Voltalia SA (VLTSA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, to all of you who are present here and all of those who are on the video. Very happy to be with you again this morning to talk about our final annuals of 2023. Today, we will go through a series of subjects. First, I'll start with 2019 to 2023 strategic plan. Then Loan will present some of our strong strategic pillars with more information than what we provide usually to give you more granularity on our business model. Then Sylvine will continue with the financial results of 2023. And Yoni will continue with the financing strategy with more detailed information on cash and debt. And finally, I'll conclude about the outlook for the short term -- a new short-term outlook for 2024 and also more information on 2027. So let me begin by mentioning that we have delivered on our 2023 ambitions. You already know it regarding our capacity, which is now at 2.85 gigawatts. And it is also true for our normalized EBITDA where we published this morning that we are at EUR 271 million. So we checked both boxes. This means that we had a very rapid growth of these -- all our KPIs since 2019. Since as you remember, it's in 2019 that we have set these 2023 objectives. Our capacity has grown by 28% per year since 2019, which is a high number, but not as high as 35% annual growth rate for our turnover, which itself is not as high when compared to the plus 44% annual growth rate for our EBITDA, which itself is not as high as the plus 59% per year for our net income. These achievements have been the result of a lot of work by all of our stakeholders. And a special mention to all the employees of Voltalia, who during these 4 years have dedicated themselves to reaching these objectives. So thank you to all of you Voltalians. To get to this 2023 level has been a long and not so easy journey. If I take first Energy Sales. You can see that both in terms of capacity and the EBITDA generated by Energy Sales have been growing quite consistently from year to year during this 2019 to 2023 journey. When we go now to Services, it is less consistent, which is quite normal because many of our Services are generating revenues at a pace, which is less regular than producing electricity out of a portfolio of power plants. Yet, the progression is even more dynamic than Energy Sales when you look at this 2019 to 2023 flashback. At the end of the day, we have achieved in 2023, a very impressive set of results, whether they are financials or operationals. You can see here some data, which talk by themselves with big progress, not just versus 2019, but also versus 2022. And with all that in mind, let's get into the second part. Thank you, Loan.

Thank you, Sebastien. So now I would like to walk you through the business model of Voltalia, that is supported by strategic pillars. You can see here on this page that the first one is related to our Energy Sales business. We are long term. You can see the 98% of our capacity backed by long-term PPA. And when I say long, it's very long. It's 17.1 years of the remaining PPA life duration. And what is remarkable is this figure has increased compared with last year. Plus 7 months compared with last year, moving from 16.5 years to 17.1 years. And it gives us visibility. So you see here EUR 8 billion of future revenues. And why we like to be long term. It's because we don't like to be subject to volatility and fluctuation of the price of energy, for instance. It can go up, it can go down. And with that, with long-term PPA, we avoid the risk. And last point is we do prefer when the price going up because 74% of our revenues coming from PPAs are indexed on inflation, meaning out of EUR 100 of PPA, you have EUR 74 that are moving to inflation, EUR 26 that are fixed. So here, you are protected from risk with long-term PPA and competitive energy, so nonsubsidized PPA. And on the second hand, you have higher value creation, thanks to the fact that we have PPA indexed on inflation. Here on this page, we are making a focus on our secured portfolio, meaning the capacity in operation, under construction and the capacity awarded, meaning backed by signed PPA that is not yet under construction. The total secured portfolio is at 4 gigawatts, moving up by plus 10% compared with last year. And with strong diversification level, you can see that the biggest part is now Europe with 46% compared with Latin America for instance at 43%. Now I would like to focus on the second pillar, our integrated business model. Basically, we are developing, building, maintaining for ourselves and for third-party support plants. And this, historically, we have been selling more than 50% of the plants that we are developing. Historically, we have been building more than what we build for ourselves. And today, we do operate more for third parties than for ourselves. And this brings 3 main competitive advantage, I would say. The first one is we capture margin as we are in all the value chain. We capture margin from the development side, the construction and the maintenance side instead of giving this margin to the suppliers. Second element is we are able to have economy of scales, doing these for ourselves, growing and doing for third-party clients. And finally, and I think the most important thing is the higher portfolio quality. The fact that we are selling 50% of the portfolio, that means we keep 50% and we're keeping the best quality portfolio. As an illustration, I will give you that it would not have been possible to diversify our portfolio if we were not able to sell more projects in Brazil than what we keep. In this page, we wanted to give some illustration of each of development, construction and maintenance services, illustration of 2023 achievements. We sold more than 800 megawatts of development services. And my favorite example, I would say the first one is the Casqueira ready-to-build wind farm project. We sold to the Japanese company TODA. What is interesting here is the fact that we were happy to sell for a second time because we already sold a project in 2020, a 28-megawatt project to TODA. And second, the fact that we are selling this project that is ready to build with construction services. We are, for example, building the connection infrastructure for them and also the maintenance services. Moving now to the construction services, where we have more than 480 megawatts under construction for third parties. I think the best example is in Ireland with, for instance, Power Capital, where we are building 4 solar plants for a capacity of 230 megawatts. It's our biggest contract turnkey construction contract for Voltalia. And on the other hand, in a limited time, we were able to have a position where we are -- if it's not the leader, we are one of the leader of the turnkey construction project in Ireland. Finally, in maintenance services, where we have a capacity of more than 4.6 gigawatts operated for third party, meaning more than 65% compared with last year, so strong growth. You imagine here that it's just illustration of some of the contracts. One good example could be the wind farms that we operate for EDPR, a well-known renewable specialist, where we operate in Brazil more than 340 megawatts. Here, it's a good illustration that we were able to grow very fast from a poor producer to a service provider very strong to third-party clients here, notably with maintenance. Here, the third pillar is that we have a unique approach to corporate. With Voltalia core business selling directly to corporate, the corporate PPA, corporate power purchase agreements. So between -- direct agreement between company to Voltalia. And on the other hand, with our subsidiary, Helexia, that we acquired in September 2019. That is a specialist in self-consumption and for instance, solar rooftop for, you can imagine, a large warehouse. And here, what is striking is the level of growth of Helexia here. We were able to move from 56 megawatts of the portfolio of Helexia to more than 650 megawatts since September 2019. So we multiply by 11.6 the size of the portfolio. So growth and on the other hand, Helexia is positioned on the fast-growing segment of activity and notably with solar rooftop right now in Europe. We give here illustration of the 448 megawatts of PPA we signed in 2023. Here, you see that the biggest part, as illustrated earlier in the corporate, with corporate PPAs of 167 megawatts and Helexia 166 megawatts. For Helexia -- the biggest contract ever for Helexia with Comerc 90 megawatts of contracts. And maybe an illustration of interesting corporate PPAs, it's with Leroy Merlin 23 megawatts and with SNCF 37 megawatts. And why it's interesting, we signed a PPA in 2023. And today, it's already producing -- we have 2 plants already producing for the client and delivering energy for them. Here you see on the right part of the slide that we are -- we have signed mainly in Europe and mainly in solar. Finally, moving to the fourth pillar of Voltalia, it's our pipeline of projects in development. So that means it gives a good visibility of the future growth of Voltalia as the pipeline is all the projects that gather mainly the fact that -- it's a data that is audited and the fact that is allowing to have 4 criteria in those projects. First, we secured the land for them. Second, the project, we launched already the permitting and the different analysis and studies. Third, we secured the connection to the grid. And fourth, the fact that we -- it's financially viable. Today, this portfolio amounts to 16.6 gigawatts growing by 17% compared with last year. And just as an illustration, solar, 62%, it shows how far the solar is competitive today in the difference due to the decrease of the price of the solar. If I think of the 10 past years, the cost of the components have been divided by almost more than 10 -- since the past 10 years. Here, what we provided is the funnel that we did provide in the last Capital Market Day in October 2022. It gives here the idea of how the projects are maturing. So you see here that from the top to the bottom, each of the steps are maturing, allowing us to grow. And you see at the end, the capacity in operation and the construction at 2.9 gigawatts. Now I will let the floor to Sylvine for the financial results. Thanks.

Thank you, Loan. Let's have a look to 2023 financial results. It has been a challenging year because we were in an inflationary environment. We did face a Brazil blackout and we also had the El Nino effects. However, despite all this context, would like to draw your attention to the main KPIs. We indeed increased the production by 18%. While the turnover increased by 6%, but out of which 23% of growth for the energy sales of turnover. We did reach an EBITDA -- published EBITDA of EUR 241 million, normalized of EUR 271 million, which is plus 91%. And finally, we get a positive net income of almost EUR 30 million. So let's have a look first about the turnover. So here, we built it in a way so that you can understand what is the contribution per plant. So we started from 2022 turnover, increased by the plant operated before 31st of December '22. You had plus EUR 12 million of volume effect and then plus EUR 6 million due to the price effect on those plants. Besides, we had the full year effect of the plants put into operation during 2022. And finally, out of Energy Sales turnover, the biggest impact is coming from all the plants commissioned during 2023. Besides, we have development and construction turnover, which decreased by minus EUR 33 million, while operation and maintenance increased by EUR 5 million. I'll come back to Services more in detail just after. So overall, the turnover increased by 6%, reaching EUR 495 million. What about EBITDA? So we had followed the same approach and at first, let's have a look to 2022 to 2023 published EBITDA. So thanks to the plants operating for more than 2 years. We benefit from the better performance year-on-year plus EUR 11 million. And we had, on the top of that, plus EUR 7 million from the new plants commissioned in 2022 full year effects. And finally, the contribution of plants commissioned during this year of '23. You'll notice here that while the turnover was a negative effect for services. Here, we had a positive impact on the EBITDA of plus EUR 52 million. So we, therefore, reached EUR 241 million of 2023 EBITDA. Secondly, we have the contribution up to normalized EBITDA. So first, we had the production effect. Since we had a lower level of production versus a long-term solar, wind and hydro average, it results in a positive step to normalized EBITDA. On the other hand, we had a stronger Brazilian real and therefore, it results in a negative step to the EBITDA. And then we end up with the EUR 271 million normalized EBITDA for 2023. So let's deep dive now for Energy Sales first. So turnover increased by 23%. And we had the contribution indeed on a year-on-year better performance. For instance, in France, we benefit from a better load factor as well as availability. The full year effect of the plants was noticed mainly in Brazil. And for 2023, we commissioned plants in Brazil, France, Portugal and Albania. Besides the perimeter volume effect, we also had a benefit of positive price effect, thanks to our long-term power sales contract, which are indexed. And it was partially neutralized by early generation revenue in 2022, which, by definition, were not overflowed in 2023. As for the EBITDA, I'd like to highlight both increase on value and profitability with a plus 6 points of margin ratio, driven by new plants early generation, which was booked in other revenues, that's why you've not seen above. The temporary negative effect due to commissioning of solar plants during the winter time, while we have a long-term positive effect from a solar plants with higher margin than the wind plants. And finally, overall, monitoring our OpEx, we have scale effect on operating expenses. These are the main drivers, which end up reaching EUR 195 million of EBITDA for 2023 on Energy Sales. Meaning, a 65% margin. So back to the load factor I was just mentioning before. We, overall, have in Brazil on the right side, a good performance of our resources. However, and we can notice that Voltalia long-term average in both cases, is better than the country long-term average. Still, wind is point of attention since we do have the El Nino phenomenon who is impacting the resource. Looking at solar and in France, you can see that it's in line with the long-term average, but better than our peers. Now having a look on Services activity. This slide on the top line in the table gives you both internal and external activity, and reflect the fact that we had a strong internal activity reminding the 795-megawatt, which were either put into operation or in construction during the year of '23. However, since it's eliminated, I'd like to focus on the contributive turnover after elimination. So it decreased by 12%, reaching EUR 195 million. Why that? Due to, first, a minus 16% decrease in dev and construction due to temporary lower volume in the activity to third-party clients. While we had plus 25% increase in the O&M, thanks to new contracts signed during the period. Where has the turnover decreased? We had an EBITDA multiple by 6.8. So where does it come from? First of all, driven by developments. We did sell more than 800 megawatts mostly greenfield projects, with construction and maintenance contracts in Brazil for 702 megawatts, as well as we sold project in operation in both Brazil and France for a total of 92 megawatts. Second, we had construction activity. Despite the solar panel prices, which weighted on our operational margin, we did have an EBITDA growth mainly in Ireland, Mauritania and France. And third, O&M operation and maintenance activity. We signed new contracts. New contracts, including construction and maintenance or maintenance only, which reached a record level, and here, we give you 2 figures, one in Spain, a contract amounting to 347 megawatts, and one in Brazil of 212 megawatts. Conclusion is, overall, the EBITDA margin is 32% for Services activity. Keeping in mind that according to our IFRS standards, the sales of developments of project generates EBITDA, but no turnover. So let's deep dive in the development and the sales of project activity. Project sales is core business in Voltalia. We sold ready-to-build projects in France and Brazil. It accounts for 9x price-to-cost multiple. This shows how valuable it's for Voltalia to develop internal projects. As for operating projects, we sold projects in Brazil and in France. The equity price value and not the enterprise value is around EUR 1 million per megawatt. I believe it's an interesting KPI to measure the Voltalia's portfolio. Finally, regardless the times of the sales, we continue to provide maintenance services, which again shows the benefit of our integrated model. Let's have a look below the EBITDA, how to reach the net income of EUR 30 million. Main items, depreciation and amortization. It's driven by 2 aspects. The first one is depreciation linked to the commission plant in 2022 full year effect plus the one in 2023. And we also did book an impairment during 2023 on the stock due to some decrease of value of solar panel and some stocks, which were destroyed due to a burn in warehouse -- warehouse which was burnt. Then in terms of income and expenses, so it amounts to EUR 18 million and it arise mainly from some nonrecurring expense extraordinary one, which refers to regulation in France, taxe inframarginale as well as a similar one in Portugal. And we did have a reversal of provision in 2022, which was related to a reversal of depreciation of a real estate building that we didn't have in 2023. For the financial results, it amounts to EUR 57.9 million. And it's driven by 2 points. First, the debt financing of the plants commissioned. We had short-term drawdowns revolving facilities, which impacting the structure of our financial costs as well as the full year effects on new project financing. I'll not go too much into detail since you will have a full focus on the financing strategy just after. Taxes. It shows 2 points. It reflects the improvement of our profitability and therefore, increase in taxable income as well as the tax effect on the projects sold during the period. And finally, the net result group share amount to EUR 29.6 million, which is EUR 37 million increase compared to prior period. What about our balance sheet? So we had a total balance sheet of EUR 3.8 billion mainly linked to -- the increase is mainly linked to the increase of fixed assets. So we did record as an increase in construction of plants that we still have in our pipe nowadays, plus the development of projects, which are ongoing. Just as a reminder, we had 2,370 megawatts of capacity power plants in operation at the end of 2023. So it's in line as well as the construction ongoing. As for the current and noncurrent assets, it increased by EUR 159 million. It's close to the increase of other current and noncurrent liabilities and mainly refers to our working capital related to the Services activity. Cash and equivalents remain in a strong position, EUR 319 million, decreased by 17% since we temporarily used the cash for accelerating the construction of own plants before finalization of their long-term loans. And it also -- it allows us to benefit from attractive electricity price in Europe, I mentioned earlier with early generation approach. Equity share amounts to EUR 1.3 billion. Financial debt to EUR 1.9 billion. It's 46% increase compared to prior periods. The financial debt in 2023 is lower than the fixed assets one. And you will see in detail together with Yoni how we used our cash and how we managed the debt financing during 2023. Finally, other current and noncurrent liabilities indeed are mainly the trade payables from power plant contraction operating activities. And therefore, we end up with our total balance sheet of EUR 3.8 billion. So now let's have a look more into detail to the financing strategy with Yoni.

Thank you very much, Sylvine. Good morning, everyone. So yes, so let's start now with the financing. So I'd like to walk you through the cash flow statement, which is, as Sebastien said, more detailed than usually. First, cash flow from operation amounts a solid EUR 115 million despite EUR 73 million of noncash items. Those items include notably a payment shift from a sell of project. Working capital and company taxes are, I would say, normal level. So no particular comments. In terms of the cash flow from investments, the CapEx reaches EUR 694 million in '23, reflecting the strong '23 delivery, but as well the beginning of investment of the '23-'27 CapEx plan to deliver the 2017 guidance. For the financing cash flow, I will comment just after the net EUR 564 million increase in debt. And you can see here the EUR 73 million of interest paid, first in construction, but as well paid in operation. At the end, the cash flow statement leads to a robust EUR 319 million of cash position. Now coming to the bridge for the debt variation. So cash wise, we have drawn EUR 689 million of debt and reimbursed EUR 125 million. Accounting-wise, you can see that the debt coming from IFRS 16 is up EUR 16 million and accrued interest increased a little bit with EUR 12 million. The gross debt finally stands at EUR 1.9 billion, resulting in a EUR 1.6 billion of net debt at the end of '23. So coming to the debt strategy. In Voltalia, we have a consistent business strategy and debt strategy, and I will start then by the PPAs. As you know, at Voltalia, we cherish a long-term PPA strategy. As a matter of fact, having long-term PPAs allow us to mobilize long-term project finance, which limits the risk for Voltalia. Lowering the risk we can have better bank conditions with, of course, PPAs, which are long term, which are indexed and which are with blue-chip counterparties. So with that, we get better conditions, so longer tenure, better margins. Then, of course, the swap for long-term financing are available, preventing Voltalia from interest rate exposure on operating projects. And finally, as you can see, residual product debt maturity is way lower than the remaining life of the PPAs, meaning we amortize the financing over the PPAs, avoiding any refinancing risk at the end of the PPA, which is as well, very important for us. So that's why we love long-term PPA. What about corporate debt? Corporate debt is initially very important for us because it creates value. Short-term value, we can have flexibility. We can anticipate construction, not waiting for project finance to be in place. And it can be very value accretive in some kind of environment. For instance, it's been very useful and a big competitive advantage during the energy crisis in Europe. Another illustration for the long-term value creation this time is the ability of Voltalia to bridge long-term project finance for Helexia, for instance, which built actually a bunch of small assets, which is time consuming to finance. So we are building a sum of assets. And then we are refinancing. And this is possible through our corporate debt. What is important here is I would like also to precise that we do not have in Voltalia junior debt. And the leverage stands at 53% this year with a debt net over EBITDA of 6.6x, a bit decreasing -- slightly decreasing compared to '22. It was at 6.8x. Finally, in terms of the cost of debt, the cost of debt increased slightly to 5.9% compared to 5.3% in '22 at group level coming, of course, from the increase of interest rates, but it's important to precise that the new PPA price are higher in order to reflect the increase in interest rates. Now let's come to the main characteristics of the debt. So those are the, I would say, classic pie charts you know. But the first one, is very, very important, the debt structure. So as of today, 71% of the debt is hedged, is -- sorry, is project finance. Actually, 11% is on the verge to be project finance as it's bridged and under finalization. It remains 29% of the green bonds and corporate debt. The second pie chart comes to currency breakdown, whereas the main interest is just to reaffirm that 100% of the project finance of Voltalia is raised in the same currency than the PPAs. Third pie chart about the rate structure. As I said, 85% of the debt is either hedged, pre-hedged or indexed. So it remains a 15% variable rate structure over the debt of Voltalia. Another indicator, which is very important for us as a mission-driven company, is that 89% of our corporate debts are other green bonds through a green framework or sustainable linked loans, meaning that the margin of the loans is indexed on sustainable KPIs. Finally, I'd like to remind you the composition of our corporate facilities syndicated loan -- of our syndicated loans. So all the banks supporting Voltalia for years, and I would like to thank them. It's now time to -- for Sebastien to conclude this presentation.

Thank you, Yoni. And now let's look at future, short term and medium term. First, we are setting an objective for 2024. So the current year. It's our new practice. We'll do this annually providing every year. So the guidance is for the current year. What is the level of our guidance? First, regarding capacity. We target to have at the end of this year, a portfolio of 3.3 gigawatts, of which 2.5 gigawatts will be in operation. Then about EBITDA, and this is the published EBITDA versus the normalized EBITDA. We target an EBITDA of EUR 255 million, of which EUR 230 million will come from Energy Sales. As you see, Energy Sales will represent a significant proportion of our 2024 EBITDA, boosted a lot by the full year effect of all the plants we have put online in late 2023. Giving you more details on 2024 is on one important subject, which is our CapEx plan to reach our 2027 objectives. You already know the table on the left, which is the series of sites, which are under construction now. In fact, this is -- these are the sites that were under construction on January 1st. Since then, some capacity has been put in operation. But -- and most of it will be put on line this year. But in parallel to these projects that you see here, we will also launch construction of new sites, which will represent over 400 megawatts of additional projects in 2024. So additional 400-megawatt sites under construction to be added this year. These are megawatts, now what's about euros? The 2023-2027 CapEx plan that was outlined in November 2022 during our last Capital Markets Day was a plan of EUR 2.5 billion to EUR 3 billion of CapEx. Out of that, EUR 300 million have already been spent in 2023. And we think that an extra EUR 500 million will be invested this year. Together, so for a total of EUR 800 million, it represents roughly 30% of the 2027 plan. So as you see, we are advancing at a fast pace towards this objective. This brings me to the 2027 objectives themselves, where, on one hand, we confirm and on the other hand, we provide you with more details. Let's talk first about the capacity. We confirm the 5 gigawatt target that we provided you already. And we add an additional information, which is that out of these 5 gigawatts, 4.2 gigawatts will be in operation in 2027. Then we confirm also our target of normalized EBITDA of EUR 475 million. And we provide you extra information. First, out of this EUR 475 million, EUR 430 million will come from Energy Sales. There, again, a relatively high proportion because services can vary from an year to another. And we want to be sure to have a cautious objective for 2027. And which means that we've assumed so far level of Services lower than average for 2027, which I think provides us quite a bit of visibility. Then at the bottom right of the page, we also provided some sensitivities to help those who want to analyze and to understand better our 2027 targets. And we've run 2 sensitivities. The first one is about exchange rate, where we calculated the impact of plus or minus 1 impact on the Brazilian real exchange rate. And whether it is plus or minus 1, it would have an impact on EBITDA of plus EUR 35 million or minus EUR 25 million, depending if it's plus or minus 1. Then the second sensitivity is about power generation, where we run numbers where in 2027 we would have the same magnitude of deviation that we have seen in 2023. The impact there would be plus or minus EUR 48 million, which impact is proportionally less than in 2023 because in 2027 we will have more solar capacity proportionally than what we had in 2023. And as specialists know, the year-to-year variation of solar is smaller than the year-to-year variation of wind. Anyway, it would -- the probability to have in 2027 an impact of the size of 2023 is smaller for last reason, which is that with portfolio growth, you have also portfolio diversification, and climate would be -- the climate variations would be much more spreaded over many sites and countries. Finally, we added new ESG guidances. We confirm, of course, our guidance about avoided CO2 emissions of 4 million tonnes for 2027. We add 3 new ones. The first is -- target is to be at 100% of our capacity, having a stakeholder engagement plan aligned with the World Bank standards, the second -- compared to 44% today. The second target is to have 50% of our solar capacity, which is located on co-used land or upgraded soil. This is -- co-used is, for instance, to have solar panels on rooftops, on parking lots, on agrivoltaic -- on agriculture land. And today, we are at 37%. Finally, we have a target to be 35% lower for our carbon intensity. This is versus -- this is in 2030 versus 2022. This target is aligned on the standards required by European regulation. And this is why it's 2030 and not 2027. And we've already reduced it by 4% since 2022. Voila, and I'd like just to wrap up before answering all of your questions with the help of the team. And I'd like to highlight a few takeaways. First, we've delivered the 2019-2023 plan. And this journey was not easy since we have not changed the target during COVID. You know many, many companies in or out of our sector have done so. We have not and yet we delivered the plan. Second, we tried to give you more details and more data on the foundation of our business model showing its strength, its robustness since it doesn't depend on the future price of -- electricity price in the market. It does not depend -- we are resilient in case we want to accelerate in given countries versus others. Thanks to faculty to develop more sites than what we keep in the balance sheet at the end of the day. Third takeaway, of course, our financial results. With an EBITDA that has grown by 76%, generating net income of EUR 30 billion. Fourth takeaway, thanks to Yoni, I think we provided quite more information on our financing strategy with a series of actions and data. Finally, last but not least, our 2024 and 2027 objectives that are either confirmed when they were preexisting or more detailed than when they were not. Before answering your question, we have a 1-minute video that will refresh all of us before going through your questions, please. [Presentation]

Thank you.

I think we can begin the question in the room because we -- do we have questions in the room? Okay.

Harald Aschehoug from Redbridge. I have 2 questions for you, Sebastien. The first one, in the current context, if you look at the way the share price has gone in the last month or quarters and the fact that you have a very strong majority shareholder, can you shed a bit of light regarding their intentions and especially because if I were them, I would look at the share price and the value of the company and take it private to enjoy it for myself. So if you have any views on that, that would be helpful. And second question regarding the convertible that you have maturing next year for EUR 250 million. What are your plans about it? What are you going to do? Because obviously, looking at the share price, the possibility that it converts seems rather slim. And so as of right now, do you have the means to repay it? Do you have the lines to do that right now?

Thank you to you. On the second part of the question, the means that if I use present time, so the means we have in April would be using the available part of our revolving credit facilities is the available part this April is higher than the convertible, I think so, right? Yes, it is. So the answer is yes. The cash available in April is sufficient to repay the convertible. The second question is a bit more strategic about the take private by our majority shareholder. Where to start with? Clearly, the stock price is at a very low level. All the analysts have targets above the current price. We've met many, many shareholders in the past several months. And I think I can say 100% of them feel that the stock price is undervalued. So of course, it would make sense to create value to do a take private. There is a probability of that, but I'm not -- I wouldn't know myself to answer more precisely to the question. So it's a possibility, indeed. And of course, the stock price is an incentive to do this, but it's not up to me, but up to my majority shareholder to be -- to answer that type of question.

No more in the room. So maybe let's switch to the -- yes, we can switch to the platform. I have a question from Philippe Ourpatian. Could we have an idea about the prices captured? You are integrated in your EBITDA published electricity sales for 2024 and 2027.

For those who are not specialists, capture price is a concept where you look at what is the wholesale -- what is -- sorry, the firm electricity price in the market for consumers that can receive the electricity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And the capture price is the price at which electricity generated by solar or wind. So not 100% of the hours is selling, which is a price, which is lower than the baseload price. For us, this capture price is the price that is written in our contracts. You know that 98% of our plants are backed by PPAs. So we don't have to ask to ourselves what is the capture price of this portfolio, which is selling at a given price, which is used to calculate the forecast and to set the targets. So we have 20-year contracts most of the time. So this becomes applicable for all years, including 2024 and 2027. Yet Philippe's question still is putting the spotlight on one last parameter, which is if there are early generation revenues what is the -- what's the level of the price and maybe as well for future revenues in -- future PPAs in 2027, what is the price level? Early generation are these revenues that we received before the start of the 20-year contract, if we have been able to complete construction ahead of the beginning of this contract. There, the capture price we have in our forecast is already hedged since we tend to hedge these early generation revenues when we start construction for 2024, therefore, there are no uncertainties about that. In 2027, the proportion of early generation in the total is negligible. But anyway, we tend to use the low range of data specialists that are well known to the sector. But again, anyway, it doesn't have a big impact. Last part of the answer, this is very useful and technical question is the price we have in long-term PPAs in our 2027 target. First, significant portion of these PPAs are already in our backlog. So we don't have an uncertainty for that. But yet we need to find new PPAs between today and 2027. We have said that at current market price and using the trend of analysts. But again, this out of the EUR 430 million of EBITDA generated in 2017 from power plants. It's a very small portion. The rest being on existing PPAs that are already -- for plants already in operation or not yet in operation, but we have already set the price.

I have a question from Oscar Nájar from Santander. In the list of assets under construction, 480 megawatts, there is no wind farms. Would you consider to reduce 25% of the CapEx into wind to other technologies as solar PV? What kind of capacity load factor are you considering for 2027 by technology? Your long-term loan factor or a bit lower. Total output expected for 2027, more or less. So a question on CapEx.

The first question on technology is a good remark because it is true that our acceleration in solar has provided quite unbelievable results up to a point where if we look at the picture as of today, solar indeed represents almost all of the plants that we have under construction. This is the result of a strategy where we look to generate the cheapest source of electricity in any given grid. And it happens that as of today, the levelized cost of energy, the price you need to -- at which you need to sell electricity to make a return is lower for solar in almost all grids in the world. Not all, but a vast majority. Since our strategy is to be the low-cost producer and therefore, not relying on subsidies, it is normal that solar taken a big part. Yet there is still room and a lot of room for wind because we need electricity by day, but also by night. Even though this electricity by night in most grids will be maybe more expensive than during the day. And we continue to develop wind projects that -- and we will have more projects coming on wind, you will see them progressively year after year. Regarding -- and competitiveness by the way of wind is about to improve because it was reduced by the higher and higher cost price for those who want to buy a wind turbine. And with the rapid expansion of the global market share of Chinese wind turbine suppliers, the cost of building a wind farm is getting down quite significantly in more and more markets. The second part of the question is about load factors. The load factors that we have in 2027, given that it's a normalized EBITDA is using the long-term average of these load factors. Like I've said a bit earlier, we've run sensitivities to see what would be the impact if we would be below or above this long-term average. And let me say or say again that the -- even though we had lower than average load factors last year and the previous 2 years, it is -- the long-term average will prevail. When you measure for 60 years the wind at an airport, you see that some years are higher, some years are lower. And we've seen that we've been lower than long-term average in several places, but -- including Northeast Brazil. But to be lower than average doesn't mean that there will not be years that will be higher than average. So we give you the average, and this is determining the load factors. The volatility of load factors is smaller for solar versus wind. So the variability of the load factors will diminish globally for the whole portfolio of Voltalia quite rapidly.

Okay. I think I have a few questions related to the financing strategy. Yoni, could you elaborate more on the financing plan for full year 2024? You say you will draw the full amount, any option for revolving credit facility for corporate debt? How much from full year 2024, EUR 500 million CapEx will be funded from a new project finance team? This is from Benoit de Braca. And I have another one, I think, from Adria Lu, could you give more details on debt schedule particularly related to the bond?

Yes. Of course. Thank you, Loan. So elaborating for '24, of course, we said that we have the available facilities to draw 100% of the green bond refinancing. We have as well cash, but it does not mean that the project finance team and the corporate finance team is not working in '24. Of course, first, as you saw in the presentation, EUR 220 million of project finance are under finalization, should the EUR 56 million is already drawn and the rest should be drawn in the coming weeks. We will finance the EUR 500 million of CapEx with new project finance with an amount, which is depending, of course, of each project, depending on the geography, but roughly with a classic project finance leverage. So 60% -- 55%, 60% for the remaining assets in Brazil, which should be very low this year, and the rest would be between 70% and 80% in Europe and Africa. For the rest of the corporate finance, we were waiting actually the annual results in order to launch the refinancing properly of the green bonds. So it will be launched today with our banks in order to raise a new RCF and term loan facilities. What we can say is that you saw that the stock price is very low. So if we want to go further to that financing, we will favor nondilutive instrument. Finally, in terms of the next milestone for financing, we can tell you that the next big event of refinancing will come in Q2 '26 for EUR 270 million. Then it will be Q4 '27 for EUR 90 million. And finally, Q4 '28 for EUR 190 million. This one should be postponed of 1 year because it's one of the extension of the last corporate finance facility we have raised last year.

Thank you, Yoni. Before moving to the conference call questions, we have 2 questions related to Brazil. So one from Juan Rodriguez from Kepler, can you please provide an update on the Brazilian litigation? And if possible, what kind of compensation of missing revenue Voltalia would be covered. And I take the opportunity to also take the question of Emmanuel Chevalier from CM-CIC. What impact as El Nino had on Voltalia since the start of the year?

Thank you. Yes, it was not mentioned in the presentation, but it was mentioned in the press release. We've initiated litigation in order to be compensated for unfair and illegal curtailment following the last year's blackout. This litigation, by the way, has been initiated jointly, not us, but all the other players of the market who have been affected. And therefore, it's actually the entirety of the market, which joined this litigation, and we had favorable judge decision to compensate us for the impacts we suffered from. This litigation might take time because there is an appeal going on. So it can take time, but it provides good, I think, basic information that this curtailment was rightly so not expected. Since the judge said it was not legal, so showing that we've been impacted like the rest of the sector in an unfair way. We -- it is difficult for me to provide you too many details because when you start a litigation, you claim high amounts, as you should always do when you litigate. And since we share this strategy with the rest of the sector, we have to be cautious not to provide too many details. But the impact of curtailment can be defined in several ways. And of course, when we claim and we continue to work on that to continue to increase the amount we claim is quite high compared to what we've discussed so far. So I cannot say much more than that without weakening our position during this litigation. But I think that the main message is that this problem we disclosed back in September is actually in a good way to be solved even if it may take some time to have a final judgment. The second question was about El Nino. You know this Pacific Ocean current that goes in a certain way, on certain years in another way in other years, and it's affecting climate almost globally. And El Nino has been -- El Nino event has started something like a year ago and had a negative impact on our power generation in -- a bit depending on the countries, but a negative impact for wind farms in Brazil means that for us, in average, the impact has been negative. The impact has been significant. I don't have the exact data, but we'll gladly share more numbers about that, but the impact is we've put euro amount in front of the impact. So a significant part of that is because of El Nino, even though it's always difficult to precisely define what is about El Nino, what is about other weather events and so on. The El Nino event is coming to an end early this year. So the impact is not completely gone, but is weakening as we speak. And last point, of course, we took -- by setting a 2024 target, we took into account actual power generation since January 1.

Before moving to the conference call, I have a quick question. I think we can answer very quickly from Gerard Boe. What part in percentage of the group total debt is swapped in floating rates with caps, of course.

Yes. So in percentage, just we have EUR 65 million of corporate debt, which is capped. And the cap is already reached because it's an old edge we've done a few years ago. So that is the amount of what is swap with the cap and the cap is reached.

Okay. So we have a few questions coming from the call. [Operator Instructions] Operator, can you please take the first question?

First question is from Arthur Sitbon of Morgan Stanley.

The first one would be on the additional details that you provide on the cash flow statement. There is an item, which is the adjustment for noncash starting from your operational profit. You mentioned that it was due to a shift in project base. Just wanted to understand a bit better what this is about exactly? And I've also noted that there is rather limited cash inflow in investing activities while I would have suspected this is where you would book the proceeds from disposals. So I was just wondering if you could provide a bit more detail on that. So that's on the cash flow statement. The second question is on value creation in renewables, generally speaking. I was wondering if you could comment a bit on the trajectory that PPA prices are taking at the moment? And are you seeing any pressure on PPA prices due to the fact that wholesale power prices in Europe are much lower than they used to be? Or if your price is just holding up quite well at this stage?

Maybe Sebastien, I'll take the first one. So when we were saying that there is a shift in the payment, it's because we actually closed the project, the sale of a project last year, but there was a vendor loan for 3 months -- 3.5 months actually, in order to -- for the buyer to pay and it will appear actually within the next 15 days. So this is a sale, which is to be paid within the next few days. This is the shift in payment I was mentioning in the bridge. Then actually, I did not totally get the second part of the investing cash flow question.

Yes, if I understand properly your question. So investing cash, it's actually the gross amount. It's not the net of the proceeds. So the overall amount of the cash invested flows during 2023.

Exactly. And the proceeds, as you saw, it comes in the operating cash flow at Voltalia. Development includes the sale of projects, which is business as usual. And then it is in the operations and not in the investment part.

Maybe I'll answer to the third part of the question about PPA price trajectory. PPAs are, let's say, 20 years where the wholesale price is between daily price up to -- depending whose definition it is until 1, 2, 3 years. And wholesale prices have gone up tremendously in Europe during the war in Ukraine and then has been coming down as it was said in the question. Does this have an impact on the 20-year price that we see in PPAs? I would say that the answer is that it has limited impact. The 20-year PPA price has gone up with CapEx inflation during the past years and has gone up more with interest rate increases. If these 2 parameters come down, the 20-year PPA price market will come down. And if they go up, the 20-year PPA price market will go up. The relationship between short-term price of electricity and 20-year price of electricity is a little bit like for interest rates or currency. It's not completely disconnect, but the curve of price from spot to 20 years has a shape that varies over time, and you can have high spot price without having 20-year PPA changing, and that's quite normal. Then I'd like also to answer the same question, but in the Brazilian market. In the Brazilian market, the wholesale short-term price are going the opposite direction than in Europe. We have been for 3 years at a record low spot prices. Again, not affecting us since we sell electricity under 20-year contracts. But those who -- and there are quite a few players in Brazil like this who didn't enjoy 20-year contracts, had record low revenues of around EUR 10 per megawatt hours for 3 years in a row. These short-term prices started to go up since -- while the El Nino effect would -- is becoming smaller because there starts to be less rain since last December in the hydro plants of Brazil creating the beginning, and we'll see if it's confirmed or not of a big hike of short-term prices in Brazil. There again, it could mean higher 20-year PPA price. The answer is not so much. But whether we are in Europe or in Brazil, these short-term price evolutions may have, and I think it will be the case in Brazil, an impact on how much volume clients are looking for in the 20-year market. When spot prices are high, many buyers, whether they are distributing utilities or corporates that consume the electricity, see a positive effect during the first years, and it's a strong motivating factor to sign 20-year contracts. So we might see this in Brazil. And at the contrary in Europe, corporate buyers might wait before signing new 20-year contracts. But in Europe, the market is quite different since a big portion of the market is with state or regulated and forced buyers, where the volume is a political decision, and this will, I think, support the market. Thank you for this sector interesting question because it's an opportunity to explain how the market works, which is always important to us because it's really a foundation of our strategy to do 20-year contracts to avoid many of these questions.

The next question is the last question from Paul Chabran, Kempen.

Actually, I would like to have further some comments on Brazil. If I remember correctly, in Brazil, you need PPA between 170 and 200 Brazilian real in order to -- well, at least have net positive return -- positive value creation. So in light of the comment that you just made, would you say that today you can find demand for 10 years PPA at this price range or not? And I think the other question is on returns. Last year, you had presented the target equity for emerging market of 15%. Is it still something that is attributable in Brazil as of today? And maybe if you could give a quick comment on this private equity area versus what essentially the spread is for you, so the value creation that is actually there, that will be extremely helpful.

Thank you to you. The first part of the question, and the two are connected, as you said, is do we find in the market -- in the Brazilian market long-term prices that are sufficient for us to sign 20-year contracts. And the 2 parts of the questions are connected because for us, what we need is to have a price, which is high enough to give us target equity IRR in that case of 15%. The answer is for the past few years, we found the right prices, but only in the distributed generation. So the Helexia business model. Meaning, in the past few years, we have not found long-term PPAs at the price that fit our targets. And this is one of the fundamental reasons why we -- when we had sites, which were ready to be built, we have not kept them, but we have sold them to other investors who were either happy with the lower return or happy with market price exposure. The projects we have built recently were done with PPAs one a while ago at the time where prices were higher than today, for the 20-year prices. As I said at the last question, the market has cycles, and I assume we can have with the end of El Nino, the comeback of the bigger volume as in the 20-year contract, 20-year prices, which means that, hopefully, we will have again a market reaching our target. Meanwhile, Voltalia has been growing in Brazil quite a lot. Thanks to distributed generation through Helexia where Voltalia is now a market leader. One of the largest of this quite -- of this market with many, many small players. So not all of them having the technicality and the strength of Voltalia. So it has been a good market for us. And we have -- and Helexia started from 0 in 2019 and is now one of the market leaders parallel to Voltalia itself, which is it's good to remind all of us that one of the 3 largest developers in Brazil year after year. When I say developer, I don't mean owner since we develop and keep and develop and sell. But when you look at the total volume of everything developed especially in wind, we are in the top 3 every year. And for solar, it depends a bit of the year, but quite often in the top 3, but not keeping if it's not meeting our financial standards. The last part where Voltalia has grown in Brazil is what was mentioned by Loan a bit earlier, is services for third parties where in the maintenance segment of our business, where Voltalia is expanding very fast, starting from a small base 2, 3 years ago is now a gigawatt player in Brazil for that part.

I think if there's no more questions in the room, I think we will end the presentation. So maybe...

Well, thank you for being here today. I was very happy together with the team to provide you all the information that you need. We had a remarkable journey between 2019 and 2023. I trust that the journey to 2027 will be an opportunity for all of us to demonstrate. We will meet again our target while creating financial value, as we explained, for instance, during the last question. So thank you to all of you, and I look forward to seeing you during our next annuals or semestrals. Thank you.