Thank you very much, Carla. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everyone, depending on where you are joining this call today.

Thank you for joining ACWA's first quarterly earnings call for the year 2026. As usual, we are hosting the call from our headquarters in Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia.

Together with me, I have Dr. Samir Serhan, ACWA's CEO, and as well as I have Abdulhameed Al Muhaidib, who is our CFO.

For those of you who may not know me, my name is Ozgur Serin. I am the Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy at ACWA.

In less than a minute, we will share with you our presentation together with the prepared remarks, and following that, we will also open the call to your questions at the end of the prepared remarks. All materials in association with the results of ACWA for the first quarter of 2026 are already on our website, company's website, as well as Tadawul's website.

One last note, as you all know, during the call, we are going to be using forward-looking statements, and for those, we have a disclaimer in all the materials that we are sharing with you today. Without further ado, let me pass the word to Dr.

Samir. Dr.

Samir?

Thanks, Ozgur. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today.

I will begin with a brief update on the business, including our operational performance, portfolio resilience, growth trajectory, and outlook for the remainder of the year. Let me start by saying that ACWA is entering a new phase of maturity.

ACWA has built a significant scale across power, water, and renewable energy. What we are focused on now is ensuring that the growth continues with a greater operational discipline, stronger execution, and consistent financial resilience.

From a business development perspective, the first quarter of the year included several important milestones. We're proud that we have entered Kuwait through our first greenfield project called Az-Zour North Phase 2 and 3.

It's IWPT, which represent close to 3 GW of power capacity and around 600,000 cubic meter per day of water desalination capacity. We also achieved 1 billion SAR in financial close activity during the quarter and reached two commercial operation dates, adding more than 770 MWh of BESS and 600,000 cubic meter per day of water capacity to our portfolio.

Operationally, the business continued to perform strongly. Availability across renewables and water remained solid, while our legacy in concentrated solar and combined-cycle forced outage issues continue to improve significantly.

Our forced outages for these assets are now down by 50% over the last 3 years, reflecting the focus we have placed on operational excellence. Safety performance also remained strong.

During the quarter, we delivered 38.5 million hours with an LTI rate of 0.01. We also continued to make progress on ESG performance and disclosure.

During the quarter, MSCI upgraded ACWA from BBB to A. From a financial and operational perspective, the first quarter demonstrated the resilience of our portfolio, despite the elevated geopolitical disruption in the region.

We have seen no material or adverse effect operationally or financially on our business today as a result of the geopolitical situation. That said, while underlying the fundamentals of the company remain robust, we continue to take a measured and reasonably cautious view on the remainder of the year.

Given the geopolitical developments in the region, I would like to take a couple of minutes to deep dive into how are we managing the situation across the business. From a safety and crisis management standview, we activated a 24/7 command center early in the escalation period.

While the command center is currently not active, we continue to closely monitor developments and maintain enhanced safety and security measures across our portfolio. Our priority throughout has remained very clear: ensuring the safety of our people while maintaining operational continuity across our fleet, providing products to our customers.

From a business development point of view, we have seen no systematic delays in our bid submission pipeline or adverse impact on the financial close for our projects. Operationally and financially, our portfolio remained resilient.

Our contractual framework continue to prove strong protection for us. From a risk management standpoint, the primary areas we continue to monitor are the potential impacts of prolonged disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, especially in relation to supply chain continuity and insurance market tightening.

To mitigate these risks, we have implemented a range of measures, including maritime rerouting strategies, inventory build-up for critical spare items, and activation of contractual protections where appropriate. Safety continued to be one of the clearest indicators of operational discipline across the organization.

Today, ACWA operates 67 assets while managing 32 assets under construction. As I mentioned earlier, during the quarter, we maintained an LTI rate of 0.01, representing a combined improvement of 50% over the last 3 years.

At the same time, as mentioned also earlier, we delivered 38.5 million hours in the quarter. Another scale that we also want to report moving forward, which is a leading indicator instead of a lagging indicator like the LTI—it is a lagging indicator—is the potential fatality and permanent impairment.

We have reported 37 in the quarter compared to 21 in the same quarter last year. This number definitely higher.

This reflects our stronger detection capability, greater reporting discipline, and a more proactive safety culture across the business. We want to really see where are the weaknesses before really serious issues happen, LTI or fatality.

The strength of our operational platform is also reflected in our availability metrics. During the quarter, water availability remained strong at 99%, while renewable power availability was north of 97%.

As mentioned earlier, forced outages in these areas are now 50% less than 3 years ago. This reflect the effectiveness of the operational improvement program we have implemented across the fleet and reinforce our confidence in the long-term quality and reliability of our platform.

In the 4 years since the IPO, we have more than doubled our power capacity to 95 GW and added 53% more desalination capacity, close to 10 million meter cube per day. At the same time, asset under management has grown from $67 billion at IPO to $121 billion today.

By 2030, we still commit to a target 175 GW of power capacity and more than 15 million cubic meter per day of water capacity, and up to 1 million ton per annum of green hydrogen production. Let me give you now a shorter outlook what we really see in the next 12-15 months.

Our confidence in delivering the 2030 strategy is supported by a strong, diversified pipeline across our business verticals. Within the immediate pipeline, we currently have close to 3 GW of power, together with 8.7 GWh of BESS battery energy storage system, and 600,000 cubic meter per day of desalinated water awarded projects pending contract signing.

These are projects that basically were awarded to us, but we're waiting for the contract signing. We've also submitted projects bids awaiting results representing more than 1 GW of power and more than a quarter-million cubic meter per day of desalinated water capacity.

Beyond that, the broader bids and deals pipeline remains very substantial, with 91.5 GW of power opportunities that currently in our pipeline, more than 10 million cubic meter per day of water opportunities also in our pipeline, and a little over 1 million ton per annum of green hydrogen opportunities. Again, you can see the very rich pipeline and that's why we're confident about the 2030 targets.

It's worth noting that due to the regional conflict, some bidding timeline may shift as are scheduled by our offtakers. In parallel, we currently have to close 9 GW of power and slightly north of 2 million cubic meter per day of water desalination project at financial close that we expect to complete in 2026, in this year.

Finally, I would like to close by highlighting the continuous progress we are making on ESG performance and disclosure. MSCI, as I mentioned earlier, upgraded ACWA to A rating.

S&P Global scores improved above industry average levels, and Sustainalytics reduced our risk profile to medium risk. We're very proud of these improvements.

They're really a result of a substantial company-wide effort involving active engagement with rating agencies, enhanced governance and disclosure practices, and reporting of more than 430 data points and 120 disclosure metrics. Really impressive around the whole company to really achieve this.

This is not simply about rating. It reflects the continuous institutional strengthening of the company and reinforce confidence in ACWA as a credible, long-term global infrastructure platform.

To close, I would like to reiterate that ACWA is not simply growing. We are scaling with discipline, executing with consistency, and strengthening our position as a long-term infrastructure platform.

Thank you, and I would like to pass it on to our CFO, Abdulhameed. Abdulhameed, please?

Thank you, Dr. Samir.

Assalamu

alaikum, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening for those joining us across the world.

I would really first like to thank you for joining us today. I would like to highlight in the first couple of moments about resilience of our business model.

As you can see from the first part of our announcement, the business model remains strong, which is depending really on the four pillars of our operating model, which is develop, invest, operate, and optimize. I will specifically discuss how some of these components of the business model has weighted higher despite the fact that the development part has been slowed down, in line with what was mentioned earlier by Dr.

Samir. This shows the resilience of the business model.

We continue to have a very stable operation, despite the geopolitical tension that has happened in part of our portfolio. Also, I would like to put a little bit of emphasis on the recently completed acquisitions, mainly the assets in Kuwait, Bahrain, and in the Saudi market.

Operating income has reached around 710 million Saudi riyals, almost 16% lower for the same quarter of last year, and net income has also dropped to 345 million, which is around 19% lower than the same quarter of last year. Our business is really about a yearly performance, and we do always see cyclical impact on the quarters, but usually given the long-term structure of most of our business model, we are really looking at delivering this usually on a yearly basis.

The first point I would like to share with you on the operating income, if you move to the next slide, I would like really to highlight a trend that we have witnessed for the first quarter in the last 5 years. As you can see, the first slide you see how does the operating income does perform as against the development revenues, which is one part of the four components of our business model.

You can see what I tried to highlight in the previous slide, the unusually strong development parameters we have witnessed in 2025, which is around 526 million Saudi riyals. It has contributed significantly to quite unique quarter one in 2025.

What I have seen as a positive in 2026 first quarter, and that's why the development part or one component of the four components has dropped significantly to around 50%, the overall operating income has only dropped for less than 16%. This shows the maturity of the recurring cash flows our operating income on this quarter.

Looking at the net income, also you can see the trend that we have witnessed in the last 5 years and taking out the big components related to development again. We are quite working or aligned with the trend that we have seen in term of average first-quarter performance for the last couple of years.

On the operating income, to take a more detailed breakdown from previous year to the current year, last year the first quarter we have closed at 870 million Saudi riyals. The first major change is related to really the existing and new assets that has been moving from construction into operation, and these assets including also settlement, closing, and all of that has contributed around 115 million Saudi riyals.

Looking at component number two, which is mainly what we have acquired, as you have seen in the announcement, we have closed both the expansion in Shuaibah IWPT and also the acquisitions of the portfolio in Bahrain and Kuwait, which has contributed for the quarter one around 78 million Saudi riyals. Component number three, you will see that there is a drop of around 300-plus million Saudi riyals.

It's mainly related to lower development activities. If you look at the performance from the previous years and the usual expectation, there is always a slowdown in the quarter one, but I think when you look at the full-year performance, we remain optimistic that development will catch up, as the demand is real, and there is a serious growth a serious progress in these projects.

However, the delays is mainly coming from the timing of this either financial closes or the awards or the signing of the PPAs or the PWAs. The last component is mainly related to other items including G&A and other costs.

Moving to the net income, looking at the 427 million which is the last year's quarter one, the first component really is related to lower financing costs that also happened or added to one of the provisions that we took last year in a project that we decided not to pursue in 2025 in Africa. That was around 104 million Saudi riyals.

Then we have around 29 million or close to 30 million of higher financial income together with other finance activities net impact. Then we have the impact for the previous slide which is around 140 million Saudi riyals of lower operating income.

Around 74 million is mainly impacted of the deferred tax, which is mainly, I think, from specifically the assets in Morocco, where we have the mismatch between the Moroccan dirham and the euro-dollar fiscal accounts. This brings it to around 345 million Saudi riyals.

We'll pause here. We'll take some of the questions from the investors, thank you very much.

Thanks for taking my question. I have two.

The first one is the revenues you recognized from the sale of shared facilities in this quarter. Could you give some color, what is that and is it likely to be repeated?

That's number one. Number two is that two of your Saudi plants faced a limitation on power dispatch.

Could you let us know the current status?

Can you repeat the second question?

Two of your plants faced limitation on power dispatch.

What's

current status for that,

how

are your mitigations?

Sure. Can I go ahead?

Yeah. For the second question on the curtailment, we have announced really the two assets that has been composed to curtailment, and any further developments when it comes to bringing them back to operation or any major items, we will definitely announce it also on the stock exchange.

Far we're progressing in terms of discussion, and as we mentioned in the announcement, it comes to third-party assessment. There is no major developments since we announced, we will have to wait until further development comes, and then definitely we will include it in the exchange.

As we stand today, it's exactly the same than when we left it on the announcement in the exchange. For the revenue of the shared services, this is usually I would say specific exercise that we have witnessed in specific markets in Central Asia, not in the Saudi market, where I just can explain to you what's happening there and then you can reflect on how frequent it will be in the future.

Usually, if you take the example of Saudi, basically we are building the generation side, where the government are building the transmission, distribution, and the substation linking up to our plant, whereas in other locations, we add the transmission and big part of the offtaker substation into our scope of execution. During the construction period, this is part of the project cost, and then at COD, we hand over these assets back to the offtaker, and then there is kind of a payment either structured in 10 years or more that is being added on.

How frequent will this be is how frequent this kind of scope being repeated into our portfolio. We have seen couple of actually projects follow the same standard, you will see a bit more of the same exercise happening in this asset in Central Asia.

How much it will be repeated or changed or be repeated in other markets, we still have to see that.

I think one thing to add about the curtailment, if you allow me, I think we were instructed recently by the offtaker, basically, to reduce the curtailment percentage to a lower percentage, we're making more power out of some of these units.

Okay. All right.

Thanks a lot. Just on the sale of shared facilities, what is the margin profile of that sale?

Could you let us know, is that a capital gain which you generate on this? How does it work in terms of profitability?

We don't disclose the margins there when it comes to transfer of sales, but these are, as I mentioned, it's assets being transferred, and then the same profile, you are amortizing it over the years. Depending on how you treat these assets, sometimes you can book it up front and then you get the payments in amortized basis.

Sometimes, depending also on the treatment of these assets, it could be payment and amortization if the contract is different to be around the years. There is no margin profitable.

It's basically the same asset transfer that you are doing. It's zero for the assets that we have done so far.

In the future, it depends really on these assets.

Thanks a lot.

Hello, it's Ricardo Rezende from Morgan Stanley. Thanks for taking my question.

If I may, the first question is on your early strategy. When you're talking a lot about growth discipline, does that mean that if we see some changes as well on your geographical footprint, it might emphasize some specific geographies compared to what you had mentioned in the past?

Then just second question, you've shown these slides both in show new projects and the pipeline for bids and tenders. Could you also please comment upon potential farm-downs and potential stake sales in current projects that you have?

Thank you.

I can respond to the first question, basically. As we highlighted to you before, we really have a very rich pipeline of opportunities.

We're pursuing around the world. Really what fortunate in this regard, because that really gave us the choice now, to be more selective, we're definitely evaluating the risk profile for these different opportunities and the returns.

Based on that, we can really pick one that really going to be really add more value to us and to our shareholders, yeah. Specifically to the second question, it was not part of slide 10 that we presented, because farm-downs or acquisitions usually is not part of the bids and deals pipeline.

Maybe I will talk about the farm-downs first. When it comes to the portfolio, you will see couple of assets that we are having a bigger share than what usually own, between 30% to 40%.

Some assets that we are still at the level of 70% to 80%. These are all assets that are coming up with potential divestments or I would say partial divestment into them.

We have actually bundled couple of these projects into a portfolio, and we are actively looking for a potential divestments for one of these portfolios. There is another active progress on one or two other transactions.

Divestment remain part of the bigger picture, one of the four pillars, which is the optimized part, and you should expect divestment to continue contributing to our bottom line on this forum. When it comes to acquisitions, I think today we have demonstrated that acquisitions come with a strong recurring cash flow is always a target for ACWA Power.

Any four assets that has start contributing for quarter one results, and we are also looking at multiple transactions at the same time. We believe the market today is actually giving a good opportunities in these acquisitions that potentially could be part of our I would say deals pipeline, but not this pipeline.

Finally, some of these markets that we are looking at now in Southeast Asia also give a good opportunity for acquisitions that we are actively looking at that as well.

Great. Thank you very much.

Yes, good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for the presentation.

Anna Antonova from J.P. Morgan.

One question from our side. Can you please comment what is the status of the NEOM green hydrogen project?

What is the current completion rate and do you still expect it to be commissioned in the end of this year? Thank you.

We're currently around 90% on the project and as expected, basically, we will be producing product next year. We're very, very proud of this project and many people were questioning how real is this project.

It is very real. We would love to have you sometime, to go visit the job site and see how impressive of a facility is this, and it's going to be making around 1.2 million ton of green ammonia basically next year.

Thank you.

Yes, hi. This is Ildar Khaziev from HSBC.

I have a question about the latest fifth round of projects, which I think was launched sometime in July 2025, I think. I've seen that this round was in the bid evaluation stage and seems like it was delayed.

Can you tell us what's the status of that tender? Is it coming up soon this year, perhaps?

Separately, another question is about the impact of the regional disruptions. Are you experiencing or might experience, you think, cost inflation because of this in your ongoing projects, and do you think this could actually potentially lead to more business for you in terms of reconstruction projects and stuff like that?

Thank you.

Thank you. For the renewables related to round 5 and round 6, as you highlighted, the second part of your question is actually already achieved financial close and they are in the progress of construction.

These projects are in the execution phase and definitely there is now a foreseen impact when it comes to completion, potential increase in the cost of the materials and shipping due to the geopolitical tension. Having said that, the structural protections that we usually have when we execute these development is that there is a lump-sum EPC turnkey solution that usually protect basically the project company from any escalation on the construction and execution risk, and it is passed through to the EPC contractor.

Having said that, of course we're going to work in the spirit of partnership between the project company and EPC contractor to try and find solution on this potential cost increase. Some of this could be increased as a offtaker risk, in a force majeure structure that offtaker risk event, and some of it could be basically maintained within the EPC cost impact.

These are beginning of the year, they were extremely doing well, ahead of schedule. Today, they have faced some of the challenges that you have just witnessed.

For the first part, I assume that you are referring to the round 7 and round 8, which is now we have seen some delays on the development part there. We don't have exactly dates to share in terms of execution, but we expect there is at least 2 to 3 months of delay on delivering these projects at development stage.

Then from that stage, we would have also to take our time also to achieve the financial close and start the construction. Status of major milestones will be also shared on the exchange whenever we sign the PPAs or achieve the financial close for these projects.

Thank you very much for comments. May I also ask about that news about the curtailment of the power offtake at some of the power plants?

Can you tell us what's physically being happening there? Does it often happen in this kind of projects, and why it happens, and what are the things you can do to address the issue?

Thank you.

ACWA Power is operating in more than 15 countries today. When it comes to renewable experience, if you look at it from the east to the west, we are operating solar projects in China, in Indonesia, in Uzbekistan, in Vietnam in the past, in Saudi, UAE, Oman, Morocco, Egypt, and South Africa.

We have not ever witnessed a curtailment discussion that takes more than 1 or 2 days. This is definitely a unique experience that we are witnessing now when it comes to the long curtailment that we have seen now in these two assets.

In reality, it means that these assets are not producing energy, despite they're being ready and in standby. The curtailment is limited to a certain percentage as also mentioned by Dr.

Samir. What is produced is being produced and is being fully paid on time, but whatever is curtailed is what is being disputed today.

We are working really extensively with the stakeholders, including the principal buyer, the distribution company, and the ecosystem of the ministry to make sure that we get into a conclusion as soon as possible so we can announce it in the market and then get these assets into operation.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Maybe let's make sure that we get that question right. We are assuming in this answer that the reference is to Shuaibah, not Shuqaiq, because there is a reference to decommissioning.

If the reference is to Shuaibah, we are decommissioning the asset of Shuaibah, which is the IWPP, and there is a phasing of the decommissioning for the next 5 years, based on which we have replaced it with a plant which is the IWP, as you highlighted. That is purely water project, separate in contract, separate in financing, separate in everything to the decommissioning asset.

When it comes to what is the expectation on that region, if there is more water projects coming up or more water power projects, I think this is a question not really for ACWA, it's more for the regulator who is usually designing the full mapping and demand, supply and demand for the different regions and they tender these projects on time. We are now there multiple projects.

Some of them actually is power, for example we have Shuaibah PV projects, and some of them specifically water, the Shuaibah 3 IWP. I would not really link the decommissioning with specific scope for ACWA Power, except for the Shuaibah IWP which we announced at that time and now is basically on operation.

Definitely for the construction projects, because of the restrictions in shipping. As I mentioned earlier, we had to reroute some of the shipments to other ports basically to be able so not to impact our ongoing projects.

There is definitely been an impact, but we've been really managing it with our EPC contractors and our offtakers. For the stock for our plants, because we need some materials, we have been really buying, overbuying just to make sure that we have enough material there just in case if this thing will go longer.

Thanks again for taking my question. Pratik from Jefferies here.

My question is on Uzbekistan. You have a growing presence there, and the government recently gave an update about implementing the RAB methodology, RAB-based tariff framework from September 2026 onwards for their utility assets.

Does it impact your profitability there, profitability of assets there? Thank you.

What did the government implement, if you can say that again?

They are planning to implement a RAB methodology, RAB-based tariff framework from September 2026 onwards for their utility assets.

Look, maybe actually both Dr. Samir—

We were all basically, the chairman, Abdulhameed, and myself, were in Uzbekistan for the whole week. Again, we've visited our sites, we met with our people, we met with the government who's the offtaker.

I think we're doing very well there, really, and actually we're looking for more growth in Uzbekistan. Yeah.

Maybe I just want to highlight few things in Uzbekistan market compared to Saudi. If you look at the structuring of this financing, they are actually heavily or fully being financed by development banks compared to the commercial banks that usually finance IPPs in Saudi.

The likes of ADB, IFC, AIIB, and also EBRD that usually be big parts of our financing of these projects. When we design these projects, even at the time of the financing, it come with a huge ES requirements, which is environmental and social impact, that is actually much higher when it comes to the standard than what we have seen being required in other parts of the world.

We have multiple projects under construction there, and I'm glad to share with you that we have actually using this opportunity, we have actually improved a lot in the ESG itself as a corporate and as a project, which helped us actually to our environment and social scoring. It was reflected in one of the slide when it comes to the rating of the ESG as well.

We have not witnessed any negative impact because of that. Actually, it's always a positive impact because it keep opening our eye into new challenges, new things that we have not maybe looked at it in the past.

Definitely, it's a reason also for us to sometimes delay our financial close, because we really need to understand the consequences, the methodologies to do it before we achieve the financial close for these projects. This was managed in the past.

At least we will look into what you have highlighted to see if there is additional impact or there is something that we will share it in our maybe as a follow-up question as follow-up to you. I think you have already a direct engagement with our team, given that you have recently started covering our stock as well.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you again. I had a question about outlook for the CCGT projects in the Middle East.

I think there was a big wave of those projects over the past 2 years, and now the pipeline seems to be fairly light. Although I think in Iraq potentially, they have a big gas program.

Would you expect that activity to improve going forward? Would you be interested actually to look at Iraq if anything happening there on this front?

Thank you.

When we presented the pipeline, we actually added all technologies together. You'll talk about renewables, CCGTs, and other technologies as well.

Looking specifically at the CCGTs, already the announced Vision 2030 target for Saudi includes 50% renewables by 2030 and 50% I would say high-efficient gas portfolio. We have seen a very strong CCGT pipeline in the past few years, including the next direct programs of two assets that we announced, Taiba and basically Rabigh and Hajr.

We actually signed just after the quarter a big PPA for the CCGT, which is part of Rumailah 2 expansion that was announced in April. There is an active, visible pipeline that we have seen in the CCGT, including some of the projects that we are looking at was actually in South Africa, in Jordan.

You highlighted UAE. Definitely we have a strong presence there, and Saudi Arabia for sure, along with Southeast Asia, mainly Malaysia, where we are seeing also an expected CCGT pipeline.

Overall, the CCGT pipeline have not seen a slowdown on a yearly basis. Maybe on a short-term quarterly basis you can witness slowdown, but we are expecting that we are going to remain active in the CCGTs as well.

I'm not sure if I heard also he mentioned specifically in the question about Iraq. Definitely, we are pursuing combined-cycle projects also in Iraq.

I heard it, Iraq,

as well. No risk.

Mentioned Iraq, yeah.

Interesting. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Where does the question come from?

It is typical when you have what's happening now with the regional conflict that you would have the EPC contractors file force majeure claims, also the project companies file force majeure with the offtakers. This is part of the ongoing business, and definitely we will be working with our offtakers and our EPC contractor to try to resolve these things.

These things take time. if you look at the way that And we have a very recent experience, 4, 5 years ago about COVID-19.

You had a serious delays in multiple EPC contractors, and took us almost 3 years and a half to close all the COVID-19 EPC delays, depending on the project, because it's a continuous disputed resolution between multiple stakeholders, between the offtaker, the EPC contractor, and the project companies. It takes time.

Depending on these projects, you will have a different basically impacts. What we have seen so far is nothing related to the magnitude that we have seen during COVID.

It is sizable impact, but not even close to what we have seen at the time of the COVID.

Thank you very much, Carla. Thank you, everyone, for your patience with us and listening to us and all the questions that you have asked.

Any additional questions, you know how you are going to reach us, please do not hesitate, and we are going to get back to you with the answers in the standard response time. Thank you very much.

Have a good day or evening, wherever you are again.

Thank you.

Thank you.