Companhia Energética de Minas Gerais (NYSE:CIG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

This is a robust program. So in 2025, we expect that our leverage is at 2.5 times. Now turning into Cemig D results. In this quarter, I already have 100% of the adjustments for the tariff review. So analyzing the recurring EBITDA, we went up almost 7% with now — no effect. That was not recurring here. All the effects here were related to 2022, not 2023, and our profit was up 4.4%. Now, talking about Cemig D, as Leonardo mentioned in the beginning, this market grew 1%. Number of analysts expected higher growth because of heat wave. But we do take a hard hit with distributed generation. 17% of my total captive market today migrated to distributed generation. They are no longer in our base. So when we look at these significant figures, Cemig D is the concession that has the hardest time with distributed generation in the country and this 1% growth is important because it shows that the investment program is able to cater the pent up demands and also new industries that are coming to Minas Gerais and allowing the growth of our concession.

If we look at transported energy here that grew 4.2%. More information on distributed generation, so that you can have a clear snapshot. The impact in our concession here. On the one side we have Cemig D market and the other side the market that migrated to the distributed generation. And as I mentioned, you can see that even with the growing market of the distributed generation, Cemig D was able to grow in the accumulated figure 1.6%. We still have 2 gig and half of loads and — to be connected. These are future loads that depend on investments. That’s why one of the most important programs we announced is the program Energia (ph) Mise energy plus for substations. We have already finished two substations and we have 15 more substations to be concluded by 2023.

For distributed generation, as we mentioned, when we compare September of ’23 with September 2022, the market that migrated to distributed generation grew 57%. And here on the bottom, you see the number of orders that we had before the law change, the Law 14,300, the number of budgets of connections and you can see that we did meet in 2022, 102,000 orders for Micro GD. As also mentioned, we are within all the regulatory limits for distributions and losses is one of the important limits. When we look at the limit, it is at 11 and our performance is 10.57. This is a limit that was reached in December of 2021. This is a successful trajectory, thanks to a number of good initiatives that we continue repeating. And I highlight here the inspections, the exchange of old and obsolete meters, the replacement of the obsolete meters by smart ones, and also the regularization for low income communities.

Now, in terms of our delinquency, the digital channels for collection are growing. We have 63% of our collection coming from these digital channels. And we highlight here the fixed or instant payment system which is close to 18% of collection. That’s important because collection via digital channels has a much lower cost than what we had before, when most payments would have to be made in specific paying places. And what we call ARFA, the receivables collection index is very close to 100% and the year to date in the third quarter we reached 100.53%. Now about operating efficiency of what we have within the tariff curve is — Cemig distribution. As already mentioned, we are within our OpEx limit. Our performance is 4.7% lower than the regulatory level and the EBITDA of BRL163 million is 7.6% above the regulatory level, showing this trajectory of change that happened in Cemig’s distribution where we in the past few years, were able to fall into the right limits for losses, OpEx and EBITDA, the regulatory levels.

Now for Cemig GT, we started the migration of the trading company for Cemig Holding. So part of Cemig GT was transferred to Cemig Holding that’s why we have this additional here. And as we already disclosed to the market, we have already the — published our supply and demand balance and the strategy allowed us to have better results for of the trading company so we have grown vis-a-vis the same quarter of 2022, 112%. The only nonrecurring effect here is the loss which was the impairment for the SHPP reversal that we had for the PCA SHPPs and net profit was up 201%. And in blue you see how much of EBITDA has been transferred in this quarter for Cemig Holding. Gasmig which is a company also consolidated and we always have information on Gasmig’s results.

This year also Gasmig has had an amazing result. EBITDA for this quarter compared to the prior one was up 42.6% and net profit 24.1%, thanks to the regulatory tariff receivables and also to the increase in the distributed and sold gas volume once that Gasmig. So they also has free clients paying for its gas supply. And now to concluding with our commitments, I will turn the floor to our CFO, Leonardo George for his final remarks and right after that we will start our Q&A session.

Leonardo George de Magalhaes: Thank you, Carolina. As we mentioned in other opportunities, since 2020 when Cemig published its strategy and its new plan for the next years, we understand that we are executing this strategic planning thoroughly and some of them have been already achieved. So divestment of equity interests with complexity. So when we talk about divestment, basically we are talking about capital reallocation. This is a very different reality for this company when we compare that to prior years. So we continue to having some important matters for us to invest in renewables, to grow in retail electricity sales. This is a new market for the company. We are very optimistic for the value generation to our shareholders.