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Enel Chile S.A.
10/29/2021
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our NO Chile third quarter and nine months 2021 results conference call. My name is Victor, and I will be your operator for today. During this conference call, we may make statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements reflect only our current expectations are not guarantees of future performance, and involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-lifting statements as a result of various factors. These factors are described in NLT's press release reporting its third quarter and nine months 2021 results. The presentation accompanying this conference call and NLT's annual report on Form 20F include under-risk factors. You may access our third quarter and nine months 2021 results press release and presentation on our website, www.no.cl, and our 20F on the SEC's website, www.sec.gov. Readers are cautioned not to place under-reliance on those forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their date. NL Chile undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements or to disclose any development as a result of which these forward-looking statements become inaccurate, except as required by law. I will now turn the presentation over to Ms. Isabella Clemes, Head of Investor Relations of NL Chile. Please proceed.
Thank you, Vitor. Buenos dias. Good morning and welcome to NL Chile's third quarter 2021 results presentation. Thanks to all for joining us today. I am Isabella Clemens, the Head of Investor Relations. Let me remind you that our presentation and related financial information are available on our website, www.nl.cl, in the Investors section, and in our app, Investors. In the final of the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions via phone or chat through the link, Ask a Question. Joining me this morning, our CEO, Paolo Palocchi, and our CFO, Giuseppe Tucciarelli. In the following slides, Paolo will open the presentation with the main highlights of our strategy and operational performance of the quarter. Then Giuseppe will go through our financial results. A replay of the call will also be available. And as always, our IR team will be continually available to provide you with any other detail that you need. Also, let me remind you that media participants are connected only in listening mode. Thank you all for your attention and let me hand over to Paolo. Paolo?
Thank you, Isabella. Good morning and thanks for joining us. Let me start with the main highlights of the period of design number three. First, let me comment about the unusual situation of the Chilean electricity market. In terms of hydrology, The country is facing the driest calendar year of its history, and as a consequence, the system has required and is still requiring an important support from thermal generation. At the same time, by the end of 2020 and the first month of 2021, Chile suffered a shortfall of Argentinian natural gas, followed by the rise of the LNG stock price. Considering this lack of resources in the system, since the first month of 2021, we put in place some actions to improve gas availability, buying additional energy cargos to supply our plants at first, and then to sell gas to the system. During the first period of 2021, we have been the largest importer of energy gas in the country. At the same time, we launched a force to improve the performance of our hydro plants to operate also with minimal conditions. Despite all the actions we put in place during 2021, the external scenario has worsened with escalation of commodity prices and a very bad energy, especially in July and the first half of August, leaving the authority to put in place a preventive rationing decree within due date March 2022. Consequently, our margin remains affected. Within this challenging scenario, investing in renewables to diversify our matrix to reduce our exposure to the hydrology and commodities has been confirmed to be a priority. With reference to our 1.3 gigawatts of new projects under construction, the activities on site are advancing and during the last quarter, also celebrated the start of the construction of the first green hydrogen pilot project in Chile and in Latin America, located in Mariana. On electric mobility, last week, Enel X signed an agreement to bring to Chile the first mining electric truck. Additionally, today we have more than 10,000 wood heating systems replaced with safer, efficient, and cleaner technology as part of our effort to support the contamination of the cities. We continue to develop our actions based on ESG-XL standards, allowing us, for instance, to leverage our expansion through SDG-Link financial instruments. Now move on to page 4, our capacity in construction. We continue to develop our strategy toward a cleaner generation monthly. Renewable energy is the catalyzer for the energy transition and an essential pillar for our positioning in the market. During the last 18 months, we went through some heavy wind associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, as the constraints in worker displacement and closing of the border, and the bureaucracy's slowness for archaeological permits, for instance. Nevertheless, Without including Los Congres, today we have 1.3 gigawatts of projects under construction, of which around 0.6 gigawatts have been already connected to the system by the end of September. By the end of this year, we are maximizing our efforts to advance the construction of the remaining projects, expecting to reach at least 900 megawatts to be connected into the group. Additional 250 will be connected to the grid by first quarter 2022, and the ramp-up to full production will be finalized by first half 2022 for most of the projects. The construction of wind farm Renico II will be finalized during 2022, considering the effort to move components of the wind facilities from the port to the site location. With reference to our JD on green hydrogen with Amy and other partners, we have recently started the construction of this first pilot project in Chile, and we expect it to be operational by second quarter 2022. We are fully convinced that along the renewable energy, green hydrogen will be essential ally in the energy transition and faster decarbonization process Now let's move to the decarbonization of the final concern. Page 5. NLX is expanding its effort to displace polluting energy sources and promotes the intensive use of electricity in the public and private sectors, accelerating an agenda that allows the electrification of industrial processes and public transport. as well as the implementation of energy efficiency mirrors in private and public buildings. Along with this plan, a good complement is the action in public transport. Chilean government, committed to reaching 100% electric public transport by 2040, launched a standard to replace 1,640 buses in early 2031. As an election, We are participating in this process and have been awarded, together with our partners, with 991 electric buses, reinforcing our leadership position in public mobility in Chile, with a market share of 81%. In the field of private sector fleet, together with the mining company SQM, we have presented the first 30 tons electric mining truck. with incorporation of six electric buses for transportation of the employees. NLX is also implementing the necessary charging infrastructures for the operations. This is an important step for the mining industry in Chile, where a complete process has been made in mitigating emissions at the core of the mining operations. Regarding the decarbonization of homes and final consumer, we have achieved the milestone of replacing 110,000 wood stoves with an efficient electrical air conditioning equipment in Chile. This initiative reduces CO2 emissions and improves the well-being of our city and communities, benefiting more than 40,000 people. Finally, in the face of efficient lighting in our cities, LNX expands and consolidates its presence in regions with the award of the maintenance service of the public lighting system in the municipalities of Temuco, with more than 32,000 public lighting that allow us to reach 340,000 points of light, of which 50% correspond to projects carried out outside Santiago, lighting our city efficiently and increasing the safety of the citizens. Now let's go to Network, page 2. Energy distribution improvement reflects the recent easing of the sanitary conditions, showing a partial recovery when comparing to the previous year. Our efforts and investments have allowed to increase the quality of our service, resulting in lowering CID by 16%. Our investment in digitalization continues to improve the contact channels with our clients. In this period, almost 90% of our contacts with our clients have been executed through digital channels. Let's now move to the classic service load. With its extension until 31 December 2021, the application of such a law is still affecting the level of overdue debt. As of September, the overdue debt reached $180 million. In order to minimize this impact, we continue to promote payment agreements with the aim of reducing the overdue accounts by September 2021, in more than one year, we have reached more than 58,000 payment agreements with our clients, of which 53% correspond to the basic service load. Moving to collection, the ongoing process for the update to sub ISO of our billing system, as important lead in the digital transformation process of our company, has temporary worsened our KPI versus previous quarters. We expect a normalization of the collection rate during the next quarter. A quick update on regulation. On distribution, we expect that the consultant report on the reference model will be released during November. If this date is confirmed, the final report could be issued early next year. Considering the challenge of potential discrepancy to the ex-panels, the final distribution tariff decrease is expected to be released during mid-2032. On transmission, we have answered in the ex-panel phase. All the discrepancies referring to the final reorder report on the transmission system for the period 2020-2033 were already presented. As a result, we expect that the new VAT shall be published early 2032. Thank you, and now I will hand over to Giuseppe.
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