Boralex Inc.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the telephone conference on the financial results of the fourth quarter and the 2021 BORALEX exercise. Please note that all lines are in listening mode only. At the end of the presentation, there will be a question and answer period during which financial analysts, shareholders and investors will be invited to ask their questions. If you have any questions in the comments, please press star followed by the number 1 on your phone. Please note that this conference is recorded. For the participants in the webcast, you can also ask questions during the conference, but these will be answered by mail after the call. Finally, media representatives who also have questions are invited to contact the Director of Public Affairs and Communications of Boralex, Isabelle Fontaine, at the coordinates indicated at the end of the quarterly communication. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Boralex fourth quarter and year-end 2021 financial results conference call. Please note that all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session in which financial analysts, shareholders, and investors will be invited to ask their questions. If you have any questions or comments at that time, please press star followed by one on your telephone. Please also note that the conference is being recorded. For webcast participants, you may also ask questions during the conference, but they will be answered by email after the call. Finally, media representatives are also invited to contact Boralek's Director of Public Affairs and Communications, Isabelle Fontaine. Her contact information is provided at the end of the quarterly press release. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Stephen Miller, Senior Director, Investor Relations for Boralex. Please go ahead.

Merci beaucoup. Thank you, operators. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Boralex's fourth quarter results conference call. Joining me today from our head office in Montreal, Patrick Dacoste, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruno Guilmette, our Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and other members of our management and finance team. So, Lacoste will begin with comments about market condition and the highlights of the quarter. Afterwards, Mr. Gilmette will carry on with financial highlights and then will be available to answer your questions. As you know, during this call, we will discuss forward-looking and historical information. When talking about the future, there are a variety of risk factors that have been listed in our different filings with security regulators, which can materially change our estimated results. These documents are available for consultation at CDART.com. In our webcast presentation document, the disclosed results are presented both on a consolidated basis and on a combined basis, unless otherwise necessary. stated, all comments made in this presentation will refer to combined basis figures. Please note that combined is non-GAAP financial measures and do not have standardized meaning under IFRS. Accordingly, combined may not be comparable to similarly named measures used by other companies. So for more details, see the non-IFRS and other financial measures section in the MD&A. The press release, the MD&A, the consolidated financial statement, and a copy of today's presentation are all posted on the VaraLex website at VaraLex.com under the Investors section. So if you wish to receive a copy of these documents, you can also contact me. Mr. Dacasse will now start with his comments, so please go ahead, Patrick.

Merci, Stéphane. Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I am pleased to present to you our fourth quarter results today. Thanks to the integration of acquisition, the commissioning of new wind and solar farms, as well as the positive effect relating to sharp increases in market prices in France, we ended the quarter with a combined EBITDA of 163 million, a 5% increase over the fourth quarter last year. Production was lower than the fourth quarter last year and also lower than anticipated production due to soft wind conditions in France and Canada. Our development teams continue to be very active during the quarter, adding 137 MW of project to our pipeline and advancing three projects totaling 41 MW in construction or ready-to-build phase of our growth path. In terms of market conditions, delays in approval of certain portion of the Build Back Better plan in the U.S. caused a delay in the announcement of the results of the 800 megawatt of project we submitted with NYSERDA in September. We are now expecting results in March for this bid. In Quebec, as announced, a 300 megawatt request for proposal for wind energy and a 480 MW RFP for renewable energy are planned for this year. The process for approval of the Hydro-Québec transportation line to the City of New York is also progressing. As mentioned before, this combined with the Québec Green Plan should be positive for the overall development of renewable energy in Quebec in the coming years. Our 200 MW project is in fact a good sign that wind energy development in Quebec has restarted. Moving to France now. We remain highly confident in the future development of renewable energy. As mentioned before, RTE, the French Transmission System Operator, recently issued six different scenarios for 2050 production mix, and all of them are highly promising for renewable energy. The most conservative scenario refers to a solar production seven times higher than today, as well as onshore wind production 2.5 times higher. The most ambitious scenario indicates a solar production 21 times higher than today and onshore wind production four times higher france is facing important issues with the aging of its nuclear fleet and more specifically recent corrosion issues noticed with some reactor causing temporary shutdowns for instance let's consider for a moment the recent assertion from the chairman of the French Nuclear Safety Authority, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire, or ASN, regarding the lack of margin to support contingencies and the difficulty the nuclear industry will have to achieve even the most conservative RTE scenario of 50% nuke and 50% renewable energy. The ASN chairman also insisted that margins need to be maintained to avoid facing a trade-off between security of supply and facility safety in february 2022 president macron said that he hoped to double the country's renewable energy production by 2030 and increase solar production tenfold as well as double onshore wind power capacity by 2050. as you can see there is plenty of potential in the French market, and let's not lose sight that the market is not an easy one to develop with strong barrier to entry, which is an important competitive edge for an established player like us. I will now review the main variances in our portfolio of projects. We added six wind projects and five solar projects in France to the preliminary phase, representing a total of 137 megawatts plus 23 megawatts for the optimization of wind project. Projects in the pipeline continue to progress with 124 megawatts of project moving to mid-stage and 101 megawatts of project moving to advanced stage. In total, We are now developing a portfolio of wind and solar projects of 3.2 gigawatts and 190 megawatts of storage projects. Let's move now to the review of changes to the growth path. I said previously, two wind projects and one solar project in France totaling 41 megawatts moved to the construction or ready-to-build phase. We know have 647 megawatts in the growth path, 493 megawatts in the secured stage, and 154 megawatts in the under-construction and ready-to-build phase. We also have a 3-megawatt storage project under construction in France. In total, when adding the growth path to our existing production capacity, potential capacity is 3.1 gigawatts. In conclusion, as you can see on slide 12, we're pursuing the execution of our strategic plan and are making good progress on all four strategic orientations. I have talked about growth and diversification, but we also announced the signing of two corporate PPA recently, a 20-year contract with Métro France and a three-year contract with L'Oréal in France. Market conditions are highly favorable for corporate PPA, and we are continuing to see a very strong interest from corporations. In terms of optimization, I would like to highlight that we started the repowering work at our Mont-de-Bézard II project and optimized maintenance for wind operations totaling 161 megawatts in Canada. One last point from my part. Today we published our 2021 CSR report. I invite you to read it. As you will notice, we made very important progress in 2021 with regards to CSR and have a clear path for years to come. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our CSR director, Mihaela Stefanov. Mihaela, rapidly took charges of the CSR strategy and mobilized our entire organization around CSR and ESG criterias. CSR has always been part of Boralec's DNA, but we have drastically increased the pace of change and accountability in the past year. This completes my part. I will now let Bruno cover the financial portion in more detail, and we'll be back later for the question period.