CPL - CPFL Energia S.A. (CPL) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

2023-11-10 13:13:05 ET

CPFL Energia S.A. (CPL)

Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call

November 10, 2023, 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Carlos Cyrino - Director of IR

Gustavo Estrella - Chief Executive Officer

Yuehui Pan - Chief Financial and Investor Relations Officer

Conference Call Participants

Daniel Travitzky - Safra Bank

Presentation

Carlos Cyrino

[Abrupt Start] Gustavo Estrella to begin the presentation of the results.

Gustavo Estrella

Thank you very much Cyrino. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Thank you for being here at the call of our results of the third quarter. I'm going to go through highlights. EBITDA has reached value a hike of six -- 5.6, the accumulated of nine months, an increase of 14.9%. Our profit reached R$1,313 million with a drop of 7.5% in relation to last year. We will see more in details. The biggest effect its financial expenses and the inflation rates. The accumulated in nine months, R$4,210 million and that is an increase of nine and a half. Our debt has closed in R$23.1 billion. Leverage, which is comfortable 1.71 and the criteria of a financial covenants reminding you that our limit is 3.5.

We also issued debentures for infrastructure of R$1,750 million at an average cost of IPCA plus 6.18%. And it is important to talk about liquidity short term with the entry of R$1,750 million in cash. But the timeframe of these ventures, which will allow us to extend the time.

We are going now to the next slide. Here CPFL solutions. We launched e-commerce, our portal with digital sales focused on clients of Group A with a series of products that are available migration process, free short-term energy carbon credits, I-RECs. The idea is to have a new channel besides the channel that we already have, so that the client can access CPFL in a quicker way. Two recognitions that we had here. The first one is the recognition value, 1000 via load of [indiscernible].

CPFL was considered the best company in the energy sector. It's a similar recognition. It's Epoca Negocios also considering as the best company in the sector. The IDIVERSA index, we are now part of this rating, recognizing all the initiatives and the actions that we have in ESG is specifically on the topic of diversity.

Okay, let's go to the next slide. Here we have market distribution. We have a load with a growth of 2.8% in the area of concession sales. It's practically stable, a drop of 0.2. And we can see here for the business segments that it's a market with an important growth that comes from residential and the commercial classes as well. Residential growing 5.1% and commercial growing 2.9%. This is a reflex of the increase of the revenue compared to 2022 and also an effect of the temperature, especially the second -- two weeks of September with important effects in the increase of load.

When we look at the industry, the industry continues with negative growth of 2.7%. We can see a lot of resilience in the REIT. The uptake of the industrialization, so we have a negative performance. When we look at all the segments of our industry, the values are negative, with the exception to food with a timid growth of 0.2%, but the rest, all the values are quite negative, composing this value of 2.7 negative.

We can also see the spreadsheet on the right side. One fourth of the distributed generation, which is strong compared to 2022, an important impact in residential. And the market in January, we have the distributor generation impact of 2.2%. In the accumulated of nine months, it's very similar. So we have here a small increase of load of 0.5 with a drop in sales of less than 0.5. But when we look at the segments, Residential and Commercial, continue positive and they show themselves as being more positive in the more recent months due to the effect of the temperature. And the income also continues with this effect and the industry with less 1.6. This continues the whole year and the expectation for the fourth quarter is very similar for us to have a weak industry compensated or more than compensated by the commercial and residential performance, which, and the will have even a higher impact of temperature.

Next slide. This is default. I think that we've reached a stability here in our index of delinquency and 0.82 with a small drop in relation to the quarter of last year. This is a bit of expectation as delinquency more or less constant up to the end of the years and closing -- and 0.8 up to the end of the year. And it's -- what we have is a volume of cuts, which is still high above 210 per month in the third quarter. This should repeat itself in the fourth quarter and in 2024, depending on the behavior of the delinquency. We can revise and reduce these values during the year.

About energy losses. Energy losses stable in relation to 2022, an increase of 0.09%. Also for -- due to stability, with a general losses, we can see here RG and Santa Cruz performing with a volume of losses below. The challenge continues with CPFL Paulista and CPFL Piratininga.

In Generation, we start here with a PLV or DLP, it's stable in relation to last year. This expectation or this forecast will still be the same for the next month. Going close to the base, we have an impact here in the third quarter because of the increase of temperature, increase of load, and so it -- in a few days of -- some peak days, but I would say that in general, given the growth of the load, it's relatively stable. And also the offering of energy, the forecast that we have is it will be close to the base during the next few months.

When we look at the wind farms, we've had a drop of 9.9% in the production of energy. Here very much impacted by the restriction of the ENS. Without this restriction, we would've had a growth of 2.1% of the generation of the volume availability. Wind is stable, 95.6%. And this effect of temperature, we have FCGA a bit higher than last year's, about 80%.

Now I'm going to give the floor to Mr. Pan and he will be talking about the financial results.

Yuehui Pan

Thank you, Gustavo. Good morning. The results in this quarter, we reached an EBITDA of R$3.1 billion, a hike of 5.6%. The distribution performed well with an EBITDA of R$1.7 billion, a hike of 14%. The highest gain came from the market and tariff R$204 million.

The update of the finance asset of the concession had a hike over R$105 million due to the higher IPCA and the larger base of assets when compared to the same period of 2022. Other revenues had a gain of R$8 million and other items R$6 million. On the other side, we have negative effects in 2022. We have a huge effect in the pension fund of CPFL Piratininga, which generated a revenue of R$75 million. PMSO with a pension fund had an increase of R$33 million, and PDD was higher R$3 million.

In Generation, the EBITDA reached the value of R$1.1 billion, an increase of almost 2%. The main fact was the consolidation of Enercan, which increased the EBITDA to R$141 million. And on the other hand, we had an increase of R$80 million in the expenses with PMSO and taxes. The wind generation reflected the impact of the ONS restrictions, and it had a lower result R$33 million.

The contractual readjustments added a negative effect R$7 million. The segment of trading services and other had an EBITDA of R$60 million, an improvement of R$46 million.

Prince mainly to the recovery of CPFL Brazil with a gain of R$40 million. The segment of services had a hike of R$8 million during the period, especially CPFL Services and Alesta. Other services added a loss of R$2 million.

In the EBITDA results IFRS of the Transmission segment, we had a drop of R$112 million and the variation relative to CPFL Transmission of R$49 million due to the conclusion in 2022 of the process of tariff revision of 2018. The other Transmission projects had a negative impact of R$63 million due to the inflation adjustment carried out last year.

As you can -- for you to understand better what happened in this quarter, we have to analyze the regulatory EBITDA, which you can see on the right side of the slide. The regulatory EBITDA reflects better what is happening with the Transmission projects. We had an increase of R$87 million during this period.

I highlight the increase of R$38 million due to the readjustment of the concession contract. We were also able to reduce the PMSO in R$32 million, especially due to the reduction with legal expansive. The other Transmission projects had a positive impact of the R$17 million due to the beginning of the operations of Project Sul I and Sul II.

In the next slide, I would like to show you the performance of the net profit, which was R$1.3 billion during the period, a reduction of 7.5% in relation to the third quarter last year. In the financial result, we had a decrease of R$203 million due to the monetary update of regulatory assets, R$78 million and the lower balance also had expenses with the net debt with an increase of R$70 million. Explained by the increase of the IPCA and the index debt to the CDI reduction of MTM R$60 million due to the risk spread reduction. The depreciation increased R$40 million and taxes R$31 million.

The next slide will show you the accumulated performance of the year. We reached an EBITDA of R$9.7 billion, an increase of 14.9%. All the segments had positive results. Distribution with an increase of 12.7% was favored, especially due to Parcel B and for the evaluations of the tariff revisions this year.

In Generation, the increase was 18.2%, which reflects the consolidation of Enercan and the higher generation of the wind farms in the beginning of 2023. The Transmission segment had an increase of 5.1% due to the reduction of expenses with personnel and the beginning of Sul I and Sul II.

Below you can see the performance of the net profit, which was R$4.2 billion in the period, an increase of 9.5%. The increase of the EBITDA was partially compensated by the worsening of almost R$360 million in the financial result impacted by the update of the financial assets of the concession and for the higher costs of the debt. Depreciation increased in R$191 million and the taxes R$344 million.

The next slide, we have the net debt in the criteria of covenants, which reached R$23.1 billion. The EBITDA of the last 12 months was R$13.5 billion. Therefore, the leverage measured by the net debt was 1.71.

I also highlight the recent emissions of the debentures finalized this week, which add R$1.75 billion with a medium timeframe of 9.6 years, and an average cost of around IPCA plus 6.18%, where we have already done the swap to CDI plus 0.5%.

Once more, we benefit from this favorable moment of the market to capture resources with competitive costs to finance the investments that we have planned for the next few years. We have the debt cost, which is in 12.9%. There was a light increase of the IPCA. This justifies the increase of the gap between the nominal cost and the real cost observed this quarter.

Below we have the gross debt profile. Largest exposure, CDI 74%, IPCA 24%, and TJLP 1%. On the right side we have the cash at the end of the third quarter, which was R$5.6 billion, with a coverage, which is more than sufficient for the short-term amortizations. The average term of amortization is 3.1 years.

Slide 18, R$1.2 billion represents a reduction of 23.1% in relation to last year. This drop was already expected once the year of 2022. There was a huge effort for the BAR tariff revision. In distribution, our main -- the main destination of the CapEx, a total invested of R$896 million, with the larger focus in service to the client expansion and improvements.

In the segment generation, we invested R$114 million investments, all also of R$181 million in reinforcements and improvements in our transmission projects. We also destined R$44 million for commercialization service and others. In the accumulated, we can see that in distribution there was a total of R$2.7 billion. In Generation R$273 million, in Transmission R$477 million. And finally, the investments in commercialization and services, a total of R$65 million.

Now I will give the floor back to Gustavo and thank you very much.

Gustavo Estrella

Thank you, Pan. Well, I think to end our presentation, we are going to talk about innovation and mobility. We had an innovation week. This is an internal event. The goal is to engage all the 16,000 collaborators of CPFL in terms of innovation. We did this in 16 locations with 28 projects, electric trucks, second life of batteries, thermo vision projects. The idea is really to engage all the collaborators in innovation and highlighting our mobility, electrical mobility project. We inaugurated a sustainable charging area in Campinas. It's complete.

We have the solar panels on the roof, battery and vehicle charging. This is -- we have over 40 electric vehicles circulating with drivers for us to test not only the vehicle, but the charger. They have a specific app where they can charge the cars. And the idea is that we have nine of these in our region so that they can supply and charge the cars so that we can test this model in real life.

Testing the electric cars and the circulation of drivers that work for apps. So this is about R$90 million in investments and the idea is to be able to use more and more electric vehicles. I think that's more or less that I had to say. This is what I wanted to share with you.

So now we will move towards the Q&A session.

Question-and-Answer Session

A - Carlos Cyrino

Thank you, Gustavo. Thank you, Pan. Thank you for the presentations. So as Gustavo mentioned, we are now going to the session of Q&A and we are going to follow the order in which the questions, we ask. The questions are live. And to ask to a question, you should use the raise your hand button, which is in the bottom part of the platform.

So the first question that we have here, I have a question from Julia from Santander. Julia, good morning. Go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Good morning everyone. We read some news about the concession of transmission. Is there any updates about this topic? I'd like to hear what you have to say about the interference of the Congress in this process.

Unidentified Company Representative

Julia, thank you for your question. I think this is a subject that's been on the table for a long time. This is a discussion that is led by the Ministry of Mines and Energy after public consultation, all the contribution. So expectation continues being that we are very close to a definition of this subject, as was already expected. I think what we've lived here, this week was very, very challenging. I think for us, for all the companies in the state of Sao Paulo with all the occurrences of storms that we had. So I'm sure that it's natural that the subject comes more intensely, but these are -- we have an operational, and this has been solved after a very aggressive storm like we had. It affected the whole state of Sao Paulo. And I think this is a discussion. I think there've been lessons learned, what can be improved from the regulation to the regulation of the companies itself, but also the renewal topic.

I think still in this topic, we've talked a lot about investments, everything that CPFL has done. We've put Piratininga, Paulista, RGA, everyone who went -- all these companies went through the tariff revisions, and we more than doubled our base of assets. That means a network which is much more robust, much more trustworthy. So I think this is a challenge, and we have to continue with this volume of investment. So I think these are two subjects that end up by confusing in the heat of the moment. All of us, we visit our clients who also suffered with these storms. But once more, these are independent subjects and that's how it should move along.

Unidentified Analyst

Thank you very much.

Carlos Cyrino

Let's move to the second question, which will be from Daniel from the Safra Bank. Good morning, Daniel.

Daniel Travitzky

Well, good morning. Thank you for the opportunity of asking a question. In fact, I have two questions. One is perhaps adds to the -- together with these new regulations, we've seen a while ago new regulations being proposed by the ministry, putting the PL to 114 with a solution for the tariff reduction. So also addressing the migration to the free market, impacting the distributors a lot. So I would like to understand your vision about this theme, your expectation about the timing, what can be proposed in the sense.

And then if I could ask a second question, when you think of allocation of capital, if you can share a bit about your vision of participation in the next Transmission meetings? And how you can see the current context for investments in renewables? Thank you.

Unidentified Company Representative

Thank you for your question. I'm going to answer the first part. In relation to the opening of the market, this question of the Group A, which is going to intensify, I think, the distributors, they are protected, so there's no impact for the distributors. This is all resolved. And for Group B, you are right. And this is a -- this has been very much debated. It's in the Congress to be evaluated. So supply of the issue of the opening of the tariff, the component energy, all this is discussed and I believe that for the future when these issues will have been solved.

The second part of your question of capital allocation, we continue looking at the process -- the auctions that have to do with our strategy. So we should have some lots with these characteristics. The first auction in 2024. We're going to participate following the same line that we have been doing. So trying to be competitive, obviously in these auctions, but preserving the expectation of return, knowing the risks, the challenges, and the building of a new -- this is gives return to our shareholders, so we will not advance.

In terms of renewables, I think I talked a bit here in my presentation that we have a small variation of short-term prices, which doesn't change our perspective of tariffs, midterm and long-term. So I believe that this makes the Generation segment and the Renewable segments very challenging for new projects. So we continue in the same line. We have a pipe, a huge pipeline, and while we don't have good conditions for this pipeline to be executed, it won't be. So our vision continues very similar with a medium, long-term perspective and a large offer, which will still last for a few years.

Daniel Travitzky

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Unidentified Company Representative

Thank you, Daniel. Thank you for your participation.

Carlos Cyrino

Well, we don't have any more questions, so we will end our Q&A. And if there is any question or any doubt, the Investor Relation group is here available for clarifying.

Before giving the final word to Gustavo, I would like you please to cooperate with us with a perception research. There's a QR code that you're going to see, and it's very important for us to be able to improve and development. It's very quick, this survey.

Now I'm going to give the floor to Gustavo Estrella for his final considerations, and for the closing of this event.

End of Q&A

Gustavo Estrella

Well, once more, I'd like to thank you all for participating in our results call. As I said, I think we've lived through months of a lot of challenge on the operational side. In September, we had the worst competition of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, affecting our network a lot. More recently in Sao Paulo with a storm, which was totally an outlier and for sure, one of the worst of the story of the state of Sao Paulo. I think, this has to do with the focus of attending our client the best way possible. The focus in the last days was to give the client back energy, the quickest possible. This was a huge challenge for us in Sao Paulo. Just on Friday there were over 1,500 large trees that fell on our network. So rebuilding is -- I think this focus of giving energy back to our client is fundamental and planning that we've been done with investments.

It's very important to have a robust network, more and more digital automated. This has made and makes a big difference so that we can respond the quickest possible in a critical situation such as we've lived through in September in the state of Sao Paulo. So we continue with this perspective that investments are very important for us to be able to deliver the quality that our client desires and deserves. And I think we've demonstrated this.

I thank you all for your participation and I wish you all a wonderful day.

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