Jason Boyes
Kia ora. I'm Jason Boyes, the Chief Executive of Infratil, and welcome to Infratil's annual results presentation for the year ended 31 March 2026.
I'm here with our CFO, Andy Carroll. Morning, Andy.
Andy Carroll
Morning.
Jason Boyes
Together, we're going to run through the annual results presentation that was released to the ASX and the NZX this morning. You can also find our annual report and a whole bunch of other supporting information in that release.
Without further ado, let's get going. This is an overview of the company that all of you will hopefully be familiar with.
We're very proud of the strong track record that we're showing on the right-hand side there, very strong growth over many periods and remarkable over such a long period since inception. If we then switch to having a quick look at the portfolio, this is a snapshot of the portfolio as at 31 March.
We had some farewells and a welcome during the year. During the year, we sold RetireAustralia, Infratil Property, and Fortysouth, our towers business.
We also sold Manawa Energy into Contact Energy, as we progressed our medium-term target that we described last year of divesting up to $1 billion of assets over the medium term. One welcome to Anytime Radiology, which was established during the year, our teleradiology business that we spun out of our ANZ radiology businesses.
I'll talk about that a little bit more later on. Quickly to the highlights.
We delivered growth in what were very volatile markets. I'll let Andy talk to the numbers in a second, but quickly focus on the two main drivers of growth, CDC and Longroad.
Both have their growth being accelerated by the massive buildout of AI infrastructure globally. CDC is now a global-scale data center operator with more than a gigawatt of contracted capacity and a strong growth outlook that's underpinned by its new Moody's Baa2 public credit rating, which shows what a differentiated platform CDC continues to be for us.
Longroad Energy is also accelerating, delivering strong earnings growth during the year and with a strong growth outlook as well, that I'll talk about in a second. Our largest New Zealand businesses were resilient, with Wellington Airport and One NZ delivering their guidance and positive EBITDAF growth despite challenging market conditions.
It wasn't all rosy, though, with Gurīn Energy and Galileo and renewable energy development having a difficult year, and our New Zealand radiology business dealing with a weak local economy. I'll talk about both of those in a second.
We're on track to achieve that $1 billion divestment target I talked about, with $600 million sold and a sales process underway for Qscan. We also announced our credit rating, Standard & Poor's BBB+, which transforms our access to debt markets, which is perfect timing given the strong growth we're seeing from CDC and Longroad in particular.
Lastly, strong ESG performance across the portfolio is translating into higher ratings, as we put out here, which exposes us to more ESG-oriented investors around the world. Over to you, Andy, on the financial highlights.
Andy Carroll
Thanks, Jason. Yes, a couple of quick callouts, which I'll touch on in a little more detail later on.
So $989 million proportionate operational EBITDAF, almost a billion, in the top half of guidance; $2.7 billion of proportionate capex, yeah, we've talked about that in the past, that investment driving future earnings growth; and then in terms of total asset value, that's up 13%. There's a few other stats there, but I'll touch on those a little later.
Thanks, Jason.
Jason Boyes
Thanks, Andy. Back to you later.
Let's go through some of the portfolio companies, and of course, starting with the big one, CDC. A strong operating performance from CDC, achieving their guidance and nearly 20% uplift in EBITDAF during the year.
Large uplifts in built operating capacity, with 350 of the 450 MW that were under construction at the start of the year completing construction. Capex was up $400 million to $2.1 billion, completing those builds, but also getting started on further builds, with 572 MW under construction at year end.
The big news, of course, was the 555 MW customer contract announced on 5 May, just after the 31 March cutoff, but important to mention, lifting our contracted capacity to over a gigawatt, as we've got here. Together with existing contracts that are expected to come billing as construction completes, as shown in this graph on the right-hand side, which is the same as the one we showed on the 5th.
CDC has good funding flexibility to deliver that growth and more, as CDC's CFO outlined on the call we had then. This is supported by the credit rating I mentioned before, which gives it access to multiple debt capital markets at a much lower cost than if it weren't rated.
The first step in that program is the hybrid AMTN wholesale bond program, or bond issuance, announced by CDC yesterday. Looking ahead, that FY 2027 EBITDAF guidance is that big jump we showed in March and again on the 5th to $680 million to $720 million.
This exceeds our guidance last year that we were doubling the $330 million delivered in FY 2025. We're maintaining that $1 billion EBITDAF for FY 2028F that we talked about in May, more than doubling again last year's earnings over the next two years.
We're on track to double again to $2 billion in FY 2030 once the contracted capacity is fully deployed over FY 2029. Remarkable growth, really, doubling earnings every two years, and that all contracted already.
Lots of work to do, but the contracted side is in good shape. Capex guidance is understandably increasing also, double last year's $2.1 billion at the top end, excluding land, because that is lumpy.
Lastly, but importantly, we see further growth potential from here, with unprecedented demand continuing for further small, medium, and large-scale deployments that have the potential to accelerate the business even further towards the back end of this decade and beyond. Contract discussions are progressing well for more signings, I should say, in the first half of this financial year and beyond as well.
Finally, the team are actively progressing a gigawatt or more of extensions to their growth pipeline, which as at 31 March was, say, a bit over a gigawatt, which you can see on the next slide here as well, just on the right-hand side. That's unchanged from what we showed in May.
CDC is well positioned to continue to capture outsized growth as what we see and what we've been saying for some time is a quite differentiated platform with strong access to funding, driving off strong contracted earnings and premium customer mix with capability and pipeline enabling it to scale efficiently and continue to deliver strong returns for Infratil as the shareholder. Moving then to Longroad, probably the most new news in this section of the growth businesses anyway.
It also delivered its guidance, lifting EBITDAF a giant 170% over the year to this $121 million we are showing here. Importantly, future growth is strong too, with another 2 GW under construction and coming online over FY 2027 and '28, and a further 1.7 GW expected to commence construction this year.
Those two together, 3.7 GW, will more than double the capacity in operation at the beginning of this year, 3.5 GW, all put into construction over last year and this year. Another business looking to double every two years, if you like.
Because its growth is so strong, we also report and track the stat we're talking about on the right-hand side, OpCo run-rate EBITDAF, which is a little like CDC's contracted earnings or EBITDAF that I just talked about, that $2 billion I just talked about for them. How we do that is shown on the right-hand side.
It's worth just stepping through it. At the end of FY 2026, those earnings were $367 million US dollars, in line with the guidance we set at the start of the year as well.
What that does is we take reported EBITDAF, and then we add back the contracted annualized earnings of the projects that are under construction in that year, which is saying that 144 on the right, and we also add back the development expenses, which is really investment in new projects, and the corporate overheads, to give a view of value of just the operating projects, or what we call the OpCo, the operating company. If you wanted to convert that into a valuation, we see listed comps trading in the kind of 13 to 15 times that number, or that number looking a year ahead because the business is growing so quickly.
If you used about 60% gearing or eight times EBITDAF for leverage, remembering the revenue is contracted for 30 years or more with minimal maintenance capex, that should give you a good sense of the equity value pretty close to the independent valuation that we're putting out there. Lastly, you might recall that law changes in the US last year meant that tax credits for solar projects would expire by 2030, but your projects had to be qualified by later this year, actually.
We're confirming on the bottom of this slide that we've qualified more than 6 GW of projects now to support our development targets out to 2030. Remember that battery storage credits, which apply to half the capex effectively of the projects these days, remain accessible through to 2037, a much longer runway on that support from the federal government under the current settings.
These tax credits, what they do is they effectively reduce US renewable energy power prices, but renewable energy is still competitive without them, we believe you can look through them for a lot of purposes. The expiry, though, of the solar tax credits should mean a big build program out to 2030 as developers and power buyers look to take advantage of them before they expire.
Now, looking ahead, the biggest news here is that Longroad has materially increased its target development cadence for the next four years from 1.5 GW per annum to 2 GW per annum on average, a 33% increase. That's supported by what we've talked about for a long time now, the robust demand for electricity supported by AI and broader electrification and decarbonization still going on in the US.
It's also supported by the good work the team has done tax qualifying that more than 6 GW of projects I talked about, and also new news today, a super large project Longroad acquired in April. It's a 2.8 GW solar and storage project, nearly as big as our entire operating fleet today in one project.
Importantly, has a PPA in place. That project on its own would deliver the uptick in development cadence we have guided to.
There's potential to grow even faster, I think. The other key things to know about this project are it's expected to come online calendar year 2028-2029, towards the back end of the decade, and also that is contingent on two regulatory approvals that Longroad is confident can be obtained based on similar projects that have recently been approved and the clear need for the power.
We expect to be able to update on progress on those approvals over the year. What does that all mean?
If you took the average earnings from our projects, that uptick sees on the right-hand side that graph Longroad targeting a billion dollars of OpCo run-rate EBITDAF, that run-rate earnings measure I mentioned earlier, by the end of the decade, double what those earnings will be at the end of this year, so that doubling in two years that I've mentioned. I've also talked to multiples.
You could use those to back solve the equity value of what I just talked about, or another way, we've guided in the past to about $300 million US of net present value, value creation, for every 1.5 GW of projects, because that's what we were trying to do every year, $300 million a year. I'd say that's conservative.
If you lift that by 33%, the number of gigawatts you're delivering, then the NPV is bigger as well. Another $100 million of NPV creation per annum is kind of what we're talking about.
Or by the same metric, if you looked at our new project, that's kind of two years of development or $600 million US dollars of NPV, just to give you a rough sense of it, a significant acceleration, I would say, compared to where we were before. That's not all.
At the bottom here, we're revealing that Longroad has also been actively progressing its own data center strategy to develop at the moment 4+ GW of grid-connected data centers co-located with Longroad's solar and storage projects. We can develop the powered shell to have more value creation, either alone or with partners, or simply sell that land as powered land to data center developers.
Either way, you're able to accelerate Longroad's own core energy development pipeline, developing the renewable energy for those facilities. We're not ready to value this pipeline.
It's not in the independent valuation, but it's a very logical and interesting opportunity that we intend to pursue. Lastly to guidance.
We're guiding a modest uplift this year, $120 million to $135 million. That's because a lot of the construction that's underway will complete towards the back end of this financial year and actually into FY 2028, but also because of increased development expenses, really in line with that acceleration of the development business I just talked about, that increased development cadence.
That's taken another $20 million off that. You can see the impact of that strong development addition, the extra 1.7 GW we see coming under construction this year coming into the OpCo run-rate EBITDAF at the bottom, lifting that to nearly $500 million over the year, a $120 million increase.
Infratil's agreed to provide an additional $300 million of equity funding to support this acceleration, which would be deployed over the next two years, and we see very strong returns from that, obviously. I think that's it on Longroad.
Maybe over to you, Andy, is it? Oh no, two more.
Andy Carroll
Two more.
Jason Boyes
This is a good spot to put this because the US has been incredibly strong, but as I mentioned in the opening, elsewhere, it's been a little tricky. Gurīn has done well in Southeast Asia progressing its projects, but really, the big focus is on this key approval that we're waiting for Project Vanda, its own very large project.
The government-to-government discussions appear to be progressing positively, which are needed to facilitate that approval, but it's fair to say that's taking longer than we hoped, and we hope to be able to update on that over the half. Turning to Europe, that has been a difficult market as well.
Really, the prolonged effect of the Ukraine war depressing demand for new electricity there means that the markets have reached a kind of mature stage, and values for earlier-stage projects have reduced markedly, making our target returns more difficult to achieve. That's led to a strategy reset over the last half to focus on projects that are near term, taking off the longer-term projects, and the ones that can take the business to more material scale, which would be more resilient business over the near term as well.
We're showing the targeted state for that business by 2030. That resulted in some write-downs and write-offs, which I mentioned here, which are not particularly big or material from an Infratil perspective, but were clearly not what we hoped for or what the team hoped for from the business.
They've got a good plan in place, I think, to get the business back to growth, and we'll be reporting on that over the half as well. Maybe now you, Andy.
Andy Carroll
Yeah. Thanks, Jason.
One, the team is continuing to deliver well in challenging market conditions. EBITDAF up $4 million on the prior period.
We promised a stronger second half, and that's what the team has delivered. A few callouts on the slide, mobile revenues continuing to perform well, and you'll also see an uplift in handset and other sales, which does talk to the effectiveness of One Wallet as a retention tool, so that program is going well.
Eon Fiber had its first full year of operation with EBITDAF of $65 million, and, of particular note, secured a material undersea contract with a hyperscaler. Now, there's work to be done there, you don't expect revenues to turn up for 12 months or so, and there is some capex and other spend associated with delivery of that contract over the next 12 months.
In terms of metrics that people regularly ask us about, free cash flow and dividends, you'll see that they have both doubled over the last 12 months, and that graph is on the next slide. In terms of outlook, my commentary has been largely unchanged for the last 18 months, soft economic conditions, challenging competitive environment, and limited immigration, which all contributes to a pretty challenging operating environment.
The team is conscious of careful financial management in those circumstances, focused revenue growth in particular areas, and you'll see that there are price increases that have been applied to both mobile and fixed in April. We're also keeping a close eye on costs while pushing on a number of key strategic programs of work.
You'll see, to the end of cost control, we have over 50 AI solutions working across the business now, delivering cost savings, productivity benefits, and customer experience benefits. The IT program continues to track to plan.
Moving to guidance, there is an uplift in EBITDAF guidance relative to the previous year. Capex is unchanged.
I've noted some of the Eon Fiber-related spend, and our medium-term EBITDA margin and capex intensity targets remain unchanged. Thanks, Jason, back to you.
Jason Boyes
Nice one, Andy. Back to you in a minute, actually.
Let me talk through the rest of the portfolio, starting with Wellington Airport. Their results are already public, but from our perspective, a resilient performance given the ongoing aircraft capacity issues last year and the weak economic environment domestically.
Good growth in international, though, that you can see here. The outlook for the next year is relatively flat, with aircraft back, but fuel crisis affecting capacity, of course.
We'll have to revisit that guidance number if the crisis continues to be protracted, but the team are doing a great job managing within the guidance so far. Sensible capex, too, continuing, and route development with the runway now able to accommodate long-haul flights to Asia, Matt tells me, and I'm looking forward to that.
Next is Kao Data. Quickly on them, that's our London data center business, a strong year, actually, doubling its contracted capacity, so that, I think, actually, it's nearly sold out at the moment.
You can see why Kao acquired a prime London data center site that we've talked about here, which would be attractive to multiple hyperscalers in that location, and is progressing that as well as its existing Manchester site. Its growth ahead looks good, just at a much smaller scale than CDC, of course, from a shareholder perspective.
Lastly, I think, is our healthcare businesses, but not least at all. Diagnostic imaging, of course, it's been a difficult year, as I said at the top, for our New Zealand business, with EBITDAF slightly down over the period, reflecting cost and competition pressures.
The excellent team there, though, is implementing a performance improvement plan, as we've said there, to return the business to growth, and it's early days, and we'll report back at the half on that. In Australia, on the other hand, Qscan has had an excellent year, delivering double-digit growth from a range of initiatives executed pretty well.
The sales process for that business is ongoing, and we expect to update on that in the half as well. Then finally, Anytime Radiology, the newest addition to the portfolio, is now up and running after being spun out of our ANZ businesses.
It's a pure-play teleradiology business, which is a subsector of radiology that's growing faster than traditional ones. It's small now, but we think more likely to be successful and attractive in this standalone format.
Back to you, Andy.
Andy Carroll
Thank you. I think I've touched on a number of these metrics already.
Operational EBITDAF in the top half of guidance, key drivers CDC and Longroad, as we had foreshadowed. I didn't touch much on Infratil investment, but that alongside that proportionate capital expenditure are the ingredients for future earnings growth and shareholder value accretion.
I think those are the key numbers to touch on there. Independent valuations, just touching on a few of the movements there, CDC is the largest one, unsurprisingly, and part of that increase does reflect the additional investment that we made into CDC through the period.
If I touch on some of the pinks, One NZ is down 320-odd million, and that broadly reflects that reduced growth outlook that we've seen in the New Zealand economy, moderated growth outlook, and I think now the midpoint of that independent valuation does align with market consensus. Galileo is weaker for the reasons that Jason has outlined, some write-downs and also some of those early-stage projects less value attributed to that pipeline.
RHCNZ also reduced, underperformance relative to guidance, moderated growth outlook from a different base. Those are a few things just to call out on the independent valuations slide.
Thank you. Dividend, this is exactly as we foreshadowed at the half year, 13.65 cents.
There are no imputation credits attached, and we will continue to run the DRP with a 2% discount. Funding and liquidity, I will spend a bit more time on this slide because there are some changes here.
Our inaugural S&P BBB+ credit rating, we announced that in late December, and that is proving material in terms of reduced funding costs, broader access to capital sources, and improved funding terms. We have some brand-new banking arrangements in May.
That's one example of that, with cost savings and improved borrowing terms realized. Today, we're lodging our first capital bonds PDS, which should also enhance funding flexibility, and you can expect to see further work from us to diversify funding sources over the balance of this financial year.
Just to give you a sense of some of the cost-saving benefits, we see savings in the order of $10 million per annum in interest costs in the medium term. Last but not least on this slide, liquidity, $1.1 billion of available liquidity at 31 March, and clearly, we've enhanced that with the partial sale of our Contact stake recently.
Guidance, we've talked a lot about growth this year, proportionate operational EBITDAF up materially, 20% odd in this year, midpoint 1350, and that largely reflects the CDC uplift, which we've talked to you about previously. Proportionate development expenditure, that's up a touch.
Corporate cost guidance, now we have broken that out separately. We did have that sitting within proportionate operational EBITDAF, all of the component parts here are unchanged, but there is a different dynamic that drives corporate costs.
That's largely related to the Infratil share price, as opposed to proportionate operational EBITDAF, which talks to the earnings performance of the investments. We think it is helpful to break out those component parts so you can better understand the individual drivers.
If you want to reassemble the guidance fruit salad, you're very welcome to. Yes, corporate costs called out separately.
Then proportionate capex guidance range, that's up 50%, again largely reflecting that CDC effect, which we have previously guided on. I think that's back to you now.
Thanks, Jason.
Jason Boyes
Great. Thanks, Andy.
Is there a slide? Oh, yes, I see you've switched them around.
Great to see that billion of proportionate operating EBITDAF, even if you reassemble the fruit salad, as you say. I think we're touching over that, which is great to see that finally happening.
I wanted to touch on two things before wrapping up and going to questions. First, sustainability highlights.
As I mentioned at the top, strong progress has been made across our portfolio and portfolio companies, some of which are mentioned here, resulting in the improved ratings, which we'll continue to work on to improve. I think the key metric to watch is our SBTi target, which really hinges on the scoping work CDC is doing to set its own SBTi target, now that its first report under the new Australian reporting regime nears completion.
That's the one I would focus on from now. Then the second thing is our medium-term strategic objectives that we set at the result last year, wasn't it?
On the first, we set a target of a billion of divestments and completed 600, as I said, with Qscan underway. We see the potential for another $1 billion-plus of divestments over the medium term as well of investments we think are unlikely to scale under our ownership, and as we said last year, we expect to be reinvesting those into growth or new businesses.
On the second objective, this is on track with improved distributions from One NZ and a stronger outlook for CDC and over the longer term, Longroad. I think this year we needed a little under $90 million to cover all of the dividend to be in balance, Andy, this is in sight.
On the third, frankly, we're reassessing this a little bit. CDC and Longroad have accelerated materially and set a very high bar for new ideas, which we have continued to look at, but now our focus is on interesting adjacent opportunities, like Longroad's own data center ideas, for example.
In the near term, assessing these adjacent ideas is a higher priority, and we'll update on this and the strategic objectives, I think, at our Investor Day, which I think is in September this year. That's probably the right place for that discussion.
Lastly, the share register, while progress has been made, this is still an important work-on for the reasons we outlined last year. Let me wrap up.
Growth this year has been excellent, but we continue to position the portfolio for further step changes in growth ahead. CDC is facing this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to develop AI infrastructure at globally relevant scale, with strong demand and its deep capability, pipeline, and funding flexibility to continue to accelerate.
Longroad also, right? Setting materially higher development targets, its own path to the billion club, a billion of run-rate EBITDAF by the end of the decade, backed by the new very large-scale project that's been acquired, subject to regulatory approvals, of course.
We continue to develop other potentially material growth opportunities, right? Including Longroad's data center options, which we've revealed today.
Don't forget Gurīn's Vanda project. As Andy outlined, Infratil has significant flexibility to support that growth, especially with the new credit rating.
We continue to focus on lifting operational performance across the portfolio, as shown by One NZ and Qscan's strong performance this year, and actually Wellington Airport, I would say, and improvement plans in place for the New Zealand diagnostic imaging business and Galileo. I feel like we've navigated the noise of 2025, and while there's plenty of noise still about in the world, we're as positive as ever about the opportunities and options for the portfolio ahead.
Thank you to all the teams in the portfolio companies, all the team at Morrison, and all our customers and stakeholders for the progress we've made this year. We might go to questions.
Operator
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.
If you wish to cancel your request, please press star then two. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question.
The first question today comes from Eric Choi from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Oh,
Eric Choi
thank you. Morning, Jason and Andy.
Could I please ask one question on Longroad and one on CDC? Just on Longroad and on the data center strategy, I was wondering if I could confirm, a, what the book or market value of that land is; b, that the IE hasn't included that land value in their valuation, you said included the project, I haven't included the land value as well; and, c, that land value we should be thinking of that as maybe the floor.
I'm just referencing your annual report. I think you made a comment you want to bring power and DC expertise together.
I was just wondering, does that mean you can leverage CDC, and can Longroad DCs maybe even generate CDC-type-level returns, which would make the build cases more compelling than the land one? Sorry, I'll pause there.
Yeah.
Jason Boyes
I think you've put all the pieces together there well, Eric. I don't think the land will be in the valuation, or if it is, it won't be particularly material.
The land that we're generally acquiring, it's not metro or anything, and it's very competitively available. I think the overall expenditure on this initiative would be in the low single-digit millions, and that's really just because you're converting stuff we already have or buying the land next door.
What they do is put in an application to take load out of the grid rather than put it in, to give you a sense of the activity. There's so much alignment, I think, between this stage of development that Longroad does and what CDC already does in Australia that it made sense, I think, to recycle a lot of that capability and see what progress could be made.
Frankly, I'm surprised how much they've managed to progress over six months. None of the potential PV of those being turned into powered land or being sold as powered land is in the independent valuation yet.
I think there is an interesting potential for CDC and Longroad to work together, and certainly those teams have and are building a relationship. Even without that, there can be other partners in the US if that doesn't really work for CDC to develop it, or that they could partner with.
There are small development teams around. I think Longroad and the shareholder group are still figuring out what the best way to take advantage of this opportunity is.
Clearly, there's a lot more present value to be got through developing the data center as well and leasing it out, and sort of stacking that on top of the value you're generating from the energy. If you look at what CDC earns and turn that into US dollars, maybe take a bit off, it's pretty interesting, right?
We make $70,000 of EBITDA per megawatt roughly from a Longroad energy project. That's pretty much what our averages say.
You would be making more like $1 million of EBITDA on a data center if you added that to it. Pretty interesting kind of step up in the NPV that's potentially available to Longroad or its partners.
That's how we're thinking about it.
Eric Choi
It's very useful. Thanks.
Then just a quick one on CDC. I'm just trying to do our own analysis on where that IE valuation could go once the 550 MW in first half or any first-half '27 wins are factored.
My question is, does the IE reference contracted EBITDA multiples at all? If so, is the benchmarking peer set in the mid to high teens?
The piece of information we're missing is the capex that would be required to fulfill the existing 1 GW-plus of contracted capacity. Maybe if you could help us out with that so we can do this back of the envelope.
Yeah.
Jason Boyes
I understand the question. The independent valuer does reference a wide range of comps, listed comps, but also the contracted earnings statistic you refer to, which I think is probably the most common way of eyeballing the valuation of these businesses.
It would be in the mid to high teens, and of course, you've seen businesses trade at a 20 in the past as well on a contracted earnings basis. You have to adjust that for the capex, of course, which is why you've got your next question.
Hopefully that answers the first one. On the capex, we gave the guidance in May, which we're holding here, which is this kind of mid teens per megawatt ex land.
You can use that. What you're probably missing is how much of that has already been spent or built, I'm guessing.
If you think of the 572 we're building now, I think we've spent about a quarter of the capex for that amount of the megawatts. Hopefully that will get you pretty close to, I guess, a net debt number at the back end and a capex number.
I don't know if you had a quick follow-up to that, make sure I got your question.
Eric Choi
No, that was excellent. I'll repoll to give everyone else a turn.
Jason Boyes
Thanks
Eric Choi
very much, Jason.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from Wade Gardiner from Craigs Investment Partners.
Please go ahead.
Wade Gardiner
Hi there. Hi.
I'm glad that Eric asked that around the percentage of completion. I was sort of working off 3.2 to 4.2 million divided by, say, 15 a megawatt would imply that it's about 50% complete, but you're saying it's more like a quarter complete.
Jason Boyes
Yeah. That's of the 572 under way.
Wade Gardiner
Yeah.
Jason Boyes
Yeah.
Wade Gardiner
At the end of March, yep.
Jason Boyes
Yeah.
Wade Gardiner
Extension to that, if, once that's completed, you'll have it roughly about 1.2 gigs, of which you've sold about one. If you did another big contract and therefore were starting to talk about developing the pipeline, if we pushed go today, how long could you call it 100 100 MW data center?
Jason Boyes
Yeah. We have 100 MW of sort of blocks available still in our pipeline.
You can sort of see that, right? I talked in the voiceover about sort of towards the back end of the decade, I think is what you're asking, is when could that turn up in earnings, where is the real potential upside.
I think this year is largely done, right? '28, there's capacity for upside, but then more '29, '30 onwards is the way to think about it, Wade, I think that's what you're asking.
Wade Gardiner
Yeah. I guess if I look at the 1.6 gigs of pipeline, if we were to include the development gains of that in our valuation, a big part of that is understanding when those development gains arrive.
Are we talking 5 years? Are we talking 10 years?
Yeah.
Jason Boyes
I would say nothing much in the next 2 years, and then from '29 onwards is kind of what I'm saying, and bigger chunks from 2030 onwards.
Wade Gardiner
Okay. One, previous guidance has included, I think last year, $25 million related to SpaceX exclusivity and AI acceleration.
Is there anything in the guidance for this year?
Andy Carroll
Some of those elements are implicit in guidance. SpaceX exclusivity has expired, but the service ongoing isn't free.
There continues to be, it's what we talked about, SpaceX, AI, and there was a property move, the property move is complete. There is ongoing AI spend, still at the point where it's investment ahead of the return, albeit that some of the returns are absolutely in year, but it's growing momentum.
There are still elements of that in there, Wade, yes.
Wade Gardiner
Okay. Just finally, also on One, can you provide any update on where the new IT stack program is, how that's looking?
Andy Carroll
Yes. We talked at the half year about prepaid being complete.
We are now well through the postpaid migration, and that is material, but it is tracking to plan. That is phase two of broadly a three-phase program.
We've talked about three years, we're approaching the crunch time for phase two.
Wade Gardiner
Okay. Thank you.
That's all for me.
Jason Boyes
Thanks, Wade.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from Suraj Nebhani from Citi.
Please go ahead. Oh,
Suraj Nebhani
thank you. Just a couple of quick ones from me.
Firstly, just a follow-up on Eric's question on the valuation assumptions for CDC, is it fair to say the contracted capacity that was announced earlier this month, it's yet to flow through into the independent valuation?
Jason Boyes
That's correct. Came after 31 March, yep.
Suraj Nebhani
Yeah. Okay.
All right. Then I guess just to answer to Eric's question, Jason, on capex and on the 572, so that mid teens number, is that on a 572 MW basis, or should we think of it on an ICT sort of contracted?
Jason Boyes
Sorry, great clarification. That's the ICT number.
Suraj Nebhani
Yeah. Okay.
Understood. Understood.
Thank you. Yeah.
Then the second question was again, not surprisingly, on Longroad. Just interested to understand this data center strategy a bit more.
Firstly, how close it is and is there further capacity to increase that over time? US obviously, in terms of data centers, yes, demand is growing strongly, but there's a lot of supply as well.
How do you think about what that fit too? Yeah.
Jason Boyes
That's a great question. I think the key is to understand these are grid connected.
They're co-located with often projects we were already planning to build. They just happen to be in good places for data centers as well.
We have certainly a long-term view on the value of those sites as energy sites. On the data center side, in terms of timing, Longroad is talking to, like a lot of people in the market, pretty much all the hyperscalers.
They're all focused on a '29 onwards type delivery date. Some early studies have come in saying some of the projects could hit that timeline, some of them are saying later.
It's still reasonably early on to when we could say definitively that a project could hit a '29, '30 delivery date, which is kind of the zone where customers are interested just now. Maybe bear with us over the half, and we'll have the team down here in September at the Investor Day to get a good sense of that.
It's still reasonably long-dated. I think to hit that in the US at the moment, there's almost always a bridge to grid solution, the bundled energy and data center side of things is getting, I think, quite a lot of traction.
Then if you zoom out from a shareholder perspective of Longroad, it just creates a different potential buyer set for this business if you roll out two or three years if actually you're being able to generate in some ways, your own demand for your power projects through the data center side of your business, rather than necessarily relying on kind of utility RFPs and things like that. Zoom forward, potentially a much more stable sort of development business than we've enjoyed over the last few years.
Suraj Nebhani
Understood. I'll just ask one last question on the corporate costs, please.
That's obviously significantly higher, and the development spend as well compared to last year. How are you thinking about on a go-forward basis?
Firstly, what's driving that? Is it just increased activity across the various businesses?
Jason Boyes
I think that corporate costs is about the same as last year. I think it was mostly in the development expenses where we had another 20.
That's really just increased team size, increased cadence on more megawatts than we were doing last year. If there's an increase on the corporate side, it would be that element of that that we can't automatically charge to the project.
I think it goes hand in hand with that. If you're asking should that happen every year, I don't think so unless we're also increasing delivery cadence as well.
Suraj Nebhani
Understood. Thank you.
Jason Boyes
Sure, Suraj.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from Grant Swanepoel from Jarden.
Please go ahead.
Grant Swanepoel
Morning. Can you hear me?
Jason Boyes
Yeah. Morning, Grant.
Grant Swanepoel
Thanks. Good morning.
Just on Longroad, I might have missed this, but your stake's gone up to 42.5%, and I assume that's from the extra equity you've put in. Is there a read-through on the implied valuation of the extra equity?
Andy Carroll
Not yet, Grant.
Grant Swanepoel
Oh, yeah.
Andy Carroll
Not yet, no.
Grant Swanepoel
That is linked to you over tipping in the extra equity share?
Jason Boyes
That's right. Yep.
Andy Carroll
We haven't contributed the cash.
Grant Swanepoel
The cadence step-up from 1.5
Andy Carroll
We haven't contributed the cash yet, Grant.
Grant Swanepoel
I saw that in May. Saw that.
The cadence step-up from 1.5 to 2 GW per annum on Longroad, is that factored into independent valuation yet? Because it seems to have gone up very little, even though the WACC did go up and offset some of it.
It just seems the Longroad valuation has just stalled for a while. Yeah.
Jason Boyes
No, it isn't. A lot of the headwind in the Longroad valuation itself in US dollar terms was rising interest rates, frankly, you've had a reasonable amount of discount rate expansion.
The business did what it said it was going to do, it just was worth less in that interest rate environment effectively. No, this is really because we didn't buy the new project until April, all this stuff is not in that 31 March valuation yet.
Grant Swanepoel
Fantastic. Thanks.
This extra $1 billion of divestments you're talking about now, does that include the 495 you've just realized through the Contact sale?
Jason Boyes
Then,
Grant Swanepoel
what you have left in Contact is over 900 million. Is that just the extra billion you're talking about here?
Jason Boyes
No, it doesn't include the 495, and we don't talk about exactly which business that we're choosing to divest for all sorts of reasons, including disruption to the businesses. We had in mind a target like this already, to give you a sense of it.
I think if you go through the portfolio, you can pretty easily see which investments aren't able to scale. It's definitely more than the Contact stake, which could actually scale.
No, it's not just that.
Grant Swanepoel
Thanks. Just my final question, just on CDC, you did answer the questions from Wade and Barrenjoey, but these contracts you're talking about in first half of '27, just want to get a feel of what the quantum could be.
Just in terms of the buyers, when do they need you to start delivering megawatts that allows you to really scale again with another big contract?
Jason Boyes
As Greg described this, I think I know what you mean. As Greg described, there's great demand now, sort of outstrips the available supply tomorrow, but for a while, we've been talking about, this delivery is '29, '30.
You can look at peers and see where they're signing contracts for deliveries. Clearly, that zone for lighting things up, '29, '30, is the zone that people are most interested in now, exactly the same as Longroad is hearing in the US.
If you're thinking about the kind of next set of contracts, think they're good contracts, there's a kind of a broad range of the small, medium, large. They're very lumpy.
Why we're sort of a little bit vague is, well, one moves, then people think they're disappointed. They're lumpy, but they're all ranges of sizes, the demand is good, and we hope to have an update in the half on exactly what that kind of near-term contracting that Greg alluded to in May is.
Then longer term, I think it's sort of back end of the decade and beyond is probably more realistic at this stage in terms of further growth.
Grant Swanepoel
Fantastic. That's great color.
Thanks so much for answering those questions.
Jason Boyes
Great. Thanks, Grant.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from Ben Crozier from Forsyth Barr.
Please go ahead.
Jason Boyes
Hey, Ben.
Ben Crozier
Morning, guys. Just first one on Longroad, you just called out this project you acquired.
It still needs federal approval on the land lease extension. I think some of the renewable projects across the US have run into a bit of problems when they're on federal land.
Is that what Longroad's experienced? What gives you the confidence that you'll get the approval for that?
Jason Boyes
Exactly. That was a big part of due diligence in the board and shareholder discussions.
The thing that gives us confidence here is it's in a region with a counterparty that's had good success recently on getting these approvals through for all sorts of various reasons, but also because the demand is very strong. Without that track record, we'd be very skeptical, but that recent track record was what gave us confidence.
Ben Crozier
Yeah. Then just on the projects that are completing later this year, is that sort of a delay in developments that you sort of timetable that you would have expected maybe 12, 18 months ago, noting that sort of completions are below your 1.5 GW target of the last sort of 12, 18 months?
Jason Boyes
Yeah. We guide the 1.5 on getting into operations rather than completions, but I know what you're saying.
I don't think any of those came in super late, but they are a longer build time. I was sort of surprised as it was coming through as well that there was so much in really in the next financial year, but there's nothing material going on in terms of build times or delays and starts, if that's what you're asking.
Ben Crozier
No, that's some good clarity. Thanks.
Maybe one just last one on One NZ, I know you talk to some of these AI improvements haven't shown up in cost savings overall, but have you been able to give out or pull out a couple examples of projects where you have seen deployed AI and sort of what cost savings you've seen in those specific projects today? Because I know sort of opex percentage of revenue sort of increased this year.
If we look at going to that 35% margin target, we'll have to come down quite a bit over the next few years.
Andy Carroll
I'm not going to get into too many specifics, but we have got a good sense of what's cost avoided, what's cost saved, and some of the projects that are more visible from a public perspective, you will see One NZ has referenced publicly, for example, when it comes to faults calls, the call center, AI agents collecting relevant data, response times reducing by 80% as a consequence. Those are sort of early-stage projects that then you can think differently about how you resource them, and there might be medium-term and longer-term cost savings.
I think the good news is the breadth of deployment and the nature of the benefits that are being realized does give us confidence that there is a medium-term and longer-term material cost saving in the mix.
Ben Crozier
Yeah. Nice and good color.
I think that's all for me.
Jason Boyes
Thanks, Ben.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from Ben Kira from Shakespeare.
Please go ahead. Hi, Ben, your line is open if you'd like to ask your question.
Jason Boyes
You hear me?
Operator
I might move on to the next questioner.
Andy Carroll
Got some new investors lined up.
Jason Boyes
Maybe.
Operator
It's from Stephen Hudson from Macquarie Securities. Please go ahead.
Jason Boyes
Stephen.
Stephen Hudson
Hey, Jason. Hey, Andy.
Just a couple from me. Just firstly on Longroad, you mentioned in your annual report the 1,000-mile project is being developed for Meta.
I just wondered if you could flesh that out, particularly in light of the 4 GW new DC development strategy, whether or not there's opportunities there at all.
Jason Boyes
Yeah. I think the relationships are definitely proving helpful as we pivot from selling electrons to selling land as well, having an existing relationship with Meta.
That's not the only project we've built for them, and they've been tax equity on another project as well, is helpful. That project, I believe we bought with the PPA, yeah, it was well before this data strategy was lit up.
I think that's helpful. We have other projects that we sold to Microsoft, and then there are others where Google has been in and around them.
It's really extending those relationships from the power side to the kind of infrastructure side is part of the strategy for sure.
Stephen Hudson
Thanks for that. Just on the billion dollars of further asset sales, can we get some sort of color on what your thinking is around rationalizing the 13 company portfolio there?
As you said, we can do the math, but what's your latest thinking in terms of complexity and the price and NAV gap? Yeah.
Jason Boyes
We still believe, I think, right, Andy, that asking people at our current scale to analyze both data centers, energy, offshore as well, and say healthcare is probably too hard. Hence the Qscan sale.
We would see it tightening down, but it's not just that. I think there are some earlier-stage investments in energy and data centers, for example, where the path to material scale is not super clear, and so they're things we're considering here.
If you roll forward, as I was saying, and we'll talk about this a bit more at Investor Day because we're still learning and developing our thinking, maybe two to three markets focused in and around AI infrastructure, energy, building, and app, could be kind of more coherent from a capital markets perspective, I think also take advantages of the capability we've got and the great starts we've got across the platform, and also lead to still an interesting growth profile just at our current scale. I think we haven't changed our spots, Infratil has made its track record on moving in and out of sectors as they became more or less attractive, and we would still reserve the right to continue to do that over time.
For a variety of reasons, a kind of more focused strategy over the next period feels good to us and something we're more focused on than spreading out again just now.
Stephen Hudson
That's useful. Thanks, Jason.
Just a couple of quick ones. Just back to Longroad, I think somebody else asked a question around your shareholding.
Are there any advantages to you going higher in terms of your existing shareholding, and are MEAG and NZ Super going to be participating in the current equity raise?
Jason Boyes
There aren't any yet, it's just more share of the good growth we see ahead. I think for those other two investors, they have their own kind of portfolio-related reasons for whether they're participating or not, which has given us the opportunity this time to get a bigger share of kind of the future growth we see.
Going forward, who knows, that'll be a question we'll be asking them as well.
Stephen Hudson
Okay. One last quick one, sorry, the 1 GW pipeline extension that you refer to on CDC, did you say that the current contract discussions that are taking place and that you're likely to update us on over the first half of this financial year will support that sort of 3.9 GW ultimate pipeline, or were you saying that that's actually beyond that time frame?
Jason Boyes
No. I think they're quite separate things.
I think these contracts we've been working on for a long period of time and we already have the land and everything for those kind of near-term ones. We're talking about longer-dated contracting discussions that I'm telling people, realistically, back end of the decade and into the 2030s is when they would light up, topping up the land pipeline for those sorts of target dates, which you kind of obviously have to do having accelerated so quickly in terms of contracted over the last month.
Stephen Hudson
You'd want reasonable certainty on your contract discussions before you'd go on, the land sport and extra gig, essentially, is what you're saying?
Jason Boyes
Oh no. I think we're seeing enough from demand to justify actively progressing that now is what I'm saying.
You put down a deposit and pay later in a lot of instances, and the amount you spend on the land is pretty immaterial relative to the overall build cost of it. We're signaling you should see that I think 1.6 GW of future pipeline we showed at 31 March, you should expect that to continue to extend over the year.
Stephen Hudson
That's useful. Thanks, Jason.
Jason Boyes
Great.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from Paul Mason from E&P.
Please go ahead.
Paul Mason
Hey, guys. Just two for me.
First one just on your credit ratings, I was just wondering if you could give us some comments on what your plans around managing those are, are you aiming to keep them stable through time for the headstock and for CDC, or is there scope here to maybe look at a lower rating and more gearing now that you're in the rating system or a higher rating? What's the general plan?
Andy Carroll
I think both public ratings are brand spanking new, I think you can expect us to continue to support those, and we both have a number of tools available to us to support the current ratings and grow liquidity. In our case or in both cases, we're looking at capital notes with equity credit, divestments, broadening our funding profile.
I think you can expect steady as she goes from both of us for the foreseeable future.
Jason Boyes
Yep.
Paul Mason
Great. The second one was just on the Kao Data Neocloud deal that you guys have mentioned.
Can you just give us a bit of color how it came together and also just the structuring? Is it similar to what you did with Firmus, where you've got some additional credit comfort?
Jason Boyes
Yeah. I think that particular customer has been growing strongly in the UK, particularly as the government's pushed their kind of sovereign AI efforts.
Kao participated in a lot of the kind of white papers and worked with the government on that, and so I believe the relationship was built out of working together on those things. The credit profile is obviously different from hyperscale, and so, yeah, there's slightly different technology than was used in Firmus, but trying to get to the same point where you're able to start using money from the customer to start building things and effectively raising the equity content and the build and then sort of ongoing credit support as well to give you comfort ahead that the rent's going to be paid and interest and all those things will be met.
Interesting to see how that technology is evolving all around the world. This is another iteration of it that we've seen, and there's others we've heard of as well, but yep, that's exactly what's going on.
Paul Mason
Okay. Thank you.
Jason Boyes
Cheers, Paul. I think we have one more question, do we?
Operator
Yes, thank you. Nick Harris from Morgans Financial.
Please go ahead. Great.
Jason Boyes
Hey, Nick.
Nick Harris
There we go. Hi, Jason, how are you going?
Jason Boyes
Hey, good.
Nick Harris
Thank you for the questions. Two.
One was just on the Longroad's potentially long-term data center builds. From what you said on the delivery dates, it sort of feels to me like it's more traditional CDC, Kao-style colo rather than potentially Neocloud builds.
Obviously in the US, some of those NCPs are scrambling to secure energy, I'm just trying to understand what the theoretical counterparty might look like
Jason Boyes
so I can get a feel for
Nick Harris
the theoretical funding envelope.
Jason Boyes
Yeah. It's actually both in kind of Neocloud, but at the kind of more institutional end because of the debt requirements.
Even the project finance requirements for energy, right, does narrow the aperture a bit. Then traditional hyperscale.
It's actually been quite interesting to see how the US market has developed its view on how to finance kind of lower-investment-credit-rated or sub-investment-credit-rated Neoclouds or model builds. Kind of wrap technology from maybe the chip provider, their own credit support like we were just talking about with Paul there, plenty of innovation that's resulting in investment-grade credit structures for counterparties that I think a year ago would have been almost unimaginable for the market.
Hopefully that gives you a sense that there's actually a broader set than just the big hyperscalers there, I think, could back one of these projects.
Nick Harris
A lot of those NCPs are obviously backed by the hyperscalers as well. Oh
Jason Boyes
yeah, there's a lot of money around
Nick Harris
both sides, so,
Jason Boyes
yep. Yep.
Nick Harris
Cool. Just my second question was on Gurīn's Project Vanda.
I just wanted to make sure I understood correctly. The sort of slippage you're seeing at the moment, as
Jason Boyes
I
Nick Harris
understand, it is more governments taking their time, as governments tend to do, as opposed to any specific roadblocks you may need to overcome?
Jason Boyes
Yeah. It's a good question.
Andy?
Andy Carroll
Yes, that's right. The key milestone we are waiting on is Indonesian export license, and that does involve conversations between Singapore and Indonesia.
That is the key milestone. We've ticked off a number of the stepping stones that are precursors to that, but that export approval is taking longer, it is moving to the right.
Yeah.
Jason Boyes
I think the context is for a new Indonesia government that's come in since these projects were started, is there enough benefit, right, for Indonesia that they're seeing? That's the kind of conversations that are going on.
Not so much to do with our project, but that kind of broader context, particularly in light of the energy crisis at the moment, I think as well.
Nick Harris
That's great. Thanks, Jason and Andy.
Jason Boyes
No worries. Thanks for the questions.
Okay. Let's wrap it up there.
Thank you very much for your attention today. Hopefully see you out on the roadshow we're about to do.
If not, we'll talk to you again around Investor Day. Have a good day.
Andy Carroll
Thanks.
Already premium?