Pampa Energía S.A. (PAM) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call May 11, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Corporate Participants

Margarita Chun - Chief of Investor Relations

Lida Wang - Head of Investor Relations and Sustainability

Nicolás Mindlin - Chief Financial Officer

Horacio Turri - E&P Executive Director

Conference Call Participants

Lida Wang

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining our conference call. I will try to make it short and skip some parts already displaying the earnings release. So we have plenty of time for Q&A with our CFO, Mr. Nicolás Mindlin, and our special guest here, Mr. Horacio Turri, our Head of Upstream.

Let's start with the quarter's figures and go straight to the adjusted EBITDA, which amounted to $206 million in the Q1, 8% less year-on-year mainly because of Barragán old PPA. PGS' lag tariffs and higher payroll in dollar terms, upset by the addition of PPAs and a solid power dispatch, better gas and spot prices plus Transener tariff increase. However, the EBITDA increased 12% quarter-on-quarter because of the PPA additions, Transener tariff and higher liquids margins in PGS upset by soft gas sales and lower performance sales. It is worth to note that 76% of EBITDA was dollar-link as you can see in the right below, the share between electricity and oil and gas is almost even though power is leading the pipe thanks to our PPS.

CapEx in Q1 more than doubled year-on-year mainly because we keep off some new wind farm in PEPE VI plus E&P shale drilling and completion activity in preparation for the winter peak season.

Moving on to power generation as seen on Slide four, we posted an EBITDA of $108 million in Q1 down 11% year-on-year but up 26% quarter-on-quarter, mainly explained by Barragán PPA that expired in April last year. And higher labor expenses offset by the addition of wind farms plus the kickoff of PPA in late February of this year. And better spot prices, thanks to a special remuneration for legacy CCGTs.

Q1 dispatch rose 11% year-on year, while the National Power Grid 8% growth in response to a hot wave that drove new records of power demand. Barragán's new CCGT contributed most of the increased load factor offset by less Bolivian fuel and forced and scheduled outages at some thermal units restore within the quarter.

Availability is essential to collect take or pay capacity payment, especially for PPAs contributing most of the EBITDA. In Q1, we reached 93%, this is below last year's almost 98% availability rates due to the thermal outages mentioned before but still outstanding compared to the grid 69% availability.