XPLR Infrastructure

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Hello, and welcome to Explore Infrastructure First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kanghee Jeon, Director of Investor Relations. Please, go ahead.

Thank you, Dustin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our first quarter 2026 financial results conference call for Explore Infrastructure. With me this morning are Alan Liu, President and Chief Executive Officer of Explore Infrastructure, and Jessica Jeffrey, Chief Financial Officer of Explore Infrastructure. Alan will walk through our business highlights, and Jessica will provide an overview of our financial results. After that, our executive team will be available to answer your questions. On this call, we'll be making forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from our forward-looking statements if any of our key assumptions are incorrect or because of other factors discussed in today's earnings news release, in the comments made during this conference call, in the risk factors section of the accompanying presentation, or in our latest reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, each of which can be found on our website, www.xplrinfrastructure.com. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. Today's presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. You should refer to the information contained in the slides accompanying today's presentation for the definitional information and reconciliations of historical non-GAAP measures to the closest GAAP financial measure. With that, I'll turn the call over to Alan.

Thank you, Conhee. Good morning, everyone. We delivered a solid start to 2026. Performance across the business was consistent with our expectations as we continue to advance our strategy to simplify our capital structure and maximize the value of our portfolio. The portfolio continues to deliver steady performance, and the team continues to execute in a disciplined manner with progress across our key focus areas. Our repowering program continues to progress well. To date, we have completed approximately 30% of the repowering projects planned for 2026. The remaining projects are on track and are expected to enhance output and longevity of Explorer's fleet and support overall portfolio performance over time, while positioning Explore for the future in this growing power demand environment. We also completed the final expected draw from our project financing commitments secured in 2025, successfully funding certain of our repowering investments with long-term and low-cost asset-level financing. With the successful execution of plan refinancing and recapitalization activities in 2025, we have a relatively modest financing plan ahead of us. with the next major corporate refinancing activity not expected until 2027. With respect to the previously announced interconnection sale and battery storage co-investment agreement with NextEra Energy Resources, Explore completed its evaluation and exercised its options to co-invest in the storage projects. Explore will participate with a 49% expected interest in each of the four projects which are expected to add approximately 200 net megawatts of battery storage capacity to our portfolio by year-end 2027. As a reminder, after asset-level financing proceeds, the net equity required for Explore is expected to be approximately $80 million, which Explore plans to fund through the sale of certain interconnection assets and rights to next-gen energy resources and to the four to-be-formed joint ventures. We believe that the structure for the joint ventures represents a disciplined and capital efficient way to add incremental growth, leveraging our existing platform while maintaining a focus on balance sheet strength. Lastly, we continue to see improving power market fundamentals that we believe are supportive of the value and the optionality of our assets. And those favorable market dynamics are starting to translate into tangible opportunities. We recently recontracted roughly 90 megawatts at an existing wind site at a rate that is roughly $25 per megawatt hour higher than realized pricing on that project's generation over the past year. It's a small project, but the revenue uplift is meaningful on a percentage basis. And more importantly, we are optimistic that this is an early example of a broader opportunity set as legacy contracts expire. Our team is pursuing additional opportunities to recontract and optimize existing contracts across multiple markets where there is strong demand growth. With that, let me turn it over to Jessica, who will review our first quarter of 2026 results in more detail.

Thank you, Alan, and good morning, everyone. Let's begin with Explore Infrastructure's detailed results. For the first quarter of 2026, Explore's portfolio generated approximately $435 million in adjusted EBITDA and $89 million in free cash flow before growth. First quarter results from existing projects were affected by lower wind resource, which came in at approximately 99% of the long-term average compared to 103% in the prior year period. This impact was partially offset by contributions from repowered assets, which continued to enhance generation and cash flow across the portfolio. Favorable weather and strong execution during the first quarter allowed us to pull ahead planned major component work from later in the year. which was the primary driver of higher year-over-year O&M costs. In addition, the results for both adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow before growth reflect the impact of asset dispositions completed in 2025. The year-over-year decline in free cash flow before growth was consistent with the company's expectations as it was primarily driven by higher financing costs resulting from the balance sheet simplification and capital plan funding activities in 2025. Specifically, Explore Infrastructure's first quarter 2026 free cash flow before growth includes approximately $74 million of incremental corporate interest expense from the approximately $1.75 billion of unsecured notes issuances in March 2025. It also includes approximately $12 million higher year-over-year interest expense from project financings raised in 2025. As a reminder, Free cash flow before growth reflects actual cash interest payments within the measurement period. As a result, quarterly results can vary based on the timing of interest payments, along with the natural seasonality of wind and solar generation. Taken together, these factors typically result in a lighter contribution in the first quarter. Specifically, Explore's first quarter 2026 free cash flow before growth is expected to represent roughly 12 to 15 percent of its expected full-year results. Additional granularity on the timing of expected interest payments can be found in the appendix of today's presentation. For 2026, we continue to expect adjusted EBITDA of $1.75 to $1.95 billion and free cash flow before growth of $600 to $700 million. As always, our expectations assume our usual caveats, including normal weather and operating conditions. Let me close by reinforcing the key elements of the Explore platform. Explore is a contracted infrastructure platform generating stable cash flows supported by long-term agreements and high credit quality counterparties. Our strategy remains focused on two priorities, continuing to simplify the capital structure and executing on attractive investments into the existing asset base to create value for unit holders. We believe that consistent execution against these priorities supports both our financial flexibility and our strategic positioning. We believe that the combination of stable cash flow generation and a disciplined capital plan allows Explore to allocate retained cash flows in a value-maximizing manner over time. That discipline underpins our strategy and positions Explore to capture long-term value as U.S. power demand continues to grow. That concludes our prepared remarks, and we will now open the line for questions.

Thank you. Quick reminder before we start the Q&A, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star and the number one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and enter the queue. If you'd like to withdraw your question or your question has been answered, please press star one again. We also advise that you pick up your hands when asking for optimal sound quality. And if you're muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. With that, we will take our first question from Nelson Ng from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks, and good morning, everyone. Alan, you mentioned there was a small recontracting during the quarter with a $25 improvement in the power price. Are you able to provide the power price prior to the recontracting? I was just wondering what the percentage improvement was.

Nelson, good morning. Thanks for joining. We didn't provide the prior contract price, just commercial sensitivity of where the ultimate PPA landed here. But I would say if you think about it, right, and we've given you some disclosure previously about on average kind of the uplift, This is in line or even slightly better than kind of the uplift that we would have expected for this market. The opportunities, obviously, we've highlighted before, right? They're generally in SPP, in ERCOT, in WAC. So it's a project in one of those markets and in line with where we expected, which is it's a multiple above where the previous price was.

Okay, thanks. And then just on the battery storage fronts, I think you previously agreed to sell interconnection rights to raise 45 of the $80 million required for your equity contribution. Have you identified the rest of the projects that you're looking to sell? And then just to follow up on that, is there a timeline in terms of when there could be another batch of projects that Explorer could co-invest in?

I'll address the first question, which is the funding for the existing storage JV. We're certainly working through a list of potential opportunities with NEAR. As a reminder, construction for these projects aren't slated to begin until at the earliest end of this year, but most likely it's throughout 2027, and then they're CODing in late 2027. So we have some time, but with the list and the opportunities that we're looking at, we feel confident we will be able to fund those with additional asset sales. I think your question about will there be additional storage opportunities, I think the right way to think about it is across our 10-gigawatt portfolio, we certainly have multiple gigawatts of interconnection, surplus interconnection. Those represent potential opportunities. You know, we certainly feel out of that set, there are opportunities for additional co-located storage or other development opportunities. You know, but whether or not those projects are ultimately attractive to explore is site location specific. You know, it comes down to a lot of factors, including the demand and the pricing that can be achieved for those specific projects. And then ultimately, whether or not we participate or monetize the value of that interconnect is going to fall under our existing capital allocation framework, right? It's subject to what else can we do with our money, their better returning allocations, and then also it's subject to the balance sheet and our cost of financing. So long way of saying, yes, there's opportunity. We have not committed to any incremental investments at this time, but we'll keep you posted.

Thanks. And then just one last question. You mentioned the balance sheet. So looking at the balance sheet, there's about $943 million of cash and equivalents. I presume a lot of that cash is at the project level, but roughly how much of that cash is readily available at the corporate level?

Hey, Nelson. It's Jessica. So you can see in our SEC filings, we break out the amount of cash held in reserves at the projects. Our 10Q for this quarter will come out after market closed today, but looking back at the last quarter, there's roughly $300 million held in reserves at the projects.

Okay, great. Thanks. I'll leave it there. Thank you. Yeah?

If you'd like to ask a question, please press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. And we will take our next question from the line of Mark Jervie from CIBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just going back to the recontracting opportunity, can you comment at all in terms of like how big the funnel would be? Like how many megawatts costs your portfolio or something you're actively exploring and We're sort of, I assume it's more weighted to win just given the vintage of the contracts and assets. Is that right?

Hey, Mark. Good morning. This is Alan. That is correct. I think that's the right way to think about it. The majority of the opportunity will exist in win projects and obviously in the specific markets. We've highlighted this before in prior presentations. In the near term, and we've given you a schedule, a rough kind of chart that shows There are increasing opportunities as we get closer to 2030, but there's definitely going to be tangible opportunities that we're working on as we speak. But the majority, I would say, you know, roughly 70% of the kind of opportunity exists beyond 2030. And, you know, we're hoping to continue to execute in the next few years leading up to that.

And obviously the pricing you received was attractive. I think NextEra said around $20, no matter what hours, what they got. So that's a good uplift. Just I'm curious in terms of what the tenor of the contracts are out there and so that trade-off between price and duration.

I believe it was a 15-year contract, but we'll confirm.

But that's generally what the counterparties are looking for? Is that sort of that term at this point? Or is there a real range out there of shorter duration?

Yeah, so just to confirm, it was a 15-year bus bar contract here. And as you know, there's always a trade-off between tenor right, whether it's hub-settled or bus bar. And ultimately, you know, for us, this made the most sense, right, between duration of the contract, like the fact that in this particular market, we prefer the bus bar over a potentially higher bus bar, but hub-settled contract here.

Got it. And just on the battery projects, co-investment, are the costs all locked down for those projects? Like, you know, everything locked down in terms of Equipment, EPC, all that kind of stuff, just so that you know that the $80 million investment is more or less firm at this point?

So this is a true equity co-investment alongside near energy resources. So as with any equity investment, if there are cost overruns, we, of course, would be as a partner funding that. But we feel good about this project. It's well, you know, well-advanced, you know, supply chain. We have the same benefits, right? I've had, you know, the benefit of having you as a co-investment partner here is that we have access to that supply chain and the equipment we feel very good about having secured.

Okay. Thanks. Thank you.

Seeing as there are no further questions on the queue, that concludes our question and answer session for today. That also concludes our call for today. Thank you all for joining, and you may now disconnect.