Welcome to the Empower H1 2026 earnings call. Following the formal presentation, there will be a question and answer session. During Q&A, participants will be able to ask both text and live audio questions. To ask a text question, select the messaging icon, type your question in the box towards the top of the screen, and press the send button. To ask a live audio question, press the Request to Speak button at the top of the broadcast window. The broadcast will be replaced by the audio questions interface. Press Join Queue and, if prompted, select Allow in the pop-up to grant access to your microphone. You will then be placed in the queue where you will be able to listen to the meeting proceedings while you wait for your turn to speak. I will introduce each caller by name and ask you to go ahead. You will then hear a beep indicating that your microphone is live. Thank you. I will now hand over to Chander for the formal presentation. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining Empower's H1 2026 earnings call. Today, we'll review our financial performance for the first half of 2026, provide you with an update on our key operating highlights, and discuss the outlook for the business. I am Chander Tekchandani, Director of Finance at Empower, and it's a pleasure to have you with us. Next. Joining me on today's call are our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Ramesh Ramadurai, and our Chief Commercial Officer, Mr. Edgar Qureshi. Next. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that certain statements made during today's call may be forward-looking in nature and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to this slide in the presentation for further details. With that, I will now hand over to Mr. Ramesh to provide an overview of our business and operational performance. Next. Thank you, Chander, good afternoon, everyone. The first half of the year continued to be shaped by geopolitical tensions in the region and uncertainty across global markets. As we discussed during our first quarter earnings call, these developments began in late February and continued to influence business sentiment and market conditions during the second quarter. Even so, the U.A.E. economy remained resilient, supported by strong fundamentals and proactive government measures to stimulate economic activity and strengthen business confidence. Against this backdrop, we remained focused on what we can control. We continue to manage our costs prudently, optimize plant performance, maintain a strong liquidity position, and invest selectively in expanding our network and enhancing operational efficiency. That disciplined approach enabled us to deliver another period of solid financial and operational performance. A key highlight of the quarter was crossing the milestone of two million refrigeration tons of contracted capacity. This is an important milestone in Empower's growth journey and reflects both the continued demand for district cooling and our ability to execute consistently. Connected capacity also increased to 1.71 million refrigeration tons, providing a strong platform for future growth and resilient cash flows. Looking ahead, we remain confident in the strength of our business model. Our long-term concession agreements, healthy development pipeline, and strong dividend profile provide a solid foundation for sustainable growth and long-term shareholder value. At the same time, we continue to support Dubai's transition to a lower carbon economy. Next. Let me now take you through the key financial highlights for the first half of 2026. During the second quarter, we saw some softness in consumption revenue, particularly from our hospitality portfolio, where lower occupancy levels were influenced by the regional situation. Still, our diversified customer portfolio and continued focus on cost management helped maintain the overall performance of the business. In the first half, revenue increased by 4.5% year-over-year to AED 1.52 billion, despite a 2.7% decline in the second quarter. EBITDA grew by 7.5% to AED 773 million, supported by new capacity additions, improved operational efficiencies, and increased use of TSE, which continues to have a positive impact on our operating costs. Net profit before tax increased by 16.1% to AED 514 million, reflecting improved margins. The first half results reflect the strength of our underlying business and the disciplined way in which we continue to execute our strategy. With that, I will now hand over to Edgar for the macroeconomic outlook. Next. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Edgar Qureshi, the Chief Commercial Officer of Empower. Against an evolving geopolitical backdrop, the U.A.E. economy continues to demonstrate resilience underpinned by strong fundamentals and a positive long-term growth outlook. While external factors have moderated the near-term growth forecast, the broader macroeconomic indicators remain supportive. Inflation is expected to remain contained and ease further in 2027, while the reduction in interest rates has contributed to more favorable financing conditions. The economy is also expected to regain strong growth momentum in 2027. For a capital-intensive infrastructure business such as Empower, these factors provide greater cost and financing visibility and support an environment conducive to continued investment network expansion and operational efficiency. Next. Turning now to Dubai. The emirate continues to reinforce its position as a leading global hub for aviation, tourism, real estate, trade, and urban development. Strong international connectivity, sustained real estate activity, continued population growth, and proactive government-led economic initiatives are supporting growth across the key sectors of Dubai's economy. At the same time, the continued expansion of the emirate's infrastructure, together with its alignment with the Dubai 2040 Urban Master Plan, provides a strong foundation for long-term and sustainable urban development. These structural growth drivers support a resilient long-term demand outlook for reliable and energy-efficient district cooling services and provide Empower with a strong platform for continued growth. With that, I will now hand over to Chander, who will take you through a detailed review of our financial performance for the first half of 2026. Next. Empower continued to deliver strong year-to-date performance, with revenue growing by 4.5% and net profit after tax increasing by 16.1%. This performance demonstrates the resilience of our business model despite lower consumption during the quarter. In addition, our use of TSE has returned to pre-flood levels following the earlier disruption to supply. As of Q2 2026, TSE accounted for approximately 15%-17% of our total water consumption, compared with 8%-10% in 2025, supporting both operating efficiency and our sustainability objectives. Our balance sheet remains strong, and we continue to deliver robust cash conversion despite the current operating environment. Additional details on our balance sheet and cash flow are included in the appendix. Next. Looking at the quarterly trends, Q2 EBITDA was AED 415 million, with an EBITDA margin of 46.7%, broadly in line with our historical second quarter performance. Overall, our financial position remains strong, providing the flexibility to continue investing in growth while maintaining a disciplined capital structure. With that, I will now hand over to Mr. Ramesh, who will take you through our leverage position and dividend policy. Next. Turning to our balance sheet, leverage remains conservative. Net debt stood at AED 2.99 billion, with net debt to EBITDA at 1.8 x. This remains comfortably below our target range of three to four times and provides ample headroom to support future growth. Lower financing costs also contributed to the increase in net profit during the period. We also maintained strong liquidity, supporting continued financial flexibility. Next. Delivering consistent shareholder returns remains a core priority. Under our progressive dividend policy, we remain committed to distributing AED 875 million annually for 2025 and 2026, with the next interim dividend due in October 2026. Our dividend coverage remains healthy at around 1.63 x, supported by predictable cash flows and continued growth in the business. Overall, this provides shareholders with an attractive and sustainable dividend profile. Next. Our capacity growth remains on track. Connected capacity reached 1.71 million refrigeration tons at the end of first half, reflecting an increase of 51,000 refrigeration tons since the start of the year. This included 17,600 refrigeration tons added during the second quarter. For the full year, we continue to expect connected capacity to reach between 1.76 and 1.77 million refrigeration tons. This implies a further 49,000 to 59,000 refrigeration tons of additions during the second half. This outlook is supported by our established project pipeline and the long-term concession agreements that underpin our growth. Next. To conclude, Empower remains well-positioned to deliver sustainable growth and attractive shareholder returns. Our market leadership, predictable cash flows, disciplined approach to growth, and strong dividend profile provide a solid foundation for long-term value creation. At the same time, we continue to play an important role in supporting the UAE's growth and net zero ambitions. With that, I will hand back to Chander to moderate the Q&A session. Next. Before we move to the Q&A session, I would like to mention that the appendix to this presentation contains additional information on our financial statements, ESG initiatives, and other supplementary disclosures. Thank you for your attention. We'll now be pleased to take your questions. We will now proceed with the Q&A session. Just a reminder that participants can ask both text questions and live audio questions. To ask a text-based question, please select the messaging icon, type your question in the box towards the top of the screen, and press the send button. If you wish to ask a live audio question, press the Request to Speak button at the top of the broadcast window. This will be replaced by the Audio Questions interface. Press Join Queue, and if prompted, select Allow in the pop-up to grant access to your microphone. You will then be placed in the queue, where you will be able to listen to the meeting proceedings while you wait for your turn to speak. I will introduce each caller by name and ask you to go ahead, after which you will hear a beep indicating that your microphone is live. The caller, please proceed to ask your question. You can speak now. Hello. Thanks for taking my questions. Riccardo from Morgan Stanley. If I may, on the first question, you mentioned the dividends for the second half of this year. Would you be able to provide some more visibility on dividends from 2027 onwards? What sort of discussions related to the dividend policy are you having? Second question, a bit more shorter term. If we assume some normalization in Dubai, the UAE, starting now in the third quarter, how would you expect consumption in the second half of the year? Thank you. On the dividend for 2027, we will be coming out with our dividend policy at the end of third quarter. As you are aware, this AED 875 million has been committed for 2025 and 2026. We are internally discussing the dividend policy for 2027, which will be announced along with the third quarter results. On the second question- Second half Yeah. The third quarter, which is the second half, we expect the consumption revenue to bounce back. The first quarter is typically a summer month, and it is slightly on the lower side when it comes to revenue from hospitality. We expect a bounce back in the third quarter and for the rest of the year. We have another audio question. Caller, please proceed to ask your question. Let's perhaps move to waiting for another few seconds to see if there's any additional questions. If the caller can perhaps hear me, you are free to ask your question if you are still online. Okay, let's just wait for a few- Yes. Good afternoon. Anna Antonova from JP Morgan. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Yes. Please proceed. Okay. Thank you. Apologies, the line was not working well. Anna Antonova from JP Morgan. Apologies, I joined the call a bit later. Just wanted to ask if you could please comment on the consumption and the volume trends in the recent months, in June, July, how maybe the trends were compared to your expectations. I heard that you expect the bounce back in demand in Q3 and Q4, maybe if you could shed some more light on this. The second question is about the trends in contracted and connected capacity. Beyond the share, if you could maybe shed some light whether the current situation has impacted how you're thinking about the medium-term outlook for the connected capacity growth, for example. Thank you. For the second quarter, on the consumption revenue, weather had a minor impact. The temperature was lower in April and May compared to last year. However, in June, it was higher than last year. The impact of weather on the consumption revenue was marginal. The major impact is because of occupancy levels being lower in the hospitality sector, which is what contributed to lower consumption revenue, which is what we highlighted in the first quarter. That was our expectation for the second quarter because of the conflict. However, the weather is in our favor in July and in August. It is hot and humid in Dubai. We expect the revenues to hold and even improve on 2025 numbers. We expect strong consumption numbers for third quarter, and if this trend continues, even for the second half of this year. On the capacity side, the capacity addition that has happened in the second quarter is in line with our internal projections, we expect to have an addition of 49,000 to 59,000 as we guided in our presentation. We expect to hit those numbers. To answer one of the other questions which has been asked by one of the analysts, we don't see any major delays in the construction activity. Whoever has started and are in final stages of completion, they are continuing business as usual because it is in their own interest to complete the project and hand it over so that it can be put to use. We don't see any major delays in the construction activity and associated connection from our perspective. On the sewage cost pass-through, we continue to have the conversation with the Supreme Council of Energy. Again, considering the current state of affairs in terms of the conflict, we didn't get any feedback from them yet. Hopefully, we will have some communication from them sooner than later. Yeah. Contracted to connected gap has widened. In fact, I think we see that as a positive development. In spite of what is happening in the region, there are more building owners who are signing up with us for connection in the future, which is a positive development from our perspective, and we don't see that as an issue going forward. The consumption decline is predominantly because of lower occupancy levels in the hospitality sector. If I have to give a split, maybe 15%-20% will be due to weather being less than harsher. Otherwise, 80% of it is purely from hospitality sector and drop in occupancy levels. TSE is currently at around 15%-17%. We expect this to go up to 25% by 2030, which has been the guidance that we have been providing, and we expect to hit those targets by those dates. The guidance for CapEx for both 2026 and 2027 remains the same. Approximately for 2026, we are talking about AED 450 million-AED 500 million in CapEx addition, and a similar amount of CapEx for 2027 because our guidance for capacity addition for 2027 is also between 90,000-100,000 tons. For the consumption trends, you should refer to our presentation where we have given you for close to 12 quarters what is the consumption pattern. I think it should give you some indication as to the general trend. We had strong pre-insulated pipe sales in the second quarter. Again, these are project-specific and project-based. Our guidance of AED 50 million for the year stays, and there can be a slight upside if there is more deliveries this year. But otherwise, AED 50 million pre-insulated pipe sales is something which we can be sure of. If the reference is December number versus June, it is purely due to seasonality. If you compare receivables this year versus last year, say first half of 2025, you'd see a similar sort of a trend. Definitely yes, there is an impact. But again, our CapEx is in the form of incremental additions. The impact is between 10%-15% on the CapEx that we have incurred. However, the situation is easing. Shipping costs are dropping. Insurance cost is also hopefully will be back to normal by end of the year. It shouldn't have a long-term impact on Empower's cost. We have not reached those thresholds. We are not subjected to 15% effective tax rate yet. Regarding the average cost of debt, if you see our income statement and the financing cost, it's approximately 4.5%-5% as a cost of debt. Regarding credit rating, we'll evaluate. If it is fruitful for us, then we might probably opt for it in future. On the capacity additions for the second half of 2026, we are fairly confident we should be able to hit those guided numbers. As we indicated in our first quarter call, any further escalation or delay in resolution of this conflict could start having an impact on the additional capacities from the second half of 2027. We don't see a major impact even in the first half of 2027 based on our current information we have, because these buildings are at their advanced stage of construction and completion, and it is in their interest to complete the buildings and hand it over to the end users. International expansion as well as possible acquisitions, they are a continuous process. As and when we have updated information, we'll come to the market. In our view, once the conflict is resolved, we will see an uptick in terms of connections. Our pipeline is strong. That shows the builders' confidence in continuing with their project. Once the conflict is resolved, I think Dubai will be the first place to bounce back, and we expect we should be able to hold on to our guidance for 2027 as well if this conflict is resolved sooner. It is slightly earlier, but I think once this conflict settles, the impact will be known, and there is a possibility, potentially, some of those real estate developers disposing some of their assets, but we don't have any information currently. But we expect once the conflict is resolved, they will understand probably they need to focus on their core activity and not on district cooling, which is a specialized operations. Generally, July and August is a lean period for hospitality sector, so we don't see a major impact. However, Dubai government has actually come out with an initiative, Dubai Invite, which is essentially to promote tourism by inviting friends and relatives to Dubai. Hopefully, that will have some sort of a demand uptick, and that should help us in our consumption revenue for July and August, which are generally a lean month. We have another audio question. Can the caller please proceed to speak? Hi. Thank you so much for this call. One of my questions earlier, I think was an underserved property, so perhaps I can elaborate a bit on it. Would it be possible for you to share monthly data so we can compare how each month has been progressing and if the year-on-year consumption weakness is getting better, or is it getting worse? Just to understand the monthly trends. I think that may not actually give you a sort of a trend because you see a variation in weather for various reasons. They may not actually reflect what is actually happening on the ground. That is precisely the reason why probably a quarterly comparison, which averages out within a quarter, if there are any temperature variations or any other reasons for drop in consumption, which gets captured on a quarterly basis in a better way than doing a monthly comparison. For your information, even internally, for us, a monthly comparison actually sometimes doesn't work, even from a budgeting perspective, because it is extremely challenging to budget on a monthly basis considering the weather conditions and variations in temperatures as well for various reasons. We have been highlighting that we have kept our demand charges the same for over 23 years of our existence. We will update the market if there is any adjustment to our capacity charges on a CPI basis. As I said earlier, it is a continuous process. We work on multiple opportunities at any point in time. As and when it materializes, we will announce to the market. The improvement we are talking about is going to be on quarter-on-quarter as well as year-on-year. We are already ahead in terms of year-on-year numbers. When quarter-on-quarter number improves, that will improve the year-on-year number as well. As indicated in our first quarter earnings call, hospitality roughly 10% of our revenues. As I told you, we are in a lean period, July, August, September. We expect strong occupancy levels for the last quarter on the back of resolution of the conflict. That should improve our consumption revenue as well as general trade in our revenue growth. We are just going to wait for a few more minutes to make sure that we capture all of the questions that you might have. I believe there are no more queries. Thank you for joining us today. Should you have any further questions, please feel free to contact our investor relations team. Thank you once again, and have a great day.