10/24/2023

speaker
Martina Døli
Head of Investor Relations

for the quarter, together with a strategic update. We will also be joined today by our Executive Vice President of Energy, Arivid Moss, who will have a walkthrough of the recently announced transaction with Macquarie Asset Management. Lastly, our CFO, Paul Kildemo, will take you to the financials for the quarter. After presentations, we will run a Q&A session. As normal, you will be able to ask questions directly to Hilde, Arvid and Paul, and we will use the chat that you see to the right on your screen as a queue. So if you want to ask a question, you can write your name in the chat. I will get back to more instructions on this later. And with that, I leave the floor to you, Hilde.

speaker
Hilde Merete Aasheim
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Martina, and good morning and welcome from me as well. Let me begin with what is the most important in Hydro. The health and safety of our people and everybody who works for Hydro is always our top priority. Nothing is more important than that. Last week, we experienced a painful reminder of why this is so important to us. And I got the phone call I feared the most twice in one week. Two young men working within our fences lost their lives. One in our joint venture in Qatar, Catalun, the other in Alenorte, Brazil. I am deeply saddened that these two young men who came to work in our plans did not come home to their loved ones. Our heartfelt condolences go to the family, friends and affected colleagues. We are now ensuring thorough investigations of the incidents to find the root causes and to learn from them. Fatalities are a stark reminder of how immensely important it is to keep health and safety at the top of our agenda, in everything we do, always. Our target is zero incidents and we will continue to work throughout the whole Hydro organization to avoid any incident to happen. The world around us is in a state of upheaval with increased rivalry, increased conflicts and increasing unpredictability affecting all parts of the economy. This unpredictability combined with rapid monetary tightening, precious household spending and consumer behavior, and in turn, demand for aluminum. For the third quarter, we report an EBITDA of NOK 3.9 billion, while free cash flow came in at negative NOK 1.4 billion. We have had a strong release in operating capital in the quarter, offset by high investments. Weaker results this quarter are much driven by lower sales prices and volumes, but also from some one-off effects related to reduced CO2 compensation and provisions for donations supporting our long-term social ambitions accounted for this quarter. Demand for primary aluminium in the world outside China continued to decline throughout the third quarter. In downstream, we observed consistent weakness in residential building and construction, as well as in the industrial segment. However, demand towards segments supporting the green transition continued to be robust. This macro environment requires us to address these challenges by swiftly mitigating where we can, adjusting capacity to market demand, and also utilizing our portfolio flexibility. Our efforts to strengthen robustness and competitiveness continues at full force, with improvement efforts ahead of plan, freeing up cash where possible. But while addressing the short-term volatility, we are also positioning ourselves towards expected growth in demand for low-carbon aluminium in the longer term. Growing in recycling is important to serve the market for green aluminium, and we are making good progress here, also this quarter. As you will recall, on July 7th, the share purchase for Alumetal SA was settled and synergies have been confirmed and under execution with a potential EBITDA uplift ranging from 10 to 15 million by 2027. We continue our strategic growth in extrusions with three new presses added to our portfolio in China, Austria and Poland. While the market in itself is strengthening demand for low carbon aluminium, the anticipated demand growth is also supported by regulatory developments. The EU Green Deal is progressing at high pace with legislation overall supporting aluminium and renewable energy. However, the Norwegian state budget proposal presented on October the 6th introduced disappointing changes to important framework conditions for the industry as well as the power sector in Norway. Finally, this morning, we were very pleased to announce that we have finalized a capital raise for HydroRhein, signing an agreement with McQuire Asset Management to further develop and grow HydroRhein Capital Light. This transaction marks a very important milestone for the execution of our strategy of growing in renewable energy. Hydro is responding to the short-term market uncertainties by adjusting to demand developments and utilizing the flexibility we have in our portfolio, which we have developed over the last decade. In aluminum metal, we are benefiting from our casting flexibility, shifting volumes between product segments in order to avoid building inventories. We're also using the flexibility in our recycling system to mitigate short-term volatility and to keep inventories as low as possible. The same flexibility is also being used in our recycling system in extrusion. And in extrusion, we are also shifting extrusion capacity between product segments. This together with reducing production through reducing number of shifts and other banding reductions in Europe ensures that we are maintaining margins despite large volume decreases. The strong focus on inventory and capacity management has contributed to a year-to-date release of working capital of more than 4 billion. In the medium term, we are constantly delivering and identifying new improvements, and I'm pleased to report also this quarter that both our improvement program and commercial ambitions are ahead of plan for 2023. Another way to secure robustness is strategic hedging. And we continue to lock in strong aluminum margins for up to 25% of our primary portfolio when the LME price allows it. And we currently have 440,000 tons hedged for 2024 at a level of US$2,500 and 300,000 in 2025 at US$2,400. Speaking about robustness, this has been one of our main focus during the last years. We have made strong efforts in making Hydro a more robust and resilient company, which includes strong improvement drive, delivering billions on the bottom line and driving down our position on the cost curve. Locking in low cost renewable energy for a large part of our portfolio until 2030 and even into 2040. also improving our carbon footprint and increasing premiums through greener products, but then also allocating capital to strategic growth areas like high-return margin-based recycling and extrusion. This increased resilience gives us the room to maneuver and to handle the short-term challenges without losing sight of the long-term opportunities, progressing with determination on our strategic agenda. This quarter has included several milestones in our strategy execution. And now also the partnership with Macquarie, which we announced this morning. And now I will introduce Executive Vice President of Hydro Energy, Arvid Moss, which will now run you through the partnership with Macquarie and what it entails for HydroRank's growth journey going forward. Please have it.

speaker
Arvid Moss
Executive Vice President of Energy

Thank you, Hilde, and good morning, everyone. As Hilde said, this transaction marks an important milestone for execution upon our strategy in growing in the new renewable energy. Today, I'm really proud to present the groundbreaking partnership. Hyder is joining forces with one of the largest energy renewable investors in the world, Macquarie Asset Management, to accelerate the exciting journey of Hyderain and the decarbonization that we're going to do in the industry with green power. We have spent quite some time on this process and we have spent the time well to find the right partner. Macquarie Asset Management and Hydro have worked together on renewable energy projects back since 2017, so we know each other quite well. And we share the drive to reduce industrial emissions. We meet a highly competent Macquarie Asset Management that is focused on performance and profitability. And we believe that Mackwire, with their financial and commercial strength, and also their leading expertise now in renewables, really match very well with Hydro's very competent organization in this area, and that together we can accelerate our joint ambitions to decarbonize industries in a profitable way. So a little bit to the transaction details. Through an investment of $332 million, Macquarie Asset Management will acquire 49.9% of Hydro Rain. Hydro will own the remaining 50.1% and we will develop Hydro Rain together as a JV. This transaction values Hydro Rain at $333 million per 30th of June this year on an equity basis. With the capital from acquired asset management, Hydro Rain is expected to be self-funded in the medium term with no further equity injections from Hydro in the coming years. The transaction is subject to standard regulatory approvals and transaction terms required by both sides. This includes several conditions present on both Hydro and acquired asset management, which needs to be satisfied, including related to funding of the transaction. Subject to satisfaction, closing of the transaction is expected to come second quarter 2024. All of HydroGrain's assets are included in this deal, with an exception of onshore wind projects located close to the hydrosmelters in Norway. And for example, the Snøhaja Industrikraft that we announced in December last year is the only current project of that kind. And it differs also from other renewable projects in several ways. It's really very close to our smelter. It's intended directly to go to the smelter and use there for continuing the green aluminium production and for industrial companies in the region. It's very closely developed with aluminium metal and the local community. And it's really something that we do together to really create the basis for a good development of the Høyhungersmätet going forward. This project is an early development stage. If we get support from local municipalities and we decide to move forward with this project, potential capital spending will come towards the end of this decade. Now let's move to where we are with HydroRain after three years of growth. The ambition of HydroRain is to become a preferred supplier of renewable energy solutions to our industrial customer base with Brazil and Nordics as our core markets. We have two business segments in rain, renewable energy, which is a big majority, and we have energy solutions. And we have already made significant progress with four wind and solar projects in construction for a total of 1.7 gigawatts. And if we include the project Vista Alegre in Brazil, it's actually 2.6 gigawatts gross. This is a significant pipeline. And we see also that we have a long pipeline of projects that we can work on over the next years, particularly in the Nordics. The three projects we have in construction in Brazil, together, we have one project in Brazil that we actually are doing together with Macquire, and that is the Feijão project. Altogether, in the four projects, we have now 4,000 people working on the sites, and when we come to Captain Marcus Day, we will give more insight on where we are on this project. And in Sweden, actually, in Stora Skärsjön, we have already started production from the first turbines, and all turbines are expected to be in operation by year end. So things are moving forward. Energy Solutions is gaining pace. This is a less mature market. We have a growing number of energy storage and efficiency projects in construction and operation across Norway, Sweden and Germany, including a total of eight battery projects. But as we see going forward now, this with energy efficiency and also inside fence solutions will be more important. This is how we are building up HydroRain step by step. Let me also share with you a little bit update compared to what we said on the Capital Markets Day last year and where we are now. Last year we communicated the 2026 targets as that we should have a 3 gigawatt gross portfolio in operation and construction in 2026. We had an ambition to add more than 500 megawatts annually gross capacity and that the four projects that we have in construction should give an estimated EBITDA between 4 and 450 million when they were in operation. So where are we now? As of Q3 2023, we have the 1.7 in operation and construction. We have added 1.5 gigawatts total in the pipeline over the last 12 months. We are estimating to spend approximately 3 billion NOC in equity in CapEx in this project that we have in construction. And we have estimated now the contribution from these four projects to be between around 410 million annually. So we are on track. So where do we see this business coming forward? This is a business where we think we can deliver good returns for our investors. We are targeting an equity internal rate of return of 10 to 10% annually for the whole rate platform value going forward. And as I said, the value creation starts with thorough screening, identifying attractive assets where we can utilize our core strengths. And both Feeder and Acquire has strong track record from scaling projects and businesses, which is a clear advantage in growing renewable energy markets. And we will capitalize on synergies both across projects and operations. And we will lever on our competence when it comes to also the market side. And I think that we have a special good relation now to really develop industrial partnerships with industrial customers. And that brings me to the PPAs. I think we have shared this more with you also earlier, but we target with the rate to have 60 to 70% PPA coverage. And here on this page, you can see an overview of the current PPAs and the coverage we have. And also going forward, we want to secure that our projects are, let's say, well linked to PPA so that we can take down risk and create a good foundation for also debt financing. But let me also show how this works with the rest of the activity. Hydro's captive power and PPA strategy ensure robustness and contribute to place Hydro at the lower end of the cost curve for primary aluminium pieces, as you see on the figure to the left. As important, it enabled us to produce aluminium in Norway with a low carbon footprint and 75% less than the global average. But also in Brazil, we have enabled, through rain, the fuel switch to El Boise and Norte, and that will take down the CO2 emissions substantially. But as you see to the right there now, we are facing a new round of sourcing for upstream hydro. And that is really one of the thoughts behind rain when we established this three years back in time. Because one, we saw the value potential in renewables. We also saw that we need to take an active owner role to make things happen at speed and with the right quality throughout the lifecycle. And we see that rain can contribute with risk mitigation for hydro in a challenging energy market. And we also see that we create a long term cost advantage for both bauxite and metal. So there are four reasons why we think this is really a good value proposition for hydro. And it is important to recognize that getting to profitable build decisions have become more challenging in most countries. Being able to be a good developer and owner has become more important Staying in, just not flip and sell, has become more important. And here Hydro Rain can really benefit from Hydro's long transition in many local societies around the world. So these days, going out and just pick a PPA is not as easy as before for industrial customers. But with Hydro Rain in the family, we can really build values in both ends, both as a renewable producer and industrial consumer, and in between, optimizing on an hourly basis in the markets. But Hydro, as a very large consumer, will source from several suppliers. So it will not only be from rain and vice versa. Hydro Rain will also support other industrial customers with power supply and other energy solutions. But I think that the strong industrial approach in Hydro Rain makes it a very good match for the rest of the Hydro family. So, to summarize, with Macquarie Acidments coming in as a co-owner in Hydro Rain, the company is uniquely positioned for long-term value creation. Hydro Rain's aim is to become the preferred supplier of renewable energy for industrial clients in its core markets. The company has already shown to be a key enabler for decarbonization of hydro, and more industrial customers will follow. We have established a strong presence in Brazil, but going forward, the company will focus on growing in the Nordics and selected markets in Europe. And with the Hydro's strong industrial presence in Europe and Macquarie as a partner, Hydro Rain is an excellent position to grow further. And with that, well, I have to say at the end, together with my car we really have got a partner that will help us also to drive performance and profit profitability through this um through this setup and i really look forward to deliver also good results going forward from peter rain so with that i'll leave it back to you hilda thank you arvid and then i continue my strategic update

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