Enel Spa Unsp/Adr

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the NL First Half 2024 Resorts Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Monica Girardi. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good evening, everybody. Welcome to the first half 24 results presentation hosted by NL's CEO, Flavio Cattaneo, and the CFO, Stefano De Angelis. Following the presentation, we will have the usual Q&A session. We ask people connected to the webcast to send questions only via email at investor.relations at 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 the CEO.

Thank you, Monica, and good evening to everybody. Let's start with the highlights of the period. The strong performance of the beginning of the year extended also in the second quarter, with visible progress on financial results, the leveraging, and efficiencies. To date, we have cashed in more than 5 billion from disposal and we have taken a step further with the partnership deal in Spain as just announced. All this confirms our confidence on 024 delivery. We see the result to move towards the top of the range with a positive impact also in our dividend. Indeed, I remind you that our dividend policy allows us to pay up to 70% of our ordinary earnings if cash neutrality is reached. Let's now dive into the details of our performance. Financial results improved visibly. Ordinary EBITDA came in at 11.7 billion, up by 9% versus previous year. Stefano will elaborate on the main drivers later on in the presentation. Ordering net income is up double digit, confirming the trend observed in the first quarter. Cash generation remains strong, with FFO reaching 5.5 billion and providing some coverage of the net capex. These results are supported by managerial action put in place so far. We record further improvement in the regulatory frameworks across our operation due to our ongoing advocacy activities. In Italy, we welcome a set of degrees that can be a game changer for the renewable development. Still in Italy, on July 1st, we welcomed in our customer base the client leaving the regulated segment. In LATAM, we enjoy the stability of the regulatory frameworks and appreciate the ongoing constructive discussion with the various regulators. Value creation is mainly achieved through a carefully planned capital allocation. In line with our strategic pillars, capex networks account for more than 50%. More than 65% of total investment were deployed in Europe. As a consequence, industrial parameters improve across the board. RAP customers stood at around €650. Renewables production on total increased by 10% point, while the share of emission-free production reached almost 85%. This industrial performance benefited also our customer segment, with fixed sales covered by renewable production for almost 90%. In the period, we recorded a significant progress also in the partnership business model. In the first six months of this year, we have already completed two deals worth around 2 billion out of six to be cashed in by 2026. In particular, following the successful completion of the partnership with Sosteneo in Italy, today we announced a partnership with Masdar on solar assets in Spain. These are two clear examples of how we can enhance the value associated with our project. In the partnership business model, investments are shared with third parties to foster capacity growth and to accelerate paybacks and returns. And more will come. I will now move to the second pillar of our action. Over the second quarter, we continued to progress on efficiencies. In just 12 months, we reached around 500 million savings versus 0.22. And now we are halfway through the 1 billion target set in November 0.23. More than 70% of this reduction is associated with the project across business and geographies, while the rest has been recorded at holding level due to the rationalization of operating expenses and overhead reduction. Let's now focus on the third pillar of our strategy, financial and environmental sustainability. In two years, the quality of our results improved thanks to the managerial action implemented in the last 14 months. Notwithstanding the perimeter effect, EBITDA is up by more than 40% and it is clean of any capital gain. Operating cash flow produced organically increased by almost 8 times. Net net on EBDA improved strongly. Not yet included around 2 billion cash in from announced disposal. And now... is now positioned as one of the less levered companies in the sector. On environmental sustainability, emission intensity recorded a remarkable 41% decrease over the past 12 months. And now I leave the floor to Stefano who will deep dive into the financial performance of the period.