Good morning, welcome to Bluefield Solar's interim results for the period ending December 2022. James Armstrong and Neil Wood here from Bluefield Partners, investment adviser to the fund. As part of the presentation this morning, we'll highlight three themes, key themes that are developing or continuing to develop, all of which have positive input indications for the company over the medium to long term, namely future earnings, future public policy, and future growth opportunities. With that, we'll go into the presentation on page one by way of introduction. First, earnings. You'll see the expectation of very high earnings in the coming years due to locking in power fixes over the past six months, particularly. Record earnings for the first half of the year, and forecast earnings of over 2 times dividend cover for the full financial year. On a cumulative basis, we're seeing earnings grow up to over 3x dividend covered by the end of June 2025. Net, I should add, of debt amortization and the Electricity Generator Levy, the EGL. Second, the strong results for the period are set against the backdrop of what was the most challenging time for the company in its history, in its almost its 10-year history, due to political uncertainty around the time of the Truss government and the mini budget. We'll discuss the impact of public policy and the EGL as we go through. The direction public policy is taking today is one which is remains very positive in respect of renewables, but also again, shows how robust the model is for Bluefield Solar. I was looking at my notes from a year ago where we described the company as anti-fragile, and that has certainly proven to be the case over the past 12 months, and particularly the last six months. Finally on page one, we have continued to see really good progress on the work we started over four years ago with our development partners and also our in-house developer. We've had a very successful period with over 200 megawatts of new solar sites being granted planning permissions on top of the existing portfolio of assets which are ready to build, which we'll come back to. All in all, a very, very positive period for the company, and one which if you take the first point around earnings, where we've got the increased level of earnings and the development, we as mentioned before, it gives us the opportunity to have the opportunity to be able to invest potentially into our self-developed assets. Okay, moving on to page two with the period highlights. What we've got is, and the financials on the top left there, we've got increase, further increase to the discount rate, which reflects the movement in gilt yields during the period. Neil will talk about this in more detail, but we've seen discount rate move to 7.25%, which looks prudent when looking at the assets and also the geography of the company being U.K.-base. NAV has remained very solid. The counterweight to the increase in the discount rate is that we've captured very high power prices on our power sales. Power forecasts have been very positive and inflation has remained inflated, which are all benefits to the company. We see the strongest NAV that we presented previously. We've also had good asset activity on the top right there. We made an acquisition of just shy of 50 MW, which was an operational plant just before Christmas. We've also, as I mentioned, we've had 215 MW of new sites which have been given planning permissions in the period between July and December. Bottom left, mentioned very, very strong earnings for the period where we're expecting over 2 times dividend cover for the full year. Just finishing up on that, so development pipeline, which I've mentioned, we've grown the development pipeline to over 1.3 GW in development or being developed, and that is almost 1 GW of solar and the balance is made up of battery investments. Just a quick summary on page three of the current portfolio. On the right-hand side, you can see the company's grown to around about GBP 1.4 billion. Market cap is as at the end of the period was in excess of GBP 800 million. We've got that vast majority being solar assets, and then we've got a growing portfolio of wind assets. All geographically based in the U.K., and you can see at the bottom right there that the vast majority of that is within England. On the left-hand side, just the overview, really good performance, very strong operating performance by the portfolio, above expectations on the solar portfolio, actually, again. We've got a average revenue was captured as GBP 190 per megawatt hour, which is a third higher, as we've mentioned, over a third higher than in the period June 2022. It's worth referencing, it's actually 4X higher than the average revenue that was captured in December 2021, which I think gives you a sense of the obviously the success we've had in capturing those prices, but also what has happened in the past 12 months. Revenues, which are split pretty equally now between regulated revenues and also the power sales, partly because of the high levels of revenues that we've achieved with the power sales has made that balance more like 50/50. Historically, it's always been pretty 60/40 in favor of the regulated revenues. If we go on to page four, a very key chart in terms of the forecast that we have in terms of going out. As you're aware, Neil will actually talk about the power strategy in a few moments in a little bit of detail. Historically, we've always delivered the earnings and dividend through in-year earnings for the past almost decade. If you look on the right-hand side there, we can see, the outlook has never, ever been stronger in terms of our earnings potential. You can see in the June 2023, we've got the full-year target dividend of GBP 0.084 per share, and we're seeing that there are over two times cover there, which was previously mentioned, which is net of debt amortization and the EGL. On the cumulative basis, you can see how that grows over June 2024 and June 2025. That includes, we have very high visibility of that because of the power fixes that we have undertaken where we've looked to strike for as long a contract as we can in the past six to 12 months, and investors will see the benefit of that clearly over the next two to three years. And it also relies on some of the obviously the power forecast that we're using at the moment. You can see it's an incredibly strong position for the company over the, as I say, the next periods out to June, 2025. On to page five. On the underlying earnings, just showing you how we work through that. If you look at that half-year position, which is the column to the left, we've got total underlying earnings of GBP 0.0841 per share, which is nice because that is in excess of the full-year target we have for our dividend, and we've achieved it in six months. That's obviously very, a very pleasing position to be in. We've amortized more debt. We've had reserves brought forward, which means that where we end up is that we've got over 7.5 pence per share post the dividend in the period available for distribution, which is where we're starting to build that very significant surplus that I've just spoken about. At the bottom there, the net asset value is just a couple of pence higher than it was at the end of the full financial year ending June 2022. Then on final part from me before I hand over to Neil is on page six. We'd like to show you the bridge chart of what we how the from the accounts, how the earnings translate into dividends and cover dividends for the shareholders on a pence per share basis. You can see that bridge chart. I think the key thing to look at is if you look over to the right-hand side, you've got that seven and a half pence per share being carried forward, which clearly is a very strong position to start the second half of the financial year in. With that, I will hand over to Neil to talk about the capital structure and the valuation. Thank you, James. This slide outlines the company's capital structure and how it has enabled the fund to flourish since listing in 2013. Critical to this has been ensuring the structure offers the ability to maximize shareholder value through enhanced operational flexibility. To achieve this, Bluefield Solar has deliberately structured over 85% of the company's debt across portfolios of assets rather than borrowing against individual projects. In doing so, enabling it to spend more time delivering value-enhancing portfolio initiatives such as life extensions, capital works programs, and power price fixing. All three strands are delivering material value to both individual projects and the wider portfolio through improving revenue across near, medium, and long-term horizons. Although this has especially been the case across the company's ability to apply a dynamic rolling power price strategy, securing terms from competitive tenders instead of being locked into periodic fixes under single long-term offtake agreements. It's why during the COVID-19 pandemic, the fixes the company had secured helped drive record earnings, and why, as power markets have rallied since, that the company has gone on to report even higher earnings. Turning over the page to debt strategy. Now, connected to the benefits of the capital structure is the position of the company's debt arrangements and the strategy of maintaining leverage between 35%-45%. This ensures cash flow cover on debt ratios sit materially above lender levels, resulting in limited risk of equity distributions being impacted. To facilitate this, the company has arranged debt over three time horizons. Short term, this reflects redrawable funds available under the company's RCF to support acquisitions. Medium term, financing that has a limited tenor in order to secure favorable cost margins over longer-term debt, but deliberately structured to include a long-term swap so that refinance risk is materially reduced and any impact from adverse interest rate movements are avoided. Finally, long term, this debt is sized to ensure it is fully amortizing within the life of the subsidies, completely insulating the company from interest or refinance risk over the life of the loan. Current overall leverage, 38%, combined with only 10% of this not being fully hedged, means the company has very limited interest rate risk exposure in its current debt drawings. Turning over to power price movements. Following on from the capital and debt structure slides, a key operational benefit enjoyed by the company from its gearing approach is the flexibility to adopt a rolling power fixing strategy. The result is that the company has delivered record earnings in falling and rising markets without exposing shareholders to the risk attached to daily power price volatility. The flexibility of this hedging approach has meant that during 2022, when power prices reached successive highs following the recovery of the global economy from COVID-19 and the impact of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the company was able to adjust its fixing schedule in order to implement competitive tenders across over 310 MW, and in the process, securing elevated pricing out to 2025. This has also meant the company enters 2023 with 100% of its fixed power sales hedged until March 2023, over 85% until March 2024, and 80% until June 2024. With over 650 MW of the portfolio hedged at an average contract price of GBP 173 MWh for this period. Now, when combined with average pricing of around GBP 150 per megawatt hour, as at December 31st, 2022, a rise of over GBP 100 per megawatt hour to the position in December 2021. The result is the company has secured very attractive power prices over the next 18 months at levels that provide a high degree of visibility in respect of the company achieving over 2x dividend cover in the period to June 2023, with the expectation of it rising further in the period June 2024 and June 2025, with the inclusion of carry forward surplus earnings. Turning to the Electricity Generator Levy. The consequence of the unprecedented rises in power during 2022 and the pressure this added to households already struggling with rising living costs was that in November 2022, in response to demands for a windfall tax, the U.K. government announced the introduction of a temporary 45% tax, otherwise known as the Levy, on the extraordinary profits potentially being made by electricity generators. The Levy will be in place from 1st January 2023 until 31st March 2028, with a benchmark price of GBP 75 per MWh linked to U.K. consumer price inflation. Revenues earned from assets under feed-in tariffs, Renewable Obligation Certificates or Contracts for Difference with the Low Carbon Contracts Company are exempt. With around 53% of revenues out to the mid-2030s, the company has revenues that are exempt from the Levy, the combination of the company's successful power fixing strategy and medium-term power forecasts mean the estimated value impact to the director's valuation is still close to around GBP 90 million or GBP 0.15 per share. The company is pleased to be playing its part in providing a solution to the energy crisis. Turning to valuation parameters. Despite the political turmoil during the period from June 2022 to December 2022, demand for U.K.-based renewable assets remained high. Under the surface, equal and opposite forces have been at play as record power prices and rising near-term inflation have been tempered by the introduction of the Electricity Generator Levy, as just discussed, and increasing interest rates. With CPI and RPI running at 30-year highs during 2022, the directors valuations has reflected this and applied RPI at 10.9%. Consensus on the extent of a fall in inflation remains split beyond 2022, 5.5% has been applied for 2023, an increase from 3.4% in the June 2022 valuation, with 3% until 2029 before dropping to 2.25% thereafter as RPI is re-replaced by CPIH. As the company is a net beneficiary from inflation and even more so following recent highly regulated revenue acquisitions, increases to inflation have a positive impact on revenues and ultimately value. Inclusion of the latest power curves from the company's three leading forecasters, as well as PPA fixes in the period, have contributed around GBP 120 million of additional value compared to June 2022. That's an astonishing figure and one that is principally a result of surging estimates of power prices for the period to 2025. Although the introduction of the Electricity Generator Levy means this figure is reduced by close to GBP 90 million of additional taxes. Looking beyond the mid-2020s, the forecasters continue to hold predictions around medium and long-term power prices being in line to the curves released over the past 12 months. With central banks continuing to increase interest rates between June 2022 and December 2022, in fact, as the Bank of England moved its base rate up from 1.25% to 3.5%, the directors felt it prudent to also adjust the weighted average discount rate to 7.25%, up from 6.75% in June 2022, and 1.25% higher than in December 2021. In conclusion, considering the highly regulated nature of the company's portfolio and its low level of leverage, the directors are satisfied the valuation for December 2022 is squarely placed within the universe of values seen across transactions over the past year for portfolios of comparable size and technology mix. James. Thank you, Neil. On to page 12 on ESG. We've made very good progress in the period on our ambition to be at the front of the pack in respect to ESG standards and are setting a very high bar in terms of where we're looking to get to. We've achieved 100% alignment on EU Taxonomy in the period. We've moved forward with level two SFDR disclosure requirements, also we've adopted a sustainable investment policy into our investment policy procedures. We're also making, which hasn't been mentioned on this slide, but we're also making very good progress with the biodiversity project we started across the several 1,000 acres of solar farms that we have across the U.K.. That we hope to see the, obviously the ecology on the land, on the portfolio, will see the benefits of that work over the coming decades as we look to implement that very wide-ranging program. It should be said on the right-hand side of page 12 is that we are now we've moved from powering a city the size of Bristol, which was last year. I think we're now powering a city the size of Leeds with renewable energy each year. That's, again, another good milestone for the company. Moving on to page 13, which is future growth. We spoke about this, at the beginning, and the one of the key elements that we've been working on over the past few years, and it's very much the DNA of Bluefield, is this ready-to-build development capability that we have internally You can see on the right-hand side of the page where we have very significant development progress has been made by the team. Where you can break into sort of three elements. One is the ready-to-build side. We've got over 400 MW of ready-to-build assets which are going through. This is both solar and storage assets, and we've been breaking ground on some of those assets already, and we've got that program kicked off, and it'll be going through until 2026. The second is that we have an additional over 200 MW of solar projects in planning. What that means is a planning application's been put in and submitted, and we are awaiting determination by the local authority on whether we have been successfully granted the planning permission. In development, there is a further over 600, 650 of solar and battery projects which haven't yet had those planning applications put in place but are we're working towards that. Combined, we have a very significant and developed proprietary pipeline that we can control, and that gives us very good visibility on the future growth of the company which we can control. If we go back to that, the earlier comments about the earnings surplus we have in ahead of the dividend, obviously that's something where we have the ability to very effectively use those potential surplus earnings into these proprietary deals that we're working on. Okay, the penultimate slide here. Public policy has been at the center of really the period under review. I think that the last six months has shown that public policy is interlinked in terms of government have responsibility for creating, firstly, financial stability, and then secondly, the ability to provide stable long-term energy policy measures to support investors like Bluefield. As I said in my opening comments, this period was the most challenging period we have experienced since we IPO'd the company. The epicenter of this challenge was the U.K. gilt markets, where we saw very significant volatility, and we saw a doubling of the U.K. gilt rates pretty much overnight around the time of the mini budget with the Truss government. At one stage, it actually became quite difficult to value long-term assets during that period. The first thing that should be said is it's been very reassuring to see that there has been a real period of stability has returned. I mean, gilt rates are still inflated from certainly from 12 months ago, but we're seeing stability has returned to the market. What that then means is you then, if you have some control over that area, we've then got the fact that renewables can then renewables and storage then becomes the sort of the centerpiece for the U.K. government in terms of dealing with what we've termed the energy trilemma. So this is the challenge for governments of the cost of energy security, and also net zero. Obviously the last 12 months have put this into a very sharp focus. What is really encouraging in terms of the current government, but also just generally in terms of public policy, is that for very hard economic reasons, that the renewables and storage combined deal with the energy trilemma together. It's the lowest cost, you know, solar and wind are the lowest cost of energy today. They're also very quick to deploy, so it increases energy security. In doing so, it deals with the very important issue of climate change and our net zero target. We think that even though it's been a challenging period in terms of public policy, the end part has been fairly positive in terms of where the government has got to. Just to conclude. It's been a very positive end to what was a challenging period, but one that again shows the robustness of the model that we have set up. We end the period with record earnings for a half year and with very high visibility on future earnings, which could deliver 2-3x dividend cover over the next couple of years. With the near-term pipeline growing so significantly and with public policy, as I just said, having the stability that we need to see, we think that there is reasons to be very optimistic about the next period for Bluefield Solar and that we're in a very strong position to be able to take advantage of the market opportunities presented to us. Thank you for listening, and good morning.
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