Public Power Corp Greece

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am the IE, your chorus call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Public Power Corporation conference call to present and discuss the full year 2025 financial results. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. George Stachys, Chairman and CEO, Mr. Costantinos Alexandridis, CFO, and Mr. Ioannis Stefos, Chief and Bachelor Relations Officer. Mr. Stefos, you may now proceed.

Hello everyone and thank you for joining today's conference call for PPC's full year 2025 results. We will begin with an overview of the group's results from our chairman and CEO, Giorgio Stasis, followed by a review of the financial performance for the period by our group CFO, Konstantinos Alexandridis. After the conclusion of the presentation, we will open the floor for your questions during the Q&A session. The IR team will be available after the call for any follow-up discussions. With that, I will now turn the call over to Georgios. Georgios, please go ahead.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's earnings call. PPC had a strong performance for another year, in line with the strategic target set in the business plan, with adjusted EBITDA increasing to 2 billion and net income at 0.45 billion, demonstrating the extent of the transformation and the growth that has been achieved during the last years. This significant growth in profitability has allowed us to keep increasing dividend distribution in line with our plan, which provides for further improvement of shareholders' remuneration with a gradual increase of dividend to 1.2 euros per share in 2028. Investments stood at 2.8 billion euros with a majority allocated to renewables, flexible generation, and distribution projects, supporting a further step up in profitability going forward. Despite high capex, our balance sheet position remains solid, with a net debt to EBITDA ratio at 3.2 times at the end of 2025, providing the necessary room to implement our investment plan in the next years. Moving to slide 7. The last years have been directing capital toward renewable energy, flexible generation and distribution. As a result of these investments, we have been able to increase both the regulated asset base, as we will see later, but also the renewables and flexible generation capacity, which now represents 80% of our total capacity. In this way, year after year, we are increasing our renewables footprint. combining it with flexible generation assets, while at the same time we have made significant progress in phasing out lignite, a process which is at the final stage with a last unit of 700 megawatt planned to cease its operation by the end of this year. Deep diving now to generation business on slide 8. As you can see, we have increased the total install capacity to 12.4 gigawatt. led by the continuous rollout of new renewable projects, which has outweighed the reduction of lignite capacity during the last year. Our total generation output has remained practically stable, however with increased participation of renewables on the back of reduced production from lignite and oil. More specifically, renewables output increased to 6.9 TWh. driven by wind and solar generation, reflecting the addition of new capacity, which outbalanced the very weak performance of large hydro power plants for last year. As a result, renewables increased its share to 33% of our total output, On the flip side, lignite generation declined at 2.7 terawatt hours and oil at 3.6 terawatt hours, corresponding to 13% and 17% of total output, respectively. 2026 is a milestone for PPC generation activity, since it marks the end of lignite fire generation after many decades, making PPC coal-free. Last, Gas generation had no change versus 2024, being, however, a very important component of our energy mix today, corresponding to 37% of our total output. As a result, CO2 Scope 1 emissions declined by half a million of 0.5 million tones compared to last year. And going forward, we expect further improvements since we will cease our lignite operations by the end of the year. Now moving to page nine. Let me briefly describe the progress in renewable projects that we have achieved in the fourth quarter of 2025. Executing our strategic plan with discipline, we completed the construction of an additional 800 MW of capacity across Greece and abroad. The majority of these additions were solar projects which exceeded the 700 MW in total, complemented by the first 59 MW of battery energy storage installed in Greece and Romania, as well as 36 MW from a wind farm in northern Greece. In summary, 546 megawatt of renewable projects across various technologies were completed in Greece, along with 272 megawatt internationally in the fourth quarter, leading to total additions for 2025 at 1.7 gigawatt, as we will see in more detail in the following slides. Going to slide 10. Let's see in more detail the additions that we concluded in the fourth quarter of 2025. First, in Greece. Major projects totaling 550 MW were completed since the November Capital Markets Day. Specifically, we completed the last 30 MW of a 550 MW solar project located in the formal ignited area of Ptolemaida in northern Greece. In the same region, in cooperation with RWE, we completed the final 623 MW of a 938 MW solar project. In the Peloponnese region, again in a formal ignite area, we completed the first 125 MW of a 490 MW solar project. The second 125 MW cluster is currently under construction, and the third cluster is scheduled to begin construction later this year. For wind, we successfully completed 36.4 megawatt in central Greece in the region of Akiva. And last, an important milestone was also the completion of our first battery project in Greece in the formerly ignited areas of Palemaida as well. Outside of Greece, in the fourth quarter, We added 272 megawatt of capacity from renewable projects, mainly solar across Southeast Europe as depicted in detail in slide 11. Starting with Romania, we completed solar projects of 215 megawatt in total in various locations, along with 9 megawatt of batteries, which will enable us to enhance dispatch optimization and capture value from balancing services and price arbitrage. At the same time, we completed 17.5 MW of photovoltaics in Italy and 30 MW in Bulgaria, increasing our footprint in these countries. Overall, as you can see, we keep a good pace of additions, delivering significant renewable capacity while continuing to expand our construction pipeline. All of the above are summarized in the next slide, slide 12. which shows that we remain on track to achieve our 2028 renewables target of 12.7 gigawatts, as presented in our last Capital Market Day. We have added 1.7 gigawatts in 2025, standing now at a total of 7.2 gigawatts. And we have another 3.7 gigawatts that are either in construction, ready to build, or in the tender process, having secured, in essence, 86% of the capacity that we target for 2028. There has been further progress in our pipeline also in terms of maturity, having moved during the fourth quarter, last fourth quarter, approximately 600 megawatt into the under construction and ready to build stages from the permitting and engineering stage. And this process of adding new capacity, maturing additional projects is something that we We have been doing many quarters now, and we will continue to do so as we advance multiple projects across Greece and internationally. Let us now move to slide 13, which provides key highlights of our retail activity and the overall environment in Greece and Romania. Electricity demand was slightly decreased in both countries by minus 1.3% in Greece, reflecting milder average temperatures compared to 2024, and by 0.6% in Romania. Our electricity sales decreased by 1.9% compared to 2024, primarily driven by lower demand in Greece and a slight market share reduction in both countries. Deep diving in the retail activity in slide 14, Despite this intensely competitive environment throughout 2025, we successfully defended our market share while expanding beyond the commodity segment, demonstrating our ability to diversify and deliver impactful results. Customers remain our top priority. This is reflected in our strong top-line performance across all customer satisfaction metrics and the continued improvement in the quality of our customer base. Notably, budget exposure decreased by 14%, as shown in the bottom right graph, driven by improved penetration and more effective management of high-risk customer segments. On top of various targeted propositions that we launched during the year, SME, family, and other, and as artificial intelligence continues to shape market developments, we launched in Greece a virtual assistant to support our customers. This is the first AI-powered digital assistant in the market designed to elevate the customer experience by providing clear explanations of bill charges in simple language. For our activities in Romania, 2025 was a transitional year following the lifting of the price caps. As competition has been growing, we focus on protecting and strengthening customer relationships through targeted retention actions. Looking ahead, we expect 2026 to remain highly competitive. We will continue to focus on delivering value, strengthening customer engagement, and maintaining resilience in an evolving market landscape. Just a few words for several synergy streams in the retail activity that we set up in 2025. We are in slide 15. Protovolos has been key for this, providing the opportunity to launch a broad range of initiatives. Our collaboration has evolved from establishing a strong in-store presence and developing dedicated PPC shop-in-shop corners featuring our products to extending field services coverage that delivers essential energy solutions to customers and households, services that are fundamental to everyday living. Looking ahead to 2026, we plan to further strengthen our footprint within PPC shops, while expanding our product and service portfolio to reach additional customer segments, addressing a broader spectrum of needs. Next, in slide 16, a few words of certain KPIs of our distribution business. We continue to invest significantly in 2025 with CAPEX increasing by 2% year-on-year in line with our strategy to enhance and digitalize our electricity distribution networks. The total regulated asset base now stands at 5.7 billion euros from 4.9 billion euros last year, mainly driven by the increase in Greece following material investments. The strong investment activity is also reflected in the improvement of the reliability indices of our networks in both Greece and Romania. While smart meters penetration continues its upward trend, we further need to grow, especially in Greece. Turning to slide 17. We can see how the implementation of our strategic initiatives, combined with active engagement, have resulted to actual progress in several ESG ratings and scores within 2025. Specifically, our efforts have been recognized by S&P Global, ECOVADIS, MSEI, ATEX ESG, and ISS, all of which upgraded PPC's ratings and scores. These improvements reflect tangible progress in several key areas, such as environmental management, renewable portfolio expansion, corporate governance, ESG integration, and transparent reporting. These advancements underscore our commitment to sustainability, mitigating business risk, and fostering long-term value for all stakeholders. Let me now pass it on to Konstantinos for the financial performance analysis.