ENGQF - Engie SA (ENGIY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-02-23 00:20:02 ET
Engie SA (ENGIY)
Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call
February 22, 2024 04:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Delphine Deshayes - Head, IR
Catherine MacGregor - CEO
Pierre-Francois Riolacci - EVP, Finance, Corporate Social Responsibility and Procurement
Conference Call Participants
Arthur Sitbon - Morgan Stanley
Harry Wyburd - BNP Paribas Exane
Ajay Patel - Goldman Sachs
Louis Boujard - ODDO
Arnaud Palliez - CIC Market Solutions
James Brand - Deutsche Bank
Piotr Dzieciolowski - Citi
Presentation
Operator
Good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to welcome you to Engie's Full Year 2023 Video Webcast. Catherine MacGregor and Pierre-Francois Riolacci will present our full year performance and our medium term outlook, following which we will open the lines for a 45-minute Q&A session, and with my polite request of limiting your questions to one or two only, please.
With that, over to Catherine.
Catherine MacGregor
All right. Good morning everyone. I'm very pleased to be here today and to share with you our presentation on our 2023 performance and medium term outlook. In a constantly shifting environment in 2023, I am very happy to report another year of strong performance for Engie.
We reached the middle of the earnings guidance range that we upgraded in November, in fact, beating the earnings in 2022, which was already an unprecedented year. We maintained a strong pace of our renewables rollout, and we had a pivotal year in batteries, both through acquisition and organic growth.
We made further good progress in major aspects of our ESG targets and net zero trajectory. And we fundamentally derisk our group as we signed the final nuclear agreement with the Belgium government in December.
I want to thank all of our teams for their unstinting efforts in executing our strategy and delivering the energy transition. The results of your commitments are there to be seen in this presentation.
Summarizing a few headlines 2023 numbers. The EBIT, excluding nuclear, grew by 18% organically to €9.5 billion, contributing to a 3% rise in net recurring income group share to €5.4 billion.
Cash flow from operation was up sharply by almost two-third, in fact, to €13.1 billion, boosted by higher earnings and working cap improvement. And growth CapEx, which I repeat is always selective, always disciplined, is up by almost half, in line with our 2023-2025 business plan.
And I should add that in 2023, if I take the year in isolation, 72% of our gross CapEx is eligible and 66% is aligned with the EU taxonomy, and both these numbers are up versus 2022.
Consistent with our payout policy, we are proposing a dividend of €1.43 for shareholder approval at the AGM later this year, and this corresponds to a payout ratio of 65%.
Moving to the next slide, focusing on our performance in ESG. Starting with the greenhouse gas emissions from energy production in 2022 -- in 2023, sorry, there were 52 million tons, down from €60 million in 2022. And that is a big improvement underpinned, of course, by a decarbonization journey, but also helped by lower load factors at our CCGT units and soft demand in Europe.
The share of renewables in our total power capacity was up to 41% at the end of December, which is fully on track towards our 2030 targets. In terms of general diversity, we have reached 31% in the proportion of women at management level, and we stay focused and committed to our aim of managerial parity between men and women in 2030.
We are committed to net zeros carbon by 2045, and I am proud that Moody's recently aligned our ambition with a 1.5-degree C trajectory with a solid level on the implementation of these objectives. This demonstrates our progress and compares favorably with SBTi certification of well below 2-degree C that we received at the beginning of last year....
Engie SA (ENGIY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript