Brookfield Renewable Corporation

Brookfield Renewable Corporation

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Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptJanuary 30, 2026

Operator

1. "Identify speakers: begin each speaking turn with the speaker's name and role when they are stated on the call (e.g.

"John Smith (CFO):"). When the operator introduces the next caller by name and firm, or hands the call to a named person ("I will now turn the call over to Jane Doe, CFO"), use that identity for the immediately following turn.

Reuse exactly the same label whenever the same voice returns." Let's trace speakers: - Operator: "Good day and thank you for standing by.

Welcome to the Brookfield Renewable Partners Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results. ...

I'd now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Connor Teskey, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead."

-> Speaker turn 1: `Operator:` -> Speaker turn 2: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` Connor Teskey says: "We will then turn the call over to Patrick, who will discuss our operating results and strong financial position..." (Note: Patrick doesn't have a role stated, but let's check what Connor says: "We will then turn the call over to Patrick, who will discuss our operating results and strong financial position...")

. Later Connor: "And with that, I'll pass it on to Patrick to discuss our operating results..."

-> Patrick speaks: "Thanks, Connor..." What is Patrick's label?

When Connor introduces him: "turn the call over to Patrick" (no role stated, or is there? Patrick Patrick?

Is there a role stated? "turn the call over to Patrick, who will discuss our operating results and strong financial position").

So `Patrick:` or `Patrick (CFO):`? Wait, rule: "begin each speaking turn with the speaker's name and role when they are stated on the call (e.g.

"John Smith (CFO):"). When the operator introduces the next caller by name and firm, or hands the call to a named person ("I will now turn the call over to Jane Doe, CFO"), use that identity for the immediately following turn."

Connor was introduced by operator: "Connor Teskey, Chief Executive Officer" -> `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` For Patrick: Connor says "pass it on to Patrick" / "turn the call over to Patrick" -> `Patrick:`. Let's check callers: - Operator: "Our first question comes from Sean Steuart with TD Cowen."

-> `Sean Steuart (TD Cowen):` - Connor Teskey: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` - Sean Steuart: `Sean Steuart (TD Cowen):` - Patrick: `Patrick:` - Sean Steuart: `Sean Steuart (TD Cowen):` - Patrick: `Patrick:` - Sean Steuart: `Sean Steuart (TD Cowen):` - Operator: "Our next question comes from Nelson Ng with RBC Capital Markets." -> `Nelson Ng (RBC Capital Markets):` - Connor Teskey: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` - Nelson Ng: `Nelson Ng (RBC Capital Markets):` - Connor Teskey: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` - Nelson Ng: `Nelson Ng (RBC Capital Markets):` - Connor Teskey: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` - Nelson Ng: `Nelson Ng (RBC Capital Markets):` - Operator: "Our next question comes from Robert Hope with Scotiabank."

-> `Robert Hope (Scotiabank):` - Connor Teskey: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` - Robert Hope: `Robert Hope (Scotiabank):` - Connor Teskey: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` - Robert Hope: `Robert Hope (Scotiabank):` - Operator: "Next question comes from the line of Baltej Sidhu with National Bank of Canada." -> `Baltej Sidhu (National Bank of Canada):` (or `Baltej Sidhu (National Bank of Canada):` Let's check name in audio: Baltej Sidhu) - Connor Teskey: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` - Baltej Sidhu: `Baltej Sidhu (National Bank of Canada):` - Connor Teskey: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` - Baltej Sidhu: `Baltej Sidhu (National Bank of Canada):` - Operator: "Our next question comes from Benjamin Pham with BMO."

-> `Benjamin Pham (BMO):` - Connor Teskey: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` - Benjamin Pham: `Benjamin Pham (BMO):` - Connor Teskey: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` - Benjamin Pham: `Benjamin Pham (BMO):` - Connor Teskey: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` - Benjamin Pham: `Benjamin Pham (BMO):` - Operator: "Our next question comes from Anthony Crowdell with Mizuho." -> `Anthony Crowdell (Mizuho):` - Connor Teskey: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` - Anthony Crowdell: `Anthony Crowdell (Mizuho):` - Operator: "That concludes today's question and answer session.

I'd like to turn the call back to Connor Teskey for closing remarks." - Connor Teskey: `Connor Teskey (Chief Executive Officer):` - Operator: "This concludes today's conference call.

Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect."

"Output format: plain text, one paragraph per speaker turn, each starting with "Speaker Name: ". No timestamps, no headers, no commentary, no markdown."

"Your final response must contain ONLY the transcript text (no preamble, no closing remarks, no markdown fences or blockquotes)." "Every paragraph must begin with a speaker label, including the operator's opening and the first prepared remarks.

Never output an unlabeled paragraph." "Normalize punctuation and capitalization into clean, readable sentences, but keep the spoken words verbatim.

Do not paraphrase, summarize, shorten, or fix grammar." "Preserve all numbers exactly as spoken.

Write monetary amounts and percentages with digits and symbols (e.g. $55 million, 44.3%, 64 cents)."

"Mark uncertain speech: if a word or short passage is hard to hear, wrap your best guess in [brackets?] ; if it is unintelligible, write [unclear]."

Let's carefully verify the text from view_file and ensure every turn is a single paragraph. Good day, and thank you for standing by.

Welcome to the Brookfield Renewable Partners Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.

After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone.

You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again.

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Conor Teskey, Chief Executive Officer.

Please go ahead.

Conor Teskey

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our fourth-quarter 2025 conference call.

Before we begin, we would like to remind you that a copy of our news release and investor supplement can be found on our website. We also want to remind you that we may make forward-looking statements on this call.

These statements are subject to known and unknown risks, and our future results may differ materially. For more information, you are encouraged to review our regulatory filings available on SEDAR+, EDGAR, and on our website.

On today's call, we will provide a review of our 2025 performance, share our perspectives on the energy market today, and provide an update on the growth outlook for our business. We will then turn the call over to Patrick, who will discuss our operating results and strong financial position, as well as outline how our increasingly differentiated access to capital is providing a clear advantage for our franchise today.

He will then conclude our remarks with an update on our growing asset recycling program. Following our comments, we look forward to taking your questions.

2025 was another excellent year for our business. We delivered strong financial results, strengthened our balance sheet, and most importantly, further positioned the business to continue delivering strong growth and value creation for our unitholders going forward.

This past year, we delivered $2.01 of FFO per unit, up 10% year-over-year and in line with our long-term growth target, on the back of solid operating performance, expanded development activities, accretive acquisitions, and growing capital recycling. We deployed or committed a record $8.9 billion or $1.9 billion in growth net to BEP, highlighted by the privatization of Neoen, our carve-out of Geronimo Power in the United States, and our increased investment in Isagen, one of our strongest performing businesses over the last decade.

We were successful in advancing our various commercial priorities, signing contracts on over 9 GW of generation capacity. We also continued to scale our development activities, bringing online over 8 GW of new capacity globally, a record for our business.

We delivered on our asset recycling targets, reaching agreements to sell assets generating $4.5 billion of proceeds or $1.3 billion net to BEP at returns above the high end of our targets. We accomplished this all the while strengthening our balance sheet, ending the year with $4.6 billion in available liquidity.

Stepping back and looking at the broader market today, it is now clear that power is a strategic priority around the world and is the bottleneck to growth for both governments and corporates. Investment in new generation capacity over the past several years was largely about replacing carbon-intensive generation in a world of modest or even flat electricity demand growth.

Today, that backdrop has fundamentally shifted. Energy demand is rising at a pace not seen in decades, driven by the multi-decade trends of electrification and renewed industrial activity.

This demand growth is being further amplified by AI and the unprecedented investment and energy consumption from some of the largest companies in the world. As a result, we are not only transitioning the grid, but adding substantial net new generation for the first time in decades.

Said another way, we have shifted from a period focused on energy transition to a period focused on energy addition. This shift is driving a move from incremental grid upgrades to large-scale expansion, prioritizing fast-to-deploy renewables, scale baseload generation, and capacity to ensure reliability.

Meeting this demand will require a mix of all the scale and efficient technologies over time. Solar and onshore wind will play a critical role given their speed to market and low cost.

Hydro and nuclear are important for their baseload and scale, natural gas for its flexibility, and battery solutions will be critical for ensuring the reliability of grids going forward. In this evolving environment, we have deliberately positioned our business at the epicenter of many of these technologies, allowing us to capitalize on the rapidly expanding opportunity set given our operating and development capabilities, strong partnerships, and significant access to capital.

First, we are scaling our development of low-cost, fast-to-market solar and onshore wind to meet the accelerating demand for power in the near term. Over the past year, we commissioned a record amount of new solar and onshore wind capacity and are on track to reach a run rate of delivering roughly 10 GW of new capacity per year by 2027, all while maintaining our disciplined approach to development.

Second, against the backdrop of growing demand for reliable baseload power, we are well-positioned in the current market through our operating hydro assets and our ownership of Westinghouse. As power systems require more scale baseload generation, flexibility, and enhanced reliability, the value of hydro is being recognized more than ever before.

This has been highlighted by the execution of three 20-year power purchase agreements at strong pricing with hyperscalers, a first for our business, as well as the signing of the framework agreement with Google to deliver up to 3 GW of hydro generation in the United States. With respect to nuclear, only slightly more than two years ago, we invested in Westinghouse, gaining exposure to this critical technology for current and future electricity grids given its scale and baseload characteristics.

Our investment was underpinned by Westinghouse's highly contracted, infrastructure-like cash flows from its fuel and maintenance business, its strong market share, and its leading and proven technology for large-scale nuclear power reactors. The current energy demand environment has reinvigorated the nuclear sector, with increasing recognition of the role nuclear can play to enable economic growth and provide energy security.

Perhaps the most impactful development for the sector is the recently announced landmark agreement with the US government to deliver new nuclear reactors utilizing Westinghouse technology in the United States. This agreement delivers significant economic value to Westinghouse and BEP via the development of multiple reactors, and then through the long-term provision of fuel and maintenance services over the 80-plus year life of those reactors.

A commitment of this scale provides long-term demand certainty, helping unlock supply chain investment, and positions Westinghouse to expand deployment well beyond this initial program to both corporates and governments in the US and internationally. Since signing this agreement, all parties have been working to progress the sites to construction as quickly as possible, largely focusing on site selection and the ordering of long lead-time items.

Against this backdrop, and the known development timeline for nuclear, the limited new hydro capacity available, and a growing backlog for natural gas plants, we are seeing batteries play an increasingly important role in the near term, with their importance set to grow over time as additional low-cost renewables come online. Battery costs have declined by an astonishing 95% since 2010, following a trajectory similar to solar panels a decade ago, and we see a growing opportunity to deploy this technology on a contracted basis at strong risk-adjusted returns.

Our recent acquisition of Neoen significantly expanded our operating footprint, capabilities, and development pipeline in battery technology, and we expect to quadruple our battery storage capacity over the next three years to over 10 GW. This growth is highlighted by one of the largest standalone battery storage projects globally, totaling over 1 GW, which we are currently advancing through Neoen in partnership with a sovereign wealth fund.

Taken together, rising energy demand across global markets is driving the need for rapid additions of renewable capacity, large-scale baseload power, and battery storage. Backed by long-term partnerships with the world's largest corporate buyers of power and governments, we are delivering more generation than ever before.

By being positioned in markets with accelerating demand, combined with our global scale, significant access to capital, and our operating development capabilities across key technologies, we are best positioned to deliver comprehensive energy solutions across all markets at scale and are entering into a period of outsized earnings growth, generating significant value for our unitholders over the long term. With that, I'll pass it on to Patrick to discuss our operating results, our diverse sources of scale capital, our balance sheet, as well as our recent capital recycling initiatives.

Patrick Taylor

Thanks, Conor, and good morning to everyone on the call. As Conor noted at the outset of his remarks, 2025 was a strong year across almost every metric, with the business delivering 10% FFO-per-unit growth, achieving our target while maintaining our best-in-class balance sheet and further positioning ourselves to generate significant growth and value going forward.

In the fourth quarter, we delivered FFO of $346 million, up 14% year-over-year, or 51 cents per unit. On a full-year basis, we delivered FFO of $1,334 million, or $2.01 per unit, up 10% year-on-year.

Results were driven by the strength of our contracted, inflation-linked cash flows across our diversified global operating fleet, growth from development activities, accretive acquisitions, and scaling capital recycling. Looking across our segments, our hydroelectric segment delivered strong results this year, with FFO of $607 million, up 19% from the prior year, benefiting from solid generation across our Canadian and Colombian fleets, higher revenues from commercial initiatives, and gains from the sale of a non-core hydro portfolio, all of which offset weaker hydrology in the US.

Our wind and solar segments generated a combined $648 million of FFO, supported by contributions from the acquisitions of Neoen and Geronimo Power, as well as our investment in a portfolio of contracted offshore wind assets in the UK. This growth was offset by gains on sales recorded in last year's results, which included the sale of Saeta and the partial disposition of Shepherds Flat.

In our distributed energy, storage, and sustainable solutions segments, we generated record results of $614 million, up almost 90% from the prior year, driven by growth through development, the acquisition of Neoen, and strong performance at Westinghouse on the back of continued momentum in the nuclear sector. In addition to the strong results, a continued focus of ours has and will always be to maintain balance sheet strength and financial flexibility.

This enables us to be opportunistic when it comes to deploying capital into growth and protecting us against downside risks. We ended 2025 with $4.6 billion of liquidity, and over the past year, we reaffirmed our BBB+ investment-grade credit rating, which we remain firmly committed to maintaining going forward.

Our rating, significant liquidity, and strong financial position enable us to be very opportunistic with respect to our financing activities, which further strengthens our balance sheet. In 2025, we executed over $37 billion in financings, a record for our franchise.

These financings were highlighted by the completion of $2.2 billion in investment-grade upfinancings, primarily at our hydro assets, where we are seeing strong lender demand for these assets and are leveraging the benefits of newly signed long-term contracts at strong pricing. In March of this past year, we issued $450 million Canadian of 10-year notes at what was our lowest spread in almost 20 years at the time.

We then more recently topped this, issuing $500 million Canadian of 30-year notes this January at our lowest spread ever, reflecting the strong demand for our credit and our ability to be nimble and take advantage of a favorable spread environment. In November this past year, we also executed a $650 million bought-deal equity raise and concurrent private placement.

We were successful deploying capital ahead of our targets in the 12 months prior to the equity raise, and this financing provides capital to invest even further in the expanding opportunity set in areas where we have a differentiated ability to deploy capital, such as hydro, nuclear, and battery storage. Our strong balance sheet is further enhanced by the fact that we deploy our capital alongside a large pool of third-party funds raised by Brookfield Asset Management.

In 2025, Brookfield successfully completed fundraising of over $20 billion for its second vintage of its Global Transition Fund. This capital will support large-scale investments alongside BEP that few others can make, further enhancing our access to large, high-quality M&A opportunities that help us achieve strong and consistent growth.

In addition to our financing activities across the business, we are continuing to scale our capital recycling program, which is increasingly providing significant liquidity to support our growth and crystallize value creation within our business. We continue to see robust demand from private investors for derisked, infrastructure-like, cash-flowing operating assets.

At the same time, with our scaling development activities, we have a growing portfolio of assets and platforms that we are selling on an annual basis. The size of our portfolio and our flexibility to sell whole platforms, standalone assets, or minority stakes is enabling us to be active in the market, consistently selling at prices that deliver on our target returns.

This past year, we generated record proceeds of $4.5 billion, or $1.3 billion net to BEP, from asset recycling alone. This year, our asset rotation activities were highlighted by the sale of a major North American distributed energy platform, a 50% interest in a portfolio of non-core hydro assets in the US, and the establishment of an asset rotation program at Neoen that was successful in executing the sale of $1 billion of enterprise value of assets in our first year of ownership alone.

Looking ahead, we are focusing on continuing to scale our capital recycling program and generating proceeds from sales in a more recurring manner. In January this year, we agreed to sell a two-thirds stake in a large portfolio of recently built wind and solar assets in North America, generating proceeds of $860 million, or $210 million net to BEP, and are actively progressing the sale of the remaining interest.

In conjunction with this sale, we are also establishing a framework for the future sale of select assets that meet certain criteria to the same buyers. This framework, which proposes the sale of up to $1.5 billion of additional assets, further derisks our development platforms and provides a scalable source of capital to fund future growth.

We are exploring similar initiatives in other regions across our global platforms and look forward to providing updates on our progress throughout the year. We also wanted to note that after the quarter end, we announced a fully discretionary $400 million at-the-market equity issuance program for our BEPC shares.

We expect to use the proceeds to repurchase BEP LP units on a one-for-one basis under our existing NCIB. The purpose of the program is to increase BEPC's float and liquidity in a non-dilutive manner while also allowing us to capture value from the persistent premium at which those shares trade, providing incremental cash to deploy into growth or buy back even more shares.

Lastly, with our record results, and in conjunction with our strong liquidity and robust outlook for our business, we are pleased to announce an over 5% increase to our annual distribution to $1.468 per unit. Since Brookfield Renewable was listed in 2011, we have now delivered 15 consecutive years of annual distribution growth of at least 5% each year.

In closing, we remain focused on delivering 12% to 15% long-term total returns for our investors while remaining disciplined allocators of capital, leveraging our scale and operational capabilities to enhance and derisk our business. On behalf of the board and management, we thank all of our unitholders and shareholders for their ongoing support.

That concludes our formal remarks for today's call. Thank you for joining us this morning, and with that, I'll pass it back to our operator for questions.

Operator

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again.

Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Sean Steuart with TD Cowen.

Sean Steuart

Thanks. Good morning, everyone.

A couple questions to start with. Conor, 2026 would be the first year where you start to feed projects into the Microsoft framework agreement.

Can you give us an update on progress there and the expected cadence of capacity into that deal through 2030? How is that advancing at this point?

Conor Teskey

Good morning, Sean. I would make this comment more broadly on a wholesale basis beyond very simply our strong relationship with Microsoft.

The demand we are seeing from corporates and in particular the large hyperscalers is at an all-time high. I recognize that we've been saying that for a number of years, but that demand just continues to accelerate and continues to grow.

We're seeing that in terms of the projects and the execution that we are doing with counterparties such as Microsoft on an ongoing basis. When we launched that program, we had a defined set of projects in our pipeline that we thought would fill the 10 and a half gigawatts that was initially outlined.

I would say since we announced that agreement in 2025, we are seeing counterparties such as Microsoft look for power in a broader spectrum of regions and markets, particularly across the United States, and even a broader spectrum of technologies to meet their power demand. We will see growth in 2026, and we expect to see that growth do nothing but accelerate from 2026 through the rest of the decade.

Sean Steuart

Okay. Thanks for that perspective.

Patrick, a question on the balance sheet. You guys were busy with financing initiatives in the fourth quarter, asset recycling.

When I look at the ratio of available liquidity versus the scale of the secure development pipeline, or versus the installed asset base, those ratios have moderated a little bit the last year and a half. I guess any commentary on broader comfort with the liquidity position.

I appreciate you're going to be busy recycling assets. Are there ratios you're focused on to sort of sustain a comfort level with available liquidity relative to an expanding growth opportunity set?

Patrick Taylor

Absolutely, Sean. I would say we're very comfortable, first of all.

When we think about our available liquidity and the business obviously having grown over the last several years, we're very focused on sort of maintaining a minimum level in and around that $4 billion mark. We're fairly focused on it.

It's not a hard line by any means, but we have been above that for the last several years at this point. It's a level, given the scope of our business today, that we feel quite comfortable being at.

To your point, as the development pipeline continues to grow, we're complementing that by scaling our capital recycling as well. That allows us to be in and around that $4 billion mark and be very comfortable with our liquidity.

Sean Steuart

Okay. When you think about $4 billion, you've been there for a while now.

Your organic growth pipeline is expanded really rapidly. I would imagine there's sort of a dynamic element to this as the velocity of capital deployment changes for you guys, as the organic pipeline grows.

Is there other thoughts to that?

Patrick Taylor

No, I think it's fair that as the organic pipeline continues to grow, there'll be an element where we may look to increase that over time, but we're at a level right now whereas we look out over the next several years, we're quite comfortable at these levels. Part of it is just because of that visibility we see on accelerating recycling.

Sean Steuart

That's all I have for now. Thanks very much.

Operator

Our next question comes from Nelson Ng with RBC Capital Markets.

Nelson Ng

Great, thanks, and good morning, everyone. Quick question.

In terms of the 8 GW commissioned this year, I think about 2 and 1/2 were in North America. Obviously, there's a lot in the US.

When you look at developing projects in the US, are you still seeing any headwinds or bottlenecks from the federal government from a permitting perspective for onshore wind, solar? Obviously, it's a different story for offshore wind, but you're doing onshore, but are you seeing any headwinds there?

Conor Teskey

Hi, Nelson. Thank you for the question.

Really put this in two buckets. What we would say is when it comes to solar, which is the broadest component of our pipeline, solar and batteries in the US, we are seeing no slowdown.

We are seeing an acceleration. This is driven by solar is quick to deploy, it's cheap, it's the lowest cost form of production, and quite frankly, the corporates need the power as quick as possible.

On solar, we are seeing no change, if anything, an acceleration, and we're trying to pull projects forward as fast as possible. On wind, onshore wind, there has been some slowdown in permitting from the federal government, but projects are still getting done.

We've taken that into account into our development and execution process. That's reflected in the pipeline that we present.

I would say that wind is progressing slower than onshore solar in the US market, but both are still getting done.

Nelson Ng

Got it. Thanks for the color.

Then just switching topics a bit. Obviously, we're hearing a lot about the elevated power prices in the US, and the fact that you are signing more long-term hydro contracts.

When I look at your realized power prices for the US hydro segment in the supplemental document, I think the realized hydro price has been flat year-over-year at about $83. I'm just wondering whether that's just due to the generation mix given that it was below average in the past year, and should we be seeing an increase going forward?

Conor Teskey

You should see an increase going forward, and there's a lot of different dynamics that flow through those numbers. The overarching point to be made is the scarcity value of hydroelectric power is at an all-time high right now.

It perhaps gets glossed over in the breadth of our broader business, but the three contracts, three 20-year take-or-pay PPAs, inflation-linked with some of the largest corporates around the world from our perpetual hydro assets, we have never seen demand of that scale at the prices we have seen in I'd say the last year, but in particular in the last six months. As those contracts get layered in, some of those contracts don't start immediately, they start in a couple years when the existing contracts roll off, you will begin to see higher contracted power prices across our hydro portfolio.

Nelson Ng

Great. Thanks.

I'll try to squeeze in one more question. In terms of capital recycling, you guys mentioned that you have, I guess, a potential framework to sell an additional $1.5 billion to some existing buyers.

When you look at recycling assets, how much of the buyers are essentially repeat customers, and should that streamline your asset recycling process going forward?

Conor Teskey

Short answer, yes, but let me provide a little bit more color. Since we started to grow our development business, I would say in 2019 or 2020, our capital recycling activities have understandably grown on a similar trajectory, but probably on a three-ish year lagged basis, the time it takes to pull a project out of the ground.

As a result, over the past two or three years, our asset recycling proceeds have become a very consistent, recurring, predictable source of both funding and earnings for our business. Given the trajectory of our development activities and the visibility of our pipeline today, we would expect this activity to continue going forward, with 2026 being no different.

Then when it comes to the recent, we will call them frameworks we've set up in terms of asset recycling, similar to in the past how we have raised capital to facilitate a greater level of deployment into growth, we think about this as raising capital to facilitate a greater amount of capital recycling in the business. We're pretty excited about what we've designed and executed here, because what these frameworks, and we've executed one and we're pursuing others in different regions around the world that we would hope to execute in the near term, what we have done is we would say we have created almost a framework or a program to recycle newly built assets at scale quickly on a recurring basis.

The impact to our business is it significantly derisks our development platforms around the world and the business plans we're seeking to execute, and it significantly derisks our capital recycling and funding plans for our business for the next several years. I will go out on a limb and say I think this is going to be a huge differentiator for our franchise.

Yes, we've signed one since the end of the year, focused on North America, but we expect to sign others in the near term here, and these are very significant in terms of scale. Not only are they going to provide an accretive source of funding for our business, they significantly derisk our development activities that continue to grow.

Nelson Ng

Great news. Thanks for the color.

I'll leave it there.

Operator

Our next question comes from Robert Hope with Scotiabank.

Robert Hope

Morning, everyone. At the recent Investor Day, you spoke quite bullishly about the battery outlook, and I believe you've commented that it could be 7 gigs in a couple years, and today you're saying could be 10 gigs.

Is the accelerating development pipeline here or an increasingly bullish outlook here in part due to the fact that you're seeing larger opportunities? The 1 GW battery project with a sovereign wealth fund, is this indicative of where you think development is going, larger projects to ensure reliability for the grid?

Conor Teskey

Yes. Hi, Rob.

The short answer is yes. Make no mistake, batteries are the fastest growing part of our platform today, and we expect that to continue.

What this is really driven by is the simple fact that battery costs have come down so dramatically over the last decade. They've come down more than 60% over the last 24 months, and as a result, they are becoming a increasingly economic solution in more and more markets around the world.

This dynamic continues. Costs continue to go down, technology advances continue to be made, and therefore, we are seeing batteries as a potential solution in more and more of our projects and in more and more of our markets.

The other thing we would highlight is we do all at Brookfield Renewable think about battery development probably a little bit different than generation development, because it can be executed faster. Much of the equipment shows up pre-built on site, and because batteries and energy storage reduce grid congestion as opposed to add to it, there is significant incentive from grids to bring batteries online faster.

Therefore, yes, we have accelerated or increased our outlook for batteries, but it's very simply just a reflection of what we're seeing across our business. What we're doing with our sovereign wealth fund partner, we would expect to do other similar projects like that going forward.

Robert Hope

All right. Appreciate that.

Then maybe turning over to the M&A environment. You've been very successful monetizing assets, but on the other side, acquiring assets, what does that environment look like in a rising price environment as well as the power addition environment?

Conor Teskey

Perhaps I'll almost tie this back to Patrick's answer on funding a little bit. We've always been very opportunistic in terms of funding our business, and right now, we see scale capital as an increasing competitive advantage in today's market, and we see a very constructive market for deployment into growth.

This is why we took the decision earlier this year to strengthen our already very strong capital and balance sheet position, because we do believe we are at the start of a period of very attractive deployment into growth and M&A, and very simply, a broader consolidation of our space where we think we can play a very significant role.

Robert Hope

Thank you.

Operator

Next question comes from the line of Balte Sidhu with National Bank of Canada.

Balte Sidhu

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Conor, just given that renewable infrastructure valuations remain compressed, and you've noted a largely US-based development pipeline, where are you seeing the most attractive risk-adjusted opportunities today?

Is it operating assets, late-stage development, or early-stage platforms? How do you think that mix will evolve looking into 2026?

Conor Teskey

The opportunities we are seeing are pretty broad-based around the world, but perhaps to focus on a few themes that we are seeing right now, I would perhaps highlight three where we're seeing the greatest volume of opportunities that we view as attractive. Absolutely yes, public companies.

That would be number one in the current environment. The second point we would highlight would be carve-outs from broader utilities or energy businesses because there are such significant capital needs across the industry.

Market participants are needing to choose where they will allocate their capital budgets, and to put it bluntly, some market participants can't fund 100% of the opportunities they have at their disposal, and therefore, they may look to sell divisions that they don't expect to fund all the growth opportunities in, and that could be an opportunity with us given our robust capital position. The last point we would make is we are seeing a unique dynamic in the developer market where we are seeing a bifurcation between what we would call high-quality developers and maybe less high-quality developers.

High-quality developers price at an absolute premium in today's environment given the growth trajectory of electricity demand and the value of projects that can be pulled out of the ground. However, developers that maybe don't have scale capabilities to navigate the current environment, but do have large pipelines of projects, we are seeing more attractive pricing at that end of the market, and would expect to be active there in order to add projects to our pipeline that we can then contract with the demand we're seeing from our customers.

Balte Sidhu

Got it. Thanks for the color.

Just one more for me, just on the scale of hydro that you had alluded to and speaking towards the Google HFA, which could see you potentially acquiring additional hydro to facilitate the entirety of the 3 GW, what are you seeing in the market and how are you thinking about it just moving forward in that regard?

Conor Teskey

Sure. What we would say when it comes to hydros is it very much depends on location.

As mentioned, we've seen really strong demand for our hydros, and premium valuations both in contracts and in assets in markets in the US like PJM and MISO, and our activities in 2025 reflect that. However, what I would say is what we are seeing is the offtakers of these hydro assets increasingly looking now beyond those two markets, which have really been their focus, I would say, for the last two years.

Therefore, when we look to potentially acquire assets, we're probably looking for assets in these markets that have been viewed as non-core in the past, where we can acquire assets, execute operational improvement programs, and re-contract them under our framework agreements. The biggest point I would say is it's very location-specific.

Balte Sidhu

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Benjamin Pham with BMO.

Benjamin Pham

Hi, thanks. Good morning.

I wanted to ask a couple of questions. You mentioned the battery storage opportunity.

I'm curious a couple of things is the plan mostly greenfield development? You picked up a quite a number of megawatts from Neoen.

Or are there opportunities to also do M&A? Then, I'm also secondly curious the revenue model with storage for you specifically.

Is that, do you expect it to be mostly contracted or is there an element of merchant arbitrage in there?

Conor Teskey

Good morning, Ben. Great question.

In terms of batteries, we view ourselves to be in quite a fortunate position because we do have a very large organic development pipeline. A lot of that did come through the acquisition of Neoen.

Candidly, Neoen was the largest acquisition in the history of Brookfield Renewable. We recognized that perhaps a lot of people knew Neoen as a leading global renewable power developer.

We obviously saw that in the value of that, but we thought what was underappreciated in their business is the fact that they're the leading global energy storage developer as well. What you've seen in our first year of ownership is us really accelerating the growth in the business, but particularly on the energy storage side.

We are also looking at M&A opportunities in the battery space, but we've positioned ourselves that we can be quite discerning and balance the returns we're seeing in M&A versus the returns we're seeing in organic development. To your question about contracting, we're very excited about the evolution of what we've seen in the energy storage space where only perhaps two, maybe three years ago, a lot of the revenue models were arbitrage or merchant-related.

Increasingly, what we are seeing is long-term tolling or almost take-or-pay capacity contracts on newly built battery assets. Very simply as an example of the large project that Neoen is pursuing, that would be on a 100% contracted basis for the entire life of those assets.

A development and revenue profile very much in line with or potentially even stronger than what we do all day every day on the wind and solar side.

Benjamin Pham

Understood. Thanks for that.

Then, can I also ask on the offshore wind side? Previous comments, you didn't like it for a while, maybe 7, 10 years, you got maybe more open to it.

It did a deal for Orsted. Where does Brookfield stand today then on offshore wind?

Conor Teskey

Understandably, it would be very market-specific, but we are seeing some markets, we won't bury the lead here, Europe in particular increasingly more constructive from an offshore wind perspective, and we are evaluating opportunities in the space there. That being said, as with everything, we will compare the investment profile and the risk return we see in those opportunities versus what we see elsewhere in the portfolio, and only pursue them if we think we're being appropriately compensated.

Benjamin Pham

Okay. If I may, just a follow-up on that.

There's been maybe a trend of offshore wind assets as they reach end of contract life to become more merchant-like. Is that something that maybe Brookfield could opportunistically take advantage of?

Conor Teskey

Certainly, and in particular if we could bring our contracting to bear such that we could acquire those assets based on a merchant profile, but bring our power marketing capabilities to quickly derisk them through a new long-term contract. Yes, that's absolutely something we would look at.

We would be clear that we've seen a couple of those opportunities, but it's not the largest opportunity set in the world today.

Benjamin Pham

Understood. Okay.

Thanks, Conor.

Operator

Our next question comes from Anthony Crowdell with Mizuho.

Anthony Crowdell

Hey, good morning, Conor. Just a quick one, a follow-up maybe on the previous question or two questions ago on PJM.

Just several weeks ago, the Trump administration created that backstop auction, which is very light on details. I'm just curious if you think that plays maybe or pushes hyperscalers to focus more on Brookfield Renewable's development side where you bring a new generation in, or the company could be opportunistic with some repricing some existing generation?

Conor Teskey

Good morning. The activity and the announcements around PJM, we very much see this as simply a reflection of the demand for energy and quite frankly how tight the system has become, in particular in markets with the highest levels of energy demand growth.

We've been saying for years that the supply-demand imbalance has been growing materially, and this inevitable evolution leads to the immediate need for large-scale capacity to be added to grids around the world and in different markets in the United States. From our perspective, one of the most constructive outcomes of this discussion is that it should create a dialogue to facilitate an acceleration of new capacity coming online over the long term.

That's obviously incredible for the market, and it's incredible for our business given our large pipeline of development opportunities. All that being said, we've already contracted our hydro fleet in the PJM region with the recent Google agreement, which really insulates us from any near-term market impacts depending on how these discussions and announcements related to PJM evolve in the coming weeks.

As an existing generator with contracted assets today and a development pipeline focused on meeting the growing and incremental demand, we view this as a step towards addressing the underlying supply-demand imbalance in that market, and we view that as very positive for our business.

Anthony Crowdell

Great. Thanks for taking my question.

Operator

That concludes today's question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to Conor Teskey for closing remarks.

Conor Teskey

Great. Thank you, everyone, for joining our Q4 conference call.

We appreciate your continued support and interest in Brookfield Renewable, and we look forward to providing an update after Q1. Thank you, and have a great day.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating.

You may now disconnect.