rapid rise we've seen in recent months means that we have -- we end up with excess energy, which is much higher than forecast in both these situations. This energy has to be resold onto the market. In reality, we resell the gray blocks to simplify the explanation. So what we bought in 2023, year 2023, during the crisis, that accounts for the losses because it has to be resold. If we stay -- if we look at the solar again, we can perhaps basically say, perhaps we don't need to buy the long-term energy and then we will be close to the demand from our customers. But in reality, the situation, we can see this is shown -- this is day by day on this chart. But if we start from the right-hand side and look at our solar production in June 2024, we can see the solar generation is not linear, but it has peaks. It peaks between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. in the afternoon, depending on sunshine. So even what we can see here come very wildly during the day. So we need to be like a weather forecaster to understand what's going on. But everyone has the same weather forecast. When they are known, we can adjust our position. We can resell positions. If everyone sells at the same time, then it relates to losses, but there's also the effect of both the conditions on this given day. I mentioned there was cloud cover, and suddenly, all of a sudden, the sun appears, and then we end up with too much solar. You can see the chart on the low -- right. You can see the price of the balancing power that hertz in the grid stays always the same. And you can see the volatility of these balancing power prices in the first 6 months of the year going from minus 15,000 up to plus 15,000. It means we're buying when it's too expensive, and we're selling into a negative prices on balancing power. So let's look at our cash flow now. I won't spend too much time on this, but I just want to say the cash flow from operations is hit by the same variations as our P&L because these market sales, the pricing policy and energy costs. This leads to cash outlays and it hits -- impacts our profitability temporarily. Secondly, in terms of CapEx, okay, we're a bit -- we're a bit delayed this year. We need to know at this point last year, we invested significantly, for example, to finalize the Sainte-Croix wind farm and also the hydro power plant, which Christian mentioned just now. So we don't have the same good CapEx this year, but we need to be confident because the pipeline, whether it's district heating or other areas, is still strong. Another element which will help, we did give for the transition. We also did this -- contracted a green loan, which is a new source of financing, which enables us to diversify our financing. Which is part of the green finance framework, which we established when we issued our green bond 2 years ago. This is a new fashion. Our investments may be lagging, but we are still significantly investing because we already allotted all of the green bond funds. And that was at the end of 2023. As you can see, there are some pillars of sustainability on the screen. I just want to mention, there are 3 pillars. The first is we added into our full year targets for EBIT. We've added EBIT -- we adjust our EBIT guidance depending on the cost of carbon emissions. So we are combining nonfinancial and financial. The second is to be -- a main challenge of our carbon footprint is procurement. Almost 2/3 of our carbon footprint are indirect emissions. And we are -- we're implementing a new sustainable procurement policy, which requires systemic assessment in terms of our sustainability of our suppliers. And secondly, the CSR criteria is way to 20% in all tenders. And lastly, -- and we -- most important to have teams who are aware about sustainability issues to understand the sustainability issues. So we've set an ambitious target and we've targeted to train 80% of our employees through a 90-minute training program before the end of the year. And I hand back to Christian.

Thank you, Nicolas. For the last part of this presentation, we're going to leave the short-term and move on to the long-term. In 2023, we announced our new strategy based on massive investment in renewable energies and in the energy transition. Halfway between the start and the end of the period to 2021-2026, we're going to give you an intermediate review. Top left, you can see the development of our own production has continued with our plus-30 gigawatt hour increase in solar output in Switzerland, particularly for industrial and commercial customers. And then the implementation of the Sainte-Croix, the commissioning of the Sainte-Croix wind farm, which is generating 22 gigawatt hours of additional power. As Nicolas has already mentioned, we are continuing the rollout of smart meters with more than 150,000 smart meters already rolled out. Investment in district heating is continuing. We're at the beginning of the opening of large construction sites. But you can see that in these first 3-years, thermal generation has also increased significantly. It's almost equivalent to what we did in the area of electricity in solar with solar generation, and that will speed up. We're also a major actor in mobility -- electric mobility with -- the aim is not to equip public parking spaces, but private parking spaces in condominiums. We've already equipped nearly 15,000 parking spaces, and that gives us a de facto monopoly for the future. Because whether the purchases of user -- electric vehicles are tenants or property owners, they will have to go through us. Now for 2021-2024, we wanted to improve the profitability of Romande Energie Services. And that was the case in 2023, we had an EBIT of CHF 5 million. I've already mentioned Click&Charge. And we've also invested in Swiss startups, sustainability start-ups in our region. And we've also invested in a BNP Paribas Solar Impulsive Fund, which enables us to get a view of the development of cleantech technology in Europe. Nevertheless, as the conditions are evolving, we have proposed to our Board of Directors that the strategy be updated and also that its time horizon be extended up to 2030. Why? Well, because the context is evolving. I won't come back to the market. Nicolas has already explained that to you. What is remarkable is the explosion and acceleration of the development of solar power in Switzerland. This year, 10% of electricity will be generated by solar in Switzerland. So that means we will have constructed the equivalent of a new nuclear power station in Switzerland. So this solar power generation is also decentralized. It calls for a reinforcement of our investments in Grids and it gives rise to this volatility, this market volatility, which requires flexibility and storage capacity in order to cushion the sometimes devastating impact of volatility, as Nicolas already explained to you. In the center, you will see a mention of the legislation and regulations. The Swiss people massively ratified the Electricity Act, and the Federation has also been taking initiatives to promote renewable energies. This, of course, is favorable to our company. Cantonal programs, in particular, are aimed at promoting stricter regulations for buildings in terms of energy. That's the case of the new Vaudois Energy Law, which is soon going to be adopted and will set a renovation obligation for extremely poorly insulated buildings. And that was the reason why we set up companies like ID GO and why companies like that will prosper in the future. There's been a resumption of negotiations between Switzerland and the EU, particularly as regards the agreement on electricity. If they are successful, that could have 2 results for RE. First of all, the complete liberalization of the market. We have to prepare for that. And the obligation to legally separate our grid activities, which could give rise to a separation between the monopoly type activities and the other activities. We've already invested CHF 500 million in the energy transition. We've achieved notable successes in the field of heat generation and solar, rollout has been satisfactory. And it's now important at the halfway stage to place the emphasis once these projects have been materialized on implementation, which measures up to expectations in terms of profitability. There are some things which are not changing in this 2030 strategy. Our mission is still to make Western Switzerland the first net zero region in the country to help make the sustainable world materialize, which will be better for our children. And at the same time, we are focusing on our 3-pillar target, economic, environmental and social. All 3 of these go hand-in-hand. Each 1 reinforces the other. There are a few changes which we are making to our strategic initiatives. As regards to customer solutions. We confirm that we are becoming a pivotal player in decarbonization. Thanks inter alia to the creation of the company, ID GO. We're also preparing a new strategy with a view to the potential market liberalization. I will come back to that in the next slide. As regards rollout of infrastructure, grids 2030, we have to prepare the grid for the explosion of solar power generation. That initiative is continuing. The hydropower plant, which I illustrated in my introduction, that is continuing in order to reinforce our own generation and to stabilize the tariffs we charge our customers. The thermal energy plan is bearing fruit. We have signed agreements with a number of Vaudois municipalities and which measure up to our expectations. And there is a new initiative, another new initiative in order to cope with this explosion of solar energy. I will say something about that in the next slide, which concerns flexibility in storage. What you don't see, of course, is the hidden part of the iceberg. All these new professions require changes in our workforce. Some jobs are disappearing because they are becoming integrated in the day-to-day work of our teams. 3 have been selected to remain, 2 were already there. Environmental responsibility has to affect all our trades and professions. And we really have to focus on decarbonization. We have to calculate our carbon footprint on each renewable energy initiative, and we are going to emphasize that with our new Sustainability Officer, Sustainability Officer, Florence Schmidt. Customer focus, customer orientation is continuing and being reinforced, particularly with a view to market liberalization. Then of course, economic performance. Now that the projects are underway being developed, we have to ensure economic profitability. New initiatives now. We have to control our margins, which we want to be competitive, the production of the kilowatt hour. We have to utilize digitalization in order to be more efficient in our operations. By the way of a -- an introduction, we -- by way of a preamble, we recently launched our new website, which I invite you to consult. And you will see the groundwork that's been done in this regard. Our IT has to be more customer oriented, easier to use, and we have to control our costs in the services area. In the center -- and this is -- we have to focus on flexibility in storage, Alpiq has already focused on this. Now in the past, we used to say that what has value is production today. However, we see that production does not always have the same value. It depends on the time of day and it depends on the season or seasons. You have to have the right level of production at the right time. And to do that, you need flexibility and storage capabilities. That's important for our grid if it is to absorb generation. And thanks to our vision and artificial intelligence, we can endow our grid with more flexibility. The law gives us this possibility. We have to disconnect certain solar generation facilities at peak times. And hydroelectric power, of course, power stations can be used to store power. And also battery farms, which we are piloting at the moment at -- in the valley. And that gives us more flexibility. We have asked our Board of Directors for considerable increase in resources. Our workforce has doubled since 2021. We're also increasing our CapEx. And it's up to us now to make the best possible usage of these new resources which have been allocated to us. And in the future, we are going to focus increasingly on the deployment of these projects on the -- and on the profitability of this project. Although, of course, Nicolas has already shown you the positive contribution that these major investments are already making to EBIT. Now on the left, the electric part, you can see that our generation is progressing each year with our hydroelectric power, wind power and solar plants, both in Switzerland and in France. The bigger leap that you can see, which is scheduled for 2030, concerns the long-term contract that we have entered into for that period. It's not on production, which belongs to us. It does not require any CapEx, but it's assimilated into the new on production under the new law. That's why you see this enormous leap without seeing a corresponding increase in CapEx. In Emerald, you will see the -- that is a wind farm. We have some major projects for this in France. 3 wind farms are ready to build. We are waiting for approval from the grid operator in France. And this, which is having difficulty in keeping up with the pace of renewal of wind farms and deployment of wind farms in France. And because of that, we've had to shelve the implementation of those wind farms. And the solar plan of Romande Energie in Switzerland is continuing to develop, and that's why you can see a considerable increase in solar generation. As regards thermal generation, the trend is increasing sharply. Today, we are a relatively small district heating operator and heat generation [indiscernible] with about 60 to 80 gigawatt hours. But with the sites that we have contracted with the municipalities in Nyon already roll as well and Morges and the Montreux work is going to be starting. And in Moudon and Payerne, you can see that these major sites will -- endow us with considerable capacity, 350 gigawatt hours by 2030 and 450 by 2035. The dark red bar is the power which will be generated by local wood. That's why we are integrating forests into our plan. We are entering into 10-year contracts with forest owners. And in [ Oppens ], that's heat pumps. So lake-based distance heating. That's the case in Morges and Montreux. And it will also be the case in Rolle. We are not 100% renewable because for district heating plants, sometimes we have to build temporary mobile plants, which are fossil fuel-based or emergency stations if another power station has to be taken out of service for a while. We do still have to use some fossil-based power stations, but we are moving up to 90% renewable. So the conclusions, the underlying trends are favorable to us. The regulatory backdrop is moving in the direction that we had hoped. The electrification of society is continuing and buildings, which, of course, is favorable for our electricity and heat production, but also for our services. And the energy boom in renewables is continuing. So Romande Energie is confirming its place as a pivotal player in the decarbonization process across Switzerland. And we also have a value creation strategy for the long term with investments of CHF 1.4 billion up to 2027, and we will begin to see a return on these investments. You've already seen that that is starting, and that is going to be reinforced each and every year. Our next meetings, well, I will be speaking myself in Zurich at Investor 2024. I hope our Swiss Chairman friends will be able to attend on 18th of September, at ZKB Swiss Equity Conference in 2024. And then the traditional meetings, the full year results, which we presented in Lausanne on April 8 next year and the full year results as well in Zurich on April 9. And the AGM, we will be saying goodbye to Guy Mustaki, our emblematic President, who will be handing over next year in May. We would like to thank you very much indeed for your attention. Thank you for listening. We hope to see you again at our future meetings. Have a good day. Goodbye.