Boralex Inc.

Bonjour Mesdames et Messieurs et bienvenue à la conférence téléphonique pour tenter les résultats financiers du deuxième trimestre et de l'exercice 2022 de Boralex. Veuillez noter que toutes les lignes sont en mode d'écoute seulement. À la fin de la présentation, il y aura une séance de questions et réponses au cours de laquelle les analystes financiers, actionnaires et investisseurs seront invités à poser leurs questions en appuyant sur l'étoile suivie du chiffre 1 et 1 sur votre téléphone. Veuillez également noter que cette conférence est enregistrée. Pour les participants à la webdiffusion, vous pouvez également poser des questions au cours de sa conférence, mais celles-ci obtiendront réponse par courriel après l'appel. Enfin, les représentants des médias qui ont des questions sont invités à contacter directement Camille Laventure de Boralex aux coordonnées indiquées à la fin du communiqué trimestriel. J'aimerais maintenant passer la parole à Monsieur Stéphane Milleux, directeur principal des relations avec les investisseurs de Boralex. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Boralec's second quarter of 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. 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. To ask a question, please slowly press star 1 and then 1 on your telephone. Please also note that this conference is being recorded. For webcast participants, you can also ask questions during the conference, but they will be answered by email after the call. Finally, media representatives are invited to contact Camille Laventure from Boralex. Her contact information is provided at the end of the quarterly press release. And I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Stéphane Milot, Senior Director, Investor Relations from Boralex. Please go ahead.

Well, thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Boralek's second quarter resource conference calls. Joining me today on the call, Patrick Dacoste, President and Chief Executive Officer, Boudinot Guilmette, our Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and other members of our management and finance teams. Mr. Dacoste will begin with comments about market conditions and the highlights of the quarter. Afterwards, Mr. Guilmette will carry on with financial highlights, and then we'll be available to answer your questions. As you know, during this call, we will discuss historical as well as forward-looking information. When talking about the future, there are a variety of risk factors that have been listed in our different filings with securities regulators, which can materially change our estimated results. These documents are available for consultation at CDAR.com. In our webcast presentation document, the disclosed results are presented both on a consolidated basis and on a combined basis, unless otherwise stated, All comments made in this presentation will refer to combined basis figures. Please note that combined is a non-GAAP financial measure and do not have standardized meaning under IFRS. Accordingly, combined may not be comparable to similarly named measure used by other companies. For more details, see the non-IFRS and other financial measures section in DMDNA. The press release, the MD&A, the consolidated financial statements, and a copy of today's presentations are all posted on the Boralex website at boralex.com under the investor section. If you wish to receive a copy of this document, please contact me. So Mr. Dacasse will now start with his comments. Please go ahead, Patrick.

Thank you, Stéphane. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure for me to present our results and achievement for the second quarter. As you have noticed, we continued to vigorously execute our growth and diversification strategy during the quarter. 177 megawatts of wind and solar project as well as 26 megawatts of storage project were added to our pipeline. Sorry, we are also selected for 540 megawatts of solar project and 77 megawatts of storage in the latest New York RFP. We grew consolidated operating earnings by 89%, 61 on a combined basis, and ABDA by 15%, 14% on a combined basis, even despite lower production than last year. main drivers of this growth were the effect of high market prices in France and to a lesser degree in the US. We continued to optimize our operations and our capital structure during the quarter. The reduction of our debt level will have a favorable annualized effect of 19 million on AFFO. Finally, We got confirmation at the end of July for early termination of three power purchase agreements, representing a total of 58 megawatts in France. The termination will be effective on October 1st, 2022. The electricity will be sold on the market from the effective date of termination. Market conditions continue to evolve rapidly by region during the quarter. In the U.S., positive news came last week with regard to measures potentially harmful to the realization of projects, in particular, solar. Indeed, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Manchin, both senators, announced an agreement on a package including roughly $370 billion in energy and climate spending. If approved by the U.S. Senate and House over the next weeks, the bill would restore federal ITC tax credit to the full rate for renewable energy projects completed in 2022 or later. They would remain at this level for at least the next 10 years. In Canada, the Canadian government has planned new investment of around 9 billion and specific measure for electrification and decarbonization of electricity and the transition to renewable energies and storage, including an investment tax credit specific to battery storage. In Ontario, new power needs confirm as early as 2025, and in the years that follow are prompting the Independent Electricity System Operator, IESO, to develop supply mechanisms to meet them. Tenders are expected shortly. Turning to Europe now, the geopolitical context continues to reinforce the need to ensure security of energy supply and sovereignty. In France, problems with nuclear reactors causing historically low levels of production are still going on and are pushing electricity prices at very high levels. France lacks local production and has become a net importer of electricity during the energy crisis. On July 28, the Minister of Energy Transition in France published a press release indicating a first set of emergency measures to favor the acceleration of renewable energy development. The following measure should positively impact our development in the short and mid-term. The first measure is allow renewable energy projects to sell their electricity on the market during 18 months before the start of their feed-in premium contract. The second measure is integrate inflation in cost of materials between awards and start of construction for all future renewable energy project. Then the final measure is allow all renewable projects already selected in RFPs to increase their capacity by up to 40% before the end of construction. We will provide more info on our next call regarding these measures as the criteria are not yet precise enough to give us an idea of the expected effect on our development and the positive financial impact. Please note also that the legislative project is under discussion in the Parliament in France to share the revenue generated beyond the contract price on certain feed-in premium contracts for which recorded additional revenues since the beginning of the year. As a result, we may be required to repay a portion of the amounts collected in 2022 if the legislation is passed and is effective on January 1st, 2022. I will now rapidly review the main variances in our portfolio of projects and growth paths. The 307 megawatt increase in the early stage came from the addition of two wind projects and a solar project totaling 66 megawatts in Europe following the acquisition of InfiniRG. the addition of two new wind projects and three new solar projects totaling 71 megawatts in Europe, and the change in the expected capacity of a solar project in Europe and two solar projects in North America for a total of 176 megawatts. Projects in the mid and advanced stages continue to progress with no material changes to report. In total, Our pipeline now comprises project totaling 3.9 gigawatts, up 298 megawatts from the end of the first quarter of 2022. The wind project segment is totaling 2.3 gigawatts, up 49 megawatts from the previous quarter. The solar power segment pipeline includes project totaling 1.6 gigawatts, up 249 megawatts from the previous quarter. Let's review the change to the growth path now. As shown on slide 11, we had assets in operation with 2.5 gigawatts of installed capacity as of June 30, 2022, down 14 megawatts from March 31, 2022, following the disposal of two small power stations in April 2022 and the commissioning of three facilities in May and June 2022. Commissioning of secured facilities and projects under construction is expected to bring our capacity to 3.2 gigawatts. 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 won't cover in detail our progress as I already have highlighted our main achievements. One last point from my part, as alluded earlier in my comment, we have contracts maturing in the next five years for which we have been doing analysis on optimal strategies. Given the highly favorable pricing environment in France, we're being very agile and looking to all possibility to create maximum value. As mentioned earlier, we received confirmation of early termination for some contract and we are expecting additional answers in the coming quarter. We are also continuing to evaluate potential repowering where it makes sense. In the past three years, we have put important efforts to create our expert team to commercialize electricity. We knew this trend was to accelerate and are very happy to have this team helping us to take the most optimal decision in the current situation. To conclude, as mentioned in the previous quarter, solar and onshore wind farms can be commissioned quickly and at low cost. We're increasing our efforts and discussion with the various levels of government to accelerate our development and offer sustainable renewable energy supply solutions in the region affected by the energy crisis and those targeted for our growth in Europe. This acceleration must be done in a win-win setting for the countries and producers who invest while inflationary conditions result in a higher level of overall risk. 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. Bruno? Thank you, Patrick.