Mercury Annual Results Briefing Transcript

Mercury Annual Results Analyst Briefing 2024 20 August 2024 Start of Transcript Operator: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Mercury Annual Results Analyst Briefing 2024 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listenonly mode. After the speakers presentation there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Vince Hawksworth, Chief Executive of Mercury Limited. Please, go ahead. Vince Hawksworth: Kia ora tātou and welcome everybody to the FY24 Mercury Full Year Results Presentation. I’m Vince Hawksworth, I’m joined by our Chief Financial Officer, William Meek. I want to start just by saying that this presentation really has three major elements to it. A reflection on FY24, some observations about FY25 and the events surrounding our current situation, and plodding a way towards the future and the opportunities that Mercury continues to pursue. There is a lot of material in this presentation, so William and I are going to canter through that at a reasonable pace. We know that questions are always valuable. So I’m now on Slide 3 which is the overall highlights slide. We produced 8.8TWh of renewable generation from hydro, geothermal, and wind. Wind obviously up reasonably significantly. We completed the integration of the Mercury and Trustpower businesses all under the one brand, one set of people, processes and systems. That we’re really pleased about because that creates great platform as we look to the future. We completed Stage 1 of Kaiwera Downs under budget and in advance of time, and agreed on a contract with the aluminium smelter which allowed us to go to final investment decision and start Kaiwera Downs 2 which is now under construction. We also have Ngā Tamariki geothermal expansion of 50 megawatts under construction and materials are being delivered to site and we’re pleased with the way that that has set off. Obviously, the scale of the business that has delivered what is a record EBITDAF result of $877 million. Ordinary full year dividend of $0.233 per share, 16 th year of dividend growth. However, we have also acknowledged that with a significant impact on our ability to Page 1 of 26