Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for Meridian Energy 's results announcement for the financial year through June 30, 2025. I'm Mike Roan, Meridian's Chief Executive, and I have with me our Acting Chief Financial Officer, Helen Peters, for those that are new investors. I sat in that seat at our interim results announcement in February, so at the very least I bring continuity. Given the environment the business is navigating right now, my experience, and the experience housed throughout our business, is more important than I would have imagined a year or so ago. While we're challenged by the perfect storm this year, I'm incredibly confident about the future of the business and its ability to both support and grow the economy while rewarding shareholders for doing so. As I'll talk to soon, there are some challenges immediately ahead that require attention. When we properly harness the natural bounty that this country has to offer, I believe the electricity sector will underwrite the economic growth of the nation. I want Meridian to be a driving force behind that. This will require an evolution of where we've come from and some change. I have an immense respect for what people have done to get Meridian to where it is today, but I also have a clear idea of what's required for us to continue to succeed as we move forward. First, I want to further accelerate our development of renewable energy while we're well on track to deliver seven new developments in seven years. That was framed before the gas sector collapsed. We need even more clean energy to realize the ambition. As we do this, I want us to go back to our roots. Sixty odd years ago, the Waitaki Hydro Scheme was devised and built in the Mackenzie Basin. It remains the country's largest hydro scheme and the backbone of Aotearoa, New Zealand's electricity system. It has so much more to give. There's more water to be accessed, more megawatts to be achieved from existing assets, and a fundamental shift in the role stored hydro plays. At a time when politicians and others are calling for a solution to the firming issue, I say look to hydro for a lower cost and lower carbon solution. In my view, the route to global competitive advantage for our economy can only come if we harness more water. Within that and other existing hydro catchments, we need to be bold. We are. We've recently established a hydro development team to explore opportunities in the Mackenzie Basin and in Fiordland. We worked with the Waitaki Guardians to create more flexibility and storage in that catchment. We've just received ministerial approval to have our application for access to Pukaki contingent storage head through the fast-track process. Second on my list of priorities, I want us to get even closer to our customers. That's where we've set our compass. Like every business, you're only as successful as the customers that you serve. As well as evolving at pace to help customers thrive in the future, we're highly tuned into how we can support industrial and residential customers in the current tough environment. Back to today, there's no question that underlying financial performance was poor last year. From a financial perspective, the business struggled to get out of first gear and even had to hit the brakes hard at one point. That result's been well signaled, and every Kiwi knows when it doesn't rain it's tough to make hydroelectricity and turn that into profits. The second half of the year was better than the first, but only just. EBITDA was NZD 100 million more, but the January to March period was the driest on record, and the rebound from April to June brought only average inflows. The result? The lowest earnings for our business in a decade. Business is always going to take a hit in a drought, and this year we had two, and both of them were one in 90-year droughts. When gas was switched on to replace hydro, that also failed. There's no historical precedent for this series of events. There's none. Despite these challenges, there was no loss of supply, and 99% of Meridian's customers were entirely unaffected. They're unaffected because we shielded them from the high wholesale prices, even though we didn't have that surety ourselves. As a result, we lost money in our retail business last year. That's the advantage of a vertically integrated business. We can and will continue to navigate the challenges on behalf of our customers. I think the 2025 financial year will be defined by Meridian putting the country's security of supply first, keeping power flowing for homes and businesses, and the financial hit we took because of that. I understand that people are calling for generation to help bring prices down and ensure that we have enough electricity for the future. I want these things too, but there's babies and there's bath water. The New Zealand electricity system is robust, possibly more so now than before the events of August 2024. The same cannot be said of the gas sector. The failures evidenced in August 24 are now playing out more widely in that sector, with customers facing higher gas costs, businesses having to put up prices to cover these costs, and the worst instance is shutting up shop because they can't get the molecules. The electricity sector uses gas too, but we can't fix the problem of declining gas production. We can, however, work around it. As the Huntley Strategic Energy Reserve agreement signals, the electricity sector is switching away from gas as well. Executing that agreement was a very challenging decision for everyone at Meridian, given our commitment to decarbonization and renewable energy. The economy needs fuel and our job is to support that economy and ensure homes and businesses have the power they need. We had to enter into a pragmatic solution. The good news is that so long as Pukaki contingent storage gets fast track approval, the Strategic Energy Reserve arrangement alongside NZAS demand response should see the electricity sector through the disruption. My key point is that the country's energy supplies have been challenged, so we have adapted. Not perfectly yet, but things have certainly stabilized. If I bring things back to the company level, the Strategic Energy Reserve also signals that your management team has reset Meridian 's portfolio settings to manage future risks. Despite these challenges, we've been able to provide a stable dividend to shareholders. We can't deliver our strategy without the confidence of shareholders, who we will always endeavor to reward for their loyalty. Furthermore, a business needs the support of those shareholders if it is to invest. We have been and are investing billions. At least a quarter of all electricity generation has been replaced over the past 15 years, costing NZD 12 billion. That wouldn't have happened without big businesses like ours. NZD 0.54 on every dollar of the dividend that Meridian makes is returned to the government, and that money, approximately NZD 300 million this year, is used by the government to fund health, education, and roading. A further NZD 0.25 on the dollar goes to mum, dad, and youthful Kiwi investors. In total, NZD 0.79 on every dollar we make stays right here in New Zealand supporting Kiwi. While the numbers we post are invariably large, shareholder returns have been incredibly reasonable. A stable, steady dividend is very important and it provides evidence of the strength of the business. That strength is now being leveraged to grow. Not only did we deliver the NZD 450 million Harapaki Wind Farm and the NZD 186 million Ruakākā Battery last year, but we obtained five consents for new developments, including the NZD 227 million Ruakākā Solar Farm, which is starting construction next month, Mt Munro Wind Farm, Te Rere Hau, another battery near Palmerston North, and the Te Rāhui Solar Farm, a joint venture with Nova. We don't just focus on today, we're focused on tomorrow and delivery of our strategy. I want to move on to that strategy now. As this slide shows, the strategy is straightforward. Invest in new renewable generation and firming assets to accelerate decarbonization of the economy. Deliver cheaper energy to customers so they can unlock value in their lives and businesses. Strive to deliver more from the operating business and grow the capability within the team so we can do better every year. It's a light where I want to take the business. It's clear for our teams and it connects directly with our purpose and it will grow shareholder value. Now, despite the challenging operating environment and conditions and intense industry scrutiny, Meridian continues to attract and retain engaged staff. In my view, that's because smart, capable people want to make a positive impact and they can here. It's one of the reasons why I've spent 17 years of my life here. The people are terrific and they're also terrifically motivated. They also have the courage to do what needs to be done to make us better. I'll provide a little more color on this a bit later. We've also overhauled the wellbeing strategy and the overhaul was pleasantly straightforward. If we focus on leaders providing leadership and we take the dross out of daily tasks, people will have space to look after themselves and it's working. Employee engagement remains strong with our latest survey showing three quarters of the people that we work with are engaged and want to tackle the challenges ahead. That puts us in an upper echelon of New Zealand businesses. The safety metrics reflect the complexity of our operations, but we're committed to making sure that people are armed to make decisions regarding their safety as they go about their daily tasks. I talked some of what's on the slide earlier, but the two 1/ 90 year seasonal droughts, May to mid August 2024 and again from January to April 2025, were unprecedented. Inflows into the hydro catchments reflect this. They were 64% - 57% of average in each period, respectively. While the hydro lakes look large, the reality is that they only hold up to 16 weeks of water at best, so they're in fact quite shallow. We have to remember that they were designed to meet expected electricity consumption in the 1970s, not the 2020s or 2030s. Financial impacts of lower physical generation flowed into monthly energy margin figures that are shown on the top right graph. The August through October impacts were exacerbated by the loss of gas and the impact of freeing up more from Methanex. We also asked NZAS to do more than contemplated last August and they did. The second drought saw NZAS provide even more support to the electricity system, which was appreciated. As with all commercial arrangements, that 50 MW deal costs money and it reduced energy margin by a further NZD 40 million. If you want to understand what the electricity sector has been through, look no further than NZAS that will finally be back to full load later this week after more than a year supporting the electricity system. Thank you to the NZAS team. You've become a bigger and more important element of the electricity sector than either we or you may have imagined only 18 months ago. In another that was then, this is now story, the green bar on the top graph shows that energy margin has reverted to pre-drought levels. As for gas, I've talked to that story for one reason or another and I don't have the answer for it. Gas has not been able to keep up with the needs of a modern economy or the transition fuel to this country's low carbon future. Instead, its demise is putting the electricity sector and the economy through the wringer. Looking ahead and based on what we know today, the graph on the right of the slide shows that dry year risk in the electricity sector has been stabilized so long as the Pukaki Contingent Storage Fast Track application is approved before winter 2026. The combination of the Strategic Energy Reserve, endless demand response, and critically that contingent storage provides enough energy to manage a drought should it occur. This combination is important as it buys time for Meridian and other businesses to accelerate the investment in renewable generation. We're targeting NZD 2 billion of capital spend in the next three years, and our renewable development pipeline allows us to do that as it's strengthened over the past five years. Te Rere Hau may have slipped by up to 12 months, but construction of the 130 MW Ruakākā Solar Farm is underway. Stage one of the Te Rāhui 200 MW solar farm is about to hit financial close, possibly as soon as Friday, and will make decisions on the Manawatū Battery, a solar farm in the Waikato, and Mt Munro in the next 12 months as well. That would represent 1,800 GW hours of new energy being delivered and NZD 1.6 billion more capital deployed this decade, with more to come. Our PPA for the Tauhei 150 MW solar farm enables that asset to be commissioned in 2026 as well. We're cooking without gas, and the benefits of these developments will flow through to shareholders and the country quite quickly. You'll also see that the pipeline has a higher concentration of solar development than wind or batteries. Whilst solar is valuable to us as it's not correlated with wind or hydro inflows, our core development competence remains in building wind farms, and there are some material prizes in that space. Expect the pipeline to move over time. The Electricity Authority and Commerce Commission task force provided further insight into its level playing field measures last week. It's hard to offer commentary other than to say that we're up for any change that reduces cost for our customers. What is creating uncertainty and considerable noise is the fact that no one has any real idea what the government intends to do as a result of the Frontiers Report. I know the government is carefully assessing what to do, if anything. Evidence from offshore interventions in electricity markets suggests that they typically increase rather than decrease prices for consumers. We are prepared for whatever might play out. The Minister is talking about a surgical intervention. It's certainly not the time for an amputation. I say that because the underlying issue, not only for the electricity sector but for the wider economy, is the lack of gas. It's this that's driving up prices everywhere, and that in my view, is what requires attention. If I was making surgical calls, I'd be considering the following. Some form of funding to help gas customers convert to electricity or biomass and quickly deferring the Commerce Commission approved increases in distribution and transmission costs, as this is what's driving above inflation cost increases for electricity consumers, and combining the gas industry company and the Electricity Authority to improve regulation and disclosures across the energy sector. Each would have an immediate benefit. I'm hopeful that this is where the government focuses its response to the Frontiers Report. The reality is the electricity market works, and it did its job last August signaling gas shortage. [Gen erators] did not earn excess profits. The EA report of March 25, this result approved for that, and the investment is pouring into the sector to remedy the problem that loss of gas created. While the overall cost of living pressures on households are big right now, electricity costs, although a factor, have as a percentage of average household incomes been reduced over the past 10 years. There are only five countries in the OECD with better industrial pricing than New Zealand. Of course, we can and we must do better. Where we're at today is a very strong starting point for a remote country without that many people. Now, I want to change gears for a minute. Specifically, I want to talk about emissions, as while not front of mind right now, given the overall cost of living challenge that people are facing, climate change is still a thing and reducing emissions, especially as the sector is likely to burn more coal in the short term, is important. Meridian reviewed its half by 30 framework year, and while the target to halve scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030 has been retained and is tracking well, the scope 3 target has been revised. Given we're now in a period of material sector growth and investment, it's unrealistic to expect our supply chain emissions to halve from 2021 levels in this capital intensive environment. We've reset that target to focus on a 51% reduction in scope 3 emissions on a per megawatt installed capacity basis. That is, we've changed it to an intensity target, a target that reduces the intensity of scope 3 emissions as we grow. Some may have noticed, but in case you haven't, Meridian is now the highest ranking utility in the Asia Pacific region on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Again, not bad for a utility in a small country. Beforehand, talent, I want to talk to the efforts of the retail team over the past 12 months as the decisions they are making and outcomes they deliver will create considerable value for shareholders over the long term. They'll also support customers. Customer numbers lift by 35,000 over the year and Meridian now has 405,000 customers, excluding flux. That's an important marker of customer support for what the team is doing. As importantly, the retail team has begun to offer products to reduce customer costs, the first being a product that offers NZD 10 off a customer's monthly bill if they hand over control of the hot water cylinder to us to reduce peak demand. That product already has 18,000 customers, so it is popular. The added CDV charts to the Zero work and reset the entire team structure, dropping 45 roles in the process or close to 15% of that team before the change. After that change was complete, the team moved to select a new operating platform, Kraken, to support the business into the future. The first customer has already been migrated to that platform, of course. The retail team also runs an award-winning fund to support customers who decarbonize their businesses and a proper hardship practice to support our vulnerable customers. While I say retail, it's people that make those tough and have to roll up their sleeves to make them work. They did. They were outstanding last year and I'm proud of the courage shown and the achievements to date as they're all designed to make energy cleaner and cheaper for our customers, the people who pay the bills and work hard themselves. Helen, over to you. Thanks, Mike. Before we dive into the numbers, I do want to take a moment to recognize Mike Roan on his appointment as our Chief Executive. Mike, we're all genuinely thrilled to have you at the helm, and I do have to thank you for passing the acting CFO baton to me just in time to talk about our most financially character-building year in over a decade. Let's get started on the financials. FY 2025 was a year when nature really tested us. As Mike mentioned, two record droughts, one in winter, one in summer, combined with low wind, declining gas availability, a wet spring, and low prices all created extremely challenging conditions to manage. As you can see, our operating cash flows have taken a significant hit, down 52% on last year at NZD 318 million. This is the lowest level we've reported since 2009. That's a tough number to stand in front of, and I want to acknowledge that up front. There are a few key drivers behind the result: reduced physical generation from the back-to-back droughts, low wind generation, and the cost of risk products, including the NZAS demand response calls, saw energy margin drop by 23% to NZD 982 million. This really reflects the cost of keeping the lights on when hydro and wind were scarce. We leaned heavily on derivatives and demand response during the year, and those tools did their job, but they came at a cost. In summary, operating cash flows fell by NZD 349 million, driven by energy margin dropping NZD 294 million and the increased tax of NZD 35 million. This also all flows through to EBITDA, which fell 32% to NZD 611 million. What's important here is that our balance sheet held firm. We've actually built it to withstand dry years, and FY 2025 proved that our structure works. Now onto dividends. Despite the financial pressure and current year cash flows, the board has declared a final dividend of NZD 14.85 per share, bringing the full year dividend to NZD 0.21, which remains unchanged from last year. To support this, we drew on over NZD 300 million of debt headroom. That's the equivalent of a reasonably sized new wind farm. That's not something we do lightly. We have also always carried conservative balance sheet settings to manage the business impacts of droughts. As a renewable and predominantly hydro generator, it is neither practical nor cost effective to try and hedge away all the tail risk to our portfolio, so extreme droughts will have an earnings impact. We're also being realistic. If we face similar droughts in future years, we may or may not need to review our dividend levels to provide flexibility and maintain our existing BBB credit rating. The dividend reinvestment plan remains in place with a 2% discount. Let's now look at EBITDA. The biggest driver behind our decade-low EBITDA was the NZD 294 million drop in energy margin. That's the direct result of lower physical hydro generation and significant derivative and demand response costs, and I'll talk more about that soon. The winter 2024 drought broke in a hurry, and the spring that followed proved to be the second wettest spring ever. While NZD 800 wholesale prices through a small number of August 2024 trading periods got plenty of headlines, the NZD 1 prices that came with the spring inflows didn't quite grab the same attention. Managing those large inflows into our catchments meant we ran hydro hard, realizing very low generation prices. Other revenue has a couple of one-off items in it this year, including a new metering contract, benefit insurance proceeds from cyclone damage at the Harapaki Wind Farm, and the operating revenue from our joint ventures. Flux transmission and distribution cost increases are also now flowing through. Energy margin fell to NZD 982 million, down from NZD 1.276 billion last financial year. The impacts of the drought show up in physical energy margin, with hydro volumes more than 1,000 GW hours, or 10% off the 10-year average. In fact, you have to go back to 2012 and 2013, which were back-to-back drought-affected financial years, to see hydro output at less than 11,000 GW hours. These conditions also affected wind generation, with calm periods coinciding with the droughts, particularly in winter and summer. Despite that, we've had almost a full year of production from the Harapaki Wind Farm, and it performed exceptionally well, achieving a 35.5% capacity factor in its first 12 months. However, to manage the volatility, we did spend NZD 300 million on derivative purchases and demand response calls. While they worked, they were expensive and drove a NZD 460 million reduction in financial energy margin compared to last year. I do want to take the opportunity to address the common misconception that high wholesale electricity prices are somehow a windfall. For Meridian, that idea is simply not the case. High wholesale prices are a signal, a signal of fuel scarcity. That's how the market is designed to work. During the year we became a substantial net buyer of electricity derivatives, and at those elevated prices, and those prices were compounded by gas scarcity, the sector's traditional backup fuels were simply not available in the volumes or at the prices we've relied on in the past. While wholesale prices were high, they reflected a stressed system and for us, that translated into higher costs, not higher profits. Now, let's talk about our retail business. Retail really was the bright spot this year, and it's where we're seeing the most visible transformation. We ended the year with over 405,000 customer connections, a 10% increase from last year. That's more than 35,000 new connections across our Meridian and Power shop brands. We saw a 2% increase in sales volumes across our mass market segment, excluding agriculture, and a 6% lift in net average sales price, delivering a NZD 32 million increase in revenue. In the corporate segment, volumes were flat, but pricing strength drove a NZD 36 million uplift, or 7% growth in revenue. While agricultural volumes declined, down 13% on last year, these can move around year -to- year based on the irrigation season, but our growth is clearly being led by residential, SME, and the large business segments. Overall, this is a standout performance from the retail business and it positions us well as we roll out our new Kraken platform and the digital customer experience. Moving on to generation. At first glance, inflows came in at 98% of average, which sounds pretty solid, but that headline hides the extreme volatility we experienced. FY 2025 brought the kind of durability that is incredibly difficult to manage, and it resulted in our lowest hydro generation since 2013. The Harapaki Wind Farm delivered its first full year of generation, producing 549 GW hours. That contributed to a 20% increase in wind generation year on year. We've also made progress on our generation upgrade program, restoring 29 MW of capacity at White Hill and Te Āpiti and an additional 18 MW uplift at Aviemore and Ōhau B and C. This all links to the 112 MW of new hydro capacity we are chasing from our existing assets. We've also faced challenges at Manapōuri. We've been dealing with issues related to driven transformers originally supplied in 2015 and 2018. Two of these were removed from service in 2023 due to elevated gassing. A third was installed at the end of 2024. Two new transformers from a different provider are expected to arrive by early 2026. We've made the decision to proactively replace all five over the next 2.5 years. At West Wind, a prolonged transformer outage took 45 MW out of the system, reducing capacity to 98 MW for most of the year. We did secure a loan transformer from Transpower in late 2024, which restored that lost capacity, and the permit has now arrived and is sitting on the Wellington wharf. We're on track to have the new one operational before the end of October this year. Let's now move to operating expense. This year OpEx came in at NZD 289 million, a 3% increase on last year and importantly below our revised market guidance of NZD 298 million. That sounds like a modest rise, but there's a key reason behind it. In short, this year we didn't meet our short-term incentive financial benchmark. This contributes to a cost reduction of NZD 7 million. This means that our people received a small proportion of potential incentive payments and our senior people received no payment. That's a tough outcome, but it's a reflection of how closely our remuneration is linked to performance. Beyond incentives, we also scaled operational changes to our retail and Flux business units. These round the NZD 11 million of staff cost reductions and reflect the new Flux structure, which now has 29 fewer roles. At the same time, we've invested in transformation. We've brought in contract support to help deliver the retail transformation and DigiGEN, our digital generation program. These costs are reflected in the NZD 8 million increase in contractor spend. We've successfully completed the implementation of our new Oracle Finance system on time and on budget. These one-off costs show up in the NZD 6 million ICT line. The cost line also includes the addition of Harapaki's operating, and finally, like everyone else, we have also encountered higher council rates across our generation assets. Now onto capital expenditure. In February, we revised our guidance and indicated that we might spend between NZD 220 million- NZD 250 million. We landed at NZD 193 million, down 45% from last year and below that guidance. It's important to note that this lower spend simply reflects timing changes and not a slowdown at strategic investment. FY 2024 included milestone payments for Harapaki and the bulk of the Ruakākā Battery and Solar Farm investment. In contrast, FY 2025 fell between the tail end of Harapaki and a later than expected start to the construction of the Ruakākā Solar Farm. Consent for that project was initially lodged in September 2023. It took just over a year to secure initial approval in September 2024. That decision was then appealed. It took another five months to reach resolution and final consent in February 2025. Stay in business capex also lifted this year, driven by two key investments: the replacement of our SCADA generation control system and upfront costs for the new Manapōuri transformers. Looking ahead, our investment program is accelerating, including the five new consents that Mike talked about earlier. Now we jump to talking about FY 2026, where we want to continue to provide guidance on our future operating and capital expenditure on operating costs. First, we are looking at spending between NZD 311 million- NZD 316 million next year, which represents an uplift of up to 9% on last year. What's driving that increase is not just inflation or overhead, it's investment in the future. One of the biggest contributors is our retail platform transformation in FY 2026. We'll be running two billing platforms, Flux and Kraken, as we transition customers across, temporarily doubling up on costs. Once we're fully on Kraken, we expect to remove NZD 15 million of annualized Flux expenses from our cost base by FY 2028. This is a short-term transition cost for the long-term gain. The other driver is our expectation that we'll meet our short-term incentive financial benchmark next year. This means that we expect to pay a higher level of short-term incentives than we did in FY 2025. Now turning to capital expenditure, we have allocated between NZD 330 million - NZD 360 million next year. As you can see from the graph, growth capex is largely driven by the completion of the Ruakākā Solar Farm. On the stay in business capex, the more generation assets you build, the more likely you are to see asset maintenance costs rise. We're also continuing the transformer replacement program at Manapōuri that I talked about earlier. The NZD 10 million cost of the two new transformers in FY 2026 is also included in the asset maintenance bucket. In summary, costs are going up, but they're going up for the right reasons. We're investing in platforms, people, and infrastructure, and we're doing it with a clear view of the long-term benefits. Let's now look at the results below. EBITDA. These graphs clearly show a massive swing in our reported profit. Net profit before tax fell NZD 671 million and net profit after tax dropped NZD 881 million. Even our preferred non-GAAP measure of underlying net profit after tax was down NZD 303 million from last year. What's driving these movements? The key factor was a NZD 1.247 billion loss from the fair value movement of our energy hedges. This number includes realized energy and unrealized losses. NZD 901 million of that total loss relates to NZAS and is driven by the accounting treatment of the new electricity agreement which came into effect in July 2024. Under the new structure, the NZAS contract is treated as a financial instrument or a derivative for accounting purposes. A 20-year contract for difference, or CFD, rather than a standard revenue contract. This means it's now carried at fair value and remeasured at each reporting period, with the main driver of any value change being movement in the long-term electricity price forecasts. In FY 2025, the unrealized cost on the NZAS contract was NZD 465 million. This loss does not reflect NZAS's actual cash flows. We also recognized a NZD 33 million impairment on the Flux platform following our decision to transition to Kraken as a retail technology platform. Depreciation increased by NZD 113 million, largely due to last year's NZD 3 billion asset revaluation across our generation assets. Again, this is a non-cash adjustment, but it does affect reported profits, and with another NZD 2 billion uplift in asset valuation this year, depreciation will increase again in FY 2026. Our generation assets get revalued each reporting period based on the same long-term electricity price forecasts as electricity derivatives. All of that washes through to a statutory loss of NZD 452 million. Our underlying NPAT, which adjusts for the non-cash items, was just NZD 305.6 million, down NZD 303 million from last year. That movement is largely explained by the NZD 294 million drop in energy margin, with the higher depreciation expense offset by the negative tax expense on the current year statutory loss. While the headline numbers are poor, it's important to understand that these are largely accounting-driven impacts, not operational ones. Our underlying business remains strong. We continue to invest in growth, maintain our dividend, and support customers through the energy transition. Net debt increased 18% to NZD 1.505 billion, and our net debt to EBITDA ratio rose to 2.5 x, up from 1.4x last year. We have NZD 658 million of undrawn facilities all under our Green Finance program with a diversified funding mix. While Meridian's debt to EBITDA has increased, this is due to the dry year EBITDA rather than a large increase in leverage. S&P do take a multi-year view of our debt to EBITDA and have assumed a stable outlook. As at July 25, we have ample liquidity available to support our balance sheet through debt facilities. We're also considering a NZD 300 million green bond issue, which would extend our debt maturity profile and support strategic investment. Our capital structure remains robust and we're well positioned to fund our growth agenda. Finally, a quick look at July. The good news is that we're seeing signs of recovery and we are well past the drought impacts of last financial year. Inflows for the month were 89% of average. Waitaki storage was also sitting at 89% and snowpack was 76%. Hydro storage is significantly higher than this time last year and generation volumes are tracking well. That's a solid foundation heading into the new financial year. Customer connections grew 1.4% in July and are up 11.2% year-on- year. Retail sale volumes were up 9.4% and generation was up 9.6% compared to July last year. These are further strong indicators that earnings reversion has happened and operating conditions are stabilizing. August will also see the final fees paid on the largest smelter demand response call we made last year. The ramp up is almost completed and NZAS are nearly back to full consumption. The annual premium fee for the demand response continues but the recall has now concluded. Looking back, that demand response call was critical. It underpins security of supply through the extraordinary drought we faced last year and it's a great example of how customer flexibility in the system can support resilience when it's needed most. In summary, while FY 2025 was financially poor, we're heading into FY 2026 with a strong balance sheet, lots of momentum, and a more stable operating environment. Back to you, Mike. Thanks, Helen, and thanks for the plug. It was a nice touch. Tough experiences build character and, you know, last year it certainly did that for us. It was tough financially and it was very tough for customers, but it would have been a lot tougher for them without us and we are proud of the support we've provided and we'll continue to provide them. We realize that we prove ourselves to investors all the time, even more so when things don't go to plan. The delivery of the Harapaki Wind Farm and Ruakākā Battery alongside consent and current construction of the accompanying solar farm at Ruakākā mean that we're growing. With Te Rāhui, Mt Munro, Te Rere Hau, the Palmerston North Battery and the PPA supporting that, growth will continue. The meaningful progress within the retail and generation teams and the Flux acquisition will make a difference as well, and the stable dividend should allow investors to look through last year's challenges and focus on the future. With that in mind, I'm pleased that operating conditions have returned to normal and with a new mix of risk management products on hand, the business is well equipped to navigate the next few years. The majority of the damage that the sudden collapse in gas supply has caused is behind the electricity sector. Absent more unhelpful news, any remaining uncertainty has been driven by concerns that the government may intervene. My observation is that they know the cost of doing that would be high and are taking their time to assess whether it's worth it or not. Regardless of what they do, it'll be up to us to navigate the course. I'm ambitious for the company as I know that we're busy unleashing the renewable bounty that New Zealand has. As that happens, the country will gain a sustainable, competitive, and cost advantage that other countries will not be able to match. We intend on providing a little more insight into this at Investor Day, an Investor Day that's scheduled in November. Right now we can move to questions and we'll start with questions from anyone here in the room. Hugh, we'll go to you. Hi, Hugh Lockwood from Forsyth Barr. Thanks, Mike and Helen. Just a couple of questions. Firstly, are you able to provide a bit more on the bidding commentary and maybe talk to what net debt to EBITDA gearing ratio the board would be comfortable with looking at a sort of normalized hydro earnings basis? Yeah, hey, it was exactly what it said, Hugh, is we have paid a stable dividend over a year where cash flows haven't sustained that. All we're trying to tell people is we're mindful that that has consumed a piece of the balance sheet, and if we have another drought in future, we'll look at it. Other than that, we expect normal business, which is what we hope for as well. Net debt to EBITDA is driven by the S&P ratios. Really is. You know, you look, we had a spot ratio this year that was 2.4x, 2.5x, 2.5x this year. Last year it was 1.6x. We expect that to normalize, you know, as we head into next year as well. We're looking at the 2x-3x as the range for net debt to EBITDA. Okay, my second question's on the pipeline. You mentioned that Te Rāhui timelines have been pushed out, but you've got the target for three projects to commence in FY 2026, and sounds like a lot of projects might reach FID in the next 12 months. Yep. Can you talk to what other projects might be part of that three and also if there's maybe the potential for more than three next year? We're hopeful that there might be more than three, but the three that I've mentioned, the first one is Te Rāhui. I mentioned the next couple of days. We expect that it will reach financial close. The team's working really hard on the battery in Palmerston North and Mt Munro Wind Farm as well. While Te Rere Hau has slipped by up to 12 months, there's a lot of work that's going on to see whether we can't bring that forward as well. Time will tell. Development, as everybody knows who's in the development game, is tough. You find things out that you just didn't expect. We got a lot of people working really hard to deliver those outcomes. Great, thank you. Cheers. John here. Nice to see you. Good morning. Jonty Nattrass from Ocagon Asset Management. Thanks for the presentation, Mike and Helen. My first question, obviously with FY 2025 kind of fresh, the mind just wanted to provide a bit more context on the portfolio positioning. You know, how you see your link, you know, you mentioned the Waitaki contingent storage as part of that wider security thing. Does that play into your, you know, on there and how does the HFO kind of feed into that? Yeah, it's, you know, having gone through, as you say, 2024, 2025, it allows you to look really carefully at business settings and, you know, we were on this trajectory not only by a bunch of risk management products that supported us, but decarbonize the, you know, the marketplace more effectively. We've had to sit back and look at again, Johnny, and the two things that have gone on within the business is we set a folio for our business based on the opportunity in front of us and that we face and we've backed that off a touch. We've dropped optimal levels a touch as we head into 2026. We've also reset the risk management products that we have within the business. The way that I presented is we have about 3 MW worth of swaptions or demand response sitting within, given the transaction that we've written, which is a lot more than we had as we headed into 2024 and we knew, you know, we found out in 2024 that some of that insurance didn't work out so well. You know, we feel really good about, you know, looking at 2026. We don't know, you know, whether it's going to be wet or dry or normal. We've certainly turned the portfolio given the experience that we had. Your piece on contingent storage is the way we see that is it's just incredibly important for New Zealand energy security. All the analysis you can, that graph shows, hopefully gives people some insight into how Strategic Energy Reserve in this transaction and contingent storage line up to cover dry year exposure from a country perspective. Security of supply as well as, you know, moderating costs for customers is really what contingent storage will help with. Cool, thank you. My second question is just on the hydro development that you mentioned, Mike. I know that was, you know, a key focus of you coming into the top seat. I was wondering if you could talk a bit more about is that on top of the work being done within the generation team to expand, you know, obviously as the transformers expand capacity of the Waitaki is looking at further expansion of those two schemes. Yeah, it is Jonty. I kind of mentioned that we're going back to our roots. We're trying to redevelop a skill set that was, you know, manifest in the 1960s and 1970s within the business. It will take us time to develop the internal capability and then identify the options that work. You know, it's kind of simple in one way. As you lose access to gas and gas storage that provides that firming, we have to get it from somewhere else as a country if we want affordable energy. You know, when you look around, the source that we have that other countries don't have is we have, you know, hydro. We will be careful, but we'll work with stakeholders to move our way through that process. If there's ever a time that the country needed someone to be looking at it, it's now. Thank you. Don't think we've got any more questions in the room, so why don't we move to the phones. Thank you. Your next question comes from Joshua Dale with Craigs Investment Partners. Morning team. Just on the Te Rere Hau project. Now you've acquired New Zealand wind farms. I think in the past you'd signaled the cost of that project was NZD 500 million- NZD 600 million. What does the incremental cost look like now do you think. I reckon it's going to cost us more than NZD 600 million. Josh is probably the best that I'd give you, but the economics of that project is one heck of a project. The average capacity factor on that wind farm, it looks pure. I'd love us to be able to push the go button on this, but we've got a challenge at that site and it's an important challenge to resolve, which is there's an airways tower that sits there and helps Air New Zealand navigate the skies. We've got to move that off site successfully. That's really, really important. Got to get it right and we will, it's just taking more time than we'd contemplated. That is an incredibly valuable property. Thank you. Just on your balance sheet settings, you've talked a little bit about this. Traditionally, the range seems to be 2x-3x net debt to EBITDA. We're in an environment now, obviously, with gas backup getting harder to rely on. There is evidence of what your exposure can be to a dry year, and then you've got NZD 2 billion of CapEx coming through. I appreciate you've tended to manage the balance sheet a bit more conservatively than that 2x-3x range, but has there been any change in your thinking or perhaps changes to the phasing of that CapEx to provide you more capacity going forward? I mean, simple answer, Josh, is no to the. I'd say the same thing. That's good. Yeah. No, we, you know, you come back to the country needs energy and our job is to provide that energy, and we've got the consents that are coming through our pipeline, and we've got the balance sheets to deliver it. There's no question about our intent moving forward. I think what you've seen for our business is, I hate to say you've seen floor earnings because you know the future is really uncertain, but you got a sense of what can really happen to our business when things are extreme. Two 90-year droughts and the loss of gas in one year for a business that relies on hydro energy and then thermal when it doesn't rain, that's a pretty tough thing to go through. I don't have any concerns. I look at the financial force for the business and our capacity to both deliver investment and stay within that net debt to EBITDA range that you mentioned. I think coming back to that CapEx spend, the driver of any changes to the amount we spend in a financial year is the impact of the development pipeline and any delays to that pipeline. You saw that in the amount of CapEx that we spent in FY 2025. While we give guidance and we model that of where we think we're going to land with CapEx, any delays in that development pipeline will have an impact to that debt level. Okay, thank you. The last question I had was if I'm a customer sitting at home logging into your website in, say, 12 months' time, you've got the Kraken platform implemented. Are there any changes to your product offering that I may see? That's the plan. Absolutely. Josh, the benefit of technology is it allows you to both connect with your customers more effectively because you get to know them better through the use of technology, and it allows you to expand your products and services to them. Kraken is incredibly efficient and effective at what it does. It wasn't easy for us to step away from Flux, but we have. That gives you a sense of discipline that we have got and our commitment to delivering outcomes for customers as well as shareholders. Yep, you will. Any early sort of insights on what customers may see in a product offering sense? The simple answer is no, Josh, not because you've asked it. I'm just not giving it away to our competitors. No, totally fair. Thanks very much, guys. Your next question comes from Andrew Harvey-Green with Forsyth Barr. Morning Mike and Helen. Just a couple of questions from me. Are you able to remind us, I think the contingent storage volume that you're looking at is around about 600, 650 GW hours and how much of that, assuming it comes through, do you think you'd be able to access in as sort of an average year in terms of what would your average hydro generation volumes change by if you had that available? Hey Andrew, it's five, five gigs that's available through that contingent storage and your rock on average we will generate harder. I don't have a number for you. Owen's kind of signaling three or four somethings. We'll let you know. The key point is as you increase access to hydro storage, you are able to generate more because you've got access to more water on average. The way that we've talked to this previously, it said we see the financial benefit to customers being in the order of NZD 500 million a year and the improvement in our earnings base being in the NZD 12 million- NZD 15 million per year. We think the leverage outcome for customers is brilliant. There is an improvement in our own financials as well. I don't have the gigs for you, but giving you probably what you wanted to know anyway. Good. Just sort of following on from that. I mean you, I guess, applied for emergency access to that storage. 2025 and Transpower turns you down going through the fast tracking consent process. How is that going to differ? I assume you're more confident of being successful through that and presumably the aim is to get that in place for 2026. It is. The aim is to get it in place before winter 2026. I think about it, like we think about consenting is you've got to choose a number of routes if you want to improve the odds of success. We were hopeful that working with Transpower, that we would get confidence for winter 2025 access to that storage, but we didn't. In the meantime, while we were going through that process, we lodged a fast track application and we do have, I'll say, reasonable confidence. We haven't been through that process before, but certainly the effort that we're putting in and bring it back to what I said before. When you look at charts or talk to people about winter 2026 security supply is going to be driven by access to it. There is a national need as well as a company outcome. Great. Okay. Just last couple of questions. Just sort of looking at the Kraken implementation and just understanding, making sure I'm getting the OpEx right going forward. You've got elevated OpEx for FY 2026 and I'm rightly saying in FY 2027 as well, before we see things reduce. Helen, you talked about, I think NZD 15 million reduction in OpEx after that. Is that just the one-off costs dropping out or is that in addition to one-off costs? The NZD 15 million dropping out is essentially the operating cost of the Flux business. Once we fully moved over to the Kraken platform, then those costs will come out of the business. That's why we've said that that should happen by the end of FY 2028. Okay, great. It'll be a gradual reduction in that over those financial years. Okay. In terms of the elevated level of cost per annum as you implement Kraken, what are the key imposts in this? They're in the same order, Andrew. That lift that Helen presented, you know, in the NZD 12 million- NZD 15 million range, is the challenge for us over the next couple of years. As Helen said, we're running two retail billing platforms and as we migrate to Kraken, we'll be able to reduce the cost and impact of the Flux platform and by 2028, we should have unwound it entirely. Yeah, okay, I understand that now. That's great. That's awesome. Thank you. Cheers, mate. Your next question comes from Grant Swanepoel with Jarden. Good morning all. I wasn't quite clear on the [color of] Andrew there. So there's NZD 12 million of extra crafting-related costs this year that drops out, and you get just a NZD 3 million extra reduction in costs by 2028. I think we'll probably be looking at a NZD 3 million- NZD 5 million drop. Okay, thanks. My next question is just on your maintenance CapEx. That's been creeping up every year and we understand why it's creeping up, but evaluation obviously links to a long-term maintenance CapEx expectation. What is the long-term expectation for ICT costs and asset maintenance? Yep, drawing on the asset maintenance cost and what I tried to pull out in the presentation is that as we continue to add new generation assets they do need to be all maintained. You will see higher levels of stay in business CapEx in relation to asset maintenance just due to the fact that we'll have more assets to maintain on the ICT site. The cost over the next couple of years is all related to the digital transformation that we're doing across retail. That's in that Kraken space and then also in our digital transformation of our generation business, Grant. You know how we used to talk to NZD 65 million of annualized CapEx was kind of the number, and then we actually only spend about NZD 50 million annualized CapEx. I think what we'll do is we'll give you an update at the investor day in November, and you know CapEx, because those numbers still feel reasonable. What we're seeing is a bunch of replacements, whether it's the SCADA environment or the transformers, and of course they flow through multiple years. I think we do owe it to people to come back and re-baseline that underlying same business capital forecast. Mike, that's very helpful because your estimated cost have risen from NZD 24 million - NZD 65 million over two years. Quite eye watering. Yeah. NZD 58 million is going to revert back to normal. Yeah, I can't see why it doesn't, Grant. Thanks. In terms of the HFO costs that you take on now, how those relate to your historical type of demand response costs and general swaptions that you used to. Is it a bit elevated because of the 10-year contract? They're okay. I shouldn't say that in front of the Commerce Commission, I guess they'll make the ultimate call, but I think at one level you could say that the cost base for that contract is higher than some of the demand response and swaptions that we'd enter. Basket the gas back swaptions that we'd had, but not unrealistically or unreasonably so. The Strategic Energy Reserve agreement feels like a reasonable approach compared to the alternates, whether that be demand response or trying to find some other measure. Not unreasonable, but we don't mind paying less. Oh, thanks, Mike. A final question, you guys might not answer it, so I'll lowball it. Anyway, consensus is sitting well about NZD 1 billion. Are you happy with that on an EBITDA forecast to at least beat NZD 1 billion if hydro plays a role? I think I'd leave that to you, Grant. That's that forecast. We don't provide forecasts, but you can't just where consensus sits and not too uncomfortable with that. I think that, Grant, there are obligations on businesses to provide updates to the extent consensus and internal forecasts vary materially, and we're really mindful of those. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for following us. Thanks, Helen. Your next question comes from Vignesh Nair with UBS. Hi, good morning Mike and Helen, thank you for the presentation. A couple of quick questions. Firstly, in the presentation we think two 1 / 90 year events from a hydrology perspective this year. I think anecdotally you're hearing such events getting more and more frequent. Do you think there's a pattern emerging or a structural change in terms of hydro volatility in the business? I tell you the interesting thing is no. All our modeling shows that as climate change has a bigger, bigger, a bigger impact on the country, the catchments in the south inflows receive more water in bigger doses. That's what all the forecasts, whether it's NIWA or any of the scientists, that's what they'll forecast and show and that's the advice that we get. Sometimes it happens, Vignesh, we know the risk. I think that's the key thing with our business. We know the risks. We know droughts are inevitable ultimately and we manage the business with a balance sheet and portfolio position that can manage them. The bit that really hurt us this year was the fact that that insurance, those swaptions that we bought, they failed. That, as Helen presented, I think I did the same thing at interims as that costs a lot of money. NZD 300 million. Yeah, I go back to my simple answer, Vignesh. No. Okay. Perhaps it's just a recency bias. I suppose this second your question was just a clarification on CapEx over the next couple years. I think last year you talked to NZD 3 billion in growth CapEx between 2024 and 2030. Is that still an appropriate assumption? Yeah, sorry for any confusion in there. Vignesh, when I talk to 2 x or 1.6x, I use a couple of numbers in there. The ambition is still through 2030 to land NZD 3 billion worth of capital. My numbers were just different periods. That's just purely growth. Not shame business. Given that backdrop sort of implies, you know, your guidance into next year possibilities result this year and last year, a spend of about NZD 700 million for the 3.5 years leading into 2030. Is that still fair? Yeah, although some of the developments, you know, they don't all come, they're not all equal. Vignesh is, you know, when you look at developments like Te Rāhui, you do have to land a couple of big ones in there to get to those sorts of numbers. Look to those bigger developments that are flowing through our books and through the pipeline. You can easily see where that money comes from or that forecast comes from. The big one next is Te Rere Hau. Yeah, that's very clear. And. Yeah. Is the balance sheet still structured in a way which supports, I suppose, flat dividends for two dry years? I think that was the previous standard. Is that still going to be the case, you know, through this phase of elevated CapEx? I think our reference to May in the statements is we would look at it carefully, Vignesh, if we saw another drought emerge in the short term. Like every balance sheet, you need to restore it. That's what we were trying to get to was, we know what we have the capacity for, but when you do draw on that balance sheet, you don't have infinite capacity and we've got this incentive and drive to invest while maintaining our credit rating. We were just saying to people, if we had another big drought on our hands, we have to look at that big drought. Otherwise, we restore the balance sheet, build these assets, and get on with business, which is what we're forecasting to do. All right, amazing. That's all for me, thanks, guys. Your next question comes from Stephen Hudson with Macquarie Securities. Hi, Mike and Helen, thanks for the presentation. Just a few from me, just the revaluation. I just wondered if you could call out any changed assumptions there under coming that super dollar. I can take that one. The increase for the generation assets is largely driven by the change in the wholesale market outlook price for the future. The only one change that we did have to our assumptions, which we've included in the financial statements, is that we did change our depreciation from accounting to tax depreciation. There's a small note of that in our financial statements. Other than that, it's the same calculation and the same methodology that we've had in prior years. Do you have a number at hand there, Helen? Oh, offhand, I don't have it. I'm just looking to Owen. I don't have that, but we can get it to you. Yeah. Hey Heidi, remember we presented at our last investor day, we gave like a price range and we've updated that since. That's the latest variation of wholesale market outlook, has popped a little bit. Not materially so, but again, we'll give you an update on that very openly and transparently as we did at the last investor day in November. Very good. Talking of investor days, I think last year the team sort of talked about the potential for a new power station on the Waitaki chain. I just wondered if you had an update on that potential. It's sitting in the pipeline, Heidi. The best I can say is we're trying to align that with the work that we're doing on wider storage options in the Mackenzie. Obviously, if you're looking at your structures and storage, any new power station that you might add to your structures has got to align with development of those options and it's connected to that work. In the meantime, what you might have picked up on today, and I can't remember how more widely we've referenced it, is the Waitaki power station upgrade that's underway and that's where you'll see a capacity uplift for that power station. Very good. Just on contingent hydro, I think you mentioned the 545 number. There's an alert release and an emergency release component to that. The 330 and 210, roughly, you've gone for the full 540 in your fast track applications. Yeah, we have. Right. Reminder that it is from a physical perspective, just water flow. The lower that lake gets, the less flows down the canal. It's just friction slows water flow down, and the deeper you go into that storage, the less water actually passes through the canal. The first 300 gigs is straightforward operationally for us. The remaining couple of hundred gigs is, no one's been there before and just is harder to deliver. Engineers are confident that we can. The release of that water would be slower than what you'd see under normal operations. It's a great reminder. So... Any... Do you have any clues on what's happening with the Tekapo contingent storage? Do you know if that's subject to a fast track application as well? We don't. Transpower are looking at their, you know, updating their SOSFIP as well again at the end of the year. I should be clear, while we've tabled a fast track application for contingent storage, we're supportive of contingent storage for the same reasons that we laid out for others. Whether Tekapo or down in a Clutha, you want a low cost clean energy system to support the economy. The way you get it is you develop your hydro resources and that contingent water is just sitting there and available to us. Yeah, thanks Mike. Just two more quick ones. It sounds like NZAS are in market for 100 MW to bring back Potline 4. Can you confirm that at all and give us any clues as to what they intend to do beyond Potline 4? Hey, so I think they're in, I think they're in the market for 50 MW for Potline 4. So Potline 4 is a 50 MW addition. 50 + 50 is what I've heard. Yep. They would love to expand that potline and make it a full potline. They'd love to get it to 180 MW if they could. The reality is you have to balance that increase in consumption with the development of your asset base. What is slowing them down is the same thing that has impacted the electricity sector. We felt good about the renewable investment going into the market, being able to accommodate new growth. When we lost access to gas, another fuel, we've had to recalibrate. The development that's going on is to replace gas for existing users. We're working with them to try and find an economic solution to them that aligns with the development pipeline that we've got. I'm sure other people are doing the same thing. We've only got capacity to support them for a portion of that increase. We know they're in market talking to people about it and we're keen to support it because it's economic growth. We've got to balance that opportunity against making sure we do look for people who are already here. Makes sense. Just last one, we've seen one of your competitors sort of start to talk a little bit more openly about developing off balance sheet. I just wondered if you had some early views on whether or not we could see a similar change for you. Yeah, hey Steve. I mean we already are. You know, Te Rāhui is a development. It's a joint venture development, very project finance. I think the total cost is NZD 370 million. For phase I, it's a full megawatt development. It's in two stages. Stage one is 200 megs. I think that first, as I said, the cost is about NZD 3 million. Most of it's project financed work with wind farms that would have been a joint venture. We've got a PPA in place with Te Rāhui, the joint Clarus Harmony solar farm as well. We're open for business and what that means is our balance sheet structuring with others in whatever way that makes sense for them and for us that makes sense. Thanks Mike and Helen. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back for any closing remarks. Thank you. Only closing remark is to close. Thanks everybody for your time this morning. Appreciate you being here and on the phones and for your questions. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.