Canadian Utilities Limited

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the third quarter 2025 results conference call and webcast for Canadian Utilities Limited. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Colin Jackson, Senior Vice President, Financial Operations. Please go ahead, Mr. Jackson.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased you could join us for Canadian Utilities' third quarter 2020-25 conference call. On the line today, we have Bob Miles, Chief Executive Officer of Canadian Utilities Limited. I'm Katie Patrick, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial and Investment Officer. Before we move into today's remarks, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the numerous traditional territories and homelands on which our global facilities are located. Today, I am speaking to you from our Atco Park head office in Calgary, which is located in the Treaty 7 region. This is the ancestral territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy, comprised of the Sissica, the Kainai, the Pagani Nations, the Tsutina Nation, and the Stony Nakota Nations, which include the Chinniki, Bears Paw, and Good Stony First Nations. I also want to recognize that the City of Calgary is home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Districts 5 and 6. During the quarter, employees across Canada recognized the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, by walking together to honour Indigenous communities and their experiences. May we continue to reflect, learn and respect the diverse history, languages, ceremonies and cultures of Indigenous peoples as we move forward towards understanding, healing and reconciliation. Today's remarks will include forward-looking statements that are subject to important risks and uncertainties. For more information on these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our filings with the Canadian Securities Regulators. During today's presentation, we may refer to certain non-GAAP and other financial measures, including adjusted earnings, adjusted earnings per share, and capital investment. These measures do not have any standardized meaning under IFRS, and as a result, they may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other entities. Please refer to our filings with the Canadian Security Regulators for further information. And now I'll turn the call over to Bob Miles for his opening remarks.

Thanks, Colin. Good morning, everyone. I want to begin by highlighting three key pillars of our long-term strategy. Growth and prosperity. This includes our robust project pipeline and our policy and regulatory partnerships. Operational excellence, which includes modernizing our operating model with safety and reliability at the forefront. and financial leadership, which touches on our funding strategy and financial performance. Moving to our first pillar, growth and prosperity. Foundational to our growth at Canadian Utilities are the economic drivers we are seeing in the province of Alberta. Alberta continues to lead population growth in Canada, and in Q3 2025, Alberta's population reached 5 million people, up 2.5% year over year. Canadian utilities plays an essential role in enabling this population growth. In 2025, we are on track to connect over 19,000 customers in Atgo Energy Systems, particularly in our Alberta gas business, in line with the strong growth we delivered in 2024, which saw our highest number of customer connections in almost a decade. When we look at the projects driving our growth and prosperity pillar, I want to begin with our Central East Transfer Out project, or SEED Out. At a high level, this $280 million project, assigned by the Alberta Electric System Operator, upgrades and strengthens the transmission system in Central East Alberta. Alberta's electric transmission system has experienced ongoing congestion challenges, affecting the reliability of the grid, the market efficiency, and the integration of new energy sources. In response, CETO was developed to directly address these constraints. CETO is a critical energy infrastructure investment, representing meaningful progress for Alberta's electric system. By enhancing the efficiency of how power flows across the electric grid, CETO makes it easier to deliver energy to where it is needed most, like major demand centers in Calgary, Edmonton, and northern regions. CETO is deep into construction and remains on track to be completed in the first half of next year. The project will have a significant benefit to our customers across the province, modernizing and enhancing the reliability of the transmission system. Beyond CETO, we believe further opportunities exist to improve congestion. An example is the McNeil Converter Station. currently the only intertie point between Alberta and Saskatchewan as shown on this slide. The MacMill station recently underwent repairs and is being evaluated for a capacity upgrade. Once complete, this upgrade will enable more generation to flow between Alberta and Saskatchewan, representing the next step in addressing regional congestion. Moving to natural gas, Our assets are strategically positioned in areas that allow us to capitalize on the spectrum of energy opportunities being delivered. On the map, you can see our three gas storage assets are well positioned near natural gas production zones, major project infrastructure, as well as locations associated with the planned data center developments and links to LNG development. Our Yellowhead Pipeline project that I have discussed previously is a required addition to the natural gas network in Alberta, and it will be a key conduit to connecting supply to demand growth. Yellowhead creates a new direct corridor from the northwest Alberta supply region to the greater Edmonton area, de-bottlenecking constrained segments and reducing reliance on longer, more complex flow paths. This released pressure on the entire Alberta integrated system, improves delivery reliability for all types of customers across the province and frees up capacity for not only residential demand, but industrial power generation and commercial growth, making it a foundational investment in Alberta's energy future. Overall, it is evident that natural gas is needed more than ever in Alberta, and we remain in a very strong position to capitalize on the growth opportunities within the province. There have been positive developments on our Yellowhead Pipeline project during this past quarter. We are pleased to announce the approval of the needs application from the Alberta Utilities Commission, or AUC. I'm also excited to announce that we filed the facilities application with the AUC earlier this week, which will provide detailed technical, environmental and consultation data required for construction approval. The filing of the facilities application is a key milestone in the regulatory process and demonstrates that we have completed sufficient consultation with communities, environmental studies and engineering to permit the construction of the project. The Yellowhead pipeline project remains 90% contracted and will deliver long-term economic benefits while strengthening the province's natural gas network. In the third quarter, two additional service offerings to the market were undertaken. We expect that some or all of the remaining capacity provided by Yellowhead will be contracted through these offerings. While we wait on final regulatory approvals, we have successfully awarded major equipment contracts for the compressor facility. In the fourth quarter, we will place major contracts for the supply of steel pipe. Ordering these long lead materials is prudent to preserve our in-service date and avoid cost escalations and supply chain delays. As you can see on this slide, the Yellowhead pipeline runs through Treaty 6 territory in Alberta. which is why we continue to pursue partnership arrangements with Indigenous partners, First Nations and Métis. Early, meaningful and continuous economic Indigenous participation in infrastructure projects on traditional land is essential for development, reconciliation and long-term project success, including the Yellowhead Pipeline project. An integral part of our non-regulated growth at Canadian Utilities is from our natural gas storage operations. We've had a strong year in natural gas storage with increases in seasonal spreads driving strong customer demand for our facilities. We have successfully optimized our storage facilities by contracting through staggered contract maturities over the coming years. The plans I have previously discussed to expand our existing storage capacity from 117 petajoules today to 130 petajoules in late 2026 positions us for continued growth in financial performance in the years to come. As we look at the future of storage and the broader market trends, a number of fundamentals are driving the demands for gas storage. Storage capacity growth across North America has slowed to less than 1% annually since 2016, while gas demand across North America continues to increase, driven by industrial demand, LNG demand, and new power generation accelerated by the build-out of data centers. As a leader in natural gas storage, we have the technology, the infrastructure, customer base, and experience to execute and build out additional storage capacity. Beyond the brownfield expansion that we have already identified, we continue to explore strategic opportunities for additional growth and storage capacity, both within Alberta and the broader North American market. Similar to the opportunities ahead of us in Alberta, are ATCO Australia businesses, which is a provider of regulated natural gas distribution services in Western Australia, and a developer and owner of Gas Fire Generation, is also well positioned, given Australia's evolving energy landscape. The developing regulations, government emissions reduction targets, and associated investment incentives present ATCO Australia with opportunities which the business is well positioned to pursue. Our gas utility business in Australia has delivered a strong 2025, and we expect this growth to continue into the years ahead as the Australian government remains focused on enabling the development of new infrastructure to meet increasing population growth. In response to this, we continue to focus our new customer connections. Under our new access arrangement, AA6, Our five-year plan sees us growing by approximately 80,000 new connections as customer sentiment towards gas continues to be positive in Western Australia. This amounts to a 27% increase in expected customers compared to our previous access arrangement. For the five-year AA6 period, we're operating under a higher return on equity of $8.25 3%, driving consistent earnings for Canadian utilities. Our second pillar, operational excellence, is anchored on safety, reliability, and operational outperformance. Safety is a key element linked to our long-term growth. By continuing to foster a strong safety culture, we ensure that operational efficiency and reliability are achieved without compromise. Safety across Canadian utilities requires collaboration and a continued focus on our commitments. We must learn from incidents, promote safety initiatives, and champion workplace safety across the business. From an outperformance perspective, our utilities are known for their ability to drive operational efficiencies. In 2024, our Australia utility delivered over 550 basis points of outperformance above the regulated ROE, while our utilities in Canada drove almost 100 basis points of outperformance above the regulated ROE. As we move ahead, we will share our learnings across all businesses like Canadian Utilities with a focus on driving further efficiencies across IT, supply chain, and administrative costs. I look forward to sharing further updates on this over the upcoming year. Our third pillar is financial leadership. And with that, I'll pass the call to Katie to discuss this in further detail.

Thanks, Bob, and good morning, everyone. And can I say what a great quarter we had. But I'll start with our external funding. I want to provide an update on our successful financing we executed in the third quarter. On September 8th, Canadian Utilities Limited announced a $750 million transaction of hybrid notes at a fixed rate of 5.45%. And on September 11th, CU Inc. announced a $370 million transaction of debentures at a rate of 4.787%. I am proud to say that these offerings had significant interest from the investment community and approximately were three times oversubscribed across a strong pool of buyers. This confirms that there is sufficient investor demand to satisfy the funding requirements for the total investment in Yellowhead, which will be funded according to the regulated capital structure of 63% regulated debt and 37% regulated equity. We continue to pursue partnership arrangements with Indigenous partners that may contribute up to 30%. The remaining investment of approximately $750 million will be funded through Canadian utilities, with proceeds coming from diverse capital sources, including the $500 million from the September 2025 fixed-to-fixed rate subordinated notes, cash from operations, and other future potential issuances of hybrids or preferred shares. I look forward to updating you very shortly on this. As with all our capital decisions, we will review all options and choose what is in the best interest of shareholder value creation. Looking at our third quarter performance for Canadian utilities as a whole, we delivered positive earnings growth year over year. We achieved adjusted earnings of $108 million, or 40 cents per share, up from $102 million for the same period in 2024. This was despite headwinds including a reduction in the approved ROE for Alberta utilities and the conclusion of the Efficiency Carryover Mechanism, or ECM. Our strong performance was driven by growth across all of our core businesses. Acto Energy Systems delivered adjusted earnings of $98 million in the quarter, $4 million higher year over year. Despite $6 million of headwinds from the reset in our approved ROE and the conclusion of the ECM for our distribution utilities, we still delivered growth within Energy Systems. While Acto Energy Systems has seen an increase in earnings year over year, We expect to face headwinds in the upcoming quarter as we will not have the same tax efficiencies that we achieved in Q4 of 2024. Atwan Power delivered adjusted earnings of $16 million, up $2 million year-over-year. In the storage and industrial water segment, we continue to deliver growing earnings. As Bob mentioned earlier on the call, we plan to grow the storage business and capitalize on brownfield expansion opportunities. In electricity generation, adjusted earnings were up for the quarter, driven by higher compensation related to turbine availability guarantees at our 40-mile wind facility and higher generation at the Veracruz hydro facility in Mexico. ATCO Australia delivered adjusted earnings of $27 million during the quarter. This is $12 million, or 80% higher than the same period last year. As Bob noted earlier, we continue to see momentum within our Ascogas Australia business, with earnings growth driven by higher rates and outperformance. This accounted for the majority of the improvement. At Ascopower Australia, higher earnings were primarily due to the settlement of the South Australian Hydrogen Jobs Plan project. From a cash flow perspective, our cash from operating activities increased 12% compared to the same period last year. The cash we generate will be used in combination with the external funding I previously discussed to fund our enhanced capital program that will generate future earnings growth. Overall, we remain in a strong financial position as we round out the last quarter of 2025 and head into 2026. We continue to remain focused on finding efficiencies across the organization, including supply chain improvements, repatriating some IT operations internally, and consolidating senior levels of leadership, all while executing on our strategy to generate long-term value for all stakeholders, including our shareholders. I will now turn the call back to Bob for closing remarks.

Thanks, Katie. It's evident from this quarter that we've seen strong momentum across our businesses when we work together as one organization. To reiterate, our three pillars guiding our future include growth and prosperity, operational excellence and financial leadership. It's an exciting time at Canadian Utilities. The environments in which we operate continue to have positive tailwinds, including Alberta, where we are positioned to benefit from the province's focus on natural resources and economic growth. Our unique position as an operator of utilities, storage and generation assets positions us to capitalize on the opportunities ahead of us and to be a key provider for all of our current and future customers. I look forward to leading us through this period of growth and will share our progress on our initiatives throughout 2026. That concludes our prepared remarks. I'll turn the call back to Colin for our question period.

Thank you, Bob and Katie. In the interest of time, we ask you to limit yourself to two questions. If you have additional questions, you are welcome to rejoin the queue. I will now turn it back to the conference coordinator for questions.

Thank you. To join the question queue, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. The first question comes from Rob Hope with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Morning, everyone. Hoping we can dive a little bit deeper into ECOGAS Australia or even the Australian business in aggregate. You know, year to date, you're at 42%. And, you know, the ASCO gas under AA6 has been quite strong. So can maybe help us understand kind of the key drivers of the strong growth, you know, with the outlook for Q4 and whether or not you would get back to a more normal kind of growth rate in 26 and 27?

Sure. Hi, Rob. It's Katie. Well, we're really happy with the AA6 parameters that were set out, and you can see a lot of our strong earnings growth there. That being said, there were some one-time items that we had this year that we would not repeat next year, including the settlement on the South Australia hydrogen jobs plan, as well as some cleanup of a previous project that we were working on, Central West Pumped Hydro. But all that said, we do expect the continued strong growth that we had in the outperformance that you can see specific to aqua gas Australia. Those two one-time items that I'm talking about mostly show up in the aqua power. part of the segment. So I think we continue to have headwinds behind us there. We also do benefit from the inflation indexing, and we're watching that closely, but I think that could help in the future a little bit as well going forward on some of our earnings there in Australia. Yeah.

Rob, if I could just add, I also think there's some great opportunities to look for efficiencies across our operations in Australia as we align across Canadian utilities. I do think there's some great potential for Australia. All right.

Appreciate that. And then maybe more broadly looking at the electric transmission opportunities in Alberta. You have a potential for a significant increase in load in the province. However, the system operator is trying to minimize transmission investment. How does that kind of balance for the growth outlook for that business?

Yeah, Rob, I really enjoy talking about that topic because we do think there's some great opportunities for electric transmission build in the province. We do have to consider that as we look at affordability across, you know, across this province as it impacts the consumer. But, you know, in the capital forecast that we've been giving, we don't have, you know, capital in there for things like Intertize. And we do think there's some great opportunities with Intertize. But, you know, the projects that are in our service territory, we think we're well positioned to capitalize on those. And much of the growth is actually in our service territory. So, we do see there's some great potential there.

All right. Thank you.

The next question comes from Maurice Choi with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

I just want to come back to slide 17 about the funding of the YellowHeads pipeline. Can I just ask how advanced you are in terms of securing the 30% investment with Indigenous partners? And if you could help break down that $251 million of remaining funding a little bit more, what drivers are there to determine how much from cash from operations and how much from, I suppose, equity raises?

Maurice, thanks. I'll comment on the Indigenous side. kind of status and then let Katie comment on the rest of your question. I personally have had a lot of conversations with the Indigenous communities. I'm very optimistic that we will have that in place. You know, it takes a little bit of time, but we've had really good conversations and we as an organization are very committed to making that happen. And I know the conversations I've had with those Indigenous communities, we're also getting a lot of support from their side as well. So I'm pretty confident in that.

And Maurice, to your second question related to the $261 million, I would just say stay tuned, but we don't, just to be quite clear, we don't anticipate having to access the public equity markets for that amount of money. And I think there's a depth in other capital areas in some of the the hybrids preferred in some of those markets to be able to fulfill that need shortly.

Understood. That's a great color. And if I could just look into your discussion about, I guess, hydrogen. Not a whole lot of mention here, but I suppose if you look at the Canadian budget and you look at the major projects office, How do you feel about your project? Were there any takeaways from the budget or even from the initial list of comments from the NPO that you think would be positive takeaways to facilitate your AH3 emissions?

Maurice, we've spent a lot of time, as you know, working with the federal government on our project that we're pursuing, you know, ammonia by rail based on hydrogen development. There are some encouraging things that are in the budget, but we do not have a lot of capital put in our plan for the hydrogen project because we just don't have the full confidence that that's going to develop. We're continuing to do some work on it, but we need to see more definitive signs from the federal government that they'll support the project. Specifically, we need to see more certainty across Canada for the project. So we're still having conversations, but it's definitely not one of our key opportunities right now.

I understand. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from John Mould with TDCon. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I think that yellowhead financing slide, that really helps lay things out. I guess on the non-regulated side, you know, beyond the storage opportunity that you discussed earlier, you know, where do you feel like you've got the best line of sight or best potential on, you know, possible regulated investments over the midterm, excuse me, possible investments over the midterm outside of the regulated platform?

John, again, Bob here. We do, first of all, I don't want to dismiss the gas storage because I think there's such great opportunities in gas storage. But in addition to that, we do see some opportunities in generation, but but primarily in gas-fired generation, not in really going out and building a lot more renewables. We do think there's pockets of electric storage, in other words, batteries that we can pursue. And then, you know, when I say gas-fired generation, I'm saying both in Alberta and in Australia. I think there's opportunities there in the near term.

Okay, thanks for that. And then, you know, just speaking about generation more broadly in the province of Alberta, can you maybe speak a little bit to your engagement on, and I know it's an ongoing process, but your engagement on the market, you know, design reforms there, and also, you know, on the transmission side. you know, what you're hoping to see. And sorry, I should say the transmission regulation side as it applies to generation. And, you know, what you're hoping to see as an owner of generation in the province and as a, you know, potential investor in incremental generation in the province, be that gas-fired or renewables down the road.

And, John, you're correct. There are two different things, the impact on generation versus the impact on electric transmission. As we said earlier, we think there's some great opportunities in the province for electric transmission. On the generation side, it is being impacted and will be impacted by the long-term plan with the restructured energy market, as we've discussed previously. We're also having a lot of conversations with the government as we speak around the zero congestion policy that was tied to the transmission regulation changes over the last couple of years. The government... The conversations with government are encouraging, but they recognize the impacts that changing the zero congestion policy has on generation. So we're continuing to work that. I am optimistic that we'll actually get something from the government to give us more confidence on where we're going with generation. But as a province and as an investor, we do need to get more confidence in the province as to what's going to happen with the rules on certainty. before much more generation is built in this province.

Okay, I'll get back into you. Thank you very much for that, Collier.

The next question comes from Ben Sam with BMO. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks, Maureen. I have a couple of questions on the gas storage commentary you had. Maybe it's the staff in Alberta. Isn't it better to... leave an open book into a rising contract price in Alberta, given what L&D export dynamic is playing out?

Are you saying then just keep it all merchant? I'm trying to – sorry, I'm trying to understand your question.

Yeah, I was wondering your philosophy around – you've locked in contracts, is what you said, and extensions. in a rate that's probably about a dollar or so. And why not just wait a while, a year or two, and capitalize on potentially a rising movement in the storage rates? So I'm not saying keep it all merchant, but just think of your philosophy between weighing those two differences.

Yeah. Ben, I'm a huge believer in a balanced approach. So if you look at our gas storage, we have a balance of contracting out part of our storage to customers so they have access to that storage based upon what they want to do. We also do a lot of seasonal deals with our customers, which is a different type of service. And then the third service is doing a lot of day-to-day service, which is probably more what you're talking about is looking at more of that merchant market. So we actually do some of that. But we do like to lock in our deals, and I think we've been very successful on that. So I do feel like we need to have a balanced approach, not all of just one scenario or the other.

Okay. Got it. And then you also mentioned looking at other regions, maybe acquisitions or for development. Is there a particular region that looks very interesting to you? At this point in time, we've seen some announcements in the Gulf Coast today from another company.

I'm assuming you're still talking about gas storage, Ben? Yes, that's right. And I actually believe across North America there's opportunities for gas storage. And so we are evaluating opportunities, again, across the North America gas storage environment. So I would agree with you on that.

Okay, so it's a pretty broad lookout right now.

Yes, yes.

Okay. And maybe lastly, I just wanted to check on Yellowhead with the CapEx. They had a couple of details there a couple of years ago. You had an initial figure. You updated it on scope. What stage are you at right now? I don't know if he's using engineering hat on it in terms of really your confidence in that. CapEx number, just looking at past projects, what if they hit the needs and then you go into the next phase?

Yeah, we keep updating our capital forecast on that, and we're down to a Class 3 kind of plus or minus 20% estimate currently. You know, as of today, we're looking at $2.9 billion is kind of what we're, you know, we've informed the Alberta Utilities Commission as to the cost of that. And, you know, as we progress with long lead materials, we can lock in more of the supply chain side of it. And then in 2026, we'll be going to the market for contracting pricing. So we'll get better confidence as time goes on. Obviously, the risk with building that pipeline, you know, in addition to supply chain and contractors is always, you know, weather. And that's something that, you know, we have to do the best we can to manage that.

Okay, got it. Thank you very much.

Once again, if you have a question, please press star then 1. Since there are no more questions, this concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Colin Jackson for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you. And thank you all for participating today. We appreciate your interest in Canadian utilities, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.

This brings to a close today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.