Good morning everybody and thank you for joining the call. That's Will here and I'm joined by Frank, our CFO.

I'll provide an overview of the first half before handing it back to Frank to take you through the numbers.

Thank you, and good morning, everybody. Appreciate you're all joining the call.

I'm joined on the call by Frank Lemmink, our CFO. I'll provide an overview of the first half before giving it back to Frank to take you through the numbers, and then I'll take it back to take you through the progress we're making on our growth strategy, and we're then happy to take your questions.

We've delivered a good first half performance, underpinned by a continued focus on safe and efficient operations. We provided around 6% of UK power and 10% of UK renewables.

In May, we commenced operations of Hirwaun Power Station, adding another 300 megawatts to our portfolio, and we continue to upgrade two units at Cruachan, which will add a further 40 megawatts. Over the last eight months, we've made tremendous progress on our plans to invest in flexible and renewable generation, adding Flexitricity and over 700 megawatts of owned and tolled batteries.

Reflecting these developments, we're now targeting an increased group EBITDA from 650 to 800 million in 2029 once those BESS developments are fully operational. These numbers are before the proposed acquisition of Bluefield Solar Income Fund, BSIF, or developing any of the further BESS, solar, or wind options that we have.

At Drax Power Station, we're continuing to develop options to utilize 4 gigawatts of capacity, including a data centre. As we progress these opportunities, we remain committed to our capital allocation policy and delivering attractive returns for shareholders.

On page four, I want to spend a little bit of time on this slide as it demonstrates how we have repositioned our business. We increasingly manage, by which I mean generate, trade, optimize, or provide route-to-market or tolling services, many different types of generation and storage.

Each one of these activities will create value in different ways for the group and for the UK system, leveraging our capabilities and experience. Our thesis is that the UK energy transition will continue to move at pace, and we are positioning our company to grow with that transition.

We expect power demand to grow significantly, and we expect this demand to primarily be met by renewables, which will require more flexibility on the system. Since 2018, we've grown the business and transformed from a single-site operation with 2.6 gigawatts of biomass to a 4 gigawatt portfolio of pumped storage, hydro, biomass, and route-to-market capacity at the end of last year.

I want to highlight the route-to-market services we provide to small-scale solar and wind plants, over 2,000 sites and 800 megawatts, which generate on the order of £10 million of earnings per year. For reference, that is also what we will be doing for the Bluefield portfolio, which is of a similar size.

Now over the course of this year, our portfolio will increase to 6.1 gigawatts, with the addition of our first OCGT site, Hirwaun, I'll talk more about it in a minute, further route-to-market capacity via Flexitricity, which we've already got, and the acquisition of Bluefield, which is expected to close tomorrow. Now beyond that, we have development projects already post-FID that will grow our megawatts under management to 7.4 gigawatts in 2029, giving us multiple generation technologies across renewables and flexible generation, not to mention the significant development options we have beyond that.

Now interestingly, our strong position in flex gen means we're able to develop options for solar and wind from a position of strength and the ability to manage those assets within the portfolio. In June, we announced the proposed acquisition of BSIF, a UK-listed investment fund, which operates a UK portfolio of about 900 megawatts of operational solar and wind assets, in addition to a development pipeline of 2.9 gigawatts, which we will assess in line with our capital allocation policy.

For the financial year ended June 30th, 2025, EBITDA was about 130 million with a high level of contracted cash flows. To be clear, the earnings of BSIF are not included in the 650 to 800 million EBITDA target that I outlined before.

To update you, a BSIF shareholder vote took place on the 24th of July, and 99% of shareholders voted in favor of the acquisition. A court hearing to approve the scheme is due to take place tomorrow, the 31st of July, after which, meaning later that day, the acquisition is expected to complete.

The acquisition supports UK energy objectives and strategically moves us to having three substantial generation businesses: biomass, flex gen, and solar and wind. The acquisition is highly complementary to our existing operations, offering or adding structured and stable cash flows underpinned by longer-term renewable incentive schemes and PPAs, which complement the higher but potentially more volatile cash flows associated with flex gen.

Beyond that, we see an additional opportunity to unlock significant further trading and optimization margins and operational and energy services synergies. We expect to provide more detail on BSIF in September.

At the end of May, Hirwaun Power, our new 300 megawatt OCGT, commenced operations, and you can see it on the slide there. The power station represents an investment of over £100 million in South Wales, supporting energy security, electrification, and economic growth for the whole of the UK.

Frank will provide some additional and quite interesting detail on how it's performed in a few minutes. Hirwaun's sister sites, Millbrook and Progress, are expected to commission from late this year through 2027.

This is later than was expected and reflects delays by the relevant authorities in connecting the sites. Nevertheless, once fully operational, the three stations will provide combined capacity of around 900 megawatts and be remunerated under 15-year capacity market agreements worth around £260 million.

Of course, those capacity payments are additional to revenues we expect to generate from both peak power generation and system support services. Sustainability, important as always, is an area where we continue to make progress against climate, nature, and people initiatives.

Recognition of this progress came in January with a CDP AA rating, and in March, MSCI upgraded Drax from single-A to double-A, reflecting our environmental disclosures, climate transition planning, and continued implementation of our group-wide sustainability frameworks. Now I'll pass it over to Frank, who'll take you through some of the numbers.

Thank you, Will, and good morning, everyone. As Will said, we have made we have made tremendous progress executing our strategy, increasing our flex gen capacity with OCGTs, Cruachan expansion in process, and our investments in BESS.

We are expanding our trading and optimization capability by bringing Flexitricity platform into the portfolio, and we are adding a new branch with BSIF solar and wind portfolio, as well as a significant pipeline of development options. On a personal level, I'm really happy to be part of this in solving the strategic puzzle and implementing our strategy at Drax.

We have a strong business today, and we will enhance our value through delivering our strategy. Our balance sheet is strong.

We are generating cash flows which can support value-accretive growth and returns to shareholders, but we must operate well and safely and execute our plans diligently to realize this. This includes delivering the value from our acquisitions.

In the first half of 2026, we performed well, good results generating 279 million of adjusted EBITDA. This is lower than in '25, but that was expected, and it reflects lower achieved forward power prices year-on-year.

Adjusted earnings per share of 29.8 pence was a decrease on the first half of 2025, and this of course reflects the reduction in EBITDA and also non-cash foreign exchange movements, which were partially offset by a lower depreciation and amortization charge. Net debt of 1.025 billion was 1.3 times the last 12 months' EBITDA, and this remains significantly below our long-term target of around two times.

This does not include the impact of the proposed BSIF acquisition, of course. Total cash and committed facilities was around 630 million, which is a strong position, and this supports our growth plans for the group.

Our expected full-year dividend of 3 32.2 pence per share is an 11% increase on 2025, in line with our long-term growth rate. This reflects the confidence we have in our business, and as is our custom, we propose to pay 40% of this as an interim dividend, which equates to 12.9 pence per share.

Then the final leg of our capital allocation policy is returning excess investment capital to our shareholders, and we have returned 47 million via share buybacks year-to-date. Moving on to the next slide, talking a little bit more on the performances by our businesses.

Starting with our pellet production and biomass generation business, which we see increasingly as interlinked through the vertical integration between our operations in the US South and the Drax Power Station. Pellet production's EBITDA reduced from 74 million in first half of '25 to 64 million in the first half of '26.

A function of reduced volumes because of plant closures and outages, and we also showed continued progress on cost reductions, reducing the cost per tonne of biomass produced, and this reduces the headline size of our pellets business of of business, but because these are internal sales to our Drax Power Station, this actually reduces the cost that are passed through to our generation business, resulting in lower cost of biomass feedstock in in a part of a well-established cost-plus transfer pricing methodology. Then talking about biomass generation, which has performed well and continues to produce large volumes of renewable electricity and system support services inclusive of a major plant outage.

As I mentioned, the business also benefits from the cost reductions in the US South and therefore lower prices of internal pellet supply. Our flex gen business then, EBITDA reduced from the previous year.

This is because of an unplanned outage on the Cruachan units three and four, which is caused by a grid connection failure of assets owned by ScottishPower Energy Networks, or SPEN. As Will noted, planned outage work on these units continues as part of a turbine upgrade, which will in due course add 40 40 megawatts of new capacity.

Despite the headwinds from the outages on the units one and two from these outages, the units one and two performed very well and maintain a very high utilization rate. Hirwaun also performed has also performed well.

We have received market capacity capacity market payments for the full six months this half year, and since commencing operations in late May, we have been providing power generation and system support services as well. I will talk more about that shortly.

Flexitricity performed in line with our expectations, and in Energy Solutions, our industrial and commercial, I&C, business performed well as well. It maintained a broadly consistent margin on a small revenue base against a background of lower contracted power prices, a really good result.

Then finally, development expenditure, development spend has reduced as we have been very disciplined in allocating capital to large capital projects against a market backdrop that does not currently support significant investment in carbon removals. This is in line with some of the expected cost savings that we highlighted at our full-year results earlier this year, and we are now realizing this.

Then a little bit more on Hirwaun, and I think this is a very interesting slide. In its first month of operations, Hirwaun performed very well.

Our OCGTs are designed to operate at times of peak demand, which we normally expect to be focused on winter periods. However, reflecting high summer temperatures and lower wind speed, we saw significantly higher demand for Hirwaun services in power generation and balancing markets.

In addition, Hirwaun is fitted with a clutch mechanism, which allows the turbine to synchronize with the grid in a non-generation mode, helping to stabilize the system without producing any electricity. In total, the station operated in this mode for around 440 hours in June, which is around 60% of time, as you can see in the graph, as well as operating in the wholesale and balancing markets.

We see this flexibility and breadth of the market opportunity as a source of value to us, but also an essential essential service to the system providing stability to the grid, which is absolutely as an essential. As power demand grows and the system evolves to include more intermittent renewable and inflexible generation, we expect these themes will become more pronounced, and this informs our investment case for flexible generation and is also why we believe that having three of these OCGTs over time in our portfolio will be value generative.

Then moving on to the balance sheet. Maintaining a strong balance sheet remains a key priority.

We have no significant significant maturities remaining in '26, as you can see. The acquisition bridge facility will become available upon the completion of the BSIF deal tomorrow, we expect, and would allow us to repay shareholders and all of BSIF's debt, if required.

There are some facilities that we will likely retain subject to bank agreement. Then we have extended maturities on some of our facilities in the first half of this year as well, and because of that, we have significant headroom over our short-term liquidity requirements, as you can see.

Credit ratings then. Following the BSIF acquisition process, we have engaged all three of our rating agencies, and they all three of them have reiterated our cross-over credit rating after the announcement of the proposed BSIF acquisition.

They note the diversification benefits and improved business risk, earnings quality, and debt capacity, and these conclusions support our ability to grow our business whilst maintaining a strong balance sheet. Moving on to capital investment.

We have continued to invest in growth and in our core business, including BESS, pumped storage, and the OCGTs. The ongoing plant outage at Drax Power Station is progressing well, and we continue to target between 210 and 250 million of capital expenditure for the year, and this excludes our acquisitions.

Flexitricity has completed, as and BSIF, as Will said, could be finalized tomorrow. Then a bit on cost management.

Strong cost discipline is an integral part of our culture. Being disciplined on cost supports our upgraded 2029 EBITDA target.

We are making good progress putting in place the structures and plans to allow us to succeed and deliver long-term value to stakeholders. This includes both staff cost reductions and reduction in third-party costs.

Earlier this year, we set out a target to establish structural savings of over 150 million per year by 2027 compared to a 2024 base year. We are making really good progress, and we will continue to keep an iron discipline with regards to cost control.

This is something which I've done successfully in my previous company and something I'm seeking to embed deeply within the Drax culture as well. Then finally, our capital allocation policy.

This policy remains unchanged and is at the heart of our financial decisions that we make to make to make sure that we can successfully deliver growth, value, and income to shareholders. Our balance sheet is strong, and we remain committed to a long-term target of around two times net debt over EBITDA.

We will continue to invest judiciously in the core business to deliver safe and efficient operations and deliver options for growth in flexible and renewable energy. Our return to shareholders remain a critical part of our investment proposition, and since 2017, we have returned over 1.2 billion via dividends and share buybacks.

Since 2017, the dividend per share has grown on average by 11% per annum, including an expected increase of 11% in 2026. Income returns to shareholders are an important part of our investment case, and we remain firmly committed to our policy to pay a sustainable and growing dividend.

Then lastly, to the extent there is a surplus of capital beyond our investment requirements, we will consider the best way to return this to shareholders. The buyback, as is currently on pause, and we will evaluate this program along with the growth opportunities that are available to us.

I'm excited to be here, I'm very pleased to share these results with you, and I look forward to discussing them with you further in due course. With that, Will, hand back to you.

Thank you, Frank. Appreciate that.

Let's move on to page 18. NESO's future energy scenarios show power demand is likely to double over the next 25 years, driven by the electrification of heating, transport, and new industrial demand like data centres.

To help meet this demand, there will need to be up to a seven-fold increase in wind and solar, while at the same time, unabated gas is expected to retire from the system, meaning that while carbon emissions will reduce, the system also will become progressively more dependent on intermittent renewables, as well as over time on inflexible nuclear power. As a result, there's likely to be either too little or too much power on the system at any one point in time.

This system transition creates opportunities for significant investment in renewables, as well as in flexible generation, principally in BESS, which NESO believes could quadruple in capacity. Again, as you can see, we think there's a very strong tailwind driving our investment thesis, right.

I would also note that we have a strong view that existing cash flows from incumbent assets are particularly valuable in a world in which it's difficult to connect additional capacity to the grid. We've structured our BESS investments to account for this risk, and the proposed BSIF acquisition is another example of how we're addressing it.

Now as we're developing a gigawatt-scale pipeline of BESS opportunities, which complement our existing flexible generation portfolio. Now having the right assets in the right location at the right time will be critical to success, as will having the tools to manage the portfolio effectively.

We are making outstanding progress in this area and have committed about £500 million for over 700 megawatts of capacity, as well as acquiring Flexitricity. Now as we see two principal and slightly different routes to creating value from BESS: firstly, the ownership of physical assets, where we believe the locations that we have chosen are optimal, and where there are opportunities to invest in the sites further over the long term.

We've acquired three development projects for 260 megawatts under a fixed-price deal with structures in place that protect us in the event of cost or schedule overruns. That deal also gives us option rights over an additional 289 megawatts of capacity.

The second route is through floors and tolls, which provides us with an additional opportunity to access the BESS market and use our deep expertise in trading and optimizing flexible assets. In that space, we've entered into agreements for 450 megawatts of tolls with the developers, Fidra and Zenobē.

We will pay them a tolling fee, in return for which they are responsible for building, maintaining, and making the assets available for us to optimize. We will keep all the revenues from operations other than capacity payments and certain other immaterial ancillary revenues.

Importantly, both projects have now taken FID. Finally, the final piece of this puzzle is Flexitricity, which provides a scalable, best-in-class platform for optimizing those assets, both for ourselves and also for third-party owners.

Turning to the next slide, we're growing a balanced portfolio in the UK, and let me provide a little more color on how we're expecting to do that. First, we have an existing portfolio and existing set of expertise that operates across the UK power system today.

We operate and trade large-scale generation assets: Drax Power Station, Cruachan, our first OCGT, and hydropower. As we're developing those attractive portfolio of BESS assets.

Now the second thing that we do is we provide route-to-market services for BESS, wind, and solar assets, both through our existing business and also through Flexitricity, which we've just recently acquired. In combination, that gives us close to 2 gigawatts for over 2,000 small renewable assets, as well as grid-scale assets.

Thirdly, we're already a major player in the I&C supply space, giving us significant insight into the demand side of the equation. It's logical for us to grow that portfolio by adding solar and wind, which we're starting to do by adding almost a gigawatt through the Bluefield acquisition that again we expect to close tomorrow.

Beyond that, we will look to grow the portfolio across the piece by developing the significant opportunities for growth that we already have. Just by way of example, BSIF brings a pipeline of options in BESS and solar with over 500 megawatts of projects which already have 15 to 20-year CfDs as only a small part of their overall development pipeline of 2.9 gigawatts.

We will also look to further M&A as and when appropriate. You put that all together, and we already have strong visibility of growing our megawatts under management that underpins our upgraded expectation for EBITDA in 2029 of between 650 and 800 million.

Again, please note, which I'm sure you guys have all done, that this does not include BSIF, which, as we have said already, delivered EBITDA of 130 million in 2025. If you put that all together and you say, well, what is the portfolio that we have the opportunity to develop, we have the potential to grow to 12 gigawatts of operational assets, including what we've already got, what we're already building, and options on sites that we already have.

All of that is before we start even talking about DPS, which we'll do now. If I go to page 22, the Drax Power Station site, as located centrally in the UK and next to one of the country's largest substations, includes over 1,000 acres and has 4 gigawatts of grid access.

It already has 2.6 gigawatts of flexible renewable generation running and has cooling systems on a secure site very close to the UK's fiber-optic network. Now as a first step, it's already the UK's largest power station, as and we expect biomass generation to continue to play a long-term role in meeting UK energy demand.

On top of that, we're developing plans for a data centre, which I'll talk about in a minute. On top of that, we're also evaluating options to utilize inactive legacy infrastructure to provide system support services.

For example, we can use power from the grid to rotate and synchronize the legacy units to the grid to provide inertia and voltage management, thereby helping to stabilize the system in exactly the same way as Frank mentioned that the OCGTs operate in clutch mode. Finally, in the long term, we are also exploring opportunities to utilize 1.4 gigawatts of non-biomass grid access for new generation.

Let's talk a little bit about the data centre. The size, location, and infrastructure of the site make the Drax Power Station a good fit for a data centre, and we're continuing to develop an option to do that.

As soon as we have more detail, we will share those with you. What I can say is the following: it'll be a three-phase project, the first phase for about 100 megawatts using existing infrastructure and transformers to import power directly from the grid, and we will be submitting a planning application for that 100 megawatt data centre in the second half of the year.

Beyond that, we have two more phases that are both behind-the-meter. The second phase aims to utilize about 500 megawatts of capacity before 2031, and as this is still during the period of the CfD, and so that will be subject to agreement with the UK government.

While we haven't had substantial discussions with the government, we are clearly making them aware of our progress as we work on this, right. The third phase would follow from 2031 afterwards, adding further capacity up to a gigawatt and beyond.

Ultimately, this development would represent a multi-billion dollar forward investment in the UK, creating thousands of jobs while continuing to support energy security through 2031 and beyond. Turning on page 25, just in short, summary.

We performed well again in the first half of 2026. We're already a leading provider of flexible renewable generation in the UK, and we're taking advantage of a great opportunity to grow that position and develop a full-fledged, multi-technology generation portfolio including solar and wind.

We've absolutely begun at pace that investment program as I've described, and look forward to growing our business through the rest of the decade and well beyond, creating value by investing in the UK energy transition. Of course, as we always have been, we will be disciplined in how we approach these opportunities in line with our existing capital allocation policy, and we will be laser-focused on value creation.

Let me close by returning to what I said at the start. The UK needs to meet a growing demand for power while maintaining energy security in a cost-effective manner and continuing to decarbonize.

That is the essence of the energy trilemma. We believe we can play a significant role in meeting all three of those needs.

Since 2018, we've grown our business from being a single-site 2.6 gigawatt biomass generator to being a multi-site portfolio with a range of generation technologies and route-to-market services. We already have more than visibility, we have very clearly plans and capital in place to grow that portfolio through the end of the decade across multiple technologies to 7.4 gigawatts under management, almost doubling the position that we had at the end of 2025.

In doing so, we make Drax a business focused on a broad range of flexible as well as long-term contracted intermittent renewables. Beyond that, we have a pipeline of further opportunities in both flexible generation and renewables, as well as at Drax Power Station, which together represent around 12 gigawatts of operational assets that we can own or manage, as well as having opportunities for further growth.

In taking these actions, we believe we can deliver value for our shareholders, all of our stakeholders, while at the same time supporting the UK energy objectives and promoting economic growth. Of course, we will update you in due course as we continue to roll out this investment plan.

With that, we're happy to take questions.

Hi, team. Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions.

I'll start with two, please. Firstly, Will, toward the end of your speech, you talked about the progress on data centres and looking to file a planning application in the second half of this year.

Can you shed a bit more light as to how the discussions are going with the relevant counterparties, and should we see the intention to file a planning application as significant progress in those conversations? Any color there would be helpful.

Then secondly, maybe more a point of clarification, if I compare today's guidance of 650 to 800 post-'29 to what you had as 6 to 700 before, is the idea that it's 50 to 100 million coming from BESS, or are there any changes to the scope of the 6 to 700 versus where we are today? Thank you.

Thanks, Pavan. Why don't I take the first one and then I'll ask Frank to take the second one.

On the data centre, I think we we continue to be in the market talking to various parties. As we've been working with a developer to help us sort of help us work through the program.

Effectively the decision we've made is that for the 100 megawatts, we're basically putting in place a planning application that we think will make sort of our offering more attractive and move us a step forward as we continue those discussions. I wouldn't take it as indicating that we've sort of that there's something more in those discussions than we've already disclosed, right.

Yeah. On

the second question, you're absolutely correct. The previous guidance was £600 to £700 million.

We've added our expectation for the BESS EBITDA range to that of £50 to £100 million, which takes you to £650 to £800 million. That is still before BSIF, of course, as you add for example, the 2025 £130 million, and you can make the calculation yourself.

Thank you.

Morning. Thanks a lot.

Just a couple for me as well, sticking with somewhat similar themes, but I just wanted to check on just following up on Pavan's question on the data centre point. Is this the only step in terms of the planning that you would take prior to announcing an agreement with an offtaker, or are there other things that you may ultimately do prior to that announcement coming through?

Then just on the 50 to 100 million on the BESS, I'd be interested to understand how well-underpinned you see the 50, and then what has to happen and how do you see the opportunity in the market to be at the upper end of that range? Then just lastly, when you talk about the development of other opportunities at Drax Power Station, particularly on the system support services, I appreciate there's a range there, '25 to 2031, but what may happen there and I guess when may we see that potentially coming into numbers?

Thanks.

Okay. On the data centre point, I think the simple answer, Alex, and I appreciate you're looking for other catalysts or other milestones that we might have, I think it's probably there's nothing that I can point to now that would be sort of additional progress that we could sort of point to before actually probably announcing that we got a customer.

I would say, as and when we have other information that we think is of value, we will obviously provide that. On the BESS stuff, I think it's really about the range in terms of the volatility in the market, I would say.

I think the 50 million is something we would be quite confident in a downside year that would cover that. 100 million would be more the upside year.

It's an interesting one because obviously the market this summer has been a bit unusual, different from normal, right. The sort of idea that there's more volatility in summer, that was probably more expected in winter in the past.

Again, I think it's a function of volatility, I think quite simply, right. Then on the system support stuff, the system operator is running auctions for system support services.

One of those has happened. I think the decision on that is I think sometime middle of next year, and that actually is then I think that's when we would start building, and that takes some time.

I would expect those sort of significant projects to be several years away before they would start producing anything as and when we would sort of win a contract.

Okay. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions.

I've actually got three, apologies. The first one's on security of supply and I think the unprecedented situation that you've kind of alluded to at the moment with the geopolitics, but also the extreme weather.

I'll be interested in your view on the threats and potential opportunities for Drax: firstly, with the potential gas crunch coming in winter. Clearly, we've got very low gas storage levels, in fact, we've none in the UK, and if demand does pick up, then clearly whether or not Drax can benefit from that.

The second one is clearly also on the electricity and the sort of alleged cover-up by NESO that the UK grid came quite close to a blackout, whether or not that gives you or if you can give us some update on what your views there. Then, of course, on the water angle as well, half the country is now in drought.

Do you see the potential abstraction and cooling issues for Drax and how your hydro assets are going to perform under those conditions? Apologies, it's quite a long first one, but they're all linked.

The second two are actually quite quick. Remind me on data centres, I think Ofgem's announcing a 0.7 million pound per megawatt development, sort of transmission fee.

Are you going to be subject to that as part of your development? Thirdly, can you remind me again on the BESS 50 to 100 million, I presume you're relying on the T-1 capacity auction or can we model a T-4 in that one and then happen that bit for 2029?

Thank you.

I think that's about eight questions, Dominic.

Another 10 if you want them.

Let's start with the first one. In terms of security of supply and the extreme weather, gas crunch, etc., I guess the first thing I would say is that we've run our assets as we always would have expected to run them.

We obviously endeavored to provide as much supply as we could, and so I feel as though we've absolutely done what we wanted, and we've also responded to the system operator asking us to run and/or in the case of Cruachan, run, pump, etc. We're very comfortable with the role we're playing and trying to provide energy security for the UK.

In that context, very pleased that the first of the open cycles was online in June. That was doing a small part to help with the security supply challenges.

I think it's sort of a simple thing to say, it would have been nice to have two other ones up and running at the same time for us and for the system, and unfortunately, they have not been running. I can't comment on what's happening inside the system operator.

Can't really comment on how close or not we were to sort of having a system sort of blackout type event, but I would say that I think that the summer situation is going to become increasingly more challenging relative to what it has been, right. You get this combination of heat wave across the continent, challenges with nuclear cooling water, etc., challenges in efficiency of various different types of technologies as it gets hotter and air conditioning sales are going through the roof, right.

It's probably something we should have and will be expecting to be the new reality. We don't expect any water issues at the Drax Power Station or anywhere.

Clearly the run of river is very much sort of rain-dependent, so that is, to the extent there's less water, there's less generation. Cruachan, on the other hand, there's plenty of water on the bottom and the top, so that isn't very much rain and drought-dependent.

On your second question, because we're an existing connection, we don't expect to have any issues with that topic. Then on the BESS topic, we have some T-4 capacity contracts in place already, and I think the important point probably there is that given the derating on the batteries, it's not a very significant piece of the puzzle.

On the tolled assets, I think the owner actually keeps those payments anyway, so. I think that's probably about four of the questions.

Are there four that I missed?

No, I think you've answered them admirably.

Thank you. Thanks, Dominic.

Feel free to come back if you have longer ones as well.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, just on the strategic review of the Canadian assets, I just wondered whether you'd be able, Will, to give any kind of overview on what the options are or anything that you've found and what the benefit could be to Drax.

Just secondly, it sounds like you've been seriously let down by National Grid hooking up the three OCGTs, which has cost you money, and also by ScottishPower. Surely, there are options, if only through insurance, for you to get compensation for that.

Can you talk about whether there may be any potential flowback of economics there? Thank you.

Okay. On on Canada, I think two points I would make.

The the team there is doing a very nice job of working through the economics and and improving the fundamental performance of that business. That's, sharpening your pencil all the way around.

There are a couple of things that are sort of specifically improving things. They've been through the portfolio of contracts, and to the extent that we can reach agreement with some people who have lower-value contracts, we've been able to sort of, close some of those down.

We've actually again, on the on the flip side, on the supply side, we've, as closed one of our sites, and so that's sort of averaged down our own cost, right. The second side of this is that the to the extent we have lower demand for fiber, we then actually can reduce the further out you go for fiber, as Mark, the more expensive it gets, to the extent there's less demand, we have cheaper pellets, all of that is contributing to a significantly improvement in the operational performance.

In terms of the actual strategic review, we're looking at very different different options, including potential sale, and that process is ongoing and and I would say early days, but potentially encouraging, right. Frankly, the benefits to the group, we are, as you can see from our strategy, we're very focused on the opportunities we have in the UK, very focused on sort of having a supply chain from the US South sorry, US South supporting the UK sort of biomass generation, and so being able to sort of focus more on that piece of our business long-term is absolutely part of what we're trying to get to.

In terms of the system operator and SPEN, I guess what I think what I would say is that the we're working very closely with both. I think that they're doing the best that they can within the constraints they have, both contractually and regulatorily, to to support us.

I think that the fact that the way the system is designed, that's not that easy for them to do, right. Their contractual sort of framework is not conducive to to us getting either sort of, having sort of strong contractual remedies to support actually their delivery doesn't also give us sort of financial remedies, as you I'm sure well know.

Again, the cooperation and the willingness is is strong, we're, we're actually working cooperatively with them, which I think is helpful, right. In terms of insurance, we are, we do have business interruption insurance, and, that has the potential to support things on the Cruachan side.

I would say it's it's less relevant on the open cycle side.

Thank you.

Good morning. Two questions.

Firstly, on Hirwaun, are you able to give the split of revenue between non-generation and generation either in revenue or in terms of the EBITDA? I'm trying to get a feel for how material the non-generation income is.

Then the second question, just around the route-to-market opportunity, I think I'm right in saying you said £10 million in earnings, was that an expectation or was that actually what you've delivered this half? Where do we see that in the numbers?

Thanks.

Yeah. On the open cycles, we haven't broken that out so far, Adam.

I think what I'll do is take that question away because I think when we get to a Capital Markets Day, for example, that's the type of thing where I think we potentially could provide more detail, that sounds like would be helpful, we will work on that. In terms of the route-to-market, the 10 million I mentioned is, call it a circa 10 million number that we've been earning from the route-to-market business that we've had in place for several years.

That business originally came to us through the Opus acquisition. It's again circa 10 million, I think that's a good ballpark number for that size of portfolio with that type of route-to-market assets, etc.

That number appears in the DESNZ numbers, right? It's a full year, not a half year.

Okay. Can I just ask, is that capacity related, or do you get any element of price exposure?

Not sure. Can you explain what you mean?

I'm not sure I understand the question.

Is your route-to-market fee for each generator, is that related to the capacity they have or is it like a royalty payment from the income they're getting? It's

basically the way it works is that these smaller scale generators will sort of come to market where they ask for a proposal, how much will you charge me in order for you to bring that power to market? We earn a fee from them, and then the flip side of that is actually then we have to manage the market risk associated with, for example, a day-ahead CFD pricing and bringing that to market.

It's effectively the earnings net of the cost for managing the risk. Got it.

Got it. Thanks.

Hi. Good morning, everyone.

I've got two questions. First on the pellets and focusing on the US South and the pellet business there, I wonder if you could provide an update on the cost reduction program in the first half year, how you see this playing out second half and into '27 and obviously the impact on margins.

Second one, again, just go back to data centres in a slightly different angle. Just in terms of the conversations you mentioned you've had with the government, appreciate that it's sort of still in the early stages, I wonder if you could provide any insights to the government's position there.

Would you say they're supportive of a large behind-the-meter data centre at Drax? Any insight would be helpful.

Thanks.

Yeah. I think on the pellet side, I mean really it's it's I think it's significantly fits into what Frank talked about in terms of the overall program, right, which is that, we've got this program which we call FutureFocus.

It includes everything from, top to bottom, sort of power station operations, pellet plant operations, internal costs, third-party costs, and and what what we've been doing now for several years quite successfully in the pellet business is basically looking for every opportunity, whether that's, simple things, better procurement, for example, right, just simple things like that, sort of optimizing operations across the piece. The way I'm thinking about it is look to take out inflation every year kind of kind of scenario, as a sort of maybe a rule of thumb, right.

They did did that nicely. The the power station may be a little bit differently because the power station will clearly going to be running less, the program there is designed to make sure we have the right sort of cost base relative to a smaller set of operations, right.

Maybe one thing I'll throw in here, which I think is interesting, is that the, if the system is going to be shorter in the summer with Drax Power Station operating effectively two full biomass units, it's going to be shorter still if we're running at 30% capacity instead of at 60% capacity, next year might be a tougher one for the system. In terms of government discussions, I think the I guess two things I would say.

One is that, we have we have ongoing, I would say call them natural day-to-day discussions with DESNZ as a major generator. Those discussions are already sort of about how what do we think the system, looks like in 2031, what's the role that we might play, how does the data centre fit into that.

I think from their perspective, clearly the investment that the data centre brings is very attractive. At the same time, I think they recognize that the power station is very well likely to be needed for security of supply well into the '30s, right.

Balancing those two things in a in a very constructive way, I would say, a discussion. Saying discussions is a bit grand, but I would say the the regular interactions we're having to sort of throw some throw these ideas around would indicate that they have recognized the value in both of those things.

Great. Thank you.

well, thanks very much, guys. Really appreciate the questions.

I guess the two things I would say. One is that, I think we've operated well, safely, delivered power, 6% is much higher than what we've been doing in terms of contribution to the overall system in the first half of the year, but much more significantly, our business is just rapidly becoming very different from what you and your investors might have remembered, right.

If I will take away one thing from this is basically we are a 6 gigawatt under management business with a broad range of technologies doing lots of different things. I'll just leave that with you.

Thanks very much.