Guido Brusco: I mean about the reduction on the participating interest in the project island Ghasha, let me start from the very beginning. So, this project started in, I mean, 2018, ’19, we started to look at this project. Then there was the COVID. We relooked into the project. And then by then, our pipeline of projects, thanks to — I mean, the discoveries made and other opportunities that came across basically expanded quite significantly. At the moment, we have a few of them running. We have a project in Ivory Coast. We have a project in Congo LNG. We have a project in Libya and coming projects in Indonesia, Mozambique. So we had to, I mean, relook at our capital allocation in the upstream project and rebalance allocation, both geographically and also by the type of commodity. That was the reason of the rebalancing of the participating interest in the gas project.
Alastair Syme: And can you say if there’s much value? Or is it more about the forward CapEx allocation?
Guido Brusco: It was more about the CapEx allocation that was driving us to — I mean, to be, I would say, more balanced.
Operator: Next question is from Lydia Rainforth with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Lydia Rainforth: Two questions, if I could, please. On Versalis, can you just walk us through what steps get taken over the course of 2024? I know you’re looking at sort of EBITDA neutral by sort of in 2025, but obviously, there’s quite a lot of work to do there. So, I just wanted to work through what steps we might see in 2024? And then secondly, if I could come back to the Ithaca transaction. Just kind of going through the details, maybe talk about the $500 million potential dividend payout for this year. I’m going to say, is it a cash flow accretive event for Eni, that Ithaca transaction?
Francesco Gattei: I leave the floor to Adriano, and then I will return back for the answer on Ithaca.
Adriano Alfani: Thanks, Lydia, for the question. As we communicated in the Capital Market Day in March, the transformation Versalis journey is not a one-quarter journey, but it’s a four-year journey, and probably will take a few more as we said. Quarter-over-quarter, I mean, we are constantly increasing our efficiency in terms of cost reduction. And this is something that we’ve been able to do already in part in Q1, but it’s not all coming in the quarter. We continue to accelerate the transformation of the Company in order to build platform. And this is the reason why, although it was not in Q1, but in April, we announced the acquisition of another compounding company, the Tecnofilm that will enable to specialize in the end-user market.
Of course, we have a strong discipline like we always have done in the past, but we are accelerating the CapEx reduction, especially not for — not at all the reduction on agency and asset integrity, that remain our first priority, but on business that generate less margin. So, we are perfecting on trajectory with what we announced in Capital Market Day, but the progress are quarter-on-quarter, not in one single quarter.
Francesco Gattei: About the Ithaca, the distribution policy that was designed with this target of 500 million, is, say, partially accretive versus our stand-alone case. We have already included this in our plan. So, I would — the answer is yes.
Operator: The next question is from Kim Fustier with HSBC. Please go ahead.
Kim Fustier: Just another follow-up, please, on the Ithaca combination. I guess the implied consideration paid by Ithaca seems to imply quite a large discount to the fair value NAV of your UK assets. And I’m also a little surprised that there was no adjustment to the initial 38% to 39% range, despite quite a big slide that we’ve seen in Ithaca share price in the past four weeks. So maybe could you talk a little bit about how the final valuation was derived in that context? And secondly, could you talk a little bit about the impact — the potential impact of the reimposition of U.S. sanctions in Venezuela on your activities?
Francesco Gattei: On the Ithaca deal, clearly, we negotiated the deal over a number of months. I think that is, let’s say, the reference of a price level that is on a daily basis, shifting and moving is not the proper way to assess a long-term strategic deal that is based on cash flow expectation, on rerating expectation on synergies and upside. So, the 38.5% is the result of all this assumption and not the effect of daily trading. I would like also to add that we have a 200 or more improvement in terms of, let’s say, value, net book value. So, the deal is generating let’s say, rerating in the range of 200 million versus what we have in our accounting. For Venezuela, I leave to Guido.
Guido Brusco: Well, on Venezuela, just as — we are recording and increase the trend of lift in equity over time in the last quarter. And despite the — I mean, GL 44 being removed, we still expect to continue this positive trend of cargo assignment. I mean the GL 44 has not been renewed, but is still in place, the — I mean the so-called [indiscernible] procedure that the U.S. authorities could provide to recover credit, which, in our case, I mean, being the gas production very necessary for the country has always been granted in the past.
Operator: Next question is from Alejandro Vigil with Santander. Please go ahead.
Alejandro Vigil: Just one question about the CCS, your CCS strategy. When are you expecting the first FID of the projects and the potential size of the investment?
Guido Brusco: On the CCS, our broad strategy is — I mean, we consider CCS as one of the lever of the carbonization and the net zero, global net zero. We are currently running a project in Italy, in Ravenna, Phase 1 of a bigger project, which we expect to start up in the — I mean, within the quarter 2. Then we have a Phase 2. The size of this Phase 2 is 4 million ton per annum. We expect to make an FID in 2025 and start up the injection before 2030. Equally in UK, we have project in the Liverpool Bay area called HyNet. We have already negotiated in recently another agreement for the economic license, and we expect to receive the full economic license by the Q3 and make a cluster FID together with a group of emitters by the end of the year and start reinjection also before 2030.
We also have a project like — I mean we also have another project in UK, Bacton, in the Northeast of London. And the size of this — I mean, the size of the investment for this project. I’m talking about the Phase 2 of Ravenna and HyNet, in the transport and storage segment only is between €1.7 billion to €1.8 billion gross.
Operator: Next question is from Massimo Bonisoli with Equita. Please go ahead.
Massimo Bonisoli: Two follow-up questions remaining. The first one, Plenitude, given the very strong performance in first quarter, the implied guidance for the remaining nine months would be down year-on-year, if I calculated it correctly, since your renewable generation should be up year-on-year. Could you shed some light on the assumptions behind the guidance? Maybe you kept a good level of contingencies there. The second follow-up on the buyback. Could you comment on the speed of the buyback that should be executed on a monthly basis?
