Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining this conference call presenting Iren Group's results as of March 31st, 2026. The results will be presented by our Executive Chairman Luca Dal Fabbro and our CFO Giovanni Gazza.

At the end of the presentation, there will be the customary Q&A session. I will now hand the floor over to Luca to present the results of the period.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for being with us today. The Board of Directors, which met earlier today, approved the results as of March 31st, 2026, characterized by an EBITDA substantially in line with the previous year, while laying the foundations for the growth expected in the coming months, allowing us to confirm the 2026 guidance as we will see later.

The first quarter EBITDA performance also stands out for the sending of regulated and semi-regulated activities, which increased from 69% to 73%, up 4 percentage points, and for the achievement of synergy targets in line with the expectations of the business plan. Net financial debt, down compared to year-end 2025, stood below €4.2 billion thanks to a solid cash flow generation, which more than covered technical investments during the period.

Investments amounted to €190 million, up 2% compared to last year. Moving to the next slide, we analyze in detail the main financial and economic results.

EBITDA reached €380 million, in line with last year, driven by organic growth following investments made in regulated network businesses and renewable generation, contributing €4 million; the positive contribution from the optimization plan for waste material recovery plants, up €5 million, partially offset by landfills saturation; higher profitability in district heating, which, however, did not fully offset lower hydroelectric production and the slowdown in energy efficiency activities; positive results from the synergy plan, which contributed €4 million during the quarter; and increased competition in supply activities and the related normalization of margins. EBIT amounted to €212 million, down 5%, due to higher depreciation and amortization and increased provisions for bad debts.

Group net profit amounted to €129 million, down 5%, reflecting EBIT performance and a tax rate below 30%. Technical investments during the period totaled €190 million, up 2%, and are mainly allocated to water networks, waste collection, and IT projects.

Net financial debt decreased by €45 million thanks to the operating cash flow, which more than covered investments during the period. I will now hand over to Giovanni for a more detailed analysis of single business dynamics.

Thank you, Luca, and good afternoon to all of you from me as well. As usual, we begin with the results of the Networks business unit on page 4.

In the first quarter of the year, EBITDA increased by over 5%, driven almost entirely by the integrated water service, mainly due to organic growth up €3 million linked to investments made and the resulting increase in RAB. The overall business unit RAB reached nearly €3.5 billion, up 4% compared to the previous year.

Investments during the period amounted to €82 million and were in line with the business plan. They were aimed at improving service quality through network modernization and efficiency improvements.

Investments in electricity distribution showed a temporary slowdown compared to last year, which will be recovered during the remainder of the year. Regarding the Environment business unit on page 5, results were essentially in line with last year because, first, growth in waste collection activity was offset by higher personnel costs related to increases provided for in the recent renewal of collective labor agreements; second, WTE plants reported EBITDA essentially stable at approximately €30 million, slightly impacted by the extraordinary shutdown of the Poggibonsi WTE plant, which limited operations during this period; third, profitability recovery in waste treatment plants amounted to approximately €5 million.

This demonstrates the expected turnaround and the operational improvement of these assets. This also confirms the assumption of an incremental annual contribution of approximately €10 million.

The improvement in treatment plants was partially offset by the lower contribution from landfills due to their saturation during 2025. This trend also reflected in the decrease in waste volumes managed.

On the other hand, during the period, we obtained authorization to expand certain landfills, allowing for additional disposals of approximately 100,000 tons, and we expect to fully utilize these volumes by the end of the year. The Energy business unit on page 6 closed the first quarter with EBITDA of €112 million, down 4% compared to last year, mainly due to lower hydroelectric volumes and fewer energy efficiency projects.

Nevertheless, we benefited from increased renewable capacity. Looking at the various business lines in greater detail, renewables, hydroelectric and photovoltaic, recorded an EBITDA decrease of €10 million due to lower hydroelectric volumes, down 94 GWh, caused by reservoirs being practically empty at the start of the year because, unlike last year, scheduled extraordinary maintenance work was carried out and this resulted in empty basins at the end of 2025.

We also note the negative effects associated with the expiry of a significant portion of green certificates, down 30 GWh in the quarter and down 200 GWh over the year. These negative factors were partially offset by higher energy prices and increasing photovoltaic volumes thanks to the Noto photovoltaic plant, which has become operational and which, with available capacity of 20 MW, will also provide a greater contribution in the coming quarters.

Production for CCGT and thermoelectric plants was overall in line with last year. The merchant thermoelectric plant in Turbigo increased electricity sold by 7%, up 50 GWh, benefiting both from improved capture clean spark spreads and a greater number of hours with positive spark spreads.

In fact, we continued to observe clean spark spreads improving only during delivery periods, which does not allow us to implement a preventive hedging policy. CCGT production, on the other hand, was flat quarter-on-quarter as plant utilization during winter months is mainly linked to heat production.

The capacity market and balancing services market were in line with last year, contributing €24 million and €4 million, respectively. District heating benefited from an increase in unit margins, mainly related to positive hedging dynamics compared to the first quarter of 2025.

Today, the group manages more than 150 million cubic meters of district heating volumes, and we point out that during the first quarter, thanks to an effective commercial campaign, we increased connected volumes by 282,000 cubic meters, and acquiring volumes amounted to approximately 600,000 cubic meters, which will be connected to the network before the next heating season. Finally, as anticipated, energy efficiency recorded a lower level of activity due to the lack of extension of tax incentives for new energy efficiency projects.

We conclude the analysis of business units with the Market business unit on page 7, which reported EBITDA of €96 million, down 4% compared to 2025. This change is mainly due to the previously mentioned normalization of unit gas margins and a 1% decline in the customer base, which also impacted the reduction in gas volumes.

Increasing competition in the sector, which led to a net loss of approximately 20,000 customers in the last quarter, was addressed by implementing a more selective and value-focused acquisition policy. In particular, the group slowed down mass acquisition campaigns and especially reduced investments in web channels characterized by higher acquisition costs and higher churn rates, while continuing the development of physical branches both in historical and prospect areas.

The group currently manages approximately 1,450 direct and indirect points of sale and continues to focus on the high quality of customer service in support of customer retention to minimize churn rate. To analyze the elements leading from EBITDA to group net profit, we move to page 8, where we note an increase of approximately €9 million in depreciation and amortization due to investments made last year; higher bad debt provisions of approximately €3 million, mainly related to the Environment BU due to the transition for environmental hygiene service revenues from a tax collection by the municipalities to a direct billing by the group, which had direct effect on our credit; a stable cost of debt at 2.35%; a lower contribution from equity-accounted companies, down approximately €7 million; a tax rate that, despite the increase of the IRAP rate, remains below 30%; and finally, a reduction of approximately €2 million in minorities due to the lower results for certain companies.

This leads us to a group net profit of €129 million, down 5% compared to the same period last year. We conclude the financial analysis, as usual, with the evolution of the net financial position on page 9.

This position stood at €4,177 million, slightly down compared to year-end 2025. The €45 million decrease during the period is attributable, mainly, to solid cash generation, which more than covered investment cash outflows totaling €192 million in the quarter; second, to the disposal of a first portion of tax credits accrued under the Ecobonus scheme, and we note that by year-end, we will monetize additional Eco-Superbonus tax credits for approximately €7 million; third, to a seasonal decrease in net working capital.

However, we confirm expectations for year-end net working capital to increase by approximately €100 million, mainly related to growth in medium and long-term tariff receivables in the water and waste collection sectors. I now hand the floor back to Luca for the conclusion of the presentation.

Thank you, Giovanni. We conclude the presentation by looking ahead to the coming months.

Unlike last year, which was characterized by a very strong growth in the first quarter, this year's trend will be different. The first quarter, which, as we have seen, was substantially in line with last year, lays the foundations for the growth expected in the second part of the year.

In particular, the coming months will be characterized by the continuing growth trend of regulated and semi-regulated businesses; the recovering profitability of material recovery plants for approximately €7 million; the positive contribution from the energy value chain, especially in the second half; the continuation of the synergy plan already launched; the implementation of planned investments with increased allocation to water and electricity networks. Therefore, we confirm the guidance announced at the end of March, and in 2026, we expect a growth of 4% compared to 2025, technical investments of approximately €950 million, a net debt/EBITDA ratio which will be stable at approximately 3.1 times, and as customary for quarterly results, we provide an indication of group net profit expected to grow by 2% at year-end compared to 2025, including impacts arising from the Energy Bill decree.

We can now move on to the Q&A session. Thank you.

Good afternoon, thank you for this presentation. I have two questions.

On the credit side, you gave some data about the components of the growth, and the 4% results is considered useful and is a very important result for the EBITDA and the revenues. Can you give us a bit more bridge also on the quantitative sides on the components that will constitute the growth of 4% on the year and on net profits?

Power prices are a bit unhedged, can you give an expectation of what impact this can have on the remaining covers not made this year and also the power prices spark spreads? To conclude, we can see the improvement of treatment activities, which were not so good in the last report.

Can you please say us what is the expected trend on the treatment side for the next years?

Thank you very much. Yes, I would like to start by the covers to confirm that in 2026, we covered 70% of all renewable production.

We expect a renewable production of 2,500 GWh. We have 500 GWh that today are not covered.

At a variance of the price of €40/MWh, we have an increase of EBITDA of about €5 million. This is our position concerning renewables.

Concerning thermoelectric production, the coverage at the moment is very low as we already communicated in March because forward continue to foresee negative spark spreads. If we had to finance coverages, the margins will be negative.

We won't do that especially because in delivery, as you have seen also in our results for the first quarter, on the thermoelectric side, we have positive results. We will have to manage a situation of standard normal margins in delivery without having to do some coverages.

Concerning 2027, we foresee a growth also in renewables production from 2.50 to 2,200 GWh, and this will be linked also to the development of the photovoltaic plants. As you have seen, we have the Noto plant, and in 2026 also our other plants will become operational.

Today, we have covered 40% of this production and we did it at a value of about €100. We have an exposure of about 1,200 GWh on 2027.

The conditions for thermoelectric coverages are not there, especially not in 2027, because spark spreads are all negative. We foresee that if we won't be in a condition to receive these coverages, in 2026, we estimate about €3-€4/MWh because we see that thermoelectric plants are in demand, especially at some times of the day, and we also call some opportunities are that's to improve the positive hours.

With reference to treatment plants, you have seen an improvements of €5 million in the first quarter, and we foresee that this improvement will increase during the rest of the year up to a turn around of about €10 million. This will not be a linear growth, but €5 million in the first quarter and €10 million full year.

Coming back to the first question, where will the growth be focused in the second quarter, because also during the second quarter the dynamics will not be fully clear. This growth is due to the synergies.

As you have seen, we have €4 million in the first quarter, and we foresee €20 million in the full year. We have an organic growth linked to networks, but also to photovoltaic.

In this case, as we say, about €4 million for the full year. We also have the recover of the €10 million we were talking about before.

This is due to the dynamics of more marginality on more margins and in this supply chain, but also the capacity market, which in 2026 is forecasted to grow by about €15 million, it would grow from €85 to €100 million. The capacity market is a very important aspect of these margins, where we have full visibility.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Good evening and thank you for the presentation.

I also have some questions. The first one is about the consolidation and the potential consolidation in the energy business unit.

Recently there were some articles on La Stampa also mentioning Iren, presenting the potentials on the market. We are talking about over 2 million customers.

Without mentioning any names, my question was if you are interested at the moment in assessing some of these dossiers, and if you are interested in growing by external lines, with an existing portfolio of customers. This was my first question.

The second question is a clarification about the hedging in 2026. It wasn't clear the price.

I have seen a 70% of volumes, but I wanted to ask if you confirm the €105/MWh that you said it in the full year presentation for 2025. Also a clarification on hydroelectric production.

Despite the maintenance in the first part of the year, there is a weakening in the Alps in northern Italy also during the second quarter, and I wanted to ask an update on this point of view. You already said that you confirmed this GWh, but what is the possibility that this visibility will be a bit lower with regard to the target that you confirmed?

A last question on the Market business unit, on the organic side, not the acquisition side. Could you give us an update, because I have seen there is a 1% decrease in customer base compared to the year-end 2025?

Could you give us an update on the competitive side for Iren in the market? Thank you.

I will begin and I will then give the floor to Giovanni. About the strengthening of the energy supply, there are many dossiers on the table, both on the customer portfolio side that and on generation.

We are looking at all the dossiers because our approach is not to leave anything aside. Today, we have to grow a lot on the organic side, if we had to decide, first, we would look at the organic side and then on the non-organic lines.

We are looking at all the dossiers without leaving anything aside. I will go to the second question concerning our confirmation of the price for the coverage in 2026.

That's right, it's €105/MWh, and on 70% of the hypothesized production.

Concerning hydroelectric production, we have an important snow amount in our reference area, the plants in Piedmont. We are seeing that the meltdown of the snow is a bit late, the production could be postponed from the second to the third quarter.

On the year side, looking at the full year, our estimates are of about 1,200 GWh, and they are confirmed, also taking into account the rains that will come in the autumn. The filling of basins due to the snow gives us peace of mind regarding this forecast.

Concerning the customer base, we had a meeting concerning customer base, and about 20,000 customer this quarter, this reduction is focused mainly on the geographic side in the central and southern part of Italy, also because we decided to change our acquisition channels. The churn rate, and we foresee a customer base at the end of the year substantially stable compared to the one presented at the 31st of March.

Our churn rate is of about 36%-37%, we noticed a slight decrease compared to the first quarter of 2025. Competition, however, is noticeable, and as we said talking about the results of the first quarter, we decided to adopt a more selective commercial policy, considering also that the investments to acquire new customers on some channels are starting to be very high, and here churn rate is even higher than the one I communicated as an overall average for the business unit.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, thank you for the presentation. I also have a few questions.

The first one is on the renewal of electrical concessions. Could you give us an update about the current situation and the trends that you foresee for the next few months?

The second one is on the improvement of the EBITDA margins for the treatment plants. Can you give us an idea of the drivers for this improvement?

Is it in terms of efficiency, capacity, or final prices that make this business more competitive? Finally, I wanted to ask something on the plants that will become operational in the next quarter.

What are the percentages, and where in Italy will they be installed? Thank you.

Concerning the renewal of electric concessions, after the European Court expressed their opinion, the Piedmont region decided to open a bid for the first concession. We are assessing at the moment what we would like to do.

In the next few weeks, we will consolidate a decision about what we want to do. At the moment, there's just a tender concerning a plant in San Mauro, which is rather small, 8 MW.

We are monitoring the situation. We are discussing with the region.

We hope a solution on the fourth way that will allow operators to continue with the current managements, but also helping the local area in terms lower costs on bills. In Piedmont, we have a 7% production.

At the moment, this is a pretty liquid situation. Giovanni?

Yes, concerning the treatment plants, we have three types of treatment plants with different dynamics depending on the type of product. We have a pallet plant starting from the recovery wood and finalizes pallets, and this improves profitability because we will begin to produce a new line of blocks, and this will allow us to have of industrial efficiency.

We don't have an increase in prices because the market is in line with 2025, but we have some plants that will become operational, in particular the Gavassa plant in Reggio Emilia and in Santhià. We will have an improvement of incoming flows, and on the other hand, a reduction of the organic flows that now we have to dispose of in external plants because these plants are also functional to the flows that we generate with separate waste collection.

Then we have a third kind that is pertaining to plastic. The market, even after the beginning of the war, gave no important signal of increasing prices.

There is a high competition of countries outside the EU, but we have an improvement of 10% of prices also concerning plastics. Concerning the photovoltaic plants, we have a plant for 7 MW that will become operational, and this is located in the province of Reggio Emilia.

We have another plant of 8.5 MW that has become operational in the first quarter, but that still has no generated production, and this is located in the province of Bologna. Overall, about 60 MW will become operational over 2026.

They are all merchant plants with no incentives. In 2026, we won a tender for the photovoltaic plant in Rovigo for 150 MW, and this will become operational by the mid-2027, first quarter, first half of 2027.

Thank you.

Hello, good evening, everybody, and thank you for this presentation. I still have a few questions.

I would like to ask, first of all, I think about the business supply. I have the impression that the business in Italy is becoming more competitive.

Maybe the policies of customer retention will have to become more competitive. What are the dimensions that you are undertaking to face this competitiveness in market supply?

This was the first question. The second question concerns synergies.

You talked about €4 million synergies in the first quarter of the year. The target for the whole year is €20 million.

I would like to ask if you could give us an indication of where did these €4 million come from, and where will like to push in the next quarters to reach this €40 million of target? The last question concerning the estimates, I was surprised by the tax rate, which is lower than what I expected.

Could you explain us a bit better the tax rate and what should the tax rate be for the whole year? Thank you very much.

Yes, concerning the supply, we also see more competitiveness, and our reaction is to give presence to physical acquisition channels. This was a strategy that we began 3 years ago.

This brought us to 1,400 points of sales, both direct and indirect, and this is a channel where we have seen lower churn rates, lower acquisition costs, and so we managed to have an overall marginality, also considering the investment costs, and we have seen some improvements. Besides higher competitiveness that impacts customer base, we also had a reduction of margins, a normalization of about €6-€7 of margin a reduction of €6-€7 in margins in 2026 compared to 2025.

Concerning the synergies, we activated a cost management plan and a task force to support synergies. As you may remember, we have about €5 million in the business plan, and the €20 million foreseen in 2026 and the €4 million already reached are in line with a strategy of improvement of our efficiency, and they mainly concern projects about 50% concern projects on the network side, hydroelectric, gas, and electric energy, but also about €5-€6 million for commercial activities.

To answer the first question, we have competitiveness, but we are also trying to maintain the costs in our Market business units, and the Market business unit contributes to these €20 million for about 1/4. Concerning the tax rate, I will try to be very clear in explaining them, but if you have any further questions, let me know.

The tax rate is at 29.6% in the first quarter, and this is foreseen also for the full year. It also includes the additional 2% foreseen by the Energy Bill decree.

This new amount has an impact of 2.6% on the full-year base. Our group also has some recoveries that are very important in the tax calculation that were already made in 2025.

We had these recoveries, but we couldn't monetize these related taxes at 6% because the decree had not already become law. We had to follow the usual IRAP rate of 4% instead of 6-7%.

In 2026, we will have a negative effect of €7 million coming from this additional 2%. On the other hand, we will have results on the other side of about €5 million.

These were not foreseen in the 2025 budget, but will show their effects in 2026. To complete this clarification, I would also talk about 2027.

In 2027, we will have €7 million for IRAP, but we will also have a reverse effect, a negative effect of €5 million that are the positive side of 2026. To sum up, the results that the group will have in 2026 are about €40 million, but they are distributed in a nonlinear way, €2 million in 2026 and €4 million in 2027, because we will make recoveries at 6%, but in 2028, IRAP will come back to 4%.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, and thank you for the presentation. I also have a couple of questions.

The first one is related to hedging. You talked about the power generation, but I wanted to ask if you could give us more information about the supply side.

If I remember correctly, in 2026, you were almost entirely covered, but I wanted a forecast for 2027. Due to the increase in energy prices on the other side of the value chain, do you foresee any downsides, and do you have a sensitivity on this side?

Concerning data centers, we have seen that connection requests continue to increase. In your areas, you have a quota of the demand, I think, and also some available plants, for example, Turbigo.

Could you give us some more detail about how you will handle this niche of business? What is your approach?

A last question about the volumes of central heating in the first quarter. January was very cold, was it only a higher conversion on the electrical side in the first quarter?

Thank you very much.

Concerning the supply, to complete the hedging framework, I would like to start saying that we have a 70% variable and 30% of fixed. This is not a very high percentage of sales.

Our portfolio is a 70-30%. In this 30% of fixed, due to our policy, we have a coverage from 95% to 100%, we don't have a significant downside risk, and the coverages concern all the contracts for 2026 and 2027.

We minimize the risks of downside on the supply for at a fixed rate. Before giving the floor back to the President concerning data centers, I would like to talk about the volumes of central heating.

It's true that January was very cold, but February was warmer. We believe that the dynamics are also due to the war, to the anticipating increase of costs that in the concession dynamics may have brought to a flattening of the consumption.

I would like to stress that the volumes that are the structural indicator that are not linked to the progression of cold and warmer climate and to the momentary times were stable.

Thank you, Giovanni. Concerning data centers, we had many requests, for example, in Turin area for several tens of megawatts.

We are discussing about the plants in the areas of Turin and Parma-Piacenza. Our business model at the moment is of giving electric energy to data centers to recover the value.

We are not one of the best operators on this side because we have three best energy plants and one of the larger plants in Turbigo in Lombardy. We are discussing of this project with developers, and we would like to develop this project, especially in our area.

Thank you for all these questions and for your attention. We are available for further questions, and we would like to say goodbye to you and wish you a good afternoon.