NextEra Energy Partners, LP (NYSE:NEP) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Rebecca Kujawa: Yes, Durgesh, I appreciate the question. I think a little bit of context is important. I think all of us, ourselves included, have really started talking about the significant change in load growth really over the last year, maybe even the last six months, and you all very much appreciate that a development business, anything connecting to electrical infrastructure usually talks in terms of years and sometimes a lot of years depending on the market. To get something into place in the ERCOT market is maybe a couple of years, and some markets in the Midwest that have had congested queues and some transmission constraints, that could be five to seven years, and obviously we’ve been working for a period of time. I think we’re the least behind of anybody with our 300 gigawatt portfolio, but some of this will take some time to materialize.

I feel very confident in long-term trends. I feel really excited and pleased with our team’s preparedness in terms of the development of that pipeline, and I very much think our competitive advantages that John highlighted on scale, experience, and technology really position us well in the types of conversations we’re having with our customers, creating this long-term visibility into demand dynamics. You guys asked John a question about data centers and how competitive we are with them. They are not looking for projects anymore. They are looking for integrated solutions that solve long-term problems for them, and we are a perfect partner for them with which to work.

Durgesh Chopra: That’s very helpful, Rebecca. And then maybe just a quick follow-up. I think you made comments around very healthy returns. Are you seeing higher returns, higher margins with your data center clients versus your other clients? Some of your peers have highlighted higher returns there. Maybe just comment on that.

Rebecca Kujawa: I continue to believe we have very attractive returns across the board, consistent with the comments that I’ve made today as well as the comments we made at our development 101 day and included in our monthly updates for investor materials, so mid-teens and solar and above 20% for both wind and storage. Of course, as we talk with customers and we have unique solutions that solve particular problems that we have, we design the solutions to meet those needs and always stay focused at the end of the day on what’s the attractive value proposition from an investor standpoint, and we remain disciplined around that. I love the portfolio. I love the positioning, and I believe what we ultimately deliver for investors is very attractive.

Durgesh Chopra: That is very helpful. Thank you very much.

Operator: The next question comes from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Excuse me, Mr. Tonet, your line is open.

Jeremy Tonet: Good morning. Thank you. I just want to start off on storage originations coming in quite strong.

Rebecca Kujawa: Hi, Jeremy, it’s Rebecca. I’m going to go for the presumptive close on the answer. Hopefully it’s the question you actually asked. Storage origination is very strong. As Kirk highlighted in some of the prepared remarks and John commented in Q&A, as we think about our customers’ needs for energy and capacity, it remains a very attractive value proposition to incorporate storage to firm up renewables, either co-located or separate. So we’re seeing terrific origination from an energy resources perspective, and we’ve also talked today about the attractiveness of storage FPL, so I’ll hand it off to Armando to give some additional color.

Armando Pimentel: Thanks, Rebecca. So I would add, if you recall John and Kirk’s comments, we filed our 10-year site plan, which we do every year. Our 10-year site plan this year had the same amount of solar that it did last year, which is a lot of solar, 21 gigs over the next 10 years. But we doubled the amount of storage up to 4 gigawatts of storage that we have in our plan. We increasingly see storage as an economical addition in our service area. My expectations are that, as time goes on, that we would likely add more storage to our plans going forward because it is that attractive in the overall economics, especially as we add solar, which, again, continues to be the best proposition from a cost standpoint for our customers.

Jeremy Tonet: Thank you for that. And just going back to the Renewable Development Day, or for people that weren’t able to make it, any particular points you want to highlight?