NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE:NEE) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

I’d say the other part that is at least as strong as we anticipated when we laid out the expectations is repowering. And we’re excited about the economics of that and economics specifically in context to the value that it brings to our customers, bringing some incremental generation and extending the life of these projects, often extending the contracts with our customers at the same times that we do repowering. So overall, with all those comments in context, I feel really good about meeting our development expectations in aggregate. We’ll continue to look at the mix in individual technologies over time. But at this point, we are obviously leaving the ranges as we’ve had them now for a couple of years, in part to reflect what I’m sure you recall, wind is a very short development cycle.

Maybe not the actual laying the groundwork to be able to build a project, but when we enter into a contract and acquire the term and put it into service, it can be as short as nine months. So there’s still a lot of time left between now and the end of ‘26 to add more wind to not only the backlog, but ultimately commission. And when I look at the forward couple of quarters, there are a couple of chunky opportunities that our teams are working on, and I feel good about bringing them some of those to fruition.

David Arcaro: Excellent. Thanks for that. Very helpful. And then maybe secondarily, just it sounds like the backdrop has gotten more challenging for small developers in the renewable space, wondering if you’re seeing opportunities for market share gain as a result, and potentially any development pipelines to pick up from developers that might be struggling right now.

Rebecca Kujawa : Sure. We always are out in the development right acquisition market. In the recent couple of years, we’ve really prioritized our greenfield portfolio, in part because of our ability to work so closely with our customers and make sure that we’re building the projects over the long term where they need them. But we will always be opportunistic in the development project market to be selective and create opportunities where it may be particularly attractive. The dynamic from a couple of years ago where a number of the development portfolios were acquired by folks looking to, I would say, compete with us, but certainly have a bigger presence on the development side. We haven’t seen those holistically come back to market.

I think that may change over time. I know the private equity cycle of wanting to be able to turn over capital quickly and realize isn’t necessarily completely aligned with the development cycle where sometimes things are a little bit faster or a little bit slower than you anticipated, and you need to be patient. So I’m optimistic there’ll be opportunities. But most importantly, and this is one of the things that we’ll focus on in March, is we want to keep our fate, our development opportunities in our own hands. And I am super excited about what our team is working on from a greenfield development standpoint and the competitive advantages that we’re investing in to make sure that we can serve our customers well, not just in the next two or three years as we often talk about with you all, but the next five, seven, 10 years plus down the road.

Operator: The next question comes from Carly Davenport of Goldman Sachs.

Carly Davenport: Hey, good morning. Thanks so much for taking the questions. I wanted to just ask about transmission. You highlighted the $1.9 billion of capital through ‘27 at NEER. And as we look at the EBITDA contributions at NEER for 2024 that piece is moving higher as well. So could you just talk a bit about what sort of growth you could see at NEER over the next several years and what that EBITDA contribution could be over time?

Rebecca Kujawa : Good morning, Carly. So from the pipeline perspective, is no doubt you appreciate transmission opportunities take a couple of years to come to fruition. So we’re thrilled with the awards that the team has been able to secure in the last year on one part of it, building on investments that we already have, so expansion opportunities that are significantly enabling new renewables development headed into the California market. And then other parts of the US competitive opportunities that we won through competitive processes. In terms of timing, as we highlighted in the prepared remarks, the in -service dates are out to 2027. So as we invest capital, obviously that’ll start to become more of a material contribution over time.

And we’ll give more color as we get into the investor conference as we typically do to give more of a breakdown by business and what those contributions will look like over time. But the momentum is terrific. And as we’ve highlighted, everybody understands, maybe not to the extent that we think it’s going to happen, but in order to unlock the renewables opportunity that we and others see across the United States, transmission needs to be built. And we stand ready to be a part of the solution wherever we can be and bring cost effective solutions to customers.

Carly Davenport: Great, thank you for that. And then maybe just one more on the financing side for this year, just based on what you’ve seen so far in the markets, how are you thinking about the mix of the different avenues that you can use to monetize tax credits, whether through tax equity or transferability? How do we think about the sort of magnitude of each of those in your financing plans for ‘24?