Good morning, welcome to Bluefield Solar's annual results for the period ending June 2021. Over the next 45 minutes or so, Neil Wood and I will break down the report into three sections seen on page one. First, we will look at the summary of the year. The second section will cover earnings and valuation. Neil will go through that, and then I will finish up with future plans for the business, including what we perceive to be some of the emerging opportunities and challenges for the company. On to page two, just a bit of background by way of introduction to Bluefield Solar. In an increasingly complex sector in terms of fund strategies, we remain pleased about the outperformance for the company on an earnings and dividend basis from what remains a simple and lower risk investment strategy. Bluefield Solar invests in the lowest risk renewable technologies with the highest level of visibility and predictability in terms of earnings. We then actively manage the assets to enhance returns. This means that we invest overwhelmingly in solar, and then we look to carefully add complementary technologies where appropriate. Far, this means that we have invested primarily, obviously, in solar, with a small exposure to heavily regulated wind assets. At the time of issuing the results from this low risk portfolio, we have the highest earnings with the highest level of regulated revenues from what is the lowest risk portfolio in the sector. Onto the highlights for the year on page three, the period highlights. It's been a very busy and also very successful year for the company in terms of our activities. We have delivered GBP 0.08 per share for shareholders and dividend comfortably covered by in-year earnings, and this is post-amortization. We are pleased to announce this morning an increase to the target dividend for the financial year ending June 2022 of GBP 0.0812 per share. We have made some fairly significant acquisitions during the period. We acquired 134 MW of regulated solar assets in two deals between July and January. We also completed post period, our maiden wind and storage acquisitions, and Neil will talk about that in just a few moments. Very significantly, we have built out our solar pipeline of developments to over 700 MW, and we've got the first accredited asset, which was mentioned earlier in the earlier results, called Yelvertoft. We have completed the materiality assessment to address key ESG issues, which I will talk about in a few moments. We've also broadened the mandate to include wind and solar, which obviously explains the acquisitions I've just mentioned. We would say that we were obviously disappointed by the negative total return in the sector, whilst obviously the dividend and the earnings have been very strong. We were obviously disappointed by that, which is due to a sector-wide re-rating, which has seen Bluefield Solar's share price drop in this period. That's something we will talk about later. Obviously we think that there is significant potential upside for the share price based on the visibility of earnings that we have and the dividend yield, which is on offer today. Moving on to page four, operational highlights. For those, I seem to say the same thing every year since 2013 when we IPO-ed. For those keen Bluefield Solar watchers amongst you, solar farms really are a very predictable way of earning electricity, sorry, generating electricity, and obviously earning income. It is fundamentally different in terms of volatility to all other renewables. That's why we chose solar as our lead technology for the fund. As you can see, the irradiation and the generation in the period was circa 1% below what we targeted in July a year ago. That's been obviously very consistent year in, year out. What's very interesting, the story that comes out of this slide, though, is obviously the revenues where they're close to 3% above where we expect them to be. If we go on to page five, the revenues and the earnings are only just partially explained by these results. At the top of page five there, you can see that we've delivered GBP 0.1134 per share, which is close to our record earnings. Last year we had GBP 0.1203, which was our record earnings. We delivered in excess of GBP 0.23 per share during a global pandemic, which obviously we're particularly pleased about, and earnings which we think are testament obviously to the stability of the strategy that we have adopted. It doesn't really say, though, in terms of the current earnings is that the story of the recovery of the power markets during the period where Bluefield has started to restrike power contracts at much higher prices is only partially being shown through here. As you'll hear as we go through about the power strategy from Neil and myself, you'll see that Bluefield Solar is going to benefit significantly from this increase in the power markets going forward. You can see just very typical on page five, where we've continued to amortize our debt, which we think is very important during this period where we've got very high levels of regulated revenue. We've brought forward significant reserves, we had over GBP 0.11 per share, which was available for distribution. Obviously, the aforementioned GBP 0.08 per share has been paid for investors for the financial year, we've carried forward over GBP 0.025 per share, which is again, our record carry forward. The NAV has held up well. Neil will talk about the valuation in just a moment, but it's obviously held up at just shy of GBP 1.16 per share. On to page six. Some of the ESG highlights, obviously a very key area, which we will talk about in various places throughout the presentation. Some really great stats, and we are generating as a business, which is our record number of homes powered, which is 187,000 homes, which is a good milestone. If you take the numbers in terms of average households, that means that we are powering from our renewable energy a city the size of Bristol, which is great for our Bristolians in business. Another pleasing stat is that on a sunny day this summer that we've just had, when we had them, into the mid-afternoon, we're providing circa 3% of the U.K.'s electricity. A lot of very good positive stats that are coming through. Materially, though, for the business, if we go on to page seven, is that we said to the market in the interim results that we were going to undertake, as part of our commitment to ESG, a materiality assessment to evaluate the key opportunities and risks in relation to environmental, social, and governance issues. We have done that. We've engaged with some key stakeholders across the business. These would be shareholders, advisors, industry professionals, the board. We identified 16 material topics which could have significant impact on the business. They were rated, all of them are important, but they were rated from lower risk to high risk. We see on the, if you look at the matrix on page seven where you've got the right-hand side of that matrix, you've got half a dozen very key areas, which includes ethics and compliance and human rights, occupational health and safety areas, which we will also be looking at in detail. Then we will work with the board to implement a strategy around those, which we will adopt, and we'll update the market on in the interim results. A very key bit of I think, creating some structure, we hope, and a robust reporting framework for our shareholders around that very important topic of ESG. With that, I'm going to hand over to Neil, who's just going to talk about some of the recent acquisitions and the power markets, and then is also then going to talk about earnings and valuation. Thank you, James. As you have already outlined, following the shareholders' approval to broaden the company's investment mandate to permit 25% of gross asset value into complementary non-solar renewable technologies, the company has enjoyed a tremendously successful period of acquisitions, as it has acquired over GBP 250 million of operational renewable generating assets since June 2020. Furthermore, it has done so on a very selective basis, with each acquisition fitting perfectly within the company's very specific growth strategy. Solar acquisitions of 134 MW between June 2020 and June 2021, which took the company's operational solar portfolio to 613 MW, close to a 30% rise over the 12-month period, have been followed by execution of first investments into complementary renewable technologies. These occurred post period end in July 2021 and August 2021 respectively, as maiden investments were made into wind, a 12.5 MW portfolio of feed-in tariff backed single stick turbines with circa 92% regulated revenues and co-located solar and storage as the Company acquired the project rights to a 45 MW solar and 25 MW battery system. Whilst these investments not only represent immediate repayment of the support shareholders gave in approving the broadening of the Fund's mandate in July 2020, they have crucially also enhanced the Company's exciting position for material future growth. Be it through further purchases of subsidized assets or significant investment into new build unsubsidized assets. As the portfolio's percentage of fixed revenues over the life of the subsidies has risen to over 65%, which for context is higher than sector averages of circa 60% for ROC accredited solar portfolios and materially higher than the 50% average for ROC accredited wind portfolios. Moving on to earnings and valuation. The first slide in the next section is on power price movement and looking back over the past 18 months. It's been well documented how volatile power markets have been since the world first went into lockdown in March 2020. As the immediate effect of a dramatic drop in electricity demand resulted in day ahead power prices falling to a low of GBP 24 per MWh in April 2020, before rising steadily during the remaining quarters to being briefly above pre-pandemic levels during December 2020. However, as the global economic recovery gathered pace in spring 2021 and lockdown measures began to ease across the world, demand for gas, in particular from Asia, coupled with low storage levels in Europe following a cold winter in 2020, saw concerns begin to mount around gas reserve levels ahead of winter 2021. The result, compounded by very low wind generation during summer 2021 and rising carbon pricing due to increased thermal generation, has seen price expectations across both the day ahead and season ahead market surge to a succession of monthly record highs over the past few months. Indeed, at the time of this recording, power continues to climb for winter 2021 and summer 2022. Whilst record prices are positive for generators, they have highlighted the challenges energy supply companies face matching rising wholesale prices with fixed customer tariffs. Sadly, this pressure has resulted in a number of the newer and smaller energy suppliers entering administration. This is in contrast to the company's position, which, due to the fact it has over 80% of its PPAs with two of the largest energy companies in the world, and the remainder with investment-grade counterparties, is highly insulated from the risk of supply and default. Despite the dramatic level of volatility over the past year, the careful application of the company's rolling hedging strategy, where on average 25% of the portfolio is fixed each quarter for typically two to three years, has meant that the average price achieved by the company over the period, as shown by the bottom left-hand graph, has remained relatively stable. The result is that the company has delivered record earnings without exposing shareholders to the risk attached to highly volatile power markets. Not only this, as James is discussing further, but the flexibility of its hedging approach has meant that the company has also been capturing value from rising power markets by fixing over 312 MW between January 2021 to date at average pricing on an installed capacity basis of between GBP 61-GBP 68 per MGh for contracts starting during Q3 2021 and into 2022. In doing so, it has not only created revenue certainty, as shown by the chart in the bottom right, as at the June 30th, 2021 of 88% for the 12-month period to June 2022, but secured value for shareholders in the coming financial year at levels above previous forecast and expectations. Turning over to consolidated portfolio earnings. As we have outlined since BSIF first listed, the company's financial performance continues to be built on three central tenets. Consistent portfolio operational performance, a power-fixing strategy that smooths out market volatility, and prudent management of operational costs. However, as a business that is judged on its earnings, it's imperative the financial performance of the portfolio is straightforward to reconcile to the distributions available and made to shareholders. Evidenced on the slide by the interaction between the financial results table and the graph detailing distributions to shareholders during the financial period. As outlined previously in the presentation by myself and James, during the period, the company completed two material operational solar acquisitions, a 64 MW portfolio and standalone 70 MW asset. The careful structuring of the timing of the economic benefit the company received from these acquisitions, being January 2020 and April 2020, has resulted in these two investments enhancing the company's portfolio earnings by a highly pleasing circa GBP 5.1 million in the period. Taking the component parts of the table in turn, portfolio income of GBP 80.3 million is ahead of target, as despite generation being fractionally below budget, revenues before accounting for the net impact of earnings from acquisitions were 2.8% ahead as the company took advantage of rising power markets and secured PPA pricing ahead of expectations. Portfolio costs, e.g. the operational costs within the underlying SPVs of GBP 19.4 million were in line with expectations with the increase against June 2020 driven principally by the additional 134 MW of assets acquired in the period and the limited financing costs associated with this. Group operating costs of GBP 7.5 million have risen compared to June 2020, driven principally by the company's GBP 45 million equity raise in November 2020, as well as a moderate increase in corporate tax estimates for the period to June 2021. Deducting interest costs of GBP 4.7 million in relation to the company's 18-year amortizing loan with Aviva and its RCF with NatWest results in underlying earnings for the period pre-amortization of long-term debt of GBP 48.6 million or GBP 0.113 per share on a weighted average basis. As the bar chart below the table outlines above budget earnings and highly accretive acquisitions means after debt repayments of GBP 0.0217 per share, a full-year dividend of GBP 0.08 per share, as well as an adjustment for shares raised post period ending July 2021, that the company has grown effective carried forward dividend reserves to GBP 0.0267. Moving on to valuation and valuation parameters. In the same way that earnings represent the most important figures for distributions, the directors' valuation is the most important number in respect of the company's NAV. As it is prepared on a willing buyer, willing seller basis, it's crucial it is a comparable reflection of transaction values for the reporting period. As the bar chart at the bottom of the slide on discount rates illustrates, since Bluefield Solar listed in 2013, investor appetite, understanding, and comfort with renewable assets has increased year on year. As such, given increasing competition for non-correlated income from sustainable sources, it is no surprise this has resulted in market participants continuing to apply ever-lower discount rates and extended asset life assumptions in transactions across the renewable spectrum, by continuing to apply a levered equity discount rate of 6%, the latest power curves from the company's third-party forecasters and increased asset life assumptions of between 30-40 years across 490 MW, which is circa 80% of the company's portfolio as at June 30th, 2021. The director's valuation of GBP 1.26 million per MW continues to sit prudently below the middle of the value range of GBP 1.2 million-GBP 1.4 million per MW that the investment adviser has observed in transactions for comparable subsidized U.K. solar assets. Supporting the valuation of the portfolio at the period end are the acquisitions made by the company during the period, shown as light blue dots on the far right of the bubble graph. The dot in the top right represents the 64-MW portfolio, which benefits from an average subsidy tariff of 1.8 ROCs and very high proportions of regulated revenue, close to 66% at the time of acquisition until 2033. Whilst the lower blue dot is the 70-MW asset, which is accredited under the 1.4 ROC banding. As detailed on the previous slide, both of these acquisitions have already delivered immediate benefit to the earnings profile of the company's portfolio as a whole. Turning over to NAV movements. This slide illustrates the correlation between NAV movement, the top graph, and the numerical impact on the portfolio valuation in the bottom graph as a result of the core valuation assumptions shown on the previous slide. Over the 12-month period, the NAV per share has declined slightly from GBP 1.17 in June 2020 to GBP 1.158 in June 2021. As the top graph illustrates, after accounting for the equity raise in November 2020, the 1% fall in NAV has ultimately been driven by the net effect of a drop in the valuation of the portfolio of GBP 90 million, being offset largely by an increase in the fair value, which is inherently an increase in equity reserves of the company's direct U.K. subsidiary, Bluefield SIF Investments. Taking a specific look at the drivers behind the drop in portfolio value of GBP 90 million, the portfolio valuation movement graph illustrates the fall is essentially the result of three key factors. Reductions in long-term power price forecasts over the life of the investment, effectively out to 2050, have lowered the valuation by GBP 18 million, whilst updates to long-term tax rates following the 2021 spring budget, which outline corporation tax rates will rise to 25% from April 2023, have impacted the valuation negatively by GBP 14 million. This cumulative decrease of GBP 32 million has been partially offset by a positive movement of GBP 19.1 million from an increase in asset life assumptions, with 80% of the portfolio valued between 30 and 40 years of operational life following continued success of the company's asset extension program. Finally, concluding the section on valuation is a tornado chart of key assumptions and the impact flexing them has on the director's valuation as at the June 30th, 2021. Now, as expected, they highlight valuation returns are most impacted by long-term swings in the overall energy yield, with power price movements of ±10% and asset life changes of ±5 years making up the second and third biggest value drivers. Lastly on this side, the chart also outlines the positive impact rising inflation would have on the company's earnings and valuation. This is due to its highly regulated revenue base, meaning income rises would exceed the inflationary impact on operational costs. With that, I'll hand back to you, James. Thanks, Neil. To finish up, we're going to talk about the future. On page 16, the future in respect of the strategy for Bluefield Solar is actually going to be based a lot around the past, as we've had considerable success, and we think that success is sustainable. If you look on the charts on page 16, obviously the most compelling, where you look on the top left, where we have the sector-leading dividends, which have been delivered through covered earnings and post-amortization. Just to reiterate, that's with a portfolio that for a sterling income fund is the lowest risk portfolio, in our sector, being 98% U.K. Solar, with the balance being U.K. Wind, and with the highest regulated revenues in the sector and the highest levels of contracted revenues, which is delivering the top left there, which is the highest covered dividend in the sector. Clearly, if you go on to page 17, we're going to look to double down on that to make sure that we can obviously continue that success. The focus that will remain for the portfolio overwhelmingly is going to be around the Solar Fund. We've got some 6,600 MW of operational Solar assets and over 700 MW, which are currently in development. The three points that we should raise about why we chose solar and why we continue to prioritize solar is it's a highly predictable energy source. We've mentioned many times before that it's daylight hours driven. It's why over the past eight years when we've reported, we've always had very close correlation between our target energy generation and actual. It's a very simple proven technology to convert irradiation into energy, and it's done very predictably. We've also focused very much on having very high levels of regulated income. In fact, the solar market has the highest levels of regulated income in the sector due to legacy issues with the ROC accreditation. We're going to continue to focus on that and look to drive that out. As I say, we've got over 600 MW which are operational solar assets and 700 MW, circa over 700 MW, which are in development. The plan for the development pipeline currently is three-fold. What we're going to look to do is to acquire some subsidy-free. Secondly, acquire using CFDs when they come through, which is obviously slightly further out to the process in terms of that scalable market. The third is to sell to third parties. It's very important to remember that we start this position, this process, with the highest level of regulated revenues in the sector. Typically, it's circa 50% regulated revenues, and we have in excess of 65%. Therefore, even thinking about adding some of these subsidy-free assets, which we can obviously manage and optimize and drive out higher returns from, we will still remain even with a very large amount of subsidy-free assets, one of the highest levels of regulated revenues in the sector. We've also looked at, obviously, as we were in the period, we have broadened the mandate. On page 18, we have looked at the analysis we did was to try and see in a very competitive market, where there are asset classes where returns have not been distorted by unjustifiable, in our view, reductions in discount rates, and also where we can actively manage assets in order to drive out higher returns. If you look at the chart on page 18, where you see returns which we think are very much in line with the risk reward that we'd expect to see for our shareholders is in that area where you've got obviously the subsidized solar, some subsidized onshore wind, and then you've got the subsidy-free, particularly subsidy-free solar, which obviously all in that bottom area. You do have different technologies as we've spoken about on previous occasions, which have much higher risk profiles in terms of their earnings generation or their complexity. One of those is anaerobic digestion, and another would be batteries. Just taking something like anaerobic digestion. If you are investing in that asset class, you should be demanding a significantly higher return than you would get from the core technologies of solar and wind. One of the challenges we think for investors at the moment is that some of these, because of the weight of money that's coming into the sector, which has been mentioned by Neil, is that what you're seeing some of these more complex assets being, in terms of discount rates, being driven down, so prices are very high. Batteries are different. Batteries are a new market, which we are obviously very keen on. We've spoken about it demands a much higher return. When we're looking at, we think it fits very nicely into a low-risk portfolio as a section of that portfolio, but we also expect to see it generate significantly higher returns because of the risk profile of the revenues. That's something we're going to talk to the market about much more as we go through and develop that side. The area really is to say that we are very comfortable still where we're looking at particularly subsidized solar and subsidized wind and subsidy-free solar. They still offer good risk-adjusted returns. Moving on to page 19. One of the areas I mentioned there in terms of our analysis is looking at assets where we can actively manage. One of the big differentiators for Bluefield is this life cycle approach we have to investment, where we have individuals and expertise at every stage of the life cycle, from development through to operation and maintenance. Looking after the asset for the long term. It's really for us, it's divided into four key businesses, which starts with development, goes into investment, asset management, and operations. You'll see from the numbers on page 19 is that the Bluefield approach is very operationally focused. There are 16 people that are working on the Bluefield fund on the investment side, which also includes something which is quite unique to us, which is construction engineering, where we have teams that will go out with Neil and the investment team to our technical analysis when we're looking to make acquisitions or indeed pre the construction phase of an asset. You'll see beyond that, we have another 50 people who are included in areas which are non-investment based. We've got the development pipeline has come through our business, which is run by Jonathan Selwyn, who has been responsible with a partner on developing that development pipeline. You've got 20 people who are involved in asset management and reporting and finance, and then a further 28 who are the operation and maintenance team who are in the field day to day. To give you an idea of their sort of activities, since the beginning of 2019, the operation maintenance business have traveled some 750,000 miles, which is to and from solar farms, which is actually to the moon and back, which shows how active their analysis and their work on site is. They've also produced something like 20,000 reports when on site. You've got this very detailed granular asset management and operational capability, which has been one of the key distinguishing factors for us and it's something where when we're looking at new acquisitions, that's one of the areas that we're looking to see that we can add in that platform expertise. Last couple of slides for me is just on the building on what Neil said about the power strategy is we've been really pleased about how the earnings have been so robust during this very unusual period. As I say, we've had the experience of going through the pandemic, where in March 2020, we went into the pandemic and lockdown with circa 90% of our revenues already contracted out, and we delivered record earnings that year, and we've almost delivered record earnings again this year having gone through that. We obviously have this strategy of periodically fixing every quarter, where we can, the contracts. It's something where, obviously, in the market today, as Neil's slide showed, that obviously we're going to miss some of the upside. We are pretty comfortable with that because obviously we have such high levels of certainty for our shareholders in terms of what the revenues are going to be. On page 20, on the right-hand side, you can see that there is real future upside. At the end of this period that we are reporting on, the average price per megawatt hour was just shy of GBP 50. That is a pretty solid performance considering the sort of the undulations that we've had during COVID. If we then roll forward some of the new contracts which are coming on in 2022, we're seeing that rise to almost GBP 57. The benefit of that hasn't been seen by the shareholders so far. We have in 2022, we've got the potential for circa 300 MW to be restruck. Obviously, there is the expectation, depending on how the markets go, but there's going to be some more restrikes which are going on. We think there's obviously certainly some upside which is coming down and benefit coming down the pipe for the shareholders. Finally, the slide just in terms of where we see some of the opportunities and challenges for the market and for Bluefield Solar. If we take sort of challenges, I will start with one which maybe seems slightly counterintuitive, which is energy price inflation. I think when you look at any chart around, obviously the dislocation that's happening with the energy markets at the moment in terms of extraordinarily high pricing, clearly the position is unsustainable. It's making businesses go out of supply companies are going bust and also there's going to be significantly higher energy bills for the consumer. Obviously that is challenging politically. I think what we're watching closely is that there's going to be, we need to see very good long-term thinking from policymakers, to obviously trump short-term politics. There is also the usual within the industry, there is the usual concern over future power prices. There's a wide range, and we've spoken about this before. There's a wide range of outcomes, of what long-term forecasts of power being and the cannibalization of returns for renewables as deployment increases. We repeat that the fact that we think we fundamentally disagree with some of the low forecasts, certainly that we've seen from BNEF, which we think are based around assumptions which are not particularly achievable. It's something which obviously investors are quite concerned about. The third thing we'd say in terms of just challenges to be aware of is supply chain. This, again, this is not unique to solar. Within the solar industry, there are a number of key challenges. One, which is concerns around labor practices in terms of the supply of modules and production of modules. Secondly, which is a big issue at the moment, is module price inflation, which is happening across the world. This is going to be exacerbated by the fact that China, which is the biggest exporter, is also looking to prioritize supply of modules into China. There could be increased pressure. There are some headwinds that are in place which investors need to be aware of. On the positive side, the opportunities are very strong as well. You've got COP 26, which is obviously a big push for the government. Public policy has never been so supportive, certainly not in the 15 years I've been looking in solar. You've got broad political and public support for renewables and decarbonization. In fact, yesterday it was announced that there'll be a target of 100% renewable energy by 2035. That's all very positive. Clearly also just thinking about inflation again, is that inflation is beneficial to Bluefield Solar. We have two thirds of our revenues are linked to RPI. The majority of our bank debt has fixed level debt. We have a very favorable capital structure, which means that net earnings would be boosted in an inflation environment. The counterweight to that point about energy price inflation is obviously it will be very beneficial. Obviously the point about energy price inflation is clearly that as a generator of energy, we're going to be the beneficiaries of that. The issue is that structural imbalances in the market we think remain. We spoke about this as long ago as two years ago, where decarbonization of the energy markets is going to be challenging in terms of getting decarbonizing and getting renewables on the grid is going to create some levels of volatility. You're seeing this obviously very significantly at the moment. This is part of the challenge that we're seeing at the moment, and is why we're seeing the highest pricing of power since our IPO in 2013. It's going to be beneficial, obviously, for generators and obviously beneficial to storage, which is one of the strategies that we have obviously adopted and have spoken about to the market over the past couple of years. Overall on balance, we think there are some obviously, as there always are some concerns and some challenges. Overall, we think that the opportunities remain very strong. Certainly in terms of the strategy we've adopted, we think that there are many reasons to think that we will be able to sustain the outperformance that we've delivered again this year. With that's the end of the presentation. We do have in the deck, we also have an annex, which has a number of different slides where there is some additional information if people would like to see that.
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