Q1 2025 AES Corp Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Susan Harcourt; Vice President - Investor Relations; AES Corp

Andres Gluski; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; AES Corp

Stephen Coughlin; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President; AES Corp

Ricardo Manuel Falu; Chief Operating Officer, Executive Vice President; AES Corp

Julien Dumoulin-Smith; Analyst; Jefferies

Nicholas Campanella; Analyst; Barclays

David Arcaro; Analyst; Morgan Stanley

Durgesh Chopra; Analyst; EVERCORE ISI

Michael Sullivan; Analyst; Wolfe Research

Richard Sunderland; Analyst; JPMorgan

Anthony Crowdell; Analyst; Mizuho

Presentation

Operator

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AES Corporation Q1 2025 financial review call. My name is Emily, and I'll be moderating your call today.
(Operator Instructions) I will now hand the call over to Susan Harcourt, Vice President of Investor Relations to begin. Susan, please go ahead.

Susan Harcourt

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to our first quarter 2025 financial review call. Our press release, presentation and related financial information are available on our website at aes.com. Today, we will be making forward-looking statements.
There are many factors that may cause future results to differ materially from these statements, which are disclosed in our most recent 10-K and 10-Q filed with the SEC. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures can be found on our website along with the presentation.
Joining me this morning are Andres Gluski, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Steve Coughlin, our Chief Financial Officer; Ricardo Falu, our Chief Operating Officer; and other senior members of our management team. With that, I will turn the call over to Andres.

Andres Gluski

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our first quarter 2025 financial review call. Today, I'm very pleased to reaffirm both our 2025 guidance and long-term growth rate targets, which reflect our strong execution to date as well as the resilience of our business overall.
I will discuss this in more detail and provide an update on the robust growth program at our US utilities. Following my remarks, Steve Coughlin, our CFO, will provide additional color on our financial performance and outlook.
Beginning on slide 3 with our first quarter results. Our financial performance was in line with our expectations with adjusted EBITDA of $591 million and adjusted EPS of $0.27. We completed the construction of 643 megawatts and signed or were awarded 443 megawatts of new PPAs, bringing our backlog to 11.7 gigawatts.
We have achieved our asset sale proceeds target for the year, including the sale of a minority stake in our global insurance company, AGIC, for $450 million. Now turning to the resilience of our business model and portfolio.
Our execution is proceeding as planned, and we expect to hit all of our financial metrics for the year. We have positioned ourselves for success even in the face of uncertainty around tariffs, changes to the Inflation Reduction Act or potential recession.
Our business model is based on long-term contracted generation with creditworthy off takers as well as growth in our US regulated utilities. Our contracting, financing and supply chain strategies have all been designed to minimize the impact of economic conditions, including inflation, interest rates, energy prices and tariffs.
As a result, we have clear visibility into our future financial performance. I'll first discuss the performance of our renewable business and then address the ways we have ensured that this business is resilient to macroeconomic and policy shifts.
Turning to slide 4. A major driver of our renewables EBITDA growth this year is the approximately three gigawatts of new projects we expect to bring online. I'm pleased to say that we are fully on track with more than 600 megawatts already completed, including the 250 megawatt Morris Solar project in Missouri serving Microsoft.
Our remaining projects under construction for the year are now approximately 80% complete. Our one gigawatt Bellefield one project, which includes 500 megawatts of solar and 500 megawatts of storage, is virtually complete, and we will be fully operational this summer.
This is the first phase of what will be a two gigawatt project and the largest solar plus storage plant ever built in the United States, all of which is contracted with Amazon. Moving on to slide 5. Our supply chain strategy provides us strong protections from any current or potential future tariffs as well as from the impact of inflation.
Of the seven gigawatts in our backlog scheduled to come online in the US between 2025 and 2027, nearly all of the CapEx is protected with zero exposure to tariffs as the equipment is already in the US, in transit or contracted to be produced domestically. Our tariff exposure is limited to a small quantity of batteries that are being imported from Korea for projects coming online in 2026 with a maximum potential exposure of $50 million, which we are actively working to further mitigate.
This represents just 0.3% of the total US CapEx and is well within the normal project contingency. I would like to emphasize that our US supply chain protects us from any potential tariffs that could be announced, including reciprocal tariffs.
We also serve our corporate customers outside the US where we continue to see substantial demand. Contracts that we are signing outside the US are benefiting from lower equipment prices as the result of the increase in international equipment supply, with solar panels typically one-third the cost in Chile versus the US.
Turning to slide 6. Our business is also well protected from possible changes to US renewable policy for several reasons. First, we are the top electricity provider to premier corporate clients, including data center customers that require capacity that can come online relatively quickly.
We have signed agreements for 9.5 gigawatts with data center companies, more than anyone else in the sector. There are a few others in the industry who can develop, build and operate the projects we offer, which are often large, geographically diverse and with customized commercial structures.
Furthermore, with our extensive history of working with large corporate customers, our development projects are tailored to meet their specific needs. We believe our customers will have strong demand for renewables in any scenario.
Through the end of the decade, Bloomberg New Energy Finance sees increased electricity demand requiring at least 425 gigawatts of new capacity. While AES is committed to serving our customers with an all-of-the-above strategy, including new gas generation, we see renewables as the primary source of new energy to serve this demand for the following reasons.
First, they offer the fastest time to power, given their short construction period and advanced permitting and interconnection positions. Second, the fact that they are a low-cost source of power, particularly considering the rapidly rising cost of gas turbines and long lead times.
And third, the price stability that they offer customers once contracted, unlike thermal power, which is subject to fluctuating fuel prices. In addition, roughly one-third of our backlog is in international markets where we develop, build and operate renewable projects without tax credits, usually with higher returns than in the US.
In the absence of tax credit, projects have higher net capital needs but PPA prices are also higher to account for this funding structure. In these cases, we earn higher EBITDA per megawatt and are able to achieve our financial targets with fewer projects.
Turning to slide 7. Another reason for our confidence in the resilience of our business is that nearly our entire US backlog has safe harbor protections. Once a project starts construction or incurs 5% of the cost of materials, the project has safe harbor protections and has a period of four years to be placed in service and begin receiving tax credits.
For example, any project that reaches start of construction milestones in 2025 is safe harbored through 2029. Turning to slide 8. We're also resilient to any economic downturn. Our business is heavily contracted with approximately two-third of our EBITDA coming from long-term contracted generation, essentially all of which are take-or-pay and not tied to underlying demand conditions.
Looking to the future, nearly all of our growth through 2027 is already secured through our 11.7 gigawatt backlog of signed long-term contracts. At the same time we sign our PPAs, we contractually lock in all major capital costs, EPC arrangements and hedge our long-term financing. This approach gives us clear line of sight to our future EBITDA.
We have also achieved our asset sale proceeds target for the year with the sale of a minority interest in our captive insurance company, and we have closed the sell-down of AES Ohio. Furthermore, with our March debt issuance, we have successfully completed all financings needed to address our 2025 debt maturities, and we have hedged 100% of our benchmark interest rate exposure for all corporate financings through 2027.
Next, I'll discuss the robust growth program we're undertaking at our US utilities on slide 9. We are executing on the largest investment program in the history of both AES Indiana and AES Ohio as we work to improve customer reliability and support economic development.
This year, we're on track to invest approximately $1.4 billion across the two utilities to support areas such as hardening the distribution network, smart grid, new generation and transmission buildout for data centers. We signed agreements for 2.1 gigawatts of new data centers in AES Ohio's service territory.
We are beginning construction on new transmission to serve this load. This summer, we'll be breaking ground on the $500 million transmission investment needed to serve a new Amazon data center in Fayette County.
Additionally, last month, we completed the sale of a 30% stake in AES Ohio for $544 million to CDPQ, a global investment partner that also owns 30% of AES Indiana. This partnership helped support capital requirements for their substantial growth programs while also strengthening our balance sheet. Now turning to AES Indiana.
We're continuing to invest in new generation to support our customers with affordable and reliable power. In March, we brought online the Pipe County Energy Storage project, which includes 200 megawatts of installed capacity and 800 megawatt hours of dispatchable energy, the largest operational battery project in MISO.
We continue to make progress on the Petersburg Energy Center, a 250 megawatt solar and 180 megawatt hour energy storage facility, which we expect to be operational by the end of the year. And in April, we received final regulatory approval for the 170 megawatt cross-buying solar plus storage project, which we expect to bring online in 2027.
With that, I would now like to turn the call over to our CFO, Steve Coughlin.