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spk06: Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Renew Energy first quarter 2023 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Nathan Judge, TBC. Please go ahead.
spk09: Yeah, thank you very much, Jason, and I'm not TBC, I'm the head of investor relations, but thank you very much, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Last night, the company issued a press release announcing our results for the first fiscal quarter of 2023, ended June 30, 2022. A copy of the press release and the presentation are available on the investor relations section of Renew's website, at www.renewpower.in. With me today are Sumant Sinha, our founder, chairman, and CEO, Kedar Apadje, our CFO, and Vishali Nigam Sinha, our Chief Sustainability Officer. Sumant will start the call by going through an overview of the company and recent key highlights, and then Kedar will go through the results, followed by an update on ESG from Vishali. We will then wrap up the call with Samant reiterating our guidance for fiscal year 2023. After this, we will open up the call for questions. Please note, our safe harbor statements are contained within our press release, presentation materials, and available on our website. These statements are important and integral to all our remarks. There are risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. So we encourage you to review the press release we furnished in our Form 6-K and presentation on our website for a more complete description. Also contained in our press release, presentation materials, and annual report are certain non-IFRS measures that we reconciled to the most comparable IFRS measures, and these reconciliations are also available on our website in the press release presentation materials, and annual reports. It is now my pleasure to hand it over to Samant.
spk21: Yeah, thank you, Nathan, and good morning to everybody on the call. Let me dive right into the presentation. Starting on page five, we are pleased to deliver a strong set of results above our internal budget for the first fiscal quarter of 2023. And we are on track to meet our FY23 guidance so far this year. Revenues and adjusted EBITDA were up about 50% year-on-year, and our cash flow to equity, or the equivalent to distributable cash flow, more than doubled versus the same quarter last year. Our portfolio grew to 13.2 gigawatts, or 33% up from the prior year, and importantly, nearly 95% of the portfolio has PPAs now, providing therefore greater confidence in our growth. Nearly all of our forecasts of fiscal year 23 adjusted EBITDA should come from operating assets currently operating, giving us confidence that we are on track. Overall, the growth environment remains bullish as renewables are the lowest cost options for new power capacity in India, and we believe that this is really sustainable. Increasingly, our customers are seeking complex power solutions that can be delivered consistently over the full day and we have built this expertise by offering a full suite of renewable products overlaid with digitalization and a proprietary AI technology. We believe that this is a truly differentiated offering in the renewable sector. Given the need for electricity to be delivered round the clock, we have seen increased interest in our intelligent energy solutions. We expect in the near future, about 10 to 12 gigawatts of RPC auctions will occur over the next several months, and there is over 100 gigawatt opportunity by 2030. Importantly, please keep in mind that one megawatt of RPC power actually requires up to three megawatts of renewable energy power. The higher return corporate PPA opportunity is really gaining momentum, and we are seeing a very significant acceleration of interest from corporates now, given the economic advantage of a lower price than alternatives, and an increased focus on sourcing energy from green sources towards corporates in their own net zero journey. Today, corporate PPAs represent about 10% of our portfolio, of our total portfolio of 13.3 gigawatts, up from about 4% a year ago. And this area has represented about 30% of all portfolio additions during the last 12 months. We believe that this growth will continue and potentially could even accelerate over the near term. Our intelligent energy solution has significant potential beyond just the traditional utility customer base, and we are seeing tremendous interest in both the corporate market and also globally now in the green hydrogen space. Talking about the global green hydrogen opportunity, this is a multi-billion dollar opportunity, but it is still very early in the development process. and any contract and material capital commitment are likely still some time away. We will only proceed with making investments if the opportunity clears a very stringent set of requirements, including returns over our cost of capital and payment security. As far as green hydrogen is concerned, we don't see meaningful capital or investment into this area in the near term. Turning to page six, We have a very strong cash position of approximately $850 million and expect that after the CapEx for completing our portfolio of 13.2 gigawatts has been spent, we will still end up with a higher cash balance than today. We have no intention of issuing new shares in our current plan and capital recycling provides additional resilience in our balance sheet. In just the past 18 months, we have raised about $450 million of equity from capital recycling. and interest in our assets is even stronger today, if anything. The lending environment for our renewable energy projects remains robust, and we continue to see rates hold at historically attractive levels domestically. We just put in place a $1 billion facility for our round-the-clock power project, which compares favorably to the current interest rate of debt on our balance sheet. We also refinanced about $600 million in the latest quarter, reducing our annual interest expense on the debt by about $12 million and extended the maturity by approximately three years as well. We have already pre-funded about 80% of debt maturing in the next two years and the remaining $140 million should easily be refinanced and is also amply covered by internal accruals as well as the $850 million of cash on our balance sheet currently. Even if the refinancing market unexpectedly closes, which we certainly do not expect it to at this point in time. As we've highlighted many times over the past year, we have been focused on improving connections on the pass-through receivables from the state distribution companies, and we are pleased to announce that we have made progress in this regard and have reached an agreement on payment schedules from several states in the past couple of months or so. The AP DISCOM, which, as you would know, represents almost 42% of our current pass-through receivables, has now agreed to pay what is past due until June 22 over the next 12 months in equal monthly installments. And I'm pleased to say that they've already paid the first installment of that. This is a significant positive development. We have also just received a favorable order from the regulator in Telangana. The central government has also ramped up pressure on the state through a series of measures to ensure quicker clearance of outstanding dues. So for all these reasons, we do expect an improvement in our DSOs by year end. Turning back to the corporate PPA market on page seven, as I mentioned earlier, this market continues to gather momentum and we want to spend some time on this given how important the segment has become to our growth and to our ability to consistently deliver returns above our cost of capital and above our peers. We view the corporate PPA addressable market as around 25 gigawatts today although the total consumption of type corporates in India is over 100 gigawatts. In India, corporate customers pay about between 6 to 10 rupees per kilowatt hour to buy power from the grid, which is significantly higher than what is paid by residential customers. The price to buy power from the power exchanges is also around the same level. Renewal is able to provide power to the same customers at around 3.5 rupees per kilowatt hour, which is, as you would imagine, significantly better for the corporates than other argumenters. On top of this very strong economic initiative, there is an increased focus by corporates globally to source their energy from sustainable sources and move towards net zero carbon emissions goals. As many large companies are able to source low-cost carbon credits from India to offset their emissions goals, We are seeing a significant amount of interest for our India renewable energy projects from non-India-based companies as well. Regulation is also changing to reduce surcharges and penalties on purchasing power from renewable energy projects rather than from response. One item that we are paying particular attention to is the transmission cost waiver from renewable energy to corporates. And if this is ratified by the central regulator, it will make the delivered cost of renewable energy even more attractive. At the end of the quarter, as seen on page 8, the business segment represented about 10% of our portfolio, up from 4% of our portfolio a year ago. We see the potential for corporate ETFs to eventually get to 25% of all portfolio growth for the next several years. Our optimism also stems from our competitive advantages in this sector. Renew has considerable market share leadership in this segment, as we are able to provide value-added, customized solutions to our technological advantages, as seen on page 9. On top of this, the need for companies to partner with renewable energy developers such as Renew means that corporate governance is a significant focus by the highest quality corporate customers, our target audience. All of our largest competitors in the corporate PPA market are private companies. Another critical differentiator that Renew has is the ability to pre-build projects to accelerate the selling cycle. Historically, corporate customers don't like to wait too long to start receiving electricity which is where Renew scores over its competitors in being able to provide customized solutions far more quickly. Given our scale, pre-building corporate projects presents only a nominal amount of our total portfolio, whereas it could be much higher for a number of our competitors in this market. Corporate PPs also have higher returns than bundler projects that most of our competitors focus on. And as we all know, corporate customers also have a history of paying the bills on time, And so our DSOs from this segment are actually fairly low, less than 1% of our total accounts receivable, even though they represent about 8% of our total operating capacity. As the corporate PPA market grows organically, or as corporates grow organically, we will grow along with them, offering us higher long-term organic growth. In addition to that, we believe that there are additional opportunities to enhance growth by cross-selling and offering customized products to our customers. Page 10 also shows that we have a strong liquidity position. The chart on the right shows that after all capex and debt maturities are paid over the next several years, we should end up with even more cash in our balance sheet than we have currently, and this without issuing any new shares. We believe there is limited risk to our capex budget at this point, and we have considered current prices and providing our capex guidance. Even if module classes were to rise even by up to 10% from today's level, our capital would not gain them more than 3% to 4%. Most of our wind turbine classes are already locked in, and so therefore there is no material exposure on Bush Trump. As far as individual projects are concerned, for the future, we continue to target 60% to 20% equity IRAs, and we will continue to remain disciplined with your capital. We also have a high level of visibility for our debt funding. About 50% of all our debt needs for the next couple of years has already been either sanctioned or approved. We are seeing strong indications of interest for the projects that we haven't yet raised debt for. Our interest rate risk is also limited, with fixed rates on 74% of our debt, and 100 basis points increased only impacts our FI currency cash flow to equity by around 2%. On top of all this is the opportunity to utilize capital recycling to enhance the resilience of our balance sheet and ensure ample liquidity, which brings us, in fact, to pay dividends. We have a strong track record of having raised capital for capital recycling. We raised almost a half a billion dollars in the last 18 months by selling minority stakes or, in some cases, entire projects. Going forward, we continue to see a lot of interest in our assets at between 9 to 10 times EV to run rate EBITDA. And given the fact that we are ourselves trading at about 7.6 times run rate EBITDA for our 13.2 gigawatt portfolio, this prevents a significant arbitral opportunity. given also that we have $150 million of authorization left on our share buyback. Turning to page 12, DSOs were about 232 days at the end of fiscal quarter 2023, which was about 30-day improvement from the same quarter in the prior year. Our DSOs are seasonal, and so there is an uptick in quarter one and quarter two, but we do expect that by the end of the fiscal year, our DSOs will be significantly lower than where they are right now. In addition to that, we are also now, as I said earlier, moving more and more to SECI and to corporate PPAs. In fact, of our 13.2 gigawatt total asset base, the total amount from DISCOMs will only be about 34%. And that itself, that shift from 53% to 34% of DISCOMs in our total portfolio itself could lead to an improvement in our DSOs by 55 days from where we are right now. Let me turn it over to Kedar. But before that, let me also just point out that most of our leadership team has been here from the beginning of the Indian renewable sector, and we have lived through many ups and downs. We have a lot of operational expertise and capability, and this does provide a significant competitive advantage. We believe that building a platform such as Renew can't be easily replicated in an emerging market. You need strong operational experience to have a sustainable business in Indian renewables. With this, let me turn it over to Kedar. Kedar, over to you.
spk20: Thank you, Soman. Looking at page 14, which provides the highlights of the first fiscal quarter of 2023, we added about 57 megawatts this quarter, to bring the total to 7.6 gigawatts operating. The 528 megawatt acquisition is in advanced stage of closing, and adding this would bring us to 8.1 gigawatts operating. We signed about 341 megawatts of PPA since our last earnings call, Our first quarter FI 22 revenues, which we call as total income under IFRS, rose 50% year on year. Our adjusted EBITDA also increased at a similar rate and cash flow to equity more than doubled from last year. Turning to page 15, which provides a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA, it was above our internal expectations and it puts us on track to meet our full year guidance at this point of time. Turning to slide 16, which highlights our financing and refinancing initiatives. In first quarter, we refinanced about $600 million of high-cost debt at an interest rate which was 8.2%, or about 200 basis points lower than the previous interest rate on that debt. And it offers us about $12 million annually of cash savings. Regarding interest expense this quarter, there are several one-time items that hit this quarter, which is related to these refinances. We expect that going forward, the interest expense for the current loan book will be around 12 billion rupees in 2Q onwards. We have about $900 million of debt maturing in the next two years, of which more than 80% has already been pre-funded. We expect the market will be open to allow us to refinance the remaining portion, but if that isn't an option, our cash flow generation or the approximate 850 million of cash we have on our balance sheet should more than cover this requirement. It is worth noting that inflation in India is under control and well below levels seen in the U.S. Long-term interest rates in India are more competitive than what is generally seen globally. We have meaningful additional borrowings, dry powder available, and we believe we can fund all our growth in our current plans domestically itself. When our net debt to EBITDA ratios are viewed on a historical 12-month basis, the ratios are distorted as the project debt is added during construction phase, but the EBITDA isn't generated for another 18 months or so. We believe that investors should look at our debt levels on a normalized and unread basis And for 13.2 gigawatts, our leverage would be around 5.1x. With that, I will turn it over to Vaishali to update everyone on our ESG initiatives. Thank you.
spk17: Thanks, Kedar. If we could go to slide 18. During the first quarter of this financial year, we have continued with the momentum and rigor around our ESG and sustainability initiatives. From a governance standpoint, we have formalized two new policies on human rights for our operations and the sustainability code of conduct for our suppliers. Both these policies are available on our website. The supplier code of conduct is now being rolled out with the view of de-risking our supply chain and also to support us in our decarbonization journey. We are working with the business teams to roll it out through vendor interactions and making it a part of the contracts we sign going forward. From the view of integrating sustainability further in our operations, we have scaled up our efforts around water management and implemented robotic cleaning further. for solar units, which has resulted in a net saving of 216,533 kiloliters, sorry, 200,016,533 kiloliters for this financial year. We have also improved sustainability disclosures significantly and have disclosed our scope three greenhouse gas emissions for the first time across all applicable categories. We have also continued our engagement on climate action globally, and we were the only Indian representative at the steering committee of the recently held Sydney Energy Forum, which was organized by the Australian government, led by the Prime Minister of Australia. Renew has always been a responsible citizen, and what we believe is that the ultimate purpose of any organization is to create shared value and positive impacts to the society. So recognizing this, as we have presented in slide 19, that climate change has a disproportionate impact on women and youth, and our social programs are designed to address these issues. And we have two segments to address these issues. One is, and all of this by looking at it through the climate lens. So let me talk about a few of our efforts which we have undertaken recently. One is in our Lighting Lives program. Lighting Lives is a program where we electrify schools with less than three hours of electricity using solar off grid. Till date, we have electrified 84 schools in India and established 25 digital learning centers, positively impacting the lives of children who live around in these areas. We have also recently signed a long-term partnership with HSBC, a global financial institution, to electrify 74 more schools in and around our areas of operation, hence scaling up this program significantly. Community-based water management is also on top of our priority, and in regions around Rajasthan and Gujarat, we are relying on local knowledge to conserve water through traditional rainwater harvesting methods. The desuited six lakes constructed 100 tankas and have excavated 18 water ponds across these regions to provide access to drinking water to these communities. Women for Climate is an extremely important part of our social engagement work we do in our communities. We have two sets of programs, one for the rural women and one for the urban women. In partnership with UNEP, which is the United Nations Environment Program, we are skilling traditional women salt farmers in Gujarat as renewable technicians. So we are re-skilling them to become renewable technicians from SORTAN workers. And also as we do that, we are helping them improve their earnings capacity as well. Our goal is to provide training to about 1,000 women by 2025. The other program is in partnership with UNDP and IIT Delhi. where we are mentoring women-led climate startups, and we have a cohort of six entrepreneurs we are mentoring, and they'll be finishing the program in the next month. We have also initiated a clean cooking initiative in Madhya Pradesh. Our target is to impact 10,000 families by providing them with clean cooking stoves, which will help them reduce their emissions and cooking time and increase their productivity, and of course have a hugely positive impact on the health of women who cook in these homes. This project has the potential to mitigate 30 million tons of carbon emissions per year. I will now turn it back to Suman for guidance and closing remarks.
spk21: Yeah, thank you, Vaishali, for that. So far through this point in the year, we're on track to meet our guidance, which is outlined on slide 22. Our FI23 EBITDA guidance is for more than 20% EBITDA growth above FI22. which translates into between INR 66 and 69 billion or 156 to 153 rupees per share. Of this FI 23 guidance, we have already achieved about 30% in the first quarter of the year. Our cash flow to equity guidance is 21 to 23 billion rupees or 50 to 54 rupees per share. As an update on our share repurchase program, we see considerable value in our shares with a 12% cash flow to equity yield on our current portfolio. It also trades at a meaningful discount to what we can sell assets for. As our shares are one of the highest return investments of scale we can make, we have been actively buying back stock when we believed it would provide the highest return opportunity. We have repurchased about 12 million shares so far since we implemented the buyback, which leaves us with well over $150 million of authorization remaining for the program. One other item that I would like to mention is that in about a week, it will be one year since our listing. which should allow us to implement some initiatives near term that should help further distance us from the SPAC moniker that has hindered the stock's attractiveness to a broader investment audience. We are clearly not a typical SPAC, but we were hampered on what we could do to address this overhang until the annualization of the listing. With that, we will be happy to take any questions.
spk06: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touch-tone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Julian Dumoulin-Smith from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk08: Hey, it's actually Cody Corcon. Thanks for taking my question. So first, wondering if you can update on how you're tracking against your plans for solar manufacturing expansion, and also if you can give us an update around the PLI, if any.
spk09: Yes, Timon, why don't you go ahead and take that.
spk21: Yeah, sure. Julian, hi. Thanks for the question. Look, our solar manufacturing plans are on track. We expect to get the first set of modules to be coming out by very early next year. and the self-launch should be up and running by around middle of next year. So I think that is more or less on track. And your second question was?
spk08: Just around the PLI, if there's any updates there.
spk21: Yeah, on the PLI scheme, the government has been essentially trying to formulate a new PLI scheme which is now with it the government you know at some stage of approval the expectation is that it will come out fairly soon and then we'll have to bid again for for the see if you can get any allocation under that as would everybody else for that matter so we are waiting for the final details of the scheme to come out and for the final approvals to come through and as I said that should all To my mind, it should all happen in the next maybe three months or so.
spk08: Okay, understood. Thanks for the update around the corporate PPA side. Curious if you can talk a little bit about the differences in returns and risk profile for pre-building projects versus waiting for a signed contract. I would assume maybe higher financing costs offset by market prices for electricity in the front years. But am I kind of thinking about this correctly?
spk21: Yes, so Julian, there is not really a significant gap on pre-building. And when I say pre-building, it doesn't mean that we start necessarily putting up wind turbines. What it does mean is that we do fairly proactive project development. And so make sure that we get the sites to a point where we can then start deploying the wind turbines or the solar modules fairly quickly. The longest lead time in Indian project execution is not the actual construction at site, but getting the site ready. And that takes relatively less capital, but as I said, does end up taking more time. And so that's the part of the equation that we tend to work on a little bit more proactively. Now, it helps us very significantly because in a number of cases, corporates want solutions quickly. And if we are in a position where we've already done a lot of the project development work, we can actually provide the solutions to them fairly quickly. rather than starting the process and then saying, you know, it will take a couple of years and so on. And we are able to do that, Julian, because we have a number of conversations happening with many corporates on the PPA side. And so, therefore, we know, broadly speaking, where these projects are required to be put up or where new capacity is required. And that allows us to do project development on a fairly targeted basis and ensure that there is a very, very strong likelihood of uptake. For example, we haven't had an issue yet where we've built something or we've gone very far and we haven't found a customer after that. And that's unlikely to happen as well. As far as the riskiness of the corporate market is concerned in general, as we said earlier, DSOs obviously in the corporate market are very, very low and they all pay on time. And there is an opportunity to grow organically along with a number of our corporates because obviously Corporate India is. growing and expanding and their power needs are increasing as well. So once we have a customer, then it's relatively easy to continue to work with them and to grow along with them. And then once you get into the solutioning conversation with them, then it's easier to continue to then convert a lot of the customers. So it's really a much more attractive market which we are able to capitalize on quite substantially.
spk08: Okay, understood. That's very helpful. Thanks so much for your time.
spk06: Again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. Our next question comes from Justin Clear from Roth Capital Partners. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hi, thanks for taking our questions. So I guess first off, I'm First off, in the annual guide here, I believe that you had previously assumed a $40 to $60 million negative impact or potential negative impact from a lower wind resource. So just wanted to see what was your experience in fiscal Q1 in terms of the wind speeds that were experienced relative to historical averages It looks like things have improved meaningfully from previous quarters here. And then could you talk about what you've seen in terms of wind speeds so far in Q2?
spk09: Kadar, why don't I turn that over to you?
spk20: No, no, that's true. I think roughly the same amount of weather adjustment was factored in our annual guidance. Fortunately, for the first quarter, we have not seen very significant impact. and we'll have to see how this current ongoing quarter goes. There is a little bit of a softening of the wind speeds, but it's too early for us to change anything at this point of time. But first quarter, especially considering May month, which was highly productive, we were not impacted by lower wind speeds.
spk07: Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And then just on the module supply, I know you're bringing online your own manufacturing here, but can you just give us a sense for the current availability of solar modules and how confident you are that you're going to have the supply needed for your near-term projects? And then just curious, when you actually do bring the manufacturing online, can you talk about the cost? that you're expecting for your in-house supply versus at least where module prices are today?
spk20: What I was just saying is when we start consuming our own captive manufactured solar panels, the way it impacts our P&L is compared to the procured cost of solar panels, which get capitalized. Instead of that, the captive cost gets replaced with that. So in terms of the change, you will see in the P&L that will be nominal, and we are still in a stage to get to the exact levels of the efficiency. I think the captive manufacturing is a great lever for us to build supply certainty. Given what we are seeing as supply chain risk, And more importantly, the 40% custom duty which Indian government has placed for imports. So I think it's a lever for us more to build supply certainty, avoid high-value custom duty. And we hope it pays out over the long run. So that's the answer to your second question. On the first question, I think our arrangements for wind turbines and modules for the next few quarters are more or less done. But I'll request Suman to give a perspective on this, please. Thank you.
spk21: Yeah, Justin, as far as the cost of our own modules are concerned compared to what would then be the alternative, which is the imported modules plus the 40%, in some ways, while you might want to look at it from a cost standpoint, keep in mind that it's not even that. It's really just a question of getting modules. Because of the other issue around the approved list of modules and manufacturers, where no overseas company has yet approved, it'll be impossible to even import modules. So it's a question of even getting access to modules. It's not a cost issue, actually. The second thing is that the only modules available would be whatever is manufactured in India by anybody else. And our belief is that, and our understanding based on looking at the market, is that the total amount of manufacturing capacity available for modules of really high efficiency latest sort of technology modules is not going to be more than 5 or 6 gigawatts through next year. It will take time for that capacity to be set up. And so it's going to be an issue of actually getting access to modules and therefore having our own supply becomes absolutely critical for being able to deliver the projects that we have and for delivering growth. And that is really the cost of that is what we factored into our current CapEx estimates.
spk07: Okay, got it. And then I guess just wanted to follow up on that. How are you feeling about the capacity that you have planned for your module and cell facilities here? Are you comfortable with the current amounts or could you look to expand that? And then also, you know, I think you're primarily just looking at using all of the module supply internally, but could you look to sell modules to external customers at some point here?
spk21: So, Justin, at this point, right now, as you know, we've talked about six gigawatts of modules, which we are now putting up, and two gigawatts of cells. Eventually, our aim is to have a balanced cell and module facility. We are going a little bit slower on the sell side because we wanted to get the first two gigawatts up and running. It's a little bit more complex than setting up a module plant is. And so therefore we wanted to get far advanced on the first two gigawatts before we start setting up the balance amount. But that is something that we will be looking at doing at some point over the course of the next several months. Now as far as the question of what we will be doing in terms of selling to other customers and all, that's not something that we're contemplating at this point, Justin, simply because the total amount that we will be producing will essentially, as we've talked about in the past, will be enough to do projects of about three to three and a half gigawatts, which is really what we expect to be setting up ourselves. So we don't really expect to have capacity available for third-party sales you know, in the near future. Of course, you know, having said that, the reality is the market is dynamic and we look to see what is happening. But at this point in time, we are going in hypothesis that we will be supplying to ourselves.
spk07: Got it. Okay. And then maybe just one more. I was wondering if you could just talk about the, you know, the types of customers that you're serving in the corporate market And is it possible to serve those customers in a more programmatic way where you're potentially doing multiple projects for the same customer in different regions? And then I'm also curious on the competitive side, are you seeing more entrance into that corporate market? I mean, right now it sounds like there's only private competitors. Are you anticipating larger players coming?
spk21: Yeah. So, you know, I think what is happening is right now a number of corporates in India are looking at buying clean energy for the first time. And so they are sort of getting into it with the first step. And therefore, they're taking a little bit longer to understand. And they are going ahead with, let's say, a smallish megawatts to begin with or a smaller project to begin with. Now, and that's why, you know, we've been talking about corporate PPS for a while and we've always said that it's going to take time for us to build momentum. But we've now, after a lot of effort over the last year or two, we've been able to build that momentum and that effort. Now, you're absolutely right. As the same corporates now get familiar and comfortable and they recognize the cost savings that they're able to get and the value that they can get in terms of going green, they will start looking at ramping up their activity and their purchase in clean energy and there for us to be the company that has done the first project with them hopefully having given them a good experience and keep in mind the point we're making that uh in a number of cases from a regulatory standpoint uh the customer needs to take a 26 equity stake as well so they want the counterparty i.e the developer to be a very credible counterparty and actually they tend to have a significant advantage So as we go forward, our ability to penetrate into these customers for their future needs, their existing needs as well as their future growth that they will have will be quite good. And that is therefore something that we will continue to work with these corporate customers on and hopefully develop on a more programmatic basis as you suggested we should be doing, and that's exactly what we are working on. Now, our other competitors coming in, Of course they are. You would expect other companies who see the attractiveness of this market to try to come in. But because of the effort that we've put in over the last couple of years and the amount of progress we've made and a number of very serious and significant conversations we're having, we have a long runway to go of conversations that we can conclude before any of our competitors begin to get in. The other thing is that we had a very good counterparty for them because of our independent governance, our NASDAQ listing. That gives us a bit of a halo, which also gets customers who in some ways want to be with us. So I think that's also an advantage that we bring to the table. And it is for those reasons that we feel that this market will continue to be very attractive for us. And in our view, our expectation is that almost a quarter of our total portfolio over the next few years will come from the corporate customer base.
spk10: Okay, got it. Appreciate it. Thank you.
spk06: There are no more questions in the queue. This concludes our question and answer session, and the conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
spk15: Thank you. music music you
spk06: Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Renew Energy first quarter 2023 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the start key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Nathan Judge, TBC. Please go ahead.
spk09: Yeah, thank you very much, Jason, and I'm not TBC, I'm the head of investor relations, but thank you very much, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Last night, the company issued a press release announcing our results for the first fiscal quarter of 2023, ended June 30, 2022. A copy of the press release and the presentation are available on the investor relations section of Renew's website, at www.renewpower.in. With me today are Sumant Sinha, our founder, chairman, and CEO, Kedar Apadje, our CFO, and Vishali Nigam Sinha, our Chief Sustainability Officer. Sumant will start the call by going through an overview of the company and recent key highlights, and then Kedar will go through the results, followed by an update on ESG from Vishali. We will then wrap up the call with Samant reiterating our guidance for fiscal year 2023. After this, we will open up the call for questions. Please note, our safe harbor statements are contained within our press release, presentation materials, and available on our website. These statements are important and integral to all our remarks. There are risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. So we encourage you to review the press release we furnished in our Form 6-K and presentation on our website for a more complete description. Also contained in our press release, presentation materials, and annual report are certain non-IFRS measures that we reconciled to the most comparable IFRS measures, and these reconciliations are also available on our website in the press release presentation materials, and annual reports. It is now my pleasure to hand it over to Samant.
spk21: Yeah, thank you, Nathan, and good morning to everybody on the call. Let me dive right into the presentation. Starting on page five, we are pleased to deliver a strong set of results above our internal budget for the first fiscal quarter of 2023. And we are on track to meet our FY23 guidance so far this year. Revenues and adjusted EBITDA were up about 50% year-on-year, and our cash flow to equity, or the equivalent to distributable cash flow, more than doubled versus the same quarter last year. Our portfolio grew to 13.2 gigawatts, or 33% up from the prior year, and importantly, nearly 95% of the portfolio has PPAs now, providing therefore greater confidence in our growth. Nearly all of our forecasts of fiscal year 23 adjusted EBITDA should come from operating assets currently operating, giving us confidence that we are on track. Overall, the growth environment remains bullish as renewables are the lowest cost options for new power capacity in India, and we believe that this is really sustainable. Increasingly, our customers are seeking complex power solutions that can be delivered consistently over the full day and we have built this expertise by offering a full suite of renewable products overlaid with digitalization and a proprietary AI technology. We believe that this is a truly differentiated offering in the renewable sector. Given the need for electricity to be delivered round the clock, we have seen increased interest in our intelligent energy solutions. We expect in the near future about 10 to 12 gigawatts of RPC auctions will occur over the next several months, and there is over 100 gigawatt opportunity by 2030. Importantly, please keep in mind that one megawatt of RPC power actually requires up to three megawatts of renewable energy power. The higher return corporate PPA opportunity is really gaining momentum, and we are seeing a very significant acceleration of interest from corporates now, given the economic advantage of a lower price than alternatives, and an increased focus on sourcing energy from green sources towards corporates in their own net zero journey. Today, corporate PPAs represent about 10% of our portfolio, of our total portfolio of 13.3 gigawatts, up from about 4% a year ago. And this area has represented about 30% of all portfolio additions during the last 12 months. We believe that this growth will continue and potentially could even accelerate over the near term. Our intelligent energy solution has significant potential beyond just the traditional utility customer base, and we are seeing tremendous interest in both the corporate market and also globally now in the green hydrogen space. Talking about the global green hydrogen opportunity, this is a multi-billion dollar opportunity, but it is still very early in the development process. and any contract and material capital commitment are likely still some time away. We will only proceed with making investments if the opportunity clears a very stringent set of requirements, including returns over our cost of capital and payment security. As far as green hydrogen is concerned, we don't see meaningful capital or investment into this area in the near term. Turning to page six, We have a very strong cash position of approximately $850 million and expect that after the CapEx for completing our portfolio of 13.2 gigawatts has been spent, we will still end up with a higher cash balance than today. We have no intention of issuing new shares in our current plan and capital recycling provides additional resilience in our balance sheet. In just the past 18 months, we have raised about $450 million of equity from capital recycling. and interest in our assets is even stronger today, if anything. The lending environment for our renewable energy projects remains robust, and we continue to see rates hold at historically attractive levels domestically. We just put in place a $1 billion facility for our round-the-clock power project, which compares favorably to the current interest rate of debt on our balance sheet. We also refinanced about $600 million in the latest quarter, reducing our annual interest expense on the debt by about $12 million and extended the maturity by approximately three years as well. We have already pre-funded about 80% of debt maturing in the next two years and the remaining $140 million should easily be refinanced and is also amply covered by internal accruals as well as the $850 million of cash on our balance sheet currently. Even if the refinancing market unexpectedly closes, which we certainly do not expect it to at this point in time. As we've highlighted many times over the past year, we have been focused on improving connections on the pass-through receivables from the state distribution companies, and we are pleased to announce that we have made progress in this regard and have reached an agreement on payment schedules from several states in the past couple of months or so. The AP Discom, which, as you would know, represents almost 42% of our current pass-through receivables, has now agreed to pay what is past due until June 22 over the next 12 months in equal monthly installments. And I'm pleased to say that they've already paid the first installment of that. This is a significant positive development. We have also just received a favorable order from the regulator in Telangana. The central government has also ramped up pressure on the state through a series of measures to ensure quicker clearance of outstanding views. So for all these reasons, we do expect an improvement in our DSOs by year end. Turning back to the corporate PPA market on page seven, as I mentioned earlier, this market continues to gather momentum and we want to spend some time on this given how important the segment has become to our growth and to our ability to consistently deliver returns above our cost of capital and above our peers. We view the corporate PPA addressable market as around 25 gigawatts today although the total consumption of type corporates in India is over 100 gigawatts. In India, corporate customers pay about between 6 to 10 rupees per kilowatt hour to buy power from the grid, which is significantly higher than what is paid by residential customers. The price to buy power from the power exchanges is also around the same level. Renewal is able to provide power to the same customers at around 3.5 rupees per kilowatt hour, which is, as you would imagine, significantly better for the corporates than other alternatives. On top of this very strong economic initiative, there is an increased focus by corporates globally to source their energy from sustainable sources and move towards net zero carbon emissions goals. As many large companies are able to source low-cost carbon credits from India to offset their emissions, We are seeing a significant amount of interest for our India renewable energy projects from non-India based companies as well. Regulation is also changing to reduce surcharges and penalties on purchasing power from renewable energy projects rather than from response. One item that we are paying particular attention to is the transmission cost waiver from renewable energy to corporates. And if this is ratified by the central regulator, it would make the delivered cost of renewable energy even more attractive. At the end of the quarter, as seen on page 8, the business segment represented about 10% of our portfolio, up from 4% of our portfolio a year ago. We see the potential for corporate TPS to eventually get to 25% of all portfolio growth for the next several years. Our optimism also stems from our competitive advantages in this sector. Renew has considerable market share leadership in this segment, as we are able to provide value-added, customized solutions to our technological advantages, as seen on page 9. On top of this, the need for companies to partner with renewable energy developers such as Renew means that corporate governance is a significant focus by the highest quality corporate customers, our target audience. All of our largest competitors in the corporate PPA market are private companies. Another critical differentiator that Renew has is the ability to pre-build projects to accelerate the selling cycle. Historically, corporate customers don't like to wait too long to start receiving electricity which is where the new scores over its competitors in being able to provide customized solutions far more quickly. Given our scale, pre-building corporate projects presents only a nominal amount of our total portfolio, whereas it could be much higher for a number of our competitors in this market. Corporate PPs also have higher returns than bundler projects that most of our competitors focus on. And as we all know, corporate customers also have a history of paying the bills on time, And so our DSOs from this segment are actually fairly low, less than 1% of our total accounts receivable, even though they represent about 8% of our total operating capacity. As the corporate PPA market grows organically, or as corporates grow organically, we will grow along with them, offering us higher long-term organic growth. In addition to that, we believe that there are additional opportunities to enhance growth by cross-selling and offering customized products to our customers. Page 10 also shows that we have a strong liquidity position. The chart on the right shows that after all capex and debt maturities are paid over the next several years, we should end up with even more cash in our balance sheet than we have currently. And this without issuing any new shares. We believe there is limited risk to our capex budget at this point, and we have considered current prices and providing our capex guidance. Even if model prices were to rise even by up to 10% from today's level, our capitals would not gain more than 3-4%. Most of our wind turbine prices are already locked in and so therefore there is no material exposure on this chart. As far as individual projects are concerned, for the future we continue to target 16-20% equity IRAs and we will continue to remain disciplined with your capital. We also have a high level of visibility for our debt funding needs. About 50% of all our debt needs for the next couple of years has already been either sanctioned or approved. We are seeing strong indications of interest for the projects that we haven't yet raised debt for. Our interest rate risk is also limited, with fixed rates on 74% of our debt, and 100 basis points increased only impacts our FI currency cash flow to equity by around 2%. On top of all this is the opportunity to utilize capital recycling to enhance the resilience of our balance sheet and ensure ample liquidity, which brings us, in fact, to page 11. We have a strong track record of having raised capital for capital recycling. We raised almost a half a billion dollars in the last 18 months by selling minority stakes or, in some cases, entire projects. Going forward, we continue to see a lot of interest in our assets at between 9 to 10 times EV to run rate EBITDA. And given the fact that we are ourselves trading at about 7.6 times run rate EBITDA for our 13.2 gigawatt portfolio, this prevents a significant arbitrage opportunity given also that we have $150 million of authorization left on our share buyback. Turning to page 12, DSOs were about 232 days at the end of fiscal quarter 2023, which was about 30-day improvement from the same quarter in the prior year. Our DSOs are seasonal, and so there is an uptick in quarter one and quarter two, but we do expect that by the end of the fiscal year, our DSOs will be significantly lower than where they are right now. In addition to that, we are also now, as I said earlier, moving more and more to SECI and to corporate PPAs. In fact, of our 13.2 gigawatt total asset base, the total amount from DISCOMs would only be about 34%. And that itself, that shift from 53% to 34% of DISCOMs in our total portfolio itself would lead to an improvement in our DSOs by 55 days from where we are right now. Let me turn it over to Kedar. But before that, let me also just point out that most of our leadership team has been here from the beginning of the Indian renewable sector, and we have lived through many ups and downs. We have a lot of operational expertise and capability, and this does provide a significant comparative advantage. We believe that building a platform such as Renew can't be easily replicated in an emerging market. You need strong operational experience to have a sustainable business in Indian renewables. With this, let me turn it over to Kedar. Kedar, over to you.
spk20: Thank you, Suman. Looking at page 14, which provides the highlights of the first fiscal quarter of 2023, we added about 57 megawatts this quarter to bring the total to 7.6 gigawatts operating. The 528 megawatt acquisition is in advanced stage of closing, and adding this would bring us to 8.1 gigawatts operating. We signed about 341 megawatts of PPA since our last earnings call, Our first quarter FI23 revenues, which we call as total income under IFRS, rose 50% year-on-year. Our adjusted EBITDA also increased at a similar rate and cash flow to equity more than doubled from last year. Turning to page 15, which provides a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA, it was above our internal expectations and it puts us on track to meet our full year guidance at this point of time. Turning to slide 16, which highlights our financing and refinancing initiatives. In first quarter, we refinanced about $600 million of high-cost debt at an interest rate which was 8.2%, or about 200 basis points lower than the previous interest rate on that debt. And it offers us about $12 million annually of cash savings. Regarding interest expense this quarter, there are several one-time items that hit this quarter which is related to these refinances. We expect that going forward, the interest expense for the current loan book will be around 12 billion rupees in 2Q onwards. We have about $900 million of debt maturing in the next two years, of which more than 80% has already been pre-funded. We expect the market will be open to allow us to refinance the remaining portion, but if that isn't an option or cash flow generation, or the approximate 850 million of cash we have on our balance sheet should more than cover this requirement. It is worth noting that inflation in India is under control and well below levels seen in the U.S. Long-term interest rates in India are more competitive than what is generally seen globally. We have meaningful additional borrowings, dry powder available, and we believe we can fund all our growth in our current plans domestically itself. When our net debt to EBITDA ratios are viewed on a historical 12-month basis, the ratios are distorted. As the project debt is added during construction phase, but the EBITDA isn't generated for another 18 months or so. We believe that investors should look at our debt levels on a normalized and unread basis And for 13.2 gigawatts, our leverage would be around 5.1x. With that, I will turn it over to Vaishali to update everyone on our ESG initiatives. Thank you.
spk17: Thanks, Kedar. If we could go to slide 18. During the first quarter of this financial year, we have continued with the momentum and rigor around our ESG and sustainability initiatives. From a governance standpoint, we have formalized two new policies on human rights for our operations and the sustainability code of conduct for our suppliers. Both these policies are available on our website. The supplier code of conduct is now being rolled out with the view of de-risking our supply chain and also to support us in our decarbonization journey. We are working with the business teams to roll it out through vendor interactions and making it a part of the contracts we sign going forward. From the view of integrating sustainability further in our operations, we have scaled up our efforts around water management and implemented robotic cleaning further. for solar units, which has resulted in a net saving of 216,533 kiloliters, sorry, 200,016,533 kiloliters for this financial year. We have also improved sustainability disclosures significantly and have disclosed our scope three greenhouse gas emissions for the first time across all applicable categories. We have also continued our engagement on climate action globally, and we were the only Indian representative at the steering committee of the recently held Sydney Energy Forum, which was organized by the Australian government, led by the Prime Minister of Australia. Renew has always been a responsible citizen, and what we believe is that the ultimate purpose of any organization is to create shared value and positive impacts to the society. So recognizing this, as we have presented in slide 19, that climate change has a disproportionate impact on women and youth, and our social programs are designed to address these issues. And we have two segments to address these issues. One is, and all of this by looking at it through the climate lens. So let me talk about a few of our efforts which we have undertaken recently. One is in our Lighting Lives program. Lighting Lives is a program where we electrify schools with less than three hours of electricity using solar off-grid. To date, we have electrified 84 schools in India and established 25 digital learning centers, positively impacting the lives of children who live around in these areas. We have also recently signed a long-term partnership with HSBC, a global financial institution, to electrify 74 more schools in and around our areas of operation, hence scaling up this program significantly. Community-based water management is also on top of our priority, and in regions around Rajasthan and Gujarat, we are relying on local knowledge to conserve water through traditional rainwater harvesting methods. We've desuited six lakes, constructed 100 tankas, and have excavated 18 water ponds across these regions to provide access to drinking water to these communities. Women for Climate is an extremely important part of our social engagement work we do in our communities. We have two sets of programs, one for the rural women and one for the urban women. In partnership with UNEP, which is the United Nations Environment Program, we are skilling traditional women salt farmers in Gujarat as renewable technicians. So we are re-skilling them to become renewable technicians from SORTAN workers. And also as we do that, we are helping them improve their earnings capacity as well. Our goal is to provide training to about 1,000 women by 2025. The other program is in partnership with UNDP and IIT Delhi. where we are mentoring women-led climate startups, and we have a cohort of six entrepreneurs we are mentoring, and they'll be finishing the program in the next month. We have also initiated a clean cooking initiative in Madhya Pradesh. Our target is to impact 10,000 families by providing them with clean cooking stoves, which will help them reduce their emissions and cooking time and increase their productivity, and of course have a hugely positive impact on the health of women who cook in these homes. This project has the potential to mitigate 30 million tons of carbon emissions per year. I will now turn it back to Suman for guidance and closing remarks.
spk21: Yeah, thank you, Vaishali, for that. So far through this point in the year, they're on track to meet our guidance, which is outlined on slide 22. Our FI23 EBITDA guidance is for more than 20% EBITDA growth above FI22. which translates into between INR 66 and 69 billion or 156 to 153 rupees per share. Of this FI 23 guidance, we have already achieved about 30% in the first quarter of the year. Our cash flow to equity guidance is 21 to 23 billion rupees or 50 to 54 rupees per share. As an update on our share repurchase program, we see considerable value in our shares with a 12% cash flow to equity yield on our current portfolio. It also trades at a meaningful discount to what we can sell assets for. As our shares are one of the highest return investments of scale we can make, we have been actively buying back stock when we believed it would provide the highest return opportunity. We have repurchased about 12 million shares so far since we implemented the buyback, which leaves us with well over $150 million of authorization remaining for the program. One other item that I would like to mention is that in about a week, it will be one year since our listing. which should allow us to implement some initiatives near-term that should help further distance us from the SPAC moniker that has hindered the stock's attractiveness to a broader investment audience. We are clearly not a typical SPAC, but we were hampered on what we could do to address this overhang until the annualization of the listing. With that, we will be happy to take any questions.
spk06: Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touch-tone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Julian Dumoulin-Smith from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk08: Hey, it's actually Cody Corcon. Thanks for taking my question. So first, wondering if you can update on how you're tracking against your plans for solar manufacturing expansion, and also if you can give us an update around the PLI, if any.
spk09: Yes, Kamal, why don't you go ahead and take that.
spk21: Yeah, sure. Julian, hi. Thanks for the question. Look, our solar manufacturing plans are on track. We expect to get the first set of modules to be coming out by very early next year. and the cell plan should be up and running by around middle of next year. So I think that is more or less on track. And your second question was?
spk08: Just around the PLI, if there's any updates there.
spk21: Yeah, on the PLI scheme, the government has been essentially trying to formulate a new PLI scheme which is now with the government at some stage of approval. The expectation is that it will come out fairly soon, and then we'll have to bid again for seeing if we can get any allocation under that, as would everybody else for that matter. So we're waiting for the final details of the scheme to come out and for the final approvals to come through. And as I said, that should all – To my mind, it should all happen in the next maybe three months or so.
spk08: Okay, understood. Thanks for the update around the corporate PPA side. Curious if you can talk a little bit about the differences in returns and risk profile for pre-building projects versus waiting for a signed contract. I would assume maybe higher financing costs offset by market prices for electricity in the front years. But am I kind of thinking about this correctly?
spk21: Yes, Julian, there is not really a significant gap on pre-building. And when I say pre-building, it doesn't mean that we start necessarily putting up wind turbines. What it does mean is that we do fairly proactive project development. And so make sure that we get the sites to a point where we can then start deploying the wind turbines or the solar modules fairly quickly. The longest lead time in Indian project execution is not the actual construction at site, but getting the site ready. And that takes relatively less capital, but as I said, does end up taking more time. And so that's the part of the equation that we tend to work on a little bit more proactively. Now, it helps us very significantly because in a number of cases, corporates want solutions quickly. And if we are in a position where we've already done a lot of the project development work, we can actually provide the solutions to them fairly quickly. rather than starting the process and then saying, you know, just take a couple of years and so on. And we are able to do that, Julian, because we have a number of conversations happening with many corporates on the PPA side. And so, therefore, we know, broadly speaking, where these projects are required to be put up or where new capacity is required. And that allows us to do project development on a fairly targeted basis and ensure that there is a very, very strong likelihood of uptake. For example, we haven't had an issue yet where we've built something or we've gone very far and we haven't found a customer after that. And that's unlikely to happen as well. As far as the riskiness of the corporate market is concerned in general, as we said earlier, DSOs obviously in the corporate market are very, very low and they all pay on time. And there is an opportunity to grow organically along with a number of our corporates because obviously Corporate India is growing and expanding and their power needs are increasing as well. So once we have a customer, then it's relatively easy to continue to work with them and to grow along with them. And then once you get into the solutioning conversation with them, then it's easier to continue to then convert a lot of the customers. So it's really a much more attractive market which we are able to capitalize on quite substantially.
spk08: Okay, understood. That's very helpful. Thanks so much for your time.
spk06: Again, if you have a question, please press the star, then 1. Our next question comes from Justin Clear from Roth Capital Partners. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hi, thanks for taking our questions. So, I guess first off, I... First off, in the annual guide here, I believe that you had previously assumed a $40 to $60 million negative impact or potential negative impact from a lower wind resource. So just wanted to see what was your experience in fiscal Q1 in terms of the wind speeds that were experienced relative to historical averages It looks like things have improved meaningfully from previous quarters here. And then could you talk about what you've seen in terms of wind speeds so far in Q2?
spk09: Kadar, why don't I turn that over to you?
spk20: No, no, that's true. I think roughly the same amount of weather adjustment was factored in our annual guidance. Fortunately, for the first quarter, we have not seen very significant impact. and we'll have to see how this current ongoing quarter goes. There is a little bit of a softening of the wind speeds, but it's too early for us to change anything at this point of time. But first quarter, especially considering May month, which was highly productive, we were not impacted by lower wind speeds.
spk07: Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And then just on the module supply, I know you're bringing online your own manufacturing here, but can you just give us a sense for the current availability of solar modules and how confident you are that you're going to have the supply needed for your near-term projects? And then just curious, when you actually do bring the manufacturing online, can you talk about the cost? that you're expecting for your in-house supply versus at least where module prices are today?
spk20: What I was just saying is when we start consuming our own captive manufactured solar panels, the way it impacts our P&L is compared to the procured cost of solar panels which get capitalized. Instead of that, the captive cost gets replaced with that. So in terms of the change, you will see in the P&L that will be nominal and we are still in a stage to get to the exact levels of the efficiency. I think the captive manufacturing is a great lever for us to build supply certainty. Given what we are seeing as supply chain risk, and more importantly, the 40% custom duty which Indian government has placed for imports. So I think it's a lever for us more to build supply certainty, avoid high-value custom duty, and we hope it pays out over the long run. So that's the answer to your second question. On the first question, I think our arrangements for wind turbines and modules for the next few quarters are more or less done, but I'll request Suman to give a perspective on this, please. Thank you.
spk21: Yeah, Justin, as far as the cost of our own modules are concerned compared to what would then be the alternative, which is the imported modules plus the 40%, in some ways, while you might want to look at it from a cost standpoint, keep in mind that it's not even that. It's really just a question of getting modules. Because of the other issue around the approved list of modules and manufacturers, where no overseas company has yet approved, it'll be impossible to even import modules. So it's a question of even getting access to modules. It's not a cost issue, actually. The second thing is that the only modules available would be whatever is manufactured in India by anybody else. And our belief is that, and our understanding based on looking at the market, is that the total amount of manufacturing capacity available for modules of really high efficiency latest sort of technology modules is not going to be more than 5 or 6 gigawatts through next year. It will take time for that capacity to be set up. And so it's going to be an issue of actually getting access to modules and therefore having our own supply becomes absolutely critical for being able to deliver the projects that we have and for delivering growth. And that is really, the cost of that is what we factored into our current CapEx estimates.
spk07: Okay, got it. And then I guess just wanted to follow up on that. How are you feeling about your, the capacity that you have planned for your module and cell facilities here? Are you comfortable with the current amounts or could you look to expand And then also, you know, I think you're primarily just looking at using all of the module supply internally, but could you look to sell modules to external customers at some point here?
spk21: So, Justin, at this point, right now, as you know, we've talked about six gigawatts of modules, which we are now putting up, and two gigawatts of cells. Eventually, our aim is to have a balanced cell and module facility We are going a little bit slower on the cell side because we wanted to get the first two gigawatts up and running. It's a little bit more complex than setting up a module plant is, and so therefore we wanted to get far advanced on the first two gigawatts before we start setting up the balance amount. But that is something that we will be looking at doing at some point over the course of the next several months. Now, as far as the question of... what we will be doing in terms of selling to other customers and all, that's not something that we're contemplating at this point, Justin, simply because the total amount that we will be producing will essentially, as we've talked about in the past, will be enough to do projects of about three to three and a half gigawatts, which is really what we expect to be setting up ourselves. So we don't really expect to have capacity available for third-party sales you know, in the near future. Of course, you know, having said that, the reality is the market is dynamic and we look to see what is happening. But at this point in time, we are going in hypothesis that we will be supplying to ourselves.
spk07: Got it. Okay. And then maybe just one more. I was wondering if you could just talk about the, you know, the types of customers that you're serving in the corporate market And is it possible to serve those customers in a more programmatic way where you're potentially doing multiple projects for the same customer in different regions? And then I'm also curious on the competitive side, are you seeing more entrance into that corporate market? I mean, right now it sounds like there's only private competitors. Are you anticipating larger players coming? Yeah.
spk21: So, you know, I think what is happening is right now a number of corporates in India are looking at buying clean energy for the first time. And so they are sort of getting into it with the first step. And therefore, they're taking a little bit longer to understand. And they are going ahead with, let's say, a smallish megawatts to begin with or a smaller project to begin with. Now, and that's why, you know, we've been talking about corporate PPS for a while and we've always said that it's going to take time for us to build momentum. But we've now, after a lot of effort over the last year or two, we've been able to build that momentum and that effort. Now, you're absolutely right. As the same corporates now get familiar and comfortable and they recognize the cost savings that they're able to get and the value that they can get in terms of going green, they will start looking at ramping up their activity and their purchase in clean energy and there for us to be the company that has done the first project with them hopefully having given them a good experience and keep in mind the point we're making that uh in a number of cases from a regulatory standpoint uh the customer needs to take a 26 equity stake as well so they want the counterparty i.e the developer to be a very credible counterparty and actually they tend to have a significant advantage So as we go forward, our ability to penetrate into these customers for their future needs, their existing needs as well as their future growth that they will have will be quite good. And that is therefore something that we will continue to work with these corporate customers on and hopefully develop on a more programmatic basis as you suggested we should be doing, and that's exactly what we are working on. Now, our other competitors coming in, Of course they are. You would expect other companies who see the attractiveness of this market to try to come in. But because of the effort that we've put in over the last couple of years and the amount of progress we've made and a number of very serious and significant conversations we're having, we have a long runway to go of conversations that we can conclude before any of our competitors begin to get in. The other thing is that we had a very good counterparty for them because of our independent governance, our NASDAQ listing. That gives us a bit of a halo, which also gets customers who in some ways want to be with us. So I think that's also an advantage that we bring to the table. And it is for those reasons that we feel that this market will continue to be very attractive for us. And in our view, our expectation is that almost a quarter of our total portfolio over the next few years will come from the corporate customer base.
spk10: Okay, got it. Appreciate it. Thank you.
spk06: There are no more questions in the queue. This concludes our question and answer session, and the conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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