Atlantica Sustainable Infrastructure plc (NASDAQ:AY) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Santiago Seage: I think two comments I would make. One, I believe that for a rational company with a balance sheet, there are more opportunities today than two years ago. Two years ago, two guys in a rented car, sorry for the expression, were able to raise money and deploy capital at very low returns. Today, probably those two guys in a rented car cannot do that. And that means that the market is becoming more rational from that point of view. So we feel more comfortable in this environment. And we do believe that we have opportunities where we can deploy capital at what we consider are reasonable returns.

Mark Jarvi: Makes sense. Last question for me, just in terms of what you think equity deployment will be this year. I think the last disclosure we saw was $165 million to $185 million. Is that still roughly where you’re tracking or have you raised that number since the last update?

Francisco Martinez-Davis: Mark, we’re tracking towards that number right now. That’s our estimate that we gave at the beginning of the year. So that’s the latest estimate that we have, Mark.

Mark Jarvi: Perfect, thank you. Thanks for the time today.

Santiago Seage: Thank you Mark.

Operator: Thank you. The next question today comes from the line of Julien Dumoulin-Smith from Bank of America. Please go ahead, Julien. Your line is now open.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Hey, good afternoon or good morning team. Thanks for the time, appreciate it. Look, I wanted to check in real quickly, just as you think about pipeline development, you guys provided the slide to get once more, hasn’t really changed since the start of the year. How are you thinking about just pursuing organic development, heard your comments earlier but in light of the strategic review and given the comments for what’s ready to build in 2023 and 2024 seems fairly modest as a total contributor to your annual goals here on contribution to organic growth but would love to hear how that fits into and is any reflection on your intent to pursue strategic alternatives in lieu of organic opportunities?

Santiago Seage: So forgetting a little bit about the strategic review, which is ongoing. As I mentioned before, our strategy, as I mentioned, is to have a very significant part of our investments coming from the pipeline. We believe that with the pipeline that you have in front of you, we are going to be able to do that. Obviously, as you can see there, there’s a significant part of the pipeline around the storage there, and when you translate that to dollars, you end up with higher numbers. And over the next quarters, we expect, as I mentioned, irrespective of the strategic review, we expect to continue growing our pipeline so that it can become a very significant part of our investments every year. Complemented with M&A whenever we find opportunities that create value and that are accretive which, as I mentioned before, we believe now it’s much more probable than a year or year and half ago, and that’s why our strategy would be let’s build what we are developing and let’s complement that with some M&A whenever the numbers work.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Got it. Your point is, don’t read into any kind of pipeline statements about your intent to pivot towards strategic alternatives, right, regardless of the fact that the pipeline has sustainable market?

Santiago Seage: Yes. Agreed.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Okay. And there’s no dedicated time line for when that — when we could see kind of a return to the pipeline expansion or when we could see kind of resolution on the strategic process, right, I know you’ve left is really generic?

Santiago Seage: No. As you know, the strategic review is being led by the Board, and we think that the Board should be able to lead that process without putting a deadline somewhere because obviously, we want to do things properly.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Alright, fair enough. I will leave it there, thank you guys.

Santiago Seage: Thank you Julien.