Harmony Energy Income Trust H2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 27, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • The company’s portfolio is now fully operational, marking a 40% increase in operational capacity versus the prior year average, positioning it to capture upcoming market opportunities.
  • In the first quarter of FY25, the business achieved 63% of the previous full-year revenue, driven by strong correlation between high renewable penetration and wider winter price spreads.
  • Management expects to reinstate a covered dividend of around 4p per share in FY25, subject to revenues aligning with current forecast models.
  • The company remains in exclusivity with a preferred bidder for a potential portfolio sale, with any definitive agreement subject to shareholder approval and a likely member’s voluntary liquidation structure.
  • Falling battery CapEx, evolving grid-connection queue reforms and potential zonal pricing changes introduce development and market-access uncertainties for new-build projects.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Harmony Energy Income Trust H2 2024
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

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Moderator

Be in a snowy mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll, and then I'll hand you over to Paul Mason, Managing Director. Good morning, sir.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Thank you very much, Lily. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us today for what is our third annual results presentation. It has been a year of fantastic progress for the company from the point of view of bringing our final projects online, transitioning to a fully operating portfolio, and increasing our operational capacity by 40% compared to the average that we had over the year. This is setting us up well for the future in that sense. There are certain headwinds we have been up against around challenging revenue environments and some uncertainty around the future regulatory setup, and we will talk a bit about how we see those things and how we can navigate those best going forwards.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Through this presentation, we are going to update on the progress around the portfolio. We'll be talking about the revenue landscape that we find ourselves in, some of those challenges we've seen, but also recent improvements and how we think that looks going into the future. We'll be taking a look at some of the key themes we see going forwards around the way we think the markets will evolve, what we're seeing happening to CapEx, and also around those regulatory items. Finally, we'll be touching on the ongoing negotiations around a potential portfolio sale.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Now, we will make some statements around this. Clearly, the process remains ongoing, and not all commercial terms are agreed. For obvious reasons, we're restricted on what information we'll be able to provide. We've been keeping the market as up to date as we can, and we would encourage listeners to look at those statements that have been put out to date. will repeat some of those statements in this presentation, but please do be aware we will not be answering questions specifically related to that process just due to those commercial and regulatory restrictions that we have.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

I hope that makes sense. I am going to hand over to Max to start by talking about the portfolio progress we have seen and how we have built out the remaining assets and increased the capacity by 40%.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

Yep. Thank you, Paul. Yeah, it's been a terrific year in terms of portfolio construction completions. As Paul said, we are now fully operational as a portfolio, the second largest portfolio of GB BESS by megawatt, and the largest GB BESS portfolio with an exclusive two-hour duration. Paul will elaborate on the importance of the duration later in the presentation, which is a common theme that we've always been talking to shareholders and engaging with shareholders around. The Hawthorn Pit, and Wormald Green projects were the final ones to be energized.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

We diversified our battery supply chain by using Envision as the principal contractor for those projects, which is a good way of diversifying our risk around construction. They were successfully energized just prior to the financial year-end in October. On top of that, the Rusholme project was also energized slightly earlier. That has been, out of all our projects, the one which has faced the most challenges in terms of construction delays, but they were not construction delays caused by the contractor or our supply chain.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

It was a DNO-led delay, which we had to resolve over time, involving a third party and cable routes, etc., which were ultimately worked through. We are very pleased to have seen that come online and performing well. As Paul said, now that we are fully operational, going into this current financial year, we are looking at a 40% increase in relation to the weighted average over the financial year 2023/2024. That puts us in a really stable, strong position to take advantage of the positive trends that we are already experiencing in relation to revenues in the country. That's a good segue back to Paul in terms of talking about recent revenue trends.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Thank you very much. Yeah, absolutely. As Max said, over the period, revenues were relatively low. We have still seen that relatively low environment that we started to see around this time last year, and we were talking about last year. We did see some signs of positivity. Key items that we have seen really starting to shine through are around a correlation between high renewable penetration and higher battery revenues, which is really encouraging to see because that is the whole thesis of what we are doing here, and that is why we are building these batteries to provide an opportunity to store that excess renewables generation and then release it back onto the grid when the power prices are higher.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

We have seen that more and more. The better periods of revenue on this chart correlate very well to high wind output in particular, being the dominant source of renewable generation in GB. We've also seen improvements through better use of batteries in the Balancing Mechanism. This has been a big ongoing theme that we've talked about for many years. Since the launch of some new software in the NESO control room and the launch of certain products which support that, being Balancing Reserve and Quick Reserve, we have seen four times the amount of volume through the Balancing Mechanism in our batteries.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

That's really encouraging. We still think there's a long way to go. There's a lot of opportunity that can continue to be unlocked in that area, but it's a good start, and we're starting to see that come through. What we've seen post the period end, but over the past quarter, is a real increase in revenues. That's really returning to the more traditional shape of revenues that you would expect to see, where spreads are wider in the winter, where we have cold weather, we have demand going up as we're using more electricity for heating, etc., and we're getting higher gas prices that go along with that.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

That has created this opportunity for higher prices, more price spikes going into the winter, and that's been really encouraging. It's actually partially due to that increase in underlying revenue per megawatt, partially due to that increased operational capacity, but in the first quarter of the 2024/2025 financial year, we've actually already earned 63% of the revenue which was generated over the whole of financial year 2023/2024. That is showing the value of having that fully operating portfolio as we move into a period of higher revenue.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

The timing has worked well for us in that respect. Just to come on to that correlation point and demonstrate that, what we saw over the summer months was this very strong correlation between the blue line, which is the wind generation shown on the right-hand axis, and the orange line, which is the GB fleet, so average revenues earned by batteries in GB, which is on the left axis. Very strong correlation over those warmer months. The driver of that was higher winds, and when we saw the wind generation being high, we saw prices for wholesale electricity really drop, going often negative.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

We had a record number of negative hours in 2024, 176 negative hours, which is 65% more than we saw in 2023, a trend we expect to continue. We saw that wind really dominating, pushing generation above the demand so that we could buy very cheap power and then store that power and sell it back onto the grid when demand was a bit higher or when the wind dropped off. As I said earlier, the peak periods really correlated to the better periods for BESS revenue. As we move back into the colder months from October onwards, that correlation is broken somewhat, and that's because we're seeing the spread being driven more by the gas pricing again.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

We've got higher gas pricing, but we've also seen periods where low wind, such as the spike, sort of just as we get into December there, you'll see the spike of higher winds there sort of correlating with lower BESS revenue. That's because the wind is taking the slack off the gas, and that's meaning that there isn't so much tightness in the system. The prices were lower. We've seen the low wind period in November correlate with a little spike in BESS revenues. Again, that's because low wind coincided with a period of relatively high demand, so there was a shortage on the system.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

We're just seeing that the wind generation is starting to be a real driver in what's going on with battery revenues. This is, as I said, what we've always believed, what we've always said. We are now at, say, wind being 30% of GB electricity, but looking ahead and looking at the plans around Clean Power 2030, that wind generation is forecast to increase significantly. This will become a much bigger driver of what is going on with battery revenues, which is in line with what we have always suggested. It is encouraging to see those correlations starting to come through. Just to touch on, we often talk about this.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

As you know, the company is still the owner of the largest exclusively two-hour duration battery portfolio. We are starting to see many others add duration or when new build projects are more often than not now two-hour duration batteries. Others are starting to do this. It is still good to note that the two-hour duration batteries are continuing to outperform their shorter duration counterparts. That gap is widening as we start to see more of those trends around wholesale spreads, wind driving low prices, etc., going through into the winter. The gap is widening, and we can still expect that trend to continue going forwards.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

It's worth saying the average duration of BESS in the UK at the moment is now just shy of 1.4 hours long. There is still a way to go, although, as Paul said, out of all the new capacity that came online last year, 67% of it was 2 hour duration.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Now, moving on to the outlook going forward. This chart is a chart that we've published and updated over time. This is the most recent revenue and cost projections that we use for valuation purposes. When we're calculating the net asset value of the company, we have to make assumptions around what the future looks like. We do rely on 3rd party revenue forecasts, and as we know, they have moved around a reasonable amount over the past couple of years, particularly over the short term. Now, they appear to have stabilized.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

They've come down quite a lot. Right now, they seem to be fairly well calibrated to what we're seeing going on if we look in the market. I think hopefully that sort of volatility and that short term moving around will be calming down now. What we really wanted to focus on here was the growth story and why we're at a relatively low point of this curve. It is really coming back to those fundamentals that we've talked about: increased renewable penetration. We've seen that correlation between higher renewable generation and battery revenues.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

We've got that alongside demand growth as we electrify heating and transport. Really interesting stuff coming out of the Climate Change Committee yesterday highlighting those trends and what needs to happen. We're also seeing more demand from things like energy-intensive data centers coming through. You have increased electricity demand. We're going to have to increase the renewable generation significantly to meet that demand, and that needs storage. We're at a relatively low point. We think the fundamentals remain as strong as ever, and we're confident in that growth trajectory.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Having said that, we've seen that clearly there is, whilst these are reasonable forecasts for the longer term, we've seen over the short term there can be some volatility around that. We're seeing the market for tolling agreements where we can remove some of that volatility, improve. There are more options around that. We've been working hard to position the company well so that we can take advantage of some of those agreements if the pricing is at an attractive level. What we don't want to do is lock in long-term pricing at the sort of levels we're seeing today because we believe in that growth story and we don't want to give away that value.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

We see that there is clearly value in removing some of that short-term volatility and downside risk over the shorter term. We're monitoring that. There are opportunities, and that's something that we are working hard to position the company to take advantage of as and when the timing is right. I think one of the other trends we've seen is players looking to bring optimization in-house. Almost the opposite end of the spectrum to locking in some revenue and some value is to sort of try and bring it in-house, take full control over that trading.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Although we have direct experience of actually designing optimization algorithms and selling those to energy traders, we don't think the timing is right for that for the company. We're seeing increased competition amongst a large number of 3rd party revenue optimizers with large teams specialized in providing the service. We're seeing the services become more complex, and we see that actually bringing in-house is a fairly significant additional risk. Given the cost of outsourcing that to a specialist third party, and in many cases, specialist third parties who may be able to add some level of revenue protection through tolling agreements, we see that as the preferred option rather than trying to bring that in-house for what might be a relatively small cost saving.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Finally, just in terms of giving a little bit of guidance around what all of this means, if the outturn is in line with these projections, the company expects that this would allow a covered dividend of around GBP 0.04 per share in the 2024/2025 financial year. A return to being able to pay a dividend compared to last year, where we obviously had to cancel any further dividends. That is providing a little bit of guidance. You can see that growth trajectory and what we believe the future is looking like.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

It's important just to note there that that guidance is not official. It will be reviewed and monitored, and we will make a firmer statement around that towards the end of this financial year.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Coming on, we looked at what the revenues may look like going forwards. Just to provide a bit of balance and color around the wider market context, we are seeing CapEx decline quite significantly. This creates a potential risk for the company, less around what it means for operating revenues going forwards. We actually think, and have often said, that batteries are sort of competing with the technologies, and there is a long way to go before batteries start to compete with other batteries, and a bit of cost saving on the battery front is going to flow through directly to revenues.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

I think we are a long way from that. What it does do is create a perception from the market around the value of a battery project. If I'm looking to invest, do I prefer to buy an operating asset, or do I take a look at this and say, "I'll wait and I'll try and build it when the CapEx is cheaper"? We have often said and still believe that this is an oversimplified view. Actually, the complexity and risk associated with acquiring a site and then building it out and the risks of grid connections, lining up suppliers, supply chains more generally, is probably underestimated in that analysis.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

It is fair to say we can speak from experience.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Yes, yeah, having built out more than most, that is definitely an underestimated area. Also, I think to the extent CapEx comes down, it generally becomes more expensive to actually acquire the sites in the first place. Those project rights, having a site, having a grid connection, which has got planning permission and you are ready to build, that will become a more valuable thing as the CapEx comes down. It is not as simple as saying lower CapEx reduces value of projects, but it is a perception, and it is a risk that we wanted to highlight.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

On the counter to that, we are still seeing battery buildout rates lower than most forecasts, and we are seeing grid connection reform potentially putting some barriers in place to the wide buildout that would be required to meet something like the Clean Power 2030 plan. By no means a fixed outcome from this, but there's a few areas of uncertainty.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

Yeah. The other point on trend from lower CapEx does actually create some or heighten some additional risks, such as geopolitical risks, because it's well documented that I think roughly 80% of every battery comes out of China. In this new tariff rhetoric that we're hearing, that could create some geopolitical risks if China or any other country chose to use that to their advantage. Just to touch a bit more on other regulatory barriers to entry that we're seeing and how these are evolving. I think the general point is that the regulatory environment remains very supportive for BESS.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

Everyone is recognizing the crucial role that it is playing and will continue to play in the transition to net zero. Also, it's very important to remember that we are at the very early stages of that transition. There's a long way to go. The Clean Power Plan, for example, recognizes that. It sets very, very ambitious targets in relation to not just batteries, but also other technologies as well. Also, the transmission network. I think the phrase is, "There can be no transition without transmission." There are many local and national challenges that need to be overcome in order to deliver on the Clean Power Plan.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

We see it as overarchingly supportive for the sector, but it does create some questions from an investor looking to get into the sector now with new build opportunities. How is this plan going to be delivered, and what's the short-term impacts on our business case? On top of that, REMA, the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements, is continuing. It has done two rounds of consultations now. The current narrative seems to be supportive of zonal pricing. Now, we don't want to get into that much on this webinar, but fundamentally, there are pros and cons to zonal pricing.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

For us, as an operational portfolio, we have a diversified geographic portfolio across Scotland and England, which we think stands us in good stead from a zonal position. It's very much dependent on the revenue and generation mix in each of those zones in terms of the business case for a battery in a zone with a lot of solar may be different from a business case of a battery in a zone with a lot of wind and vice versa. There is a lot of adapting and research and analysis to be done if we end up moving to a zonal system. I think the net benefit will be positive because I think the great advantage of batteries is their flexibility and their ability to adapt and evolve their business cases to suit the local environment.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

We see the overall picture as positive. However, if I was an investor coming into the sector fresh, it would give me pause for thought because where do I go? What do I build? How quickly do I do it? The final point, as Paul touched on, is grid connection reform, which is something that is very much very fresh. It's still to be firmed up, and we're expecting more clarity on that actually in the coming few months. This is more of an issue for developers than it is for owners of operating assets. Effectively, what it's doing is looking to make more efficient the existing queuing system and rewarding those projects which are the furthest progressed and trying to fast track those.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

Likewise, if projects that are at an early stage of development, and especially if they don't have planning, they are likely to face delays. Their grid connection that they have in their hand now, which says 2029, may well become 2035 plus if they haven't passed the relevant gating criteria by the deadlines. I think this represents more challenges for developers. It puts those operating batteries, or those batteries which are in construction or have reached financial investment decisions already, they are going to be better placed to take advantage of the near-term positive revenue environments that we are currently seeing.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

Those ones that are in a more early stage look to be facing further delays. Just to what does this all mean and how do we round this all up? In the context of everything we've spoken about, it's worthwhile coming back to what we said at the beginning around where we are at in terms of the sales process. Just as a quick reminder, we began marketing this portfolio back in the late summer. We were very encouraged by the amount of bidders and interested parties that were involved and engaged with us. We shortlisted those down over a 2 stage process and went into exclusivity with a preferred bidder in December.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

That exclusivity was recently extended until the 10th of March as we look to close out outstanding due diligence request queries and work streams. Talking about what might happen, it's important to remember that any definitive agreement we reach is subject to shareholder approval. We will be publishing, well, assuming we reach a definitive agreement, we will be publishing a circular which will contain details of the transaction and how we would expect to return the proceeds back to shareholders. At the moment, our intention is to do it through a members' voluntary liquidation.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

As I said, more details will be published in that circular. In the event that the transaction does not happen, either by way of not reaching a definitive agreement or the shareholder vote is negative, obviously the company will continue. All of the trends and initiatives that Paul's mentioned already would be worked through. Sorry, we're having a bang, which is ironic. That would involve talking to our revenue optimizers around tolling arrangements and looking to increase the proportion of contracted revenue in our revenues.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

We'd also seek to explore leveraging options to try and deleverage back from where we currently are so that we put ourselves in a more stable and robust position to manage better any short-term revenue volatility. We are very positive around that and the prospects for doing that. However, it's worth remembering that at our IPO, we set out a mechanic whereby we would put the company forward for a continuation vote in the event that our NAV was below GBP 250 million as of 31 December 2024. That criteria has been triggered. Therefore, a co

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

ntinuation vote will be tabled. The sales process may impact that, but fundamentally, what we've tried to do is put shareholders in the most informed position so that, A, they have up-to-date revenue information and our views on the market and the prospects, the near-term prospects of the company. Also, if they so choose, it's now an opportunity to exit on the knowledge that we have run a very competitive and thorough marketing process rather than doing that post a failed continuation vote, in which case we would be at a competitive and commercial disadvantage.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

We feel that we have given the power to the shareholders to make the best decision with the full information that's available to them now. That concludes our presentation. We will now turn to some of the Q&A.

Moderator

Max, Paul, thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab situated on the top right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the company takes a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed by our investor dashboard. Guys, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Perhaps if we dive straight into it, the first question we have here reads as follows: How sustainable is the revised dividend policy?

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Yeah, thank you for the question. Just to reiterate, the policy remains as it was amended recently, which is we are aiming to pay out at least 85% of the cash flow that we generate over the period. The guidance around the 4 pence per share is very much linked to the assumption that revenues over the current financial year will be in line with that valuation forecast that we put up. To the extent that the revenues are higher, that could be a higher number. To the extent they're lower, it could be a lower number. As Max said, this is not a firm dividend guidance.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

In terms of what the future looks like, I would say you've got that view of revenues increasing and the macro drivers behind that, but we know that there could be better or worse years. That is the reason we have moved to that more dynamic policy around dividends rather than a fixed pence per share target. I think going forwards, I would say in addition to what we have been covering to date, there will have to be debt repayments factored in. Not all additional free cash flow would be able to be distributed to shareholders through dividends. There will need to be an element of debt amortization for that.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

It is very much linked to what is going on in revenues going forwards as to what that dividend will look like. As I said, we do see the fundamentals are all strong in terms of supporting that increased revenue. Hopefully that is helpful. I appreciate it's probably not as direct and clear as you would like, but unfortunately, the markets we're operating in do lead to that uncertainty around revenues going forwards, hence the dynamic policy.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question we have here from an investor is DNO. What is this, please?

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

Yeah, so DNO stands for Distribution Network Operator. Apologies, we should have been clear on that, as opposed to the TSO, which is the Transmission System Operator. The DNOs basically operate the more local distribution networks. All of our projects are distribution connected rather than transmission connected. What that means is when we applied for the connection in the first place, they have to interact with the local Distribution Network Operator and not with National Grid. National Grid manages the transmission system. Various companies such as UK Power Networks, SSE, Western Power Distribution, depends on where they are.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

They manage the more localized thing. Going the transmission route or the distribution route has its pros and cons, but we can elaborate on that in another session.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question we have here is: What is the potential level of tolling revenues from the market sounding you made? How does it compare to the levels you show on slide 11?

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Yeah, good question. Flicked back to slide 11 just so we've got that in front of us. I would say right now, if you were to be locking in sort of anything from a 2 year toll all the way up to a 10-year toll, you're probably locking in something that's close to the lower end of where we're starting. If you look at that sort of 70 to 80 mark, that's probably where you're at. The caveat to this would be these revenue projections here are all in real terms. That means that as we go forwards, we expect the real amount, the actual amount of money that we receive will be higher than that due to inflation being added on top of these projections.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

The tolls that you are able to put in place are typically fixed, not index linked. They're actually, if I lock in GBP 70,000 per megawatt per year toll today, that's actually declining in value in real terms over time. That's the balance we've got is looking at how long would we want to lock in and how much of the portfolio. I think we would never be looking to put 100% of the portfolio into tolls. We would be unlikely to be going for long-term agreements due to that sort of degradation of value over time through inflation. I think a reasonable strategy would be looking at a sort of shorter-term tolling agreement for a portion of the portfolio.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question we have here is: Do your assets offer the potential to increase duration further if you wanted to?

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

The answer is right now a limited ability on the footprint that we have available to us. Most of the projects, we have sized the footprint to fit on the 2 hour duration. I think the caveat to that would be that there is often spare land around, which we could look to go and get planning to increase the footprint and negotiate with a landowner. That is a possibility. I would also draw attention to the technological advances and just improvements in battery technology, cell density may well mean that by the time we come to repowering these batteries in, say, 15 years' time, we might well be able to fit four hours on the same footprint that we currently fit two hours.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

Or sooner if the commercial landscape allowed and it was cost-effective for us to do so. If a business case for 4 hour duration battery becomes more prominent, to be honest, at the moment, we do feel it's in its infancy and not yet ready for an investment. If that changes, then yeah, we would look to ways to increase the energy density of the footprint that we are currently using. That may be through technological advances, or it may be, as Paul said, trying to increase footprint and add on additional containers. It's a good, interesting question.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

If you compare our Pillswood project with our Bumpers project, which were roughly a year in between each other in terms of the construction timing, it's rough, and again, roughly the same number of megawatts and megawatt hours. I think I forget the actual numbers, but it's roughly 55 containers for Bumpers and about 75 for Pillswood. That just shows the advance of between, and that's just in one generation of Megapack from Tesla. Yeah, this sector, the technological advances are happening fast. It's reasonable to assume that we could increase duration simply by upgrading existing infrastructure.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question we have here is: Are there any make-whole penalties or exit fees on the debt if repaid early?

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

No make-hole penalties. There are some debt facilities which have very punitive sort of early repayment terms. We do not have that. There is a sort of fairly standard project finance early repayment fee that does disappear in about a year's time. It is a relatively small prepayment fee for the next 12 months, and then there would be no prepayment fee. I am actually reasonably confident we could negotiate the fee down. I think the bank would see it as a sort of a nice positive if they were to get a bit of prepayment for just deleveraging. If we were to repay the whole facility, that might be a different matter.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question we have here is: What is the total prospective supply versus the CP30 target? You mentioned that some areas are seven times oversubscribed. What is the overall supply picture? I take on board all your points about potential delays and issues with this new supply actually materializing.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

Yeah, we don't have the actual figures to hand, but the seven times oversubscribe point was more just drawing on the existing consultation, which talks about zones. The country is under the CP30, is divided into zones, and each of those zones has a certain amount of capacity allocated to it as a target for various technologies. It is just making the point that for some of those zones, the amount of batteries that are in the planning system and in the capacity market register to be built in the future in those zones is way in excess of what the CP30 limits are. In terms of, again, if you're developing a new project, the risks to your grid connection timetable for those are twofold.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

First of all, it's how advanced is your project in relation to planning, lease, financial investment decision, your construction procurement, etc. The second one is, even if you've done all those things, are there already too many assets in front of you in that zone? It needs a lot of thought and analysis and planning from the development point of view.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question we have here is: What is the current CapEx cost per megawatt hour for new batteries?

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

There has been a couple of surveys on this recently. Modo did a pretty comprehensive survey, and they got a fairly wide range, I think it is fair to say, of what people are actually paying. That is because each site is quite different in terms of how much you pay for your grid connection. Also, the caveat to all of this is that the CapEx surveys tend to miss out the actual acquiring of the project rights in the first instance. As a ballpark figure, you would be somewhere for a 2 hour battery, somewhere between GBP 500,000 to GBP 600,000 per megawatt.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

That is for a 2 hour battery. On top of that, you would be looking to pay, you would have to buy those project rights. You would have to get the project from the developer who has got planning, the land options, and the grid connection rights. That could add anything from GBP 50,000 to GBP 200,000 per megawatt, depending on what position that developer's in, how good the site is, is it strategically important. There is a wide range, but pure CapEx, I would say you're in that GBP 500,000 to GBP 600,000 per megawatt for a 2 hour battery.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question we have here is: How are developments in the balancing mechanism and other aspects of new revenue impacting the bottom line in the most recent quarter?

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

Yeah, it's going back to.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Yeah, it's a good question.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

Yeah. There's a big difference.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Yeah, I think it is a good question. You can see the balancing mechanism in December, for example, became quite a big part of what we were doing, and that was really good to see. It has then dropped off a bit in January, but the reason for that is actually because the wholesale markets were so strong in January, it made sense for us to commit more capacity into those wholesale markets and not take the chance of whether or not National Grid would call us in the balancing mechanism. We have got a certain amount of capacity.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

We can choose to commit that day ahead or intraday within the wholesale markets, or we can leave it and we can submit our pricing to the control room, who may or may not choose to use the battery an hour before they need it. In that sense, through the balancing mechanism, we've got that choice, which is being made all the time. When the wholesale prices get to a certain level, it's not worth taking that risk that you're not called. We could probably have squeezed a bit more out of this by leaving a little bit more capacity to the balancing mechanism, but your certainty around achieving that revenue is then reduced. It's becoming more important.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

The other products, we mentioned Balancing Reserve and Quick Reserve, they've really acted to support the control room in using the balancing mechanism. They go hand in hand. Whilst we don't actually see, you see Balancing Reserve here, the sort of purple bar, it's a relatively small part, but actually it's really important in enabling some of this larger green bar. They go hand in hand. How much have they played compared to just the spreads being wider? It's difficult to split out with sort of confidence, but I would say the balancing mechanism and those additional services are really going to be adding a little bit on top. You're talking sort of maybe 10% incremental value to if you were just trading in wholesale markets.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question we have here is: Are you pursuing floor route to market to capture potential upside while securing a minimum level of revenues?

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Short answer is no. The reason behind that is when we have looked at the floor products which are on offer, the floors are still set at a very low level. While it provides a theoretical downside protection, it is actually protecting against unrealistically low scenarios for a sustained period. They typically require you to lock in a much longer-term agreement. We like to have flexibility. We do not typically sign up to long-term optimization agreements so that we can see which optimizers are doing a good job, move around if that makes sense. You are giving away upside through higher fees in exchange for that floor, which we are not valuing so well.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

What we have looked at rather than that is that approach of partial tolling, which I talked about, where we would not put the whole portfolio into a tolling agreement. If you put a partial part of the portfolio into a tolling agreement, you effectively create a floor. Yes, you give away some of the upside if things are going very well, but under most of the sort of more realistic scenarios, you're in a better place. That is the way that we've analyzed and looked at it. Just because we do not see the floors as being an attractive commercial proposition right now, if the offers change and they become attractive, then there is no reason we would not consider it, but it has not been attractive to date.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question we have here is: When deciding whether to buy new batteries, does Harmony compare the potential investment return to the investment return from buying back Harmony Energy shares?

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

We certainly would do. I think the reality is that we have not been in a position to make those sort of decisions. We have obviously raised equity through two raises, and given where the shares are trading and have been for a period of time, there has not been an opportunity to go and raise additional equity to give us the ability to go and buy new projects. Similarly, we have certainly as much debt as we would want to have in the structure right now. We would not go out and raise debt to buy new projects. If we were sitting on a large cash balance and we were thinking about what to do, that would certainly be the calculation.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

I think it would be a pretty easy calculation given where the shares are currently trading compared to now.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question we have here is: Do you see scope to reduce OPEX further in due course?

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

I would say not significantly. I think the OPEX that we have across the portfolio, the largest elements are really, a lot of it is contracted for fixed over the long term, and that's sort of long-term maintenance contracts with battery suppliers. Potentially, there is something we could do on the Envision projects, so the Hawthorne Pitt and Wilmore Green projects, which do not use Tesla batteries. They are long-term contracts, but there is an ability to break those contracts at 5 yearly increments. Our assumption is that actually that would increase risk significantly and risk warranties.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

That is not part of a base case strategy, but it is something that we could definitely look at in five years' time. Other than that, the large OPEX items are really driven by things which are not within our control, and that's things like network charges paid to the distribution network operators and insurance costs. Those insurance costs are linked to replacement costs. If CapEx goes down, the insurance costs should go down. Equally, if we're insuring some revenue around business interruptions, if revenue is higher or lower, that should move a bit, but we've got limited ability to influence that.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Those network charges are set by the DNOs on an annual basis, and there isn't, again, an ability to influence those. There might be some more things we can pull together and try to get economies of scale across the portfolio, but I don't see a massive sort of opportunity on the OPEX side.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question we have here is: Why has the reconciliation revenue stack increased so much recently?

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

That's a very good question. Essentially, this is linked to how much money we're making through wholesale and balancing mechanism trading. We have a very good estimate of how much we're going to make pretty much immediately. Some of the amounts that we are paid are subject to reconciliations from Elexon, who is the sort of electricity system administrator. Until we actually get invoices from Elexon, which confirm our estimates, we do not book those revenues. We take a conservative view on that and book them as they come. To the extent you're making more money and trading more energy through wholesale and balancing mechanism, those amounts get larger.

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Effectively, these are sorting themselves out on a month plus one, month plus two basis. It is just the fact that as we went into that winter period, we started trading more, the wholesale spreads were wider, so therefore that element of revenue was larger. It is showing through there. I think we could probably reallocate that to trading, but we have always taken the view of splitting it out because that is the way we recognize it. It is not revenue that was necessarily earned in that month. We have wanted to differentiate that, but effectively, it is linked to trading revenue.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question we have here reads, to clarify, when you mention CapEx of GBP 500,000 to GBP 600,000 per megawatt for 2 hour duration, is that per megawatt or per megawatt-hour?

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

That's per megawatt. Yeah, you can halve that to get the per megawatt-hour.

Moderator

Perfect. Max, Pull, I think that concludes all the questions, and thank you for answering all those questions. You can, for investors, and of course, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, Paul, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?

Paul Mason
Md at HEIT

Yeah, thank you very much, everyone, for taking the time to listen today. Just to reiterate, we're really pleased with the progress in terms of getting that portfolio fully operational. We do think that makes a huge difference to the way that the company is looking for the next 12 months. We're seeing those positive revenue sort of signals coming through and looking for that to continue over the next 12 months. We look forward to updating you on the outcome of the ongoing sales process in due course. Thank you very much for your time.

Max Slade
Commercial Director at HEIT

We and the board remain at your disposal to answer any further questions you may have. Please do reach out via your contact either at Camarco or either of our joint brokers, Panmure Liberum, and Stifel.

Moderator

Max Pull, thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Harmony Energy and Harmony Energy Income Trust, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you.

Analysts
    • Paul Mason
      Md at HEIT
    • Max Slade
      Commercial Director at HEIT
    • Moderator
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