Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Encavis AG conference call regarding the results of the first nine months of 2022. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Mr. Christoph Husmann. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A warm welcome to Encavis analyst and investors conference regarding our Q3 results. Today in the conference, the hosts, which are at your disposal are Dierk Paskert, our Chief Executive Officer, who participates most likely for the last time in such a call, since Dierk is about to leave the company as of December 2022. There is Mario Schirru, our Chief Investment Officer and Chief Operating Officer, newly appointed in August 2022. He will guide you through some part of this presentation, and myself, Christoph Husmann. All of us will be available for your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, yesterday evening, we released our interim report Q3 2022, and this morning, the corresponding press release. Before we go into the details, I would like to emphasize two topics. Our key figures do reflect the commercial development of our company and first of all, the growth of our company. Compared to the nine months of fiscal year 2021, we added, in the meantime, 233 MW of capacity, which is a growth of 13%. Thereof, 34 MW in Q4 2021 and then additionally, 199 MW in 2022. These capacities were not available in the first nine months of last year, therefore did not contribute to the revenues last year, but this year. The second topic I would like to raise is the current European discussion on caps for market prices for power. I would like to give you an overview and would like to show you the impact on Encavis. First of all, I would like to state that the Council of the European Union agreed on September 29th, so within the third quarter, to introduce energy price caps of EUR 180 per MWh for technologies like wind and solar. Where does it have an impact on us? On the right-hand side, you see the European map with our activities. The two dark blue countries, Spain and Italy, there we do not see an impact on our business. The reason for that is that these two countries already pretty early during the course of the year introduced market price caps, and so therefore, these were already introduced and integrated in our figures during the course of the year. These countries are not obliged to introduce any additional price limit due to that council decision. In France, there's an exemption from the rule as well because states which have capped the prices anyhow by feed-in tariffs or two-way contracts for difference, they do not have any obligation to cap prices on such parks again, because we do not earn market prices there, so therefore, no cap of the market prices is possible or does impact us. It is only the middle blue countries in the North where which could be an impact by that price cap limitation. It is these countries which either have one-sided CFDs like Netherlands and Germany, so where the feed-in tariff is just the floor price, and other countries like Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, and outside the EU in the UK, where we have some merchant exposure. In these six countries, there might be an impact from such measures. Well, what is the Encavis approach to that decision of the Council of the European Union and the ongoing discussion in the respective countries? First of all, our approach is always to show you the true and fair view in our figures. We said that since the politicians obviously decided to do something here on the price limitation, it would only be fair and true to show you figures without any such price caps. Since the decision was taken, forming the basis for the laws of the respective national countries on September 29th of third quarter, we decided to integrate that in our figures based on the later discussion, which detailed out the specific mechanism. We decided to take the most likely case of a so-called retroactive cap of the prices in several countries, effective as of September 1st, 2022. We calculated an impact for September of EUR 30.3 million, not for a single country, but for numerous countries like Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Finland, and the UK. We build up provisions in the revenues for these price caps. Let's go into the figures and what that means all to us, the growth as well as the price caps. First of all, in our existing portfolio, we generated 2.3 TWh of electricity, which is an up of 195 GWh or plus of 9%. Due to weather conditions in the first nine months of this year, which are fairly on plan. That means that they are fairly above the poor weather conditions we have seen in the first nine months of 2021. In addition to that, as we pointed out, we increased the portfolio of our capacities by 13% in the meantime, and this means that we have 10 percentage points of additional energy production in our whole portfolio, which amounts now to almost 2.6 TWh in the first nine months. This 19% increase in gigawatts-hour production, and together with the price increase we have seen in the power market, leads to an increase of revenues of 37%, up more than EUR 96 million of revenues in total to EUR 355 million. Please have in mind that in these results, we have already incorporated a provision of EUR 30.3 million to reflect the market power price caps. Without these provisions, our revenues would have amounted to EUR 385.1 million. This increase by 37% of the revenues, so the EUR 355 million we have, we show here, leads to an increase of the EBITDA by 39%, and now we reach an EBITDA margin of almost 77%, or in figures, EUR 271 million. The operating EBIT margin grew now to 47%, fairly above the margins of previous years. I would like to comment something on the cash flow. While the cash flow usually is slightly below our EBITDA, reflecting the growth of the company and the later cash in of the revenues, now the cash flow is slightly above the operating EBITDA. The operating EBITDA is EUR 271.5 million. The reason for that is that we deducted EUR 30.3 million of revenues for the price cap in the revenues, as well as in EBITDA, and therefore. This cash has to be paid out to the government at a later stage, so it is still in the operating cash flow included. If we have a look into the specific quarters, and if we compare the respective quarters with each other, then we see that in the first quarter of 2022, we had a meteorological-wise better quarter than the very poor quarter of last year, increasing the gigawatt-hour production in our existing portfolio by 23%. While the Q2, the quarters were almost on the same level meteorological-wise, it is that we have again a better quarter in Q3 2022. That can be seen in the energy production in gigawatt-hours in total as well, where we have a strong growth in first quarter and a strong growth in third quarter. In addition to that, now we have an increasing portion of impact by the energy prices, which can then be seen in all three quarters. If we then come to the segments, we see that the solar parks still add the biggest portion to our revenues, in total EUR 256 million, so 72% of the whole revenues of the group. We do see a sharp increase in the wind farms, now contributing 23% to total revenues. PV and PV services and asset management still on a moderate level, but both growing, as we will see later during the course of the year. Let's have a look on the PV segment. The PV segment is impressed by the full year effect of the acquisition of the Spanish and the connection to the grid of the Spanish projects during the course of last year, and the new acquisitions of our Dutch and Danish parks. In total, our revenues increased in that segment by 29%, but this is mainly based on an increase of the production of electricity by 21%. 9% of that growth is due to better weather conditions, specifically in Germany and Italy, and 12% is due to the capacity increases in Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands. Only a minor portion is due to increased energy prices, but this can be seen in all countries. With these revenues, we can keep up the high EBITDA margins, which we already enjoyed in the first nine months of last years on 81% this nine months as well, and have a slight increase in the EBIT margin from 42%-48%. Please have in mind that we utilized some of the profits from the higher energy prices for investments to increase the productivity of the existing asset portfolio by a comprehensive technical compensation, which sometimes are accounted for as expenses. Ladies and gentlemen, in our wind segment, we do see a significant growth of our revenues by 70%. This increase of our revenues by 70% is mainly based on energy price effects and only to a minor extent of 14% to higher production of electricity, which in this case is 10% based on... 10 percentage points based on better weather conditions and 4% only on capacity increases. The main driving portfolio here are Germany and Denmark. That sharp increase in revenues based on prices, which is only accompanied partially with increased costs due to revenues linked lease contracts, for instance, and higher minorities, which we have to pay out to the minority shareholders in our wind farms, is then reflected in an improved operating EBITDA margin, which increases from 74%-81% and a sharp increase of our operating EBIT margin from 31%-58%. In our asset management, which does not have any impact or there's not no material impact from any price effect, we do see a strong increase in the revenues as well. Compared to previous years, nine months, 2021 figures, we do see an increase of revenues by 44%. This is reflected in a very strong increase in EBITDA, which more than doubled, and is a similar strong development in operating EBIT, which more than doubled as well. The increase of revenue is backed by compensation, and this is ongoing compensation from consultancy and operations management, and some one-off revenues from project realizations, specifically in the AIF2 fund. Now, there's not much to say about the headquarters, but in the headquarters we have a substantial increase in EBITDA, negative EBITDA. The reason for that is an increase in personnel expenses, which is based on the growth of the company and therefore the growth of the number of people working here, as well as inflation-driven increase of wages. Ladies and gentlemen, based on the figures of Q3, we do confirm our guidance for fiscal year 2022, although there is an ongoing discussion on price limits of the group. In August, we raised our guidance for the fiscal year 2022 from EUR 380 million- EUR 420 million. We feel very comfortable with these figures, having in mind how far we are already in Q3, although we incorporated provisions for some price caps. During the guidance or these provisions we have seen in Q3 are just for September. October, November, December prices, including potential price caps, are incorporated in the guidance. We expect for the operating EBITDA, EUR 310 million, so substantially above 75% EBITDA margin, as well as EUR 185 million EBIT. The operating cash flow of EUR 280 million is expected to be somewhat higher than the Q3 operating cash flow. Again, the reason for that is that we still have cash, a lot of cash in Q4, but expect to repay this price limit exceeding the power prices to the state, and therefore there's some compensation effect in it. We still expect an operating EPS of 0.55 EUR. If we do compare our Q3 figures as well as the guidance with the analyst consensus, then we do see that we have in Q3 standalone as well as in the nine-month reported figures, approximately EUR 10 million less of revenues and EBIT compared to the average of the analyst consensus and EUR 5 million less of EBITDA. The reason for that is that we did already incorporate EUR 30.3 million of provisions in our figures, which you didn't take into consideration. The operating cash flow here, we substantially exceed the average expectation by EUR 17 million in Q3 and EUR 18 million in the nine-month figures. If we have a look on the guidance, and if we take into consideration that we say more than EUR 420 million of save and more than EUR 310 million of EBITDA, then I think the analyst consensus is in line with our guidance. If we then have a further look into the guidance of our segments, then we do not change the respective guidances here. We are still confident that we still will have a further positive development of our solar farms, wind farms, the technical service and the asset management. We will have to change it in a way in future by incorporating the Stern acquisition, which Mario will discuss with you on the following charts. Mario, would you like to take it over? Thank you very much, Christoph. Just before we start talking about Stern, a couple of words on our acquisitions. In terms of the deals we have and the transactions we have performed this year, we are well on track to deliver the target growth of 500 MW. So far, we have announced 93 MW of acquisitions. A couple of projects are already operational. Some of those are still in the ready-to-build stage, but construction will start soon. In addition to these, 143 MW will be announced very soon. We have closed basically a transaction. We are waiting for the agreements and the press release to be discussed with the sellers. In total, we have secured a capacity of 236 MW so far. Now, there are a couple of projects which are in advanced stage of the development process. In a couple of those, we are waiting for the final grid approval, so the project can be built, but the grid connection is not clear yet. Other projects are progressing to the ready-to-build status. Also, on these projects, the authorizations, the big ones, have been granted. In total, we are striving at the moment for a total capacity of 475 MW. There are some additional projects which are currently under due diligence. Now, it's important to point out that we have been particularly careful in the selection of deals so far, given the fact that high interest rates have driven up return expectations and, we are sort of seeing that the sellers are digesting this new market environment and therefore, the discussions, the negotiations are taking a little bit longer due to a difference or, a reflected return expectation from the investors. Talking about Stern, as Christoph Husmann already has anticipated, we have increased our stake in the in our long-term O&M partner for three reasons. First of all, we believe we love Stern's attitude in serving its customers, and making sure that the plants produce at their very best. Secondly, because Stern has a very broad customer base with well-known investors and IPPs, which allows us to benefit from and to develop together with Stern, new best practices for the industry. Thirdly, because it guarantees us access to competencies and resources for the booming market of revamping and repowering of older plants, a sector which we see an incredible potential in the near future. The quality of the company and its ability to grow is visible in the figures we are presenting here. We now plan to support Stern in entering some markets which are strategically relevant to us, but currently not served by Stern yet, namely France, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden. All in all, we can say that we are very proud to have had this opportunity to further increase our stake, given the fact that Stern has been a strongly contested company in a consolidating market. This deal allows us to significantly strengthen our segment, technical services, giving us a competitive advantage in an area which will become even more important in the future. Thank you very much, Mario. Ladies and gentlemen, that were our Q3 figures and the outlook for the full year, and now we are happy to answer all your questions. Please go ahead. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to cancel your question, press nine star again. Please press nine star now to state your question. Please press nine and star if you want to state a question. The first question comes from Teresa Schinwald from Raiffeisen Bank International. Please go ahead with your question. Thank you. Good morning. Could you please provide also a technology split for this provision and maybe also a country split to help us with our modeling? Yeah. Thank you, Mrs. Schinwald, for the question, which honestly said we expected. To say it pretty clearly and I hope for your understanding that we won't answer the question on the country split. The reason is that the politicians, if we announce that, would know how we are incorporating our figures, and therefore we're happy to design that in the respective way. Therefore, please apologize that we do not give a country split, but we can give you a technology split. For the solar sector, we build up a provision of EUR 20.8 million, and for the wind sector, a EUR 9.5 million provision. Okay. Understood. Very clear. Given the experience in various countries, I can also very much understand that. Again, on this revenue clawbacks, where we have seen some general approaches like the technology independent EUR 180 million proposal by the European Commission. Some countries also have technology based price caps. What's your expectation for the general trends? Not so much perhaps on the country side as I understand your reluctance when it comes to these caps. First of all, please, thank you very much for the question. First of all, honestly said, for me it is really a surprise why they really agree in the European Council on a decision where they exactly state that any differentiation between the different countries would be disastrous for the whole integrated European power market since this would lead to a discrimination of different providers of electricity, although that power can flow over the borders. Therefore, it is really a surprise to me that although they all agreed on this formula and this wording, that they do not have that in mind and consider that if they go to the national parliaments. Regarding the technologies, I think there is a different way how to handle them. Specifically in Germany, we have a technology-wise differentiation by giving very complex process and formula by the way to allow the producers a margin or a price limit depending on the feed-in tariff plus EUR 30 plus 10% exceeding this total sum of both. Here there is some differentiation between wind and solar and the age of the respective parks, because wind in general has lower feed-in tariffs than solar, so therefore allowing a total lower price caps for such for the wind technology. While in solar, which on average has higher feed-in tariffs, plus the EUR 30 plus the 10% allows their higher price limits. There is some differentiation here. We see a similar discussion in other countries as well. On the other hand, we do see that the complexity of the introduction of such a law looks to be very challenging to the politicians. That's the reason why most likely yesterday, German government decided to postpone the discussion of such a measure in the cabinet. Therefore, I wouldn't exclude that they all, after discussing such a complex measure, that they would return to more simple ways as the Italian and Spanish governments introduced during the course of the year. Okay, great. Thank you. I'll come back with more questions, later. You're welcome. The next question comes from Jan Bauer from Warburg Research. Please go ahead with your question. Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Just for my understanding. You made a EUR 30 million provision on sales level, but in the end, on EBITDA and EBIT level, that should be the same figure. Is that right? Well, it is almost the same figure. As you might know, specifically in the wind sector, we have lease agreements which are dependent on the revenues which we incorporate. Therefore, with a price limit introduction, here the lease would react accordingly. That should be almost all of it. It is only a minor reduction of the EUR 30 million impact on EBITDA, but there is some. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Only like, yeah, these payments are on end-to-end contract. All right. Yeah. On investment IRRs. If you assume that the price cap in how it's discussed currently will be introduced, does this somehow affect your investment plans for the period as long as this power price cap would be effective? It definitely does. There is sort of a combination of effects. On the one side, we do of course have to incorporate some kind of caps in the investment models, this is for sure. It's a big question which figures, but we definitely run different sensitivities to understand how the price would change. Moreover, as I said before, there is a discussion about the return expectations that we should now chase given the fact that interests have gone up. The attractiveness of different asset classes has also changed. Therefore, it's sort of a double effect. We have to take into account the new revenue structure, and at the same time, we have to adjust our return expectations. The first one, we have to say there is another variable which has to be discussed, which is the duration of these measures. We have seen recently that Spain has extended. Originally, it was planned to have the revenue cap until the middle of the year. Now they have decided that it's going to stay in place until the end of next year. It's a different and difficult set of variables now to define. Yeah, totally understand. About the 500 MW target. Can you give us an idea of how much in CapEx this will cost you for Q4? Or respectively, you said you already acquired some of the parks, right? The 134 MW. How much did you already spend on this pipeline so far? On the operational assets, we have paid the price, the full price, of course. On the right to build assets, we have paid very little fees, I would say, because this is exactly the reason why we sort of have this kind of agreement with the developers. We pay little fees to secure the plan to acquire the shares of the SPV. Then we have sort of a variable earn-out to be paid out to the developers according to the final business model, which is then ultimately defined and finalized once we have a PPA assumption and a binding PPA term sheet, and at the same time, final financing conditions and EPC prices defined. It's sort of a variable price that we end up paying at financial close. That means for the 236 MW, you already paid the full price. On the remaining roughly 239 MW, you already paid on the secure payment to the SPVs. I would say almost. The dark blue ones are the operational ones where we have paid the final price. The light blue ones are the ready-to-build projects where there will be an upside to be paid out to the developer. All right. Thank you for taking my questions. The next question comes from Sven Kürten from DZ Bank. Please go ahead with your question. Okay. Thank you. Sorry for the mishap. Given the current electricity pricing and the current political suggestions, how much would the impact be in next year then from the price cap? Thank you, Mr. Kürten, for the question, but that question is hard to discuss because then first of all, we have to agree what revenues we might have next year if the prices would develop in a certain way, and then how much would be kept away then again. It is a comparison of two theoretical concepts, and therefore, this would be pure speculation. We do not believe that any of such price caps, which will be introduced, will stop us from reaching our 2025 goals earlier than anticipated. Because honestly said, even if such price caps are implemented, they are the prices, the cap prices, fairly above the expectations we ever had when we built and started that business plan Fast Forward 2025. Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from Manon Coulon from Erasmus Gestion SAS. Please go ahead with your question. Okay. Thank you for taking my question. Morning. Just a follow-up. Just a quick reminder. Can you remind us what is the state of your portfolio regarding the contract? You know, regarding what's on spot, what PPA, what feed-in tariffs, please. Sorry, do you mean the split of our capacity? Yes. Yes. Okay. That's it. Regarding revenues, it is that 70% of our planned revenues are under feed-in tariffs, and 20% of our planned revenues are under PPAs. That PPA portion is growing steadily since most of the new acquired projects, or almost all of them, are PPA projects. The remaining 10% are either short-term hedgers or merchant. Thank you very much. There are no further questions. Teresa Schinwald announced that she might have further questions. Yes. There's one more question from Ms. Schinwald. Please go ahead with your question. Yeah. Thank you. I also wanted to ask you for an update on the general situation for sourcing the panels and what's the price development in that area compared to last year. We've heard about 25% increases. I think these were your comments in recent quarters. Is it still the case or have you seen another uptick? Well, first of all, thank you very much for the question, and I would like to combine it together with the current discussion on the price caps. As a matter of fact, yes, we do see shortages of all different components. Honestly said, not in the module sector. In the modules, we see sufficient supply, and but increasing prices, and they're due to the overall inflation. Please have in mind that the making of silicon is pretty energy intensive, and so therefore, the high energy price we see in the market has an impact on the module prices as well. In addition to that, we have a shortage of potential workers and construction workers in Europe, and so therefore, EPC prices are increasing as well. We see cost increases almost everywhere, and we do see an increase of interest cost as well. Financing becomes more expensive on such projects. Having that all in mind, this then therefore impacted cash flow is confronted with increasing minimum return requirements. We have, having in mind that in all asset classes, the IRR expectations are increasing. To attract capital and to make good investments for our shareholders means that we have to increase our minimum return requirements as well. What does it mean? If the electricity prices are kept by the politicians now by these laws, then it is that the potential acquisition price we are willing to pay for such projects are increasing. This does not only apply to Encavis, but it applies to the whole industry. We see that financial investors are currently turning around and walking away from that business because now they can buy U.S. state government bonds on 3% or 4%, and so therefore, they don't have to go to the renewables. What does it mean to the developers? The developers are now confronted with a market which is, well, drying out or at least reduced, and the people are not willing to pay high prices as they did in the past. Why? Because there are price limits in discussion for energy and power prices. Because these are the only component which could compensate for increase of the inflationary-driven increased cost of the projects, the increased interest costs, and the increased requirements for IRR. What we currently see in the market is that the European states, with good intention to ease the high energy cost for the poor households and for the industry, at the same time creates a burden for the further energy transition. Do we see any negative impact on us? No, not necessarily, because due to the strategic development partnerships we have in place, we have sufficient projects already in our pipeline to grow further. We see that the energy transition as a whole will slow down. A follow-up. We're now talking more than 25% EPC cost increases. Is that right? Somewhat, yeah. Could be. You know, it depends on negotiation, yeah, but the forward figure could be overall quite wide. Okay. Thank you very much. There is one follow-up question from Jan Bauer from Warburg Research. Please go ahead with your question. Thank you for taking my question again. To sum up your statement regarding the higher prices for components, modules, and so on. In the end, you're saying, if we expect you to keep your investment IRR, especially on the return on equity, at least stable, the higher prices and the less optimal compensation of these higher prices by higher electricity prices due to the power price cap is then fully compensated by the developer, so the developer margin is set to decline for new build projects. Is this right? Absolutely. All right. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Martin Tessier from Stifel. Please go ahead with your question. Yes, good morning, and thank you for the presentation. One question on the impact from high power prices over the nine months. You say it's 57% of the increase in your revenues. My understanding is that it applies to reported revenues of EUR 255 million, excluding the EUR 30 million provision. Is it correct to say that the impact from high power prices was 57% of the increase in reported revenues, + EUR 30 million from the provision, implying a total of EUR 85 million? This is my first question. The second question on the price cap, could you indicate how much volumes are behind the EUR 30 million provision? Also, could you maybe extrapolate on the impact of the price cap and tell us what would be the final provision for the full year, based on the same assumptions you made for the EUR 30 million provision? If you're unable to communicate, maybe tell us what would be the impact for October, which is now over. Thank you. Thank you very much for the questions, Martin Tessier. The first one is easy to answer. Yes. The second question, well, first of all, if the government introduces that new price cap soon and has a simple mechanism of payment, well then we don't need provisions. The provisions are only because we want to give you a true and fair view on our revenues and EBITDA, and therefore, take that into our calculation, but we didn't pay it out. As soon as we pay them out, the provisions will be gone. The matter of fact is, I cannot give you the precise figures on the capacities, but it is, as I pointed out, the solar business in the Netherlands and Germany and Denmark has some impact here. Well, the small one in Sweden most likely as well, and in the U.K. and the whole wind business in Denmark and Finland. It is a huge amount of capacity, so the impact per kilowatt hour isn't as big. A forecast on the October figures I cannot give you because I don't have the figures of our October revenue so far, and therefore I don't know the calculation. I'm sorry for that, but it's too early in the month. Okay. Thank you. There are no further questions. Okay. Thank you very much for following our company in this turbulent times. We hope that we could give you some clarity on what the politicians are discussing with introducing that provision of EUR 30 million and giving a true and fair view. Our company is well-prepared to reach and exceed the guidance of 2022 and to reach the figures of our Fast Forward 2025 program earlier than anticipated. Thank you very much for your patience. Thank you very much for the time you took, and have a good day and please stay safe and healthy. Thank you and goodbye.