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Uniper Se

Q22020

8/11/2020

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the analyst and investor conference call of Uniper. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has difficulties hearing the conference, please press star key followed by zero on your telephone for operator assistance. I now hand you over to Udo Giegerich, who will start the meeting today. Please go ahead.

speaker
Udo Giegerich
Head of Investor Relations

Good morning, the analysts and investors. Welcome to the Uniper Interim Results Call for the first half year of 2020. I'm sitting here with our CEO Andreas Schierenbeck and our CFO Sascha Biebert in our headquarter in Düsseldorf. Looking at today's agenda, Andreas will start with the key highlights and give an overview where we stand on our strategy execution when it comes to hydrogen and the coal exit. Afterwards, he will go through the latest developments on the commodity markets and the respective impact on our business. In the second half of today's call, Sascha will dive into the details of the financial interim results and provide an update on the full year outlook for 2020. Right after the presentation, you will have the chance to raise your questions.

speaker
Andreas Schierenbeck
Chief Executive Officer

Having said that, Andreas, the mic is yours. Thanks, Udo, and good morning, everyone, and welcome also from my side. Thank you for participating in our conference call today, and let me start with the essential topics of the first half of 2020. First, I'm very satisfied with our financial performance in the first half. As we saw already in Q1, the guest business is a strong earning driver this year, bringing our overall adjusted group EBIT to €691 million, which is more than double compared to prior year. Adjusted net income increased even stronger to 527 million euros. This means that we are on track despite the considerable macroeconomic and commodity headwinds. The negative impact of COVID-19 on production and energy supply volumes had limited impact on our operating results in the first half of our 2020 fiscal year. However, we do see some impacts around project delivery. Based on this overall strong performance, we feel confident to narrow our full-year guidance already at this point in time. Sasha will provide you further details a little bit later. Secondly, on our portfolio optimization and strategy plans. We continue to ramp up our business initiatives in the hydrogen area. As part of this, a hydrogen business line has been set up within UNEPA. The new team is structured in a way to be more efficient than a conventional ZERO or silo organization, as it enables us to pull more resources together and to access a wider range of group-wide expertise, which is key to push this topic ahead. We're also involved in various activities to be part of upcoming sector projects supported by the EU and national governments. In order to become carbon neutral in the European generation business by 2035, we need to find technical solutions to make our gas-fired power plants hydrogen-ready. For this, we have formed alliances with our two major equipment suppliers, General Electric and Siemens. Coming to the coal-related business, the concrete implementation of the planned phase-out of German coal-fired power generation continues to gather pace. A binding law is in place since the beginning of July. The first option for hard coal-fired power station is earmarked to take place on September 1st. Here we are working to implement the best options for Uniper to exit from coal-fired power generation as quickly as possible and in a way that preserves value. The coal-to-gas conversion has accelerated due to the low prices for natural gas and the rising prices for emissions allowances in the EU. Consequently, Irsing 4 and 5, our two most efficient German gas-fired power plants, will exit the German grid reserve mechanism as standby power plants and will be allowed to operate on the merchant market again from October 2020. Now coming to our two legacy growth projects. The Dutton 4 coal-fired power plant was successfully commissioned at the end of May 2020. The Coal Exit Act has confirmed DUTN-4's admission to operate. At the same time, it also enables the option to accelerate the phase-out of older, more efficient, inefficient, hard coal-fired power plants. When we were able to put our DUTN-4 power plant into operation earlier than planned, we are facing COVID-19-related delays at Beresovskaya 3 lignite fire power plant in Siberia. Corona cases at the construction site required a temporary shutdown of the repair works and to take further precautions. Hence, the remaining work here is currently only continuing with a limited skilled workforce. This will postpone the start of Berezovskaya into the first half of 2021. With regards to major projects, we cannot ignore the unfortunate development around Nord Stream 2, which continues to be a point of contention between the US and Russian government. Overall, the pressure on Nord Stream 2 has been further intensified by the U.S. government, but the sanctions have not been implemented yet. Germany and Europe have reassured the political support for Nord Stream 2, given its security of supply role. On July 15, the U.S. government has updated its public guidance on the CAATSA sanctions, and based on that update, the guidance on so-called grandfathering has been adjusted. According to our understanding, are now are also targeted but only those taken after after july 15 2020. uniper server close the monitoring and analyzing situation finally coming to the shareholders here our first successful virtual and regenerative meeting with high approval ratings for all agenda items confirms that we are on the right track we can now focus even more on strategic development The five new supervisory board members elected at the annual general meeting bring a high level of sector and specialist expertise. With the process of the H1 reporting, Uniper and Fortum teams worked already intensively in order to enable Fortum to smoothly incorporate Uniper as a consolidated entity within Fortum's half-year financial statements. This sets another milestone to strengthen the relationship with Fortum, where we congratulate Markus Rauramo on his new role as CEO of Fortum. Over the upcoming weeks, we will be intensifying the exchange between both companies through a strategic alignment process with the aim to bring the strategies of Uniper and Fortum closer to each other. One of the major strategic issues that Uniper can apply its expertise and future growth investments is the area of hydrogen, which I will describe in more detail on the next page. The production of green gases, especially hydrogen, as a supplement of renewable energies for electricity generation is a missing building block to lead Europe towards sustainable energy supply by 2050. The EU and many national European governments have given the issue an enormous political boost in recent years. Thus, the German Federal Cabinet in June and the EU Commission in early July presented their roadmap for the implementation of a hydrogen strategy. The EU Commission Economics Recovery Plan Next Generation EU highlights that hydrogen technologies can become an engine of growth in Europe, create local jobs, and enable Europe to play a technological pioneering role in a global market. Currently, 75% of fossil fuels still dominate Europe's primary energy mix, with 33% still based on oil, around 25% based on natural gas, and 15% on coal. It will be a challenging task and a great opportunity for the next decade to replace fossil energies with renewable energies and carbon-neutral hydrogen. Currently, hydrogen is mainly being produced from natural gas in a process that releases carbon dioxide. Therefore, it's usually referred to as grey hydrogen. If the CO2 is captured, stored or reused, then it's considered blue hydrogen. Green hydrogen is produced through electrolysis using green electricity. In our view, we use both green and blue hydrogen in order to reach the given carbon targets. We anticipate that green hydrogen will play a substantial role in the energy transition at some point in time. However, until green hydrogen is economically viable, blue hydrogen can be a great addition to help develop the hydrogen economy and provide the commercial framework needed to trigger the necessary investments into infrastructure. The transition process is now ramping up to enable commercially viable business cases around hydrogen. The EU political roadmap provides for the implementation of a policy in three steps. Phase one, policy makers promote technology development through European economies architecture projects and create a reliable regulatory framework. From now to 2024, the EU will support installation of at least six gigawatts of renewable hydrogen electrolysis in the EU and the production of up to one million tons of renewable hydrogen. Phase two, between 2025 and 2030, hydrogen needs to become an intrinsic part of Europe's integrated energy system. The EU ambition is to tenfold production under 2030, up to 10 megatons of renewable hydrogen backed by at least 40 gigawatts of renewable hydrogen electrolysis. Germany has set its goal to contribute at least five gigawatts for that goal. Phase three, from 2030 on, renewable hydrogen should be deployed at a large scale across all hard to decarbonize sectors. As you can see on the slide, Unipa has the ambition and the capabilities to occupy many fields within the value chain in the hydrogen economy. Unipa targets are all non-CO2 emitting forms of hydrogen production. Unipair brings project development, partnering, integration capabilities, as well as a strong customer-supplier relationship. Depending on the market prerequisites and concrete regulations that are about to be developed, we will choose our engagement according to the potential. In order to identify the future potential of the different market segments in the hydrogen value chain, we need concrete framework conditions and guidelines from European and national political decision makers. This is where Uniper and I can help, for example, in my role as a member of the newly founded German National Hydrogen Council. The Council is tasked to advise the federal government on the concrete implementation of the National Hydrogen Strategy in Germany. We will be able to significantly contribute to the work of the Council based on the expertise that Uniper has acquired in a series of hydrogen pilot projects over the last year. Our current project initiatives are based on R&D partnering and semi-commercial pilot plants in the Unibas core market, Germany, UK, Netherlands, and Sweden. We focus to be part of flagship electrolyzer projects in order to operate hydrogen technologies on a commercial scale for the first time. Aside from the mentioned cooperation with technology providers to convert our gas power plant fleet, we are also working on further developing existing coal generation brownfield sites, such as Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea, which could become a future hydrogen hub. Due to its location, this site offers a variety of options for sourcing an electrolysis plant, ranging from offshore wind to transport by ship. For example, we have signed a letter of intent to conduct a feasibility study for Salzgitter AG on the production and handling of environmentally friendly sponge iron with upstream hydrogen electrolysis. In addition, We see an evolving international hydrogen economy to provide supply, trading, and optimization opportunities. Uniper, which is a commercial power and gas business, is well positioned to play a leading role not only on the operational but also on the commercial side midstream for future hydrogen industry. Our goal is to become CO2 neutral in our European power plant production by 2035. In Germany, the coal phase-out act was passed on July 3rd after long and controversial discussions. This law does not only end coal-fired power production by 2038 latest, but it also provides necessary legal framework for our planning over the next year. According to this regulation, German hard coal and lignite fire power plant capabilities are to be reduced by 40% by the end of 2025. Uniper has significantly more ambitions than this. In fact, we are almost twice as ambitious given our commitment to reduce our German coal and lignite capacities by 78% in the same period. As we will also reduce our capacities outside of Germany after 2025, Uniper is the only the only operating two most modern hard coal-fired power plants in Europe, Dublin IV in Germany, and Maastricht III in the Netherlands. The step in the decommissioning of German hard coal-fired power plants is the first coal exit auction taking place as early as September 1st. As a result of the first tender, 4,000 megawatts of capacity will be taken off the German grid by the end of the year. Seven more auction rounds will follow afterwards until spring 2025. The price cap in the first tender is set at 165,000 euros per megawatt and will decrease gradually over time with only 89,000 euros per megawatt in the last tender round. We are currently analyzing which is the best exit option for our hard coal-fired power plants in the upcoming auctions. there are quite some factors that need to be taken into consideration aside from the communicated price gaps. Among others, we need to consider our contractual obligations toward customers and, of course, the needs of our employees. In order to be able to focus on this multitude of strategy development issues, it's helpful that our operating business is in steady waters. And this performance has been achieved against the background of a difficult commodity price environment, as you can see on the next slide. Slide six illustrates how our market environment has been influenced by COVID-19 and weather in recent months, starting with gas. Prices have fallen significantly during the first month of 2020 and have remained low since March. The fall 2021 price which is shown on our slide, even temporarily fell below 12 euros per megawatt hour during July. This is mainly due to a depressed outlook for the gas market, characterized by LNG oversupply and very high storage levels. The expected economic situation might be also waiting on the gas demand outlook and therefore dampening forward prices. One of the few supporting factors are increasing concerns about the impact of potential sanctions on the completion of Nord Stream 2. Moving over to carbon. In mid-March, the carbon price collapsed in line with reduced emissions from the power industry and the aviation sector on the back of the COVID-19-related lockdown. After the significant drop, carbon increased steadily and surpassed pre-crisis levels, breaking through the 28 euros per tonne barrier beginning of July. Most of the rally seems detached from the fundamentals, which would imply a more bearish picture. Even increasing concerns about a resurgence of COVID-19 do not impact the positive carbon price development so far. Instead, a key driver seems to be trading strategies fueled by cheap money combined with expectations about an early carbon recovery and accordingly rising demand in the foreseeable future. Finally, the recent demand in EU-wide ETS auctions has indeed picked up from the historic lows in May, providing at least some fundamental support. Accordingly, electricity prices in Europe, and especially Germany, also showed a recent uptick. In those markets, the price-setting power plants tend to be fossil, which explains the level of correlation. The Nordics, in that sense, is a different story. As fossil generation does not play such a big role, and interconnectors towards Central Europe are limited, the Nordic outright prices did not follow the carbon rally to the same extent. Weather is the stronger driver here. Nordic power prices are still suffering from a sustained period of high hydro levels and relatively high temperatures in the beginning of the year. The importance of weather could also be seen in June and July, where a dry phase first lifted frontier prices under the subsequent wet phase led to a price aversion towards lower levels. Accordingly, a dry phase beginning of June lifted frontier prices. This upward movement reverted when the dryness predicted for the summer disappeared from the forecast. Looking into the outer years, the sentiment is further affected by questions around demand recovery, potential delays in interconnector projects, as well as an ongoing build-out of renewables. Those aspects combine with the fact that the outer years are typically more of a buyer market if the market price for delivery years 22 and 23 currently below the 26 euro mark. How did spreads develop? Generally, dark spreads have decreased and spark spreads have increased since the beginning of May. While coal and gas generation costs increased almost equally for coal and gas-fired plants, the increase in carbon has a naturally stronger effect on coal generation. Beyond, spark spreads remain heavily supported by the low gas price. As you can see, the peak spark spread has been in the double-digit area now for quite some time. This development was the base for bringing back Irsing 4 and 5 back into the merchant market. However, while spark spreads have increased in the forward market, the opposite was true in the spot market of 2020, as reflected in Unibas power production volume shown on the next slide. On slide 7, You can see how our operating EPI has developed during the first half of 2020 compared to 2019. Let's start with the global commodity business. Looking back on Q1 2020, we had already high filling levels back then of 71%. Since then, further gas was injected, giving the very low gas prices during the summer season. Overall, this results in a storage filling level of 89% as of June 30th, That means the storages have been already close to their peak at the end of H1. From a financial perspective, storages being ahead of the usual filling schedule means that the cash flow in the first half was burned. However, the cash flow in H2 benefits from that, as there will be less working capital built up needed to reach the maximum filling levels. Second, our European generation volumes have fallen by 25% year-over-year. You can see This is not only in the graph, but also in the appendix of today's presentations, where we incorporated a detailed table with Unipa power production volumes split by country technologies. Starting with H1, we will provide this overview on a quarterly base going forward. When it comes to our hydropower plants, the production volumes remain overall on the same level compared to the first half of 2019. When we had additional hydrovolumes in Sweden, related to higher precipitation and snow melt, those positive effects were compensated by lower hydro volumes in Germany. Nuclear was down by around 24%, mainly driven by the closure of Ringhals II and extended outages at Oskarsheim III and Ringhals I and III. Gas and coal-fired production was down about 35% volume-wise, mostly due to a lower power demand caused by the COVID pandemic and the greater availability of renewables, especially in Germany. However, the decrease in gas-fired production is also significantly affected by the disposal of the French business, which has contributed to its prior use production. Last year, our business segment International Power, or Russian Power Generation, as we will call it going forward, delivered a strong performance. Unipro's production volumes were burdened by an abnormal warm winter, very good hydro conditions at the beginning of the year, and the lower demand due to COVID-19 and Q2. Thus, our Russian business produced 14% less electricity during the first six months compared to 2019. Finally, Unipro emitted 22% less CO2. Of course, this development is purely driven by the decrease of thermal generation. Nevertheless, This is the direction Unipa is striving for, producing less emissions and focusing on more environmental-friendly technologies. This brings me to the end of my part today. I would now like to hand over to Sascha for the financial part, after which Sascha and I will be ready for your questions. Thank you very much.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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