The AES Corporation (NYSE:AES) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Andres Gluski: Well, thanks for the question. It’s a great question. Look, we feel very good. And the one thing is, if you recall from last year, I believe we had a lot of signings in the last quarter. And so what we’re seeing here, these things are lumpy. So we have been ranked 2 years running as the largest developer of renewable projects for corporations. And so when you’re dealing with these corporations, these are big projects. So one project can easily be a giga. For example, the just another case, our green hydrogen project in Texas, that’s 1.4 giga. So these are lumpy. So I’m not the least bit concerned about meeting our growth targets. We’re seeing a lot of interest. We’re in advanced negotiations. But they don’t count until you sign them.

So we feel good about them. No cause for concern. And that’s one of the issues we have, that they’re lumpy. But when you’re going for big contracts, as an example, the project — the green hydrogen project in Texas, that’s 1.4 gigawatts just in one. And we have others that are in that range. So it’s going to be lumpy, but we’re not concerned because we will land enough of these to keep us on track.

Durgesh Chopra: Understood. That’s very clear. And maybe is there a cost update on the — on your joint venture, the hydrogen project with APD. I know their project, and I’m not — I’m going to mispronounce this, but NUM. They had some increases early in the year when they reported, I believe. So any update to cost there in terms of the overall project cost or cost allocated to you for that project?

Andres Gluski: Look, we have no update for cost. It’s still going to be in the range of around $4 billion, the whole project. We think it’s, again, it’s going to be the lowest carbon project in the states. As you know, you have a $3 per kilogram subsidy, if you have below a certain threshold of carbon intensity. So we feel we’re well within that. If you have less than that, for example, if you’re taking energy from the grid, then it drops to $1. So we feel very good about that. In terms of the costs, what I’d say is what they announced on their Neon project. And again, I’m just repeating what they put on there that they were going to make some more capital investments to lower operating costs. So it’s the Neon project in Saudi Arabia which is very good for us because they are using a very similar project to this one but it’s at more advanced, so we can learn from that project jointly learned from that project.

But no, we have no updates, but we have no reason to think that there’d be any additional cost overruns at this point in time.

Durgesh Chopra: That’s very helpful color. Thank you Andres. See you on Monday.

Andres Gluski: See you on Monday.

Operator: Thank you Mr. Chopra. The next question comes from the line of Julien Dumoulin-Smith with Bank of America. You may now proceed.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Hey good morning team. Thank you guys for the time and the question here. Look, I just wanted to follow up on the ITC, PTC conversation we’ve been having of late. Just curious, are you guys still pretty committed to using ITCs. I know some of your peers have been evolving towards PTCs, you guys focused on the Eastern U.S. Can you talk about the thought process and philosophy there? And then also to follow up back on Angie’s question to the extent to which that you are using ITCs. 70-30 split is still good. I know that, for instance, here in the quarter for tax cut, it’s fairly low. So I just want to make sure that ITC heuristic of 70-30 in year 1, year 2 still applies.