Unidentified Company Representative: Andres Cardona from Citi has the following question. Regarding Maxus, what is the status of the claim? Do you expect any update on the future — in the near future?
Alejandro Lew: What to expect for the near future is difficult to say. As probably many know, the trial was scheduled to start around these days in March and to last until late April. Recently, the different parties to the claim have submitted a joint request to the court to postpone the beginning of the full trial, and that was postponed to late June, and that should take place between June and July. So the latest that we can comment is that the trial process was postponed by request of the different parties to — on the claim and the court basically accepted that and authorized that on the same day that it was requested. And so that’s the latest that we can comment on the Maxus case.
Unidentified Company Representative: From Morgan Stanley, Bruno Montanari. How sticky is the CapEx budget in coming years?
Alejandro Lew: Sorry?
Unidentified Company Representative: How sticky is the CapEx budget in coming years?
Alejandro Lew: Well, we — I mentioned also when talking about the numbers that we expect CapEx to be in the $5 billion to $6 billion range for the next 5 years. and that should be enough to — for us to tackle the opportunity that we see ahead of us. So, yes, I believe that we should remain within the levels that we are expecting or estimating for this year for 2023. And we shouldn’t be doing anything beyond that. Of course, that does not include any significant capital investment on the LNG project which is still subject to FID. So clearly, a footnote on that chart was that the $5 billion to $6 billion does not include any relevant capital investment in the LNG project.
Unidentified Company Representative: From Barclays, David wants to know what type of debt do you anticipate raising in 2023? Will it be local market that line the 2 local issues you place in January? Or will it come from different sources?
Alejandro Lew: Well, clearly, as mentioned, we are expecting a year of negative free cash flow unless there is any positive surprise. And in doing or in tackling those needs, we are concentrating mostly in the local markets and in the — in our relationship banks. On both 2 sources of funding, we have lowered our exposure in a very meaningful way along the last 3 years when reducing our total indebtedness. Most of the reduction came from the local capital market bonds and the debt outstanding and the financial institutions. Clearly, that was shorter in general in nature, and that’s why we — at maturity, we pay down all of that debt. So at this point, we are at very low levels of outstanding. So we believe we have ample room to grow or to tap those 2 sources mainly.
Having said that, we are also working on potentially enlarging and extending the existing A/B loan facility the multi — that is led by CAF, it’s a multilateral A/B loan facility. We are working together with CAF and some financial institutions to potentially extend and enlarge that facility. But all in all, our key focus would be mostly in the local capital markets and in tapping on mostly trade financing. Recently, we have issued a $300 million equivalent or a combination of 2 bonds in the local market for a total of about $300 million equivalent. The main portion of that being a $230 million linked bond with a 3-year tenor at 1%. So of course, there is a very interesting arbitrage to take advantage of in tapping the local capital markets and also in trade financing, we just raised a couple of preexport financing with 2-year tenors at 2.5%.
