The AES Corporation (NYSE:AES) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

David Arcaro: Okay, perfect. Great, thanks so much.

Operator: The next question comes from the line of Angie Storozynski with Seaport Global. You may now proceed.

Agnieszka Storozynski: Good morning. So I know we’re going to talk about it on Monday, this transition from EPS to EBITDA. And if I understand correctly, at least that’s how I see it. It’s about renewables being more levered and having a higher depreciation rate than the thermal assets, for example, however. So there’s only one issue here that as we’re looking at the first quarter results, right, the contributions from renewables seems very small, right, to the total EBITDA. So that’s one. And also, as you are aware, there are different ways how your peers show adjusted EBITDA. I mean in your case, you’re adjusting it for minority interest there’s no inclusion of the tax benefits, which, again, might understate the EBITDA versus what your peers report. So anyway — and I know that we’re going to talk about it on Monday, but just ease us into this EBITDA transition, please?

Andres Gluski: Sure, Angie. Well, thanks for the question. Look, first, I’d say, we continue to provide adjusted earnings per share guidance. And as we said, we’ll be providing adjusted earnings per share guidance through 2027 on Monday. So I want to make that perfectly clear, but we’re adding as an additional indicator which is adjusted EBITDA that we’re going to be giving. And partly, it’s to give greater clarity into our performance of our renewables and partly that has to do with sort of the lumpiness of the projects. So that’s the real reason that we’re giving an additional one. It also helped people to do so, for example, if some of the parts of our different businesses, renewables, utilities, infrastructure. So I want to make very clear that we are providing adjusted earnings per share through 2027. Regarding the other questions that you have, I’m going to go ahead and pass that to Steve.

Steve Coughlin: Yes. Thanks, Andres, and thanks, Angie. So definitely, we’ll be talking some more about this on Monday. But our goal here is to really give the clarity that we think is important to understand and model the business. So as Andre said, we’ll give the adjusted EPS, we’ll also give the EBITDA, which is more closely aligned to the underlying business performance and cash generation from the PPAs and then we’ll also give the tax attributes and then the sum of the adjusted EBITDA plus the tax attributes. So we think it’s going to be a very complete view and package that helps people truly understand how the business is earning and generating cash. From the different components of the PPAs and the tax attributes.

Agnieszka Storozynski: Okay. And then you can also help us how to allocate the corporate leverage across — I mean, again, if we are trying to move to the sum of the part valuation from an EBITDA perspective, we need to figure out how to allocate the corporate debt, right, among these subsidiaries.

Steve Coughlin: Yes. I mean, certainly, in our reporting now, we’ll be able to separate the debt here for the business. And then as we look ahead, most all of our growth is in renewables and Utilities. About 80% of the growth is in renewables and utilities and about close to 0.75 80% in the U.S. market. So I think you’ll have a lot of good detail to help understand how to do that allocation.

Agnieszka Storozynski: Okay, okay. See you guys on Monday. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you Miss Storozynski. The next question comes from the line of Richard Sunderland with JPMorgan. You may now proceed.

Richard Sunderland: Hi, good morning and thanks for the time today. Maybe I’ll pick it up where Angie left off on the new SBUs. Turning to the new energy technologies, SBU, can you speak more to the green hydrogen side. Curious if this represents a shift in thinking of where you like to be involved in hydrogen? Or are you just specifically calling out the breakout there relative to the renewables feeding in?