Ladies and gentlemen, a very good morning to everyone joining us both in person and online. Welcome to Sembcorp Industries' first-half 2026 results presentation.

I'm Sinjin from Group Strategic Communications and Portfolio Management. Before we begin, may I kindly request that all mobile phones be switched off or set to the silent mode?

Thank you. Joining us on the panel today are our Group CEO, Mr.

Wong Kim Yin, and our Group CFO, Mr. Eugene Cheng.

There will be a question-and-answer session following the presentation. For those joining us online, please submit your questions via the Q&A box by clicking on the raise hand icon on the webcast page.

Without further delay, I will now hand over to Kim Yin to begin the presentation. Kim Yin, please.

Yeah. Good morning.

Welcome to SCI first-half 2026 results briefing. Let me begin with the key highlights.

For the first half of 2026, turnover was $3.8 billion, EBITDA $768 million, adjusted EBITDA $947 million. Underlying net profit was $369 million, and this translates into earnings per share of 20.7 cents and annualized group ROE of 13%.

We completed the acquisition of Alinta in June. We are showing the pro forma financials, and this illustrates the group's earnings profile with Alinta included for the full period of the first half.

On a pro forma basis, turnover would have been $5.6 billion, EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA would have been $1.2 billion and $1.4 billion respectively. Underlying net profit would have been $558 million, with earnings per share 31.4 cents and annualized group ROE at 19.1%.

The acquisition of Alinta broadens Sembcorp's earnings base and increases the contribution from integrated platforms with recurring cash flows. In line with our outlook for the full year, we are pleased to increase the interim dividend to 11 cents per share, up from 9 cents a year ago.

Allow me to take you through the performance of each of the business segments. First, under Gas and Related Services, for the first half of 2026, underlying net profit for the segment was $285 million.

Spark spreads were lower in the first half. This was partially mitigated by our contracted portfolio.

As of June 2026, 80% of Sembcorp's gas-fired generation portfolio, excluding Senoko's, is contracted for 5 years and above. Our overseas assets remain resilient.

In the Middle East, our operations perform well despite ongoing geopolitical tensions. We further expanded our platform in the Middle East through the 2.6 gigawatt Taweelah C Independent Power Project in Abu Dhabi.

Underpinned by a 21-year PPA and a strong contractual framework, the project will provide long-term earnings visibility and stable cash flows to our overseas portfolio. In the UK, earnings were lower following the closure of one of our industrial customers.

We are actively repositioning the Wilton site to capture new demand from data centers and digital infrastructure. Looking ahead, our 600 megawatt hydrogen-ready power plant remains on track for completion in the fourth quarter of this year.

This will enhance our generation capacity and the competitiveness of our generation fleet. During the period, we also secured a 150 megawatt long-term power purchase agreement with Micron, bringing our total contracted supply to the semiconductor manufacturer to 600 megawatts.

In addition, we announced an agreement to acquire 20% stake in Aster Power, where Sembcorp will be the sole gas supplier to the Aster facilities. Overall, Gas and Related Services remains well positioned, supported by our contracted base, integrated gas and power capabilities, and growing demand from AI-related industries.

The Renewables segment faced a challenging first half, with underlying net profit of $69 million. In China, generation hours experienced weak wind and solar resources.

Curtailment, lower tariffs, and the removal of VAT refund on onshore wind projects further impacted the segment. Our focus remains on disciplined execution and value creation within the portfolio.

India remains a bright spot with renewables. We have 3.6 gigawatt of projects with high tariffs secured in the pipeline.

Today, the group has a total of 6.6 gigawatts of renewable capacity under construction. As this pipeline comes into operation, it will strengthen the portfolio's earning potential and long-term value.

With a sizable operating base and a strong pipeline under construction, we are now well positioned to unlock greater value from our investments in the Renewables segment. To move on to Integrated Urban Solutions, the IUS segment delivered underlying net profit of $62 million in the first half of 2026.

This mainly reflects the absence of contribution from SembEnviro following its divestment in March 2025, partially offset by improved performance from the water business on stronger contribution from industrial water. Our urban business continued to expand its footprint and build recurring income.

In Vietnam, we secured six new projects, increasing the group's gross development land area to over 18,000 hectares across 31 projects, achieving our 2028 target well ahead of schedule. We are also growing our ready-built facilities portfolio.

Gross floor area has grown from 134,000 square meters in 2023 to over 1.1 million square meters as of June 2026. This will strengthen the base for recurring income moving forward.

Looking ahead, we expect a strong second half from higher land sales. In Kendal Industrial Park, Indonesia, 40 hectares of land sales have already been secured and are expected to be recognized upon handover in the later part of the year.

Within the water business, we continue to sharpen our portfolio and focus on areas where we see stronger returns. During the period, we completed the divestment of a municipal water in Qinzhou.

This is our second municipal water exit in China since December '25. As you can see, we remain focused on growing the urban portfolio and its recurring income, while optimizing our water portfolio to build stronger earnings base for the segment.

For Alinta, the acquisition of Alinta Energy was completed in June 2026, adding a high-quality integrated energy platform in Australia to the group. On this slide, we are showing Alinta's first-half performance to provide a clearer view of the strength and earnings capacity of the business.

Alinta delivered a strong first half, with underlying net profit increasing to $231 million from $101 million a year ago. This was supported by a high thermal fleet availability, and Alinta has the lowest cost generation base in all of Australia through its fleet of generation plants, particularly Loy Yang B coal facility in Victoria.

During the first half of '26, Alinta also strengthened its long-term gas position. It secured two new long-term gas supply contracts with Chevron and LNG Japan in Western Australia.

The business also benefited from strong portfolio management, capturing value through portfolio flexibility across generation and retail markets. Alinta's first-half performance reflects the strength of its integrated platform.

Looking ahead, its strong generation, retail, and development capabilities are expected to strengthen Sembcorp's earnings base, enhance recurring cash flows, and add further resilience to Sembcorp's diversified portfolio. I would like to touch on this growing wave, and some people call tsunami, of AI and data center demand.

As you all know, AI and data center growth is increasingly becoming relevant to our portfolio. New data center bids require both power supply reliability and a credible pathway to low-carbon energy.

This plays to Sembcorp's strength, given our integrated energy portfolio and the suite of lower carbon solutions. In Singapore, we are a trusted partner to data center and digital infrastructure customers, with over 1 gigawatt of power purchase agreement secured.

I'm pleased to share that, as the latest development, Senoko has entered into an arrangement with Micron for the development of a direct connection infrastructure. As Senoko and Micron, their facilities are next to each other in the northern part of Singapore.

This direct connection infrastructure is an important step for Senoko to support the power supply needs of Micron's advanced wafer fabrication facility, the current as well as future development. Other than Singapore, in the UK, our Wilton site provides a strong platform for data center development.

Phase 1, with 200 megawatts of data center capacity, is currently under planning. Wilton might be the only one, if not one of very, very few platforms that is able to deliver 280 megawatts by 2028.

Many players have land, but in order to secure power to the land, it will take them into the 2030s before the commissioning of any data centers that will come along. Wilton, in the UK, has a very precious commodity in the form of the powered land that's available by 2028 and in utility scale of 280 megawatts.

The site is very well positioned with immediate grid connection, ready infrastructure, as well as water availability. I spoke about Singapore and UK, and in Australia, Alinta adds a coast-to-coast integrated energy platform with 3.4 gigawatts of operational thermal and renewables capacity.

Generation, retail, and development capabilities position Alinta very well to serve growing AI-driven power demand. Closer to home, across ASEAN, we have established data center footholds in Vietnam and Indonesia.

In Vietnam, we received investment approval to develop a data center within Saigon Hi-Tech Park, very near to Ho Chi Minh City. In fact, it is in Ho Chi Minh City.

In Indonesia, we told you that Batam is an emerging location for data centers, supported by its connectivity to Singapore with submarine cable network. Across all these markets, we have got ready platforms that are able to capture the structural growth in digital infrastructure demand, leveraging on our existing power, renewables, and urban capabilities.

The second half of the year will start with a very positive note. For the Gas and Related Services, in July, it was a very strong month.

USEP prices in Singapore averaged $240 per megawatt-hour. This, of course, creates opportunities for our GRS team to capture value from the spot market.

This is, of course, markedly improved from the first half. Alinta also delivered a strong performance in July across both the East and West Coast markets of Australia during this peak winter period.

The business should continue to benefit from favorable market conditions as well as resilient customer growth. In India, our Renewables business also performed well, supported by higher wind resource across the entire portfolio.

These are all developments that underscore our confidence in the group's outlook for the full year. I want to emphasize on the strength of that confidence.

The board has supported us to increase our dividend to 11 cents despite a weaker performance in the first half. In recognition that our dividend payout is lagging our peer group, and it's part of this recognition to level up to our peer group in terms of the dividend payout moving forward.

I will now hand over to Eugene. He will tell you more about the financials and the details before we go into the Q&A.

Thanks.

Thank you, Kim Yin. Now if we move on to the first slide.

On an overall basis, all the factors that Kim Yin talked about flowed through right into our underlying net profit, which are purely on a reported performance basis. Our underlying net profit was down 25%, from $491 million to $369 million.

I think from a pro forma perspective, if we have seen what Alinta would have contributed to kind of show what a full first-half run rate would have been for us this year, right, that would have been $558 million. Now there are a few items below the underlying net profit to take note.

I think in terms of the DPN forex loss, the Indian rupee continued to depreciate slightly against the Singapore dollar, and hence a $57 million mark-to-market loss, markedly lower than last year, right. We did see the Indian rupee turn slightly in Q2 of this year.

Now the fair value loss on energy derivatives of $10 million, that's a purely mark-to-market as of 30th of June position of Alinta's hedge positions, not reflective of what cash flows had been as of 30th of June. Exceptional items of $152 million comprises $155 million of a transaction cost that is in relation to the acquisition of Alinta, offset by $3 million from a gain from divestment in the China water portfolio.

Now this $155 million is substantially all the costs really for the transaction. Now some of you may ask why is it lower than what was previously guided, which was closer to $190-plus million.

The reason was because in the previous guidance of the transaction cost, we have included in there the possible breakage cost of refinancing certain US private placement debt facilities. We were fortunate that upon the completion of the transaction, many of these US private placement debt investors actually saw the credit improve and hence were more than happy to stay.

That is a savings in terms of the transaction costs. Now if we move on to the next slide, I will go into detail in terms of group net profit impact.

Now for the Gas and Related Services as a segment, right, we did see a 14% or a $45 million decline year on year in terms of our net profit. Now you have seen from the earlier slide that for Singapore it declined by about $33 million.

The contributory factors of that is really a result of lower spreads from recontracting both across the Sembcorp as well as the Senoko portfolio through 2025 and coming into the earlier part of 2026. Now in general, our overall portfolio average spreads declined by about $8 per megawatt-hour to average around the low 50s.

Now we also saw a couple of things in the first half of 2026 that were some one-off gains, including cargo diversion gains that we were not able to realize in the first half of this year. Also, there was some gas cost increase in Senoko as a result of a gas curtailment, but that impact is small, probably we're talking about a $4 million type impact.

All this contributed overall to a decline of about $33 million from Singapore year on year. Now the UK saw a close to a $22 million decline year on year.

As guided at the earlier part of this year, we did see a loss of customers, petrochemical customers, and as a result, also a demand from them. We are working as Kim Yin talking about revitalizing Wilton for the use of AI as well as data centers.

We are looking into the second half to see if something will be realized, okay? Now for the rest of the world in the Gas and Related Services, we actually saw a $7 million improvement year on year across the different countries, coming from various factors: cost savings, efficiency gains, and so forth.

That's the Gas and Related Services segment. Now I'll talk about Renewables first.

Now the Renewables segment saw a decline of 48% or $63 million year on year. I think in the first half of this year, and you would have seen also the earnings announcements as well as profit guidance from pure renewables companies in China and also some in India, that one key element that was quite common across the renewables business was resource, right.

We did see a weak resource across both wind and solar across China, a little bit of India, as well as Southeast Asia. The impact of resource in the first half of this year actually saw a $40 million impact, close to $40 million impact of the $63 million that we talked about.

China basically saw close to a $30 million of that $40 million impact, okay. Specifically for China, we also saw a couple of other impacts.

One, we did talk about the VAT that was lost. It was a $12 million full year, $6 million of that came through in the first half.

In addition to that, we also saw a further $6 million impact as a result of lower market trading tariffs for the portion of the China portfolio that has to be put on market trading as a result of the move towards more market trading by the various provinces. Specifically for curtailment, it is rather mixed.

We did see curtailment improve for certain provinces, that includes areas like Guangxi, Yunnan, as well as Guizhou. We did see worsening in some other regions as well, particularly in Hunan, where hydro output was high and increased, hence there was increased curtailment across solar and wind, and also in Ningxia itself, where there was a one-off outage of a cross-province transmission line for inspection.

In the second bucket of curtailment impacts, at least at this point in time, it doesn't look like it's systemic. Now the northwestern part remains elevated and unchanged, curtailment remains high in the northwestern part of the country, right.

I think for India, there was some resource impact in the first half, particularly over wind, but as Kim Yin has highlighted, we did see a strong improvement of that in July. Now for our storage portfolio, right, which is largely centered around the UK, we did see batteries prices decline by about $5 million in the first half, driven, well, purely by supply and demand dynamics in the market.

Basically that accounts for the Renewables performance, and a big part of it is really due to resource in the first half, okay. For Integrated Urban Solutions, net profit declined by $16 million.

Of course, Sembwaste no longer contributes, so that in itself contributed to a $10 million decline. Now Urban saw a $4 million decline year on year, but that is really contributed by a delay in the recognition of KIP's 40 hectare of land sales.

Now again, in the first half of this year, we did see more rainy days, and hence the land preparation and the resettlement was a little delayed. I'm very happy to say that we have completed the handover to the customer and we have booked that earnings in August.

It will be booked in August, and that's about $11 million. See it as $11 million which would otherwise have been booked in the first half essentially moved into August.

All in all, IUS, apart from some timing of land sales, no real surprises there. I'll talk a little bit about Alinta.

We closed the Alinta transaction on 11th of June 2026, hence not any meaningful recognition. I think it's important to note that the first-half performance was strong, right.

We saw $231 million contribution from Alinta in the first half on a full-half basis, which was a meaningful growth year on year. Now it's important to note that from the $231 million, $100 million of that is really from optimizing our green certificates portfolio, right, against a certain offtake, and it will not be repeated in the second half, but we do have visibility of these optimization opportunities into 2027.

Decarbonization Solutions, essentially we did see our losses narrowed by $5 million, and that is really driven through a tighter cost control. From a corporate perspective, interest cost increased slightly, $3 million.

That is really for the purpose of funding the acquisition of Alinta in June. Our overall corporate costs, we did tighten by $6 million, which a result of a tighter cost management as well.

In terms of other business, which really comprises our specialized construction business as well as the mint business, it declined slightly, but this is really as a result of the timing of a percentage of completion recognition of the projects that the specialized construction management business is operating. All in all, those are the key segmental operational updates in the first half that really explains the results.

Now moving on to our group capital expenditure, we have significantly tightened capex and investment spending, excluding Alinta, where we did $257 million of capex and investment spend in the first half of 2026 relative to $567 million the year before. Of course, the equity payment for Alinta was close to $4.4 billion Sing that flowed out in June of this year.

Now when we move over to free cash flow, okay, this, which is the next slide, this is the slide where I have to go into some details in terms of reconciliation, okay. Now I have to talk about some numbers to put first half '25 and first half '26 on a like-for-like basis, okay.

In first half '25, we reported a free cash flow of $1.3 billion. Out of that $1.3 billion, if you look in the cash flow statement, you will realize that $383 million of that is really proceeds from the sale of Sembwaste.

If you remove that, our first-half free cash flow would have been $930 million, okay, $930 million for the first half of 2025. Now if we look in the first half of 2026, our free cash flow were impacted by three key events.

Number one, Alinta's transaction cost, $155 million, so that clearly wasn't incurred last year. There was also $80 million of a prepayment in relation to Taweelah C for the commencement of a project that sits in working capital.

Of course, that will reverse itself out later. Then in terms of our deferred payment note receipts, there was a slight delay in the funds flow, about $19 million of that will flow into Sembcorp in August this year rather than in the May-June period.

When you adjust the free cash flow of 373 of all that, you will end up at $700 million. The difference of 130 $130 million of a first-half free cash flow, you will notice that it would tie in roughly with the underlying net profit decline, of which, as Kim Yin mentioned earlier, we do expect the second half to be stronger.

When we look at the group borrowings, our net debt right now sits at about $13.9 billion, and it increased by about $6 billion. Most of it is a result of the acquisition of Alinta, the equity purchase price as well as consolidating Alinta's net debt.

We also continue to deploy capital for the completion of CCP4 and also the execution of our ongoing pipeline in SGI, which is our India renewables. Now it's important to note that we have reported our net debt to adjusted EBITDA on a first-half pro forma basis.

What does that mean? We took our first half, including Alinta for the full-half run rate, but of course we excluded roughly 100 million of the LGCs gain from Alinta, because we do not expect that to be repeated in the second half.

On an annualized basis, that comes up to a net debt to adjusted EBITDA of 5.3 times, which is roughly expected as a result of the completion of the transaction. Now we remain very confident that with the continued cash flow as well as some growth expected in Alinta, the delivery of a CCP4 going forward, as well as continued development of the pipeline in India, as well as a possible capital recycling exercises, we will deleverage in the coming years to come.

Now in terms of the group debt profile, I think from a debt maturity profile, it hasn't changed a lot, right. You will notice that our weighted average debt maturity actually have improved slightly in spite of a rolling forward one quarter and funding from Alinta.

Also our weighted average cost of debt came down from 4.5% to 4.3%. That was because in raising the financing structures and debt for Alinta, we have achieved a very attractive metrics.

The weighted average cost of debt for the funding of Alinta's acquisition was 3.4%, and the weighted average tenor for the Alinta funding package was about 6.6 years, okay, very strong financing metrics. Now you will notice that our hedging profile has come down from the 70-ish percent down to a 57% fixed.

Now that is because in the funding of Alinta, about $1.6 billion of that, we are now using a 2-year revolving credit facility at very low cost. That in itself is close to about 1 1.5% in terms of interest cost.

The reason why we did that was because, with this RCF, we would be better able to strategically tap the different types of markets, whether it is the bank market or the long-term bond market, to term out that 2-year RCF, right. I think in addition to that, if we have a 2-year runway to term it out, it also give us the opportunity to reduce that $1.6 billion through paydowns.

We may not need the full $1.6 billion in the long-term permanent debt, which are obviously, on average, would be at higher cost. That is the strategy that we chose to take.

In short, it simply means that the 57% fixed ratio, ceteris paribus, or else equal, you would expect that to increase as we term out the $1.6 billion 2-year RCF. All in all, we are very pleased that we achieved very, very competitive terms as well as the cost of financing for the acquisition of Alinta, which is also testament of the financiers' view of the asset that we acquired led by a very strong management team led by Jeff.

The last one is to talk about group liquidity. Our cash and equivalents have increased as a result of the consolidation of Alinta, and our unutilized committed facilities also increased from $2.5 billion to a $3.6 billion.

More than ample liquidity across the whole group. Now I'll talk a little bit about the outlook.

The outlook statement in itself, I wouldn't read it. I leave it to you to read it in itself.

I will talk about the different segments in greater detail. For the Gas and Related Services, I think we know the first-half 2026 backdrop, right, where we saw weaker performance because of lower recontracted spreads and certain gas curtailment, and also UK market softness.

As we head into the second half of 2026, directionally, we expect second half of 2026 to be meaningfully higher than the first half. Now there are three key areas to take note.

Number one, as we will have higher levels of retail and vesting contracts that will be generating in the second half compared to the first half. These are also contracts with slightly better spreads, okay.

Secondly, we do see portfolio optimization opportunities. As a result of occurrences of the first half, we do have some excess gas in the second half.

With the additional capacity that the CCP4 presents, we see the opportunities of potentially optimizing that gas. By optimizing that gas, it could be a sale of the gas or it could be generating that gas into the pool.

Of course, we have to see what gives us implied spark spreads. Of course, the third thing is CCP4 significantly more efficient, you would see improvement in the spark spreads simply by heat rate efficiencies.

Gas and Related Services. I think for Alinta in the second half, well, okay, back to Gas and Related Services, Kim Yin has also highlighted, I think we also had a strong July month driven by a strong USEP outcome, and we did see some pool gains.

Now for Alinta, for the second half, you will have 6 months of contribution. The performance will largely be supported by pretty favorable operating conditions and also our resilient customer book, right.

In July in itself, Kim Yin also highlighted we see trading performance across both West Coast as well as East Coast. At this point in time, I'm still holding on to the $100 million contribution in the second half for Alinta.

Then for the Renewables segment, I think in the second half, performance is always seasonally lower than the first half, right. I think we will also continue to execute the growth pipeline.

Of course, when you look at the schedule, we are not expecting a lot of capacity contribution coming through in the second half. The only point that I would note for the second half of 2026 is that we continue to watch closely the resource situation.

I think that potentially would still be a possible resource uncertainties, although in the month of July, factually, we did see both wind and solar resource improve against our expectations. We will have to continue to monitor how possible resource variations could take place in the next 5 months.

For Integrated Urban Solutions, we certainly expect higher land sales simply by the timing of land sales. We have a clear visibility in terms of the pipeline that's underpinning the order book for the land sales.

As mentioned earlier on, we have already confirmed the recognition of close to $11 million as a result of the completion of the 40 hectares of land handover in KIK. I think that completes my report in relation to the first half of 2026.

The key note is that we do expect the second half to be meaningfully stronger than the first half, and July did show the green shoots of that. Thank you, and open for Q&A.

Thank you, Kim Yin and Eugene. We will now proceed to the Q&A session.

For those in the room, please raise your hand and a microphone will be brought to you. Kindly state your name as well as the organization that you represent before you ask your questions.

Again, for the online participants, you can enter your questions in the Q&A box by clicking on the raise hand icon on the webcast page, and we will address your questions during this session as well. Siew Ki, please.

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.

My first question is current spot spark spread have spiked. Has this been mainly driven by the force majeure?

If yes, when do you expect spot spark spread to be normalized?

Okay. Chaba, need crystal ball like this one.

Now, just kidding. No, I think, Siew Ki, at least based on what we are monitoring, we know that the USEP, it's always driven by marginal cost of SRMC, right, and the key SRMC of course is JKM.

I think, for many of you who have interacted with me, post-March up to May-June last year, the issue was the JKM has no conviction, right? It increased up to $18, and then next thing it comes back down, 15, 14.

I think through July, what we saw was a pretty firm JKM outlook, $20, $21, and it remained that way, and that really drives the USEP outcome. I think the reality is that it is hard to say, right, how that will hold out for the rest of the year.

If you look at the forward curves, it seems to suggest that normalization of that is really post 2026 into 2027. Again, those are forward curves.

It can change. I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that we are seeing firmness in the JKM market, but of course that situation could change, lah.

Yeah. The forward curve, however possible changes that it can happen, that's the best you can go with,

huh,

right? Today, you look at forward curve, it has firmed.

People can offer all kind of reasons why, right? Compared to the Ukraine situation, where suddenly there was a shortage and then prices spike up, this time round, because of preparation, many economies are able to draw on their storage, right?

Maybe it has gotten to the point where some of this storage is being used up, maybe, right, or it may be that the people are already factoring in that this situation in the Middle East is going to drag, right, on, off, on, off, and because of that, they start to price it into the gas prices. If you remember, when we first looked at this, we were actually quite surprised that it didn't go the way Ukraine did, right?

Now, I think that the forward curve is the best way to think about where the market is heading, huh, right? I don't think we can sit here and have a crystal ball and tell you that it's going to stay there forever, but we also cannot offer any reasons why, but I was just trying to suggest some of the conventional wisdom.

You ask AI today, he will tell you that, oh, look, you used up the storage. All that chewing up a lot of time, I was just trying to say that we do think that this time it could last at least for a short while, lah, right?

It probably will last, because there's no good reason for it to come down also. The demand is actually quite firm, and you can see new demand coming through over time.

With demand holding out and the main factor being the supply, and if the supply-side dynamics doesn't look like there's any possibility that the things will just dramatically improve from a supply side, then the forward curve should hold out.

Thanks. Then just on the new plant coming in, which month will it come in?

It will be early part of end Q3, early Q4, yes. It's already connected to the grid.

It is already generating power, and we're already clocking revenue, but it will be coming on progressively ramping up, lah, right? Of course, we would want to do more of that sooner than later, but it is already connected to the grid as we speak.

Okay. Just have two more questions before I jump back to the queue.

Just on that itself, if you use your crystal ball again, next year, we have so many new plants coming in. How do you actually manage to rationalize your old plants or optimize your overall portfolio so that the market is rational that the spot spark spread don't come down, because there are so many plants that are coming in?

I think what we have explained in the past is that with the portfolio, right, we're not just going to pump all the electrons from that new plant in addition to the old plant into the system, right? What we have is a portfolio of customer contracts.

We are using the more efficient plant, the new plant, to substitute out some of the less efficient plant to serve the customer. In so doing, then customer contracts don't change, right?

Then if you are able to burn less gas, you actually make money. That's one effect.

The other part of it is, of course, we told you about contracting strategy. With the bigger fleet of plant, then that gives us the opportunity now to contract more aggressively, right?

The contract portfolio, we are continuing to pursue that, and then over time, the market share would then reflect the increase in the new plant. What I'm trying to explain is that please don't expect that 600 megawatts of plant get commissioned, then suddenly our revenue goes up by 600 megawatts.

It's not going to happen that way. What we're doing is using our fleet of plant and repeating myself, to serve our customer portfolio, and this customer contract portfolio will grow over time into the near future.

We feel actually pretty good about it. Net-net, there will be on the fringe additional revenue, as I told you just now.

We're already connected to the grid. For this second half of the year, earlier, we were thinking maybe it's October, November full commissioning, right, and for purpose of financial projection, we started adding numbers into the budget for October, November, but we are clocking some of that revenue even as we speak, taking advantage of the plant being connected and taking advantage of the higher USEP in the market in the meantime.

It's true. You okay with that?

CFO always wants me to be Mayank, is it?

Mayank.

Yeah. Mayank from Morgan Stanley.

Kim Yin, first question for you at a portfolio level, 40% of your book value now sits in renewables, and obviously it's been a struggle for the last 1.5, 2 years now for you. How are you thinking about capital deployment in renewables?

Because even in the first half, large part of the capex went into there ex-Alinta. Is there a rethink around capital allocation in renewables in itself?

I think a related question on China: you said some of that capacity is now in the market on a spot basis. What percentage of your China renewables is now on spot?

Okay. I will ask Eugene to help me out with more details on the capital, but capital allocation is a reflection of your strategy, right?

The short answer to your question is, yes, the way we allocate capital is constantly adjusting. When we see better opportunities, it will naturally attract the bulk of the capital, right?

Alinta was the big opportunity in front of us in the last year, we shifted. Yeah.

It's very clear how we allocate capital in that space. Renewables from a business, a longer-term business perspective, we call ourselves energy transition player.

We believe that each of this sources of energy will continue to have a place in the energy mix of the customer. Customer, broadly speaking, could be countries and grids.

Renewables will continue to have a place in many, many energy mixes, yeah. You saw what happened in the Middle East and so on.

Everybody has some sun, everybody has some wind, there will be that desire to deploy assets in order to capture some of these. Renewables is a place in which we will continue to be looking for opportunities.

Now that we have had a portfolio, right, we got Singapore, which is where we're very strong, right, and frankly, please don't repeat to regulator, we almost the only game in town. 60% of what's going out there is generated by us.

China, we got a lot of experience, not doing well at the moment because of all the reasons that we explained to you, but India, we have a very strong team as well, right? We are then in a very good position now to capture those opportunities that will come along, the better ones.

I'm trying to paint a picture that renewables will always be there. We have a good position.

We will leverage on our good position to capture better opportunities among them, right? You can use the word selective, but selective might suggest very, very careful, but I'm saying in the context of your capital allocation question, we're looking for the higher margins.

Yeah. That's why we say that, look, in India, we continue to feel good, because our portfolio of projects that are coming online, what we call pipeline, those are secured, they're all in hybrid projects, where the margins are higher.

We're comfortable with that. Then in terms of moving forward of capital allocation, I spoke about renewables, but I also want to touch on gas and related.

We continue to think that gas and related this season and I'm talking about 5 years, 7 years, 8 years will continue to be very high in demand, because this is the one fuel that is reasonably clean and yet able to provide very reliable power to meet this tsunami of demand coming from digital infrastructure, and we're seeing that in Singapore, as I told you. We're seeing that in the UK, right?

People are coming to us. In a way, Wilton, the chemical customer exiting, at that time, we were all gloomy and all that.

Vipul, sitting in front, he went there so many trips to try to fix things, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because it compel us to quickly pivot. In that process, then suddenly we realize, we are the only site in the UK that can do 2028.

The players who want to do fast, and of course, if you talk to any data center people, they say, 'I want it yesterday.' Position us in a very good position to cement that relationship.

Gas, coming back to capital allocation again, renewables, there will be allocation. Gas and related, there will be allocation.

We will be directing it I know it probably not the answer that you will be looking for, but it's a generic answer to say it will be chasing the higher-margin project, as simple as

that.

I think the second question on the proportion of the China portfolio that is now spot, right? Now, back in 2024, we were around 15% or so, right?

You all forgot that. I did guide the market that our expectation is that all the province will start moving more and more.

Today, almost around 50% of the portfolio is a spot really. They are accelerating that move.

That number should remain around that 50% range going forward, or you think a larger part will go into that? [unclear] No, I was just saying that will that 50% now ramp up closer to a bigger number as you kind of

Revenues are roughly about 50/50 split between the spot and secured.

That should remain around the same range going forward?

It will increase over time, right?

It will increase. Okay.

Yeah.

I think the second question was Alinta. While you had some very, very good quarter compared to your peers, especially AGL and Origin when you look at their numbers as well, but your net profit is still near breakeven, correct, if you look at first half.

Question was more in terms of what did you guys do differently at the Alinta level versus the peers? Second thing is when we can see some ramp, or if you can just give us a bit of an idea below the EBITDA line items around Alinta.

Mayank, can you repeat that part? What you were saying that the breakeven, what was

the Alinta, if you look at the net profit, was around $5 million for the

Oh, no, no, no, Mayank. $5 million is because we complete the transaction on

Only just because of that. Got it.

Otherwise,

what would be the Yeah. The full first-half net income of Alinta was 200 and 30 $238 million,

Mayank. That was the run rate.

Got it. Yeah.

Yes, yes,

yes. The reason why we show the full first half so that you know the run rate, but the $5 million was because we only complete on 11th June, yeah.

Otherwise it's the normal run rate, then. Got it, yeah.

You gave me a scare.

You scared me. I was like, 'You stumped me,' I said.

You stumped me.

Yeah. Then run rate is fine.

On the EBITDA line, the numbers were pretty good, correct, in the first half versus the peers. Is there something that you can kind of give us an idea around, especially on the West Coast, the numbers were pretty good.

Sorry, East Coast, sorry. Anything you want to

Maybe it's an opportunity to introduce Jeff Dimery. He's sitting right here.

Let's have Jeff to give a little bit of a synopsis as to how you deliver superior results.

Yeah. Thank you, Kim Yin.

I think the first point I would make, if you're looking at AGL and Origin, they don't have nearly the same exposure that Alinta has to the West Coast of Australia. Obviously, they've commented on the market conditions in the East Coast where we're seeing a decline in forward prices, etc., at the moment.

I would contrast that with the West Coast of Australia where we're seeing record prices. We do have quite a bit of exposure there and we're performing very strongly in that space.

On the East Coast of Australia, Kim Yin and Eugene both mentioned our play around the renewables market around the certificate contribution from the LGC. As Eugene pointed out, we have that same opportunity in 2027.

That will come to an end. It's part of the previous legislation around how we can I guess bank renewable certificates, and that scheme ends in 2030, it won't be ongoing.

Having said that, what I would say, and I note that the CEO of AGL also said this: when you look at the East Coast market and the outlook in Australia, today, the market prices are well below a new entrant level. We don't think that they're sustainable where they are or we'll get no new investment in capacity into the market.

I say that against the backdrop, which is a global theme, we're seeing exceedingly strong demand for data centers. We're seeing an enormous push now into the electrification of vehicles off the back of what's happened in the Middle East.

I guess the outlook we're saying is that prices are quite subdued on the East Coast, but as we look forward, with demand rising, we will need new capacity, and right now, the signal's not there. We expect, and I think our peers would equally expect, to see a forward change in market conditions in the not-too-distant future.

Having said that, the last point I would make is that whilst you are seeing declining forward curves relative to where it's been historically, we've been pretty well hedged. We are insulated to an extent both today and for the short-term future in our portfolio management, we're not anticipating, as I think the guys alluded to, we're very comfortable with balance of calendar year and what the contribution's looking like.

Thanks, Jeff. In a nutshell, at the risk of repeating, we are guiding that the second-half 2026 contribution from Alinta in terms of net profit to the Sembcorp group will be $100 [million], right?

That's not changing. Yeah.

Usually, the first half is slightly stronger, right? The full year will be 220, 230 type number if we were at 1st January today guiding 2026, yeah.

That's, just to be clear, that's the number. In terms of the underlying fundamentals in Australia, we are optimistic even though it is a merchant market, right?

First, Alinta has a big retail portfolio that it is hedged. Maybe not 15 years, 18 years like what we can get in Singapore, 2, 3 years, but it is a retail portfolio that is also quite sticky, yeah.

The other part of it is that Alinta has got low-cost generation, right? That underpins its stability, its competitiveness in terms of keeping customers and in terms of locking in margins, yeah.

The other thing is that Alinta has the East and West Coast market. In the West Coast, they are dominant, right, and they're also very strong in the gas market.

Then in where the market is heading, demand is growing faster than all the planners have expected. That's the first thing.

We all know that in a place like Australia, if you want to plan new plants, it will take time, right? Even in the past, supply has trouble catching up with demand.

Now with demand going up faster, the supply is actually under a lot of pressure. In terms of market outcome, that's good reason to be optimistic, right?

The macro is there, demand versus supply; the micro, in terms of the business, low-cost generation, the strong position, good management team. That's why we quite comfortable that this recurring cash flow and recurring income portfolio that will really enhance the resilience of the Sembcorp portfolio.

That's that. I want to also add a little bit more to the earlier question on capital allocation between renewables, gas, and so on, right?

Of course, IUS is IUS. We already laid out the plan what we're doing.

We're recycling capital. We're selling some of the municipal water and so on.

We sold Sembwaste, right? Then in the meantime, we are allocating capital to build recurring cash flow, ready-built factories and all that in Vietnam, where we have got good access to good locations and good land.

We're building up the land bank. That part of it, there's allocation.

Then in terms of gas, we spoke about that. Then renewables, I just want to add that really we'll continue to chase after the good margin projects.

Where we think we would have the opportunity in terms of geography is, first, India, right? As I told you, we have a good team.

We have a good portfolio that's currently being developed, but we will be chasing more, but we will be conscious about chasing the good margins. The other one is Australia, right, because again, the fundamentals I described to you just now, and to the extent Alinta is in a position to build renewable portfolio to complement their existing fleet of gas as well as coal power plants in order to serve their customer better, to create optionality for their portfolio trading and optimization, those are areas that we would invest in, right?

That's just to add an additional geographic dimension to the capital allocation question. Hornghan, is it?

Joy first, second row. Yeah.

Joy from HSBC. Thanks for taking my question.

First, if we can go back to spark spread. I think, Eugene, you mentioned average spark spread came down about $8.

If I look at your pies, I think there's a fair chunk at Senoko has already being repriced. How much more downside do we have on your current spark spread?

That's the first question. Second, on dividend.

You're alluded to increasing dividend. Shall we take your first-half payout as a full-year payout?

Or should we look at the percentage of growth as an indication to full-year dividend number? Thank you.

Now you're drawing a reaction from me. I answer the second question first.

He answer the second first, then I

If we going to stop at 11, you can take this company private. No, right?

First half is 11, last year's first half was 9, right? Last year's full year was 25.

I want to be very careful in my words, because I was given a specific mandate what I can say, what I can't. First, we recognize that we lack our peer group internationally as well as domestically.

Domestically, if you look at it, the numbers draw off my tongue: ST Engineering payout ratio, 80-some percent; Keppel payout ratio, almost 70%; the banks' payout ratio, DBS is, we know what they are. I think UOB more than 100%.

We lack our peer group. Peer group, today any investor coming to Singapore will look at the stock exchange and then they say, 'Where do I put my money?'

right? Then if Sembcorp is lagging the peer group by so much, of course we're the first one to be sold, if they have to pull their money.

If we want to attract capital to come into our stock, we have to increase our payout ratios to at least be at par with our peer group, right? That is something that we recognize, right, that we are lagging.

Now, if you see in the last few years, our behavior, it has been a steady increase from 24 23, 24, 25, and now 26, right? The short answer to your question, no, it is a half-year payout, right?

If I was an investor, I would extrapolate the full-year payout with also an increase in the second half, right? Because that is in the backdrop of what I told you what we recognize, that we're lagging our peer group, right, and that we think that's one aspect to it.

The other aspect is that we feel that we are actually very comfortable doing this in terms of that increasing the payout ratio, which we are very committed to. Why?

Because the underlying business and the cash flow is very strong. Eugene will be able to show you scenarios whereby even if net profit doesn't perform as we expect it to grow, we'll still be delevering quickly back into the 3 times, 4 times debt-to-EBITDA range in 3, 4 years' time.

We're very comfortable with that. Because of that, then the cash flow other than investing activities, returning it to shareholders through dividend is also an important signal to the investor community.

Short answer, it's only for half year, 11 cents, and we recognize we are lagging peer group, we're committed to increasing our payout ratio. The only thing I fall short of saying is to tell you what is the target, lah.

At that time

Just to clarify, I guess what I'm trying to say is 11 cents is about 53% payout on the underlying profit for first half. Can we extrapolate that ratio?

I think for this particular year on a non-pro forma basis, not unreasonable. Okay?

I think historically how you have seen we have done it, it's if it's a year of dividend increase, we like to think of it of increasing both first half and second half also, and we also distribute our targeted increase for the full year accordingly, lah, right? I don't remember the numbers, Eugene.

In 20 20 2025, First half was 9, right?

9. That's right.

2024 first half was what?

First half was 6.

6.

Yeah.

Okay. Then 2025 second half was what?

Second half was 16. Yes.

That's right.

Then 2024

What's that? 13?

13. Okay.

Sorry, I don't have the slide to show you that, but I'm trying to show you there's a track record you can go back and There is a certain pattern that we do this. We tell people we are committed to steadily increasing it, as opposed to increasing it one round, lah, right?

Somehow many people feel that steady is always better. I happen to be a little bit on the other side of the camp, but it doesn't matter.

More importantly, we're comfortable with sustaining it, even while we delever. That's very important.

Sustaining and increase. When I talk about sustaining, I'm talking about sustaining and increase.

I'm not talking about sustaining at this level. Sustaining and increase while we delever, right, because the cash flow supports that.

I don't want to belabor that point. Let's focus on the season today.

It's 11 cents. It's 2 cents more than what it used to be.

Then year end, we expect to be able to sustain the growth. Thank you, Joy.

You had a second question.

Spark spread.

Oh, spark spread. Now Senoko, we left about 20%, right?

Of course, it's 20% for recontracting. A lot of it has been negotiated already.

Now, of course, we don't expect this to be as high as historical, lah. We're quite happy that the spark spreads that we are landing at is better, lah.

It's better than the start of the year. Remember we were struggling around 30, 35 earlier on, but certainly for this it will be better.

I think in the past, we have told our stakeholders that our portfolio-wise, in terms of contracted portfolio for Sembcorp, we're sort of in the more than $50 range, lah, right? Now with the market, the spot spark spread being closer to between $60 to $90, it also present the opportunity to go and lock in better quality, better price, better margin contracts, albeit for the short term, lah, right?

The longer term, if this sustained, then again, there may be the opportunity then to locking in long-term contracts, huh? The last month or two gave us a lot of confidence that things are turning.

Thank you.

Hornghan Low, is it?

Yeah.

Hi. Good afternoon.

Hornghan Low from CLSA. I just want to ask one question with regards to the importation of renewables from Malaysia to Singapore.

Is there a PPA contract for this? If there is, what are the returns should investors expect?

To conclude this would be in terms of cannibalization of existing demand, should we see more of this renewables importation coming to Singapore, would this partially, to some extent, cannibalize the existing demand coming from gas-fired power plant? Thank you.

Depends on price. When it lands, what is the price, huh, right?

At the end of the day, customers are selective based on price, huh. The import today, you have to factor in the generation cost as well as the transmission cost, because transmission, undersea cable, even if you bring it from Peninsular Malaysia, there's still a short distance of undersea cable.

Then in between the governments, they need to negotiate what is the toll, lah, right? You factor all that in, today, if you ask me, I don't think it is as competitive as the domestic generation.

I dare say that. Today, basically, you add all that in of what upstream generation wants, what the transmission needs, and what the government wants to factor in on top of it as a margin, it's still much cheaper to generate onshore.

Let's put it that way. It will come, right, but at a point where there's still a distance.

Let's put this way. There's still a distance between what could be attractive to customers in Singapore from what people are asking for for both generation and transmission.

Chiap Khiong is here. You want to touch on that?

You covered it. Whether it's going to cannibalize, definitely not in the near term, lah.

Can't see it. Even if it lands, it's going to be expensive, right?

It would take away maybe the people who are very sensitive to green, right? If somebody willing to pay $300 per megawatt-hour, $280 per megawatt-hour for green power, then okay, that customer might have to go there.

Other than that, no one is going to pay that kind of money not in Singapore.

Can I try to understand from a distributor perspective, right? Because you operate power plants, at the same time, you are also importing and distributing renewables energy into Singapore.

Should we think that from a risk-reward perspective, distribution of electricity or the reselling of electricity coming to Singapore would perhaps you would demand a slightly lower return compared to your power generation business?

No. No, it's the same customer that I'm serving,

what. Right, so,

Hornghan, I have the same customer. I can choose to give him power from my CCP4, I can choose to give him power from my Sakra, I can choose to direct that power source to Senoko, right?

I can go and buy from Seraya if they sell me cheap for whatever reason to serve my customer. I can also then bring it in from Malaysia or Indonesia or, for that matter, Vietnam to give to my customer.

You can see that it's actually a very simple equation. This is what my customer willing to pay, right?

Then what is the source that I would direct to serve my customer so that I maximize my margin? If let's say in Singapore, I'm generating my power from my CCP4 at $50 per megawatt-hour, my customer willing to pay 150, my import is going to cost me $120, why would I take the import to serve my customer, right?

I would just run my power plant and then collect the $100 margin, what. It's as simple as that.

Then it's the same dynamics. I'm going out to the upstream and telling the upstream generator, it could be in Sarawak, it could be in Malaysia, it could be in Batam, and I'm saying that, 'Hey, look, I can sign a contract with you, but it has to be of this price that's worth my while.'

It's actually very commercial, right? Coming back, I can see the underlying question is whether or not this market dynamics moving forward will be materially disrupted by incoming new sources from the neighboring countries, and my answer is that not in the time frame that we are planning.

Let's say if I'm planning 2028, 2030, I can't see that happening at all. Even if it lands, it's going to be in the $300 range, or $280, $270 range, and that range is just not competitive based on what we can deliver at that time.

Can I just circle back to the discussion towards USEP prices, right? If you look at past cycles, USEP tends to correlate very much to supply-demand dynamics.

It basically reflects supply-demand. I think this relationship is no longer so straightforward this year on the back of Iran war, and I think if you look in terms of the price trend, it basically rebound very strongly on the back of the geopolitical tensions.

The question I have is that spot spark spread has gone up significantly higher, as you mentioned, $60 to $90 range is very attractive. At the same time, we do have a lot of supply coming through.

Can we try to get some insights with regards to the discussion you have with your customers, those who want to sign a 15-year contract? Are they looking backwards, how spark spread price trend has been, or are they looking more forward, given that spot prices have gone up a lot more or they could be trying to renegotiate and delay some of the signing of contracts there?

Thank you.

How the customer thinks, you can you can probably have a better guess than many people, you know. I'll ask Chiap Khiong to to address the customer part.

I I want to first mention that this is not new to us. This volatility in the market is not new to us, right?

If you I don't know whether you were covering this company before I came here in 2019, 2020, right? In that period, we we had a bloodbath.

There was too much of capacity, demand was not what planners expect, right? Then margins were very low.

Customers are thinking about the past and looking to the future. We ourselves are also doing the same, and that's why we keep on emphasizing that, our strategy is to make sure that we are not overly exposed and we insulate ourselves by signing contracts, right?

If we didn't sign the contracts that we did, if we didn't have the contract portfolio that we did, today, I might suggest that our based on the the $30, $40 spark spread, Singapore, instead of delivering 6, 700 million, will be delivering 400, you know? We would we would be a $500 million company instead of billion-dollar company net profit-wise.

We we somewhat insulated or rather we I somewhat is the wrong word, I think we insulated ourselves very well and in in terms of thinking forward. When we commission CCP4, and that's why just now in Siew Ki's question, I I'm saying that we are we are building the supply, we are lining up the supply in order to serve my customer portfolio.

The mentality is that, look, I have got this customers, I got this contracts, I got this margin, what is the plant that I need to go in? Now, I am I'm I'm I'm I'm talking about this because yes, think about with someone who doesn't have my competitor who doesn't have this contract portfolio, what will they be doing?

They'll be planting and then they'll be trying to sign up the contracts. Some of them are copying our strategy to sign contracts that would, and they also, but the bulk of the generation will be a little bit like Senoko, selling into the pool.

When there is more supply than the the demand being expected coming through, you are right, you could expect that prices will start to ease and and it might go back to the days of the 2017, 2018, right? Again, I'm saying that we are first insulating ourselves; second, in planting new plants, we have factored that into our consideration.

Then in terms of engaging our customers, we are also going to the high-quality customers who are wanting to have stability rather than having to to to ride the cycles, right? Someone like a Micron, for instance, that's why we keep emphasizing the relationship with them and the and the direct agreement that we just talked to you about.

The the these are people who have a very long-term investment horizon, right? Even when things were bad, they were still planting.

Now, the if you look at the Micron financials and their their latest release, these guys, the the the the business is just booming, right, because of the high-bandwidth memory and all those things that are going into their their their planning. The high-quality customers are more likely to want to have stability, and this is where we have a sweet spot, right, because, again, we have a we have a we have a low-cost generation, efficient; we have low-cost gas, well, low-cost gas, maybe competitively priced gas, huh, right?

We have we have LNG, we got we got PNG, and then we got the power plants. Then now, we're increasingly also extending that contract strategy into Senoko, right, because the Sembcorp portfolio is largely contracted.

Now we're extending that contract strategy to make sure that Senoko will be less exposed. Never mind that Senoko already have our payback.

Whatever that we paid to acquire it, we already got it. That that extending that contract strategy, if we're successful, and in in this case Senoko and Micron moving forward, then you will again what we did with Sembcorp portfolio, we're hopeful that we can replicate that with the Senoko portfolio such that it is it will then elevate itself from a very volatile earnings profile into a there is a baseload that we can we can count on through contracts.

Again, we move away from So Senoko, hopefully, from a from a $500 million year, dropping to $100 million next year, and then going to $600 million the following year, we will try to get it to then stabilize at 4, 500, right? That's the that's the strategy.

It's not not quite there yet, but I I alluded to it just now in my delivery that Senoko, with our help, has signed a direct connection agreement with with with Micron. It is significant, because with that direct agreement, that is and then Micron and Senoko has a cost advantage, because now you can connect directly without going through the grid, yeah.

Because I I'm saying all these things because I think, Hornghan, your your you're asking your question is saying that, look, is this market going to hold out, right? Then I'm trying to say that I I don't know, right, but I I spend the time then talking about what we will do to navigate this market whichever way it's going to go.

If it goes high, great, we are there, we'll capture it. If it if it's going to going to have a oversupply situation with all the plants coming online, our strategy is actually to make sure that we will hold out, not just the Sembcorp portfolio, we're now extending it to the Senoko portfolio, and we we are we also just told you that, we we have just achieved a very good step, a next step in that strategy, lah, with with the with the Micron direct connection agreement.

I I would like Chiap to help me out, talk about, because he deals with the customers directly, it's better to hear from him.

Thanks, Kim Yin. Thanks, Hornghan.

I think the customer's part is quite interesting. If you look at Singapore, additional growth for demand, which sector?

Comes namely from semicon and DCs. We are quite in a very interesting position for capturing the market in these two segments.

Why? Semicons are all growing more in the north side, the north, northeast, and Senoko actually stands in a very, very interesting position.

Micron, just for info, they take about 10% of the whole Singapore power. It's our strategic customer.

Our linkage with Micron as they grow, like what Kim Yin said, they are not looking at up and down, they are looking at stability of electrons, whether there's electrons, whether the price is stable. When they initially, before they contract with us, Ukraine war came, the prices was crazy high.

In terms of a 10% needs of the power requirements, they will never be able to take this kind of shocks. They're very happy to look at long-term agreements, and they are happy to look at a partnership with us.

Semicons, we are in very, very good position to actually look at the increase in growth. DCs, if you look at all the requirements in DCs, getting a license, they need a lot of green elements, and we are also there.

This two segment where the big demand is, we are very, very close to the customer. If you look at demand-supply, we have new machines.

The way that we're thinking about it, the baseload will be contracting with all this new growth, new customers, then Senoko and ourselves, we've got some old machines, we can actually then flex it. If the wholesale price goes high, we can actually flex it.

I think we are in a very good, comfortable position where overall demand and supply maybe a bit mismatch, but where the customer is, where the long-term agreements are, we are quite in a good niche to cover them. Then we have the flex of opportunistic kind of play as well.

Why customer like us? Because we got good machines, we also can access to gas, we have a good portfolio of grid and new stuff like biomethane and also, I think all these X elements why we believe the customers will come to us.

We have to work very hard to also court them, but I think naturally the fit between us

Just to add a little bit the two aspects. One is that customer selecting us, we are also selecting customers, right?

We are going to customers who, as you can see from our past behavior, we are able to secure some of these people who are prepared to sign very long term, right? We are selecting customers that are having that priority of stability versus short-term gains, huh, right?

You're going to analyze the value chain, let's say for a data center fellow, the margins they going to get in operating a data center is much, much, much higher than the margins that one can get selling power, right? We're not getting into their business, but what the point really is that if power supply is disrupted, that very, very high margin that they can corner with their customers will be affected.

They don't want that, right? They have bigger fish to fry than try to negotiate with me for the last half a cent of power price.

What they rather have is go to someone who can in that market give them what they want, but be able to stand behind it reliably. To Chiap Koon's point, we have all these sources, right?

I've got older plants, I got newer plants. On a bad day when my plant is down, my old plant can be cranked up to serve them.

On a good day when they need some green, I am the biggest green player in town. Because of that, then the second aspect what I want to talk about is that then this import they're talking about, if I'm saying that, 'Oh, look, they're still too expensive relative to my domestic generation,' why am I talking to all these people?

Eventually, it will come. Eventually, there will be enough customers who will pay for it.

We are positioning ourselves to a full-court press. When that comes, we are not left out.

Batam, people come and talk to us. Johor, people come and talk to us, right?

Then Sarawak, Vietnam, all the sources are there, and when it comes, we are the ones with the customer. As long as we have the customer, I sign a contract with whoever is generating power upstream, it will underpin the financing for their upstream investment, right?

That contract has to be long. How many people have the ability to sign that long-term contract that will underpin the upstream investment in Singapore?

Going back to what Chiap Khiong was saying, there's that customer what they want and how we select the customer. There's also why are we doing some of these things, is actually to position so that then when it comes, right, government is talking about nuclear.

Maybe I shouldn't say that, but people are talking about nuclear. If nuclear comes, we are also positioning ourselves to protect our market share and to find the best way to serve our customers if it does come.

Part of that decarbonization solution that we spoke about, right, we're trying to, by investing in a option-type cost, maintain that possibility that if it ever comes, we are in the position to not be left out, if not be in the lead. Today, in the planning horizon that we talk about when it comes to earnings forecast and so on, I wouldn't worry about imports, I wouldn't worry about nuclear, I wouldn't worry about hydrogen, right?

Renewables, yes; gas, yes for Singapore. Then for places like India and Australia, coal remains a very big factor.

Thank you very much.

Sorry, yeah. Just a quick question from me.

This is Terence from JP Morgan. I just wanted to ask about Wilton.

Thank you for sharing on the data center slide, but I wanted to ask what's the monetization opportunity for Wilton, given that potentially could be powered up by 2028? How are you looking to sort of monetize that?

Would we expect some power sales by 2028 for Wilton?

Ask Vipul. Vipul, please.

Vipul, present CEO Renewable West, but he looks after the UK business as Executive Director of that business as well, so. He's quite close to the situation.

He's chairing the steering committee with the UK team every week, to advance the UK data center agenda.

In terms of monetization, there are multiple sort of revenue streams that can come out of this. One quite simply is it's called powered land, and the reason Wilton has that opportunity is because it is actually one of the few sites that in this time frame, as Kim Yin already said, can actually offer a combination of grid power, local generation, as you know Wilton has the largest private wire network in the UK, and backup power.

Which obviously, if you're a data center builder, developer, or operator, that's the first step. That provides one revenue stream.

Of course, if you look at what the values of those are with the scarcity of powered land availability, even outside the London area, of course that's quite an attractive opportunity. I think the second is to provide power to any data center, where there would be some monetization of the supply of that power, which one option is bring it through the grid, and then supply it through our network.

There's some margins that come with that one. Of course, longer term, it would be quite sensible to build behind-the-meter generation within Wilton itself.

We haven't planted in Wilton for many years, but this opportunity then opens up those options. Those are the two very straightforward power-related ones, and then of course there's powered shells will get built, etc., etc., which is potential.

Thank you. That's very clear.

If I could also ask, EMA is running RFP for new planting. Is Sembcorp potentially interested in participating in any of the RFPs for new plants?

I think in relation to the to the And you I I I presume you're referring to DCCFA2, right?

Not just the new planting for EMA, the new power plants.

Oh, the new power plants for EMA, which is the ones in the 2031, 2032? We are in the best position to address the power needs of the country.

I don't want to answer your question. I hope you understand it's a little bit sensitive, but we are in the best position to address the next increase in the demand, and I think there is a trust between government and us, when it comes to addressing immediate as well as future power needs.

We will do what is good for the nation as also for ourselves to address those immediate needs.

Since we are on it, then could you discuss about the DCCFA2 process, how Sembcorp participating in that?

I think the honest answer is that for DCCFA2 specifically, we are clearly not participating it from a DC perspective. The DCCFA2 does require the DC operator to submit with an accepted power, a grid power solution and offer, lah.

We are quite pleased to say that most of the DCs that have submitted for that have submitted with our power offer. It is our expectation that we would be powering most of that capacity, unless it gets all awarded to somebody else, lah.

The reality is that we do feel that we are in a good position for that, yes. For now, it is really a power offer, and we have no intentions of being involved in the DC construction for DCCFA2.

Pei Hwa, please.

Pei Hwa from DBS. Maybe a first question on India renewables for Vipul.

I think the grid bottleneck has been an issue. There's been more news flow recently, wondering if that has become more concerning, in terms of grid infrastructure bottleneck, especially with the influx of new capacity.

I think at an overall level, you're quite right: the grid has not been able to keep pace despite massive expansions in the grid. As I'd mentioned in our last briefing, there are new policies on the anvil to actually give the grid developers a lot more power to acquire land and clear the bottlenecks.

Now, that's at the overall country level. If I look at our portfolio, which is more relevant, our curtailment levels are less than 1% and that's on our operational portfolio at the moment.

I think we are in good shape, and there are rules in place that allow compensation if there is grid curtailment for any reason other than grid security. Now, then the question comes, okay, we are building out close to 4 gigawatts, of which 2.5 gigawatts is signed PPAs and 1.5 gigawatts we're in the process of going ahead and trying to confirm those, what happens to those?

I think this is where it's worth noting what our strategy for project development is versus perhaps what many others in the industry do. Our objective is to increase electrons sold, not just rack up capacity commissioned.

What we do is we keep a very close eye on when the grid is likely to come and we time our project commissionings accordingly. Why is this important in India?

Because the way the rules work for the generalized network access, or GNA, if you come before your authorized date of network access, you could get connected because there's always some way to move the power through some route or the other, but you get what is called a temporary GNA, T-GNA. If you're on temporary GNA, the grid has no obligation to take your power.

They take it on a best-efforts basis and therefore can curtail, which is why you may have read some very alarming numbers. I think there was a 43% curtailment number for some players in Rajasthan a few months ago.

That's because they're on T-GNA, because they built their plants before their permanent GNA was ready. Our strategy is to time it to the best possible to come within a month or two of our permanent GNA.

Therefore, once that happens, the grid is obliged to take our power, even if it means backing down anyone else who might be on a temporary GNA at the time. That's how we're managing this.

Thanks. One more question on India renewables.

Given the first half is relatively weak because of the weather pattern, I'm just wondering whether this has any indication to our IPO, what's the timeline now, and any change in that?

I'm going to hand to Eugene to answer.

Yeah. I think, again, like I've always said, I've been read the Riot Act.

Somebody's staring at me. In any case, let's call it capital recycling, right, and not refer to words like the three letters that you pointed out, right, with sensitive.

Now, but of course, I think, you have heard me mention before, we are always gearing up towards a capital recycling exercise, putting all the necessary preparations in place. Now, the war started.

You create some volatility in the market. I think what is positive for us is that, if you look at recent performance of India renewables listed, of course, just because they're listed, it doesn't make any reference to the exact mode of capital recycling, okay, but because they're listed, and they are performing fairly well, I think some of the recent performance include CleanMax has now recovered over its IPO price.

Also, a recent listing, Juniper, I think we saw huge coverage of the book, almost 6 times covered,

right? I think 26 times QIB, about 6, 7 times overall.

Yeah, 26

times,

Yes, on the books. It gives a lot of indication that the capital recycling exercise is actually good.

You would imagine that we would be gearing towards a capital recycling exercise. I think in terms of timing, it's quite difficult for us to guide you, but you would imagine that we are certainly putting ourselves in a position to take advantage of the momentum that we see in the market.

Maybe to supplement Eugene's comment, it's not just CleanMax and Juniper, all the listed entities in renewables in India which maybe this time last year were languishing somewhat, they are all at much better levels today, and of course you would know that. I think that what I'd like to add is the reason why.

If you're looking at just delivery of projects that were promised and so on, a lot of that has come along, but more importantly, with the Middle East situation, we're actually seeing a very strong push for generation capacity additions in India supported by policy, particularly wherever there is local resource. What are the local resources for India?

There's coal, there's renewables. These are the two.

Hydro is of course there, but that gets capped out at a certain level given the rivers and so on. There is actually a very strong sort of policy push, and perhaps that's putting tailwinds into the market.

The only other thing, maybe it's worth mentioning is that, obviously we factor that into all our assessments and evaluations of what we do, but does this materially affect our plans one way or the other? For us, we are quite clear that we now have a strong portfolio geared towards growth.

We have our connectivity 100% secured. We have a very large proportion of our land secured as well.

We now have 2.5 gigawatts of signed PPAs, which are now going into construction. We have a 1.5 gigawatts of awards, which are still very much in discussion to try and convert into contracts.

That agenda has to get done, and we factor that into our calculations. Thank you.

Clear. Thanks.

Again, just as a reminder, Pei Hwa, it's in reference to a capital recycling exercise. Yes, thanks.

Thanks. Just to continue on that topic, I just wonder what other asset or business that we may consider to capital recycle, firstly.

Then, also a bigger scale of things, shareholders are happy to see you increase your dividend, and at the same time, we're also doing deleveraging. How should we think about our M&A, our growth forward, more on a bigger things, yeah?

I think, Pei Hwa, in relation to that, right, we are calibrating I think our outlook, when we look further into the next 5 years, we are quite careful to ensure that we are in a position to capture growth. I think that will always be on our agenda, right?

We are also of the view that we have to be very focused on capturing growth along key themes that Sembcorp has the right to play and also thematically, we are comfortable that it will be a trend that would be a secular trend that will transcend a fairly long period. I think some of these themes that you would imagine would be, okay, number one, clearly looking at a growing power provision to growing AI and data center demands, right?

That will be one key theme that will be playing into. Now I'm going to talk about in broad themes, because I don't think we are at a point where we can really talk about specific capital allocation, right?

I talk about broad themes. Power into a growing AI/data center thematic.

Of course, through that, Sembcorp does have a very strong right to play, because in many of the markets that we're in, right, they are actually attractive to many of these AI and data center players, and we're talking about Wilton, which, fingers crossed imminent, right, for powered land. We already have plots of land secured in Vietnam that is already data center shovel ready towards RFS, Batam, and, of course, Australia now with Alinta already in the portfolio and we are getting very strong reverse inquiries.

I don't use that word, but looking at growth along this strategic themes are important. Others will obviously be along the tailwinds of what we have always done well.

I think we are in the theme of energy transition. Continue to be focused on allocating capital for the purpose of renewables growth, is also important, but we will be very careful of the markets that we're in, and right now, clearly India is a key bright spot for that.

The capital recycling exercise will give us access to a well-priced cost of capital to allow us to continue to grow there, right? Then, other key themes will be of course Australia.

I think Australia power fundamentals and also increasing demand, as Jeff has pointed out, coming through from the AI thematics, will also allow us to continue to grow there, right? Then, we also see the possibilities of looking how we could expand our LNG networks to take advantage of the core baseload markets that we're in.

These will be some of the key growth themes that we will still be looking at it. Of course, if we drill down to a capital allocation thoughts, we have to be very selective, right, because the key goal ultimately is to be able to accrete our ROICs and ROEs, right?

We will be taking that lens towards that. Now then when we flip into the other key theme of capital management, I think we are quite comfortable to say that when we look at the base cash flow generation that we have, right, we would be very comfortable over the next 5 years to say that in a base case scenario, we would be more than ready to be able to delever the balance sheet, right, naturally.

Now then, the speed at which we delever the balance sheet of course will be informed by the specific opportunities we see along those growth themes, but in general, we will delever the balance sheet. Now then in light of being able to delever the balance sheet, then are we able to increase the cash flow returns to our shareholders?

We see an opportunity for us to do that quite comfortably actually, right, we have the capacity, right? I don't want to commit too far forward on any payout ratios or so, but we do have the capacity to quite comfortably catch up with our peers in a reasonable timeframe.

Now, you have always heard me talk about this: the cash cost of dividend increase to us has always been low, right? Every cent of dividend increase, you can do the math, is a $17 million increase, okay?

The reality is that from a funding perspective, we have always have a lot of cost of capital advantages in terms of our debt as well as our long-term bond capital markets. For example, we funded Alinta, right, close to a 6.5 billion of total debt, on-balance sheet plus new debt, right, and we are able to average down our cost of borrowing, right?

We funded 6.5 billion using at 3.4% cost of capital. Because of that, we don't have a large equity base in terms of our funding, right, and hence, our ability to grow cash flow returns back to our shareholders, it's not very demanding from a cash flow standpoint, right.

I think when you put that into perspective, I think the goal would still to be to pursue growth, right, along those key themes, but be very careful in terms of how we are focused on accretion on our ROICs and ROEs, and yet with the cash flow generation ability already in the balance sheet today, we still see the possibility of a deleveraging and yet increasing our dividend,

yeah.

Eugene, the the Pei Hwa was asking about how else one might recycle, right? You spoke about the purpose at the end of the day is to access capital if we need it, so that you can recycle, right?

Because as we grow, we become bigger and we're in a capital-intensive industry, you want to be able to access capital so into enable the growth, lah, right, without having to to to come back to shareholders to ask for capital. The other purpose could be to also to to access a high valuation opportunistically when the opportunity arises, just like in the case of potentially India, right?

What other things inside the Sembcorp portfolio that can be open for for recycling, you know? Is it your your your IUS portfolio, your your the the the the the ready-built factories, recurring cash flow?

Is it the gas portfolio in Singapore? Or the, is it the the Alinta?

I think I think she's asking for that. Lah.

I think to put it very circumspectly, right, there will be a range of capital recycling options, okay? To put it very bluntly, everything is available for capital recycling from an asset perspective, right?

It will always boil down to what is the cost of capital I'm able to achieve, right, in the capital recycling exercise versus the use of proceeds. I think within the IUS perspective, you will notice that, I don't speak a lot of incremental capital deployment into IUS, because in the particular LOB itself, we see many capital recycling opportunities.

I think one of the key things is that for the water portfolio, exiting lower-returns, municipal-type plants and then redeploying it or increasing capacity to organically grow our industrial water plants is there, right? I think in the urban business model, it is already to a certain extent capital recycling, right, in terms of the land bank, and also, as we build up the RBS, we are already looking at the possibility of capital recycling some of the ready-built factories and ready-built warehouses over a period of time.

That's for IUS. I think on a broader theme, more across the Renewables portfolio, we will selectively look at capital recycling.

I think China, even given its situation right now, it is always a target that we'll look at for capital recycling. I think more broadly across Australia, because of the significant opportunities that we see, right, we will have to think of structures to fuel growth, right?

Many of these capital recycling opportunities will probably come in the development of the Renewables portfolio. We certainly may not see the need to hold 100% of the equity of the Renewables portfolio as long as we have the electrons for distribution, right?

That's one possibility, right? As we look at the possibilities of scaling in assets as a result of AI-driven growth, then, we'll look at capital partnerships for capital recycling as well.

I think more broadly, I would characterize it that way, yeah. Again, we're very clear what is the purpose, right?

Are we divesting for managing exposure? Are we divesting to recycle capital?

Are we trying to access capital, or are we trying to access a valuation? The purpose of doing it will be very clear.

Then the short answer to your question is that actually we're here to manage value. To the extent there's the opportunity, we are open to all those possibilities.

Eugene described a wide range of it, and I'd be very happy to hear your feedback as to whether or not you think, especially analyst community, when you look at so many other peer group, when you look at us and then you say which are the ones that we can think about, we're very open to that suggestion. As we took a long time to answer that, I saw hands from the back, we need to

Sharon from Business Times. Yeah.

Thank you. Hi, I'm Sharon from The Business Times.

Just have a follow-up question on capital recycling, actually. Specifically in China, you highlighted that some regions remain challenging like Hunan and Ningxia.

Are there any plans to divest the underperforming assets there? I think in the previous briefing, someone also asked if there's any impairment risk, what's your assessment of that?

Also wanted to ask a second question about DCCFA2. You mentioned that you are involved in supplying power to some of the applicants.

Are you all providing purely gas solutions, or are you also involved in providing the green component that's mandatory like biomass? If it's biomass, could you share a bit more color on where are you procuring your feedstock from and what type of biomass?

I have a third question on power import projects. You have conditional approvals now for the Johor one that was just announced, and also for Sarawak and Vietnam.

Do you have any timeline on when the CAs will progress to conditional licenses? You mentioned that the costs are very high, and Sembcorp also has experience in this import business with that energy import project, given your experience, what breakeven timeline do you expect on these projects?

Especially for the Johor one, since you're developing your own floating power plant, and then also for the others. Thank you.

First, China, when things are not going well, generally not the best time to sell, right? You'll be selling it at a discount.

Do we need the cash back? We don't, right?

I just told you that with strong cash flow and all that. If somebody comes along with a proposition that can help to enhance value with a merger or something like that, that's a possibility.

The short answer to your question is that I don't think it is top on the priority list to sell China now, right? Especially we have not a very good first half in terms of resource, we are experiencing tariff reform, we've still got curtailment that we expect with the build-out of transmission, it could ease.

We are not in a hurry to do something like that when there's no gun to the head. That's China, if you ask me.

We are managing it carefully to make sure that we have, as much as possible, matching cost structures to the revenue structure, right, and that's something that we will continue to do, and also to make sure that the assets remain in good condition and so that when the right time comes, then we can consider. Today, since you're from BT, I expect that you'll be writing something.

If you had to quote me, I would say that selling China is not a priority in the immediate future. That means the next 6 months, yeah.

In terms of the DCCFA, I'll ask Eugene to help me. Power import in terms of the timing, and again, I think I don't have a fixed timing in mind.

It takes on its own life, that's the right way to put it. What we want to do is to make sure that we are ready when the stakeholders are ready, right?

Today, what I've said just now, I stand by it, is that today what is being talked about as the power price, we do not see a match between what is the cost from upstream matching the desire to pay from the downstream, which is our customer. In other words, we're standing in between and we're saying that, 'Look, we will be talking to upstream exporters,' right?

We are the importers. Exporters are telling us this is the price that they need in order to sell the power to us.

When we look at our customers downstream, when we talk to them, they are not willing to pay the price that's being demanded upstream. Again, if you had to quote me, we have to wait for the right opportunity whereby there is a matching between the upstream and downstream expectations in terms of price, right?

Then how long it would take, I do not have a crystal ball to address that. I'm sorry about that, but what we want to do is that we think eventually it will come, and we want to position ourselves to be there when the conditions are matching.

DCCFA. I think on DCCFA2, clearly, if you look at, in general, the requirements of DCCFA2, Yeah, or maybe I'll ask Chiaw to help me answer that, lah.

Sorry, offer.

I think the question is whether we just offer the gas? No, it's a bundle.

As we also are issued biomethane pilot scheme. We have also the whole suite of other things in the green part.

As a proposer, depending on the customers, we do customize all the green solutions together with gas for customer's needs, yeah. From Malaysia?

Yes, it'll be imported, and in our scheme that we have submitted is actually from different sources. We're still working on the sources.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. I'll just take several online questions.

Most of them have actually been answered through the questions raised by the analyst as well, but in terms of the Gas and Related Services segment, there's a question on the assumptions behind a higher net profit for the second half of this year for GRS. Is it because of the start-up of the new 600 megawatt plant?

Also, what's the rationale for acquiring a 20% stake in Aster Power? Eugene,

you want to do that?

I can answer the first question. Thanks, Yuan Long, for that question.

Thanks, Yuan Long, for the question. I think, the the first first things first is that we can't think of our Singapore, gas business as, okay, we're adding in a new, plant, and immediately that will be a step-up of, earnings that will come because, it comes a contracted, a new contract that comes with the plant, right?

We have to see it as Singapore has a a strong portfolio of contracts ranging from very long term to a to a to a to a short term, and we have a generation fleet, and then the generation fleet will then fulfill those contracts in the best way that they can together with our gas portfolio. That is a that is the right way to think about it.

In the second half, as the as a CCP4 comes in, how does it, add, to the portfolio? I would say, number one, that would be a heat rate efficiencies.

The so you would imagine that we would be running the the the CCP4 at baseload, and hence as a result, the heat rates that it will be able to achieve, it's lower, it's almost a 10% to 15% lower compared to the the the the current F-class machines. That will translate to a to a to a to a better, a more efficient, cost usage for the purpose of generation.

That's that's one one, element. The second element will be, if you recall, earlier on I mentioned that we will enter into second half with higher contract levels, probably about between 100 to 200 megawatts more, right, for for Singapore.

These are contract levels that will be generating for that was not contributing in the first half. The higher contract levels on the the contract side of things, would also, help to to to improve the profits.

The third thing is, you also have heard me mention earlier on, we have excess gas coming into our second half, which means that we have more gas than our contracted portfolio, right? With that and the CCP4 currently in the portfolio, we do have additional generation capacity for us to optimize the excess gas, right?

Our options to do that, which we were was not there in the first half, was to either generate more than our contract levels into the pool if the spark spreads make sense, or we could monetize the gas by selling it if the implied margins, spark spreads make sense. There is a combination of these three, elements, which was not there in the first half, that will, essentially drive our second half to have, stronger profits than the first half.

Yeah. On top of that, of course, we just told you that in July, we're seeing the spark spread's increasing, right?

Multiple dimensions. Some are locked in or we can count on; some are market-related, but we are quite confident that all these things, a good part of it will come true.

Rationale for acquiring 20% stake in Aster is very simple. As part of that, they are signing us with exclusive gas supply contract, a contract that we are very happy with.

The gas supply contract is actually the important part of the deal.

Two other questions on Alinta. The guidance is for a $100 million contribution in terms of net profit for the second half.

What proportion of this earnings are anchored by long-term commercial contracts versus retail contracts? Then in terms of the Alinta completion, have you identified which renewable projects you'll be pursuing over the next 12 to 24 months?

Yeah.

I think, why don't, I answer, question 16, the second one, and then, I'll ask Jeff help to answer the the the the first, one, okay? I think, in relation to the renewable projects that we will look in the next 12 to 24 months, well, some of this is already publicly, known in, Alinta's own press release.

We'll what, be looking at a, 100 megawatt, 212 megawatt-hour battery at Wagerup, right, there's one. We will also be looking at a, another, a BESS, project, which is the Reeves Plains one.

And, in addition to that, you would have also seen in Alinta's press release that we have actually signed a long-term PPA with Water Corp, right, which will underpin a a wind farm that that that what what we call the Merredin wind farm, close to 500 megawatts. That will be developed as well.

I think from a COD timeline, the Merredin wind farm probably won't be in the next 12 to 24 months, but, essentially, this will be the key projects that we will be looking at.

I just want to also caution that Alinta is a big portfolio, right? Each of these businesses or these projects, some are committed, some are not.

That we want to, as much as directionally we are there to support the growth and the energy transition of the business as well as for Australia, we will be evaluating each one of these projects on a stage-by-stage basis, huh? That's something that I thought need to be clear about.

In case, I don't want you to be just based on what we're saying here, then start to build all these things into your model with the full capex and then with some earnings and so on. We will go through that in stages, and just like in the Singapore portfolio or elsewhere, we will inform you when the key milestones are reached,

just like we won the bid for Taweelah C, we signed the contract for Taweelah C, along the way we will announce it, right? I think what Eugene is confirming is these are projects that are in the pipeline, right, and that it's one of the reasons why, when we looked at the investment into Alinta, we know that they have a strong pipeline that we can come in to support, huh, yeah.

Then the question that will ask Jeff help on, it's to in relation in the second half for Alinta's core earnings, how much of those earnings is anchored by long-term or retail or commercial contracts versus basically taking spot volatility in the spot market?

The short answer is, predominantly all secured for the next half, either through customer contracts, we don't have any major renewals coming up in that period, customers are secured away. We continue to receive payments, capacity payments for generation that we have in the west, and our portfolio is predominantly hedged for that period as well.

The outlook, I would say, from our perspective is quite secure.

Okay. Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff, if I may, just to clarify, because as you can't see the question here, but the question says that, it's like, are these long-term retail commercial contracts? I think the the nature of the contracts in Australia in the case, they are none of them are like 10 years, right?

They are all sort of in the 3 3-year range,

2, 3 years. 1 to 3 years is

So

the average duration in the book would be approximately 2 years on average, made up of 1, 2, and 3-year contracts, with the exception, Eugene spoke about the PPA with the Water Corporation. If we go ahead, and that's conditional on us building the Merredin wind farm, if we get to FID on that, the PPA will be for 15 years, so that will be a bit of an outlier.

Right. For the second half of the year is covered by contracts, right, but these contracts, they are of 2, 3-year tenure, just to be clear so that Okay.

Thanks, Jeff.

Thanks, Jeff.

There are no further questions online. We'll take one last question from the floor.

Tau Yee, thanks for your patience.

Thank you. Tau Yee from The Edge Singapore.

I have two questions. Firstly relates to the Alinta loan.

With the Australian dollar rising, how does it impact financing costs? Secondly, relates to Wilton UK.

I'm sure I understand it is still a very early, you are still doing the proposals or bidding, but of course before you all decided to pivot, I'm sure you all have calculated what are the returns. Could you share some insight into what are your calculations?

I think, I will

On your first question is in relation to, the the the, basically, fixed versus floating of the of the of the Alinta financing, right? When we look at the, Alinta, financing, 6.5 billion, close to 4 of that is really Sing dollars, and then, the remaining is in Australian dollars.

You're right. I think, in general, we have seen base rates in Australia rising, we our our inclination is to hedge the Australian dollar base rates so that we don't take, a lot of a base rate risk, in terms of the Australian dollar funding.

On the Singapore side, we're taking a more balanced view, right, because, when we look at, Singapore SORA, it's has been fairly benign. We've, are basically, looking at our options in relation to, hedging off our Singapore base rate, exposure, given the fact that it is benign.

In general, we still prefer more fixed than the floating, but, of course, we will be quite judicious in how we approach, hedging, the Singapore dollar portion. That's the the the question on the hedging, yeah.

Wilton returns, because it is an existing site and it is existing assets that we're leveraging on, suffice to say that the returns will be very high, right, because the book value written down, it's already written down to very low levels, huh, right? In terms of new investment going into it, it will obviously have to make sense before we would put in any new investments.

When we talk about 280 megawatts of powered land that's ready by 2028, it is through the transmission grid and the substation that is already there. With the chemical customer having vacated the land, the transmission capacity is still there, right?

Not much additional investment has to go in, right? What we're doing is that we're selling the land together with transmission capacity if the customer comes along and offers us the right terms, huh, right?

If in that scenario, because of the lower investment going in in the front end, the returns should be very, very high, because the denominator in your return calculation is small. Now, having said that, this will be the first phase, and we obviously have the ambition to go further beyond the phase 1, right, and if the right customer comes along, as I say, then the phase 2, in order to serve the customer need, we would need to involve new investments into new power plants and so on and so forth, but that is a happy situation, frankly, and we are taking it a phase at a time.

Right now, phase 1 is shovel ready, boring Eugene's phrase, shovel ready, powered land, very rare in the UK, and we will take advantage of that in order to secure a longer-term future for the site. You're not taking further questions,

right?

I think it's a bit late. Thank you for your patience.

Before you go, you just have to remember one or two things coming out from this session. I think for us, at least my own lens is that the highlight for this season is actually, first, the Alinta, right, the completion smoothly of Alinta and then having seen it contributing to the group's earnings space.

That the second thing is that the second half, we see all the catalysts and all the reasons why we are very confident about the full year being good, right? The second half will be much better than the first half.

That's something that we described all the things that we mentioned to you just now. That anchors the confidence that we will continue with our commitment to sustained growth in our dividend even while we deleverage, right?

Alinta, second half, as well as sustained dividend growth while deleveraging. Those are the three things that I would offer as the takeaway, certainly something that I would like you to take away from this session.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's presentation.

Thank you very much for joining us again, and we wish you a pleasant day ahead.

Are you serving lunch? There's some buffet out there if you're hungry.