This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to this Northland Power Conference call to discuss the fourth quarter and full year 2021 results. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Friday, February 25, 2022 at 10 a.m. Conducting this call from Earthen Power are Mike Crawley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Pauline Alinchandani, Chief Financial Officer, and Waseem Khalil, Senior Director of Investor Relations and Strategy. Before we begin, Northland's management has asked me to remind listeners that all figures presented are in Canadian dollars and to caution that certain information presented and responses to questions may contain forward-looking statements that include assumptions and are subject to various risks. Actual results may differ materially from management's expected or forecasted results. Please read the forward-looking statements section in yesterday's news release announcing Northland Power's results and be guided by its contents in making investment decisions or recommendations. The release is available at www.northlandpower.com. I will now turn the call over to Mike Crawley. Please go ahead.
Earthen Power
Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. We're also joined this morning by David Pavel, our Executive Vice President of Development as well. Off the top, just with respect to the conflict in Ukraine, I would like to just say that we are thinking of all of those impacted and also thinking of our colleagues, former colleagues, and peers who have family and friends in the Ukraine. Thank you. This morning, we will review our fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial and operating results. Following our prepared remarks, we will take questions from analysts and look forward to addressing all of those questions. To kick things off, as we always do, I want to reiterate that the health and safety of our employees and stakeholders always comes first. The rigorous adherence to health protocols during the pandemic helped ensure the safety of our employees while ensuring, allowing us to maintain high levels of availability at our facilities. Reflecting back on 2021, I'm happy to say that we delivered a strong year financially, operationally, and strategically, despite a number of challenges, including a historically low wind resource in the North Sea. We have made strong progress in advancing key development projects, sourcing new growth, and optimizing our operating facilities. As a global energy transition accelerates, a substantial build-out of renewable energy will be needed over the next decade, with government decarbonization policies and corporate net-zero plans, taking hold. With a significant global presence, Northland is well positioned to be a big part of this transformation. Our leadership and entrepreneurial DNA has helped us grow into a global company, and our significant exposure to offshore wind means that we can play a significant role in this energy transformation. We have an operating portfolio of over 3 gigawatts, which nearly 95% is under long-term revenue contracts. and a 14-gigawatt development pipeline to fuel our growth. Our primary focus remains on offshore wind, where we have three significant projects that will reach financial close within the next two to three years. These include Heilong, which will reach financial close later this year, Baltic Power in 2023, and North Sea Two in 2024. Together, these projects will provide us with almost 3 gigawatts of gross incremental capacity to complement the 1.2 gigawatts of offshore wind we currently have in operation. In addition, we are establishing a strong presence in select onshore renewable power markets to complement our growth in offshore wind and provide near-term growth in cash flow. Looking at our accomplishments over the last year, first starting with our financial results, we finished the year on a very positive note, posting solid results for the fourth quarter. For this quarter, we reported adjusted EBITDA of $364 million compared to $269 million in 2020, representing a 35% increase. For free cash flow, we reported $156 million or 69 cents on a per share basis. This compares to the $56 million or $0.28 from the same period a year prior. The strong performance in the quarter helped us achieve full-year adjusted EBITDA of $1.14 billion and free cash flow per share of $1.40. Both of these results came in at the midpoint of our guidance and exceeded our more recent expectations for the year. Pauline will provide a more detailed look into the financial numbers later in the call. Looking back at the year and with respect to our growth pipeline, we closed our entry in the 1.2 gigawatt Baltic Power offshore wind project, for which we also secured a 25-year indexed CFD or power purchase agreement. Work is progressing on moving the project towards financial close in 2023, with commercial operations expected in 2026. We expanded our presence in the German offshore wind market with the formation of the 1.3 gigawatt North Sea cluster with RWE. and we exercise our step-in rights on the first of three projects within that cluster, North Sea 2, to retain the lease. The formation of the cluster is expected to allow the realization of synergies in development, construction, as well as operating costs, leading to enhanced returns for all of the projects. We also have the same step-in rights for North Sea 3 and North Sea Delta, which are expected to come to auction in 2023. and all three together form the North Sea cluster with RWER partner. Turning to our activities in Asia, we made significant advancements on our offshore wind projects under development there. The most notable is our 1,044-megawatt Heilong project in Taiwan, where we are preparing to move the project to financial close later this year. In the past year, we completed key milestones for HILONG, including obtaining the localization plan after working closely with the local supply chain and government. Tendering of the main components has resulted in preferred supplier agreements being signed and securing the supply chain for the project. In South Korea, we secured our first two electricity business licenses as part of our progression of a large portfolio of projects through early development in that country. In Japan, two of our projects were designated under the government's auction process as promising areas, with bidding expected to commence later this year. Looking at our near-term growth and cash flow, we acquired a 551-megawatt portfolio of wind and solar operating assets in Spain, as you know, one of the most promising growth markets for renewables. This portfolio, so far, has been outperforming our underwritten assumptions. The acquisition provided in media cash flow to Northland has helped to position us as a top 10 renewable power operator within Spain. As we build on this momentum, we expect to grow this platform through both greenfield development and additional opportunistic acquisitions. We also solidified our entry into the United States renewable energy market by beginning construction on two of our New York State onshore wind projects. which are progressing on schedule and on budget. The two projects, Ball Hill and Blue Stone, have a combined operating capacity of 220 megawatts and benefit from a 20-year indexed renewable energy certificate agreement with NYSERDA. In Columbia, we began to deliver on our renewable growth strategy, leveraging our position in our EBSA utility there. We advanced the 16-megawatt heliosolar project and the 130-megawatt supersolar projects. Helios has already achieved financial close and construction activities commenced in 2021 with commercial operations expected by the end of 2022 for both projects within the Helios cluster. We hold a 50% interest in the SUBA projects with commercial operations expected in the second half of 2023. Both projects will benefit from long-term off-take agreements with Helios securing a 12-year PPA and SUBA a 15-year PPA. Finally, we bolstered our talent by adding key people in roles across the globe. These experts are vital as we build out our capacity and grow our global footprint. These key roles include areas such as corporate offtake, strategy, market analysis, project management, global procurement, as well as adding storage and hydrogen talent to strengthen our ability to succeed in these new growth sectors. In a world with significant need for new renewable power capacity and lots of capital looking to invest in these assets, you want to be a developer with projects of scale. This ensures we will have proprietary investment opportunities ourselves, but also that we can pursue sell-downs of interest in these projects going forward to other investors. With that, I will now turn the call over to Pauline for a more detailed review of our financial results.
David Pavel
Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. Last night, Northland Power released operating and financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2021. We are immensely proud of the accomplishments we have achieved together as a team over the past year and are gearing ourselves up to continue to deliver on our stated objectives in 2022. Our fourth quarter and full year financial results showcase the continued strength and resilience of our performance despite the challenges we encountered through the first nine months of the year with respect to low wind resource in the North Sea. As discussed in our MD&A, our financial performance from our offshore wind facilities were impacted this past year due to a weaker wind resource in the North Sea, which impacted all three of our offshore facilities. Over and above this, the turbine bearing replacement campaign at North Sea One also impacted our results. However, we are happy to report that the wind conditions experienced in the fourth quarter were closer to our P50, or normalized expectations, and we continue to see strong wind conditions to start 2022. Looking at our financial results in the fourth quarter, we generated adjusted EBITDA of approximately $364 million, which was an increase of 35%. for $95 million compared to the $269 million we generated a year ago. There were a few factors that contributed to the higher EBITDA and resulted in the year-over-year increase. These included higher contributions from the Spain portfolio due to the acquisitions and due to higher wholesale market prices in the quarter ahead of our expectations. higher operating contributions from Gemini resulting from higher market prices realized on production above the subsidy cap, and higher contributions from EPSA in our natural gas facilities due to optimizations in annual rate escalations. To understand our Spanish portfolio better, I encourage investors and analysts to refer to our 2021 annual report and our latest AIS released last night for more information. On a full year basis, we generated adjusted EBITDA of approximately $1.14 billion, which was near the midpoint of our guidance of $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion. Year over year, adjusted EBITDA decreased slightly by 3% from the same period a year ago due to a $94 million decrease in contributions from our offshore wind facilities resulting from lower wind resource in the year coupled with the APX hedging losses realized at Gemini and the lost revenues at North Sea One due to the Bering replacement campaign. These decreases were offset by a $74 million positive contribution from the Spain portfolio, as well as fewer periods of negative pricing and compensated outages at our German offshore wind facilities compared to last year. With respect to free cash flow, Northland generated approximately $156 million in the fourth quarter, representing an increase of $100 million versus 2020. Overall, the higher free cash flow in the quarter compared to 2020 was due to a number of items, including a $51 million increase in earnings across all our facilities, as I described in explaining adjusted EBITDA. We also realized a $27 million contribution from the Spain portfolio to as well as a $10 million decrease in interest costs from repayment of facility-level loans. On a full-year basis, free cash flow in 2021 was $307 million, which is a decrease of $36 million, or 11%, compared to the $344 million realized in the prior year. The main driver behind the year-over-year change in free cash flow was an $88 million decrease in contributions, primarily at our offshore wind facilities. These decreases were partially offset by a $30 million contribution from the Spain portfolio and $18 million of interest cost savings resulting from the scheduled principal repayment facility-level loans. On a per-share basis, these figures translated into free cash flow of 69 cents in the fourth quarter and $1.40 for the full year 2021, which came in at the midpoint of our financial guidance for the year and above our expected guidance of approximately $1.30 which Northland had guided to in the third quarter of 2021. These results compared to the $0.28 and $1.73, respectively, realized in the same periods of 2020. Our rolling four-quarter free cash flow payout ratio calculated on a cash dividend basis for the year ended December 31 with 56% compared to 63% in 2020. For adjusted free cash flow, which as a reminder excludes growth-related expenditures from free cash flow, we generated $182 million in the quarter and $386 million on a full-year basis. On a per-share basis, this translates into $0.80 in the fourth quarter and $1.70 on a full-year basis. This adjusted free cash flow resulted in a rolling four-quarter payout ratio of 45% compared to 53% in 2020. Expanding a little on our growth expenditures, you will note our presentation of growth expenditures in our annual report distinguishes between business development and project development expenses. We believe this presentation will more clearly outline the nature of these expenditures. Business development expenditures are encouraged to identify and secure prospective business and development opportunities. These are ultimately expected to result in identified development projects intended to be pursued to completion and include costs incurred for transactions that are not ultimately pursued to acquisition. On the other hand, project development expenditures are attributable to certain early to mid-stage development projects under active development that we have identified to the market in our current or previous disclosures. These projects are described and identified in our 2021 annual report. With respect to our balance sheet, Northland remains in a very strong position with ample liquidity to help fund our growth initiatives. As at December 31, 2021, we had access to approximately $776 million of cash and liquidity, comprising $748 million of liquidity available on our revolving facility and $28 million of cash on hand. In addition to free cash flow generated, Northland uses additional sources of liquidity to fund growth and capital investments. For the year ended December 31st, we sourced additional liquidity through net proceeds from a number of strategic debt refinancings and debt optimization. This included our Deutsche Boot debt facility, a number of Canadian solar facilities, and our EBSA debt facility. In aggregate, Northland realized nearly $200 million of additional proceeds from these refinancings. When added to the nearly $250 million of additional liquidity generated in 2020, we have generated approximately $450 million of additional liquidity over the past two years through our refinancing and debt optimization activities to further support our growth. Expanding on EBSA a little bit more, in December, we restructured and upsized EBSA's long-term, non-recourse debt financing, resulting in $84 million of incremental cash proceeds to Northland, net of closing costs. The aggregate amount of the financing was upsized to $533 million, driven primarily by expected growth in EBSA's EBITDA. The facility is structured as a $521 million term loan and a $12 million debt service reserve credit facility. The restructured facility is denominated in Canadian dollars and the principal amount is currently 100% hedged against the Colombian peso. The interest rate on the debt facility before foreign exchange hedging costs is 3.7%. In addition, the EPSA facility will also benefit from a long term as we extended the loan to three years compared to two years previously. Under the terms of the EPSA facility, Northland intends to execute reoccurring upsizing of EPSA's debt supported by continued growth in EBITDA. Looking ahead, as we announced that our investor day held on February 8th, To complement our existing sources of funding, Northland will be considering partial sell-down of ownership interest in certain development assets on or before financial close, green financing instruments such as green hybrid bonds, and other financing tools. These additional sources are intended to improve Northland's financial flexibility while supporting the capital and credit requirements for our development projects. Turning to our 2022 financial guidance, as noted in our press release issued on February 8th, for adjusted EBITDA, we expect to generate between $1.15 billion and $1.25 billion this year. This level is expected to be slightly higher relative to our 2021 guidance levels. Guidance for 2022 free cash flow per share of $1.20 to $1.40 is expected is expected to be slightly lower than 2021 free cash flow per share of $1.40. This is primarily due to increased project development costs and higher corporate costs in pursuit of the company's continued execution of its global growth strategy. As a growth company with a significant pipeline of development projects, Northland is committed to unlocking value by deploying early-stage investment capital, or DevEx, to advance our projects. As such, in 2022, we expect our development expenditures to amount to $100 million, or around 45 cents per share, to fund expenditures to advance the North State cluster, Scotland, Japan, and Korea, in addition to other strategies. Accounting for these growth expenditures noted above, our adjusted free cash flow for 2022 is expected to be in the range of $1.65 to $1.85 per share. This compares with adjusted free cash flow of $1.70 for 2021. I would like to point out that our 2022 guidance ranges for free cash flow and adjusted free cash flow do not incorporate any sell-down proceeds, and as such, net proceeds from sell-down would increase our reported free cash flow in the event they do occur. In conclusion, 2021 was a strong year for Northland and demonstrated the resilience of the portfolio and cash flow through diversification. Our teams achieved numerous successes in the year that allowed us to exceed our expected guidance ranges for both adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow compared to the third quarter, despite a truly anomalous win resource year for the company. We also took meaningful steps to increase our liquidity and enhance our balance sheet, through targeted debt refinancings and optimizations to fund new investments. All in all, it was a productive year for the company. 2022 will be another busy year for the company, and we look forward to providing you with updates on our progress on our upcoming quarterly conference calls. With that, I will now turn back the call to Mike for his concluding remarks.
Earthen Power
Thank you, Pauline. So looking forward, we have a big opportunity ahead of us to further accelerate the growth that we have delivered over our 35-year history. We believe Northland is well positioned as an originator and developer of projects to capitalize on the expected growth in renewable power globally. Currently, we have 366 megawatts of additional capacity in construction with the expectation of completion in 2022. We also have nearly 3 gigawatts of gross capacity in projects which are scheduled for financial close and commencement of construction within the next two years. Once these projects are complete, Northland's total gross capacity will nearly double to more than 6.5 gigawatts by 2027. So this concludes our prepared remarks. We're now happy to take your questions. Operator, please open the line for any questions.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to register a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. If your question has been answered and you would like to withdraw your registration, please press the pound key. And if you're using a speakerphone, please lift your handset before entering your request. One moment, please, for the first question. Our first question comes from the line of David Cruzado of Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.
David Cruzado
Hey, thanks. Morning, everyone. My first question here on the offshore wind segment, sounds like curtailments were lower in a quarter, but the wind resource is actually pretty close to in line. I'm curious if that situation has improved, whether due to investments in transmission, or was that just temporary factors that reduced those curtailments?
Earthen Power
Hi, David. It's a good question. So you're correct that there was less curtailment than we had forecast and certainly less curtailment than we had seen in prior years. We are expecting that to continue to improve. And I think as you may recall, about a year ago, we forecast that we expected by 2022 and certainly 2023 to see growth. some of the impact of curtailment due to extended periods of negative pricing decline because of transmission enhancements, both in northern Germany but also north-south in Germany. So the other impact, too, is just the gradual retirement of coal-fired generation in Germany as well, taking some thermal capacity offline as well, which reduces the incidence of negative pricing, too. So overall... we think it's a picture that is improving and will continue to improve going forward.
David Cruzado
Excellent. Thanks for that, Mike. And maybe just one more for me, just a question on your onshore renewable business, maybe specifically in Europe. I'm just curious if the, if the high power price environment there today could prompt you to accelerate any opportunities that you could see there just with maybe increased demand from corporate off takers and, Do you see any opportunities arising there that maybe weren't there six months ago?
Earthen Power
Yeah, I think it's both the higher energy prices but also the volatility in energy prices and the uncertainty around power prices and gas prices, which are often on the margin in most markets in Europe as well for power prices. So those two things. pieces of uncertainty, we think will create a more favorable market for long-term contracting of renewable energy to corporates going forward. And we think that's a positive for Northland as we look ahead to contracting the North Sea cluster over the next two years or three years.
David Cruzado
Great. Thanks for that, Michael. I'll get back to you. Thanks.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Sean Stewart with TD Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Sean Stewart
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Two questions. Following up on the European Onshore platform, and Pauline, thanks for the additional disclosures in the MD&A on the dynamics for those contracts in Spain. Can you just help us understand a little better the pool price return on investment dynamic there? And it sounds like there's some revenue recognition deferrals. And I'm wondering practically with what you've seen for the pool price through the latter part of 2021, early 2022, how that will affect the EBITDA and free cash flow from those assets?
David Pavel
Yes, so, you know, I think with respect to Spain, you know, given this was our first acquisition, it was very much for us sort of learning and understanding not only the onboarding and integration of the assets, but also the accounting and very specific accounting that follows the regulated process. treatment of these assets. So maybe in a simplified way what I will say is there is a concept of band adjustments that are within the Spain portfolio and the intent of those are effectively to smooth out over the three to six year period essentially the peaks and valleys of what ultimately happens with the pool prices So over time, it is intended to be sort of a stable return. However, given the unprecedented levels of the pool prices in this year, it's sort of a framework that resulted in a benefit to us in 2021. We are expecting, though... that we will receive most of the benefit of the pool prices. Now, it depends on what ultimately happens in 2022, but we will see most of the benefit of the pool prices, all else equal, on the next regulatory cycle, which will be in 2023. So I know that was probably a lot, but all I can say is we are following exactly IFRS revenue recognition treatment with respect to Spain, and we are not deferring or making any subjective decisions here on how we account for the revenues.
Sean Stewart
Got it. Okay, that helps. Question on perspective development, and specific to the U.S., Mike, Any context you can give us on thoughts beyond New York, what the company might be looking at there, or is your plate full enough with offshore wind elsewhere that that'll be the focus for the company?
Earthen Power
Yeah, I'll turn it to David for a couple of comments. But, I mean, our focus in the U.S. has been primarily in the Northeast and obviously principally in New York State. We like the New York ISO and also, to some extent, some parts of PGM. We like those markets. New England, we like that market. We've looked at opportunities there before. And particularly in New York, we like the long-term contracts that are available. But maybe some additional color in terms of what you're seeing in the U.S., David.
David
Yeah, no, thanks, Mike. Thanks, Sean. Good question. I think as we communicated in the invest today, it's very much a targeted approach. Obviously, the US is a huge market, and we need to be very focused in our activities. I think the recognition of the sense of the New York market, we continue to see that proceeding, and so you'll see more assets, I think, coming through in New York. As Mike said, in the wider PGM, we think there are some Similar benefits there. We're tracking, as one of the earlier questions, about where we see the strongest activity in liquidity in the corporate PPAs, and I think some of that comes in that PGA market as well. So as we look to the contracting basis of these assets being on the corporate side, we want to make sure we've got strong liquidity and strong potential for the offtake. So I think it's in those two key areas, really.
Sean Stewart
Okay. Thanks, David. That's all I have for now. Thanks, everyone.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from Rupert Mayer with National Bank. Please proceed with your question. Good morning, everyone.
Rupert Mayer
If I could start with the thermal division, some talk of price escalation that you saw in the quarter that contributed to higher EBITDA. Can you give us a little more color on what you saw in price escalation and where and Was there anything else that contributed to that strong result?
Earthen Power
On the price escalation, I'll flip it over to Pauline, but it's principally been annual CPI adjustment that drove that escalation.
Rupert Mayer
So is that a higher number this year? Would you have seen something, say, north of 4% or 5%? Beg your pardon, Rupert? What was the CPI adjustment? What was the level of the adjustment you would have seen?
Earthen Power
It was around 2% to 3%.
David Pavel
There were also some lower OPEX costs as well, which also contributed to the results this year, too.
Rupert Mayer
Okay. Is that a sustainable drop in OPEX?
Earthen Power
I would describe those more as one-time, and it's just kind of relative to budget, what we budgeted, so I wouldn't necessarily assume that those are The only facility where we will see a continued reduction in operating costs would be KLPC as a result of the enhanced dispatch contract that we entered into with the ISO, the system operator in Ontario, which basically means that the facility is going to operate at a much more reduced level, which does three things. One, it reduces operating costs in the long run. Two, it... reduces emissions from the facility materially. And three, from our standpoint overall, it reduces the risk and exposure to that facility. It's just an older facility, so the less it operates, the less risk there is of something going wrong.
Rupert Mayer
All right, great. Thank you. And I'd like to take another crack at Spain, if I may, Pauline. And I apologize because I haven't read the AIF yet. But in the circumstance that the power prices remain as high as they are now, if you do get a regulatory reset in 2023, is there any opportunity to over-earn your targeted return, meaning that you don't actually have to repay any excess revenue, or does the contract effectively assume that you would have to repay
Earthen Power
I can start on that and then I'll turn it to Pauline. The main opportunity for us to outperform in Spain is around the availability and our operating costs in the facility. I don't know if I mentioned on a prior call, but our head of onshore renewables relocated to Madrid and is going to be there for the next year to make sure that we both integrate the portfolio well into Northland, but also to really drill down and understand those assets to ensure that we can operate them as efficiently as possible, both from an availability standpoint but also from a cost standpoint as well. And those are the two ways that we can actually do better through the regulated tariff because there's an assumed cost of operating, an assumed availability level in the regulated tariff that solves to a target rate of return. So that's where our main focus is. On the higher pool prices, as Pauline explained, it depends. The mechanism and the accounting treatment, which is guided also by the regulator, is to smooth out the impacts of any high or low pool prices during the three-year regulated period. Then the reset happens, but the idea is to make the cash flow less volatile to the owners of those assets. We wouldn't anticipate... pool prices in the long run would allow us to outperform our return on those assets. It certainly does improve our recontracting opportunity on those assets as they fall off of the regulated tariff over the next 10 years, we would expect, if pool prices remain high. And certainly, as we talked about earlier in the call, if energy prices remain somewhat volatile, we think that will create a more fertile market for recontracting. But, Pauline?
David Pavel
Yeah, the only other thing I was going to say to that is that, you know, under the regulated return, like your return is intended to be, you know, between the 7.1% or the 7.4%. However, the cash that we receive, under the way that the agreements are written, we don't have to, that cash is not clawed back. So it's available for us to use at a corporate level which sort of enhances returns on the corporate level perspective, but when it comes to the actual just considering Spain entity and Spain itself, the returns are intended to be stable for the life of the asset or the life of the contract.
Rupert Mayer
Okay, very good. I'll leave it there. Thank you. Okay, thanks, Rupert.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Najee Baydown with IA Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Najee Baydown
Hi, good morning. You mentioned that you've invested a lot in talent this year. I'm just wondering today when you think about your organization, do you think you have all the right people in the right places or do you think there are any capabilities or tools that you're still missing that you might want to be pursuing this year?
Earthen Power
I think we've done a lot in the last year to add talent. What we're looking at in 2022 is to take a bit of a fresh look at how our business processes operate and a bit around kind of how we structure ourselves globally to do some enhancements just to both from an asset management and also a growth standpoint to make sure that we're structured in the most efficient way and also in a way that properly manages risk for a company of our scale. So that's more what the focus is going forward in 2022 versus last year where it was more about pulling in the talent that we needed, and more about taking all the talent and making sure it's properly organized over the next year is where our focus is. We've grown a lot. We've grown a lot over the last several years, and so we do need to make sure that the company, for the scale it is now and the scale it will be in the coming years, is structured properly.
Najee Baydown
Okay, got it. And I just wanted to ask if you could provide a bit more context on the projects in Scotland. So what's your outlook for the two, I guess, options that you have now in the book and maybe talk a little bit about floating wind if you can as well.
Earthen Power
Yeah, for sure. I'll turn it to David. It's two leases, 2.3 gigawatts that we were rewarded and David can give you some more color on those opportunities. Okay.
David
Yeah, Neji, good question. So you're right, with a floating lease, one side is definitely for floating technology, the other one is for fixed. They are early-stage projects. Obviously, they're right at the start of their development period, so we are looking at the back end of the decade, really, by the time you're going to get to financial close and see a deal of those assets. Development works are underway. the focus of course from a timing perspective is the fixed one to move that one forward with speed obviously for the reasons of the technology and the ability to do that given its location it is Northland's first floating project and so it's a project that we're going to learn on as we do that there's a lot of similarities so the learning is really on the optimization of the design of the floating and choice of the floating technology and foundation technology and that's something that we To your earlier question, we actually have capacity that we've brought in already in the business to specific floating technology, and so that's going to be something that we'll be able to leverage on other parts of the world as well as we look for further floating sites and further expansion in the portfolio.
Najee Baydown
Thank you for that detail. I appreciate it. That's all from me.
Earthen Power
Okay. Well, seeing no further questions, I want to thank everyone for joining us today. We will hold our next call following the release of our first quarter 2022 results in May. In the meantime, we want to thank you for your continued confidence and support. Ladies and gentlemen. Oh, we've got one more. Oh, sorry, Mark, Jarvie, sorry. I know, sorry.
Mark
One moment.
Earthen Power
Are you there, Mark?
Mark
Yeah, I'm here. Can you hear me?
Earthen Power
Yeah, you just made it under the wire. I just saw you pop up. Sorry, we're about to cut it off.
Mark
Yeah, sorry about that. I just wanted to kind of circle back on partnerships for offshore when you've done a number of them in different ways. How much right now are you getting inbounds versus you chasing partnerships and trying to find a local partner? I'm just wondering the frame of the types of partnerships you're entertaining at this point.
Earthen Power
Yeah, I'll turn it to David again. I mean, we're seeing a number of new markets start to open up, or at least governments put out frameworks or initial consultations around offshore wind frameworks in some new markets. So we do get contacted by some of the early stage developers in those markets looking for an experienced partner. But, Dave, I don't know if there's anything you need to add to that, David.
David
I missed the subtlety of Mark's question.
Earthen Power
It was around how much of it, in terms of our partnerships in offshore wind that we enter into, how much are we finding now is us reaching out versus inbounds coming in asking for us to reach out to us, developers. Yeah, sorry, Mark.
David
It was a bad line. I couldn't quite pick it up. What I see, of course, once we've got the foothold in the market, the inbound calls come much more frequently, and we're finding that in a number of the locations we're in now. As we've got that presence, we've got that reputation, of course, we're bringing value. Then a partner is coming towards us to look to invest. to access that value that we're bringing to form a partnership. So I think we're seeing increasing numbers of that now in our target markets, which is great because we intend to grow. We're not just single project, single country. We want to grow a portfolio in each location. So I think it's positive from that perspective.
Mark
And in terms of those inbounds, like how often would something maybe not fit for the exactly where you want to deploy permanent equity, but something you could help with? Like is there an opportunity for you guys to use your enhanced scale and operation development to be a service provider, maybe not a long-term owner on some of these partnerships you're being shown?
Earthen Power
Yeah, a couple of things. One is we're looking to, moving forward, position ourselves not just as a developer, particularly a late-stage developer who can manage procurement and construction, set up and not just as a constructor but also as an asset manager and operator of the facility so that ideally it won't be always the case but ideally in the event where we enter into partnerships with another developer then we would be able to position ourselves as the asset manager going forward which both allows us to better I guess protect and manage our own investment in that facility but also hopefully to be able to receive some incremental cash flow from that as the asset manager beyond just whatever distributions we get as an investor in those facilities.
Mark
Understood. And then just coming back to Nord C cluster, and then obviously we talked about it before, but Nord C1 comes off contract in around the same time. Is there an opportunity to repower Nord C1, or is that just not feasible at this point? It's too early, and it's their life cycle.
Earthen Power
Yeah, it's a good question. I think that in terms of kind of – It was a nine-year and almost ten-year off-take agreement or subsidy contract on that facility. So when that comes off, the facility's still got a lot of life in it. So I think it would be unlikely that we would repower. I think the better opportunity would be to recontract that, possibly as part of the recontracting of the overall North Sea Cluster, since it will be right around the same time when the North Sea Cluster comes online. So I think that's probably the better opportunity than... than a repowering on that facility, certainly not at that time.
Mark
Okay, next slide. And maybe the last one for Pauline, just what's the cost in terms of the bearing repairs, just ending up in terms of how that's tracking versus sort of prior disclosures, your expectations?
David Pavel
Oh, no, it's tracking along in line with expectations, and the The replacement campaign that we have planned for this year and the lost revenues that we have expecting is obviously just an estimate. It's reflected in the guidance that we would have released previously.
Mark
Okay. Thanks for fitting me in here. Appreciate it.
Earthen Power
Okay. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Mark. Okay. Well, thanks, everybody, for joining, and we look forward to talking to you again after the Q1 results come out.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the conference call for today. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.
Disclaimer