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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Encavis AG conference call regarding Encavis interim statement Q1 2021. [Operator Instructions] Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Dr. Christoph Husmann.
Hello, and good morning to everyone. And honestly said, I think this is now the fifth telephone conference, which we have in some lockdown situation. I hope you're all fine and healthy and safe. Welcome to the Q1 interim statement telephone conference call this morning. Thank you very much for your interest and dialing in. Ladies and gentlemen, this morning, we published our figures. Before we go into the figures, please let us recall what happened during the course of the year so far. Well, regarding our share, more banks are covering Encavis now with buy or overweight recommendations and target prices, which are partially substantially above our current price. The latest one joining our active coverage list is Barclays, which initiated its coverage with EUR 18 target price, and Hauck & Aufhäuser updated the initiated active coverage with hold recommendation with a target price of EUR 23.The share price over the course of this year had some turbulent development, first, increased to EUR 25.55 in February, March. And since then, some upwards, downwards development, but in total, a decline to currently EUR 14. Positively, it has to be seen that we were promoted via Fast Entry from SDAX to MDAX, which gave -- should have given the share price a push. And with that, an increased interest of international institutional investors, they are named here. But in February, Standard & Poor's Clean Energy Index announced a reshuffling and an increase of their shares, which are represented by the index from 30 to 90 shares, which, by nature for shares like Encavis being part of their Clean Energy Index with 30 shares, now with the 90 shares will have a lower representation, which created a share overhang of EUR 250 million in Encavis since February 2021. That was mostly burned off since April. Despite all these turbulences in the share market, the business is prospering and developing positively. In our Encavis Asset Management, we could reach or receive more than EUR 150 million committed equity and acquired a large solar plant Vlagtwedde, which is the largest operating in the Netherlands. And now in total, Encavis Asset Management operates and manages 1 gigawatt of capacity. And we got our solar park Talayuela with 300 megawatt, not only the largest park in our group, but one of the largest parks in Europe so far connected to the grid on schedule. Although last year, please recall that we had locked down in Spain. We guided -- connected the grid on time and, on the 4th of January, injected the first kilowatt hours of energy produced into the grid. As usually is the case, we have the ramp-up phase then to be done. And for such a large park, it needs some days to do so, so until the mid of March, the ramp-up phase was done. And since then, the park is producing full energy as expected. Encavis AG grew in the meantime, so this week, we announced a new acquisition of a wind farm Paltusmäki in Finland, which not only added 22 megawatt of new capacities to our portfolio but increased the number of countries in which we are in, with our own capacities by 1 country by Finland. When we talk about Encavis, we have to talk about our ESG reporting orientation as well. We sharpened our position here. And with a clearer and better definition of our ESG position, we got 2 rating agencies improvements. So ISS ESG improved the rating from B- to B, and MSCI ESG from A to AA. Now we are rated to be one of the top 20% in the industry cluster renewable energy operations at ISS ESG. And we published our first sustainability report 2020. Beyond all these very sustainable and important issues regarding the ESG implementation, we have to ensure that in today's world, our IT systems are very well protected and our data, which we manage are safe. And therefore, we improved the IT system we have in place and certified it group-wide by a subsidiary of the German insurance companies, which helps us not only to get a better understanding of the very high quality of our IT systems, but get, in any case, better insurance terms for such IT and cyber issues.Ladies and gentlemen, so the company is in a very good shape and further unimpressed by the ongoing pandemic. But we are exposed to weather. And that, honestly said, is the story of Q1 2021. We reported this morning, revenues for Q1 2021 of EUR 58.9 million, which is below not only Q1 2020, but even below Q1 2019. Why is that? This looks surprising on the very first glance because the capacities connected to the grid increased in the meantime by more than 40%. The reason of the reduced revenues is not a price issue. As you might know, 95% of our revenues are hedged, most of them over a very long time of more than 10 years. The average count is 12 years. And for the remaining not hedged part, we see overall that the electricity prices are rising. And our parks are in a very good shape. The availability of our parks is close to 100% as usual. So the reason for that drop in revenues is the energy production was low due to meteorology. We come back to this slide later, but let's go to another one, firstly. We had, as you can see here, specifically in Germany, significantly lower wind than -- in Q1 2021 compared to previous years. We show here Anemos maps, which measures independently speed of wind and the magnitude of wind compared to the reference period. The more reddish the color is the better the wind. The darker it is, even better it is. And if it is blue or light blue, then it is below the reference period. I think it is simple to see that in Q1 2019, which was a good wind quarter, we had, had very strong wind in January and March. In Q1 2020, which was a very good wind quarter, we had extremely good wind all over the quarter. Picture, which we see for Q1 2021, is a different one. This wind weakness applies, by the way, to the overall European renewables. The electricity produced by renewables in total in the EU in Q1 by wind, PV, hydro, biomass and biogas was 240 terawatt hours, which is 14, 1-4, 14% down compared to previous year's Q1 280 terawatt hours. Although in the meantime, new capacities were added. What does it mean to Encavis? We produced with the same capacities as in Q1 2020, 556 gigawatt hours. In Q1 2021, just 428 gigawatt hours, which is 22% less. Whilst our figure is bigger, please have in mind, European figure was a net figure, so compensated by the improved number of capacities. The figure I just told you was just for the existing portfolio, which we had in last year's Q1, which for net energy is produced this year. So our energy production shortfall was partially compensated by additional capacities as well. The loss of the electricity, which I already stated to you, was solely or most solely responsible by wind. So it was not so much solar, it was totally wind. So if we go back to these figures, the EUR 6.3 million, the shortfall of revenues, this is a net figure, which means that there is a bigger loss due to the shortfall of the energy production and partially compensated by the additional capacities, which we added like La Cabrera, Talayuela and Viertkamp, the wind farm, which we acquired last year. These new additions, which partially compensate revenues, create additional costs. These costs are then reflected in the EBITDA and EBIT as well. Ladies and gentlemen, we published on Monday, the consensus of our analysts. Seven analysts participated and when we have a look on these figures and compare them to the reported figures, we see that revenues, EBITDA and operating cash flow forecast of the analysts were extremely well. This is not true for the EBIT. But if you compare the reported EBITDA and EBIT of last 2 quarters, Q1 2019, Q1 2020, and then the average of the consensus, then you see that the depreciation does not really change. But we increased the capacities by 40%, and that brings along additional depreciation. And that is the reason why the EBIT -- or the reported EBIT is lower than the consensus average. And that applies to the EPS as well. Ladies and gentlemen, when we come then to the operating cash flow, the operating cash flow reached an amount of EUR 39.9 million, which is approximately EUR 10 million down compared to Q1 2020. Here to judge that, we have to have in mind that Q1 2020 had a one-off effect of an early reimbursement of capital gains tax of more than EUR 9 million -- of EUR 9 million, and that has to be deducted, and then we are in line with previous years. Please have in mind that we, in the Q1 2020, suffered slightly from the very weak wind in December 2020 as well. Because this is reimbursed in the first quarter. When we talk about the segmentational report, we see the story, which I told you already here as well. We see a slight increase in revenues in solar farms. This is due to the Spanish parks slightly offset by slightly lower solar irradiation as well. That -- the lower amount of electricity compared to the pretty strong previous year's first quarter and the additional cost of the solar farm lead then to the reduced profit figures. In wind farms, we see a lack of EUR 7 million revenues, all of that due to the reduced number of kilowatt hours produced due to lack of wind. And that exact same figure can be seen as deviation in EBITDA and EBIT as well. The Technical Services have more or less the same internal revenues, slightly below previous year, but that is more a fluctuation. The EBITDA is lower than previous year. The reason for that is that one-off effect, which we had in the last first quarter, 2020, was that we sold our Encavis Technical Services or Stern Energy to our minority participation and therefore, created a profit of EUR 1.9 million, which we reported last year. And this we cannot repeat is a lag here -- or the difference here. Encavis Asset Management had a very good start in Q1 2020 of EUR 3.1 million revenues. Encavis Asset Management, as I told you, is already very well underway this year as well, but in the first quarter, did not close so many investments as in the previous year's first quarter. But this will come.If we have a look on our balance sheet, we see an increase of our balance sheet total by more than EUR 200 million. This is due to the full consolidation of Talayuela. As you might recall, these investments, which were done by our partnerships, are under control by the developers, although we own, in this case here, 80% of the shares already. But the developers are under responsibility to develop these parks on their own risk. And as a matter of fact, therefore, we may not consolidate them, but we have them as an equity participation already in our books. With the COD with the grid connection, we are under control of the park and then we get them fully consolidated in our books. And this is the net effect you see here for the project Talayuela. The same applies, by the way, to the equity. The equity increases only due to Talayuela. We had to account with a negative value in the equity for the PPA in last year's report until the full consolidation on the 4th of January this year, and that negative effect could be taken also out with the full consolidation. And therefore, we have an improvement of the equity. In total, we have now an equity ratio of 25.5%, again, substantially above our threshold, which we defined to ourselves.What does that wind weakness now mean to us? The full consolidation of Talayuela was fully reflected in our guidance already so no change to that. The wind weakness, which we experienced in the first quarter is a seasonality effect, which we are aware of and which we are used off. We often see such extreme meteorological effects, but which -- we know that they are usually boiled off during the course of the year and levelized out. Therefore, we stick to our guidance. 2021 guidance is still based on the assumption that we will have in total standard weather, and April already showed us that the compensation for the shortfall of the first quarter is underway. Therefore, the management Board does not see a reason to deviate from the guidance, and we confirm it with this. The same applies to the segmentational reports, although we know that in wind, specifically, there's some way to go, but we are confident that we will come close or even exceed -- come close to or even exceed the wind parks guidance until the year-end. Ladies and gentlemen, that in a snapshot was the simple story, a weakness in wind, which we suffered under, and now, ladies and gentlemen, we are open for your questions.
[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Mr. Martin Tessier from Stifel.
I apologize because I was late. So if the answer -- if you already provided the answer, I apologize. Is it fair to understand that the full year guidance for 2021 includes the positive contribution of the wind park that you acquired yesterday?
Honestly said, Mr. Tessier, thank you very much, Martin, for the question. The wind farm, which we required is with 22 megawatts, not something which changes everything in our business plan. The business plan is something very complex. So what we usually do during the course of the year is that we, once or twice, so every quarter then, rebalance and recheck our guidance. Our guidance has a broad perspective anyhow since it always says bigger as the mentioned figures. So please give us time for the second quarter's interim report, which will be published in August to give you then a new guidance of these figures, including then this new wind farm.
There are no more questions. [Operator Instructions] And the next question comes from Peter Crampton from Barclays.
This is Peter Crampton from Barclays. Just a quick question. If we're looking at the upcoming German elections on the 26th of September, it's quite notable in the kind of polls how well the Green Party is doing and how important kind of the whole climate questions have become for the public. Do you have an expectation that with the new government, there could be kind of a renewed renewables kind of push, and more done on kind of onshore wind and solar that would obviously benefit you?
Christoph, can I take this question?
Sure, sure, go ahead.
Yes. Okay, so it's Dierk Paskert, the CEO. Thanks for the question. So good question and a little bit of speculations still in it. So -- but I think we can at least assume that the Green Party will play a significant role either in a coalition if not as a leading party. So therefore, that will fuel further, let's say, investments into the, let's say, energy landscape -- renewable energy landscape. We all know that the pace with which we develop currently solar as well as onshore wind is too low in order to meet our CO2 targets. So therefore, I would definitely expect a further push there and also an even better investment climate. But also on the permitting side, probably some relief, which allows accelerating the whole program. So therefore, that can only be of benefit then to us without meaning this as a political statement, please.
And the next question comes from Jan Bauer from Warburg Research. .
This is Jan from Warburg Research. I only got 2 smaller questions. First one is, so you want to sell another minority stake this year, if I'm right. Can you give us some kind of guidance when to expect it and what size it will be?
So that was both questions, right? Okay. So I was waiting for the second one. So the minority stake will take place maybe more at the end of this year, so with the financial close. And regarding the size, as you might have seen in the past, we always sold smaller portfolios. So we do not want to get rid of all the portfolio, but we want to have a steady stream of minority sales. So therefore, this will be something in the same volume as in the past.
Okay. And second question now. You acquired this Finnish wind park, so is Finland some kind of new strategic country for you? And can we expect further acquisitions in Finland? Or is this like one good opportunity shot, and that's it for now?
Dierk, would you take it?
Yes, I'll take the question. Thanks for the question. No, as always, so we do not enter a market just on a single opportunity. So if we go into a market, then we would like to build bigger size there. And there are lot of opportunities above all, I mean, as this region just allows wind -- for onshore wind. And that is definitely something we will be looking at. So therefore -- and we have also already contact to some project developers, including the one from which we bought the current wind park Paltusmäki, so therefore that we have quite good reasons to believe that Finland can be another contributing country to our portfolio.
There are no more questions.
Okay, so if there are no more questions, then thank you very much for your interest in the company. Thank you very much for dialing in. And I think we have hopefully shown to you that the company is well in a very good order to keep up all the opportunities and challenges we see in the market during the course of the year. We are very well positioned to reach our guidance, although there was this wind lag in the first quarter.Thank you very much for the interest, and please keep safe and healthy. Thank you, and goodbye.