Sachin Shah
Analyst · BMO. Please go ahead
Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us this morning for our second quarter conference call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that a copy of our news release, investor supplement and letter to shareholders can be found on our website at brookfieldnewable.com. I would also like to remind you that we may make forward-looking statements on this call. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks and our future results may differ materially. For more information, you're encouraged to review our regulatory filings available on SEDAR, EDGAR and our website. The business performed well in the second quarter in spite of weak generation. Our asset base continues to be predominantly focused on high-quality hydro assets that benefit from the stability of long term contracts, but also have significant upside. Our access to capital remains excellent, supported by our investment grade balance sheet and high cash margins. And finally, the investment environment for premium, renewable assets remains extremely attractive. Long term power market fundamentals continue to support our ability to acquire assets for value and provide significant upside to the cash flows with strong downside protection to the business. In all of our markets across North America, Europe and Latin America, we're seeing the following three themes. One, short term wholesale prices are below the level needed to drive large-scale investment in the power sector. Two, government policies and incentives continue to be needed to support investment in new, renewable technologies as a means to reduce carbon. And three, traditional power supply in developed markets is under pressure from policies targeting carbon reduction, while supply in developing markets it tight, due to economic growth. In North America, we continue to see very weak wholesale energy prices across most markets to the point where even top-quartile nuclear power plants that must run and have very low variable costs, are starting to lose money in certain regions. This has not happened since markets have deregulated, is not sustainable and demonstrates why hydro assets that can earn ancillary service revenues and positive cash margins in this environment are so valuable. We're currently active on several large merchant hydro opportunities to grow the portfolio. Subsequent to quarter end, we also completed the acquisition of a 296-megawatt hydro portfolio in Pennsylvania which complements our existing hydro fleet in the Northeast U.S. In addition, we're also seeing a meaningful gap between public and private market transactions, in particular due to balance sheet distress in certain public vehicles. We recently disclosed details of our holdings in TerraForm Power, the owner of a 3000-megawatt portfolio of contracted wind and solar assets, of which approximately 80% of the assets are in North America. While we continue to believe that hydro is the premium renewable asset class, this represents an attractive scale entry into solar and wind at potentially accretive returns. Our operating expertise, strong liquidity and investment capabilities also makes us one of the few strong candidates to provide TerraForm with much needed sponsorship. In Europe, returns for contracted assets remain very low. And we therefore continue to focus on building out our development pipeline to achieve our targeted returns. We continue to advance 80 megawatts of contracted wind for entry into construction phase in 2017. These projects are expected to deliver mid-teens returns in a market that trades at significantly higher valuations. In Brazil, we're seeing early signs of power demand growing again, albeit very slowly. In the last four months, wholesale market power prices have started to increase and commercial and industrial power customers are starting to seek us out again for contracting opportunities. This is a positive sign and our focus remains on acquiring high-quality assets at a significant discount to replacement cost in this market with little competition. We're also advancing three hydro projects through the construction phase, totaling 72 megawatts. These projects are fully contracted, under long term power sales agreements and should generate 20% returns over the life of the assets. In Colombia, we, with our partners, recently launched our second required tender offer to Isagen shareholders and anticipate that once the transaction is complete, we will collectively own virtually all of the shares of Isagen. We expect Brookfield Renewables' ownership stake to be in the range of 25%. From a business perspective, we're advancing 100 megawatts of the 3,800 megawatt development pipeline that came with the Isagen acquisition. The power market in Colombia continues to be very tight, as the country was close to experiencing power shortages during the first half of the year. This is consistent with our thesis that power demand in South America's third-largest country will continue to grow and both the assets and the development pipeline that we acquired will be very valuable in the long term. As always, we remain focused on our primary goal of delivering 12% to 15% total returns on a per-share basis over the long run. I will now turn the call over to Nick to discuss our financial position and results. Nick?