Enel Spa Unsp/Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to NL First Health 2021 results. At this time, all participants are in list and only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Monica Girardi, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Monica.

Thank you. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. A warm welcome to our first half 2021 results presentation, which will be hosted by our CEO, Francesco Staracci, and our CFO, Alberto De Paoli. In the presentation, Francesco will provide some highlights of the period and will sum up the milestones achieved, while Alberto will walk you through the operational and financial performance for the group. Following the presentation, we will have the usual Q&A session. We ask those connected to the webcast to send questions only via email at investor.relations.nl.com. Before we start, let me remind you that media is listening to both the presentation and the Q&A session. Thank you, and now let me hand over to Francesco.

Thank you, Monica. Good evening, everybody. Let's start with the highlights of the period. We are at chart number one of the presentation pack. The operating dynamics of the quarter of the year showed a trend of significant recovery, and the industrial pickup is now visible in the financials of the period. As we detail later, the second quarter represented a turnaround across all industrial KPIs that are now accelerating and getting back to the levels of pre-COVID-19. progressive were made also in simplifying the group with the completion of the merger of egp assets into americans and the corporate organization in colombia in light of the predictable evolution of the business we can therefore confirm our targets of the year including the guaranteed dividend per share of 0.38 euro per share for the 2021 year on slide number two we dive into some industrial kpis of the second quarter in renewables We tripled the capacity built with 1,100 megawatts installed only in the second quarter of the year, making a strong acceleration that supports our target of the year around 5,800 megawatts. Our network's volumes of electricity distributed are now back to pre-COVID-19 levels, increasing 11% versus the second quarter of 2020, highly impacted by lockdown measures, especially in Latin America. In customers, the electricity sold to our customers in the free market is up remarkable, almost 20% year on year. So industrial performance is back on track. The next slide shows the upward trend on investments that we are deploying. We invested $4.9 billion in the period, an increase of 20% versus the same period of the previous year. In the ownership business model, almost half of the investments were devoted to networks, with the remaining half allocated to the generation business, out of which around 2 billion to renewables. From a geographical perspective, 2.5 billion gross capex was deployed in Europe, 1.4 in Latin America, and the remaining portion mainly in North America with around 700 million euros. We have invested around 300 millions through the stewardship business model focused primarily on NLX and renewables capacity managed through our joint ventures. Investment catalyzed and deployed by the third parties associated with the stewardship model amounted to around 1 billion euros. Moving on to our global generation business on slide number four, we can see that the total installed capacity is approaching the 90,000 mark fueled by the growth in renewable fleet, which now stands at 50,000 megawatts and accounting for 56% of the total capacity we manage. The green repositioning of our generation portfolio is evident. and it is progressing at full speed with 3,600 renewable megawatts additions and 1,000 megawatts of conventional generation capacity closed in the last 12 months. Generation output increased overall by 8% year-on-year. It reached more than 110 terawatt-hour, recovering from the contraction that was observed in 2020 as the consequence of COVID-19. The total electricity produced is almost back to 2019 levels, but with significant changes in the output mix. In fact, if we consider pre-pandemic levels, the reduction of thermal production is notable, as well as the significant increase in renewable contribution up to 15% by 2019. It's worth to highlight that coal production was down a further 5% year-on-year after the steep decrease of around 16 terawatt-hours last year, and that the increase in thermal production is mainly driven by gas and by the low levels of hydro resources in Latin America, namely in Chile. Thanks to the continued effort on decarbonization emissions, emission-free production is up 9 percentage points for 2019, reaching 65%. That positions us well on track to reach our decarbonization targets. If we focus on the progress made on renewable growth, we go to slide number five on Ener Green Power, where we see that total renewable capacity stands now at around 550,000 megawatts, approaching 60% of our total installed base, roughly. Renewable capacity built over the last 12 months is equal to 3,600 megawatts, despite challenging conditions imposed by COVID-19. Year to date, We built 1,300 megawatts, almost doubling the amount of megawatts deployed in the same period of previous year. We will scale up the magnitude of new renewable capacity additions. We expect to commission over the next two quarters about 4.5 thousand megawatts. As of today, 100% of these projects are in different degrees of execution phases, offering high visibility on their deployment by year end. Our global footprint and development capabilities allowed us to secure 100% of our supply of goods and materials until 2022, offering protection against the inflationary environment that was observed during these months and the spike in commodity prices. Such a remarkable acceleration are made possible thanks to our pipeline, which is also backing, growing and backing up future growth projects. We see that in the following chart. As of today, this is chart number six, pipeline has surpassed 300,000 megawatts, broadening project optionality, securing flexibility of capital allocation, and more than everything, protection on returns. mature pipeline is now worth 73 000 megawatts out of which 23 000 megawatts are earmarked for the period 21 23 and 46 000 are already covering projects for the 24 25 period over the last 12 months our mature pipeline grew by almost 30 000 megawatts and almost 6 000 megawatts entered the execution phase The mature and early stage pipeline dynamic positions us optimally for both the planned period as well as for the years to come, offering an advantage into the new decade of 2030 and supporting our growth ambition. With respect to the 19,500 megawatts targeted additions for year 21-23, today we stand at around 70% of this target addressed with around 1,300 megawatts already built as of now, and around 12,000 currently in execution. The residual target is covered, therefore, 3.6 times by the related portion of mature pipeline, which translates in negligible delivery risk, high confidence of achieving even more than this by end of the period. We can leverage on this extensive and well-diversified pipeline also to further push the implementation of the stewardship model in renewables thanks to our origination capabilities crystallizing over time the value that sits in this large portfolio. Let's move now to the operating achievement on global infrastructure and networks, and we are on chart number seven. In the first six months of 2021, volumes in electricity distributed stood at 246 terawatt-hours, up 6% year-on-year, showing a progressive recovery from the dynamics that were observed in 2020 affected by lockdown measures. Looking more closely at the evolution across the two quarters of the year, The first quarter recorded a mere 2% increase. The second quarter is up by 11%, which is the same period of last year, which is a clear evidence of the acceleration of the recovery. This acceleration has been observed across all geographies, which now stand at level of distributed energy almost in line with the pre-COVID-19 level in Europe. volumes increased 11 terawatt-hours versus last year. In Latin America, the uplift is driven by Brazil, where we distributed 2.4 terawatt-hours more than the same period of 2020. And thanks to our continued commitment in fostering the quality and resilience of our networks, SAIDI improved by 6% and stands now at 250 minutes. The rollout of the second generation smart meter progressed further with another number of smart meter installed that reached 21 millions, up more than 40% versus the previous year. Let's look now at customers on slide number eight. Our position on free customers strengthened in the last 12 months, both via our retail operation, as well as our services and platforms offered by NLX. More than 1 million new customers have been added to the free market, mainly Romania, due to the end of the regulated tariff, and Italy added 300,000 customers. Energy sold in the free market is up 10%, with volumes increasing in both B2B and B2C segments, driven by economic recovery. Looking at NLX, This business line performed extremely well with double digit increase recorded on all product lines. More than 100,000 charging points have been added to our electricity network for electricity vehicles, reaching more than 200,000 figure, up 2.2 times versus last year. Lighting points increased 2.9 million, up 21%. Battery storage increased by 27 megawatts. More than 7,000 megawatts of demand response capacity was offered globally. In fiber, we reached 12.1 million households passed, up 39% year on year. The industrial development goes together with the progress on group simplification. We are now at chart number nine. And we see here that after the completion of the merger and the public tender offer, we now own 82.3% of Enel America's This has aligned our corporate structure with the other subsidiaries of the group. The integration of renewables will unlock synergies, will reduce operational and financial risks for REN America, resulting into an earning accretion of the group, which we estimate to the tune of 13%. Our aim of reaching a streamlined and more efficient structure continues as testified by the agreement reached in Colombia with the creation of a single corporate vehicle that will support growth in the country. Let's now open up the section on financial results. I hand over to Alberto for that part. Alberto, the floor is yours.