Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the annual results presentation for the Bluefield Solar Income Fund for the period ending June 2024. As a colleague said to me, it is timely to presenting Bluefield Solar's results on the day that the last coal-fired power station in the U.K. is closed down. As usual, it's James Armstrong and Neil Wood from Bluefield Partners Investment Advisors to the Bluefield Solar Income Fund, and this presentation should take circa thirty minutes. So we'll go straight to page six of the presentation. When we look back over the year in question, we have executed or are executing most of what we wanted to achieve, having consulted our shareholders about capital deployment priorities in what has been a closed market for now for over twelve months. The priorities were, one, to create liquidity through the existing portfolio. This has been achieved by the strategic partnership with GLIL, which has delivered the sale of 50% of a portfolio of assets which was 100% owned by BSIF at NAV, so underpinning the valuation of the company, and also releasing circa GBP 70 million back to the company. Two, we were very focused on capital allocation. This means lowering the revolving credit facility, the RCF, and to start the share buyback program. Now, the share buyback program was started in February and is ongoing, and the board have indicated it will continue to be ongoing while we remain at the discount... share price remains at a discount to NAV. This is a post-event period, but we've got the receipt of the funds from the sale of those aforementioned assets to GLIL, which and just over GBP 50 million is going into paying down the RCF. And third, it was the priority to create future value through the management of our very unique, large proprietary pipeline, which, including Yelvertoft today, has over 400 MW of CFDs, and we'll talk about that as we go through the presentation. So if we go on to the next page, which is page seven, on the key financial highlights. I think the highlights emphasize a solid year, not as spectacular as last year, but still very solid in absolute and in relative terms, and if we take it from the top row, gross asset value just shy of GBP 1.4 billion. The NAV has dropped around about GBP 0.10, but that's what happens when you're you combine the fact we're not buying any assets and that we have a falling power market in terms of power sales, the power prices. Operational cash flow is down from a record year last year, but still very solid and very healthy at circa GBP 95 million. Going into the middle, so the debt side, prudent levels of overall gearing remain the and the 3.4% all-in cost of debt has actually gone down from last year, which is partly down to the cost of the Lyceum debt, which was the debt which came with the deal we did with Lightsource, the acquisition of the Lightsource BP assets, and we've got average duration of that debt of about 12 years. And so this has delivered what is a very attractive dividend cover, so pre-debt amortization about 1.8 x, and 1.4 x post, which is very comfortable, and attractive, and we expect that to increase to nearer to 2x, in the coming years. Dividend yield is now a remarkable 8.3% compared to the just highly attractive 7.3% last year, and we're obviously very pleased to have announced and paid the dividend of GBP 8.8, and we've increased that to GBP 8.9, for the coming year to June 2025. So moving on to page eight. So this chart shows a combination of the performance of, the past decade. Very high progressive dividend, one of the highest in the infra space, not just, renewable space, on a pence per share basis, and that's underpinned by one of the lowest risk portfolios in the sector. So we've got very high levels of visibility on revenues, defensive asset base, very high levels of regulated revenues and power fixes. NAV total, if you look at the top, right, NAV total return, very pleasing, 104%, and we paid out over 300 million in dividends. As I've mentioned, a good, good dividend cover at the moment, but as I said, we're looking at it's likely or expected to, rise in the coming year to sort of 1.7,x 1.8 x cover due to better performance and, better, radiation moving back to its average. So we move on to page nine. So a familiar chart to those that have seen this before. We've constructed a very highly diversified and very defensive portfolio, all U.K., which is likely to be, if you're thinking about public policy and government initiatives, it's likely to be one of the most, if not the most attractive area to invest in renewables and batteries in the world in the coming years, which we'll talk about later on. It looks quite static, the chart, but we have actually sold some ROC assets, as mentioned, part of the GLIL relationship. We've added some brand new assets, Yelvertoft and Mauxhall, which adds some CFDs to the portfolio for the first time, and we have a minority share in the acquisition of the Lightsource BP assets, which actually takes, going back and forwards to today, actually takes the capacity to 883 MW. High levels of ROC revenues, you can see on the right-hand side, so the top right, which is the 1.5 ROCs per MW, and we've got one of the highest levels of regulated revenues in that, in the renewable space. If you look bottom right, overwhelmingly, we've got some very nice solar assets, but also that we, our top 10 assets cover only 40% of our asset base. Again, really very nice levels of diversification. Okay, so onto page ten. This gives a sight of the portfolio revenue mix, which goes out to 2034, which is a decade out, and would be actually our 21st anniversary of the company in that year. Neil will talk more about the power strategy as we go through, and I'll talk about the power markets as well. But looking at the bar chart, it shows the average annual composition of revenues from a regulated merchant and PPA basis. And so looking at the merchant figure, or the... You've got that, that's the green. If you look at that level, that's actually just so people understand, that's the forecast there of which makes up the total revenues, is taking a, you take obviously the regulated revenues that you know, and then you add on what is a blend of the three leading four power forecasters that we use, and including the adoption of the solar capture curves, which if you take it over the life of the forecast, add, let's say, a 25% discount to the base forecast, which is quite important to note. So we always focus, as you know, for those who know the business, on the fixed power at the short end of the power curve, because that enables us to have very high levels of contracted revenues alongside the regulated revenues. If you look at the bar chart on the left-hand side, you'll see that there is this combination of, in 2024, of light blue and dark blue revenues overwhelmingly, which make up sort of 94%. That's the combination of fixes, which is the light blue matched to the regulated revenues, and then that sort of drops off a bit next year in 2025. Because we're constantly restriking our PPAs, there is always contracted revenue, so those light blue figures will start to move to the right as you go through, because we're always contracting. Depending on the circumstances, we'll decide to contract the PPAs for longer or shorter. But it gives you an idea of the visibility and the certainty of the revenues that we have from a very stable defensive asset base. And if you look at just that striped line, the final comment is more theoretical, but we have added in what the impact of adding CFDs to the portfolio. That's in the case that we bought them, but it shows how much regulated revenue that we will add in to the portfolio if we did go through that. Okay, onto page 11, my last page before I hand over to Neil. On page 11, and we've said this before, we have a very simple business model that we convert... Overwhelmingly, what we're doing is we're converting the irradiation into electricity, and then that gets converted into revenues, and then net of debt service, it drives earnings and dividends to shareholders. There's a very high level of visibility that you can see. Good performance in terms of the across the board, even though obviously, power markets have been slightly down, and also, you know, our performance and the irradiation. We had a, if you like, we've had the sort of combination of all factors coming in. It's a, you know, it's still a very strong, a very strong performance. It's worth noting, actually, that you've had the worst irradiation figures relative to a P50 number, so that's your average number, 11 years. The annual variance from your average or your P50 is typically in solar something like 3%-4%, and this is borne out by the solar generation over the past 11 years. In fact, the irradiation for the year was down 4.3% against forecast, so outside the standard deviation. Really, what would be viewed as the kind of one in 10-year event, or maybe in our case, a one in 11-year event, it does still compare very favorably with other renewables. That same comparison, if you do it with wind, is set to sort of 15%-20%, so there's much lower volatility, and this is because, you know, solar and the irradiation is not a weather phenomenon. It's a daylight hours-driven strategy, and you get the power source, comes on in the morning, goes off at night. Now, notwithstanding this, and combined with lower overall expected energy production due to specific assets in the portfolio, we still have a gross cover of 1.8 x dividend cover and 1.4 x, if we look on the bottom right there, this year, which we're expecting to see grow to circa 1.8 x in the next couple of years, which is very encouraging. So with that, I will hand over to Neil. Onto the capital structure slide, and thank you, James. So since its IPO in 2013, the company has focused on a simple and deliberate debt strategy of ensuring leverage levels are maintained prudently below company's overall limits at 50%, and then outside of the company's revolving credit facility, long-term debt within the portfolio is secured against portfolios of assets at conservative levels, with fixed interest rates on fully amortizing terms. Deliberately structuring debt across portfolios of assets rather than borrowing against individual projects delivers three crucial advantages. Firstly, it drives out lower debt costs than those of single projects, as the all-in cost of debt of 3.4% evidences. Secondly, it materially reduces the risk of financial ratios being breached. And thirdly, and perhaps most crucially, it provides the company with the operational flexibility 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. Turn over to valuation factors. Now, following the significant increases in inflation and interest rates over the past two years, the 12-month period to June 2024 brought some welcome relief, as interest rates and inflation first plateaued and then finally began to decline, with inflation falling from 7.3% in June 2023 to close to 3%, in fact, 2.8%, to be precise, as at the 30th of June 2024. This precipitated the Bank of England to make a 25 basis points rate cut post-period end in August 2024. That's the first cut since initiating an unprecedented series of rate increases from 0.25% in December 2021 to a high-water mark of 5.25% in September 2023. Now, despite signals from the central banks that further interest rate cuts will be forthcoming, the directors do not believe there is yet sufficient evidence, as at the period end, of a lower rate environment influencing changes to discount rates and the implied premium of the company's discount rate to the 15-year U.K. gilt. As a result, the directors have continued to apply a discount rate of 8% and inflation assumptions of 3% to 2029 and 2.25% thereafter. Ultimately, though, the valuation of the portfolio is premised on a willing buyer, willing seller methodology. And so beyond individual assumptions, precedent market transactions form the critical benchmark in the determination of the directors' valuation. And there's no better validation of the company's approach than the sale, which James has referenced, and as part of its strategic partnership with GLIL, of a 50% stake in a portfolio of 112 MW of operational PV assets, in line with the latest NAV of the company. Turning over the page to the NAV bridge. Now, demand for U.K.-based renewable assets with attractive levels of regulated revenues remained high over the period, and with inflation and interest rates falling instead of rising, there has been limited movement in headline assumptions over the period. That said, there have still been a number of changes underpinning the movement of the company's NAV over the 12-month period to the thirtieth of June 2024. Starting on the left of the chart, positive movements cover high inflation across the first half or the second half, I should say, of 2022, and the first half of 2023, resulted in ROCs increasing in price by 9.8% from April 2024. This added GBP 1.9 per share, with a further benefit in the period coming from recognition that renewable energy guarantees of origin, or REGOs, as they're commonly known, are expected to provide a small source of additional revenue for the period to 2030, and that's GBP 0.9 per share in value terms. Continued success of the company's development program resulted in a further 300 megawatts of solar and storage, achieving planning permission, adding GBP 1.1 per share to the NAV, with the company's share buyback program adding a further GBP 0.4 per share. Now, these increases have been offset by small negative movements of GBP 2 per share from lower-than-forecast performance, with irradiation and operational performance both circa 5% below expectations and prudent amendments to predicted future operational costs, and GBP 1.3 per share from tax and working capital changes. And rounding off the reductions, bars relating to power price estimates from the company's forecasters for the period to 2030 having been lowered, and resulting in an impact of GBP 2 per share, with the final reduction being dividends paid over the period of GBP 8.8 per share. But stepping back, and 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 June 2024 is squarely placed within the universe of values seen across transactions over the past year for portfolios of comparable size and technology mix. Turning over to the active management slide. Now, active management can often be used to cover a myriad of generalized activities in the investment space. However, for Bluefield Solar, the purpose is clear. It means deploying the specialist knowledge of a dedicated workforce of over 110 individuals within the Bluefield Group, covering development, construction, operations and maintenance, technical asset management, finance, investment, and ESG, with over 70 different core responsibilities.... These specialist units have been created over the past decade, enabling a series of asset-enhancing programs, such as life extensions and cost-saving initiatives, and core OpEx items, like insurance, operations and maintenance, and business rent. Specifically, in the past two years, these teams have combined to drive a GBP 20 million innovative repowering investment program on 17 small-scale wind turbines in Northern Ireland, secured CFDs on 431 MW. That's close to 70% of the company's consented solar pipeline and committed over GBP 65 million of investment into two new solar projects, which, with a combined capacity of 93 MW, will increase the company's generating base by circa 11% in the period to June 2025. There are further details on our construction work streams in the appendices of this presentation. Turning over to operational performance. Now, operational performance across the portfolio for the period to June 2024 has been slightly below expectations, as James has outlined. The company's solar portfolio was impacted by a combination of lower-than-forecasted irradiation, circa 4% below, and operational underperformance of circa 5%. And that was as a result of maintenance by the grid network operator in one of the company's 50 MW plants and a targeted investment, inverter replacement program reaching GBP 4 million in the period, with the aim of securing operational performance for the decade ahead. The company's wind portfolio performed in line with expectations for the period, but exceeded generation compared to the prior year by 21%, and that's a consequence of wind speeds simply having greater levels of year-on-year variance than solar. However, the deviation in levels of irradiation and wind speeds against forecast and expectations really highlights the benefit of carefully layering a minority of wind to a majority base of solar, as highly forecastable daylight hours-driven solar generation is complemented with the additionality provided by wind generation across any given 24-hour period. And if you're stepping back from the most recent 12-month period, what's clear is the company owns and operates a well-performing portfolio, with cumulative generation over the decade of its existence being in line with expectations. And that's something that is only really possible from the combination of carefully tailored preventative maintenance programs, targeting activity during periods when lower generation is expected, and a rolling capital investment program, evidenced this year by the GBP 4 million spent on inverter replacements, in order to continually optimize the long-term operational performance of the portfolio. Turning over to the PPA strategy slide. Bluefield Solar focuses on fixing power price agreement contracts at the short end of the power curve, so that's six to 13 months, with contract renewals spread evenly across periods through competitive tenders with a number of counterparties. Now, by rolling PPA fixes during the year and targeting the most liquid area of the power market, the company is able to take advantage of rising power prices, as well as providing significant insulation from periods of declining pricing. No greater evidence of that is the last year, and while day-ahead pricing has continued a downward trend from GBP 86 per MWh in June 2023 to GBP 71 per MWh in June 2024, as a consequence of high gas storage following a milder than expected 2023 winter, the BSIF average seasonal weighted power price actually rose to GBP 148 per MWh, marginally up from GBP 141 per MWh in June 2023, as a result of fixes the company secured during 2022. Of course, as the chart shows, materially above the day-ahead market. Now, the success of the company's PPA strategy means that on a blended basis, over 60% of the portfolio has power fixed at circa GBP 130 per MWh for the 12 months to June 2025, so close to 2x the latest forecast of predictions for spot prices. It also underpins expectations of a growth in the company's dividend cover from 1.4 x in June 2024 to circa 1.8 x in June 2025, as James was referencing, and that's net of debt amortization and EGL. So in conclusion, the result is the investment advisor believes its PPA policy is the best strategy for shareholders who are looking for stable revenue and forecastable, sustainable dividends with high visibility of revenues on a rolling multi-year basis. Turning over for the last slide from me before I hand over to James, and that's development and construction. So in 2019, the company made the strategic decision to begin to develop projects wholly for the benefit of the business. This pivot in strategy was designed to enable the business to organically support growth in its asset base, alongside that of its successful third-party acquisition. Five years on, the success enjoyed by the company has been extraordinary, as a pipeline of over 1.5 GW has been created across 954 MW of solar and over 603 MW of batteries, with the circa 93 MW in construction the epitome of this strategy, organic growth of the company's asset base. However, creation of the proprietary pipeline goes beyond providing the company with future investment opportunities, as it also offers huge potential for capital recycling.... With the board having consistently stated their intention to crystallize value on up to a third of the development pipeline, the successful receipt of CFDs on 70% of the consented PV pipeline of 614 MW puts the company in a unique position for future disposals, as projects with regulated revenue characteristics are highly sought after. And finally, as the company's valuation policy is only to recognize value at the point developments receive planning permission and move from the development stage to consented, there is also the prospect of a material valuation uplift being created as the pipeline of 690 MW that is currently in planning and development reach consented stage. And with that, I will hand back over to James. Thank you, Neil. To finish up, I'm gonna talk about ESG, public policy, and power markets. So if we go to page 23 on ESG, and as has been said before, you could have a whole presentation on ESG activities in the company. So in terms of trying to distill down a few highlights, there's been very important work in terms of the human rights DD, which seeks to mitigate social and environmental impacts across Bluefield Solar's operations, and where possible, and this is an ongoing bit of work, the supply chain across our over 400 suppliers. Biodiversity continues to be a real area of focus for both Bluefield Solar, but also the shareholders. It's something which is of great interest and of great value to the Bluefield Solar shareholders, and we continue to build our biodiversity data sets through ecological surveys and our biodiversity net gain assessments across the operational portfolio. Indeed, West Raynham, which is our 50 MW site in Norfolk, was the first solar farm in the U.K. to be awarded a gold certification from Wild Power for its biodiversity impact, about which the team is rightly proud of that progress, and there continues to be focus this year to obtain a better understanding on how climate change may potentially impact the portfolio. A solar fund is likely to benefit from certain elements of a change in climate. Indeed, work with one of our consultants, just to put it into sort of context, one of our consultants was talking about a theoretical scenario, which is an extreme scenario, but it's worth exploring, which is of a 4°C increase in temperatures by 2050, and where it's modeled that the U.K. could experience over 200 hours per annum of temperatures in excess of 33°C, which sounds great if you're a solar fund or a winemaker, but it mirrors temperatures today, which are being seen in southern parts of Europe and North Africa, which is salutary when you think about what the temperature. If we're getting those sorts of temperatures, what the temperatures in those countries will be in North Africa or in Spain, in 2050. Moving on to maybe more immediate opportunities and challenges, but it's public policy, and in all my time in renewable energy, which is now 18 years, I've never experienced such a positive intention from any government, and there have been a few, as we know, in the last 18 years. We've already had site visits. You can see on page 24, that is a discussion we're having on the right-hand side there with Michael Shanks, who's visiting one of our solar farms, which we co-own with GLIL. Michael Shanks is the Minister responsible for GB Energy, and there are further meetings with various ministers planned in the very near future, and the government's intention is to accelerate net zero to 2030, so it's already to accelerate it. And this leaves companies like Bluefield Solar incredibly well, well-placed in the event that the equity markets, open up, 'cause we should be a major part of the solution. As, as Neil has just said, we've got this incredible position that we've developed, particularly with our development pipeline, and we think it is conceivable that the government will probably look to incentivize, renewable and decarbonization activities further. They're definitely gonna focus on increasing planning permissions for solar, and also they will look to speed up the process of getting those approvals. And they even seem to have sorted out the double counting of fees for investment companies, which one would think should be useful in the long term, particularly with, retail investors. But the thing to, you know, the sort of counterweight to that is what will hinder their ambition, is whether they are able to genuinely unlock the issues around grid capacity, which will then supercharge the market. If they can do that, then there will be a bull market in primaries, and I should reiterate that we have, as Neil has just highlighted, we have a strategically dominant position in this area. It's a five-year program we've worked on, and having grid offers 1.5 GW of solar and battery, 800 MW of approvals, and over 400 MW of assets within that group that have CFDs. It is a uniquely strong position to be in, and one that I hope will be reflected in our stock rating at some point in the near future. Okay, so on to the final sort of analysis before the conclusion. On page 25, there has been a lot of talk about falling power prices, and I thought it would be helpful to contextualize this. If you look at the chart. We've obviously had the extraordinary pricing. If you look at the blue box there, you've got extraordinary pricing driven in large part by the Ukraine war, which saw companies like Bluefield Solar fix power contracts in excess of GBP 600 for MWh, where 12 months before, 18 months before, we were striking circa sort of GBP 50. So that was an incredible sort of position. But what I thought would be interesting is what's the future forecast? What are we looking at outwards compared to the pre 2020 numbers that we were relying on, the power numbers we were relying on, which was pre-Ukraine, pre-COVID, pre-globalization, pre-major decarbonization, which are all inflationary. And what you look at there on the left-hand side of that chart is that the average price that was achieved was GBP 43 per MWh. So that was an environment where Bluefield was delivering one of the highest dividend covered dividends in the renewables and infrastructure space at an average of 43. In fact, just as a note, we outperformed this by about 10%. Looking forward over the next few years, the average price, if you look at the right-hand side of the chart, is forecast to be by the sort of leading forecast of circa GBP 70 per MWh, so 60% higher. First of all, this should give confidence about the ability to deliver the dividend going forward. Moreover, we think, and we've said this repeatedly, we think that there is more chance of prices being higher than lower than the forecasters are predicting, and this is because of the aforementioned war, decarbonization, de-globalization. They're all inflationary. The biggest long-term driver for energy and electricity is going to be AI and data centers, and they're going to drive unprecedented demand for electricity. I think forecasters are only just catching up on this, and we think this has, again, when you're thinking about a sort of higher or lower scenario in terms of a risk to the model and to dividends, there is a reasonable, very coherent expectation of higher prices than are being forecast and are in this model. Okay, so just going on to the final sort of conclusion, which are the on page 27, which are the priorities for the coming financial year, and I mean, I think we go back, in terms of conclusion, we come back to the beginning, which is that there you know, there are increasingly positive tailwinds to the strategy, whether it be political, whether it be on the demand side, I've just mentioned. We've laid the foundations for an incredibly strong platform for the company going forward, not least this, you know, unique situation we have and capability we have within the development pipeline. What are we gonna do? It's gonna be more of the same, that we spoke about at the beginning. One is to reduce the RCF. It's currently at GBP 134 million. We want to see this reduced further, so that's a very clear objective. Two, we've spoken about the highly valuable pipeline. It's valuable in the future, very valuable for the company if the markets recover. It's also highly valuable for sale, as Neil referenced, and as such, we're looking to sell over 300 MW in the current financial year, which will be highly accretive for the business. And then last but not least is the continuation of the strategic partnership with GLIL, which continues to grow and support both the interests of both groups' long-term interests. And so with that, we do think that there is both, as I say, the macro position is improving, the political conditions are very favorable, and we have a very unique position at the moment in the market to be able to take advantage of that, and we look forward to the coming year with great optimism. And that concludes the presentation. Thank you for listening.
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