Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the NRG Yield Third Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct the question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference may be recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today's call, Mr. Kevin Cole, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, LaTonya. Good morning, and welcome to NRG Yield's third quarter 2017 earnings call. This morning's call is being broadcast live over the phone and via webcasts, which can be located on our website at www.nrgyield.com, under Presentations and Webcasts. As this is an earnings call for NRG Yield, any statements made on this call that may pertain to NRG Energy will be provided from NRG Yield's perspective. Please note that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements, which are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. Actual results may differ materially. We urge everyone to review the Safe Harbor in today's presentation, as well as the risk factors in our SEC filings. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of future events, except as required by law. In addition, we will refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. For information regarding our non-GAAP financial measures and the reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to today's press release and this presentation. Now, with that, I'll now turn the call over to Chris Sotos, NRG Yield's President and CEO.

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. Joining me, and also providing remarks this morning, is Chad Plotkin, NRG Yield's Chief Financial Officer. Turning to Page 3 for an overall business update. For the third quarter, NRG Yield diversified portfolio delivered strong results with adjusted EBITDA of $265 million and cash available for distribution or CAFD of $134 million. Due to the strong performance, and the impact of the November Drop Down, which we'll discuss later, we're increasing the company's full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance to $935 million from $920 million, and our CAFD guidance to $260 million from $255 million. In addition, NRG Yield is increasing its quarterly dividend to $0.288 per share, consistent with our goal of growing our dividend per share 15% year-over-year in 2017. NRG Yield has continued investing in growth with $295 million of capital deployed since the third quarter of 2016. In addition to the acquisition of a 38 megawatt portfolio of solar assets referred to as the November Drop Down, the company increased investment opportunities through distributed solar partnerships with NRG. These opportunities include the expansion of the existing partnerships by $10 million as well as the formation of a new $50 million partnership. In total, NRG Yield has about $85 million of remaining investment capacity in its distributed solar partnerships with NRG. In addition, NRG has offered NYLD, the 154-megawatt Buckthorn Solar project, which builds on a strong year of overall drop-down activity between the two companies. We're also pleased to initiate 2018 guidance with EBITDA of $950 million and CAFD of $280 million, the details of which Chad will go over in his section. This significant growth will allow us to continue to grow our dividend per share at 15% per annum with a payout ratio of 80% in 2018, before consideration…

Thank you, Chris. Beginning on the left-hand side of Slide 7, NRG Yield is reporting third-quarter adjusted EBITDA of $265 million and cash available for distribution or CAFD of $134 million. During the third quarter, NRG Yield's portfolio performed exceptionally well. In the conventional segment, the company undertook efforts in the first half of the year to ensure strong reliability during the key summer season. This proved fruitful as availability across the gas fleet exceeded 99% in the quarter. Importantly, this performance occurred at a time when NRG Yield's California gas assets experienced a 26% increase in starts versus the third quarter of 2016, as peak loads in the region were higher than expected. In the renewable segment, despite poor wind conditions across the company's Texas and Midwest wind projects, the overall portfolio exceeded the company's financial targets in the quarter, largely due to strong resource of the Alta project, which saw production up 12% versus median expectations. While this performance was strong during the summer season, the Walnut Creek project, as previously disclosed, experienced a number of forced outages over the past year, including the outage at Unit 1 in April, for which we continue to expect receipt of cash insurance proceeds by year-end. Since that outage, and as referenced on our last two quarterly calls, the company has worked with both NRG and GE to develop a plan to ensure the long-term reliability of the facility. The resulting analysis made clear that the project required significant investment, not only to ensure near-term performance, but also to protect against long-term issues that could materialize into similar outages into the future. As a result, the Walnut Creek project company entered into an amended comprehensive service agreement with GE, providing for, amongst other provisions, all required, currently available and future turbine…

Thank you, Chad. Turning to page 11, the company continues to deliver on its financial commitments by increasing 2017 guidance as discussed, the $935 million in adjusted EBITDA from $920 million and $260 million in CAFD from $255 million, as well as by achieving 15% year-over-year growth in our dividend per share. This growth was driven in part by the success in growth investments this year, with $295 million of capital deployed since the third quarter of 2016. Through this period of time, the company has acquired equity stakes in over 200 megawatts of wind projects, approximately 350 megawatts of solar projects and it continues to invest in distributed generation partnerships will fuel growth in CAFD on an accretive basis. As mentioned earlier, growth through the ROFO continues to be strong as NRG offered the 154-megawatt Buckthorn Solar project that's currently expected to achieve COD in mid-2018 as well as the expansion of the distributed partnership opportunities. During 2017, we have also demonstrated access to the equity markets via our utilization of our ATM program, and we continue to maintain significant capital to fund future growth investments through our revolving credit facility and internally generating cash flow. In addition, and consistent with our stated objective of securing additional strategic partners, we are working with NRG regarding the future of its investment in NRG Yield, and we remain focused on outcomes that are in the best interest of NRG Yield shareholders. Thank you. Operator, please open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And we do have a question from Colin Rusch of Oppenheimer.

As you guys are bidding out some of these projects and looking at some of the growth areas, the integration of energy storage is a material change for a number of folks. Is that really seeming like a material part of your growth plans on the solar side? Or how deep into the wind portfolio are you thinking you can penetrate in some of these energy storage opportunities?

Sure. I think there's not a lot of growth actually today in that from our perspective. There may be in terms of RFPs, but I would say, we're not seeing a lot of it. You don't see it in the ROFO pipeline today. But I think, part of your question is, depending on how the NRG process works out, and what a new sponsor may view, there may be more opportunities down the line, but I do think it is important part of the renewable growth story going forward. Just if you ask me today, what we're seeing in terms of well-defined opportunities for us to participate, those would be limited.

And our next question comes from Shar Pourreza of Guggenheim Partners.

Not a whole lot of questions, just on NRG's announcement this morning that the [BRC] is looking like they will sell 100%. The outlook is 100% sale of the yieldco. It's still preliminary and you will give an announcement probably later in the year, but I'm kind of curious on the state that you're in. Are we looking at one bidder at this point? Or is it still somewhat of a competitive process?

Sure. I think I'd really look to view NRG's discussion of the topic on the call. I think -- Mauricio -- we're in the process, whether there is 1 bidder, 5 bidders, 10 bidders, he didn't get into so frankly, I won't either.

[Operator Instructions] And I'm showing no further questions from our phone line.

Okay. Well, thank you very much, everyone, for attending, and I appreciate talking to you. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.