Capital Power Corporation

Welcome to Capital Power's first quarter 2021 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen mode only and the conference is being recorded today, April 30th, 2021. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Randy Ma, the Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining us today to review Capital Power's first quarter 2021 results, which we released earlier this morning. Our first quarter report and the presentation for this conference call are posted on our website at CapitalPower.com. Joining me on the call are Brian Baggio, President and CEO, and Sandra Haskins, Senior Vice President, Finance and CFO. We will start with opening comments and then open the lines to take your questions. Before we start, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements about future events made on this call are forward-looking in nature and are based on certain assumptions and analysis made by the company. Actual results could differ materially from the company's expectations due to various risks and uncertainties associated with our business. Please refer to the cautionary statement of forward-looking information on slide two. In today's discussion, we will be referring to various non-GAAP financial measures as noted on slide three. These measures are not defined financial measures according to GAAP and do not have standardized meanings prescribed by GAAP and therefore are unlikely to be comparable to similar measures used by other enterprises. These measures are provided to complement the gap measures which are provided in the analysis of the company's results from management's perspective. Reconciliations of these non-gap financial measures to their nearest gap measures can be found in our first quarter 2021 MD&A. I will now turn the call over to Brian Baggio for his remarks starting on slide four.

Thanks, Randy, and good morning. I'll start off with the highlights of the first quarter and comment on our 2021 outlook. We delivered strong first quarter results that exceeded our expectations. This was the first quarter where all generation in Alberta power market was dispatched by commercial market participants following the expiry of the balancing pool PPAs. The strong quarterly results confirm the Alberta power market is truly robust. Earlier this month, we executed an innovative 15-year renewable energy agreement with Labatt Brewing Company for the Enchant Solar project that I'll cover off in more detail shortly. With a strong first quarter and higher Alberta forward prices for 2021, we are forecasting our 2021 financial performance will be modestly above the top end of our annual adjusted EBITDA and AFFO guidance ranges. We also continue to make solid progress on our approximately $1.7 billion in growth projects. I'll also provide an update on our various CO2 reduction initiatives. Turning to slide five, as mentioned, we've entered into an innovative partnership with Labatt for the Enchant Solar Project. It is a 15-year renewable energy agreement for the sale of electricity and RECs. The virtual PPA is for 51% of the electricity from the Enchant Solar Project, that covers all of the electricity requirement for Labatt's Canadian operations. Approximately one quarter of the RECs will come directly from Enchant Solar and three quarters will be packaged with RECs sourced from Eastern Canada to closely align with Labatt's operations footprint. The 75 megawatt Enchant Solar project is expected to begin commercial operation in the fourth quarter of 2022. When we announced the project in November 2020, our original guidance was $11 million in adjusted EBITDA and $12 million in AFFO on average per year for the first five years. This financial guidance continues to be reasonable with upside from a higher value of RECs based on the federal carbon tax. Overall, the agreement with Labatt will strengthen our contracted cash flow, extends our average contract life, and support progress towards a low carbon economy. I'll now turn the call over to Sandra.