The AES Corporation (NYSE:AES) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Andres Gluski: Yes. Look, we feel confident in terms of what we’ve said in the past that to grow through 2025, we don’t need additional equity for that period of time. So, we also feel confident in our ability to raise $1 billion through asset sales.

Steve Coughlin: Yes. Yes. And with regard to the debt, it’s really just €“ it’s somewhat fungible. We look at both our sales program, as well as our debt capacity, always holding to our investment-grade metric, plus a cushion as a minimum, but it’s really just timing. So, there’s just flex between when we determine to issue the debt within our expectations and when those asset sales come in. So, it’s just executing somewhat of a flexibility on the timing of the asset sales and the debt, kind of flex back and forth.

Unidentified Analyst: Great. Thanks for the color. I appreciate and I’ll back to the queue. Thanks.

Operator: Our next question comes from Durgesh Chopra of Evercore. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Durgesh Chopra: Hi, good morning team. Thank you for taking my question. Just, kind of €“ I want to focus on the plan for this year 2023, that is, what’s the level of confidence? I mean maybe you can share some details with us in terms of what you already have in terms of material secured, et cetera, et cetera, and getting the, sort of the 3.4 gigawatts online and getting the $0.27 earnings accretion year-over-year.

Andres Gluski: Okay. Hi, Durgesh. Listen, we feel good about the numbers that we’re giving out there. We have all the equipment basically secured. And we’re very €“ I’d say about what we have about 5.5 gigawatts under construction as we speak. Okay. Not all of them are going to come in line in 2023. But just to give you an idea, we feel very good about it. Now, the megawatts that we said might slip into 2024. What are the issues? Well, for some of that, there could be equipment delivery. There could be interconnect timing, easement issues, permits, the usual stuff that when you’re doing construction. So, we’re going to try very hard to get it done this year, but we feel it’s prudent to say that these are going to slip most likely, slip into 2024.

Now, what I would like to reiterate is that this really isn’t a business issue. This is just an accounting issue from my perspective because we €“ all of those 600 megawatts, I feel very confident would get done, for example, by €“ certainly by March. So, there aren’t any penalties involved and there isn’t any significant change to the return of those projects. So, unfortunately, what you really have is given that we run on a calendar year. We have so much happening in the last quarter. But I want to really emphasize this is not a €“ we have €“ of all the renewable developers, we have not abandoned any project because of equipment delays or permit delays. We have delivered on . So, we feel very good, but there is a timing issue, and we thought it prudent to say, look, these 600 megawatts, we think are most likely to fall into next year.

But it’s a matter of €“ it could be weeks. And we will nonetheless try very hard to get them done this year.

Durgesh Chopra: Thank you, Andres. That’s very helpful. And just in terms of milestones for us to watch, as to whether you can get them done this year or are they going to push next year? When are you going to have that clarity? Is that, sort of kind of a summer type of event or will you have more clarity by your Investor Day?

Andres Gluski: I really don’t think we’d have it honestly, by our Investor Day, to be frank. I think it’d be more by the summer that we would have more indications on particularly the project. This gets quite granular. got a permit or something that was missing, but I don’t really don’t see that before that.