Altius Renewable Royalties Corp.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the ARR24 and year-end 2022 conference call and webcast. At this time, online journalism only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call, we require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, March 2nd, 2023, and I would now like to turn the conference over to Flora Wood, Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ina. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q4 year-end call. Our press release and filings were released yesterday after the close and are available on our website. This event is being webcast live, and you'll be able to access a replay of the call along with the presentation slides on ARR.energy. Brian Dalton, CEO of ARR, and Frank Getman, CEO of GBR, are both speakers on the call, and in the Q&A, we'll also have Ben Lewis, CFO of ARR, available for questions. The forward-listen statement on slide two applies to everything we say both in our formal remarks and during the Q&A. And with that, I'll turn over to Brian for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Flora, and thank you, everyone, for joining. As usual, I'll keep my remarks brief, high-level introductory style and let Frank take you through the real details. In general, I think it's finally safe to say that the adoption curve for royalty-based funding within the renewable sector, with ARR and GBR as its proxy, has hit that magical upwards inflection point. There are, of course, many driving factors behind this, and Frank will overview some of these in his update, but the plainest evidence is there in terms of the operational revenue trajectory, which will continue for several years just based upon already completed investments. Never mind the growing pile of new opportunities that are landing in New Hampshire these days. Congratulations to the entire team for the truly remarkable achievement of taking this business from concept to reality and for creating this exciting platform for future growth and enablement of the renewable energy era. Over to you, Frank.

Great. Thank you, Brian. Fourth quarter was very busy for us at GVR, including two deals that we closed in December, capping off a transformative year for our company. The two new immediately cash flowing royalty investments in operating projects we closed in December were first the Titan Solar deal. On December 1st, we closed a $46 million royalty investment with Long Road Energy to support Long Road's acquisition of the 70 megawatt AC Titan Solar project in Imperial County, California. This was a significant transaction for us on several fronts. It was a follow-on second investment with Long Road Energy, one of the best developers and operators in the market. It's an operating project, so it was immediately cash flowing. It was a new use case for us where our royalty financing was used to help finance an acquisition funded at closing. And it was our first investment in California, adding regional diversification to our growing royalty portfolio. We expect the Titan royalty to contribute $3 to $3.5 million to GBR's revenue in 2023 and to average $4 to $4.5 million annually over its first 10 years. The second new deal on December 20th, TBR acquired for $17.8 million in existing royalty on the 658 megawatt portion of a larger one gigawatt wind project in ERCOT, owned and operated by a top tier renewables owner operator that reached COD in September 2022. It's an interesting royalty in that it's entirely generation based, so there's no price risk whatsoever. Obviously, it makes it less risky. but it also reduces some of the potential upside. We wouldn't want all of our royalties to be structured like this, but it represents an attractive addition to our growing diversified portfolio of royalties. GBR expects this royalty to contribute $1.5 million in revenue in 2023. For all of 2022, GBR closed four new royalty deals, two new developer deals, and two new operating project deals. totaling $136.5 million of new commitments, of which $86 million was funded in 2022. For the year, GBR reported revenue of $7.3 million, exceeding our already increased guidance of $6.5 to $7 million. The outperformance was largely due to higher merchant power prices, particularly during the summer of 2022. A majority of our current revenue is from royalties that are subject to merchant pricing. For 2023, GBR expects to realize annual royalty revenue of $11.5 to $13.5 million based upon recent merchant price assumptions that reflect lower current natural gas prices and resulting lower power prices in several key markets. GBR achieved positive operating cash flow for the full year of $2.7 million, achieving a major milestone well ahead of what was forecast at the time of our IPO. We expect this trend of growing positive operating cash flow to continue in 2023. as we recently added two new operating royalties to our portfolio from our TGE and APEX developer deals and expect to add another operating royalty from our developer pipeline, the El Salas project, a 300 megawatt wind project in Irkut in the near future. I'd like to provide a few comments about our strong embedded pipeline from our existing deals. I want to spend a few minutes to discuss the impressive backlog of embedded royalties that are already currently in our pipeline based upon investments and commitments we've already closed. Between our deals with TGE, now Enbridge, Hodgson, and Nova Clean Energy, the U.S. subsidiary of Blue Star Energy, we have a pipeline of development stage royalties of approximately nine gigawatts of projects. This is our current pipeline, assuming no new deals, which based upon our current backlog of origination discussions is not a reasonable assumption. When this existing pipeline crystallizes into operating royalties over the coming years, the annual revenue to GBR is projected to be over $30 million from deals we've already closed. And assuming we're able to deploy the uncommitted cash on our balance sheet into new deals, we're looking at over $40 million in annual revenue. So we feel very good about the investments we've made to date in our embedded pipeline for future growth. I'd like to touch on some current themes we're seeing in the evolving U.S. renewables landscape. The first I'll call strong IRA momentum and tailwinds, but not without some ongoing delays. The industry is experiencing strong momentum, especially since the IRA has provided a stable and transparent regulatory backdrop for renewables for the next decade. But interconnection issues in particular remain, with both delays, larger deposits, and higher costs. These delays can actually work in the favor of patient long-term capital like ours. Second theme is evolving business models. There's new and evolving corporate strategies and companies are emerging. There's been an evolution from some of the larger develop and flip developers to what I'll call renewable IPPs, where developers want to build and operate and realize their cash flow from operating projects, not just the proceeds from project sales. I think APEX TGE and Longroad are all at various stages of this process. Mature developers with pipelines are now selling minority equity interests or the entire company rather than individual projects. There's also been a large influx of smaller and newer developers seeking startup capital, basically backfilling as the larger developers get acquired and consolidated. The demand for shovel-ready projects remains insatiable. Standalone storage as a distinct business model, with decreasing costs and increasing regulatory support for storage, has resulted in an explosion of new storage projects and an emergence of standalone storage as a business. The next theme I'll mention is what I'll call merchant renewal. Sponsors are now seeking to boost equity returns through maximizing value of the renewable energy generated by the projects, rather than trying to lock everything down, mitigate risk, and use leverage to achieve satisfactory equity returns. There's a desire by sponsors and owners and an acceptance by tax equity for some merchant exposure and offtake structures. As we've discussed before, once you introduce merchant exposure, the debt sizing will likely come down and it creates a hole in the capital stack that GBR's capital can nicely fill. There continues to be strong C&I demand for renewable energy, but sponsors are demanding higher PPA prices. There's also a desire to reduce or unwind some of these hedges, particularly those with shape risk. The recent decline in natural gas prices makes the cost of unwinding these hedges potentially more attractive, so we've seen a flurry of activity in this area. I'd note that Long Road used part of our capital in its Titan acquisition to partially unwind the hedge that was in place. The next theme is the rising cost of capital. Higher interest rates and falling equity prices is creating increased demand for non-diluted forms of financing. The levelized cost of energy for new renewable projects is increasing for the first time in many years, creating opportunities and the need for new financing solutions. Higher debt costs means higher debt service and the need for larger project equity checks. Developers and sponsors are seeking to stretch equity dollars further. Also, we're seeing more of what we'll call the recycling of capital through minority sales of either individual projects or portfolios. It has emerged as a new corporate strategy to fund growth for larger IPPs due to lack of low-cost financing options. GBR's royalty financing could be a great alternative to a minority sale to raise capital. Finally, I'd like to provide an outlook for Great Bay going forward, the adoption of royalty financing overall. The future has never looked brighter for Great Bay in our permanent, non-dilutive, flexible, partner-like royalty financing. The market is definitely moving in our direction. The themes I just mentioned are driving developers and sponsors to look for financing alternatives. We see significant opportunities for royalty financing, both in earlier stage developer deals as well as operating stage immediately cash flow and royalties. Ray Faust, Josh Levine, Bill Rogers, and new additions Peter Leahy and Zach Farrer continue to do a fantastic job in identifying, negotiating, completing due diligence, and closing new opportunities, as well as monitoring the progress of our growing portfolio of royalties. It's a major effort, and I'm so proud of the execution and professionalism of our team. This is an incredibly exciting time for Great Bay. We believe we are truly in the early innings of what is a tremendous market opportunity for the foreseeable future. That's it for my update, and I'll turn it back to you, Brian.

Thank you, Frank. Nothing further from me, so I guess we can go to questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging request. Questions will be taken in the order received. Should you wish to cancel your request, please press the star followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please leave the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Rupert Murrer from National Bank. Your line is now open.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Hi, Rupert. So you made a comment in your prepared remarks about the potential revenue run rate for the deals that have already closed. That's $30 million, and I believe $40 million if you deployed the cash in your balance sheet. Can you give me a little more color on these numbers? So what royalties would be included to build up to those?

Sure. We don't know the exact, you know, which royalties, but it would be, you know, the names of the projects. We don't know which ones are going to hit COD. But the way our deals work, you know, as they go forward and they go into commercial operation, they continue to count towards that IRR, which is compounding. So it's just going to be an ongoing stream of new royalty projects over the next several years. I can't tell you exactly which project it's going to be, but I can tell you that if you look at the, you know, we know the value of the royalties that we're owed, and we can, you know, project what we think the revenues would be from what we're owed. And if that occurs, that equates to, based on what we've already done, to that $30-plus million run rate. And then if we deploy the remaining R50 million and the $50 million that would match from Apollo, that would move the royalty, that run rate, assuming the same similar return profile, which I believe is a reasonable assumption, that would move it up from the $30 to the $40 million. Does that make sense?

Yes. Yeah, great. Thank you. Now, since the Q3 report, the timing on many of the Enbridge wind and solar projects has been advanced, or at least maybe it's a little more certain. It seems like you're anticipating quite a bit to be reaching COD in 2024. Now, your disclosures talk about a commitment of $13 million into GBR this year. I don't believe that includes any investment into those Enbridge projects. But if they do come online in 2024, would you be putting capital to work with those Enbridge royalties this year, or is that more, sorry, in 2024, or is that more of a, say, 2025 event?

We're still owed a number of royalties, so I think, remember, the way the deal works with TGE, now Enbridge, is we're still owed a number of royalties for the capital that we deployed. So there's still, I don't think through 2024, we'll still be just getting ones that were owed from our original investment in our subsequent investments, our total investment into TGE. And then after that point, on the remaining portfolio, we'll have an option to acquire those when those hit COD. So it's going to be an ongoing free option for us to acquire those on attractive price moving forward after we get all the royalties that were owed for the investment we made. So I wouldn't expect that we would be – needing to write any checks for the royalties we get for the TGE projects through 24.

All right, great. Then just to follow up on that, so given what you see today, what does your cash runway look like?

Well, we have the $50 million. We'll have on our balance sheet plus the $50 million from Apollo, so there's $100 million in deals plus the operating cash flow that we have. It's not, you know, massive right now, but it's increasing. So that's the pool of capital that we have immediately available.

Okay. How long could that last you given the pace of investment?

We lose Frank.

I can probably jump in here. Well, Frank, we might need to reconnect, but what we'd anticipate is deploying all available capital that you can see today over the course of this year. If you look at just the run rate that we've had over the last couple of years and a little bit of a sense of what the pipeline looks like, we're also out now and soliciting proposals from banks for different other forms of financing. And beyond that, I think you saw with the ARR Bot deal, in December, that there is a strong follow-on interest from major existing shareholders to continue to fund deployment. So the message that I think the major shareholders give to Frank and the team is get the deals and the money will be there. So that's really as far as I can go right now.

I'm sorry, I'm back. No, I apologize. We have a bit of a storm here in New Hampshire today, and I think I got kicked off, but We were at the punchline, so thankfully Brian took over at that point.

He gave a very good answer. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Robert.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Nick Pochuk from Cormac Securities. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, gentlemen. Frank, you mentioned in your prepared remarks that the IRA is supporting the creation of new battery standalone storage systems and that whole business line. Can you give a little bit of color on the opportunities you're looking at there and also whether or not any of the existing assets or partnerships have kind of indicated to you that they're considering adding battery energy storage systems?

Yes, I think everybody's looking at it, both our existing investments as well as there is new companies being set up that are doing only standalone battery storage. To be perfectly frank, it's one that we're working through and figuring out how would our royalty financing support that, because to be perfectly candid, I'm a little concerned that if it was associated storage, it's part of the wind or solar project. We can get our arms around that. It just increases the overall revenue for the project, which is great for us. On a standalone battery storage project, we've got to figure out – How do we value that and look at that future? Because many of these standalone projects are being proposed based upon an arbitrage opportunity where they're going, you know, there's some, because of constraints in the system, that there is some arbitrage to be able to charge them at one price and then discharge them at a higher price. And, you know, it's like trading shops and the like that are pursuing some of these opportunities. And I'm not sure a royalty on that, you know, I think markets work over time and I'd be a little concerned about the long-term value of that royalty. But there's also plenty of battery storage projects that are being arranged with tolling arrangements with some, you know, some exposure to the revenue generated, but there's more like a capacity payment. And those might make a lot more sense for our royalty financing. So it's very project specific. So it's, you know, and the market is figuring this out in real time. In many ways, storage in some locations should really be considered more transmission than generation, but there's not a great... The regulatory framework for how you exactly get paid for storage hasn't been fully figured out yet.

Got it. Okay. That's a very good call. Thanks. And then just regarding your commentary about how there's still the interconnection delays and everything else that's playing out, can you give any update on how things are going with Nova and Hodson? Are their projects continuing to progress?

Yeah. Well, first, NOVA is, yes, NOVA is building up. I think when Declan started NOVA, he was hoping that maybe there would be some M&A acquisitions opportunities as well. The pricing seems very high, so they have really kind of doubled down on their focusing on the greenfield development, which they've built a very strong team. He's brought in a very talented team along with him. to do that. So right now, they're finding the best and highest opportunities in greenfield development in the U.S., which is great. And then on Hodgson continues to advance its projects. They're adding new projects as well, which is part of our deal. We will get those as part of our overall collateral, so to speak. And there's still, you know, the thing, like in many of the projects from PJM, there's been now, PJM, you know, process has been you know, disclosed and approved by FERC, the interconnection, the revised interconnection process. So there's much better transparency there. It may not be the timeline that everyone was hoping for. It was, you know, it's a fairly, you know, new projects today are pushed out. If you had a new project today in PJM, it's probably going to be 2027 before you get it through the interconnection process. Thankfully, you know, Hodgson's project are already in the queue. So I think the type of capital that's open to to support the developers pursuing these projects. If you're a fund with a defined life or a short time horizon, that's not going to be a great opportunity for you. But for someone like ourselves where our capital is compounding while that work is ongoing and we have a taking longer term perspective, we're going to earn a return for the life of the project once it's in operation. I think that's driving folks toward capital like ours and away from shorter term folks that can get paid back in three to five years.

Got it. And the last one for me, just shifting to more of that operating stage stuff. After having the follow-on deals with Long Road, are you guys starting to see any change in the velocity of inbounds, people taking notice of what you've done with Diamond who are now looking? Can you share any color on that?

Yeah, definitely. Across the board, we're seeing increased activity, both on the developer front, both on operating projects. Folks took notice that our capital was used to partially unwind companies you know, the hedge that was in place that Longmore has. So there's strong activity on all fronts right now. And Zach is doing a great job helping organize us because, you know, we're much more organized on the front end now, you know, with him coming on board and helping, you know, run that origination business than we were previously.

Go ahead. All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Once again, should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your touchstone. And your next question comes from the line of John Mood from TD Cohen. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. Maybe just turning back to the Enbridge pipeline and the increased number of 24 and 25 CODs. You know, you guys know this pipeline very well. do you see those COD targets as achievable based on, you know, the permitting and interconnect position? And, you know, was all that this pipeline needed to really get it moving was the involvement of someone with a deeper balance sheet like Enbridge?

It's very RTO specific in which projects you're talking about, because in PJM, having a bigger balance sheet isn't going to force it through any faster. It is what it is, and that's the process. But there are RTOs like SPP, for example, where TGE had a number of projects that just needed someone to write. It was, you know, $20-plus million check for the interconnection deposits, and Enbridge has done that. So now those projects are advancing where, in TGE's hands, they were, you know, they didn't have the capital to be able to do that. So that's a specific example where having Enbridge involved is accelerating the timelines. But in other regions, you know, Okay, there's delays. There's delays for everybody.

Right, no, fair enough. No, okay, that's helpful for regional context. And then maybe just circling back on the revenue run rate numbers, I just want to be clear that that $41 million levelized number, that does not include... the Enbridge projects beyond what's required to get to your return in the original TGE deal because you would have to contribute more capital for those. That's correct? Correct. Right? Correct. Okay. Yes. Okay, great. And then, you know, maybe just a little more context on the Hodson timing. You know, it looks from your contractual disclosures in the MD&A, like expected deployment is now a little more weighted towards 2023 versus 24 and 25 as of last quarter. Is your expectation that development and the milestone progress is accelerating a little bit there relative to what you were really anticipating?

They have a couple of fast-track projects in PJM, which are hopefully moving forward. They'll be the first through the Q process, which is great. And hopefully we'll get to commercialization sooner rather than later. And then what you're seeing also is that they have new origination in regions other than PJM around the country. And I don't want to get into specifics there. I think that's, you know, competitive to them. But they're seeing, you know, some strong new origination progress, which is great to see. You know, and there's associated costs with that. But, yeah, the milestones work. If they can accelerate and move things on quicker – that's great. It unlocks the next chances quicker.

Okay. Thanks for that. And then maybe one, just final one on just how you're thinking about development portfolios more, you know, more broadly you've, you've talked before about how, you know, PJM, you know, maybe people don't like what's happening there on the interconnection process, but at least, you know, there's a, there's a plan and a path forward versus maybe some other markets, you know, that problem could bubble up as you're considering, developer investments, is there a region of the country where you're hoping to get a little more exposure relative to what your portfolio looks like today? Or, you know, is that really a smaller part of the, you know, of the process and, you know, the team and what they bring to the table remains the, you know, the main driver of higher looking investments?

The main driver is always the team, right? Because, you know, It doesn't matter what country, what jurisdiction you're in. A good team, there's a reason that good developers, you know, they're serially successful. It's an art, not a science. And people with that commercial mindset and that savviness just tend to be successful again and again. So it's always team first. But I will say the issue on the other regions, the diversification of the regions, it's kind of happening naturally. It's interesting. So we're seeing a lot more activity in the western regions of the country just because they need some interest down in the southeast, which we had seen previously. So I think, you know, particularly with the visibility now that people have with the IRA, I think it's really unlocking really all the regions of the country where before it was like, okay, let's do ERCOP, PJM. And, well, California had been done, was the first to go. So, yeah. I think the market is kind of taking care of that on itself. We're not out actively saying we're going to go look for a WEC developer, but we're seeing the developers have more early-stage projects in WEC, for example.

Okay. That's a helpful color. I'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Please proceed.

Thank you, Ina, and thank you, everybody who joined the call. Thank you for the questions, and we'll look forward to speaking to you after our Q1 results.

Thank you, everyone. Great questions.

Thank you. Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.