Centrica H2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 20, 2025

There are 10 speakers on the call.

Operator

All right. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for joining us. It's super to have you here for our 2024 results. I'm joined here on stage by my usual sidekick, Russell O'Brien, our CFO.

Operator

We've got our new Chairman, Kevin O'Byrne, in the audience alongside the leadership team in the front row. I want to start with a very clear message. We never forget that we work for our shareholders. We're focused in creating value every single day of the year. 2024 was a good year for Centrica, building on the track record of the past few years, delivering progress across the areas that move the needle on value creation.

Operator

We're performing strongly, focusing on the controllables and relentlessly pursuing operational improvements. We've hit the profit targets we set ourselves two years ahead of schedule, and we've delivered EPS of 19p for the year. Now all of this means that our confidence is growing, which allows us to give you more insight into how we see the future shaping up. So to remind you, we see a pathway to deliver £1,600,000,000 of EBITDA by the end of twenty twenty, with more than 85% of this coming from existing businesses and projects that are already in flight today. And hopefully, you'll agree that we're demonstrating capital discipline balancing value accretive investments with shareholder returns.

Operator

During the year, we returned £700,000,000 to shareholders, but ramping up investment to almost £600,000,000 And our growing confidence is also reflected in our announcement that we'll increase the 2025 dividend by 22% to bring it up to 5.5p. Now that's an almost 40% increase in two years, and we're committed to reaching two times dividend cover by 2028. As we both delivered more than expected and delivered it quicker than we expected, we've also added further £500,000,000 to our share buyback. We'll execute that at pace, and we aim to complete it, if at all possible, by the end of this year. And by the time it's complete, we'll have bought back around a quarter of the company in around three years.

Operator

There are vast opportunities arising for the energy transition for a company like Centrica. Some of the decisions being made across the industry risk increasing costs and decreasing energy security for consumers. We believe that energy transition is the biggest opportunity that our group has, but we're agnostic about the technologies that will drive the changes. We are and we will remain disciplined and pragmatic, focused on delivering value to our shareholders with returns at the very heart of the strategy. If we deliver what we think is possible, we will create additional capital in the next two to three years, and we can either invest that in value creating opportunities or consider more shareholder returns in the future.

Operator

It's all about what delivers the best return for our shareholders. Our capabilities are extremely difficult to replicate, and they set us apart in a competitive and an evolving landscape, a crucial foundation to delivering our strategy. But we must continue to improve. We never stop. And operational excellence is a journey which never ends.

Operator

We put a huge amount of hard work in over the past five years, and we've made super progress with higher customer satisfaction across our retail businesses, giving us confidence in our ability to compete and to grow. But there's still so much more to do. The better you get, the more opportunity you see. Commercial focus is an area where I think we can still make huge improvements, challenging ourselves to deliver the most attractive commercial offers to our customers. And that's particularly true in services and solutions, where we've now got a really strong operational foundation that we must convert into return to growth in customer numbers.

Operator

So that's why we've got Gary Booker, our Chief Customer Officer with us, not just today, but in general, to increase the pace of change across the business to make us more customer focused and more entrepreneurial than we've been, and I'll come back to services a bit later. And last but not least, we're investing for value, investing in assets that both deliver attractive returns and assets that are aligned to our strategy, all whilst creating long term growth options. I think we made very good progress here, whether it's new businesses, such as the new meter asset provider, which is a brand new revenue stream for our group whether it's growing existing businesses, such as our new gas beaker in Galway in Ireland to further grow our existing power generation business in Ireland, or whether it's maximizing the value from existing assets, such as a nuclear power station life extensions and the new capacity market contract we announced this morning for the White Gate plant in Ireland to underpin and grow our power generation from existing businesses. We're delivering the opportunities we've developed in a very disciplined way. But Russell now will take you through the numbers, what that means for a capital structure, and I'll come back a little bit later and discuss the future.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Chris. Hello, everyone. I'm really pleased with our performance in 2024. We ran the business well, we generated strong free cash flow, and we used that cash flow to increase balance sheet resilience, invest for value and drive shareholder returns. We've built a track record of doing that over the past few years, and that will remain our blueprint as we go forward.

Speaker 1

So let me start by taking you through the key points of 2024, and then move to provide a deeper insight into our future outlook. We've delivered another strong financial performance, which is supported by further operational improvements across the portfolio. Adjusted EBITDA was billion, which drove adjusted earnings per share of We delivered free cash flow of £1,000,000,000 which includes an increase in capital expenditure to just under £600,000,000 And our balance sheet remains strong with closing net cash of £2,900,000,000 We returned £700,000,000 to shareholders, and continued strong performance from the businesses gives us the confidence to increase our full year dividend by 13% to 4.5 4.5p. As Chris said, we also intend to raise our dividend by a further 22% this year and to extend our share buyback by another £500,000,000 That means we have nearly £800,000,000 of shares still to buy, so we'll be increasing the rate of repurchases with an aim of completing the full amount by the end of this year, if possible, depending on market conditions. Total group adjusted operating profit was 1,600,000,000 which was lower than 2023 against the backdrop of a more normal market environment with lower prices and volatility.

Speaker 1

Our retail and optimization businesses delivered $8.00 £7,000,000 just above the midpoint of our earnings range. Within that, services and solutions continues to make good progress, delivering million, which is a solid result. Infrastructure delivered operating profit of million, reflecting strong operational performance, offset though by lower storage profitability and lower nuclear power prices. We remain focused on costs, and I'm pleased that we managed to broadly offset the impact of inflation through underlying efficiencies this year. The next step for us is to harness our data and technology to further simplify our processes and get up to more material productivity improvements across the group.

Speaker 1

This makes great business sense and is completely aligned the focus on operational excellence that Chris just spoke about. Now let's turn to cash flow. We generated billion of EBITDA and nuclear dividends. From that, we paid cash tax of $636,000,000 and in total, including the electricity generator levy, alongside other levies and charges, we paid almost £1,000,000,000 to governments during 2024. Working capital was less volatile than in previous years with a £124,000,000 inflow, and that was driven by a number of offsetting movements across the group, demonstrating again the benefits of our integrated portfolio.

Speaker 1

We deployed a little under £600,000,000 of CapEx in the year, maintaining our disciplined approach and focus on delivering strong accretive returns. Our investments including bringing n second house, giving us full control over the Ignition technology platform, and we expect to deliver attractive double digit returns from that investment, while it also provides significant future optionality. We ramped up our new METE meter asset provider, the MAP, deploying 85,000,000 and installing nearly 500,000 Centrica smart meters in just over four months. And we continue to progress our peakers in Ireland and other flexible and renewable projects. All in, this led to free cash flow of GBP 1,000,000,000, a strong outcome.

Speaker 1

Moving then to our cash position, and you can see from the graph the significant improvement we've delivered over the past few years by proactively simplifying the portfolio and increasing the resilience of our balance sheet. And we've taken further steps to strengthen the balance sheet. I'm pleased to announce that we recently concluded our triennial pension review, agreeing a reduced deficit, which is now around £450,000,000 rolled forward to the end of twenty twenty four and deficit payments of around £140,000,000 a year until 2027. So I'd now like to shift to the future trajectory of Centrica. The financial framework we announced in 2023 is unchanged and reflects the strategic priorities we've set to drive long term growth and shareholder value.

Speaker 1

Starting with 2025, there's no change to the outlook I gave you in December, so I'll be very brief here. We currently expect all of our retail energy supply and optimization businesses to be within their guidance ranges this year. We expect services and solutions to deliver a further improvement, and we remain confident that it will be within the million to million range in 2026. For infrastructure, again, no change to the guidance I gave you, but I'll just remind you that we expect a loss of between GBP 50,000,000 and GBP 100,000,000 this year for rough. We currently expect net cash to be lower at the end of the year, including the impact of higher investment, higher shareholder returns and our working capital outflow.

Speaker 1

And with the continued strengthening of the group, we now have more confidence to project our financials a little further forward. So let me run through how we see the group's EBITDA pathway to the end of our investment existing retail and optimization guidance of around GBP 1,000,000,000 of EBITDA. The middle of the range is a good starting point for your models, but of course, over time, we hope that we'll be getting towards the top of those ranges for each of the businesses, subject, of course, to natural business cycles. Our existing infrastructure businesses will continue to contribute, but at a smaller scale than they do today, delivering around £200,000,000 of EBITDA based on current price curves. And note, I do not include any contribution from RUF at the moment, given the lack of clarity over its long term future.

Speaker 1

Our committed new investments, primarily the MAP and the Irish Beakers, should generate up to around £170,000,000 of run rate EBITDA by the end of twenty twenty eight. And we expect new investments to contribute an additional £200,000,000 in EBITDA, taking the total for the group to around £1,600,000,000 by the end of twenty twenty eight. And importantly, this means we have line of sight on around 85% of this projection from assets that are either generating earnings today or investments that are already underway. Now delivering that incremental EBITDA will be driven by deploying the uncommitted portion of our investment program. The projects and activities we've already announced along with about £500,000,000 of sustaining CapEx means we've committed around 50% of the total, leaving around £2,000,000,000 still available for new investments.

Speaker 1

Chris will talk about our investment strategy shortly, but we have a healthy opportunity set under review and a pipeline that we've been growing over time, allowing us to be selective about the projects we pursue. But as a reminder, our focus is on returns as we're demonstrating with our ongoing investment. Our investment grade credit rating is a critical enabler of our business, allowing us to operate flexible and volatile markets. And we've made positive steps on balance sheet resilience over the past couple of years. We signed the new pension deficit agreement, and the new assets we're bringing to the portfolio will have a more ratable profile like the map.

Speaker 1

Separately, we've also strengthened our liquidity position and our debt stack, and we now have over £5,000,000,000 of committed facilities in place to help us manage volatility. And if you look back, Centrica's balance sheet has not always been on such a solid footing. There was not that was not good for the company or not good for shareholders. So looking forward, as we invest, we'll be leaning into our balance sheet more, but we don't want to be running the credit metrics up to the red line. That's absolutely normal for any company, and we're no different.

Speaker 1

So that's why we have around GBP 1,000,000,000, which we deduct from our future financial headroom projections. This allows us to run the business efficiently, continue to grow, take advantage of opportunities when they arise and return capital to shareholders for protecting against risks. So let me pull all of that together and for the first time lay out how our balance sheet could evolve in the coming years. We head into 2025 with a strong net cash position, and we expect to generate around £4,500,000,000 of after tax cash flows through to 2028 based on the EBITDA evolution I've just described and including the new investments that we're making. Pension and decommissioning payments will consume around billion, and we expect to complete the remainder of our billion investment program over the same period.

Speaker 1

And just to highlight, I've included here around million of new leases to support our growing LNG business. We've announced an acceleration in our dividends today, moving towards two times earnings, which alongside the existing million buyback represents roughly billion already earmarked for shareholders. And so if you move to the right hand side of the chart, you can see that we have the potential for more financial headroom to emerge over time after taking into account our reserves. Now this capacity is not in the bank today, but we are confident enough in our outlooks to give an additional £500,000,000 of it back to shareholders through today's new buyback extension. Now as I said, these projections are subject to the usual caveats, and they're going to flex if markets change.

Speaker 1

One thing to note though as you look forward, our capacity could increase further over time if our credit rating thresholds improve as the shape of our portfolio changes. Similarly, we may be able to reduce the size of the reserves we hold, and we will keep this under regular review as we move forward. So our growing confidence in our future outlook means I've been able to give you a more granular projection that we've been able to give before and demonstrates how we see our financial flexibility growing in the coming years. The first step is maximizing sustainable earnings, and we see a pathway towards run rate group EBITDA of billion by the end of twenty twenty eight. We remain focused on maintaining a strong investment grade balance sheet through the cycle.

Speaker 1

We're making good progress deploying capital, and we continue to do all of that alongside delivering significant and growing returns to our shareholders. Thank you. Let me pass it back to Chris.

Operator

Thanks, Russell. It's been over a year since we laid out our strategy, a key element of which was delivering the investment program to renew our infrastructure business for the coming decades. When I became CEO, it was a deliberate strategy to prioritize fixing fixing the three most pressing issues we faced. Number one, our underperforming operations number two, our poor colleague relations and number three, our strained balance sheet. And that's why you saw the capital investment rate declining consistently over the past few years.

Operator

Trying to do too much at once could actually have been fatal. But now we've got vastly improved operations, we've got top quartile colleague engagement, and we've got a balance sheet that's got £7,000,000,000 more capacity than we had five years ago. That's partly driven by liquidating our existing assets into cash. We've been focused, and I think you'll agree this amazing team in the front row have delivered a huge amount. So our focus has now been shifting.

Operator

Reinvesting is absolutely crucial. Stable cash flow from existing and new infrastructure assets will underpin profitability in retail and optimization, creating opportunities to generate three returns for a single asset, and that's why this feature is so prominently in Russell's waterfall. I'm delighted that we've got the capacity to deliver that investment, but still rewarding our shareholders, our owners, the people that we actually work for. We've been really clear on how we think about deploying capital. Attractive returns that are prerequisite, but what else are we looking for to justify investing our shareholder money?

Operator

I want to lay that out for you. Number one, there has to be a clear industrial logic. We've got to be confident that we can run the asset or the business well, bring in our experience and our capabilities to bear to create value. If we're not confident in that, we just don't invest. Number two, there's got to be a benefit to the portfolio, bringing assets into the group that creates synergies, reduce risk and support the balance sheet.

Operator

And of course, any investment has to be strategically aligned. It's got to create options to deliver value as the energy system evolves. Now we don't have a crystal ball. I can't stand here and tell you exactly how or when things change. Nobody can do that.

Operator

But what I can say is that we are driven by pragmatism, delivering the energy our customer needs today and the solutions that are needed to keep energy reliable, affordable and clean in the future. These are the key trends that we know will shape the energy market of the future. More electrification, more intermittency, more demand for bespoke consumer products and services. None of this is new to you, but some of the implications of these trends are quite stark, and they're really, really starting to become evident now. The world consumed more energy in 2024 than it has ever done, driven by global economic growth and emerging structural trends like the growth in data centers.

Operator

And despite a tilt towards electricity and a massive growth in renewables, the world emitted more carbon in 2024 than it's ever done in a single year. The implications of a system becoming more reliant on renewables are becoming clearer. In just one single month over Christmas, the share of UK output from wind in The UK range from a low of 2% to a high of almost 60%. The backup thermal generation, predominantly gas, filled the gaps there, the difference between the two and the 60, and will continue to do so over the medium to the long term. It's very clear that we need more low carbon base load power growth.

Operator

We need more backup generation. We need more storage. Those are the assets that will ultimately drive system decarbonization, And those are the assets that we are focused on investing in. Our nuclear business, our gas fired peakers, our battery investments, the conversion of rough to hydrogen storage, these are the assets that are needed to drive the energy transition. A more complex and intermittent system will naturally lead to more volatility, and that will increase the need for people who can deliver energy where it's needed and when it's needed to keep lights on at sensible price.

Operator

That's a huge opportunity for businesses like Centrica Energy. And alongside these trends, new technology like demand side response is leading to customers looking for more bespoke solutions to their energy needs. For some, that will mean more engagement, proactively managing their household energy use. Others just want us to take the hassle away, but they want to be safe in the knowledge that we're getting a good deal. We've got to deliver the right solution for all of those customers.

Operator

Now our mix of businesses means that we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of these trends, but we're mindful that the environment is rather dynamic. Recent U. S. Policy changes after the election are a perfect example of just how quickly things can change. And we've got to be prepared for further twists and turns, and that's why we're creating a portfolio with the flexibility and the optionality to create value regardless of the pace of the energy transition.

Operator

And although the exact path is unclear, nuclear and natural gas are going to remain critical components of the energy mix, at least out to 02/1950, and most likely, quite far beyond that. Nuclear is an essential contributor of zero carbon baseload electrons, and natural gas is crucial to the move away from unabated oil and coal fired generation. As a result, gas demand will most likely rise from today in absolute terms. We therefore see scope for significant growth in LNG demand over time, But with a lot of new supply expected to come into the market over the next two to three years, we expect that will depress prices until the market adjusts to the new LNG. So we proactively hedged our exposure with deals such as the Petrobras agreement that we announced this morning, locking in positive spreads to eliminate that downside risk, plus retaining physical optionality in the event the market is better than we expected.

Operator

As you look closely, you'll see that these volumes have stepped up again since the December peak in, and we're now almost completely heads out to 2027, and we're north of 50% out to the end of the decade. This is a fantastic example of prudent risk management. We leave risk on when we see opportunities, we take off when we see the downside coming. And if the market plays out the way we anticipate it will, we stand ready to pick up well priced longer term LNG supplies to add to our portfolio, which will add further value to the group. So that's all to take a look at Ireland as a market we love, as a market we know well, and the energy system there, looking evolving, looking at security, affordability and decarbonization is at the core of our investment strategy.

Operator

The Irish electricity system is constrained. We've got very strong growing demand, and you've got a need for new generation to keep pace, and that's created really attractive opportunities to target capital towards flexible generation, and we're now in a pathway towards doubling our installed capacity by around 2028, '20 '20 '9. We were recently awarded a capacity market contract, which will help underpin continued operations at White Gate until 02/1933, about EUR 50,000,000 a year, which will support strong profitability. Our two reciprocating peakers in Athlone and Dublin are expected to commence operations later this year, and having been designed for fast response, they are perfectly positioned to capture value from growing intermittency. And as we announced this morning, we've been awarded a new contract to deliver a new three thirty four megawatt open cycle gas turbine.

Operator

The project will receive a higher capacity market payment than other peakers, funds at about EUR 60,000,000 a year, showing the increase in value of reliable backup generation sources, which underpins a significant portion of the revenue for the project and delivers a very attractive return. Now Ireland's a great example of us acting phlegmatically targeting our capital to the most attractive opportunities in countries that we know and where we believe we can add value and align to the changing energy system and delivering clear synergies with our existing portfolio. As I said earlier, there's going to be significant change in energy retail markets. Maximizing these opportunities requires efficient, flexible operations overlaid with an entrepreneurial mindset. This is why it's been so important to deliver the operational improvements we've seen over the past few years.

Operator

That was also a key factor driving the acquisition of NSEC, which powers our ignition platform. We've brought one of the industry's leading technology platforms in house, which delivers value in its own right by eliminating third party fees. But most importantly, it gives us greater control over our operations and the integration with other proprietary centric assistance. The migration of customers to the new platform is now largely complete and has been a key driver of the significant improvements that we've seen in Katharine's business and service levels with net promoter scores at a near record level last year, improving by about 70%. We're starting to see a reduction in transition costs.

Operator

We want to be as efficient as possible, but we will not blindly chase a cost number, because that could help the progress we've made for the customers over the last couple of years. We're focused on value, and we continue to invest in customer support and in our brands to support the growth ambitions, but delivering a margin of around 2.7%, which is slightly above the off term allowance in a more normalized year, suggests we're getting that balance just about right. And services, as Russell said, performance was solid. We said your rates remain low, and we've delivered very strongly on our customer promise, which is basically same day engineer repair visits. Our engineers made it to almost 93% of people who called us before eleven in the morning with no heating or hot water this week.

Operator

So you can see that even in the really cold weeks, delivery here is strong. There's no one else that can match this proposition, and the strong delivery gives us confidence to push the organization further to deliver more compelling options for our customers. We're seeing promising signs that improved operations have an impact on value with better customer retention and contract acquisition, but on demand jobs continue to increase. Most importantly, margins have gone from 2.9% in 2023 to more than 4% last year, and our intention is to further drive significant improvements. We believe that being able to offer a one stop shop for consumers, drawing together our supply and optimization capabilities will be increasingly a competitive advantage in the future, allowing us to really maximize the value of our nationwide engineers who are in customer homes at 7,000,000 times a year.

Operator

Our engineers are believing installers of boilers, believing installers of heat pumps, the leading installers of smart meters in The U. K. We maintain home gas and electrical systems, and crucially, we've got award winning training facilities to make sure that they have the right skills today and into the future. We are by far the biggest player in a completely unconsolidated market, but we've only got around 10% market share. The growth opportunities here are truly huge.

Operator

So as the recovery is clearly continuing in services, there are massive chunks of value still to go for them, and increasing the pace of our commercial progress is one of the top priorities for the coming years. So we've got a clear plan for the assets we're investing, and you can see that reflected in the things we've done recently, and it remains the framework that we will use to assess opportunities going forward, whether these are organic or inorganic. Attractive risk adjusted returns are non negotiable. We have got to be able to add value to the assets, they have to add value to our portfolio, and they must align with where the energy system is evolving. Our investment pipeline today meets all of those criteria, and crucially, it gives us the flexibility to react to whatever path the energy transition may take.

Operator

So whether it's faster or slower, whether it's more or less electrified, that's okay. We value optionality hugely, and we build it into absolutely everything that we do. So in conclusion, we've had a very good year in 2024 with further improvements in our operational performance supporting our financial results. The progress we've made over several years of making Centrica more streamlined, efficient and resilient means that we can give you a bit more line of sight on how we see the business developing. We have a very exciting future, and it's based on delivering a simple value creation model.

Operator

You hear me drawing on about all the time. Number one, relentlessly driving operational improvements through the existing businesses, basically running them better than anyone else can. Number two, constantly pushing to deliver what the customer wants. And number three, investing in projects that add value in and of themselves whilst creating long term growth options. By continuing to deliver on this, as we've said this morning, we see a pathway towards £1,600,000,000 of EBITDA and a balance sheet that could support further returns to shareholders.

Operator

Accelerating our progressive dividend demonstrates our continued confidence in the resilience of the group. Plus our buyback program now sits at £2,000,000,000 Now stepping back, I'm proud of what this team has delivered over the past five years. Our market cap has increased from £2,000,000,000 to £7,000,000,000 We've transformed our balance sheet and positioned the business for growth. All of us return almost £3,000,000,000 of capital to shareholders today, and there's more to come. That progress is behind us in the rearview mirror, and as we move forward, I want to see us accelerating delivery of the massive opportunities that lie ahead.

Operator

I am really looking forward to taking some very, very significant steps forward this year. And with that, I want to thank you for listening for your time. And Russell and I would be delighted to take your questions. What we'll do is we'll take questions in the room first, and we'll move to any callers online, and then there are there's a facility to ask them. Ajay, even before I sat down, you've got your hand up.

Operator

So Ajay, you can absolutely go first. So as I'm sitting down, why don't you grab a microphone and we'll take your question.

Speaker 2

Deja Patel from Goldman Sachs. A few questions, please.

Operator

A few. I mean, there's a

Speaker 1

few. So

Speaker 2

I guess the first one is just to maybe if you could describe the journey a little bit from last year and where we were in regards to balance sheet, the outlook for buybacks, outlook for investment and how that journey has changed over the last twelve months to kind of lead to this increase in buyback today. So that's the first one. I think the second one is on the credit ratios. When can we maybe see an improvement? Is it dependent on the build out of the investments?

Speaker 2

Is the derisking of the LNG contracts today helped? The reliability reductions that we see or the roll off of the cash outflows from them in regards to pensions and decommissioning costs drive that? And just to give us a sense of what the levers are and how should we see that part of the journey evolve? And then on the service side, the medium I guess, how much of the medium term picture for service business is driven by top line growth? And when could we see that?

Speaker 2

Because we're not there yet. And that seems like a real opportunity for Centrica. So to help us understand that would be

Operator

Perfect. So Adi, let me take number one and number three, and then Russell is, by far, the best qualified in the room to take number two. So very simple number one, it's just confidence. We're more confident in the future. That's why we're more able to give shareholders more back.

Operator

So very simple answer. Number three, on services, look, we're not going to grow this business by cost cutting. It's got the top line growth. We have 2,800,000, two point nine million customers, 29,000,000 homes in The UK. There's an awful lot more to go for, and I think integrated offerings for those customers will be very helpful.

Operator

But I think also driving more value from what we do at the moment, if possible. So I think you could see revenue growth from the existing customer base. But we've got customers with 7,500,000 customers in our business. We've got 2,800,000, two point nine million in services. At minimum, why do we not have 7,500,000 customers in services?

Operator

I don't care whether they're contract customers or whether they're on demand. I just care that they're happy customers and they come back year after year after year. There's also different products that we can be looking to offer. So that's what I mean about we've got to get better at building new commercial propositions, taking them to market quickly, testing what works, listening to customers, and then those that work, do more of it, those that don't work, tweak them or stop doing them. But definitely, top line growth is a priority.

Operator

And in some ways, operational improvements, it feels when you're doing them, it feels very, very difficult. When you vent on your mind to growth, you understand that growth is actually the difficult part. So this will not be easy, but I think we've got brilliant businesses. And I think also confidence is the businesses need to be more confident in just how good they are, and that then leads you to better customer propositions. But with that, I think it's a brilliant question.

Operator

I would say at Tive, now as CFO, to get their credit metrics improved, that's quite unsuccessful. Russell has just completed the trial evaluation months early. I was late when I did it, so I'm hoping that we've got an upgrade in the CFO, so maybe we'll see some improvement in credit metrics in the next month or two, yes? Thanks, Chris.

Speaker 1

That's a good question. And I think there's a number of things that, of course, drive the ratings. I can't really point to single one, but the good thing is for Centrica, most of the things that drive the rating are pointing in the right direction. So if you're looking at the credit strength of a company, sustainable earnings is an important one. If you go back, Centrica's earnings have been a bit more volatile, and they're now more ratable and dependable, that should be helpful.

Speaker 1

The pension deficit helps. Bringing rateable stable cash flows into the business really helps, because if you remember, we've had in the past a larger infrastructure portfolio. That portfolio was a natural diversification to the trading and the retail businesses. That's declined by building the new investments like the map we're bringing to the portfolio. That's really credit positive.

Speaker 1

And at the moment, our S and P rating metrics is 50% FFO to net debt. That's if you do the math, that's the same as one times net debt to EBITDA. And that's why on the charts I showed you today, our guidance for the end of twenty twenty eight shows a debt capacity of $1,600,000,000 1 times the $1,600,000,000 EBITDA. But if we could move down a trajectory of having lower headline metrics, it would just give us more flexibility either to invest more or for more shareholder returns.

Operator

We'll go here. And we'll go and come to you, Dom, and then we'll go to Mark.

Speaker 3

Ahmed from Jefferies. A few questions from my side. Maybe just I'll start with capital allocation. I saw some comments earlier, presumably media comments around Seizewell C and RUF. And I thought we could sort of get your thoughts on where those two processes are.

Speaker 3

And particularly on RUF, is the scope of the discussions that you may be having with the government to try and get it to a profitable number or with the same size? Or is this a broader discussion and a broader scope of the asset? The other question I have is on gas speakers. It seems to be sort of very focused right now on Ireland and your core markets. I'm just wondering if there is a broader opportunity in new markets that you see and are interested in?

Speaker 3

And then finally, just a sort of final one on gas prices. Is there something you can sort of say about the gas price sensitivity for the earnings both for 2025 and more sort of longer term given that remains a sort of a very volatile market in terms of pricing? Thank you.

Operator

Thanks so much. Let me take one and two and then Russell can talk through the gas price sensitivity. So the I can't really tell you the state of the conversations on Sines will see in rough. Sines will see, I think the Chancellor I think there's a budget in the autumn statement. I lose track of what these things are, but the Chancellor said, I allocated £2,700,000,000 to the project.

Operator

And then so there's an expectation to make a decision with a comprehensive spending review, which I think is sensible because it's a lot of money to commit to that. That's sometime in the first half of the year, so I would expect if the government wants to make a decision and it's got to have its investors or private won't, we would have something in the first half of the year. But things happen, and so I wouldn't commit to that. If a rough look, the conversation is about unlocking £2,000,000,000 of investment, we stand ready to do it, we've got the money in the bank, we're good to go. And it's about increasing the capacity of rough, making it more flexible, so the cycle times faster.

Operator

And then understanding, do we want to design it just to store natural gas or do we want to design it to store hydrogen? The reservoir, you don't do anything with that. It's the metallurgy in the wells and in the platform, the pipeline and the onshore terminal. So you could have some phase development whereby you increase the capacity, you have it hydrogen ready, but you're doing methane. And then if you go through the hydrogen, you then build a brand new terminal.

Operator

Now we bought land around existing terminals. Optionality, we value massively. So we have the option to do all of this. We have enough room to build a brand new terminal beside the existing terminal, which is what you would need for hydrogen. So we've got we're in those conversations just now.

Operator

It could and again, mean that you have a short term extension. Yes, it's possible. But what we're really looking to drive is how do you secure the future of this amazing asset and the people that work there in The Humber for the next forty years. It's been there for over forty years, supporting The U. K.

Operator

We'd like it to be there for another forty years. But the conversations are ongoing, just now that they're quite senior level in government. We're obsessed with energy, and we're obsessed with our energy stuff. The government have got a whole bunch of other things, so sometimes it really depends what else the government have got on as well, but we will continue to push. And as irritating to the government as I am to my colleagues in terms of trying to get things done, so we'll keep pushing at them.

Operator

Look, gas peakers in Ireland, we like Ireland. We know the market well. Dave is sitting in the front row. He's responsible for the overall power business. That's not why our investment is going to Ireland.

Operator

It's just a really good market. And if there's other areas that we can invest in, we've got some battery projects in Sweden that we've been looking at. We just bought a battery in Belgium. And the reason we bought the battery in Belgium is we are the biggest optimizer of batteries in Belgium. We do about 30% or 40% of Belgium batteries, including lots of our home batteries.

Operator

So if there's other opportunities elsewhere, absolutely. But what we're not going to do is to go and try and add another four, five, six, seven, eight markets with Joe Shedden, our Chief People Officer sitting here, and that would expand massively the work that we'd have to do there in terms of how do you support all these different operations. So where we see value, we will make a targeted decision to enter the country. Where we are just now, Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, The U. K, you've seen a bit of an expansion in The U.

Operator

S. We did a bit of trading in The U. S. Now. The deals that we've done with Kotera and under the hedge, the LNG portfolio are quite innovative.

Operator

You might see us doing a little bit more there. So we're not against going to other places, but we don't have a plan that says we need to be in 10 or 15 countries. The markets we're in just now, we like. But Ireland is out we're delighted to know we'll go to be able at the end of this decade to do 20% of Ireland's electricity. And we're happy to do more if the returns are in the right place.

Operator

And then also gas price sensitivity? Yes. Let me cover that.

Speaker 1

I'll just walk through the various different businesses that we have here in Centrica, because I think what you'll see is that the confidence and the message we're giving around sort of a sustainable solid earnings also translates into how we're managing gas prices and other exposures. So if you think about gas production, so the Spirit business we have, we hedge that two to three years in advance in a rolling basis. You can see that in Slide 37 in the pack. So we're not exposed really to short term fluctuations there. We do have some unhedged proportion of that, which is benefiting at the moment from the slightly higher prices, but no material exposure there.

Speaker 1

On gas price trading and optimization, which Kasim is here, his team does, of course, that's a business where you walk in every day and effectively you're hedged and you're trying to take advantage of dislocations in markets, you're not taking pure gas price exposure. The LNG business we've just discussed is one which is basically locked in from gas price exposure for the next couple of years. We've just outlined that. We do see at the moment, it's more challenging to take advantage of the gas markets and particularly things like storage, not just in The UK, across Europe. So that's something that we're working through.

Speaker 1

And then finally, in the downstream, while we are exposed to the gas price dynamics, most of that is passed through to our customers in terms of the price cap, for example, which we're all hedged from as well. So actually, while we are an energy company with a lot of gas, as you look through the portfolio, most of that's pretty well hedged.

Operator

With Dominic, go to Mark. I'll come to Harry over to Jamie.

Speaker 4

Hi there. Yes, it's Dominic Ash from Barclays. So probably three questions from me. Apologies. Look, firstly, a very quick one.

Speaker 4

Net debt to EBITDA, I guess, you're still going for one times as your sort of credit thing. But have I got so long that you changed your way EBITDA has now been calculated? I think it's higher now than it was sort of previous, if

Operator

you could just give us an indication on that. Second one,

Speaker 4

I think it's quite noticeable from your presentation, I thought it was quite interesting, is that I didn't see anything on the consumer. And what I mean by that is the sort of cost of living, the potential for rising costs of power and the potential impact on that. And Chris, I kind of agree with you that there could be quite big policy changes if you push too hard in anything in life. So the two questions come out of this. Firstly, how are you seeing your bad debts rising and the impact of that on the price cap mechanism?

Speaker 4

But more importantly, when you're sitting in front of Ed Miliband and you're talking about CP30 and RIMA, does your vertical integrated model give you a little bit of a conflict of interest? Or are you batting for the consumer, in particularly with zonal power pricing and the way that, say, Octopus is out there saying it's a great deal for consumers? I don't know what your actual position will be on that based on your vertical model.

Operator

Okay. Thanks. Let me take the other two and then Russell, the net debt to EBITDA. So I think bad debts were down in the year, it was £380,000,000 or something. But we effectively are social tariff in The UK.

Operator

So customers that can't pay, the cost of that spread over customers that can't pay. We think that there we've called for social tariff. We think that should be improved. We think we shouldn't go through the process of billing customers who can't pay, giving them the they go through the turmoil of not being able to pay the stress, and then it gets paid by others anyway. So we think there should be a social tariff that will require government involvement, data sharing, etcetera.

Operator

And those that can't pay, get billed less than those of us that can't pay. The price goes up for those of us that can't pay. You just strip out the stress. What that then allows you to do is those that choose not to pay, you identify them more easily. At the moment, you can't really identify them.

Operator

So we think there's an improvement needed there. If power prices continue to go up, if gas prices continue to go up, then you would expect bad debt to be more an issue. What we find is the vast majority of our customers want to pay, and we feature very prominently in those that they prioritize paying. And so our customers, they're truly awesome. They are absolutely brilliant.

Operator

So they try out to pay us. What we want is a solution that those who can't pay, we take the turmoil away. In terms of the discussions with Ed, I don't think we're conflicted at all. I think that everything that we do is from the point of view what's good for the consumer. So if you take our view on the zonal pricing, we are dead set against it.

Operator

Now there are some companies that are dead set against it because they think that it's going to choke off investments. So I think SSE have been quite public, I think Scottish Power have been public.

Speaker 5

They have

Operator

invested tens of billions of pounds this decade. I think we do well to listen to them, and they've invested far more than us. Our position is very different, though it's not to do with assets. Our position is that the energy market of the future requires more engaged consumers. And the wholesale market, as you know, settles every 30 minutes.

Operator

And probably as we go forward, as we do more demand side response, the retail market will maybe the price will change maybe every 30 minutes. If you do that with a single price, then you have a more engaged consumer base. If you say the electricity price is 10p just now, the next thirty minutes is going to be 11p. I'm an energy geek, but I think, could that be something that you get some nationwide traction on people talking about the energy price? Maybe not, maybe it's just for people like me.

Operator

But if you overlay 12 local distribution zones and you overlay standing charges, which are different as well because they're different transition charges, and then you overlay locational pricing, you could easily see that you've got 100 to 200 to 300 to thousands of prices for the electricity changing. So you get thousands of prices or hundreds of prices even that are changing every half an hour. How do you engage anybody? And so I think that where we come from is with the consumer. I think that those that are for zonal pricing, I think if you're sitting in an economics lecture in a university or a tutorial, it makes perfect sense.

Operator

Let's make costs cheaper with electricity generated and everybody is going to move there. I completely ignores friction costs. It's everybody going to move I'm from Scotland, I'm from the Central Belt Of Scotland, I spent quite a bit of time in the island, Absolutely beautiful. I'm not sure everyone is going to be at the windiest part of The U. K.

Operator

I'm not sure everyone is going to move there. But if they do, who's going to build the roads, who's going to build the houses, who's going to build the infrastructure? This stuff will take years and years and years to happen. So I think zonal pricing has economic merit in an abstract academic sense. When you overlay real life, which is what we do and think about what actually is good for our customers, it doesn't make sense.

Operator

So we're not I'm conflicted at all. We don't have billions of pounds that we're looking to put into specific electricity production projects in The U. K, which might be impacted by zonal pricing. So our objection to it is not driven by the same as some of these other It's all down to the consumer. So that's why we want social tariff, we want no standing charge at all, single price for gas, single price for electricity, and then let's see if we can get everyone to geek out about energy in the way that we all do.

Speaker 1

Yes, net debt to EBITDA, so no change on the trajectory. And if you do the calculations, as I said, one times net debt to EBITDA is basically the S and P 50% effort to net debt. On the EBITDA, previously, we were reporting the cash flow representation of EBITDA, and we're trying to move generally more towards EBITDA as a metric because we've had feedback from many of you and from our investors that it's something to be used. And of course, using EBITDA from a cash flow perspective, it doesn't capture income from associates. We've just captured in the new representation the earnings we get from our nuclear business.

Speaker 1

So we've got comprehensive views. So that's used for the current reporting as well as the trajectory we've given you for 2028.

Speaker 6

Mark? It's Mark Freshney from UBS. Two questions. Firstly, on the new coming back to size WellC, it's interesting. My sense from the presentation is that that as an option is being deemphasized.

Speaker 6

And you're talking about many more other things. Would you say in recent months your expectation of putting equity into Saiz Well C has either gone down or gone up? And secondly, observation, first of all, I mean, the Clean Power Plan through to 02/1930 is uncosted, right? It doesn't look into the near term impact on consumers, which I think we're all underestimating. But further to that, you've got the quasi tariff deficit, which is 4,000,000,000 of debt that's no repayment plan is in place.

Speaker 6

And Ofgem are looking closely at a debt relief scheme. To the extent that there's any P and L or cash flow benefit for yourselves, would you consider giving that to consumers and increasing support?

Operator

So we're very interested in investment size, we'll see, but it's all dependent upon the returns. There's some things there. Russell's team are leading the work on that along with Dave. It kind of acts as wanes, I think depends like the periods of intense activity, the periods of it quite I think it's quite busy at the moment, so we're very interested. But if it doesn't make sense for us, then we'll get plenty of others.

Operator

So our job is to make sure that we're not so hung up on one thing that we have to do no matter what. So I'd like to decide, we'll see, I think it's the right thing for the country. If the returns are not there, I'm very happy for other people to do it. That's totally fine. On the Clean Power Act, the debt relief scheme, we'd always think about our customers.

Operator

So if there is something and we've spoken to government about this, the new Energy Minister of Responsible for Consumers, Mieta Thandala, has been very engaged on this in a very constructive way. I met with her, Catherine's met with her quite a few times. And we've indicated a willingness to be involved in some kind of debt relief scheme, but the request that we've got is we don't just look and say there's £4,000,000,000 of bad debt or whatever the number is. Can we do something that fixes that 4,000,000,000? What we see is, can we fix the problem?

Operator

That's why we're such strong proponents of a social tariff. A social tariff will fix this problem. So yes, why not? Because I'd love to have the point. I think if anyone's ever been in a situation or the family members or friends are in a situation where they have an un repayable debt hanging on, it's horrible, horrible for their mental health, and it pains me that we've got customers that are like that.

Operator

And as I say, we go through this very inefficient process. I'll send you a bill, you can't pay, you get upset, we have to try and collect the debt, then it just gets socialized. Let's skip all that nonsense out and let's just not bill the people the same amount if they can't pay, but that requires a partnership with government and it requires our willingness. I think it can be self funding, but it means those of us that can't pay, pay more, and we pay more explicitly, and those that can't pay, pay less. And those that choose not to pay, we go after them relentlessly, because you cannot be a freeloader.

Operator

At the moment, the problem is we cannot differentiate between the freeloaders and those that can't be. But with government's help, we'll be able to. So we'd be very happy to participate, but we want at least again, nothing that we do, we want a long term sustainable solution.

Speaker 7

Harry Wybitt from Exane. So two from me, please. So the first one is for Russell, and I apologize because I'm going to lead the witness here. But I just want to try and get your sense for where we end up in terms of dividends with this new billion EBITDA guidance. So it's about 300,000,000.0 higher than current consensus, the 1,600,000,000.0.

Speaker 7

And if we say dropped half of that down to net income and put it on the new share count post the buyback, on my maths, you'd be close to about 20p of EPS. And then on your new explicit twenty twenty eight two times dividend cover, you'd be looking at close to 10p of DPS. So the dividend doubling sort of put you on a 7%, six point five %, seven % yield. Is there anything in that short bit of mathematics that you would disagree with?

Speaker 1

So that was a very good piece of mathematics, which I'm not going to respond to. So we've given you very clear EBITDA guidance. You can do your calculations and sure can. I'm sure you can do calculations and other things. We're not giving profit guidance beyond that.

Speaker 7

Okay, fair enough. All right. I hope it was worth a try. Right, second, I just want to dig a bit deeper into this reserve, right? And particularly why you decided to say you had billion of debt capacity and then a billion reserve rather than just saying I've got billion of debt capacity.

Speaker 7

So what return generating things would you use the reserve for? So you sort of alluded to if we got a great opportunity, I think, in what you mentioned earlier. So should I think this is just a billion for rainy day funds, if LNG spreads collapsed and power prices fell massively? Or is this more something you'd be willing to spend on an amazing M and A deal or if you did size LC and rough just to get us and how much of that is really a risk buffer versus an opportunity fund or pot?

Speaker 1

I suppose it could be all of those things. But if you take out a loan, you don't then spend all the money and have no ability to pay it back. You've got to have some sort of buffer for the fact that swings will move around in your company or, and that's what we've got today. Anybody that's running with a credit rating will have some degree of flexibility built into the way that they manage their company and so do we. And I would hope that everybody would be happy that we've got that buffer because in days gone by when Centrica did not have such a strong balance sheet, that was problematic and we had to take action that we didn't really in the long term want to do.

Speaker 1

So it could be that we have some downsides unexpected and that means that because we're not up to the red line of the credit rating, we've got a buffer for that. It could be there's an M and A opportunity. It could be that markets move in different directions. It just gives you flexibility and strength by having that there. So that rather than saying we've got 0.6 of debt capacity, I just wanted to be transparent as we've been pretty transparent today about how we look at the balance sheet overall.

Operator

Thank you. Jenny?

Speaker 8

Thanks very much. Harry has already asked my EPS question, so I won't try again. So I've just got one. Looking at your retail division, obviously, your guidance operating profit long term is 150 to $2.50. You've come above that.

Speaker 8

You've got the ongoing IT replacement program that take out further, call it, 70,000,000 a year on run rate. So is there any reason why at least for '25, you won't be seeing a number meaningfully higher than the top end of the range? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Yes. So I mean, I think the thing to bear in mind about the residential business is that every year you've got more than £10,000,000,000 worth of revenue and about more than billion worth of cost. And to some extent, you're trying to get them to land in the same period. And if you go back to 2023, of course, you had a much higher number when some of the costs and revenues didn't all fall in the same period. 2024 was a bit more normal in that respect.

Speaker 1

The volatility was less. There were a few things that went in our favor. And overall, what a lot of that was to do was really efficient commodity cost optimization as we manage the book. As we look into 2025, there's a few dynamics we need to sort of watch out for. We see a little bit more switching in the market, a bit more competition that might drive a little bit more investment to retain customers.

Speaker 1

So that might be driving margins down perhaps a little bit. There's ongoing regulatory consultation, which might go in other direction. But overall, if I stand back and look at British Gas Energy for 2025, I'm thinking the $150,000,000 to $250,000,000 is still a good

Operator

aiming point for that one. Excellent. We'll hear and then we'll come over here. And then we've got a question on the phone from Bartek.

Speaker 9

Thank you. Pavan from JPMorgan. I have two questions, please. Firstly, looking at Spirit and the 2028 projections, how should we think about the split of the 200,000,000 ish being between nuclear and Spirit, if you can give any indication? And I guess thinking about the Spirit existing assets based on either the current forward curves or your internal projection of gas prices, how long do you see this field being in operation today?

Speaker 9

That's my first question. And then my second question is on the $2,000,000,000 of uncommitted CapEx. I mean, I know we're talking about potentially some of Seiswold's C or rough depending on the frameworks being appropriate from the government or anyone else. Can you give a bit more steer on what other things are you looking at? Has that changed since you first started announcing this CapEx program in 2023, renewables, batteries, flex gen, I mean any color on what you're looking at or if all options are on the table would be interested in that, please?

Operator

Sure. Let me take the second question and then Russell can talk about the first. I think the portfolio of opportunities that we're looking at is simultaneously stable and changing, I know it sounds

Speaker 3

a bit

Operator

daft. So if you take the Gap Speakers Mile and we've got seven sites there. We're building them in Atholl and Dublin, And we decided to bid in for a different technology into different capacity market auction for our site in Galway, and we were successful. So would we have been saying last year we're going to be committing X hundred million euros to this thing? We absolutely wouldn't.

Operator

Would we have said we'd be in margin money for potential flexible generation in Ireland? We absolutely would. And so we continue to refresh the portfolio. We're quite excited about our partnership with Highview Power. So we own 10% of that company, and it's got some quite interesting technology.

Operator

We're looking at a project in Carrington at the moment. We're talking that's in Manchester. We're talking about another project that we won that's we're looking at at Hunterston, the old site of our own nuclear power station. Now if this technology can be proven at scale, this time next year, we might be looking at three or four projects with Highview Power. So it does evolve, but it's all about building options, but it's about being focused.

Operator

Solar, we deprioritized because you just we can't make the returns. Now we can build a solar farm, we got an offtaker that gives us a return of, I don't know, 8%, nine %, then why not? Because we know we can do it, but we're not really pursuing that at the moment. If you look at batteries, one or two hour batteries, they look a bit over bid just now, de prioritizing them, but three or four hour batteries, they look quite good. So when we look at that, we say, okay, do we want to get in there?

Operator

If we want to get in there, we have to understand why one or two hour batteries are kind of looking a bit sicker. Is it because everybody looks, then they go in, and then the returns go down. Well, if that's the case, we've got to make sure that Dave can build three and four hour batteries very quickly, because otherwise, we'll go into market and we'll be depressed. So it's quite dynamic action. What we want to do is keep dynamism in the portfolio.

Operator

You then go to the other end of the spectrum for the larger regulated assets. That is far less dynamic, but you're also taking probably a bit less risk. On Zionsville, I don't think we've spoken about the size of state that we're looking at, but remember that that's an asset that is probably the vast majority of spend is going to be in the next decade rather than in this decade. And so it's out with the 2028 the twenty four to twenty eight capital investment plan. And even if we go Martin Scargill here, who runs the business, because the rough asset, even if we could go in tomorrow and rough some of the investment would fall out with the time frame that we've got.

Operator

The other thing we also look at is potential partnerships. So we own 100% a rough just now, and I would like us to keep 100% until we get to the point of sanction. After sanction, it might be an asset whereby we see, you know what we can bring in some third party capital, whether it's debt financing through Russell's team or whether it's an equity partner. And it's all about value. The maximum value point of that asset will be the point of sanction.

Operator

And we might decide if we've got other opportunities that we want to realize some capital there and do something elsewhere. There's everything's about optionality. That's why I'm dead set against us putting hundreds of millions, if not billions of pounds into assets to take several years to build that don't have a return on the construction phase and leave you with non productive CapEx, but your optionality disappears. So that's how we think of the portfolio. And on Spirit, I'm also going to tease I'll just remind you that Spirit is not just the Morecam field, you've also got the Cygnus field and you've got the Greater Markham area as well as all the decommissioning.

Operator

But also when do we think Spirit is going to go into?

Speaker 1

Yes. So I mean, I think first of all, I'm not going to split that $200,000,000 into the two parts, but I can give you the dynamics behind both of them. The EBITDA will decline materially over the coming years, and not just because of the reduction in volumes you see from those assets, but just because prices at the moment have in the past have been made those numbers buoyant. Just to put that in context, Spirit's EBITDA for 2024 was $7.00 $7,000,000 But of course, that's taxed at 78%. So that should drop through to cash flow is, of course, a lot lower.

Speaker 1

By the time you get to 2028, I think most of the main fields will still be in operation. Decade when you might begin to see some of that coming to end of life. And of course, our great opportunity is to try and then transfer that facility into carbon capture. So trying to sync those two things together is really important. Cygnus is performing really well, and the GMA is a relatively small field on the scale of things.

Speaker 1

The other component of the 200 guidance is, of course, nuclear. And with inside nuclear in December, we're really happy to have the life extensions on the AGRs two years later for two of them, one for the other. We're hopeful as a ZDF that we could see continued extensions going forward. I haven't banked any of

Operator

that into these projections. Thanks. We'll go over here and then we'll come back to in fact, go ahead and then AG. Let's go to Bartek and then come back to you.

Speaker 4

Charles Swaby, HSBC. I have two questions. First one on Centrica Energy. I was wondering if you could just comment on the performance in the second half of the year. It was obviously quite a bit below the first half.

Speaker 4

What were the moving parts? And is there any read across for '25? And then the second one is on nuclear again. There was some press speculation last year about Centrica and potentially getting involved in Hinckley. I was wondering if you could comment on that.

Speaker 4

And could you see a situation where you take a stake in both Hinckley and Syswell in theory?

Operator

Yes. So Russell, I'm going to put you through the performance of Centrica Energy. One of the great things about having a lot of money in the bank is you suddenly become very attractive to lots of people that have got things to sell. So I wouldn't be drawn on specific things, but our investments are focused. So we're always saying, okay, is this something that we like?

Operator

Is this something we're good at? Does it add value to the business? Is it something that's good for customers? What I would say is we look a lot more than we invest in. So we passed on huge amount of investments last year because either they weren't strategically aligned with the return of the work, right, or we just didn't think that we could add value to them.

Operator

So investors could invest in different ways. So I wouldn't be I wouldn't be drawn on that.

Speaker 1

Centrica Energy, so February in the first half of the year, $75,000,000 in the second half of the year. That is definitely a business you have to stand back and look at it through multi years. There's three components to Centric Energy as you learned in the teach in December, the LNG business, the gas and power trading business and the retail business, and they all have slightly different dynamics. It just happened in the second half of last year. The a few of them were not performing as well as they have.

Speaker 1

But if you look into twenty twenty five, we're very confident we'll be in the guidance range there. If I was to pick one area that was softer in the second half of last year, that would be gas

Speaker 5

and power trading. And I think if

Speaker 1

you look in the market in general, gas and power power traders are all reporting a relatively softer performance there. Market dynamics, volatilities as well as the shape of the curves has made it a little bit more difficult to capture value. But I think Kasim is telling me a relatively strong start to 2025. So let's see

Operator

how we get on there. Excellent. Thank you. If we go to the line, we'll take Bartek's question and we'll come back to

Speaker 8

Mr. Bassak, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Three items to discuss here. I can hear you now echo. So first of all, if we can go back to rough storage.

Speaker 5

I just wonder for how long will you be able to tolerate a potential EBIT loss you are guiding for? And consequently, we think about the scenario where there is no agreement with the government related to hydrogen related to reregulation of the assets. What could happen to RASK? And how much capital or how much cash can you take out of the assets, assuming a scenario you are closing this? Second would be on LNG trading.

Speaker 5

You provided with a chart of how much of the volumes that have hatched for the next years. Just if you can give us a rough indication whether the margins you are expecting or the properties you are expecting in 'twenty five, 'twenty six on LNG are higher than you managed to earn in 'twenty four? And the last one is like sort of more like conceptual subject to discussion. Thinking about AI and thinking about the trading division, because one of my ideas is that AI could potentially decrease the barriers of entry to trading into the power and energy markets. Just thinking, I know you're running lots of algorithms and lots of experienced people, but what if AI indeed is able to somehow decrease barriers of entry to trading business?

Speaker 5

Do you think this is a realistic scenario? And do you think consequently this could impact your trading division and impact the way how you are thinking in the trading division? Thank you very much.

Operator

Yes, perfect. Thanks very much. Look, on all things, so how long will we tolerate the losses in rough? Not indefinitely is what I would say. I can't tell you how the market is going to evolve.

Operator

So rough is emptying as we speak. As it currently stands, we wouldn't be refilling it, but if the market changes then we could refill it. But we don't have infinite patience, but we also made a lot of money on this asset in 2022 and 2023. And it is right that we reinvest some of that money to see whether there's a long term option, but we don't have infinite patience. I'm not known for my patience, and Russell is not known for funding losses, so it won't take long.

Operator

LNG trading, we won't give guidance there. What we would say is when we hedge the volumes, we do still retain physical optionality. So if we were to tell you just now what we've hedged them at, then there's still potentially upside there. So we wouldn't give any guidance. And then I think it's a great question on AI and trade, and I think we did about 12,000,000 automated trades last year, so we've been using AI in our trading business for a few years.

Operator

There is a tremendous team primarily in Denmark and all board, and it was led by Jesper Jung, who's now doing some of the short term power and gas trading. And we do a lot of trade. What we don't do is to teach the computer to analyze it, to trade. What we do is we set up our trading strategies, and we then execute a lot of very, very, very small trades that you just couldn't possibly do if it was a human being executing them. And these are trades where you might make €100 But If you multiply that €100 that you make a trade by 10,000,000, 20 million, 30 million trades, then you can see that it could actually be pretty good.

Operator

So we do deploy that, but what we probably won't get to is something whereby somebody likes a big program, and that's our trading floor. And that would feel very, very nerve wracking to be involved in that. But I think we're well ahead of the curve in terms of AI deployment and trading. So EJ?

Speaker 2

Thanks. It was a bit of a follow-up actually to Bartek's question. So if you look at that LNG, I'm trying to understand how much of a derisking event this LNG portfolio chart presents. And I'm thinking, well, Centrica Energy's two fifty million to $350,000,000 of profit is a guidance. I'm just wondering, maybe qualitatively, within that, there would have been an element that would have been for LNG threats, right?

Speaker 2

Have you secured so that now you have line of sight to the end of the decade that element profitability so that that's less of a concern? Or is you're just too many moving parts and you're not willing to kind of give us a stay. It's just it would be nice just to understand that what you'd be removed, what you haven't on something that's quite a sizable amount of your profits.

Operator

So the key thing I mean, Russell will say what he's comfortable in saying, but we're happy that we've locked in positive spreads on the overall LNG portfolio. The reason I'm smiling is I remember when I was doing Russell's job, we were all sitting here going, you could lose $300,000,000 on the Schimmier contract. Oh my God, how do we gap against that? And now we're saying we've hedged this, and it's all positive spreads and there's upside. But the big price in LNG that we see over the next two to three years, it's bizarre.

Operator

So you enter into a fifteen or a twenty year contract, And when you enter into the contract, the assumption is that what's happening today is going to happen in perpetuity for the market, and we just have to look back last year and see how it's very different. And so one of the reasons that we hedged this was so that we are ready and able to go in and add new long term LNG to portfolio, because if the prices of the press, we'll go ahead and add it, and I think we'll be very happy that we've added that as long as it's the right delivery schedule, the right location, the right partner. So that's a longer term price. But I mean, I don't think we ever said, how do we split gas and powertrain, how do we split WIDO? Because sometimes you've got positive and negative correlations in there.

Operator

So sometimes one bit will do a bit worse, one bit will do a bit better. It's why the portfolio is nicely balanced, but I'll let Russell tell you that he's not going to give you guidance, but nice experience is very generous.

Speaker 1

I mean, we didn't give guidance before, and we're not giving guidance now. So it's a dynamic portfolio.

Operator

The other reason for that is it's commercially confidential. So as we said today, we're delighted to have Petrobras added as a customer for a number of reasons. Brazil is a great country, Petrobras is a great counterpart. But you see in the RNS, they see this as crucial to their decarbonization. So if you think about our strategy, we've just entered into a deal that's going to help Brazil decarbonize.

Operator

And as you know, Brazil has got a huge amount of hydro power. And so what we're helping them is to balance and then we're going to learn a bit more about how do you balance the huge amount of hydro. The UK is talking about having more pumped storage. So that will be more information that we get, which is what does the country do when it's got lots of hydro power, okay, we can then work that into our overall model in terms of how will The U. K.

Operator

Market evolve if these new pumped storage facilities come in. It's all about having knowledge, it's all about applying it across the piece. So whatever target we've got, we aim to beat. Okay, thanks. Are there any more questions in the room?

Operator

If not, Fraser, I don't know if there are any questions online. If not, then we're done. I'd just say thank you very much for coming. It's a wonderful place. I know the acoustics are not the best here, but it is quite a spectacular room.

Operator

And thanks to all of your comments, thanks to these fantastic colleagues who have driven such an improvement in this business. It's unrecognizable from where it was several years ago. And my hope is as we go through the next five years, and when we're sitting in 02/1930, we'll be saying, God, what was that business? That business 2025, we don't actually recognize it because it will be far, far better. And but we look forward to seeing you either on the roadshows, if we're out and about get any detailed questions, follow-up with investor relations.

Operator

You've got executives here. We've all been told not to answer any of your questions, but you can try. And if not, we look forward to seeing you in July for the results. So thank you very much.

Remove Ads
Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
Centrica H2 2024
00:00 / 00:00
Remove Ads