National Grid plc (NGG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2022

May 19, 2022 4:15 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Nick Ashworth

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to National Grid's Full Year Results Presentation. I'm Nick Ashworth, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm thrilled to see so many people here live in the Stock Exchange for the first time since November 2019. It's been quite a long time. So thanks a lot for attending and a warm welcome to everyone who's listening online as well.

So as always, we'll start with safety. We are not expecting a fire alarm this morning. But if one goes off, then we'll have to go out into the square. The second important thing to draw your attention to is the cautionary statement, which is at the front of the presentation.

So as usual, today's materials are all on the website. And there'll be a Q&A with John and Andy after the presentation. And any further queries, please feel free to reach out to me or any at the IR team later today. We are around to take your questions.

So with that, I'd like to hand over to our CEO, John Pettigrew.

John Pettigrew

So thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone, and welcome back to the London Stock Exchange. As usual, I'm joined by Andy Agg, our CFO. And following the presentation, we'll both be happy to take your questions.

The results we've announced today reflect both the underlying strength of our business and the positive impact of the strategic and operational changes we made during the year. Last May, we laid out our five-year framework where we showed National Grid is uniquely positioned as the energy transition company. Today, we're announcing that £24 billion or more than 70% of our five-year framework is investment in the decarbonization of energy systems, as aligned to the EU Taxonomy principles. So by my reckoning, that makes us one of the FTSE's biggest investors in the delivery of net zero.

But clearly, over the last year, the world in which we operate has seen major changes with Russia's devastating war on Ukraine, a global economic slowdown and rapidly rising inflation. Despite this, our growth objectives are unchanged and remain just as ambitious. Between 2022 and 2026, we still expect to invest £30 billion to £35 billion in critical infrastructure, deliver asset growth of 6% to 8% per annum, drive average underlying earnings share per growth of 5% to 7% per annum whilst maintaining a strong balance sheet.