Good morning. My name is Angel, I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the AES Corporation’s First Quarter 2015 Financial Review Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers remarks there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Ahmed Pasha, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

Thank you, Angel. Good morning, and welcome to AES’s First Quarter 2015 Earnings Call. Our earnings release presentation and related financial information are available on our website at aes.com. Today, we will be making forward-looking statements during the call. There are many factors that may cause financial results to differ materially from these statements. Please refer to our SEC filings for a discussion of these factors. Joining me this morning are Andres Gluski, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Tom O’Flynn, our Chief Financial Officer; and other senior members of our management team. With that, I will now turn the call over to. Andres. Andres?

Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining our first quarter 2015 earnings call. I am pleased to report that with our first quarter results we’re reaffirming our 2015 guidance for all metrics. Since our previous quarterly call less than three months ago, we have achieved several significant milestones on our strategic objectives and our priorities for 2015. We continue to leverage our platforms, our $9 billion construction program is advancing on schedule and will be the major contributor to our cash and earnings growth over the next four years. This quarter, we commissioned the largest power plant that AES has ever constructed. We also signed agreements for two additional asset sales, totaling a $105 million in equity proceeds and invested $345 million to prepay and refinance debt. This year, we have also repurchased $42 million of our shares and we made substantial progress and addressing short-term issues affecting our businesses in Bulgaria and India. I will discuss some of these achievements in detail. But first, I’d like to provide the highlights of our financial results. In the first quarter, we generated proportional fee cash flow of $265 million doubled a results of year ago. Due to the recovery of working capital and a couple of significant businesses, we are in $0.25 of adjusted earnings per share, which was a $0.01 increase from our first quarter of 2014. We improved operating performance at our U.S. and Andes strategic business units although; we continue to experience headwinds from poor hydrology in Brazil and unfavorable foreign exchange in Latin America and Europe. During the quarter, our earnings benefited from our previous capital allocation decisions to pay down debt and buyback our shares. As we’ve discussed in the past, we have taken steps to mitigate the impact of adverse hydrology in Latin America…

Thanks, Tom. To summarize, we are encouraged by the continued successful execution of our strategy and with the resilience of our platform and the opportunities that it provides increased shareholder value. As we laid out on our last call for 2015, our priorities are to pull all levers to achieve our financial objectives despite headwinds from poor hydrology in Brazil and lower foreign exchange and commodity prices, complete the 1,240-megawatt Mong Duong project in Vietnam, which will be a major contributor to our growth. We have already brought this plan online six months ahead of schedules. Resolve Maritza's outstanding receivables issue, we’ve signed an MOU with NEK and expect to execute a binding agreement by the third quarter. Continued to execute on our platform expansion opportunities and bringing financial partners, we expect to have financial partners on all of our large projects. Reduced parent debt and improved our credit profile by prepaying and refinancing shorter term maturities. And as always allocate our discretionary capital in such a way as to maximize share holder returns by competing growth projects against share repurchases. Now, I would like to open up the call for questions.

[Operator instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Julien Dumoulin-Smith from UBS. Your line is open.

So first quick question, more at a high level; in terms of future growth opportunities, you talked about $300 million to $400 million in equity investment potential. Where do you expect those dollars to trend towards? I suppose A, as you think about buybacks as shares at Tiete would be more in that direction? And then B, in the context of growth investment, obviously, you've heard a lot in the media around storage [indiscernible] as well as your own efforts in DG in the latest quarter. I'd be curious if you could talk to opportunities there, as well as Puerto Rico, in terms of where those respectively fit within the growth buckets?

Okay. Thanks Julien. Well, all as I said, we expect to have allocated about $300 million to $400 million to the future growth project. Of course this would be leveraged by bringing in financial partners. Now, the exact amount will depend on the projected return of those projects and value we create by buying back our shares. So, they will be competing. This is just to give us sort of the range where we see those projects. We also said that compared to what is currently under construction we see a heavier weighting towards natural gas, renewables and energy storage. Now, our energy storage business I think is quite different from -- and quite unique actually that we have been at this for 8 years. We make money at it. We’ve been successful, and we have a product that integrates several different usage. So, we have sort of the complete package sort of plug and play. I think that’s one of the reasons we were successful in Southern California bid last year. So, we see this as a growing market in the U.S. California is taking the lead by requiring utilities to have 1,325-megawatts of energy storage by 2020. And we see this trend going across the country in different place. So, again we’re very well positioned to take advantage of it and we have been successful. We’re also opening up new markets. In the latest ones, we’re already in Chile; we’re looking at Northern island and Netherland. So, it’s one, let's say technology has three different uses. On the one hand you can use it for capacity release like we do Chile which allows you -- you don’t have to hold back 5% of thermal generation because you have a battery. You can use it for ancillary services as we use it in PJM with Tiete. And you can also use it at the Peaking facility which will be the main use in California. So, the different markets, we see it developing, but we’re a big company. So, to really be a needle mover we see it a couple years out. What we really want to be here is not too far ahead of the curve, but we want to be sort of somewhat ahead of the curve and that’s really our strategy here and we think we’re well positioned. So just like in the past when I talked about bringing in partners and said this was an idea, we’ll see how this develops before giving any sort of guidance about say larger numbers of three years to five years out.

And then just running here more specifically at the quarter, I suppose why not more repurchases just as what about the timing here just as you execute on the authorization this year. And then subsequently in terms of the 2015 guidance, would it be fair to say the lower half just to be clear in terms of I think there’s a net $0.04 negative if you add up all those items?

Well, I’d take the second question first. I think it’s a little early in the year to give guidance within the guidance. We've reaffirmed all of our metrics and as you know we guide on cash flow metrics as well as earnings metrics. So again overall, we feel we had a good quarter. In terms of the amount of buybacks, we just did a major re-financings and used $345 million for that and so we’re committed to use as Tom said in his speech around $300 million this year towards share repurchases and we maintain that.

Your next question comes from the line of Ali Agha from SunTrust. Your line is open.

Andrés my first question relates to Brazil. For the last several years now it’s been a source of disappointment for you and not only we’re dealing with the hydro situation, but it looks like there is a upheaval or regarding the political outlook, the economic outlook at least under the current administration. I’m just curious, what is your view on Brazil? Why is it still a core market for you? And wouldn’t it be better for the AES platform if you would either substantially reduce or maybe even out of Brazil, given all these other growth opportunities you’ve been telling us about?

I think first, I think we’ve been very good sellers and managers of our portfolio. If you look at the close to $3 billion that we’ve raised in our asset sales since 2011 and the prices we got out of. If you think of Brazil, I think starting in 2006, we started to reduce our position in Eletropaulo and we also spun-off the telecom and sold that as well I think right at the right timing of the market. So actually if you take a longer term perspective. I think our performance in Brazil over this period has been good. Now there’s no question, that it has been affected by economics and political factors but most of the hydrology, quite frankly. So thinking about our position in Brazil, we have 2,600 megawatts of hydro in Tiete. We also have about $500 million of leverage capacity which we’ve not used at Tiete, so it provides us with an opportunity. And yes, there are droughts and they are cyclical. I mean this year we’re entering into mild -- actually it’s been declared already a mild to medium El Nino which means going back to more sort of normal weather patterns as we’ve seen in the other countries. So that will pass. Now politically Brazil I think it’s shown on the one hand significant institutional strength given the -- as everybody is aware the issues around Petrobras and the tax authorities and the independence of the judiciary. I think they’ve also named the very strong Minister of Economy Joaquim Levy and we’ve had some -- been able in some small meetings with him and seen what his plans are and we feel very encouraged by it. So I think everybody feels that 2015 will be a difficult year in Brazil. The economy is in contraction. Tom mentioned it in his comments that we see a contraction especially in Sul in terms of demand. But having said that, I think that as they take the right measures and move towards a primary surplus, Brazil is a country with a tremendous opportunity and you can’t sort of come in and come out of large massive capital intensive projects like us. So you have to have a footprint there. So I think we’ve reduced it appropriately and we’re well positioned to look at opportunities going forward.

Secondly the $200 million of cash that you have not yet allocated; can you just give us a sense of from a priority point of view, what would be the priority for that use of cash? And you talked about using up 300 million out of the 400 million of the authorization, but just curious the incremental 200 million, where do you think that’s going to be spent?

Quite practical, that will depend. We’ve laid out what our strategy is and what our considerations are and we have restated our commitment to buy back $300 million of shares. And so we’ll see where that -- we allocated, but we’re going to follow our strict capital allocation or procedures which we’ve done today. But I really can't give you more color than that early.

Last question, the two assets sales that you announced today. Can you just remind us or let us know, what’s roughly the annual net income that goes away as a result of those sales?

It’s a modest amount Ali. The Armenia Mountain wind project was the second part of the wind that we did earlier. And that would have a relatively attractive I guess PE from our standpoint. And then the Jordan project was a partial sell-down. I think if you add them together the PE’s around 13 -- so what said it is 7 million to 8 million, they got to take -- you'd flip that versus a 100.

Your next question comes from the line of Stephen Byrd from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

I wanted to follow-up just on Julien’s question on storage. You’ve been very active for a number of years in storage. As you think about ways that you can monetize that advantage, do you envision that would be more in the form of continuing to win RFPs or are there ways that others might want to utilize the expertise that you’ve developed either through joint ventures or effectively selling the sort of energy management capabilities you’ve developed?

Thank you for the question. Today, we've basically put the energy storage units on our platform. And this has given us several advantages. First is that we knew markets well. Then we also had a ongoing dialogue with the regulator, because one of the bigger issues with energy storage is to get regulatory approval. We know the benefits that it has for stabilizing the grid, but it’s a question of how you’re going to get paid for sometimes for those services, if there is not a sort of active ancillary market. So at the first steps, we put it on Chile, we put it in DP&L, we’re also looking at putting on our California platforms, possibly in the future IPL and other places. But there are two steps, one is really identifying the use of the energy of the batteries and the second is getting the regulatory approval. So we see opening up markets where we’re present like the Netherlands, like Northern Ireland and continue with that successful strategy. Now in terms of how to monetize that beyond our platforms and it really would be to the situations where we could actually install the advancing product as we call it, which includes our IP, includes the batteries, includes how to operate it. In the market where we’re present, we could put it on somebody else's platform. Essentially, for example let’s say we’re selling energy to a utility and they would like to rate these assets, we can do that as well. So that’s one way that we could grow more quickly than just let's say putting it in operating ourselves. And we’re looking at -- there we’re now talking to people. So again we’re well positioned. We just think that, this is a market that has to develop. And one…

That’s very helpful color. I wanted to shift over to renewables growth. We're seeing, and I guess, what I perceive as some fairly aggressive competitors in the marketplace with -- many with yield of course. Could you just talk at a high level to the degree of competition you are seeing either for -- just on an absolute return level, or in terms of just business developments? Are you seeing a change at all, in terms of competition? Or do you feel that, given how long you have been in your core markets, you still see numerous advantages for AES, as you look at renewables growth?

Yes, I think you said it right. The big advantage we have is putting among to our existing businesses and understanding these markets. And I think that we’ve seen situations for example at certain time say wind in Brazil, where prices were very expensive, competition was very aggressive; and I think we’re very judicious about where to put our money in. Now we’ve sold part of our joint venture Silver Ridge to people who have impressive global plans for utility scale solar. And we did in part, because it’s not on our strategy of using our platforms. We are much more efficient, maybe you take all in costs which at the end of the day that’s what matters from development to operating, these plans, even financing and rather than doing sort of one-by-one project financings, really doing at under the umbrella of an existing business. So for example in Chile which is a very competitive market and it had about a 1000 megawatts of renewables that are coming on the grid. We’re building out the 20 megwatt solar. We have permits up to 200. And we’ll do it to the degree that we get PPAs. Of course, the issues with solar, that you only have energy 8 to 10 hours a day. So having the backup of an existing facility gives us a lot more levy in terms of what we can put together. And also technologically we can combine this as we do in Laurel Mountain, where we combined wind with energy storage. This makes a more attractive offering. So really that’s our strategies to put it together. Not to compete just on low returns for this project in many of the markets. And our strategy to date in terms of getting lower cost capital is really been in the partnerships and bringing on partners. And I think we’ve been quite effective in that to date. We have over $2.5 billion that we have raised which is quite a lot of money if you consider it in terms of increasing our ability to larger projects, our ability to fine-tune what our exposure is. And so we’ll continue to use that in renewables as well.

Your next question comes from the line of Greg Gordon from Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Tom, the $0.01 of operating performance improvement you had in the quarter. You don’t have a commensurate assumed increase or decrease in earnings within the $1.25 to $1.35 guidance range associated with operating performances. Is that because sort of quarter specific, or is it just too early in the year to know how much you’re going to sort of gain from that as you annualizes the things you did in the first quarter? Thomas O’Flynn: It’s probably a little early Greg and obviously there is a lot of moving parts. We call that few, not all. I think the one thing that does jump out was DPL. It had improved performance. We didn’t have to pull out what’s actually, that was one thing that jumped off.

And then at what point during the year -- if you start to see yourselves potentially towards the midpoint or high-end of guidance, or sort of midpoint or low-end of guidance; do you pull the trigger on capital allocation on that 200 million that remains. Because obviously further in the year, you go, under a scenario where you’re getting behind and it's sort of too late to pull that lever. And in the flip side being, if you’re doing fine, you want to find out -- probably want to hold that money back and think more flexibly about it. So in the context of where you are, how you think things are trending, when do you think we’re getting update on that? Thomas O’Flynn: We’ll certainly do it quarter-to-quarter, we try to look ahead here and that’s what we felt very comfortable saying that we do 300 million of the 400 million that we authorized a couple of months ago, that would bring our share repurchase up to 3 and 340 whatever it would be. So, we’ll do it quarter-by-quarter. Also keep in my mind to the extend we see capital allocation opportunities, let’s say in early 2016 we may end up '15 with a higher balance than just working capital would require. So, we do look at this hard. We do compete all projects, all businesses whether it be a small storage or whether it be larger new build, we compete everything against share repurchase and we’ll continue to do that and keep you posted.

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Turnure from JPMorgan. Your line is opened.

I wanted to get an update on California re-powering. You guys were obviously successful there, back in the fall, with both the gas units and the storage. But could you give us some color here, on the potential for future gas projects there and storage, as well, to some degree, and timing and next milestones around those?

I would say, of course additional gas units have to based on sort of RFBs and bids, which if they come we still have the capacity to compete on those but really have nothing to report there. In terms of energy storage as I said California has a goal of 1,325 megawatts. Our commitment southern California I think is 100 megawatts, so there is a lot of room there for more. So, we really have to see. But you know it’s 2020. We will be very active in California seeking to increase our footprint there and to the measure that we get, we on additional bids; of course we’ll keep you informed. So, I think short term, certainly energy storage I see significant possibilities for growth in California for the next couple of years.

And then going back to the re-securing of coal in India, and that's four projects, so it's not going to be online for a while. Could you talk to how the re-contracted situation compares to the original deal that you had, in terms of your growth plans? And if this is going to materially negatively affect any future projects that you were contemplating there?

Not really, there was this scandal, say in India, we call Coal Gate and when they looked at the coal allocations, we weren’t involved in any way in it. But they cancelled all 214 coal allocation [audio gap] OPGC has entered into a joint venture with the state government of Orissa. So, it's really JV of our JV, and so our holdings in this company will be like 25%; that would be the operator of the mine. No, we don’t see any issues at this time. It’s the same two coal blocks. It’s the same amount of 2,640 megawatts. So, it would support OPGC2 and could support, and again we’re not -- there is nothing specific. But it could support OPGC3. And we see nothing negative at this stage from the reallocation of the coal and the construction of the plant is proceeding according to plan. So, again, we sort of -- the plant was proceeding and as we straightened out the coal allocation issue, so, we’re back to where we were at the beginning. Actually the one difference is that it’s -- this joint venture is with the state government of Orissa.

Okay. And then regarding future expansion in India, the economics have not meaningfully changed for any projects versus what you were thinking before.

Nothing is changed to date.

Your next question comes from the line of Greg Orrill from Barclays. Your line is open.

So you reaffirmed the multi-year earnings guidance. You had some impacts in the quarter around in 2015 around the sensitivities that you were able to offset to some extent with hedging. As you look forward into 2016 and beyond, do you feel like these things you have to offset that or capital allocation and operations or maybe other things, other investments to offset those the negative move from sensitivities, so do you feel like you’re kind of in the same place?

Yes, I’d tell you again. We have nothing really new to report at this time. And as you sort of pointed out that sensitivities move, I mean certain FX and some of the commodities have actually improved since the closing date of March 30th, in the last couple of weeks, there’s been some strengthening of the currencies to help offset some of that. What we would see as you say operational improvements, some of the projects, shorter term projects, some of the sort of energy storage that we put online this year can come on by 2016; also if we do any additional fogging, which also increases megawatts at a very low cost. For us things like the in-and-out terminal; basically the ability to re-export LNG from the Dominican Republic that maybe late sort of 2016; so those are mainly the things that we see at present. And of course capital allocation would be another tool that we have.

Your final question comes from the line of Charles Fishman from Morningstar. Your line is opened.

First, congratulations to your contract at Mong Duong; that safety record is phenomenal. And second -- the only question I had left was on Slide 24, I just wanted to confirm on that the third bullet point about the 214 million from your partner IPALCO, the Canadian partner. That’s not an increase in their equity piece, that’s just consistent timing with respect to your original announcement of their equity contribution in IPALCO, correct?

Yes. That’s correct. And thank you for mentioning the sort of safety record at Mong Duong. We’re very proud of that and we do have a sort of lot of visitors who come to see us, how we were able to accomplish that in Vietnam.

Somebody that started out in the construction business; so I can tell you that that safety record is really strong. Thank you. That was the only question I had.

Okay. Well we thank everybody for joining us on this call today. As always the IR team will be available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you and have a nice day.

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.