Christopher Sotos
Analyst · BAML. Your line is open
Thank you. Good morning. Let me thank you for taking time to join today’s call. Joining me this morning is Chad Plotkin, our Chief Financial Officer as well as Craig Cornelius, President and CEO of Clearway Energy Group. Craig will be available for the Q&A portion of our presentation. Before we begin, I’d like to quickly note that today’s discussion will contain forward-looking statements, which are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this day. Actual results may differ materially. Please review the Safe Harbor in today’s presentation as well as the risk factors in our SEC filings. In addition, we refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. For information regarding our non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to today’s presentation. Turning to Page 4. As many of you are aware renewable energy resources were weak across most geographic regions in the first quarter and Clearway was not immune to this dynamic. Chad will provide details. But the impact on our results for the full-year are within our sensitivity ranges. Additionally, the projects impacted by the PG&E bankruptcy continue to perform and our dialogue on forbearance with lenders continues to be constructive, albeit a slow process. As such, we’re maintaining our 2019 CAFD guidance of $270 million, which continues to be based on our full-year P50 energy production estimates. In addition, we’re announcing a second quarter dividend of $0.20 a share, the same dividend as last quarter. This is consistent with our view that until CWEN obtains additional visibility around the PG&E bankruptcy and has full access to its project distributions, dividends paid to shareholders will be aligned with the available corporate liquidity at our target payout ratio. Our pro forma CAFD outlook of $295 million remains on track with our first funding for the Hawaii Solar Phase I project partnership and with additional investment in the DG Partnerships. In addition, our Mylan Labs project remains on schedule with anticipated COD of June 2019. While working through the PG&E situation, we continue to drive toward achieving growth in the platform while minimizing capital needs. As such, we raised approximately $11 million in incremental capital available for investment through the refinancing of the non-recourse debt at the Tapestry Wind portfolio. We then were able to quickly redeploy those proceeds toward our newest growth project at the Thermal segment, the acquisition of Duquesne University's district energy system, which I will talk about later in the presentation. In addition, we are continuing to advance the repowering partnership with Clearway Group, which we initially formed last August and which covers 283 megawatts of our existing wind projects. We are targeting a binding equity commitment in the second quarter and I will provide you an update on this transaction when the terms are closed definitively. But we assure you that this opportunity will be accretive to shareholders. Finally, Clearway Group continues to make progress on its development portfolio, planting the seeds for further growth especially for when the PG&E situation reaches a conclusion and we can proceed with normal operations. Turning to Page 5, we want to provide an overview of the growth we’ve made at the Thermal segment in the past year, including the most recent acquisition of Duquesne University. Our thermal business stands out for its ability to create growth opportunities near or adjacent to the existing platform. And Pittsburgh, in particular, you can see evidence of this strategy. Our UPMC project came online in 2018 and adds $4 million in CAFD on a five-year average basis. Importantly, it also allowed us to achieve strong economics for the recently acquired Duquesne assets through the operational leverage we can achieve by having the facility so close to each other. Similarly, we believe that our Mylan investment at Puerto Rico, which had come online in the second quarter of this year will lead to other opportunities to build a substantial portfolio in Puerto Rico over time. With these investments, plus the acquisition of Tulare in California, we’ve added approximately $8.3 million in CAFD on a five-year average basis to the Thermal business, all at highly accretive economics supporting CAFD per share growth. I’m very positive about the momentum the Thermal division has been able to achieve and we expect continued growth there over time. Duquesne, in particular, is an excellent opportunity built upon a 40-year energy services agreement with University, which is a strong investment grade counterparty. While the total capital requirements were approximately $107 million through accessing on a non-recourse basis, the tax exempt financing market, the amount of steel and capital required was approximately $13.5 million. The project produces approximately $1.8 million of CAFD on a five-year average for a strong yield of 13.3%. Again, emphasizing the highly accretive benefits in the platform. I will now turn the call over to Chad to discuss results. Chad?