Atlantica Sustainable Infrastructure plc

Welcome to Atlantica's first quarter 2023 financial results conference call. Atlantica is a sustainable infrastructure company. Just a reminder that this call is being webcast live on the internet and a replay of this call will be available on Atlantica's corporate website. Atlantica will be making forward-looking statements during this call based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from our forward-looking statement if any of our key assumptions are incorrect or because of other factors discussed in today's early presentation or because of other factors discussed including the risk factor section of the accompanying presentation and in our latest reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. all of which can be found on our website. Atlantica does not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. Joining us for today's conference call are Atlantica's CEO, Santiago Feige, and CFO Francisco Martinez-Davis. As usual, at the end of the conference call, we will open the lines for a Q&A session. I will now pass you over to Mr. Feige. Please, Seth, go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining for our first quarter 2023 conference call. I will start with a couple of messages before Francisco takes us through our results. In the first quarter, revenue on adjusted VDA increased by 1.5%. and 4% respectively on a comparable basis, while cash available for distribution increased by 4.6% year over year on a comparable basis.

Okay. Thank you, Santiago. Please turn to slide number four, and good morning to everyone. In slide number four, I will present our key financials for the first quarter of 2023. Revenue reached $242.5 million, which represents a 1.5% growth on a comparable basis, excluding the effect of foreign exchange. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to $172.2 million, representing an increase of 4% on a comparable basis. Regarding cash available for distribution, we generated $61 million in the first quarter of 2023, an increase of 12.1 year-over-year. This includes $4.1 million from the sale or part of our equity interest in our development company in Colombia to a partner. Without this impact, CAFTI would have increased by 4.6 year over year. On the following slide, number five, you can see our performance by geography and business sector. In North America, revenue decreased by 2% to $72.8 million in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same period of last year. The decrease was mainly due to lower solar resource in Arizona and in California in the quarter. In South America, revenue increased by 14% compared to the first three months of 2022, up to $43.7 million, and EBITDA increased 16% to $33.8 million. This increase was mainly due to newly consolidated assets, assets which we've recently entered operation and inflation indexation mechanisms in our contracts. On a constant currency basis, adjusted EBITDA in the Maya region increased by 10% to $88 million compared to the first quarter of 2022. This was mostly due to higher production and inflation indexation at CACHU and also lower operating expenses in our solar assets in Spain. Looking below at the results by business sector, we can see similar effects. Let's now please turn to slide number six, where we will review our operational performance. Electricity produced by renewable assets reached 1.2 gigawatt hours in the first three months of 2023, an increase of 9% versus the same period of 2022, mainly due to the increase in production in our solar assets in Spain, where solar radiation was very good in the period and to the contribution from the recently consolidated assets and those that have entered in operation recently Looking at our availability-based contracts, in our efficient natural gas and heat segment, availability decreased, mainly due to our scheduled major overhaul, which did not impact revenue. In our water assets and transmission lines, continued to achieve very high availability levels in the first quarter of 2023. On the next slide, number seven, we would like to review our net debt position. Net debt as of March 31st, 2023 was 4.1 billion, a slight increase versus March 31st, 2022. In addition, we closed the quarter with net corporate debt of $968 million. With this, our next corporate debt to cap the pre-corporate debt service ratio to the 3.3 times. With this, I conclude today's presentation. Thank you for joining us. We will now open the line for questions. Operator, we are ready for Q&A.