Clearway Energy, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Clearway Energy, Inc., first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. 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 the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Akhil, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking the time to join Clearway Energy, Inc.' 's first quarter call. With me today are Craig Cornelius, the company's President and CEO, and Sarah Rubenstein, the company's CFO. Before we begin, I would like to quickly note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements which are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. Actual results may differ materially. Please review the safe harbor in today's presentation as well as our risk factors in our SEC filings. In addition, we will refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. For information regarding our non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to today's presentation. In particular, please note that we may refer to both offered and committed transactions in today's oral presentation and also may discuss such transactions during the question and answer portion of today's conference. please refer to the Safe Harbor in today's presentation for a description of the categories of potential transactions and related risk, contingencies, and uncertainties. With that, I'll hand it over to Craig.

Thanks, Akhil. Turning to slide four. Clearway delivered solid first quarter results across all segments, putting us in good standing to meet our 2025 financial objectives. We've reaffirmed our 2025 guidance range, And if we can see typical annual resource for the remainder of the year and continue to deliver strength and fleet performance, we have line of sight to achieving the top half of that range or even better through contributions from newly committed investments. We also continued to execute on initiatives that will enable future long-term growth in our business and are pleased to note that we made a creative progress in each of the growth pathways we have established for CWIN, in fleet enhancements, sponsor-enabled drop-down investments, and asset-centered third-party M&A. First, in our fleet, we continued to drive previously identified repowering opportunities forward and added still more identified opportunities this quarter. For the previously announced Mount Storm repowering, We signed the project's revenue contract with Microsoft, and the project is advancing towards the start of construction in 2025. The repowering remains on track to achieve commercial operation in phases in 2026 and 2027. We are pleased to also announce that a potential repowering of Goat Mountain in 2027 is now advancing. with an awarded PPA that can enable an accretive investment proposition and meaningful expansion of the facility size. Lastly, we continued to advance development of a repowering at San Juan Mesa and signed a PPA extension for the project to serve as a bridge to a future repower targeted for 2027. Another growth pathway Sponsor-enabled drop-down growth also remains resilient and saw further advancement during the past quarter. All of CWEN's committed growth remains on track for completion schedules aligned with previous public disclosures. Clearway Group continues to develop an abundant pipeline of over 9 gigawatts of CWEN-compatible late-stage projects that has now been further reinforced with additional safe harbor investments. Clearway Group is now on pace to complete safe harbor investments for approximately 13 gigawatts of projects that could achieve COD through 2029, which maximizes optionality relative to what the enterprise plans to build over that timeframe. This advancement includes battery projects within the late stage pipeline due to thoughtful planning and collaboration with our PPA customers and equipment suppliers on tariff for sharing. We are now officially naming the spindle project a 199 megawatt battery storage project, which signed a long-term contract with an investment-grade utility in mid-April. Asset-centered M&A also continued to be a complimentary avenue for us to pursue to meet our CAPTI per share growth objective. We are pleased to announce that we closed the Tuolumne wind acquisition in recent days. We are also pleased to announce that we have signed a binding agreement to acquire an operational solar project in California that is nearby a large cluster of other Clearway assets in the area, in a further demonstration of our ability to thoughtfully apply operating synergies to add complimentary high-quality assets to our fleet. Further reinforcing confidence in our outlook, We've mitigated interest rate risk for the refinancing of our corporate bond scheduled to mature in 2028 with opportunistic hedging of base rates that Sarah will discuss in her section of the prepared remarks. Through all these actions and more, we have positioned the platform to potentially achieve the high end or better of our 2027 CAPTI for share growth target. We are proud of how we've continued to execute since last quarter's earnings call on our redundant growth pathways. providing further visibility into how we will accretively grow Clearway Energy Inc. while evolving the company to be increasingly self-funding over time. Turning to slide five. Progress continues on attractive repowerings that we expect to extend and enhance the value of our existing owned wind fleet. Collectively, the three named repowerings on this slide are providing solid building blocks for our CAFTI per share growth outlook beyond 2027. The previously announced Mount Storm repowering continues to advance with win-win PPA terms accommodative of the current policy environment. The project has also completed key permitting milestones and placed the turbine order with Vestas. Goat Mountain is targeting a repowering in 2027 to expand the facility's capacity to 301 megawatts. The project's expanded capacity will be enabled by major permits that are already secured and an awarded PPA that is in the process of final negotiations on terms which allow for it to be advanced accretively in today's supply chain environment. Finally, San Juan Mesa is another repowering we are targeting for completion in 2027. It's advancing a PPA extension with the current offtaker, which will serve as a bridge to a future repower as Clearway Group is advancing development activities that could set the project up for construction in 2027. In the coming quarters, we are hopeful that we can disclose additional details and official commitments to these next two targeted repowerings, subject to customary applicable caveats, including the requirement for review by CWIN's Governance Conflicts and Nominating Committee. As a reminder, repowerings in our fleet enhancement program are underwritten to extend the asset's useful life, improve its risk profile, and drive CAFD growth incremental to our baseline forecast for EBITDA and CAFD contribution from these projects prior to repowering. In aggregate, we have repowered or committed to repower 712 megawatts of our wind portfolio and look to increase that amount in the coming years. Based on rigorous analysis with a core focus on maximizing shareholder value, we'll continue to enhance our wind fleet through either future capital-like contract extensions or contracting to underpin a potential repowering. Turning to slide six. Our sponsor-enabled drop-down growth pathway is moving along nicely and further firming our confidence in our growth outlook in 2027 and beyond. All of Clearway Group's projects with 2025 CODs are committed to CWIN and on track with substantially all equipment for the projects delivered long ago and grid synchronization active as of today. Commissioning work has begun ahead of commercial operations, and CWIN has made initial funding based on milestones laid out in the investment commitment agreements with Clearway Group. Opportunities for CWIN investment in 2026 and 2027 COD project vintages also continued to advance, including approximately 1 gigawatts of committed and identified potential dropdowns within those vintages. This includes the now-named Spindle Storage Project, which executed a 20-year PPA with a Colorado investment-grade utility after the announcements of escalated tariffs in April, reflecting both the ability of the PPA to accommodate expense recovery of elevated tariffs and other actions we have been able to take to mitigate that potential elevated cost to ratepayers. We also are continuing to advance development of the Rosamond South II project, which provides vital and valuable mid-term reliability for California, and for which we are collaboratively concluding a PPA negotiation with a valued historical customer. Finally, we are continuing forward on construction of the committed honeycomb projects, enabled by timely delivery of required equipment and nimble collaboration with our valued battery supplier and EPC contractor. In sum, thanks to our organization's trademark excellence in policy-aware project development, we've been able to implement a combination of mitigation factors to ensure projects stay on track to provide cost-effective and reliable power to customers. Offtakers are acknowledging the value of ready-to-build projects and the importance of strong franchises backing them. In contracting arrangements, we have reached and awarded and signed agreements even after the recent announcements of elevated tariffs. We continue to find ways to assure adequate project investment returns while also delivering a solid value proposition for our customers. Furthermore, our equipment procurement has either thoughtfully been sourced from domestic sources and or benefited from relationships with key suppliers understanding the current macro and policy backdrop when setting procurement terms. Through collaborative application of these mechanisms and excellence in project implementation and financing, we have been able to sustain forward progress on sponsor-enabled growth and are enormously proud of what that says about the resiliency of our very capable enterprise. With this backdrop, not only does our outlook for growth in 2027 continue to firm up, but the outlook beyond that remains robust. Clearway Group's late stage pipeline through the 2029 vintages has over $750 million of potential corporate capital investments beyond already offered and committed projects. These vintages through 2029 are now on track to secure qualification for tax credits for approximately 13 gigawatts of projects. A strategy which is intentionally over collateralizing needed tax credit qualification for project sites across Clearway Group's pipeline relative to the enterprises project build-out plans over that timeframe. Turning to slide seven. Since our last call, we've once again also made steps forward on value accretive M&A. We signed a binding agreement to acquire an operational solar project in California that has an existing long-term PPA that currently extends into late 2038. The asset is also complementary to our fleet given its proximity to existing C1 assets and also presents optionality for a future potential battery hybridization. The transaction, which is expected to close in 2025, is expected to generate an approximately 10 to 11% five-year average annual CAFD yield and a 13% 10-year average annual CAFD given the CAFD profile of the project. Turning to slide eight. We're in a strong position to achieve the top end or better of the 2027 CAFI per share target range that we set given the incremental updates on growth pathways shared today combined with past updates. We had previously provided visibility into how we could reach the midpoint or better of the $2.40 to $2.60 CAFI per share target we set for 2027 through previously committed growth investments contracted and observed pricing levels for revenues in our flexible generation segment, and our assumed plans for the refinancing of our 2028 maturity bonds, which have been firmed up by way of recent hedging activity. We now see paths to the top end of our 2027 cap-duper share range, or better, given today's third-party M&A agreement for an operational solar project, along with continued solid execution across our redundant growth pathways. The deployment of additional capital is one path. Clearway Group's pipeline has additional potential drop downs in store that have not yet been offered, such as spindle and the targeted repowering that could allow for the deployment of capital at sufficient levels to meet the top end of our 2027 range or better. We also continue to remain active in evaluating further third party M&A opportunities through which we could also deploy capital. And finally, we continue to pursue additional fleet optimization improvements such as a creative revenue contracting in our flexible generation segment. So all in all, we continue to believe we are in a position of strength when it comes to executing towards meeting our 2027 financial objectives. With that, I'll turn it over to Sarah for the financial summary section.