NextEra Energy Partners, LP (NYSE:NEP) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Shahriar Pourreza: Okay. Perfect. Stay tuned. And then lastly, John, on the FECs, since the process disclosures have been made and obviously showed FP&L was clear of any wrong doing, there were some disagreements with the FEC commissioners on the nonprofit matters. Is there an appeals path, and would there be any further information request to FP&L or NextEra or should we just close the books here?

John Ketchum: Yes. I think the way I look at it Shah is plain and simple. The FEC voted. They voted to close the matter. We’re now moving on, and I think this is behind us.

Shahriar Pourreza: Okay. Perfect. That’s it. Very comprehensive. Thank you, guys, and congrats on the results.

John Ketchum: Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from David Arcaro with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Mr. Arcaro, your line is open. Is your phone muted accidentally? I’m sorry. We’ll need to go to the next questioner. The next questioner comes from Carly Davenport with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Carly Davenport: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions today. I appreciate it. I wanted to just ask one on the backlog good strength in the additions this quarter, and we continue to see a lot of strength in the solar and the storage piece of it. Wind’s been a little bit weaker. So I guess just as you think about the difference in the returns on those projects, are there any implications for your financial guidance and your plan as you think about the mix that you’ve seen actually evolve versus what is in that base plan?

Rebecca Kujawa: Hi, Carly. It’s Rebecca. I’ll take that question. Good morning. Let me start with probably the most important takeaways first. Obviously, Kirk and John highlighted our continued expectations and expressed the fact that we’d be disappointed if we didn’t meet the top end of those expectations as we’ve outlined. So that’s most important. Secondly, we continue to be comfortable with the overall development expectations as we also highlighted in the prepared remarks and that’s consistent with what we’ve seen over time. As we’ve long stated, obviously there’s a mix in technologies. We, 4 years in advance, are not always going to be predicting exactly where we’re going to be able to develop and what our customers are going to be interested in.

And notably, since we laid those expectations out for the first time, a lot did change including the passage of the IRA and that had both an impact on changing dynamics for our customers buying wind which was largely in advance of the expectations that the incentives would ultimately wind down and in the IRA the introduction of the production tax credit for solar which made solar more attractive than it was even before, as well as the standalone ITC for storage. So that really spurred demand for solar and storage. But if I can take a step back and pile into the question that Steve answered and some of the comments that John made earlier we are seeing significant demand across the entire US economy. That, of course, includes data centers, technology, AI-driven compute demand, but it is also manufacturing, the re-domestication of important industries in the US and it is also oil and gas and chemicals companies looking to get lower-cost energy solutions into their mix.

That spurs a need for a lot of build. So as we look at our 300-gigawatts of products that are in development and the integrated solutions and solutions that we are designing for our customers, I remain very optimistic about all of the technologies. In various parts of the country, wind is most economic. In parts of the country, it is going to be solar and storage, et cetera. So I love the portfolio approach and from a returns perspective I think we continue to realize very attractive returns for all the technologies and, of course, adjusted for the types of risks that we think we take. So mid-teens for solar and above 20% levered returns for wind and storage technologies. So I think from an investor standpoint, that is a very attractive proposition.

Carly Davenport: Awesome. Thanks for that, Rebecca. And then you mentioned over the last question 15% CAGR for data center demand growth through the end of the decade. I guess as you think about some of these other drivers that you’ve mentioned of increased power demand in the US, how do you think that will drive overall load growth? Do you have expectations there through the end of the decade?

Rebecca Kujawa: So we’ll have a lot more to say in terms of our expectations and certainly in context of a number of third-party views at the investor conference. But I think it’s safe to say at this point that we see strong drivers for a long period of time, decades into the future, driving renewables penetration and electricity and electricity penetration into overall U.S. energy consumption which sets up terrific dynamics for us to continue to compete and create opportunities to invest capital for our shareholders at very attractive returns. So I love our opportunity at.

Carly Davenport: Thank you for that color.

Rebecca Kujawa: Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from Durgesh Chopra with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Durgesh Chopra: Good morning. Thank you for giving me time. Maybe just, Rebecca, on the topic of electricity demand growth. One of the questions we consistently get, and I think John hinted on this 15% the data center growth driving it is how quickly can you ramp up? So maybe can you just talk to that? Are there any constraints, whether it’s equipment, whether it’s sites? How quickly can the generation side of this, the renewable generation can ramp up?