Wyatt Hartley
Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed
Thank you, Sachin, and good morning, everyone. In 2018, we generated FFO of $676 million, a 16% increase over the prior year. During the year, our focus was on integrating recently-acquired assets and enhancing our operational depth. At TerraForm Power, post the acquisition and sponsorship by Brookfield, the company was able to stabilize operations, reinstate preventative maintenance programs, engage with suppliers and establish new teams and processes. This should lead to improved asset availability, more predictable capital expenditures and enhanced operating margins over time. In addition, in TerraForm Power, we completed a significant acquisition of recently built wind and solar assets in Spain which almost doubled the cash flows of the company on an annualized basis and facilitated the overall improvement of the company’s capital structure. This assisted us to eliminate negative financing covenants and improve TerraForm Power’s balance sheet rating. The acquisition should provide stable long-term cash flows to TerraForm Power at accretive low-teen returns and based on recent announcements of improving tariffs in Spain could exceed our expectations. We have one of the largest hydroelectric businesses in the world which we have doubled in size and expanded across multiple geographies over the last five years. These assets contributed $671 million to FFO in 2018. Hydroelectric assets benefit from long useful lives, often over 100 years, low operating and ongoing capital costs, and the ability to match power supply with demand given their embedded battery-like characteristics. Operationally, we continue to lengthen the term of our power purchase agreements in Colombia and Brazil, where power price volatility provides opportunities to enhance and stabilize future revenues. Our contracts in both markets are generally at or below market and therefore we see term extension as a unique opportunity to lock in upside. In North America, power prices remain low and therefore we continue to sign shorter term contracts at our hydro facilities to ensure we retain upside optionality if prices spike. We have several large legacy PPAs rolling off over the next three years for assets that deliver power to New England. Fortunately, these contracts, on a net basis, deliver power at prices in the range of the current market. Therefore, on renewal, we expect overall revenue to be impacted by plus or minus $5 million. Beyond these contracts, we do not have any material PPA maturities in North America until 2029. Our wind assets delivered $160 million of FFO in 2018. Over the last 18 months, we more than tripled the installed capacity of our wind fleet through large-scale and tuck-in acquisitions, and development projects coming online. Given that we now have a portfolio of wind assets across 10 countries and four continents, this geographic diversification provides a significant mitigating benefit to resource variability and is a good example of why we prioritize diversification as a key value driver of our business. Our solar, storage and other operations contributed $104 million of FFO in 2018 as we benefitted from large-scale acquisitions in 2017 and 2018. Today, we have nearly 1,800 megawatts of PV, concentrated thermal and distributed generation solar, as well as 2,700 megawatts of both pumped and battery storage. Our solar facilities are underpinned by highly contracted cash flows with an average remaining PPA term of 17 years. Our storage facilities continue to provide critical grid-stabilizing ancillary services and back-up storage capacity, products that are becoming increasingly valuable given the intermittency of wind and solar. With regards to our balance sheet and liquidity, we currently have no material debt maturities over the next four years and our overall debt duration is 10 years. We have limited exposure to rising rates, with only 7% of our debt in North America and Europe exposed to interest rates. We are well protected from foreign exchange volatility as we hedge all our developed market currencies. We also hedge currencies when we are in the process of an asset sale as we did, for example, with our select Canadian hydroelectric assets and our South African portfolio, locking in very attractive returns on these disposals. Accordingly, an overall 10% move in the currencies of markets we operate in, both developed or emerging, would have an overall 4% impact to our FFO. Post completion of recently announced asset sales, we will have $2.2 billion of available liquidity. Over the course of the year, we announced or completed key capital raising initiatives across the portfolio. These initiatives included the sale of a 25% interest in a portfolio of select Canadian hydroelectric assets as well as the announced sale of an additional 25% interest, a small wind development project in the U.K., as well as sales of our non-core assets in South Africa, Thailand and Malaysia, which were agreed in 2018 and which we expect to close in the first half of 2019. Looking forward, we have a robust pipeline of assets that we believe would attract low cost of capital buyers in a sales process. Therefore, we expect the majority of our growth to be funded by the proceeds from asset sales, cash flows retained in the business and issuances of preferred equity or corporate debt. As such, while we may issue equity when it makes financial sense, given the above noted funding sources, we are not reliant on accessing this market to fund our growth. In light of our recent growth, strong balance sheet and access to capital, we are pleased to announce that our Board of Directors has approved a 5% increase to our quarterly distribution bringing our annual distribution to $2.06 per unit. On a final note, and on behalf of our employees and directors, we would like to express our sincerest appreciation to our unitholders and many business partners for your contribution to our success. Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to updating you on our progress in 2019. That concludes our formal remarks. Thank you for joining us this morning. We’d be pleased to take your questions at this time. Operator?