Good morning, and welcome to our H1 2022 results presentation. I am Tim Mortlock, Chief Executive Officer, and I'm joined today by Gavin Urwin, Chief Financial Officer, and Dilip Kejriwal, Head of Investor Relations. I will begin the presentation with an overview of the company's strategy and key developments during the H1 of 2022, and then provide an overview of the group's operations. This will then be followed by Gavin updating on the group's financials before I conclude with a summary. We will then be happy to answer any questions. At a macroeconomic level, the H1 of 2022 was clearly characterized by continued wholesale energy price increases, energy market volatility, and geopolitical turmoil. The assets and services we provide address these issues by enabling the transition to a low carbon, flexible, secure, and of particular importance at this time to all businesses and consumers, a low-cost energy system. Over this period, SMS once again demonstrated the strong financial performance and operational resilience of our business model, underpinned by our index linked recurring cash flows from metering and data assets, and by the strong performance of our first grid-scale battery storage project. From a financial perspective, our long-term index linked recurring revenues were up 8% to GBP 93.1 million compared to December 2021, and as at the end of August, stand at GBP 94.4 million. As a reminder, our metering and data contracts are linked to RPI, providing protection against the inflationary environment. The inflation factor on our contracts is adjusted upwards on the first of April every year, and for 2022, this was 4.3%. The financial performance of the business was strong, with EBITDA up 11% to GBP 29.1 million and profit before tax up 7% to GBP 10.3 million. For full year 2022, we expect pre-exceptional EBITDA and underlying PBT to be in line with the recently upgraded guidance provided at the end of July. We are marginally upgrading pre-exceptional EBITDA expectations for 2023, predominantly driven by the impact of higher inflation on our meter rental contracts and improved return expectations on grid scale battery assets. We expect underlying PBT to be in line with previous expectations due to the impact of higher interest rates on financing costs. Gavin will provide further details later in the presentation. We had a net cash position of GBP 38.6 million as at the June 30 th, supported by the GBP 175 million oversubscribed equity placing last year. This, coupled with our GBP 420 million revolving credit facility, provides strong liquidity to finance the delivery of our existing meter and battery pipelines. Our existing portfolio of assets supports an attractive dividend policy of a proposed GBP 0.3025 per share in 2022, with this expected to grow at 10% per annum until 2024. This dividend demonstrates the sustainable growth delivered by SMS's strategy and is more than covered by long-term index linked cash flows from the existing unencumbered metering and data asset base and cash flows from our grid scale battery assets. On the operational side, we were pleased to be awarded a new smart meter contract for 100,000 meters, increasing our contracted smart meter order pipeline to circa 2.42 million meters after taking account of 230,000 smart meter installations in the H1. We continue to see additional opportunities in the wider market. Our run rate for smart meter installations increased to over 40,000 per month since the start of the Q2. A significant improvement compared to the circa 30,000 average per month we delivered in full year 2021. We remain on track to install at least 450,000 meters this year. Our first 50 MW site at Burwell has been operational since the end of January 2022, and we are pleased to highlight that it has been performing well ahead of previous expectations, generating an equivalent of circa GBP 100,000 annualized EBITDA per MW, significantly higher than our previous guidance. We made considerable progress in further developing our portfolio of grid-scale battery storage assets. The total pipeline, excluding the 50 MW operational site, increased to 710 MW, of which 360 MW is now fully secured. Of the total secured sites, the second site of 40 MW is now energized and is in the final stages of commissioning, and a further 100 MW is expected to come online by the end of H1 2023. We continue to make progress in building the commercial models and pilots for our other carbon reduction or what we call CaRe products and services. These CaRe products, such as electric vehicle charging infrastructure, are closely aligned to our core engineering and energy skills and to our technology platforms, and we see substantial growth opportunity in these large and growing markets. To further accelerate our capabilities in electric vehicle charging infrastructure and energy data management, we made two strategic investments in Clenergy EV and n3rgy during the H1 of the year. Since the business was listed in 2011, we have seen consistent growth in our key metric, index linked annualized recurring revenues or ILAR, which has grown to 31% compounded annual growth rate. This growth rate is also after the disposal of a minority of our industrial and commercial meter portfolio, which we sold in 2020. We've maintained this strong growth momentum during the H1 of this year, with ILAR growing to GBP 93.1 million. As a note, the ILAR in the above chart excludes the revenues from the 50 MW grid-scale battery site. Our existing contracted smart meter order pipeline and grid-scale battery asset pipeline both provide us with significant future growth potential, which on delivery are expected to more than double our EBITDA. We continue to see additional growth opportunities in the metering and the grid-scale battery markets. In addition to this, our fully integrated platform provides us with significant additional potential within our other developing CaRe verticals, all of which are closely aligned to our existing skills and capabilities. Our business purpose and mission is intrinsically linked with tackling one of the greatest challenges of our time, carbon reduction, and we are proud to be applying this sustainable approach to our own operations. A few updates on how we continue to make tangible progress in our ESG objectives. We are pleased that all of our key health and safety measures have shown continual improvement, and we also continue to share this best practice with the wider industry. We introduced our net zero 2030 carbon emissions target last year and have made encouraging progress towards it. Our H1 2022 handprint, which is the amount of carbon emissions mitigated through our customers using our products and services, was 61x the negative impact of our carbon footprint. We are also planning to gradually transition our vehicle fleet to fully electric by 2030. We are committed to supporting our staff and fostering diversity and have received several awards and accreditations throughout the year. SMS is also committed to the highest standards in corporate governance, and this has been reflected in us maintaining the highest scoring range by MSCI for corporate governance. In the next section, I will provide an update on the group's operations. This slide provides a breakdown of our ILR and metering and data assets under management by category, with ILR being GBP 93.1 million as of the end of June, growing to GBP 94.4 million by the end of August. During the H1 of the year, we added 230,000 domestic smart meters and increased our portfolio to 1.9 million meters, generating GBP 57.4 million of ILR. Data assets ILR grew at 13% to GBP 15.7 million, while I&C grew 10% to GBP 5.1 million. The traditional domestic meters and the third-party ILR, which are largely made up of traditional meters, are expected to come down over the next few years as traditional meters are replaced with smart. We have aligned our ILR reporting of third-party assets with the revenue reporting in our asset management division to exclude pass-through third-party rental. During the H1, we continued the momentum in meter contract wins, adding 100,000 meters to the contracted smart meter order pipeline. Including this contract win and reflecting the 230,000 smart meters installed during the H1, means that the contracted smart meter order pipeline now stands at circa 2.42 million meters at the end of June. We continue to see additional market opportunity, particularly as energy suppliers now have annual binding installation targets through to the end of 2025. We continue to grow our delivery capacity and increase the number of smart meters installed to an average of more than 40,000 per month through Q2 2022, compared to 30,000 meters average per month in 2021. We also have good visibility of meter hardware availability for the remainder of 2022 and beyond, with a resilient and diverse supply chain in place and the meter inventory within our warehouses to support these continued runways. Significant industry progress was made in the involvement and adoption of SMETS1 meters to the Data Communications Company or DCC platform. As of August 31st, approximately 9 million SMETS1 meters have been migrated to the DCC platform, which is approximately 60% of the total SMETS1 meters installed. Enrollment of the SMS portfolio of SMETS1 meters is marginally ahead of the industry. We continue to make considerable progress in further developing our portfolio of grid-scale battery storage assets. The total portfolio increases 760 MW compared to 620 MW December, 31st 2021, and 470 MW 12 months ago. Of the total 760 MW, 50 MW is now operational and performing well ahead of our expectations. We discuss the performance further on the next slide. Of the remainder, 360 MW is fully secured and 350 MW remains under exclusivity. Of the total secured sites, the second site of 40 MW is now energized and is in the final stages of commissioning, and a further 100 MW will come online by the end of H1 2023. Over the last decade, the world has significantly accelerated its focus on net zero goals, based largely on rapidly increasing clean energy investment and reduced fossil fuel use. The current geopolitical environment has further emphasized the importance of self-reliance in energy and also provided a snapshot into the future energy system where there are greater challenges to balance supply and demand, reflected in increasing volatility in power price spreads. This is where grid-scale battery storage fulfills a significant national infrastructure requirement. With these assets providing network resilience by balancing the ever-increasing intermittent renewable generation with increasing peak demand. This growing importance is reflected in National Grid recently increasing their 2030 forecast requirement for energy storage by 7.2 GW to 18.7 GW, of which 14.1 GW is expected to come from battery storage. To put this into context, there is currently only circa 4 GW of energy storage connected to the grid today, of which circa 1.6 GW is grid-scale battery storage. The increasing reliance of the U.K. energy system on intermittent renewable generation and the need for short-term response to balance the network is underpinning the attractive revenue streams generated by grid-scale battery storage assets. The left chart shows the average annualized revenue generated by all grid-scale battery assets in the U.K. The average revenue per megawatt has more than doubled since 2020, with the majority of revenues generated from the provision of frequency services such as Dynamic Containment. While the current Dynamic Containment and frequency service prices will soften over time as the volume of battery storage in the market grows, there is a fundamental and increasing need for this asset class to provide balancing services to the national energy network. The right-hand chart shows the performance of our first 50 MW site, which is performing significantly ahead of our initial expectations. On an annualized basis, this project is generating EBITDA of more than GBP 100,000 per MW or circa 26% yield, compared to our initial guidance of GBP 42,000-GBP 53,000 per MW or 11%-14% yield. Given the energy market dynamics have changed significantly over the last 12 months, we are now raising our annualized EBITDA per megawatt guidance to GBP 57,000-65,000 per megawatt or circa 15%-17% yield based on a GBP 380,000 per megawatt build cost. Over time, and for projects beyond those currently secured and in construction, we do, however, expect the capital cost of these sites to increase, largely reflecting increase in commodity and equipment costs. We continue to make progress in further developing our CaRe products and services. We announced two strategic investments in June, accelerating our capabilities in the EV charging infrastructure asset class and further expanding our service offering in energy data management. In EV charging infrastructure, SMS invested an initial GBP 2 million to acquire 25% shareholding in Clenergy EV, a software business with a charge point operator or CPO platform focused on EV charging infrastructure. SMS has the option to invest a further GBP 2 million up to one year, leading to the acquisition of an additional 26% interest, and has an option to acquire the remaining shares after five years. This investment complements SMS's existing EV installation capabilities and will enable the group to deliver a fully end-to-end integrated platform for EV charging infrastructure. We are investing in growing our pipeline of activity in this area over the coming years, addressing the destination, on street, and fleet market segments. In energy data management, SMS acquired 100% of n3rgy, a data software company for a cash consideration of GBP 1.4 million. n3rgy's software as a service platform enables and facilitates the use of energy consumption, generation, and tariff data from smart meters registered on the DCC platform. The acquisition will enhance and accelerate SMS's existing capabilities in smart energy data solutions, providing the group with a strong competitive position in a significant addressable market as the electricity industry moves towards mandatory half-hourly settlement. We also continue to make progress in other CaRe products and services, including behind the meter, solar and storage, energy efficiency, and heat solutions. The group considers these CaRe products to be closely aligned to our existing engineering and energy skills and to our technology platforms, and we see substantial further growth opportunity in these large and growing markets. I will now hand over to Gavin Urwin to provide you an update on the group's financials. Thank you, Tim, and good morning to everyone. During the H1 of 2022, we have continued to make good progress in executing the strategy set out at the time of our equity placing last autumn. Throughout this period, we have further improved the meter installation run rate, which alongside the inflation adjustment on our existing meter and data assets, continues to drive our index-linked annualized recurring revenues, which are up 8% since the year-end. We are also pleased with the strong performance of our first 50 MW grid-scale battery storage site. The business has grown all of its key financial metrics of ILAR, revenue, pre-exceptional EBITDA and underlying PBT. Pre-exceptional EBITDA and underlying PBT are up 11% and 7% respectively. Net cash was GBP 38.6 million at the end of June, supported by cash generation from operating activities and the GBP 175 million equity we raised last year. The revolving credit facility, GBP 420 million, remained unutilized at the end of June. Given the strong financial performance over the H1 of the year, we marginally increased our full year 2022 underlying EBITDA and PBT guidance at the time of our July trading statement. Looking forward, there are a number of factors which underpin the board's confidence in the group's prospects for financial year 2023, notwithstanding current wider economic uncertainty. We expect the increase in smart meter installation run rates to continue. As Tim noted earlier, our forward view in grid scale battery returns has improved. The prevailing inflation environment is expected to have a net positive impact on our forecasts due to our index-linked contracts. Therefore, as a result, the board expects that pre-exceptional EBITDA for financial year 2023 will be marginally ahead of its previous expectations. Despite the impact of higher interest rates, underlying PBT will be in line with its previous expectations. Turning now to the half-year P&L. The growth in revenue year-on-year to GBP 62.7 million is predominantly driven by increased meter installations and trading from our first operational 50 MW battery site. Looking through our divisional lens, revenues and asset management improved due to the increased meter installations in the H1 of 2022. The upward RPI adjustment of 4.3% in April 2022, and the full half year impact from the acquisition of the large power I&C metering and data portfolio purchased in April of last year. The depreciation adjusted gross margin of asset management division is 93%, which is in line with the same period last year. Asset installation revenues improved as we continue to see increased activities across both our connections business and transactional meter works. The gross margin is lower in the current period, as H1 2021 was positively impacted by the flow through for some high margin transactional work, which is not repeated in the H1 of 2022. Also in the H1 of 2022, we have continued to grow our engineering workforce in order to support the planned increase in meter installations. The costs associated with this investment in the workforce, such as recruitment and training, have led to additional one-off costs in the period. Finally, energy management revenues increased significantly, predominantly driven by our first grid scale battery site, which became operational in January of this year, for which revenues were GBP 2.8 million for the H1. Excluding the impact of grid scale batteries, revenues were still up 47% as key customer projects in the hospitality sector picked up momentum as the sector continued to recover from the effects of COVID-19. The GBP 3.3 million of exceptional items largely relates to the losses on the traditional and SMETS1 meter portfolio, which continue to be classified as exceptional as these removals are attributable to the temporary industry transition. Now turning to our cash flow. During the H1, we generated GBP 18.6 million of cash from operating activities compared to pre-exceptional EBITDA of GBP 29.1 million. The cash from operating activities was impacted by circa GBP 6 million of cash outflow due to the investment in meter inventory to ensure sufficient meters were available to support the increasing installation run rates. Adjusting for inventory, the cash conversion would be around 85%. From these cash flows, we invested a total of GBP 74.4 million in CapEx, mostly meters and grid scale batteries, and paid a dividend of GBP 18.3 million. Finally, we made two strategic investments in EV charging and energy data totaling GBP 3.6 million. I will now hand over back to Tim to provide a summary of the business. Thank you, Gavin. The global energy market is in a period of extreme turbulence, and there is a fundamental need for the CaRe assets we originate and own, which enable the transition to a low-carbon flexible, secure, and critically at this time, a low-cost energy system. The strong half-year results again demonstrate the resilience of our business model, which is underpinned by our index-linked recurring cash flows from metering and data assets, and reflects the strong performance of our first grid-scale battery storage project. We are pleased to see continued acceleration in our meter installation run rates with a strong contracted meter order pipeline. Leveraging our end-to-end platform, we have successfully built and begun to deliver a strong pipeline of grid-scale battery storage projects within a short period of time. We are particularly pleased with the strong performance of our first 50 MW site and have raised the EBITDA per megawatt guidance. We see significant additional opportunities from this large and growing market opportunity. The deployment of our existing pipeline of meters and grid scale battery assets will enable us to more than double our EBITDA, with significant additional growth opportunities within other CaRe products and services. Our strong balance sheet, following the equity raise last year and organically generated cash, provides strong liquidity to deliver the existing pipeline and also positions the group for further growth. Our existing portfolio of assets supports an attractive dividend policy. Dividends are expected to grow at 10% per annum until 2024. Finally, the outlook for the business remains robust, and we are upgrading expectations for full year 2023, with pre-exceptional EBITDA expected to be marginally ahead of previous expectations and underlying PBT to be in line. I hope the presentation provides you with a good overview of the progress we've made during the H1 of the year and the group's exciting future projects. This concludes the presentation.
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