Boralex Inc.

The conference will begin shortly. To raise and lower your hand during Q&A, you can dial star 1 1. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the telephone conference on the financial results of the 4th quarter and Alex's 2022 exercise. Please note that all lines are in listening mode only. À la fin de la présentation, il y aura une période de questions-réponses au cours de laquelle les analystes financiers, actionnaires et investisseurs seront invités à poser leurs questions en appuyant sur étoiles 1 et 1 sur votre téléphone. Faites également noter que cette conférence est enregistrée. Pour les participants à la webdiffusion, vous pouvez également poser des questions au cours de la conférence, mais celles-ci obtiendront réponse par courriel après l'appel. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Boralex fourth quarter of 2022 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 the financial analysts, shareholders, and investors will be invited to ask their questions by pressing star one and one on their telephone keypad. 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 invited to contact Camille Laverture from Boralex, and her contact information is provided at the end of the quarterly press release. And I would like to turn over the conference to Mr. Stéphane Milot, Senior Director, Investor Relations for Boralex. Please go ahead, sir.

Merci beaucoup. Thank you, operator. So, good morning, everyone. Welcome to Boralex's fourth quarter and year-end results conference call. So joining me today on the call is Patrick Dacoste, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Bruno Guilmette, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and other members of our management and finance teams. So Mr. Dacoste will begin with comments about the market conditions and the highlights of the quarter. Afterward, Mr. Guilmette will carry on with financial highlights, and then we will be available to answer your questions. As you know, during this call, we will discuss historical as well as forward-looking information. So, when talking about the future, there are a variety of risk factors that have been listed on our different filings with securities regulators, which can materially change our estimated results. So, these documents are all 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. When talking about the results, we generally generally refer to combined numbers. And when referring to cash flow and balance sheet, we generally refer to consolidated numbers. So please note that combined is non-GAAP financial measures and does not have standardized meaning under IFRS. Accordingly, combined may not be comparable to similarly named measure used by other companies. So for more details, see the non-IFRS and other financial measures section in our MD&D. The press release, the MD&A and the consolidated financial statement, as well as the annual report and a copy of today's presentations are all posted on our website at boralex.com under the investor section, as well as our CSR report, which has been also published today. So if you wish to receive a copy of these documents, please contact me. Mr. Lacoste will now start with his comments. So please go ahead, Patrick.

Thank you, Stéphane. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure for me to present our results and achievements for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022. 2022 has been a very active year for Boralex. I'm very proud to say we surpassed the three gigawatts of production capacity this year, while growing our AFFO by 34% in the fourth quarter and 27% in fiscal year 2022. we ended the year with an AFFO per share of $1.63, a 27% increase over 2021. Our dividend payout ratio was 41%, meaning we reinvested 59% of our AFFO into growth projects. At the very end of the year, we closed a significant transaction in the U.S., adding 447 megawatts to our capacity, but also bringing promising upside for Boralex while diversifying our wind resources. Our teams showed agility, innovation and vision in the extraordinary market conditions associated with the energy crisis in Europe, as well as inflation and global supply chain pressure. As a result, we succeeded in optimizing revenues by the early termination of the short remaining term contract, allowing us to benefit from higher selling prices. We also commissioned certain assets earlier than expected and negotiated a number of contracts with electricity-consuming companies, allowing us to optimize our revenues, projects and operating assets. These actions resulted in 15 million addition to discretionary cash flows generated in 2022, a 9% increase over 2021. We also continue to add project to our pipeline in the four quarters with the addition of solar and wind project totaling 137 megawatt to the preliminary phase of our pipeline. Looking ahead, We are in a very solid position to pursue our growth with close to $500 million available in available cash flow and authorized financing in the ratio of net debt to total capitalization of 40%. We also have a very solid pipeline of projects in development and construction, which now stands at 5.5 gigawatts. This is 2.5 gigawatts higher and an increase of 81% over fiscal year 2020, the reference year for our 2025 strategic plan. Before covering market condition, I would like to highlight our achievement in the past four years for some key metrics. First, our installed capacity went from 1.9 gigawatts in 2018 to 3 GW at the end of 2022, a 12% CAGR. As mentioned before, our pipeline of projects increased significantly and more than doubled in the past four years. This growth was achieved while maintaining our debt level almost flat at 3.3 billion. Our AFFO and AFFO per share grew by a CAGR of 30%, and 22% respectively during this period. I'm very proud of these results and would like to take this opportunity to thank all Boralex employees for their commitment and hard work during these years. As you can see, your efforts really paid off. I won't go in all the details of the market's condition, but in general, I would say that for all markets in which we operate, and developed favorable programs are being discussed or put in place similar to the IRA in the US. In Canada, discussions are ongoing about an investment tax credit of up to 30% for investment in clean technologies with a focus on net zero technologies, battery storage solutions, and clean hydrogen. In France, The law to accelerate the development of renewable energy has been reviewed by the Senate and the Parliament and should be approved in the coming weeks. This will be followed this year with the publication of the pre-annual plan setting the rules and RFP requests for the coming years, the famous PPE. In the UK, England focused mostly on solar energy a new outlook for onshore wind farms. Scotland focused mostly on onshore wind power. It has released an onshore wind policy statement at the end of 2022 in which the Scottish government sets on an offshore wind capacity target of at least 20 gigawatts by 2030. This will represent an additional 11 gigawatts of capacity by the end of the decade, as Scotland currently has about 9 GW of operational onshore wind. I will now rapidly review the main variances in our portfolio of projects and growth paths. The 8 MW decrease in the early stage was due to the addition of new wind and solar projects totaling 137 MW in Europe. change to the expected capacity of nine wind projects and six solar projects in Europe for 18 megawatt favorable impact. These increases were offset by the progression of four wind and four solar power projects in Europe to the mid-stage phase, totaling 163 megawatt. The 37 megawatt increase in the advanced stage resulted from the progression in Europe of three wind projects from the mid to the advanced stage. In total, our pipeline now comprises projects totaling 4.1 gigawatts of wind and solar projects and 820 megawatts of storage projects. In storage, we submitted our bid for 380 megawatts in the Ontario RFP on February 16. Let's review the change to the growth path now. No project progressed to the secured stage, but three projects from the secured stage transitioned to the ready-to-build phase. These projects are the 100 megawatt net wind project of APWIT in Quebec, the 29 megawatt wind project Moulin Blanc, and the 21 megawatt wind project Boissin-Taubert in France. These projects totaling 150 megawatts are expected to be commissioned in 2024. I won't cover in detail the progress made in our four strategic directions, as I have already talked about the major highlights, but you can find all the details in the slide of the webcast and in our MD&E. This completes my part. I will now let Bruno cover financial position in more detail, and we'll be back later for the question period. Bruno?