Brookfield Renewable Partners L.P. Limited Partnership Units

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Brookfield Renewables Third Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. If your question has been answered and you'd like to remove yourself from the queue, simply press star 1-1 again. As a reminder, today's program is being recorded. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Connor Teske, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our third quarter 2024 conference call. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that a copy of our news release, investor supplement, and letter to unit holders can be found on our website. We also want to remind you that we may make forward-looking statements on this call. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks, and our future results may differ materially. For more information, you are encouraged to review our regulatory filings available on CDAR, EDGAR, and on our website. On today's call, we will provide a review of our third quarter performance and how we are able to both successfully monetize assets at great returns in the current environment as well as find opportunities to deploy significant capital into growth at good value. Then, Ignacio Gomez from our investment team will speak to some of our successful asset monetizations announced this past quarter. And lastly, Wyatt will conclude the call by discussing our operating results and financial position. Following our remarks, we look forward to taking your questions. We had a successful quarter with the business performing well. We delivered record funds from operations for the third quarter, benefiting from asset development, recent acquisitions, and strong all-in pricing. On the back of our strong results year to date and our outlook for the remainder of the year, we continue to expect to achieve our 10% plus FFO per unit growth target for 2024. We have continued to diversify our business across the most attractive power markets globally, while concentrating on the lowest cost mature technologies, which today represent the most promising and viable solutions to meet accelerating electricity demand growth from digitalization and electrification. The outlook for our business continues to improve, driven by increasing demand for clean power, as the robust investment by the large global technology players in data centers and semiconductor chips is now extending to energy capacity. Power is increasingly the bottleneck to enable data center and AI development, and we are seeing these businesses ramp up their efforts to lock in supply to ensure that they can achieve their own growth targets. This accelerating increase in demand for new power is being driven by corporate off-takers and requires a significant build-out of renewable generation given its position as the most cost-competitive source of bulk power in most markets irrespective of incentive schemes. Our scale and geographical and technologically diversified business is uniquely positioned to meet this insatiable demand in all political environments. To reinforce this point, because our business is focused on markets, which are seeing the greatest amount of corporate demand and is focused on the technologies that are the most cost effective electricity solutions. We are largely insulated from any potential regulatory or subsidy changes and we do not expect the recent election results to change our business model or growth outlook. This past quarter saw several agreements announced by global technology players to restart or enable the development of nuclear capacity. These agreements are a powerful indication not only of the magnitude of demand for clean electricity over the coming years, but of the types of solutions that are needed. The technology leaders require reliable, low-cost, 24-7 scale power solutions, and they are increasingly looking to a small number of partners who they trust to deliver what they need, where they need it, and when they need it. This environment is very constructive for the development platforms we have acquired in recent years, and we are well positioned to continue as one of the partners of choice to these companies. We are differentiated with our diverse 200,000 megawatt renewable power project development pipeline, approximately 90% of which is located in the top 10 data center markets globally. Added to that, with our Westinghouse nuclear business, which has design and engineering capabilities to deliver micro, small modular, and utility-scale nuclear solutions, we are in an enviable position globally. As outlined at our Investor Day at the end of September, this year will be our largest for both asset recycling and investment into growth. To date, we have generated approximately $2.3 billion of proceeds from asset monetizations resulting in returns of 2.5 times our invested capital and IRRs on these investments of greater than 20%, well in excess of our corporate targets. Given other ongoing sales processes, the bids we are seeing in the market, and our pipeline of assets that will be ready for sale in the coming quarters, we expect to deliver incremental strong monetizations in the future. During the same year-to-date timeframe, we have committed and deployed over $11 billion of equity into growth, including our proposed acquisition of NEOEN, which remains on track to close on our expected timelines as we continue to progress through the regulatory approvals and anticipated undertakings, which are all well-advanced. We recognize that some may question how a market can be attractive for deployment and monetization at the same time. While every transaction has its own dynamics and there will be exceptions to any broad-based generalizations, we see a simple bifurcation in the current market. High-quality, de-risked, and cash-generative assets are seeing very strong bids, while large businesses with ongoing capital needs for development and construction are seeing a scarcity of capital to fund their growth pipelines. This creates a tremendous opportunity for those equipped to deploy capital at attractive value entry points to acquire growing businesses or fund existing operations. This constructive environment also allows us to monetize more mature assets and recycle the proceeds back into accretive new investments under an attractive and high returning self-funding model. We feel this market is particularly attractive for a number of the renewable development platforms we have acquired in recent years. Last week, we announced a new partnership with Orsted, a global leader in offshore wind, making our first direct investment into this technology. We have always taken a thoughtful approach to investing in technologies that are new to our platform. For example, almost a decade ago, we were consciously not a first mover into solar, because we believe that much of the initial capital invested in the space was subject to return drivers outside of our control. Notably, the pace of technological improvement and cost declines, the ramp-up of supply chain, and the assumed trajectory of growth. While some players got these initial bets right and others wrong, we waited until we felt the sector was more appropriately de-risked. Once the sector matured, we moved with conviction, securing attractive value entry points, often capitalizing on situations of capital scarcity where some of those earlier investments didn't go as planned. Despite our cautious initial approach to the asset class, we have since found no shortage of opportunities and today are one of the largest solar developers in the world, if not the largest. We have taken a similar approach to investing in offshore wind. We view offshore wind as a mature, fast-growing, and scale renewable technology with critical attributes for certain markets, such as providing a differentiated energy load profile, high capacity factors, and limited onshore land requirements. However, up until recently, many of the opportunities we looked at faced long lead times between capital outlays for development and project commissioning. These challenges deterred us from investing over the past several years, especially given the other opportunities we were seeing in the market. Today, we are seeing more opportunities to invest in projects that are operating or where the cash flows are more significantly de-risked at attractive risk adjusted returns. We agreed to partner with Orsted, a global leader in offshore wind, to acquire a 12% interest in a portfolio of 3,500 megawatts of operating capacity in the UK for an enterprise value of $2.3 billion. The portfolio is, one, secured by long-term government-backed inflation-linked contracts for difference, two, has approximately 90% of operating costs fixed through long-term O&M, transmission, and lease contracts, and three, comes with no development or construction risk. We are thrilled to partner with Orsted, a global leader in offshore wind, who will continue to own a 38% interest and operate the portfolio, which we expect to generate returns in line with our targets. With that, we will now turn it over to Ignacio to discuss our recent asset monetization.

Thank you, Connor, and good morning, everyone. As Conor noted, this will be our most successful year for asset recycling ever, as we have already generated record proceeds year-to-date and continue to see robust demand for high-quality, cost-generative operating platforms, and in particular, those with embedded growth opportunities and capabilities. While we underwrite our investments on a wholesale maturity basis to deliver our target 12% to 15% returns, we can often enhance these returns by monetizing mature assets to buyers with a lower cost of capital, who value the long life, the risk, infrastructure-like cash flows of renewable power projects. Asset recycling also represents a highly accurate way to fund our business and contributes to our sustainable self-funding model. Important to successful asset monetization is the strength of our balance sheet, which enables us to be patient and sell assets when markets are constructed. Throughout 2024, we have seen a very robust bid for high-quality assets and platforms. And against this market demand, we have been successfully recycling capital from our existing asset base and returned significantly above our targets. While every investment is different, in each case, these results were driven by acquiring for value, improving the assets through the execution of our business plan, and monetizing opportunistically. In September, we reached an agreement to sell Sciata, which we acquired in 2018 to protect private during a period of market uncertainty that created an attractive value entry point. The portfolio consisted of high-quality, contracted assets where we saw an opportunity to add value, leveraging our scale and operating capabilities. Following the acquisition, which we executed on a bilateral basis, we implemented our business plan, divesting non-core assets and bringing over best practices from our experience operating renewable assets globally to enhance operations and reduce costs. We also optimized the capital structure and established a development function to focus on growth. With the in-house development team that we built and supplemented by our access to capital, we were able to grow the business and develop a very attractive pipeline of projects. The development team remains in place and will continue to carry out Saeta's strategic growth plan going forward with the new owners. We agreed to sell the company, excluding the contracted 350 megawatt of concentrated solar power assets, which we continue to own and operate, to a leading global renewable energy company as part of their strategic entry into the Iberian region for an equity value of $730 million. With the sale, we generate total proceeds of over three times our invested capital over a six-year hold period, crystallizing strong returns for our shareholders. In 2017, we acquired a 25% interest in First Hydro, the leading UK hydro business, providing approximately 75% of the pump storage capacity and 45% of the hydro capacity in the market. We recognized an opportunity to use our decades of experience in owning and operating hydro assets to implement several value-generative initiatives. Upon acquisition, we helped execute and de-risk an asset refurbishment program that extended the life of the pump storage facilities by over 40 years. We optimized the capital structure by refinancing the long-term debt of the business and enhanced the commercial strategy. We recognized the federal market dynamics and increasing importance of energy storage and scale dispatchable clean power, which led us to an increase in revenues and record earnings under our ownership. In September, we reached an agreement to sell our interest in Fresh Hydro for $350 million. generating over three and a half times our invested capital since acquisition, and are delivering the buyer a highly strategic asset that will continue to provide critical grid services for decades to come. During the quarter, we also agreed to sell a 50% interest in our separate flat wind portfolio, where we executed one of the largest wind repowering projects globally, increasing generation by approximately 25% and extending the asset's useful life by approximately 10 years. we completed this reporting project on time and on budget during the pandemic, when the sector was being impacted by supply chain challenges, a testament to our procurement and development teams. On closing, we will generate almost two times our invested capital on the portion sold for $415 million, while still retaining a 50% interest and operating the asset, where we are completing other value-enhancing initiatives. And finally, Today, we're one of the leading renewable energy operators and developers in India, having currently built a regional presence in centering the market in 2017 off the back of the broader book-free business in the country. This week, we signed an agreement to complete our first full cycle investment in the country by selling a 1600 megawatt portfolio operating and under construction wind and solar assets to a large renewable player at our target returns. We expect to close the transaction in parts in the first quarter of 2025 and 2026, subject to customary closing conditions. We were able to add value to this portfolio through the optimization of the capital structure, operational and working capital improvements, and through organic development. With that, I will pass it on to Wyatt to discuss our operating results and financial position.