Hello, welcome to the ACWA Power earnings call, and thank you for standing by. My name is Bailey, and I will be the coordinator today. If you would like to ask a question during the Q&A session, please use the raise hand button found on your Zoom toolbar or dial star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad if you have joined us via the phone. Alternatively, you may submit written questions using the Q&A button found on the Zoom toolbar. I would now like to pass the call over to our host, Ozgur Serin, Director of Investor Relations, to begin. Please go ahead. Thank you, Bailey, good afternoon, good morning and good evening, everyone wherever you are joining this call. This is ACWA Power company's earnings and results call for the 3 and 6 months ended 30 June 2023. My name is Ozgur. Most of you may already know me. I am the Head of Investor Relations at ACWA Power and currently on the IR. Together with me, I have Mr. Marco Arcelli, who is our CEO, and Mr. Abdulhameed Al-Muhaidib, who is our CFO. Both of them are joining from Italy for this call. Before we start with the call, we will have some prepared slides to review, and for that, I will shortly hand the word over to Marco and Abdulhamid. After that, we will have a Q&A session. You always know that in this presentation, we will be having some forward-looking statements. We will be using some statements for which we have a disclaimer at the beginning of the presentation, as well as on the other materials. We have already announced our results on Tadawul last Thursday, so most of you are already in possession of the numbers, but we have all our investor materials already posted on our website as well as Tadawul's own website. Without further ado, let me pass the word to Marco and we will move on from there. Marco, it is over to you. Thank you, Ozgur, welcome to everybody. I am really proud of introducing this presentation today with Abdulhamid, who will go through the exceptional results that we achieved in the first 6 months. As a way of introduction, I would like to start with the strong base where we are today, where, as everybody knows, we are one of the largest renewable energy companies and companies involved in the energy transitions in the world. I think what I am most proud of, and I would like to reiterate, is that today we are the largest private company in desalination, as it was also recognized by the Global Water Intelligence recently. We are the first mover in large-scale green hydrogen projects, where we are already well underway in construction of the NEOM Green Hydrogen project together with our partners, Air Products and NEOM, and I was really impressed by the progress of the site and really this remarkable first project in the industry that is earmarking all the production basically for exports mainly into Europe but potentially other markets. We're ready to break ground in a few weeks with the second project in Uzbekistan that will start with a smaller scale, potentially also to be expanded to a large scale for exports into Europe. The other thing that I'm really excited about is the strong progress in decarbonization of our portfolio where we had committed to a 50/50 balance between the renewables and the non-renewable power gen in our portfolio. Well, so far of the 50 gigawatt or more than 50 gigawatt that we already have in our portfolio, over 46% is renewables today with a remarkable 65% CAGR over the past 10 years, which is really something that is a feast and an achievement that I have rarely seen in the industry. We consider ourselves one of the big enablers, if we can move to the next slide, in the energy transition for many reasons. One of these is the ability through our ingenuity and the work that we do with our suppliers through an open innovation concept, basically, where we bring the whole ecosystem to reduce the cost of the way that we do things, and through basically the continuous improvement in the design of the projects that we have to have been able to reduce solar PV costs and CapEx by over 80% over the past decade, and desalination cost of 50% or more, which actually is a result of our ability to really reduce what we can really control, which is the specific power consumption, that is the number of kilowatt hours that you need to produce one cubic meter of water. Here, the reduction has been well above 80%, something really amazing in the industry. The last point that I think is really something that not always goes very well noticed is how we're good at converting high carbon emitting assets and how we've been able or are able to shift from thermal to solar reverse osmosis like we're doing in the SWPC project. Basically, that will offset 22 million barrels of heavy fuel oil from the production of electricity, basically to desalinate the water and removing 9.5 million tons of CO2 per year, all by agree with the offtaker in the Emirates, basically to convert the Hassyan coal plant to natural gas, which will achieve basically over 30 million tons of CO2 reduction by 2030. I think that this stance really evidence of our ability to make a better world for future generation. If we move to the next slide, the next is really on the ongoing operations. Coming from the vision basically to the actual operation, I'm really pleased with the safety results of the first six months, where we achieved only one lost time injury accidents, which brought down the lost time injury rate basically 60% from last year. I'm very pleased with that result. Here, certainly, we should never stop, we should never become complacent, and we should always keep an eye on everything that we do, not only for our own people, but also for the people of our contractors, partners, subcontractors at the site. The second is, it's a matter that has been of a great focus for analysts in the past, is our performance on the plants that we operate. In particularly with availability in our power, water, and renewable energy, where you see that we've been able, through our reliability of supply focus and task force, to increase significantly compared with the past year. I'm pleased with the results. This is again, an area where you can never feel complacent. You are never there. When you get there is no there. You need to continue to focus, you need to continue to maintain a high standard, because that's what our customer rely on ACWA Power for. Moving to the next slide, the third, I think big, remarkable achievement is the total shareholder return that we have achieved over the past few years. Over 200% since the IPO and 10% year to date. Markets fluctuates as market do. What we can do is really to do our best and to demonstrate that we're one of the best companies that you can invest in, and that we can support these strong and reliable results for our investors. We want to reiterate our guidance that we gave during the IPO of our potential for the future. I'm really comfortable that this is something that we can achieve in the years to come. Next slide. As I mentioned in my first remark last quarter, as I just was starting to get into the company, I think the first few months in the company for me were passed basically spending time to familiarize with all the operation. You have seen also my LinkedIn profile. I've been really moving to a lot of the countries and a lot of the plants where we operate because I really want to see firsthand, meet the people, meet the customer, see our operation, and see really where we're doing good, where we can do better, so that we can always focus on delivering the best results for you. I'm pleased that based on that, we were able to finalize a new strategy that is an evolution building on all the strength of this great company, that was approved by the board of director on the 21st of June. With Ozgur and Abdulhameed, we will be pleased to present and invite you to a meeting in November, basically, where we will focus specifically on the new strategy and the evolution that we're going to do and some of the new targets and some of the new areas of focus that we intend to maintain. I think that they're summarized here basically, in a nutshell, to, I think, where we have seen the potential to more than triple our asset under management by 2030 and be one of the top three players in the world in desalination. Well, we are today the number one, so we intend to keep that position. We're the first mover in green fuels, green hydrogen, green ammonia. We want to keep that position, and we want to reinforce that we will be one of the strongest players in renewable energy transition. All this we can only do if we keep a strong focus on our people and making sure that we remain the best employer in the industry in every country where we operate. We will do this by maintaining a strong focus on our ESG and CSR ratings, so reiterating our commitment basically to decarbonize. Moving to the next slide. This starts basically with our commitment to Saudi Arabia and the transition in this country. Really, one of the reasons I continue to repeat that I moved to ACWA Power and moved to Saudi, is to be part of Vision 2030. And one of the anchors of Vision 2030 is the decarbonization of the country. We're going to move from about 100% fossil a couple of years ago to 50/50 renewables and gas fire by 2030, which is, in my opinion, probably one of the biggest and boldest decarbonization programs in the world. I'm really proud and I'm pleased to be one of the key enablers on this. And here we have summarized the progress already today. Of the 27 GW interim target for 2024, 22 GW have been already identified. On this, we're already progressing very fast on 14 GW that we have already taken in our responsibility from the PIF pipeline, where we also won over one GW of projects in the Ministry of Energy tender process in the country. By the way, this is predicated on the initial target, but of course, if the economy and the industry will grow more than the expected growth rate that we had a few years ago, we're still committed to delivering at least 70% of that, which is a bigger potential and bigger potential upside for ACWA Power. Besides this, in Saudi Arabia, if we can move to the next slide, we have an immediate pipeline that is very strong. Over 20 active bids, 20 potential bids, and 11 advanced development projects, basically, where we are working hard to achieve financial close in the next few months. I'm really impressed by the amount of work ingenuity of our business development team. I'm sure that out of this, we will be able to report some good progress in the upcoming weeks when we do our periodic updates. Moving to the next slide, which is actually my last slide before I hand over to Abdulhameed, I want to simply reiterate that year-to-date, we have already achieved almost three times the committed equity in new wins and new projects awarded to ACWA Power compared to six months 2022. I think that we're well in line, if not above, the initial IPO guidance that was given to the market. I'm really confident that we can achieve at least that. I believe that in the next few months, we can even exceed that and be able to deliver more than that in the future. I will hand over to Abdulhameed to cover more specifically these results of the first few six months. Thank you, Marco. Good afternoon, everyone. Just before we start with the numbers, I would like to quickly give you an update on what's happening in the business. From the last time we met until today, in term of progress for project that has achieved FC and the project that has been completed when it comes to the construction and the project execution and as well as project that has been awarded. By giving that kind of update to give you a flavor on how does the number has changed. Just quickly on the financial close, a quick update on what has happened. Good progress, as we expected in the first half of the year. Alhamdulillah, we have achieved four different financial closes, Shaybah One and Two in Saudi, which combined has become one of the largest, or the largest actually, PV project in the region, 2.6 gigawatt of power capacity, the lowest ever tariff that has been bid during the last few years. Also, we have achieved the financial close for two other projects, one in Egypt, which is Kom Ombo. Kom Ombo is the second PV project we have after Benban in Egypt, and also we have started our second project of wind, which is the Nuqus 100 megawatt. This is around SAR 0.4 billion of project size. With that, we have done four this year. We are progressing very well in others that will be completed within the year. Moving to the next slide. We are giving you here a quick update on which project has been completed from project execution to commercial operation. This is a very important slide we have, not only because it gives you a flavor that project moved from development to invest and operate kind of contribution, but also, as I have mentioned earlier, this period is a critical period for us to maximize our project completion for the simple fact that a lot of these projects have been hit with COVID. By having these projects hit with COVID, some of these projects have been impacted by a cost overrun or delays in execution. It has impacted our budgeting because for the simple reason of delaying this project. The more we get these projects into operation, the more comfortable we will be on the way that we are managing our portfolio. As mentioned earlier also, it is very good progress to this project. I will get fully comfortable by the middle of 2024 when all these projects that have been hit by COVID will be completed. Here, a quick update on starting with Dubai. We have two big projects, Shuaa Energy 3 and Noor Energy 1. Shuaa Energy 3 has completed the three units. Combined now we have 900 MW in operation. We are expecting the plant COD certificate to be end of the year. We are now dispatching 900 as energy generation. Noor Energy, we have already 300. The most complex unit, the central tower, has been completed and in operation today. We have also the parabolic trough today also in operation. A few days ago, unfortunately, we got hit by a sandstorm there. It has impacted a bit the operation of PT1. It will also impact a bit PT2 delivery date. Around 2% of the solar field has been impacted. We are working together with the EPC contractor on the recovery plan for that. When it comes to design, another big milestone is achieving the second asset delivery. That brings us to around 3 GW of power capacity. Another 700+ MW will be coming as a final unit for visa. Umm Al Quwain and Jubail both have completely delivered their operation of water, and Taweelah almost completely with only 76,000 cubic meters per day of water is remaining. This is another target that we are very closely monitoring, and we are hoping that we will deliver the full plant before the end of the year. Moving to the next slide, we will show you how has this impacted our financial figures. As you can see, in terms of operating income, steady growth around SAR 1.2 billion of operating income, slightly less than 6% increase. We don't have any adjustment for another quarter. Both Q1 and Q2 have no adjustment. We have around SAR 684 million of net income for the full six months. This is around 46% increase from the same period of last year. Current operating cash flow significantly dropped when you compare it to six months to six months, but around 40% dropped when you compare it to the last 12 months compared to the last 12 months of the similar period. This is we have a specific slide going through the detail of that. In reality, it's mainly related to the big refinancing happened in RAWEC. I hope you still can hear me well, and apologies for the background noise. This brings us to a apparent net debt of around SAR 12.4 billion. Net debt to EBITDA is around 5x multiples. We will also have another slide where we go through the detail of that. Maybe we go to the next slide. Here we will go through a quick comparison or waterfall of how does the six months of the year has been evolved if you compare it to the same period of last year. Again, the around SAR 200 million contribution from existing projects. This is mainly, if you recall, similar update of last year, we have impacted, updated you on impact of four distinct projects. Two projects in Morocco and two projects in Saudi has been impacted with a longer outage than we expected. All these projects have come back to operation. One of them not fully, but this has contributed around SAR 80 million of additional contribution for this period. We have around SAR 80 million contribution from project, which was just get updated or became online, either a unit or a full plant. When comparing the negative impact, we have a reduction of around SAR 114 billion. This is mainly for a project that has completed the construction period. Automatically, the fees related to the development and construction management has been completed, and that is the impact of that. You will continue to see that kind of trend for a while, and the reason is very simple. During COVID, the speed of our financial close projects or, let's say, project that has achieved net NTP has been reduced. That's a natural trend you will see due to the COVID, which will take time to recover fully, and then you will see the development and construction management fees will be coming back full speed. Other income that we have seen last year, which was that there around SAR 66 million, mainly related to some of the LDs recovery from an EPC contractor. This brings us to around SAR 1.2 billion of operating income. If you move to the next slide, we will show you how does the net income has been impacted. I will exclude the SAR 70 million upside related to the operating income, as we just explained it. You have around SAR 219 million lower zakat and tax income. If you recall also similar period of last year, we had a negative impact that was also we spent quality time discussing the impact of the deferred tax losses last year in Morocco. This year we have it actually as a positive impact due to the, mainly to the appreciation of the Moroccan dirham as against the U.S. dollar. We have another around SAR 40 million of income, mainly related to higher income on the deposits as the interest rate has been increasing. If you see the SAR 165 million negative, it's mainly related to two things. One is that we have Sukuk sizing has been increased since we have issued the second tranche on February 2022. Also there has been a continuous increase in the interest rate, which was mainly impacted our unhedged positions during the course of the six months. There is a small impact of around SAR 22 million. This brings us to SAR 684 million net profit for the first six months of the year. Here we would like to show you that impact of that breakdown on a slightly different structure. The main objective here is to demonstrate to you the different revenue streams that is coming as per our business model. Here you will see the first one, SAR 181 million related mainly to the development and construction management fees. You will have around SAR 537, which is our share in net income. That will be the invest part, while the first part will be the development part. On the O&M part, you will see that SAR 301 million is also including both projects under operation and the project that came online. Other income will be around SAR 377 million. That is also including the deposits part. This brings us to, let's say, a net income or adjusted net income before all the expense around SAR 1.3. Take out around all the corporate and head holding companies expenses, that's around SAR 700 million, and bring us to the adjusted net income of SAR 684. This is if you compare it to the previous year, it was around SAR 542. Bringing us to the period operating cash flow. This time we have simplified the slide a bit. We have also distributed both cash inflow and outflow into different buckets so we can have a clear visibility on the breakdown. We tried also to simplify the notes to make sure that you can easily follow the trend. If I will focus in few items here, capital recycling definitely is the biggest one. Last year, the same period, we have RAWEC refinancing and divestment of SCIP at that period. That does not mean that we are not planning for any capital recycling for the full period. Of course, capital recycling and cost optimization is definitely a part of our business model. We are working on this target, and we always every year have specific targets to be completed before the year ends. That is one part of the main differences. You have also a positive difference in the finance expense, mainly related to ACWA 59. If you recall, by the end of last year, we were able to buy back SAR 400 million or half of ACWA 59 bond, which has also had a positive impact when it comes to the financing expense. Aside from that, we have talked about already the zakat and the tax impact in the previous slide. More or less the rest is around 10% or less impact when it comes to the POCF. Last 12 months is around SAR 2.4 billion. We are also working in a couple of other initiatives. There is slightly delays on some of the collection. That is also a timing impact that is being shown when you see only the six months of 2023, that we are also hoping to improve that before the end of this year. Here we are showing you expanding from the POCF to the full cash of the company. Aside from the POCF, we have, as mentioned earlier, included the SAR 2.4 billion, the second tranche of Sukuk. You have together with the opening cash position of SAR 4.2 billion, this brings the total cash at around SAR 7.2 billion. How did you use the cash? This was a question that was raised in some of the meetings earlier. We have specifically updated and upgraded this slide to answer this specific question. Out of the SAR 7.2 billion of cash, we have actually utilized SAR 3.1 billion. 85% was mainly injection in the new projects and investments, and around 6% paid for financial charges and Sukuk and others. There is around 9% mainly advances to projects that have not yet achieved the financial close. This is bringing a healthy picture of the real use of the cash, 85%, and the remaining SAR 4 billion is within the company. Finally, we'll just quickly highlight the net debt to POCF slide. Again, a quick refresher. Out of the SAR 27 billion liability we have in our balance sheet, we would like to diversify it between what is on recourse to ACWA Power and what is non-recourse. You can see in the first light blue color, we have around SAR 17 billion related to non-recourse debt on our balance sheet, getting consolidated in our balance sheet. We have a few issuance, mainly the SAR 4.5 billion Sukuk, which has a recourse to ACWA Power, and another SAR 4.3 billion which is lending or guaranteeing a lending of a project company with recourse to ACWA Power together with the PIF loan. That brings around a total of let's say SAR 9 billion. Adding to that, if you look at our contingency, there is a SAR 6.6 billion of our contingency that is related to funded facilities. This could be either the equity standby LC or mainly equity bridge loans. With that SAR 16.4 billion of recourse debt we have, we just want to take out the cash we just highlighted earlier to the SAR 4 billion. This brings our net debt to around SAR 12.4 billion. Taking that net debt to our POCF will bring us around 5x multiple or 5x today. If you recall also last year we talked about what is the ratio with and without RAWEC. With RAWEC it was a very low multiple of 2.1x. If you just exclude RAWEC of last year, it will be around the same number we have today, 5x or 4.95x multiple. Our comfort zone will remain, as Marco has highlighted with our growth strategy, we always want to be lower than 6x-7x multiple. There is a one year or so that could go higher due to the growth, but we are always controlling that number to make sure that we can deliver on our commitment, both on the debt centers as well as our equity partners. This is the last slide. I will hand it over to Marco to quickly take you through it, and then we will open it up for Q&A. As a summary, I think here is highlighting the priorities we have set for ourselves. Of course, we mentioned safety. The improvement is clear compared to last year. A sign of the strong commitment of the management. I think here, we need to maintain the good momentum and really not drop the guard because it's really something that is the starting point of everything that we do. The second one we mentioned is the reliability of supply. As we mentioned, it's not just good to win the project, to build the project and bring them online, but then we need to make sure that our customers can really reliably benefit from them, particularly in water, particularly in the countries where we operate, because it's so really important for us. The third is really to make sure that we focus on the finalizing the financial closes and the ICOD and DCOD that we have on our projects. We are on track on delivering on the projects that we have earmarked for our plan for this year, and I'm really pleased with what we have done to date. Of course, we cannot forget growth. This is a company that really is going to change the world, and we really want to bring it to new heights. We need to really make sure that we maintain the momentum. So far this year, we signed four PPAs. We signed one hydrogen agreement in Uzbekistan. One project where I said that in the next few weeks, we're going to break ground and three PPAs in Saudi Arabia in the PIF pipeline that we discussed before. We continue to decarbonize our portfolio and make sure that we lead the energy transition globally. I think as Ozgur continues to repeat, basically, for every dollar that we invest ourselves, we mobilize $10-$12 of capital from lenders, from partners. We really pride ourselves as being one of the big enablers of the change that we want to see in the world. I think that this is today already epitomized by this growth of renewables in our portfolio to 46% of the total. With this, I think we summarize all the big achievement and the great story of ACWA Power. I turn it to you, Ozgur, to lead the Q&A. Thank you, Marco and Abdulaziz. Very much appreciated. Bailey, over to you for managing the Q&A, please. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press the raise hand icon on your screen if you have joined the call via Zoom. If you have joined the call via the phone, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. Alternatively, you may submit a written question using the Q&A button also found on your Zoom toolbar. When preparing to ask a question, please ensure that your line is unmuted locally. We will pause here for just a moment as questions are registered. Our first question comes from Anna Antonova. Please unmute yourself locally and state your company name before proceeding. Your line is now open. Yes. Hello. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Can you hear me well? Okay, good. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Anna Antonova here from J.P. Morgan. I have a couple of questions and, for simplicity, I will ask them just one by one. My first question is, on slide 18, I see that your investments in H1 are roughly SAR 2.7 billion, and with your current project pipeline that you outlined in the beginning of the presentation, can we expect this to be kind of the new normal run rate of investments for ACWA? That's the first question. Hi, Anna. Good to hear from you. Thank you for your question. I thought you were saying you would like to ask all your questions, you will ask them together, or you want to ask one by one? I would like to ask them one by one. I ask one question, you answer, and then we move to the next, if that's okay, because then I'll have to maybe repeat myself or something. Just for the ease of- As highlighted also by Marco in the opening speech and also on that new strategy. Definitely, the target that has been expected during the IPO is not our same target as this year. With the Strategy 2.0, which will be detailed during November session, we are targeting to invest much more than what is that. What you have seen in the six months, you can witness that it's already happening. You have the full pipeline also being demonstrated. We do expect significant growth when it comes to the equity investment per year, and definitely it will be much higher than what was expected at the IPO time. The SAR 1.3 billion per year of equity investment is not the current target. We are going above that now. Understood. Thank you so much. Maybe, I understand there is still some room to go into the year-end, but generally speaking, do you expect to stay in your comfort zone, as you mentioned, on the net debt to POCF ratio by this year-end, roughly? Yeah. This is another target we are maintaining. We are looking at that very carefully, and we would like to maintain that average, which is around six or less than six multiple. Not only this year, in a continuously period. As we mentioned that during the next five years or so, that's the target, six to seven and lower. We have specific tools to utilize as and when required to maintain that level of net debt to POCF. Understood. Thank you so much. My last technical question before I have a more strategic one for Marco is, can we expect any tax effects from Morocco to continue affecting your effective tax rate in the second half of this year, or can we expect that there will be finally tax expenses manifesting on the group P&L in the second half? Yes. That is definitely a very technical question, and not only technical, but also it depends on so many different variables, right? One of the main variables would be the currency exchange between the Moroccan dirham and the US dollar, and also the Moroccan dirham and the euro. Difficult to predict the number. It's correlated with so many other variables. As you have witnessed, 1% change on that will have a significant impact. Definitely, this is something that we are not comfortably reporting every quarter. However, we are just following the standard. Something that could definitely improve this situation is if there is any changes on the structuring or the ownership of our Moroccan portfolio, which is something we don't see today, but if it's happened in the future, it will definitely improve. This is something that we continue to monitor. We're trying to talk to the tax expert and trying to find a solution on how can we, let's say, have a less impact into our financials. As we are standing today, unfortunately, it will be continuously impacting some, depending on the fluctuation of the currency and other variables, it will be a positive or negative impact every quarter. Understood. Thank you so much. Thank you. My final question, maybe to Marco, is, you mentioned NEOM in the beginning of the presentation. It's obviously a very big and large-scale project. Can you maybe shed some more light on how is it going? You mentioned that you've seen it progressing right now. Are you on track for commissioning it in 2026? Then following up on that is, can you maybe comment how it is aligned with your smaller project in Uzbekistan? Are there any lessons learned from one that can be applied to another? Or how does ACWA think about these two projects. Yeah What is the timeframe of the next couple of years? That would be much appreciated. Yeah. For now, I went to visit our solar field, I went to visit our wind farm, I went to visit the site of where we're actually going to put the electrolyzers. I'm pleased with the progress that we're seeing. For now, we, of course, are maintaining the schedule that we had announced before. For the other projects, I think that this is an emerging industry, and I think that it's really interesting to see the different forms that project may take in different countries. NEOM is, of course, a project that is earmarked fully for export. I think that we're looking also at projects that start with local demand and then have the potential or also adjacent capacity that can be exported. Since I joined, I already visited, for instance, Egypt, where we're making progress on our project there. I visited Indonesia, where we signed two agreements, basically to develop greenfield projects in green ammonia. Both are predicated on a little bit of local demand, but most importantly of exports, targeting also the Asian market. We're following other markets as well. I think that here what we see is that we have a strong base in Saudi Arabia that, in our view, is probably the most competitive country in the world to produce green fuels. We also believe that it's important to maintain projects in many different geographies and jurisdictions. One, because the Asian market might be looking really at projects in the Far East, kind of like what LNG had in the past. Second, for European demand and potentially for demand for local production in all these countries, I think it's very important to provide final users or final customers in countries, final governments, if you want, in European countries, the ability to differentiate the supply. We can provide a one-stop shop with supplies from different parts of the world. Interesting. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you for the color. Thank you, Anna. Maybe just to add one point on the learning, because you have specifically asked. If you recall, Anna, that one of the things that we kept saying when we did our first move to the green hydrogen, which is the NEOM Green Hydrogen project, is that we took it on a lower than our typical, let's say, comfort zone when it comes to the returns. Definitely one of the learnings that we have capitalized on and built on this project is that we have improved our returns on the green hydrogen through this project as well. It was a better return for us and going back to the same learning that we had in the first project. Understood. Thank you so much. Marco, maybe final question from our side, given that you have had kind of a fresh look with a fresh pair of eyes on ACWA, what do you think is the biggest strategic challenge for ACWA in the next 5 to 10 years? On the other hand, what's the biggest strategic opportunity? I think what we are all seeing and what we have seen in the past is basically a lot of competition in the market as the world is moving to green. That means that we need to continuously sharpen our pencils and maintain the competitiveness that we have seen in the past. That is, at the same time, the biggest challenge that we're focusing on, but also at the same time, one of the big opportunities because of what we were able to achieve in the past. I think that on this specifically, we will discuss more in detail in November. I really believe that our strong relationship with core suppliers along the value chain is very important. We have some strategic relationship both with EPC and suppliers. I think that one of the important things, that I have seen really with fresh eyes as you say, is the ability basically for ourselves to lead open innovation really in our operations. It's not that we develop our own specific manufacturing. That is always a limiting factor, I think, because either you are able to allocate a lot of money to that specific technology, you will always at some point fall behind. If you're able to work with the best suppliers in the world, with the best EPCs in the world, and really focus on what the final customers need and what the- is taken is needed basically to achieve the lowest cost or the lowest tariff that you can deliver for your customers. That's how you create value altogether. What I have seen is that we work very closely with Chinese companies, Japanese companies, European companies, American companies. I really have rarely seen something this deep and this structured in the industry so far. Thank you. The next question today comes from the line of Oliver Connor from Citigroup. Please go ahead, Oliver. Your line is now open. Hi. Thank you for taking my questions and congratulations on the strong set of results. Two from me. The first one, I appreciate you'll probably flesh this out in more detail in November in terms of your sort of medium-term earnings trajectory and where we are versus IPO. My sense is that you've made a lot of progress in terms of bringing assets online this year and also reestablishing the availability to a level that you'd like. Is it fair to say, sort of looking into the second half this year, you're expecting to see a sort of further acceleration in growth in earnings, particularly from the sort of net income line of those new assets coming through? The second question, more generally looking back at sort of slide eight on the progress within the Kingdom, it looks like the PIF pipeline is very strong. Just curious to know if there's an update sort of on the auction side of things in terms of how that's developing. I know there's been sort of four or five rounds that have been positioned in the Kingdom. Is there an update on sort of how that auction process will go into 2024 or later this year? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Oliver. Thank you very much for the question. Just to give a quick update on how things are progressing from assets on operation. We have briefly given updates during the presentation, but as we have seen, more or less, yes, we are progressing very well. Summer is a bit sensitive kind of season, so usually you don't have any planned long outages in summer because it is the peak of the demand from the client side, right? Having said that, you also get impacted sometimes here and there, and I have mentioned, for example, only one of them already on Dubai that has happened a few weeks ago or last week. It is difficult to predict how does the full summer would look like. Yes, in an absolute term, if things are progress as that, we should be the second half better than the first half when it comes to operating assets and also when it comes to contribution from the asset that is being in operation. This is in a nutshell. Usually when you have a serious or severe impact on any plant that will materially impact our numbers, we will announce that also on the ground. Alhamdulillah, so far, sites are progressing. There is small outages here and there, but nothing significant on impact that would create such a negative impact for the year. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. Sorry, Abdulhameed. I guess there was another question from Oliver with respect to how we see the MOE pipeline in KSA shaping up for 2024. Do we have any color as to how it will shape up for 2024? The Ministry of Energy pipeline? Energy pipeline, exactly. The tendering process. If we have any ideas or any vision about how it will develop within 2024. No. I think we highlighted in the chart that about 22 gigawatts have been identified, 14 we are working on. It is one of my big goals basically to work with PIF and the Ministry of Energy, basically to get the longest visibility possible, I think for the benefit of everybody in the supply chain to be able to work together and deliver the best planning basically for all the program. I think that this enhanced visibility is one of the measures also to attract more localization into Saudi Arabia to basically also on the supply chain to be able to serve locally, basically all these needs. It is certainly one of the discussions that I intend to pursue, but I think that if I compare Saudi Arabia with other countries, it already serves and provides good visibility compared to the unpredictability of other countries. Maybe one thing I can add to that one, I guess, as you rightfully mentioned as well, if you look at— If you remember the first, the starting of the year, we only had 1,500 under our belt, which was on this there. The point I'm making is Saudi Arabia is definitely and very visibly accelerating the deployment of the program. It's very visible from the numbers. We have an understanding that it's going to continue in 2024. Obviously, we are not in a position to give further details. Just to support what Marco is saying, so far, we don't have any flags to raise with respect to the deployment of the country's parts. Thank you. Next, we have a written question, and the written question comes from Rakan Abunayyan. They ask, "Given new regulations which allow market makers to participate and potentially boost liquidity, can you give some clarity on whether ACWA plans to have market makers for its stock? Thank you. Thank you for the question. We did, indeed, saw a couple of initiatives by few companies listed in Tadawul. One is related to having a specific financial institution to be market makers. Other related to share splits. These all are interesting, definitely, tools to be witnessed, assessed, reviewed. We are looking at it all from our equity strategy. We are already working with a financial advisor and also our IR team led by Oswin, on analyzing all the different tools available. Definitely, increasing liquidity of the share is an important target for us. We will be assessing all the tools available and whatever tool that we believe as a management, and then also submit it to our board and approve as a direction. We'll definitely announce it on Tadawul on the right time. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Anna Kuchina from T. Rowe Price. Please go ahead, Anna. Your line is now open. Thank you for your presentation. I wonder if you could please give an update on your financing strategy. I wonder if you have any ambition like Masdar in U.A.E., who recently issued the holdco bonds. Is it something you are looking to do in the future? A specific also question with regards to your MP1 bonds issued by ACWA Power Management Company. Last November, I think you repaid half, you tendered half of it. Is it something you might do in the future? My third question is, what is your strategy with respect to your oil fired portfolio where you still have some stakes? We've seen that you have been gradually divesting it. Is it something you contemplate in the near future to completely get out of your oil fired portfolio? Thank you. Okay. Maybe we'll start with the funding strategy, then I can highlight about our strategy toward the heavy crude oil assets, right? That you have just referred to. Look, when it comes to the funding strategy, if you take one step back and look how does that impact not really the winning ratio, but it's mainly the driver for our competitiveness. Definitely, our funding strategy will be hand-in-hand aligned with our competitiveness and our ability to grow on these new countries and new projects. Every single cent that we work on optimizing does create value, and that is not only related to, let's say, EPC price on and price other costs, but also a big part of it is related to the financing. When it comes to our funding strategy, we always look at the most optimal solution that allows us to finance our growth without significantly impacting or even creating value for our competitiveness for future projects. With that in mind, definitely, we are looking at different tools and different sets to fund our growth. We did, as you rightly mentioned, last year, utilized an opportunity and paid back around SAR 400 million, which is 50% of our ACWA 39. If you ask me today, I don't see a value to do anything right now, but different circumstances will definitely trigger a different action. As we are standing today, that will remain as it is. We are looking at different positions. You have seen our cash position today. I don't need an immediate issuance at the corporate level. Maybe by the beginning of next year, we will be required to pitch for the market again. We are able to currently bridge our growth with equity bridge done for a few projects, and this is ultimately having the objective of optimizing the tariff and delivering a more competitive, let's say, water and power to the end users. With that, we are also exploring various options for next year, whether it is a green bond, whether it is a perpetual bond, whether it is a convertible bond. All these options are put in the table. We are discussing with the various financial institution to look at what will be the best position for ACWA Power to utilize for next year. Keeping in mind few things, including what we have committed to you, which is the net debt to POCF. Definitely different tools will have different impact to our net debt to POCF, and this is what also we have in mind when we look at these different tools. When it comes to your second question related to the heavy crude oil asset, I believe ACWA Power today have done something that a lot of companies were not able to do, or at least they talk about it, but they never implemented. In reality today, out of the four assets that we have, we have been able to take two out. One was in a very honorable way when we converted Shuaibah IWPP from heavy crude oil asset to be decommissioned within the next few years, and already secured a water purchase agreement on the same as a replacement for that asset. This is definitely a move from heavy crude oil asset to an asset that will be partially from the grid, and also another part also could be from the renewable. Shuqaiq, as mentioned earlier, it's completely exit since last year. We have today another two assets, mainly Rabigh and Rawdat, which is something that we are still in continuous discussion with the off-taker, definitely to do a solution within the next few months or the next upcoming period. We are comfortable with the position given that the government of Saudi Arabia already have a plan to go 50% renewable and 50% gas by 2030. The goal is common. We are not working in a different goal when it comes to the government or the off-taker and the user. We are having a common goal. We will definitely utilize and capitalize on the Shuaibah experience to build something similar for other projects. With that, we have also another asset, of course, which is Dhuruma, which is a completely different asset, given it's actually a gasification asset and not a power generation asset. Marco, you have anything to add? No, I think this one's perfect. I hope I answered your question on that. Thank you. Our final question today comes from the line of Fawaz Al-Dossary from SAB Invest. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hello, gentlemen. First of all, I'd like to congratulate you on the outstanding results. I have one main question regarding mainly the assets in Saudi Arabia. We've seen other players such as SEC and Marafiq implement the RAB model. Does ACWA Power plan on doing the same thing regarding to the assets in Saudi? Does that model doesn't benefit you, or where do you stand? If you can please shed some light regarding that matter. Apologies, Fawaz. I think I missed your word. What is the model you talked about that SEC and Marafiq is doing? RAB model. It's the regulated asset base model. Can you shed some light on what is the concept that RAB model is about? basically, it set a minimum required revenue generated by these companies, by the utilities companies mainly. It is mainly related to electricity. Okay. our assets are all with an off-take kind of agreement with different users or ultimate off-takers. There is a specific availability required on these assets, based on which we were being paid on a take-or-pay kind of concept. We will have to dig more into this RAB kind of model that you have mentioned about, and see how is it relevant to ACWA Power and its business model. To be honest, this is the first time I hear about it. allow us to go through it, and then if you share with us or our IR team, Ozgur and the team, more details, what we will do is that we will come back to you specifically on this model. Absolutely. Yeah. I think what you are mentioning is a change in regulation actually, because we are in the IPP space. you build a tariff and you are paid basically more on the production you make, or sometimes it is really reflecting the capacity you installed. What you are referring to is more a regulated asset base, which is different type of model that is mainly used for transmission distribution. Yes, it could be used to what we do, but in reality, it does not really apply when you have a BOO or a BOT. Effectively at the end, it should be more or less the same. What you are guaranteed is more cost recovery, wherein our model is more left to us. I think what you are contemplating is more a general change in the regulatory model, which we do not see really in the countries where we operate right now. Yes, absolutely. That is why I specifically asked regarding Saudi, because it does not apply in each and every other country. thank you so much for that. That was my first question. Regarding the second question, can you shed some light regarding the dividend payout ratio moving on forward? As you have seen, Fawaz, we have already distributed last month in July, SAR 606 million related to the period of 2022. What we have specifically mentioned in our IPO prospectus is that we are expecting for the next three years, which is 2021, 2022. Sorry, 2022, 2023, and also 2024, that we will be growing our dividend payout, as an amount, from 6%-9%. If you average that out around 7.5%. We have continued to deliver that for the first two years already, and we are also working and maintaining the target for another year, which is 2024. Post that, we of course have to go to our board in term of a direction when it comes to the distribution against our financing our growth. Definitely, as you have seen, we have a busy pipeline coming up with a lot of investments that our equity investment per year will increase significantly higher than what we are expecting at the IPO time. With that, we will definitely utilize most of our cash for actually growth rather than distribution. Having said that, we also respect the investors' need for distribution, and we are maintaining that kind of pool on a yearly basis, as highlighted and planned originally on the IPO prospectus. Thank you so much. That clarified my questions, and thank you. Thank you, Fawaz. Thank you. There are no additional questions waiting at this time. I'd like to pass it back to Ozgur for any closing remarks. Thank you, Bailey. Thank you everyone for your time and great questions. Marco and Abdulhameed Fu, thanks for your time as well. If you have any further questions, any follow-up questions or anything, you all know how to reach us. Please reach out to us, and we'll get back to you. By that, I think I'm closing the call, and I wish everyone a very good day or a very good night, wherever you all are. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's webinar. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.