Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LPQ3 2025 results conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, David Krent, Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you, Josh, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Brookfield Infrastructure Partners' third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. As introduced, my name is David Krent, and I am the Chief Financial Officer of Brookfield Infrastructure. I'm joined today by our Chief Executive Officer, Sam Pollack, as well as Ben Vaughn and Dave Joint, who will be available for the question and answer portion of the call. I'll begin today with a discussion of our third quarter 2025 financial and operating results, followed by a discussion of our financing activity and strong balance sheet position. I'll then hand the call over to Sam, who will provide an update on our strategic initiatives and conclude with outlook for the business. At this time, I would like to remind you that in our remarks today, we may make forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks, and future results may differ materially. For further information on known risk factors, I would encourage you to review our latest annual report on Form 20S, which is available on our website. Brookfield Infrastructure had another solid quarter, achieving strong financial results and executing on our strategic initiatives. Beginning with our financial and operating results, we generated third quarter funds from operations, or FFO, of $654 million, or 83 cents per unit. This was 9% higher compared to the previous year, driven primarily by strong organic growth, highlighting the financial strength and stability of our base business. These results were delivered despite FFO contributions for GON following a year of record asset sales and only a partial contribution from the new investments we've made. Turning to our results by segment, our utilities generated FFO of $190 million, slightly ahead of the prior year. Results benefited from inflation indexation in addition to contributions from over $450 million of capital added to the rate base. The strong underlying performance was partially offset by higher borrowing costs and the sale of our Mexican regulated natural gas transmission business in the first quarter of this year. Moving to our transport segment, FFO was $286 million for the quarter. Headline results are lower than last year due to the sale of our interest in an Australian export terminal, DBI, and the sell-down of stabilized containers within our global intermodal logistics business. After adjusting for these capital recycling initiatives, our results were slightly ahead of the prior year. The solid underlying performance reflected strong volumes across our networks and rate increases on our rail networks and toll roads. Our midstream segment generated FFO of $156 million, representing a 6% increase over the same period last year. We experienced strong customer activity levels and asset utilization across our portfolio, particularly at our Canadian diversified midstream operation. Notably, we completed the acquisition of Colonial Enterprises this quarter. The partial earnings contributions were offset by the lost income associated with the sale of our U.S. gas pipeline in the second quarter of this year. Lastly, FFO from our data segment was $138 million, representing a step change increase of over 60% compared to the prior year. The increase is driven by a full quarter contribution from the tuck-in acquisition of a tower portfolio in India completed last year, as well as strong organic growth across our data storage businesses. This growth included income earned by our developers, the commissioning of 80 megawatts of capacity at our hyperscale data centers, and 45 megawatts of new billings initiated at our U.S. retail co-location data center operation. Before turning the call over to Sam, I'd like to provide an update on recent financing activity. Debt capital markets remained favorable during the quarter, with significant new issuance activity and further tightening in credit spreads. During the period, we completed financings to enhance our liquidity, support growth initiatives, and refinance near-term maturities. This included a $700 million corporate issuance of medium-term notes in September. The issuance had a weighted average interest rate of approximately 4% and was priced at the tightest credit spreads in our history. As a result of our proactive approach to refinancing, less than 1% of our non-recourse debt is maturing over the next 12 months. We maintain a well-laddered maturity profile with a weighted average maturity of approximately seven years. Our balance sheet remains well capitalized with liquidity at the end of the third quarter totaling $5.5 billion, which includes $2.5 billion at the corporate level and over $1.4 billion in cash across our operating businesses. This strong liquidity position positions us with the confidence to pursue a variety of growth opportunities as they arise. That concludes my remarks for this morning. I'll now turn the call over to Sam.

Great. Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. From my remarks today, I'm going to provide an update on our transaction activity, and then I'll conclude with an outlook for our business. Now, starting with investments, we've already met our deployment objective for the year, securing six new investments totaling over $1.5 billion. This quarter, we secured three new investments across diverse regions and sectors. whereby BIP will deploy approximately $225 million in total. The first investment is a $1.3 billion enterprise value New Zealand natural gas infrastructure operation. The business primarily operates a leading gas transmission, distribution, and storage business that is comprised of regulated and long-term contracted revenues with inflation and taxation. This value-based acquisition is highly cash generative, resulting in a short payback period of approximately seven years. We expect the transaction to close in the second quarter of next year, subject to customary regulatory approvals. Now, the second acquisition is a $1 billion enterprise value company that is a South Korean industrial gas business that supplies industrial gases to industry-leading and investment-grade semiconductor manufacturers. The majority of the business is underpinned by 20-year minimum take or payoff take agreements, with significant cost pass-throughs. This transaction is expected to close later this quarter. And then lastly, we've secured our first AI-related project under a newly established $5 billion framework agreement with Bloom Energy to install up to 1 gigawatt of behind-the-meter power solutions for data centers and AI factories. This project provides a hyperscale customer with 55 megawatts of behind-the-meter power for an AI data center in the United States. Now, with respect to capital recycling, the momentum in our asset sale program has continued. During the quarter, we progressed a number of initiatives and we've now generated over $3 billion in proceeds for the year and are on track to achieve a further $3 billion over the next 12 to 18 months. One of the most significant asset sales completed in mid-October was the partial sale of our North American gas storage platform in what is the largest IPO in the TSX since May of 2022. In total, we raised 810 million Canadian, and BIP's share of the net proceeds from the offering was approximately $230 million US. Since the formation of Rock Point, which is our natural gas business, which was done through a series of acquisitions, EBITDA has grown by more than four times driven by operational improvements and favorable market fundamentals. As a result of various strategic initiatives, which enhance the stability and quality of earnings, along with the sale of two non-core assets in 2023, we have now realized that 3.2 times multiple on our invested capital, while continue to own a significant interest in the business. Now the outlook for Brookfield infrastructure for the balance of the year and looking into next year, remains favorable. As mentioned at our recent investor day in September, we believe BIP is at an inflection point in its growth profile. Each of our new investments this year is expected to deliver returns above our 12% to 15% target range, and it's backed by credible business plans that support potential upside returns over 20%. We also have a robust pipeline of new investment opportunities across each of our existing segments, driven by the long-term megatrends that we talked about many times in the past of digitalization, deglobalization, and decarbonization. We're also seeing a significant new growth vertical emerging from the rapid build-out of AI infrastructure, a $7 trillion opportunity set that remains in its early stages and continues to expand. We expect to deploy up to $500 million annually into AI-related infrastructure in the coming years, with AI factories and behind-the-meter power solutions representing a natural, compelling extension of our investment activities. These growth factors, paired with a macroeconomic backdrop that is trending very favorably, set the stage for BIP's FFO per unit growth to reflect higher. So that concludes my remarks, and I'll pass it back to Josh to open the line for Q&A.