Azure Power Global Limited Equity Shares

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Azure Power's Fiscal First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vikas Bansal, head investor relations at Azure Power. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Bansal.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. On Monday evening, the company issued a press release announcing results for the first quarter of fiscal 2022 and in June 3, 2021. A copy of the press release and the presentation are available on the investor section of Azure Power's website at azurepower.com. Ranjit will start the call by going through recent key highlights. Murali will then follow up with an update on our projects under construction, technology preservation, and industry updates. Pawan will then provide an update on water, and then we will wrap up the call with Ranjit providing water to fiscal year 22 and fiscal year 22 guidance. After this, we will open up the call for questions. Please note, our safe harvest 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 60 and presentation on our website for a more complete description. Also contained in our press release, presentation materials, and annual reports are certain non-GAAP measures that we reconcile to the most comparable GAAP measures, and these reconciliations are also available on our website in press release, in presentation materials, and annual reports. It is now a pleasure to hand it over to Sajid.

Thank you, Vikas, and a very good morning, everyone. As you all know, India faced COVID-19's ugliest ways in this first quarter during April and May. There were massive medical emergencies witnessed across the country during its peak around mid-quarter, which, along with local restrictions, greatly restricted man and material movement. The daily infection rates receded around the end of June, and in the meanwhile, our vaccinations were able to pick up pace. As we speak, Then about 600 million doses have been administered in India till date, and about a third of the eligible adult population has at least got one dose. At Azure, we have stood by our employees and stakeholders in this fight against the pandemic through several initiatives focused on supplementing medical supplies, tracking the health and well-being of team members and their families, organizing awareness and mental wellness talks, and providing whatever support was needed by team members. We also organized two vaccination drives for our employees, and I'm happy to report that 99% of our eligible employees are now vaccinated. I know that some countries across the world are still battling the pandemic, and I wish them all the best in dealing with COVID-19. Moving on, I'm happy to report that we became signatories to UN Global Compact this quarter. We have fully aligned ourselves to the same principles of human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption. Our ESG risk score by Sustainalytics has further improved, and Sustainalytics now puts us in the low-risk category compared to medium-risk category earlier. MSCI, the leading ESG rating agency, rates Azure Power as AA, which places us in the top quartile of all global utilities they cover and probably the highest amongst the peers in the country. We also recently retired Verified Carbon Unit, VCU, to offset our scope one and two emissions of 2019-2020. And we will continue to do so in future in our path towards carbon neutrality. We continue to strive hard to improve our ESG performance and demonstrate our leadership. We have a couple of major organizational updates to report subsequent to quarter end. IFC and IFC GIS, which has been longtime supporters of Azure since our early days and has a major role to play in our journey, recently sold their entire balance, 19.4% stake in the company to OMERS, one of the largest Canadian pension funds with net assets of over 100 billion Canadian dollars. The confidence that global long-term patient infrastructure capital investors like OMOS have placed in Azure demonstrates the strength of our company and Siemens are stated as one of India's premier renewable energy power producers with strong governance and profitable growth track record. Presence of CDPQ and OMOS are quite important from an investment view. also strengthens our position in terms of meeting capital requirements for our pipeline of projects. We also recently placed our third green bond in the debt capital market, primarily to retire our first green bond. The issue received tremendous response from global asset managers with book building and access of 5X will diversify order book across geographies. The issue closed at lowest ever coupon in the high-yield segment for any business out of it. From the lowest offering from any Indian renewable energy company to date and shall result in over 200 basis points of annual savings in landed interest cost for our 611 megawatts. of underlying assets. Both these events have further solidified Azure's position as the destination of choice for both equity and debt capital investments. We also reported last quarter on our agreement to sell Ghostop Portfolio to Radiance Renewables, which is the first-ever asset sale in Azure Power's history and signifies our commitment towards capital discipline, while recycling capital into higher return-committed projects. We are in the process of obtaining the content of off-takers and vendors and see the transaction closing over the next few months. I had mentioned in my previous remarks how we are looking to increase our addressable markets by pouring into wind and solar-wind hybrid space. Continuing with that, we participated in a few auctions in the last couple of months and have won some capacity for which we are awaiting letter of award. We firmly believe that as the industry moves towards providing the possible renewable energy to the grid, wind and storage will be two important technology additions we have to plan for our portfolio. I have mentioned in my previous remarks how green hydrogen and plankton storage costs have the potential to disrupt our industry. We continue to monitor development in both these exciting technologies and will keep you posted as we take steps to deploy them to improve our data. On the four gigawatt projects for which we have letter of awards from SEKI, but are yet to sign power purchase agreements, we had a positive update from SEKI informing us that they have signed power sale agreements with a couple of distribution companies for a total of 800 megawatts. This is part of the first triumph of 3,000 megawatts of PSAs that SETI is looking to close as part of the manufacturing link scheme. We expect to have PPAs signed for about a third of the 800 megawatts zone. As the second wave has eased, we have seen renewed interest in buying power from distribution companies. Despite the pandemic, power demand recovery in India has clearly bounced back with peak demand dropping 200 gigawatts last month. This has encouraged this comp to invest in buying power for their future needs. Today, we are 73% more megawatts operating than we did at the same time last year, excluding the rooftop portfolio. There has been an 11% year-on-year increase in EBITDA from operating assets and a 12% increase in cash flow to SRE from operating assets during the quarter period. We continue to see steady improvement in this metric. The government continues to support the renewable energy sector in India. India recently achieved 100 gigawatts of installed renewable energy capacity in the country, making it the fourth largest in the world. On Red Bull Time Minister, at his Independence Day speech from the ramparts of Red Fort, three states and governments in India submitted a mission of 450 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030. And more importantly, announced the path towards India's self-reliance in energy by 2047, i.e. 100th year of Indian independence. This is a significant announcement given that the climate change imperative coupled with energy self-reliance targets greatly enhances the renewable energy run this far. Most of India's oil and gas needs are met through imports. and the only way towards energy independence is to bank more heavily on renewable energy. In another significant positive development, a recent landmark judgment from the Appalachian Tribunal for electricity in the country allowed compensatory tariffs for solar power curtailment in the state of Tamil Nadu. This has provided a tremendous boost to investor confidence in the sector and bodes well for our growth trajectory towards 450 gigawatt installed capacity in the country by 2030. For the first time in India, the Appalachian Forum for Electricity has laid down the law that the developer will have to be compensated on account of illegal curtailment, even in the absence of a compensation clause in the power purchase agreement. We continue to look for suggestions from our investors and stakeholders on how we can further improve our disclosure and make it easier for you to understand and value our business. With that, I would like to turn it over to Murti.