Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P. (BIP) Q1 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Brookfield Infrastructure Partners 2026 Results Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Mr. David Krant, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sherry, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Brookfield Infrastructure Partners First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. As introduced, my name is David Krant, and I am the Chief Financial Officer of Brookfield Infrastructure. I'm joined today by our Chief Executive Officer, Sam Pollock; and our Chief Operating Officer, Ben Vaughan. Also joining us today is Dave Joynt, a managing partner on our investments team. I'll begin the call today with a discussion of our first quarter 2026 financial and operating results, followed by an update on our capital recycling initiatives. I'll then turn the call over to Sam, who will provide an update on our recent strategic initiatives before concluding with an outlook for the business. At this time, I'd like to remind you that in our remarks today, we may make forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to known and unknown risk factors and future results may differ materially. For further information on known risk factors, I would encourage you to review our latest annual report on Form 20-F, which is available on our website. So with that, Brookfield Infrastructure had a strong start to the year, delivering record results while continuing to advance a number of strategic initiatives across the business. We generated funds from operations, or FFO, of $709 million or $0.90 per unit in the first quarter. This is a 10% increase compared to the prior year. This performance was driven by strong base business results, highlighted by FFO from our data and Midstream segments increasing 46% and 12%, respectively, compared to the prior year. Results in our Utilities and Transport segments reflected resilient underlying performance with the current period impacted by higher levels of capital recycling activity achieved during 2025. I'll now go through our results by segment in more detail. Our Utilities segment generated FFO of $201 million, up 5% year-over-year. The increase was primarily driven by inflation indexation and the benefit of over $500 million of capital commissioned into rate base, along with the contribution from our recently acquired South Korean industrial gas business. Moving on to our Transport segment. FFO was $283 million, slightly below the same period last year. The decrease was primarily attributable to loss contributions from our successful asset sales. As a reminder, this included our Australian export and container terminal operations, the partial sale of a U.K. port operation and the majority interest in a portfolio of fully contracted containers at our global intermodal logistics business. This was partially offset by the acquisition of our North American railcar leasing platform that closed on the 1st of January. After adjusting for all these factors, FFO was ahead of the prior year, reflecting higher volumes and tariffs generally across our rail and road operations. Our Midstream segment generated FFO of $190 million, up 12% compared to the same period last year. The increase reflects attractive commodity pricing, strong asset utilization and robust customer activity levels across our portfolio. Lastly, FFO from our data segment was $149 million, representing a step change increase of 46% compared to the prior year. The increase was driven by the contribution from our U.S. bulk fiber network, which we acquired in the third quarter of last year as well as organic growth across our data storage businesses, which included the commissioning of over 200 megawatts of operating data centers into earnings over the last year. In addition to the strong financial and operating results we have delivered, we also made meaningful progress towards our 2026 capital recycling goal with proceeds secured of $1 billion to date. This includes closing the initial tranche of our partnership on a portfolio of stabilized and under construction data centers in North America and the closing of the sale of the largest of 4 concessions within our Brazilian electricity transmission business. We also completed a secondary sale of a 12% interest in our North American gas storage business. And finally, in April, we signed an agreement to sell our bulk liquid storage business, the largest independent storage provider in Scandinavia. These asset sales improved our strong corporate liquidity position, which was $2.5 billion at the end of the first quarter. Our balance sheet remains well capitalized and our proactive approach to managing debt maturities has allowed us to remain opportunistic in the capital markets. During the quarter, we refinanced approximately $1.5 billion of nonrecourse debt on a net to bid basis, with no incremental borrowing costs for the business. Before turning the call over to Sam, I would like to briefly note that we have recently begun exploring whether a single combined corporate structure would be the best path forward for the business. The goal is to determine if on a tax-free basis, we can create a single corporate security that would enhance liquidity, increase index inclusion and create value for investors. We are in the early stages of this evaluation, and we'll provide an update when appropriate. So that concludes my remarks for this morning. I'll now turn the call over to Sam.

Okay. Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. For my remarks today, I'm going to discuss our strategic initiatives before concluding with an outlook for the year ahead. We have had an active start to the year with business development activity resulting in new strategic capital partnerships and continued progress under established frameworks. These partnerships are bilaterally sourced with high-quality counterparties and gives us exclusive access to investment opportunities that require long duration capital at scale. Increasingly, these frameworks are becoming a more meaningful avenue for growth, reinforcing our position as a partner of choice and expanding our opportunity set to deploy large-scale capital at attractive risk-adjusted returns. During the quarter, we established a new framework with a leading global investment-grade OEM, and launching an exclusive leasing platform for industrial equipment. Through this platform, we will provide long-term leasing solutions that are expected to generate predictable cash flows without residual value interest rate or refinancing risk. We will have the sole discretion to enter leases under the framework with BIP's share of the equity investment expected to be upwards of $375 million. Our $5 billion strategic partnership to install up to 1 gigawatts behind-the-meter power generation advanced further this quarter as well. We secured an additional $430 million CapEx project, bringing the total capital committed under the framework to approximately $1.6 billion. BIP's total equity commitment associated with the framework to date is approximately $60 million. Given the success of the behind-the-meter solution and strong customer demand based on speed to market, we may have the ability to expand the platform in the coming months. We also remain on track to close Clarus. This is New Zealand's leading gas infrastructure utility in the second quarter. For an equity purchase price of approximately $70 million at our share. Now moving to our outlook. We are progressing through 2026 from a position of strength, and remain very constructive on the backdrop for infrastructure. While recent geopolitical developments have contributed to greater market volatility, the essential nature of our businesses and the regulated or contractual profile of our cash flows continue to provide resilience and growth. More broadly, demand for additional power, connectivity and logistics capacity continues to expand. This is being driven by digitalization, accelerating power demand, the rapid build-out of AI infrastructure and the ongoing reconfiguration of global supply chains. These tailwinds are expanding our opportunity set and providing attractive avenues to deploy capital at compelling risk-adjusted returns. Coupled with strong operating performance and a visible pipeline of organic growth projects, these factors position us well to deliver 10% plus per unit FFO growth in 2026. As David mentioned, our capital recycling program and balance sheet continues to provide the flexibility to fully self-fund the growth ahead. With multiple sale processes underway across our business and continued access to capital markets during windows of opportunity, we are well positioned to fund our investment pipeline while maintaining financial discipline. Taken together, this supports our confidence in the outlook for 2026 and our ability to continue compounding value for our unitholders over the long term. That concludes our remarks, and I'm going to pass it back to Sherry for -- to open the line for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from the line of Devin Dodge with BMO Capital Markets.

Wanted to start on the recently launched equipment leasing business. I'm just trying to get a sense if this is part of the strategy for investing inside data centers, what kind of time frame you'd expect to deploy that $1.5 billion of capital and what do you view as the main risks associated with that investment?

Devin, this is Sam. I'll tackle that one. So the opportunity, I think, will likely be broader than just data centers, but initially, a good portion of the investment will be equipment for data centers. The -- we get a lot of comfort over the transaction itself because we're able to provide capital to essentially high-quality counterparties with investment-grade profiles with fully self-amortizing cash flow streams. So it's very attractive from that perspective. We think we can scale this up as far as timing and deployment of capital. I think our hope is that on a gross basis, we'll deploy $1 billion to $2 billion of equity capital. So BIP share would be 25% of that. And we expect -- it's hard to predict flow, but I think we would hope to do that within a 24-month period.

Okay. I appreciate that. Second question, I was going to ask about that Intel JV. I didn't see any mention of it in your release, but I think Intel disclosures suggested the payments to the JV may have started in Q1. I guess, first, was that the case? And how quickly can return on investment ramp up in the coming quarters as both those fabs come online?

Devin, it's Dave here. I'll take that one. Look, I think in the past, we generally won't provide many updates specifically on the project. I think those generally come, as you said, from the Intel side. I think largely, the project has gone well. It's coming online, in line with our targets in terms of scheduling. They did make their first small wafer payments in the quarter. I would expect the initial -- the final capital contributions to go in over the next 6 months. And as those go in, I would expect the earnings to start to ramp up. And so I would expect to start seeing that come through our transmission and distribution segment of our data business in Q3 and then full run rate will be in 2027.

And that will come from the line of Maurice Choy with RBC Capital Markets.

I wanted to start with this concept of a single combined corporate structure. I have to assume that when the BIPC shares were first created back in 2020, something like this was contemplated. And if so, what were some of the obstacles back then and how those may or may not no longer be as big of an obstacle or even at all this time round.

Maurice, it's David again. But I think -- as we talked about this morning, we are in the early stages of considering this with the Board direction. And so it's probably hard to say what the obstacles are today. That's the word we'd like to complete over the next little while. As you know, the 2 companies for the last 6 years have served us well, but we're always looking at ways to improve our access to capital. And we think following a few things, obviously, the completion of our sister company BBU's process. We can now have some insights into how 1 simplified corporate structure will trade in the market. An early indication to that that's been positive, that this is the right time to reassess. And so I think that's probably all we can say at the moment in light of that, and I'll leave it that.

Fair enough. Maybe if I could just finish off more on your energy portfolio. Obviously, we've seen a series of support of federal and provincial government changes in Alberta and broader Canada. And also, there's been the conflict in the Middle East. Just your thoughts on the outlook for your business in the province notably into pipeline and NorthRiver?

Yes. And it's Ben here. I'll take that question. And look, all those developments are very positive for our Midstream business in Canada. We're seeing really strong demand from all of our clients for more access to our facilities and our pipelines. We completed about $400 million worth of growth projects in the past several months that are now starting to ramp up in terms of the revenue profile and delivering results. And probably most importantly, we have a really tangible, meaningful pipeline of pretty bite size, relatively straightforward to execute and very low build multiple and highly accretive growth projects right in front of us. So I would expect the backlog -- our pipeline to grow. The backlog in Midstream is really attractive right now, and we expect to bring a number of those projects to FID in the coming quarters. And maybe just to put in perspective, the magnitude of the projects that we're looking at the opco level would be roughly in the $8 billion range from a pipeline perspective. So it's a fairly meaningful size number of projects we have to look at.

One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Robert Catellier with CIBC Capital Markets.

I'd like to follow up on the potential corporate conversion that the Board is exploring, understanding it's quite early days. I wondered if you had any time lines for us in terms of what's reasonable to expect in terms of when a decision might be made?

Rob, as I said, unfortunately, there's probably not a ton we can share on the time line as of yet. As I said, we're just kicking off the process now.

Okay. No, that's reasonable. I just wanted to just dig into the Csquare IPO, which I understand they filed a confidential registration statement. I'm just curious as to how you chose the IPO route versus private sale and maybe you're dual tracking it, but maybe you could comment on that and how much you're expecting to sell by way of IPO.

Robert, I'll tackle that one. Look, I think in discussions with our advisers, the capital markets for IPOs are quite open at the moment. And obviously, there's a lot of anticipation for the upcoming SpaceX IPO. The one thing that public investors are looking for businesses that generate high cash flow, have still strong growth prospects and have great tailwinds related to the AI sector. And our business Csquare basically ticks all those boxes. We think it has the potential to be one of the leading IPOs of the year. And we're really excited about bringing that forward. And so just stay tuned.

One moment for our next question, and that will come from the line of Cherilyn Radbourne with TD Cowen.

I wanted to ask a couple of questions on the data segment. And I appreciate the data centers and Intel are the major growth drivers at the moment. Just curious how you think about the balance of your data portfolio in towers, fiber and so forth? And what value that provides in terms of diversity but also what you see in terms of inorganic opportunities there?

Cherilyn, maybe I'll start. But then I think you've given us a good segue to maybe talk about what's going on in the AI infrastructure sector, in particular, and we have Lief Williams here. who I think can expand on some of the things going on. But maybe just talking about some of our other businesses, we're seeing continued strong growth across the sector. One of the situations. And our colleague, Scott Peak mentioned it a number of months ago at our Investor Day. There's this domino effect. And the huge growth in data centers and AI is having impacts across basic utilities, power, Midstream and our other data businesses, including fiber -- our towers. And the types of things that we're seeing is all our customers are looking to expand density across their networks. And so on the tower side, we have a number of build-to-suit opportunities that we continue to execute in all our businesses across Europe and Asia. On our fiber businesses, there's still a huge amount of the U.S. in particular, but other parts of the world that have not been fiberized that are still operating on copper. And so that remains a lot of white space for us to continue to build out those networks and allow people to run all these new devices and programs more effectively. So we see this as a continued 5- to 10-year build-out. And so all our businesses are well positioned. But maybe turning to some of the more, I'd call it even more exciting stuff going on in the AI infrastructure space. Peak, maybe just give us a little update on that.

Yes. Thanks, Sam. And good morning, Cherilyn. So the large users of AI factories and data sectors are highly, highly active in the market. There's effectively no data center inventory remaining for 2026. And even 2027 is quite scarce. What's interesting as well is that the demand profile has broadened from just data center capacity into also looking for compute. So leasing GPU as a service as well as behind-the-meter power opportunities. And so we see a large opportunity for groups like Brookfield, who have tremendous access to capital and an asset base to participate across all of those different asset classes.

Great. And then maybe just a quick follow-up on the data center side. I imagine that site selection and acquisition is particularly competitive and secretive. And so I'm not going to ask you to reveal anything proprietary. But to what extent is having a sister real estate business help in that regard?

I would say it certainly helps. And certainly, the scale of Brookfield is helpful in that regard. Just to give a sense, I would say there is a kind of dual track search for powered land. There's front of the meter options and then there's behind-the-meter options. Front of the meter options are challenging in the sense that the number of load applications going to utilities. It just kind of massively overwhelms the grid. And so utilities are now increasingly requesting large levels of credit or financial deposits, which is a huge disincentive to many of the parties out there looking for those front of the meter power solutions. Behind the Meter also has its challenges in terms of delivering baseload power. At speed, the low emissions and highly modular. And so that's a place where, again, we think our Bloom partnership will be tremendously effective. I would say more broadly, we're starting to see some pushback in some locations in terms of the scale of these AI factories and then the risk of it pushing up rates for local ratepayers. And so again, I think Brookfield has been doing large-scale projects across a number of asset classes for many years. And so we think that we're very well positioned to help identify credible powered land sites. And help bring them to fruition.

One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Robert Hope with Scotiabank.

Hoping to dive a little bit deeper on the AI factory and digital hub strategy. How are we progressing on those discussions with counterparties. And should we be in a position in 2026 to see some notable or sizable project announcements?

Robert, it's Peak again. I'll take this one as well. Yes, look, I think you do see, as I mentioned, tremendous demand from the large technology companies. The demand profile has broadened a little bit as well. There used to be a handful of large hyperscalers. We now have a wave of foundation model companies and inference operators who are also looking to secure the capacity. So I would say there's a tremendous amount of noise in the market in terms of number of sites available and when does the power ramp. But what we're increasingly seeing is these users are looking for credible partners who have placed long-lead equipment orders and you have true dates for when the power is available. And we think that, that will benefit groups but Brookfield who are institutional and who have tangible sites that have a real ramp. And so I would say the demand profile is very strong. I think you will see and we have seen strong leasing activity on the Brookfield portfolio over the last couple of quarters. And I think you'll continue to see strong demand through '26 and certainly through '27.

All right. Appreciate that. And then maybe moving over to kind of to the 10% organic growth rate or to the 10%-plus FFO growth rate for 2026. Can you comment how you're tracking on that? The organic growth at 8% seems strong, and the commodity price environment seems to be helping. Though it does appear that asset sales are coming a little quicker than M&A activity on the other side. So can you maybe talk about what the headwinds and tailwinds that you're seeing there are.

Yes, Rob, it's Dave here. And look, I think you did a great job summarizing my answer probably, but I think the -- I'll start by saying the first quarter was an excellent start. We delivered on our 10% target. And so with that behind us, I think we feel good with how the year is progressing. It's always hard to predict the timing of new investments and asset sales. But to your point, we have had some good initial success on the capital recycling. Front, I think from an all-in cost of capital is very attractive. The yield we'll see on that $1 billion, somewhere in the mid-single digits probably. And so I think from an accretion perspective, I don't expect that to be a meaningful drag on the business as we look ahead. So all in all, I think we started the year off well. I think we feel confident with our 10% for the year still, and we'll continue to provide an update as we progress through the year.

[Operator Instructions] our next question will come from the line of Frederic Bastien with Raymond James.

Good morning. You've historically leaned into periods of uncertainty in this location to pursue large acquisitions. How are you thinking about your ability to deploy capital into a sizable transaction this year?

Fred, I'll talk -- take that one. Yes, I think you're right. We've been historically successful in I think, taking advantage of dislocations. And when others have paused, we've seized the moment. At the moment, I'd say the market remains relatively calm and constructive, given all the volatility. There's still a fair amount of buyers out there. So I wouldn't describe this as an opportunistic market environment. Nonetheless, I do think we're always on the lookout for large value opportunities. We -- what we're seeing is, today, the opportunity set around our AI infrastructure strategy is extremely strong. And so I'm very optimistic about us being able to do some exciting transactions there. We're also seeing an uptick in activity across Europe. And I think there's some larger value opportunities there that I think we can take advantage of. And then we keep on monitoring the capital markets. Often some of our best acquisitions are when the public market will pull back, and we can take advantage of a take private opportunity. So those are the things that we're up to I can't give you like a time line on when we'll do our next large deal, but we're always out there. We have tremendous partnerships so that we can execute on those things and optimistic there will be some exciting deals in front of us.

That's helpful. I just wanted to tack on a Midstream related question as well, thinking switching gears on monetization. Are you -- how are you thinking about NorthRiver and a potential monetization there?

Sorry, that was about monetizing NorthRiver.

Yes.

Well, look, I could turn it over to Ben in a second if he wants to add anything. But what I would just say is the business has had tremendous commercial success in the past couple of years. We've extended our contract term, I think, to close to 12 years now. And we think it's really well positioned. Our debate internally is whether or not we continue to build out the business and take advantage of some of the additional growth that's there or whether we bring it to market and sees what is probably a pretty constructive environment for Midstream businesses. So we're weighing those considerations. It's performing really well, and we just don't have an answer for it at this point in time.

I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Sam Pollock for any closing remarks.

Great. Thank you, everyone, and thank you, Sherry, for hosting this call. We appreciate you joining us today to hear about our results. And we look forward to the warmer weather that's in front of us and the hockey playoff season. I hope all you Habs fans are cheering for my team. And we look forward to providing an update in the quarter ahead.

Thank you. This concludes today's program. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.