Northland Power Inc.

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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to this Northland Power Conference call to discuss the 2022 third quarter 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 1-1 on your telephone. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Thursday, November 10, 2022 at 10 a.m. Conducting this call for Northland Power are Mike Crawley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Pauline Alamchandani, Chief Financial Officer, and Nwasim 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.

Thank you, Josh, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Also joining us on the call is David Pavel, Executive Vice President of Development, to answer any of your questions on our development activities. This morning we will review our financial and operating results for the third quarter of 2022. Following our prepared remarks, we're going to take questions from analysts and look forward to addressing your 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. Our rigorous adherence to our health and safety protocols ensures the safety of our employees while also allowing us to maintain high levels of availability at our facilities. We continued our strong performance in the third quarter, delivering solid operating and financial results supported by high power prices in Europe that benefited our offshore wind facilities in the North Sea strength across the rest of our portfolio as well. Looking at the headline numbers in the quarter, we delivered adjusted EBITDA of $290 million, which was an increase of 38% or $79 million compared to the same period last year. Similarly, for adjusted free cash flow per share and free cash flow per share, we achieved $0.28 and $0.19 respectively in the quarter compared to $0.15 and $0.05 in the same period a year ago. Our financial and operating performance in the quarter continues the strong pattern of performance we've delivered thus far in 2022. And as noted in our press release yesterday, we are reaffirming our full year 2022 financial guidance, which we've previously updated and moved up in August, along with our second quarter results at the time. A key driver behind this has been our strong operational performance, not only in the quarter, but year to date, and the strength in European power prices during the quarter. We've utilized the higher power prices and the resulting higher realized cash flow across our portfolio to reinvest this cash flow in the development of additional renewable energy capacity and to proactively deleverage some of our assets to enhance the long-term cash flow and economic returns of those facilities. In aggregate, we refinance over $3 billion Canadian dollars of project debt at our Gemini and Spain facilities, using the higher cash flows generated in 2022. These actions will ensure the performance of these assets remain resilient going into the next several years. While power prices in Europe have retreated somewhat in the near term, the emphasis on long-term energy security and the need to accelerate the move from reliance on fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources remains unchanged. As a global leader in renewable energy development with a significant operational and development footprint in Europe, Northland remains ready to contribute to the growth in renewable energy and energy security for the continent. And indeed, we're doing that with our North Sea cluster, Scott Wind, Baltic Power, and other projects that we have under development in Europe. Turning to our development activities, at our high long project in Taiwan, we continue to progress the project closer to the start of construction. We executed substantially all of the key contracts for suppliers for various elements of the project, including turbines, foundations, cable arrays, and both onshore and offshore substations. The project also signed supply agreement for the Siemens 14 megawatt turbine that it will be using, along with a 15-year service contract covering offshore wind logistics and operations and maintenance. Following the signing of the corporate PPA for Heilong 2B, and three in July, efforts have focused on securing non-recourse project level debt finance, which has garnered strong lender interest from various global and local financial institutions. While the project continues to progress, delays in finalizing that corporate PPA and longer than expected negotiations related to the supply contracts pushed back the launch of project finance and slowed its initial progress. The project finance, however, is now progressing well, and we expect financial close to occur, though, in 2023 rather than in 2022. The delay in financial close is not expected to impact commercial operations for the project. In Poland, our 1,200-megawatt Baltic Power Offshore Wind project has also been making significant progress in securing key elements within its supply chain. The project signed several preferred supplier agreements for wind turbines, export cables, and the offshore and onshore substations. The project will utilize 76 turbines, each with a capacity of 15 megawatts to be supplied by Vestas. These turbines are currently the largest turbines available on the market. The project continues to work on securing the remaining key elements and service contracts for the wind facility. At the North Sea cluster, North Sea Two, one of the projects within the cluster, was also preselected for funding by the EU Innovation Fund and was awarded a grant of 95 million euros. The grant was awarded to projects driving technological advancements as part of their development. This grant will be used at North Sea Two to demonstrate the technical and commercial feasibility of producing hydrogen at sea. Now, shifting gears to our construction activities, our two onshore wind projects in New York State, Ball Hill and Bluestone, which are currently in construction, have experienced delays that impact their construction timelines. At Bluestone, all turbines have been delivered, all foundations are complete, and turbine installations, which are well advanced, continued through the quarter and are expected to be completed by the end of the year. However, interconnection and final commissioning are now expected to follow in early 2023. At Ball Hill, supply chain issues have resulted in a delay of turbine deliveries, and as a result, commercial operations is now expected to occur in 2023. All the turbines, however, have been delivered to port. We also finalized a tax equity commitment for the two projects, the first ever for Northland as part of the long-term funding plan for the projects. We continue to be active in New York state, having assembled a strong team on the ground to grow our development ambitions in the United States and in particular in that state. Turning to operations, we are particularly proud of our German operations team in leading a very successful bearings replacement campaign at North Sea One. The team was able to replace all 54 turbines, main bearing assemblies on all 54 turbines on budget and ahead of schedule, thus maximizing the potential for revenue generation in the fourth quarter of 2022. The costs for the campaign were fully covered by the warranty bond settlement proceeds received in 2020 relating to the warranty obligations of North Sea One's turbine manufacturer. To conclude, despite the global uncertainty and macroeconomic pressures we are facing, we continue to deliver strong operating and financial results and continue to execute on our strategic plan with our key projects achieving milestones as we move the projects closer to their financial close. Northland plays a key role in helping our markets around the world achieve energy security and our development teams are working hard to identify additional opportunities in our current markets to help accelerate the build out of renewable energy projects and capacity overall and help Northland scale up. With that, I will now turn the call over to Pauline for a more detailed review of our financial results.