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

And the main difference is how granular it’s defined because if it’s more similar to what has been done, for example, for wind, then it’s much easier to comply with initially. But our plan is to move up the supply chain and have more and more of the inputs made in the states, including some of the more basic minerals, et cetera, coming in. We already have with our suppliers, the wafering is moving out of China, which was the last sort of main component. We’re already buying panels that were made outside of China. And of course, all the wafering etcetera was done in Eastern China, not Western China. So we feel very good about that, and we’ve had no issue thus far.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Got it. And last question just on 23 earnings. Just when you look at some of the items in the quarter, whether it was the gain on the asset sale, or whether it was LNG, was that upside relative to the plan? Are you trending better than you would have expected? Or was that gain kind of contemplated in your 2023 guide earlier when you think about your positioning on the year here?

Steve Coughlin: Yes. I would say some of these are definitely upsides, Julien. So all else being equal, yes, there’s upside. Unfortunately, as is the case, I think, with most utilities, the warmer winter weather was somewhat of an offset to those upsides for the first quarter. So we still see the potential for upside above even the midpoint of our guidance, but that’s not — it remains to be seen how the rest of the year goes.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Okay, excellent guys. See you Monday. Thank you very much. All the best.

Operator: Thank you Mr. Julien. The next question comes from the line of Gregg Orrill with UBS. You may now proceed.

Gregg Orrill: Yes hi, thanks for the question. I was wondering if you could. Congratulations. I was wondering if you could touch on the financing plan, just sort of the levers that you feel are available to you for equity or equity-like and would you need that to execute at least the plan through 2025, just to sort of reaffirm your thoughts there. Thank you.

Steve Coughlin: Yes. No, it’s Steve. So sure. So we’ll definitely talk some more about the longer-term financing plan through 2027. So I think that will give additional color. So we’ll hold for that. This year, I think as I laid out on the slide, we will raise additional parent debt capital largely to fund growth in the renewables segment. And then we have the asset sale program in addition to the close to $1 billion of parent free cash flow coming up from the existing business. So there’s no plan for equity this year. Looking ahead, we’ll talk some more about that in the plan for Monday. What I would say there is, certainly, we have we’re well positioned for growth. We’re in a leadership position, and we want to grow beyond 2025.

But certainly, through 2025, we would not need equity to meet our 2025 commitments. However, we would expect to start investing in growth, including things like the green hydrogen project, which would get started before 2025 to support the second half of the decade. But we’ll share more detail on that on Monday.

Gregg Orrill: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you Mr. Orrill. The next question comes from the line of Ryan Levine with Citi. You may now proceed.

Ryan Levine: Hi. Hoping to get a better understanding of how you arrived at the new disclosure. You’re using EBITDA with additional tax disclosure. How did you decide on that versus maybe CAFD or free cash flow for FFO metrics than some other peers are utilized?