Greencoat UK Wind H1 2025 Earnings Report

Greencoat UK Wind EPS Results

• Actual EPS: -GBX 3.23
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Greencoat UK Wind Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Greencoat UK Wind Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2025
• Date: 7/30/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, July 30, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 4:00AM ET

Greencoat UK Wind (LON:UKW) specializes in renewables infrastructure investments in energy, wind generation assets and onshore and offshore wind farm projects with a capacity of over 10 megawatt. For offshore wind farms, the fund seeks to invest 40% of the Gross Asset Value at acquisition and where a utility company retains an equity interest for a lock-up period. The fund ensures that the total of short-term acquisition financing and long-term debt is between zero and 40% of Gross Asset Value at any time, with average total debt being between 20% and 30% in the longer term. It prefers to invest in projects and assets based in the United Kingdom. The fund seeks to acquire 100%, majority, or minority interests in individual wind farms.

Greencoat UK Wind H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: UK Wind’s share price is up 12% since last quarter and the company has implemented the sector’s first meaningful fee rebasing alongside a buyback programme extended to £200 million to help close the NAV discount.
• Positive Sentiment: The sale of assets totalling £181 million at NAV this morning (and £222 million in eight months) will fund further buybacks, reduce gearing and preserve capital allocation optionality.
• Positive Sentiment: Despite the first half having wind speeds 14% below budget, net cash generation reached £163 million and dividend cover remained a robust 1.4×, underlining portfolio resilience.
• Positive Sentiment: Gearing is set to fall from 41.5% to below 40% once disposal proceeds are applied, while a 4.59% average debt cost supports attractive levered returns and manageable refinancing risk.
• Neutral Sentiment: NAV fell by 7.8 pence—mainly due to a 7.3 pence hit from softer power price forecasts and swap mark-to-market—but 60% of future cash flows are fixed or inflation-linked, underpinning dividend security.

Presentation

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Good morning and welcome to our twelfth half year results presentation. Thank you for joining us. We expect to run for around thirty to thirty five minutes and to allow some time for Q and A at the end. Stephen and I will take you through the results shortly. But before we do, we wanted to make some remarks about the market backdrop and our response to it.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

It's encouraging to see share prices across the sector rerating with our share price up around 12% since the end of last quarter. There's further encouragement in that the sector is showing some signs of consolidation or exit to rebalance the supply of investment companies with today's demand. But as of this morning, we remain at a significant discount to our NAV. We wanted to reiterate that we and our Board remain dissatisfied with where we are and we're fully aligned with shareholders to continue to improve the company's overall attractiveness against the market backdrop. We've always taken a long term view in managing UK wind and we're guided by taking actions that are in the best interest of our shareholders.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

And just to remind you that includes being the first to agree an appropriate rebasing of our investment management fees, which is unmatched across the sector being the first to start a material buyback program, which has been extended to £200,000,000 and recognizing that as gilt yields rose our return needs to adjust accordingly. We've also focused strongly on capital allocation and committed to appropriate asset divestments to fund it. We're pleased to announce this morning further disposals to continue funding our capital allocation program. These disposals are once again at NAV once more highlighting the disconnect between our share price and private market valuations of these assets. The sale of these assets with a total value of £181,000,000 takes us to £222,000,000 of realizations in the past eight months.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

We remain strategically opportunistic in assessing further disposals. The proceeds will support our buyback program, de gearing and in the medium term provide optionality to the business. Going forward, we remain active and committed to doing more to support the company's value proposition and to foster its rerating. We'll now move into the results. Our half year results show resilience against the backdrop of some of the lowest observed wind speeds in The U.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

K. During the first half of this year. Indeed according to DESNAS, the first quarter of the year was the least windy since 2010 and this was compounded by low wind speeds in April and May with some recovery in June. This left us 14% below budget, but still with robust dividend cover of 1.4 times for the half year, demonstrating the resilience of the portfolio. NAV has also been impacted by under generation both cumulatively and in this period and a softening of power price futures and forecasts.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

And we'll address power prices in more detail later in this presentation. Gearing stands at 41.5%, but is forecast to fall below 40% on completion of disposals that we just mentioned, assuming all the cash is applied to repaying debt. The immediate increase in gearing reported in our results is partly a result of the decrease in NAV and movements in the mark to markets of our swap valuations. On to capital allocation. With the increase in dividends that we announced earlier this year, we've now paid £1,300,000,000 in dividends to our investors and reinvested £1,000,000,000 in the business.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

We expect to have further capital over the next five years of a similar magnitude to reinvest from future dividend cover. Our near term capital allocation priorities remain clear and are supported by the disposal we've announced this morning. At the completion of the current program, we bought back £132,000,000 of shares retiring around £10,000,000 of forward dividends with an accretion to NAV. This and de gearing is supported by the disposals that we announced. In the medium term and we'll look at this later in the presentation, we have to consider the appropriate allocation of our capital and graded against the discount that we're trading at and the opportunities that we see in the market.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

We do believe that opportunities do and will continue to exist that could compete with the value afforded by buybacks over the medium term. I'll expand on this later in the presentation. The overall picture for the sector remains positive. We're starting to see a rerating in share prices and there's some progress on sector consolidation. We also now have certainty on government policy with regards to pricing, which we'll touch on later.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

And it's clear that wind continues to be the store to future U. K. Renewable deployment. Allocation round seven is in progress and it's clear that wind will do the heavy lifting. Strike prices have now been published at an increase over AR6 and the CFD term has been extended to twenty years from fifteen years.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

We expect this will be supportive of the investment climate. With a net return of 10% to shareholders at NAV or 12% of the current share price, UK WIN is well positioned to remain as the sector leader in terms of target returns, scale, fees and the future investment landscape. Next to a reminder of The UK wind business model, it remains a simple business model. Buy wind farms, generate electricity, receive cash and with the cash we generate, we've now paid £1,300,000,000 of dividends to our investors, which is more than the size of some of the products in our sector. We've also increased our dividend by RPI or more in each of the twelve years since IPO, making us one of a handful of thirty two fifty companies who have done that since we IPO ed.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Crucially and our distinguishing feature is that we've also generated £1,000,000,000 of excess cash flow to reinvest in the portfolio by buying further projects, which supports our aim of preserving NAV in real terms. Looking at the balance of portfolio revenues that remains on a discounted cash flow basis around fifty-fifty between fixed and floating. And over the next five years 60% of that 60% of our cash flow is fixed and explicitly linked to either RPI or CPI, which we think is valuable given the recent uptick in inflation. What I've just said about dividend cover and reinvestment is shown on the next slide, showing dividend cover of 1.8 times over the life product and the £1,300,000,000 of dividends and the £1,000,000,000 of reinvestment. Also a reminder of what we own.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

It's a diversified portfolio of 49 wind farms. It turns out that they're all in one zone as far as it matters. It's also a scaled portfolio representing 6% of all U. K. Wind assets making us the leading financial owner of wind in The U.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

K. And the fifth largest owner of U. K. Wind assets. There's further detail on the portfolio here, which I know is a slide that will be familiar to those who followed the fund for a period of time.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

We've split it out across the regions that we operate in, asset types, turbine manufacturers, all of that. The only thing I tease out from here is age. So the average age of the portfolio now is nine years versus five point five years at IPO. So over twelve years our assets haven't aged very much. That just talks to the benefit of refreshing the portfolio with investment and recently divestment.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

I'll now hand over to Steve to talk through financial performance for the half year.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

Okay. Thank you, Matt. So I'm going to talk through the financials as Matt just said. The first thing to point out on the slide on dividend cover is we are comparing H1 twenty twenty four against H1 twenty twenty five. And given the lack of additions to the portfolio over the last couple of years, they're actually fairly comparable.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

So what I'll try to do is highlight some of the differences. So the first point is to mention that net cash generation was £163,000,000 and this is despite the low wind speeds across The U. K. Which Matt has already mentioned, but also because of the softening of power prices over the first part of this year. Still though we have dividend cover of 1.4 times, which shows the resilience of our business model.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

Now also it's interesting to look at the net cash generation from '24, because actually it's a similar number. And you might be thinking well why is the number the same or similar to H1 twenty twenty five when it's been had such low wind speeds over the first part of this year? And the answer is availability. Availability this year has been very strong, which means that we've able to capture the wind that we've received and turn that into power and therefore cash in order to show the strong revenue that we're showing here. Final point to mention on this slide is that we had a 20% higher dividends in 2024.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

That's largely because of an increase in the dividend that was paid in 2024 as a result of the very high power prices received during 2023 and 2022. So moving on to cash flow on the next slide. It's a pretty similar story before. Revenue similar to last year, but with the lack of wind and lower power prices mean that we haven't we've lost around £50,000,000 there. EBITDA though 75%, which is we think a pretty strong ratio and is typical for these assets which are very strongly cash generative.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

Just to tease out some of the other differences here. So operating expenses you'll see a £12,000,000 higher. That's principally as a result of higher inflation than we've seen this year and also because of some major component exchanges on some of our offshore wind farms. Tax also slightly higher this year and that's largely a result of some catch ups in corporation tax from 2024 and a writing of the tax payments this year. You'll also notice that the SPV level debt amortization was slightly higher in 2024.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

The reason for that is that we received some one off weight compensation payments which were used to repay debt. Final point on this slide is around management fees. As you will see here the cash payment to the manager has been £1,800,000 less during this period. That's on a cash basis. On a P and L basis, it's actually £4,300,000 difference, which shows that the changes that we made at the end of last year, which Matt's already referred to, are actually aligning us further with our shareholders.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

And we believe that's a very important point for us going forward. So moving on to NAV. NAV is 7.8p down. This is primarily due to near and long term power prices softening, but also due to the mark to market on the swaps. The table and chart on the left hand side of this slide show this, but we'll focus on the chart down the bottom left.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

So as you'll see net cash generation pretty much matches dividends and depreciation. Again this is because of the lower wind speeds and the softening of power prices during H1. But we still have this very resilient dividend cover of 1.4 times. In terms of capital allocation, this half year we have bought 35,000,000 shares at an average price of about 115p and that has added 0.6p to the NAV. In terms of some of the assumptions we've already referred to power prices and we'll cover that in more detail on the next slide.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

That has led to a reduction in NAV of 7.3p. Inflation we've seen a tick up. Mean you'll see it here in the slide. And if you look at RPI at the June it was 4.4%. Mark to market as we've already mentioned in terms of where we are in the swaps there that's minus 1.4p.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

So on to power prices. So the key thing to note about power prices is that they are a part of our strategy. Indeed over the life of the fund they've been part of the reason why we've managed to achieve 1.8 times dividend cover. Because they are part of the fund, we also believe that it's very important to publish transparently what our power prices are and you can see that in the top left hand side. So prices start around today around £65 to £70 per megawatt hour and they trend down to around mid-40s per megawatt hour before we apply a PPA discount as well as a capture rate or cannibalization as some of you may know it.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

This as a result has led to a 7.3p reduction in NAV. And we thought it'd be good to take a step back here just to recap on how we actually come up with our power price forecasts. So in the very short term, we use the futures market. This is where actual traded power is changing hands in the marketplace. And we believe that is the best proxy for what we can expect to achieve in power prices over the short term.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

The medium and the long term, we then use to a third party market consultant who comes up with their power prices and we use that in order to forecast those medium and long term power prices. And it's important to note that even that long that consultant in that medium term period blends in some of the future prices so that there's always a view to not just the bottom up economic analysis, but also where power is changing hands in the marketplace. So next question is why are power prices down? So in the short term there's been some geopolitical headwinds, which have resulted that the gas prices effectively are a bit lower in June June compared to December. Now what would be interesting actually is to see is that if we were to use power prices in the futures market this week, it would add almost $01 onto the NAV, shows you there is some volatility there.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

In the medium term power prices have remained broadly stable and that's principally as a result of some project cancellations or potentially postponements. And there's one particular project in AR6, which gave back its contract a few months ago. And I'm sure you all know what I'm referring to. In the longer term, there's been a rebasing in here from twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four in terms of inflation. And we're quite surprised to see that that hasn't resulted in a higher power price forecast from our consultant, especially given where inflation sits and the aforementioned AR6 project which gave back its CFD because of the lack of power prices in the market.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

Also it's interesting to note that under AR7 the administrative strike prices for offshore and onshore wind have increased by 113% respectively showing that the government shows that there is some pricing pressure for developers in the marketplace. Now despite all that, the dividend cover is robust. And if you look at the chart at the bottom left hand side, you'll see that down to almost £20 per megawatt hour, the dividend RPI linked is fully covered all the way through this period. Further, as Matt has already mentioned, but important to reiterate, there is £1,000,000,000 of excess cash flow that we can expect to be able to use for capital allocation over the coming years. We think that gives us some very interesting opportunities to maximize return for our shareholders.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

Finally, just another point to make. 60% of our cash flows between now and 2029 are fixed and with some linkage to CPI and or RPI. So moving on to debt. So debt is additive. Why?

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

Our average cost of debt is 4.59% versus our unlevered discount rate of 9%. Therefore that gap means that when we bring in leverage into the portfolio there is a significant uplift in the overall returns we can offer our shareholders. If that discount if those debt numbers were to narrow then you will start to question whether the debt is actually additive to the shareholders given the risk that debt brings. But for us we're very, very relaxed. As of the June, we had a gearing level of 41.6%.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

But with the disposal proceeds we've announced this morning, if we have applied all of those to repaying debt, would stand at 39.5%. In terms of the structure of the debt, can see that in the top right hand side of the text here, pounds 2,260,000,000.00 of which £500,000,000 is amortizing and relates to Hornsey one. The rest is RCF and term debt. We believe this is the best structure for us giving us low cost optionality and it is easy and flexible to change. Just as a side point, if we were to make no not to have had no share buybacks over this last couple of years that would mean there'd be around about £100,000,000 less on the gearing which should be something like 1% lower gearing levels.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

Now that's not to say that the share buybacks are the wrong thing. It's just to show and highlight that capital allocation has trade offs. So finally, we often get asked about refi risk. And if you look at the chart at the top left, can see some of the maturities and the coupons that we have in the structure. So if we were to take as an example the next two maturities, which adds up to about £350,000,000 of debt with a weighted average coupon of 4.6%.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

And we were to think about refinancing it today where we think rates are today probably between 5%, 5.5%. And even we took that top figure of 5.5%, we would end up with just £3,100,000 a year in terms of extra interest costs, which we think are insignificant in terms of the overall size of our fund. Further, when we refied the £725,000,000 last year, had very, very strong support from our lenders. Indeed, we didn't need to go beyond the existing lender base, which shows how much they support us. Therefore, overall, we're very comfortable with our debt structure and we believe it gives us the flexibility along with the support from our lenders to have a sustainable situation.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

I'll now pass it over to Matt to talk about key themes before wrapping up and moving on to Q and A.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Thanks, Steve. So now that we've been through financial performance for the half year, thought it better to just zoom out not for the camera, but to a wider lens just to look at the market context. So we have a slide here on the developments in The U. K. Wind market.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

I think the overall message is that wind remains the core renewable technology in all future system scenarios. You can see the scale of build out needed from the chart in the top left. And that's material. It's roughly three times the existing offshore capacity and almost twice the onshore capacity. So for us, that's a huge part of the market.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

That could be £170,000,000,000 of new assets to AMAP. So the market opportunity for us is frankly vast. We also have clarity on policy. We've spoken to many of you about the review of electricity market arrangements. And the government has now ruled out a zonal pricing mechanism.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

We and other generators in the sector felt that if you introduce a zonal market and you didn't do it in the right way, with the right commitments for owners of existing assets, they could lead to uncertainty in the investment community, which in turn could jeopardize the outcomes of Clean Power 02/1930. So we're pleased to see that there's that the zone of market has been rolled out. There's more to do. National market reform is also something that we'll continue to engage with our peers and with government on to ensure that we get a good outcome for both consumers and investors. But overall, I'd say this policy development is positive for the investment climate in The U.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

K. For wind. We touched on AR7 earlier. And as Steve mentioned, the strike prices are there. They've increased versus AR6.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

And we know that the CFD term for AR7 assets will be twenty years instead of fifteen. And there are some other important ingredients that, of course, we don't know, most notably the overall budget. But we think that there's good basis to believe it could be an attractive auction round. So I guess I'd say overall recent policy developments are favorable for the investment climate for wind in The UK. I also thought it was worth just to zoom out and talk a little bit about the work that we do on a day to day basis on our assets.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

We touched on this in our Capital Markets Day in May. And I think it's such an important part of what we do that it's worth re articulating. So there are three key lens to the work we do on managing our assets. Generation, so maximizing the number of hours we get from our sites, both in the short term and also in the long run. Revenue, so optimizing what we get paid for the units we produce.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

And whilst as Steve mentioned, it's less a part of the overall net cash flow factor, operating costs are important, far less sensitive than revenue, but there's still quite a lot that you can do to drive efficiencies. In terms of the making sure that our sites are available to generate and getting the most out of them, availability has been a strong feature of our performance this year. Whilst we haven't had the wind that we would have hoped or expected, our availability has been really good despite some outages at some of our sites. To talk about what we do in terms of improvement, there's a number of things that you can do to wind turbines. And many of you who follow this sector will be aware of these things.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Physical upgrades is one and you can see that in the bottom left there. It is simply fixes to blades to allow you to capture more energy from the same amount of wind. And there's also a lot of technological development in terms of the efficiency of how the turbines operate and in particular having them operate at higher wind speeds than originally projected without compromising the long term life of the assets does add a material amount to the wind that you can capture. We should also talk about longer term optionality. So whilst we've got a predominantly young portfolio, it's less than a third of the way through its life on average.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

We have some older assets where we start to think about life extension, repowering and not exclusive to order assets, but also site extension by perhaps adding turbines. And there's no universal rule here. I think often repowering is spoken of as something that's going to work for every single site. We don't think that's the case. And also before you can get to repowering, you also have to consider that if you do it before the end of an asset's useful life, giving away the cash flow you could get from generating and you have to take that into account in the calculus of whether it works from a returns perspective.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

And also, frankly, not every site is suitable for repowering. If you have a smaller older site, you're probably going need quite a lot more land to develop a modern bigger site. You need to space out the turbines more. You may not have the right size of grid connection to repower it. That said, there are some assets in our portfolio where we're starting to think about the longer term optionality of extending leases and perhaps in the future repowering.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

It's a site by site assessment. In the last year, we've made quite a lot of progress in securing land rights and securing lease extensions across a number of our assets. We also continue to work quite hard on life extension of our assets, just to get more out of the assets in terms of time as well as the revenue optimization that I mentioned earlier. Model failure rate of our turbines in their first year of operation is somewhere around one in ten thousand if you have the appropriate levels of forward maintenance and that's something that we pay a great deal of attention to. So there's scope for profitability beyond that.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Also around existing sites that you have, you can see extension opportunities. It tends to be that the easiest place to get planning for a new wind farm is next to an existing wind farm. It has to be spaced out appropriately. You need land rights, but we look across the portfolio and we see a number of extension opportunities and we'll continue to explore those. Frankly, all of this is about the day to day work that we do, but also thinking about the longer term and creating long term optionality of frankly not very much cost.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

That's the business that we're focused on with Asset Management. Capital allocation is obviously an important slide in today's climate. So the first thing to reiterate is dividends have always come first. We've paid an RPI progressive dividend for the past twelve years as we said before. And beyond that, we generated £1,000,000,000 to reinvest.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

We expect a similar amount over the next five years, assuming at par performance. And that's capital we can use to allocate. We also have, of course, today the proceeds of the disposals we've announced, so 181,000,000 that supports our near term priority, which is the completion of our second £100,000,000 tranche of buybacks as well as the gearing. Beyond that, I think it's worth looking at capital allocation over the longer term. It's pretty easy to work out what you think the return is from buying your own shares back at a discount.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

So if you have a net return of just above 10% as our fund does on NAV, if you buy your shares back at a 20% discount, you have 10 divided by one minus the other, you get to 12.5% return. So on the face of it, it looks fantastic in terms of investment opportunity. Presumably, like the assets that you're buying, you're rebuying in the same portfolio, otherwise you wouldn't own them. We think there's a piece missing from the economic calculus, because every time you send a pound out of the company, you make the company smaller, but unless you've done something to your debt then the next day is exactly the same amount. So I think it's worth reconsidering in the medium term what the returns from buybacks actually are.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

They clearly have a place in supporting our share price and they've been useful to us and will continue with the rest of the program that we have for sure. But if you take into account making an investment of the pound, that's 12.5% return, you also have to take into account paying roughly 40p of debt for every pound that you spend. And for us that marginal rate of debt investment is around 6% around the cost of our RCF. And when you merge together the returns of those two instruments, it isn't the 12% that you started with, it's more like 10%. And depending on your discount, it could be as low as 9%.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

So we've shown that in the chart at the bottom. And if you look at the where the green line intersects with say buying an asset at 10% IRR, as you trend in with discount, it starts to be more and more compelling to buy assets. All of this really is for the medium term. And it's just a point that we wanted to land around how we consider the calculus of buybacks. We do think there will be investment opportunities.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

There's a lot of projects that are going to get built under AR7. There'll be a lot of recycling of existing projects to allow the equity to build projects in AR7. And as I mentioned before, we have some interesting opportunities in our own portfolio. So we look at this over the longer term and ask our shareholders just to think about the benefits of alternatives to buybacks. Of course, the benefit of reinvesting is that you get to keep the cash inside the company and that further supports an RPI progressive dividend and preservation of NAV in real terms.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

I've ended on returns there. I mean returns are really that's what the attractiveness is or should be. Our portfolio levered discount rate is unchanged at 11%. And at a 15% discount that would be 12%, 12.5% as we said before. So if you look at the ten year GILT today, it's 4.6%, 4.7 Given that our investments also come with explicit inflation linkage on at least half of our cash flows and as we mentioned earlier for 60% for the next five years, I think that's quite a valuable attribute to the fund given that we've seen an uptick in inflation over time.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Last and by no means least, a word on ESG. So sustainability and long term value creation, they go hand in hand. We've published our ESG report that's available for you to view on the website. We published it in April 2025 And you'll have all the details there of the good work that we do in communities, the amount of carbon that we abate to the homes that we power. And that's a really good read.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

So it's there for you to look at. And I think that we'll just end with a few closing remarks before we open up to Q and A. So in summary, our dividend cover remained robust against very low wind speeds. We made quite a lot of progress on disposals and we've been very clear on capital allocation. All that lands against the backdrop of I think legislative clarity and political support for wind.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

We know there's a lot to do to improve the attractiveness of the company and we'll keep working on that very hard. We'll now hand over to our call operator to take questions from the conference call. And after that at this time, we'll address any questions that have been submitted through the webinar portal.

[Operator]

Thank you. Very first question is coming from Alex Wieber calling from RBC. Please go ahead.

[Alexander Wheeler, Equity Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Good morning. Can you hear me?

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Yes. Thanks, Alex.

[Operator]

Your line is open, sir.

[Alexander Wheeler, Equity Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Perfect. Good morning. Three questions from me, please. First one just on policy. The end of zonal pricing debate clearly a big tick in the box.

[Alexander Wheeler, Equity Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

How are you thinking about reformed national pricing and how that may go? Do you have any indications at the moment about how that may look or the impact it may have? My second question is just a confirmation really. Just can you confirm that you're happy on current P50 estimates following the revisions that you've already done and just confirming that you're happy with where you sit in terms of budgets? And then the third one is just following the conclusion of the recent disposals at NAV, would you see any value in further disposals given the current discount? Thank you.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Thanks, Alex. Good to get not one, not two, but three questions out straight away. So as it comes to policy, yes, the endozone, as we said, I think, is a supportive move for the investment climate. As we said before, we and other generators made a very clear case to government around maintaining the attractiveness of this market and the landscape of certainty. And I think that's been listened to and honored.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

That doesn't mean that the discussion is over. It's pretty clear that the other alternative review of electricity market arrangements is a reformed national market. Frankly, think a lot less work has been done on that given that the focus have been on zonal. So we await detail to emerge. But when it does emerge, we will be engaging with government on it as we have in the past.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

And I think the main risk is how you express locality in a reformed national market. That has to be at the core of what happens. That could happen through a rerating of network use of system charges. And that I think will be the thing for us to engage on. Anything to add to that Steve?

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

Well, think it's clear to see from the government's decision on Zonal that they have respected the rights and protections of existing generators. And I do believe that any changes that will come to national market reform would also follow those same principles as well. And as Matt said, we'll be very involved in that directly, but also working with other stakeholders and peers across the industry to make sure government hears the needs and desires of shareholders. So whilst there is still some uncertainty, it's less than under zonal and we believe that government are very much aligned with supporting the current generators, but also making sure that the investment environment is attractive so that they can continue attracting the £40,000,000,000 a year that they need every single year between now and 2030 to meet their Clean Power 2030 marks.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Alex, your second question was on our P50s and our generating budgets. So as we spent a great deal of time talking through this in January and in our results presentation in February. So the exercise that we did in the run up to December was full and holistic across our portfolio, including working with a third party consultant. We're happy with the work that we did. We think it was right.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Think it was appropriate. We spoke in detail about the changes that we made. So we're happy with those budgets. It's obviously frustrating that having reset that the first half year that follows it leads to a period of underperformance from wind, but it is an exceptionally low wind speed period. And I think that just to take the question head on, the question is always there, is this a trend?

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

You do have periods of wind speed, if you look back to the 1990s of over and under for five years, we're in a period of under wind speed. Whether that means that there's a systemic change or something climactic happening, I think frankly is unknowable. It's something that we've started to explore with consultants, it's pretty clear when you get into the analysis that it layers uncertainty on top of uncertainty. There's uncertainty in climate modeling. There's uncertainty in wind yield estimation.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

You put two together, there's frankly no real firm outcomes that we are able to draw. It's something that we're cognizant of. It's something that we'll be talking more about. But for now, we're happy with where we are in P50s. Your last question, Alex, was on disposals.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Given where we are, that we can sell our assets and NAV as we've demonstrated repeatedly, I think yes there's a case for continuing to remain strategically opportunistic when it comes to disposing of further assets. And we've set out pretty clearly what we think we could do in the medium term in terms of capital allocation. Our first priority of course is completing the buyback program that we have, which we're well funded to do and degearing both of which we've mentioned in some detail today.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

And perhaps just to add on to that, we have an investor roadshow coming up where we'll speak with many of you and we'd love to hear directly your views on this. So we will engage with you over the coming weeks and months. And obviously the capital allocation program will remain dynamic to the feedback and wishes of our shareholders.

[Operator]

Thank you for your Thank questions you. Sorry for that. Thank you your question, Alex. Our next question will be coming from Ian Schuyler of Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open, sir.

[Iain Scouller, Managing Director at Stifel Financial]

Good morning. I've got a couple. Just firstly on the power price and the 70 impact. Can you just sort of split that out between what was below expectations during this period? I mean, I think you're saying you got a catch price of $77.65 against a market price of $88 And how much of it is related to sort of short term curve, longer term curve?

[Iain Scouller, Managing Director at Stifel Financial]

And then the other one is just the 10% increase in the OpEx. You did sort of touch on that. But again, can you just give us a bit more detail around that because that's quite a big move?

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Thanks, Ian. I'll take the power price question. I believe Steve can give a bit more detail on operating costs. So looking at the overall move in power prices, it's around three ishp from the front end of the curve and four ishp from the medium to longer term end. And you can observe that front end part by looking at twenty five and twenty six futures back in December versus the June 30, which as Steve said, that's when we cut our NAV.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

And the 4P in the longer run is partly down to inflation expectations manifesting into real 24 power prices and also a reset of gas and commodity prices. Those are the key ingredients that go into the forecaster's model. Short run, as Steve said, if we were to redo our NAV as of last night, that front end part of the futures curve would lead the NAV back up by zero pounds or so. So it's a moment in time. We obviously understand that it's not great for your power prices to go down.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

We do have that exposure. But over the long run, our model remains good, It's intact. Our business our dividend cover going forward still down to £20 a megawatt hours there and covered and still plenty of excess cash flow generation to expect. Steve?

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

Thank you. So on OpEx, so there are a couple of points I mentioned earlier on around inflation and some extra component exchanges in our offshore assets. So in terms of the inflation, the way that the contracts work they're typically looking a year behind. And so what we're seeing in the beginning of this year is the very high inflation that was experienced during 2023 and 2022 catching up in terms of the OpEx contracts. So as we all know inflation was running into double digit numbers and that is now reflected in the costs that we see.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

In terms of the offshore component exchanges, these are specific programs that we had. They were budgeted. So we knew about them and didn't come as a surprise. And they were actually one of them was known when we actually acquired the asset as well. So these are known figures that we were always planning to spend and it's just part of the prudent management of operational wind farms.

[Iain Scouller, Managing Director at Stifel Financial]

Okay. Thank you. So if you stripped out that component exchange what would the increase in OpEx be?

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

Sorry, you just repeat the question?

[Iain Scouller, Managing Director at Stifel Financial]

Yeah. If you stripped out the offshore component exchange if you haven't done that what would the increase in OpEx have been?

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

I don't have that exact number Ian, but how about I get back to you separately if that's okay.

[Iain Scouller, Managing Director at Stifel Financial]

Okay. Thank you.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Thanks Ian.

[Operator]

Thank you, Richard. Next question will be coming from Adam Kelly of JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

[Adam Kelly, Analyst at JP Morgan]

Hi, good morning. I just wondered with the Bayer that performed the one stake to another fund managed by the manager, Was that externally marketed as well? Was that something that was considered in terms of looking at the valuation for that sale? And related to that, it said in the statement, showed as Green Coast got $10,000,000,000 of AUM. What of that is private funds with a comparable mandate that could potentially acquire other assets from GreenCo were it to sell?

[Adam Kelly, Analyst at JP Morgan]

And to what degree does that fund or funds have cash available to buy assets?

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Thanks, Adam. So as we've said, we've sold two interests of roughly 1% in Hornsby One. This is something that we had externally marketed for a period of time last year and we were pretty close to the ultra of a transaction, pricey read. And for idiosyncratic reasons, that didn't happen. So that left us with an effect, a whole load of external due diligence that could be relied upon that had already been prepared and if you like a shrink-wrap transaction.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

That then happens to align with inflows into two mandates in Schrader's Green Coat that do have an overlapping investment mandate with U. K. Wind. And just to be clear, U. K.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Wind retains its priority allocation of all wind investment. And that's frankly how the marriage happened. We're obviously a regulated manager. We obviously understand how conflicts work and separation of function. We have a Board.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

We have a Private Markets Investment Committee. We also had in this case external transaction valuation validation. So I think we followed exactly the right process and we're very comfortable with it on that basis. To answer your broader question, yes, Schroders GreenCo has around £10,000,000,000 in assets under management. It has in the past had quite a few mandates that could co invest with U.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

K. Wind, and we've done that on several of our investments in Burbank, London Array and others, for example. So that part of our business has always been additive to how U. K. Wind goes about deploying assets.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

This is the first sale that we've done to another mandate. There are there is some available proceeds from some of the funds. I probably shouldn't mention which ones, so I won't. I think more broadly, looking forward, this transaction lended itself well to both the buyer and the seller. I wouldn't think that it's necessarily something that we'd go and repeat.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

It was a moment in time and it worked pretty well. So we're not reliant on other money coming into Schroders Capital into other funds to complete our divestment program. Indeed, the other disposals that we've done have been to third parties who have done their own diligence and made their own investment decisions.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

Maybe just one small point to add in terms of the sale to the Schroders Capital managed fund. There was an external valuation by an external provider, which helped provide that arm's length valuation. So we are very comfortable with that. The buyer is very comfortable with that and I think that should give our shareholders comfort too.

[Operator]

Thank you, sir. We'll now move to Connor Finn calling from Barclays. Please go ahead.

[Conor Finn, Director - Equity Research at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank]

Yes. Talk through the process for the reassessment of the P50 numbers. I mean you obviously did it for the FY 2024 and you obviously referenced using third party consultants. But one of the things that was referenced at the time was the addition of more recent years bringing the long term average down. Should we assume that?

[Conor Finn, Director - Equity Research at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank]

And then if '25 carries on as it has in the first half that there will be a further reassessment at the year end?

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Thanks, Connor. Good and fair questions. There's no particular pattern behavior between the type of assets that we operate. We have experienced more dispatch down in our Northern Ireland portfolio than we did last year, but that was already something that we budgeted for when we set our '25 budget. Beyond that, I think there's no frank rhyme or reason.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

There are some sites that have had less than budgeted availabilities. You mentioned forward looking at energy yield and the work that we did in the run up to December. So I'm happy to recover that. So the process was to align the correlation period for all of our sites to the maximum data set available. So when you acquire sites along the way, you acquire them in 2017, 2018, 2019.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

That correlation reference set is a period of time going back roughly twenty years. If you get to 2024, you've now got twenty six years of data. So we felt the right thing to do is to rebase all of our analyses. So using the on-site generation that we have and that track record and then using the longer term twenty six year data set as a correlative point and having that consistent across the portfolio. That's the work that we did.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

And given that bringing in those additional years, so just to use a cartoonish example from 2017 onwards, that's been a period of time where wind speeds have generally been a bit lower than long term averages. You bring in a third of your time at lower than average and you add it to par and then of course your overall average goes down. And that would be exactly true if we redid all this analysis at the end of this year. And this year was, don't know, pick a number minus 10%, minus 15% in terms of generation from wind. But that would only be onetwenty seven of the data.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

That's the point about having the long term. So if we did repeat that exercise, and we're not really proposing to, given that we did this fulsomely and holistically and with a third party quite a lot of time and financial expense to do it, revisiting it after another year is probably not the right methodology, but users will be able to read across the relative difference let's say minus 10 for one of twenty seven years can bring to the long term average. I hope that helps Conor.

[Conor Finn, Director - Equity Research at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank]

Yes. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you, Richard. As we have no further questions audio questions at this time, will turn the call back over to the host for any webcast questions. Thank you.

[John Musk, Investment Professional at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

So, yes, we do have some online questions here and I'll try and group them together where I can. So three questions here on capital allocation. It appears that U. K. Wind is missing a once in a lifetime opportunity to participate in wind build out plans for The U.

[John Musk, Investment Professional at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

K. What are our plans to participate? Alongside that, how are we looking to grow in the future if we keep selling assets and reinvesting by buying back shares? Are we looking at new areas for investment including going into Europe? And then finally, will you stop the buyback and use the cash to grow as neither the 8% dividend yield nor buyback seem to be rewarded?

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Thanks John. There are some good opportunities I think in the market now. So if you think about just the magnitude of capital that's needed over the next five years to build out new assets as we estimated 150,000,000,170 billion pounds You can be 10% wrong and it's still a huge number. You need all of that equity and debt to be raised. But then probably to get there, some of the participants will need to sell other assets to have the equity in the first place.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

So I think there is a decent buying opportunity. But we always have to look at the returns that we can generate from the capital that we have available to us. So our near term priority has been to buy shares back and that has been additive to our NAV and to dig it. Both of those things we spoke a lot about today. So for now, the near term opportunity is there.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Do I think that, that is suddenly going to evaporate if we're not in the market for buying assets for three, six or nine months? No, I don't. I think the opportunity will be there and enduring given the magnitude of capital that's needed to sage the government's desire for further wind build out.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

And it's probably worth mentioning that even the assets that are going to win in allocation round seven, none of them will reach FID the day afterwards. It will take a while for them to actually start construction and then become operational. So even if you just look at AR7 in isolation, the investment opportunity for those assets will exist for anywhere between six months to five years in terms of going in at the very beginning or going in at COD. So we think there's plenty of opportunity there and it comes back down to capital allocation. What is the best way that we can use the capital we have available to maximize the return for our shareholders?

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

And Matt touched on it earlier on and we'll talk about it in the investor meetings we have upcoming over the next couple of weeks and months.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

I'll probably take the next two questions together there. They're kind of different versions of the same thing. How do you stop shrinking? It's the same as how do you start growing. So we've set out here today the considerations that one should have in terms of medium term capital allocation priorities.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

It's obviously dynamic to the share price. But we do see in the medium term there will be opportunities where it will make more sense to reinvest in the business and to buy back shares unless of course our discount remains very, very wide. And you can see that from the capital allocation chart. As to where that money would go if we were reinvesting, there's a notion of opportunity for us now, both within our own portfolio and externally. And we wouldn't have to extend our investment to Europe and to a different currency and different market regimes to satisfy spending the capital that we could have.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

So for now, it's UKW, it's UKWind and that's how it will remain.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

Final question was around stopping that those share buybacks as well. And the clear direction is to continue with the share buyback program. We've announced that we wish to complete it. And that's the clear direction that we will follow over the coming months.

[John Musk, Investment Professional at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

The next group of questions are really around the dividend and how we present some of the numbers. So again three here. If you amortized your debt like peers, what would the dividend cover have been? Would it have been uncovered? Secondly, does the dividend cover sensitivity slide on page 11 assume that you generate in line with your P50s? And then thirdly, what will happen to dividend cover when the rocks gradually run off in the 2030s?

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Thank you. So we've set out very clearly many times what our approach is to debt and our debt structure. And we're completely convinced as is our Board that that is the right structure for a business of our size. You think of the next set of maturities to be refinanced. As Steve said, the refinancing risk we feel is relatively low and the cost of refinancing our debt today is relatively minimal.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

But the flexibility that we have means that if we felt we wanted to, we could switch to amortizing debt. And the impact that that would have on dividend cover depends upon the term over which you amortize the debt and the rate that you secure. And it's also a bit like your mortgage. So we're assuming that we're paying the amounts that we're paying in interest in all of our debt now forever. If you amortize it, your first period payment has a little bit of principal in it and like your second mortgage payment has a bit more.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

So actually, over time, it's not quite as impactful as people would think. So I would guide depending on the rate you refinance that, the time that you stretch it over 0.2 to 0.3 times on dividend cover probably is roughly the sensitivity that you would have.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

And it's probably just worthwhile reiterating that almost a quarter of our debt is already amortizing in the sake of the £500,000,000 that we have associated with Hornsby one.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Yes. There was a question also on dividend cover and our sensitivity to power prices. Does that assume that we generate a budget? Yes, does.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

That falls out of the NAV. The NAV assumes that we generate a budget. Whether that is or isn't the right assumption we've addressed, we've answered Conor's question on the P50 work that we did on the intra year volatility of wind. And like you, we're somewhat disappointed that the first half of this year has underperformed in terms of wind. But yes, it is based on NAV model.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

And dividend cover in terms of ROCs, I mean, is why we publish out a reasonable period of time. So it's not like tomorrow all of our subsea instruments end and it's not like there's zero we can do about it. We have the ability to trim and prune the portfolio. We also have the ability to enter into fixed price PPAs and we're exploring that on two of our largest assets now. So we feel and our lenders are comfortable with us having plenty of optionality to maintain the right revenue division over the time of these assets.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

And that trimming and pruning of the portfolio can include us going after an AL7 asset, which would have twenty year CFDs as well, which we presume would be very attractive for us. So we're constantly looking at that, constantly looking at what is the optimal portfolio that we can hold in order to have that balance between fixed revenues and some upside from power prices too.

[John Musk, Investment Professional at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

A couple of very quick numbers questions. So we talked about the cash flow in sorry in the first half being down £50,000,000 and 75% of that being due to wind. What was the other 25%? And then can you say how many pence is in the NAV for Regos following the update?

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Do you want to take the first question Steve?

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

Sure. So as we've talked around the vast majority of the reduction in budget that we've seen has been from wind speeds that we've experienced. And in fact the whole industry has experienced not just in The U. K. But across Europe.

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

There's been 75% of that reduction. The other 25% is principally because of a softening of power prices during H1.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Another part of that power price is also the manifestation of rigos. So just a word on rigos. So in 2023, they were trading at between £10 and £20 a megawatt hour. That's not something that if you're valuing your assets properly, you can afford to just ignore. So we included rigos and that was the right thing to do.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

The way that we value rigos going forward is based on again a market consultant's projection and rigo prices have fallen materially over the last eighteen months. It's partly driven by a lack of demand from consumers both industrial and retail for green tariffs in effect. So that's led to the reduction that you've seen in this half year. So on an enduring basis, regos are now almost surrounding error in valuation, maybe £1 a megawatt hour for a decent period of time. So on an NPV basis it's 1.2, 1.3 something like that.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

So in effect, we don't expect to have much variability from rigos going forward given that they're not a significant part of you given its valuation today.

[John Musk, Investment Professional at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

There's a quick question here on divestments. How come these all happen at NAVGAV? It seems coincidental. Shouldn't some of these be either at a higher or lower price?

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

So it all depends how you approach the divestment process. And we've been very clear on this. We felt that in a market where one could say it's perhaps a bias market for some things, the best way to form a transaction is to work with somebody bilaterally. So to identify the thing that it is they are looking for to buy, to see if that aligns with what you'd like to sell. And if you have high confidence in the person that you're working with, you then pretty quickly can get to a transaction where you've got a high degree of confidence.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

And the easiest way to make that go forward is to say the price will be NAV. And that's what we've done in all four of the divestments that we've had. We've agreed that that's the price. I think that's the better thing to do. It's led us to getting these things done.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Do I think in the future if we look at divestments, we would consider a more externally marketed approach where frankly the price is an open discussion? Probably yes. But in the time that we've had to date to deliver what we've delivered, this was the best way to get things done. And I'm entirely comfortable with the process and the outcome as is our Board.

[John Musk, Investment Professional at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

And so just the final two questions here on investments capital allocation. Firstly, would you consider construction or development stage assets, especially in the context of the hurdle return versus buybacks? And then secondly, are there any plans to co locate battery storage on wind farms to enhance revenues and profitability per site?

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Sure. So U. K. Winds can invest in construction assets as a limitation, but it can. We haven't felt the need to today, given that we felt the risk reward ratio was actually skewed in favor of owning operational assets And construction premiums got really kind of chased away.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

So you were forced to take a decent amount of risk for frankly not much reward. But Steve and I have spent a lot of our careers investing in construction and development assets, we know how it's done. But given the ocean of opportunity in our core market, there's we don't particularly see a need to go into those assets at the moment. A lot of the construction opportunities are going to be in offshore wind. I think there's quite a lot of risk there that you've seen in some of the listed companies in this space.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

So for now there's enough opportunity in the things that we look at. And there's enough opportunity in the portfolio actually that I don't think we need yet to look at construction and development. Anything to add?

[Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP]

No, think that's right. I think the only probably point to mention is that we remain open minded to it. And if a great opportunity came along that really made sense in terms of investing in construction, we would consider it. But it's not something which we desperately think we need to pursue today.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

On to my favorite subject of batteries. We don't yet see the case for hybridization of sites to include batteries at wind. I think it makes a lot more sense for solar. The generation pattern of wind when the wind blows is that it's windy for twenty four, thirty six, seventy two hours. So if the hydrogen for batteries to capture that arbitrage between lower power prices during winding periods of time and less and better power prices during less windy periods of time.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

You need quite a big battery to do that. And given that a decent part of the revenue stack for batteries is that optimization, is that trading, we don't yet see the case. But these things change, they're dynamic, right? So it's something that we and the Board continue to reassess over time. For now, I think it makes a lot more sense for solar and batteries on a standalone basis are just nowhere near U.

[Matthew Ridley, Partner at Greencoat UK Wind PLC]

Wind. So I think if I'm right that is all of the questions both on the conference call and the webinar answered. Thank you all for dialing in and for your thoughtful questions. And we look forward to seeing many of you on our road show in the next couple of weeks. Thanks for joining.

Participants

Executives

• Matthew Ridley, Partner

Analysts

• Stephen Packwood, Partner at Schroders Greencoat LLP
• Alexander Wheeler, Equity Analyst at RBC Capital Markets
• Iain Scouller, Managing Director at Stifel Financial
• Adam Kelly, Analyst at JP Morgan
• Conor Finn, Director - Equity Research at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank
• John Musk, Investment Professional at Schroders Greencoat LLP