Sumant Sinha
Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners
Yeah, thank you, Anunay. Good morning, everyone. Good evening or good afternoon and glad to have all of you on our earnings call. Before we get into our business, let me take note of extreme weather changes that we continue to see globally, underlining the urgent need to deliver sustainable sources of clean energy. From forest fires in the US to flash floods in Europe or the soaring AQI levels in Northern India, which we are currently experiencing, we see more events that indicate that climate change is for real. ReNew of course is doing its bit to fight this enormous challenge by changing the energy mix of India, the most populous country on the planet with a growing energy demand and no alternative sources to fill the demand-supply gap. Having said that, let me now turn to updates from our business. I am glad to inform our investors that we are on track to deliver the megawatts and accretive growth for the current fiscal year along with expanding our contracted pipeline. We continue to strive towards reducing costs and building efficiency in our operations. Among all our peers, we have commissioned the most renewable energy megawatts in India in the first six months of this fiscal year. While our share price movement has been affected by US Macro factors, these factors actually have little or no bearing on our own business or growth or profitability as all of our business and operations are linked to the Indian economy. That is in fact expected to grow at more than 7% this fiscal year. Turning to highlights for the quarter. We have commissioned 860 megawatts to date in this fiscal year and are on track to meet our guidance of installed megawatts. In addition to the 860 megawatts commissioned so far, there are another 350 megawatts to 400 megawatts that are currently installed which should be largely commissioned in the third quarter. Our total operating capacity net of assets that we sold in the last fiscal year grew by approximately 30%. Our total portfolio in absolute terms grew by about 18% and would have been an even higher 21% after adjusting for the 400 megawatts that we sold last year. Including the approximately 700 megawatts capacity signed in October of this year, we have been able to sign PPAs for 2.9 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity in the current fiscal year, extending thereby our current portfolio from 13.8 gigawatts in September '24 to 16.3 gigawatts. That does not include 900 megawatt hours of battery storage capacity that are part of our complex projects. So, just to say again, our current portfolio is 16.3 gigawatts of contracted capacity, including to that another 900 megawatts of battery storage capacity, which is in addition to that. Turning to our financial performance, we reported a 14% growth in our adjusted EBITDA this quarter, driven by cost optimization. In addition, we had a 31% increase in profit after tax, primarily on account of lower G&A and lower finance costs and Kailash will cover this in detail in the finance section. Our 6.4 gigawatt solar module manufacturing facilities are now fully operational. I am delighted to announce that recently our cell facility has started trial production of cells as well. While it is expected to take the rest of the fiscal year to stabilize cell operations, we expect that our entire cell and module facilities will be stabilized fully and will be operating for the full next fiscal year. In addition, we have now secured an external order book of over 900 megawatts, ensuring that our surplus capacity is sold in the market. Additionally, we are also listed as a Bloomberg Tier 1 supplier, underlining the quality that we have been able to create. Turning to Page 8, we are committed to creating shareholder value of course. Over the years, we have built a sustainable competitive advantage in one of the fastest-growing markets globally by raising capital through the cheapest source. We have grown responsibly, demonstrating capital discipline and taking up projects where returns are significantly above the cost of capital. Not only this, we have also created a platform with in-house manufacturing EPC and O&M bundled with our own digitization and data analytics. We are the leaders in complex solutions and one of the very few Indian IPPs to have commissioned over 2 gigawatts of renewable energy assets in a single year. Turning to Page 9, we continue to be one of the leaders in terms of megawatts commissioned since Q3 of FY'24 as we have commissioned 2.4 gigawatts or about 25% of our portfolio in this period of the last 12 months. Our operating megawatts have increased by around 30% after adjusting for asset sales that we did in the last 12 months. Fiscal year to date we have done around 860 megawatts of commissioning, ensuring that we are on track to hit our megawatt target for the year. In addition, we also have about 350 megawatts of solar projects that are currently installed and are in the process of getting connected to the grid. We expect that the peak power project should also be fully commissioned this quarter and so will the RTC Wind Phase 2 will also start getting commissioned later this quarter. While our peers in the market have faced connectivity and supply chain issues, our strategy has ensured that we have not only secured interconnection approvals for our current bid wins, but also beyond that. That is for our bid wins, not just for the contracted capacity. Our in-house EPC teams have ensured that supply chain bottlenecks are sorted out and there is no shortage of materials for wind or solar sites. Additionally, we continue to demonstrate capital discipline as the auction markets continue to evolve at a rapid pace. As stated earlier, we don't target market share, but are focused on delivering returns above our cost of capital, targeting levered returns of 16% to 20% and we have won around 1.4 gigawatts of additional capacity so far this fiscal year, where the expected returns have met our thresholds. Do note that while there are still over 6 gigawatts of bid wins with letters of award beyond our current portfolio, that won't be included into our portfolio until the PPA is signed. We are pacing our construction principally around interconnection infrastructure availability. Turning to Page 10, let me turn to updates from our manufacturing facilities. Getting into manufacturing was a strategic move to secure our supply chain as India was moving to restrict imports of solar modules into India. This barrier meant that we needed to build our own facilities. The results are visible in the commissioning that we have been able to do in the last 12 months or so using our own solar modules. While the two module plants are fully ramped up, I am happy to announce that our cell plant in Gujarat has also started trial production. Our plants are now featured in the Bloomberg Tier 1 module supplier list as well as a PVEL Top Performer 2024. Our external order book now stands at over 900 megawatts and is likely to grow and contribute to consolidated EBITDA. We will be able to provide more granularity on the FY'26 projected numbers along with our FY'25 results next year. In addition to securing supply, we are also looking to de-risk our capital by finding partners for the manufacturing business. Let me now hand it over to Kailash to talk more about the financial updates. Kailash, over to you.