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AXIA Energia S.A. (AXIA)

Q4 2019 Earnings Call· Wed, Apr 1, 2020

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon to you all, and thank you for waiting. Welcome to the teleconference of Eletrobras to talk about the results regarding the Fourth Quarter of 2019. [Operator Instructions] I remind you that this presentation you can find the PowerPoint with the RI website -- the Investor Relations website of Eletrobras. [Operator Instructions].Before we start, we would like to clarify that anything that might be said during this teleconference regarding to the prospects -- to the business perspectives of the business -- of the company, operational and financial, these are newly believed of Eletrobras as well as based on information that is currently available to the company. Future considerations are not a guarantee because they involve risks and uncertainties, and therefore, we recommend they depend on circumstances beyond our control. Investors should understand that any other factors might influence the results in the future.Now, I would like to give the word to Mr. Wilson Ferreira Junior and the Financial Director, Ms. Elvira Presta. Mr. Wilson? Thank you for the opportunity, please, the floor is yours.

Wilson Ferreira

Analyst

Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, Elvira. Thank you, analysts. It's a pleasure to be here today sharing our results for 2019.Now, I'm going to explain Page 4 and the company highlights. This is very important because it shows the last transactions that we've done, many of them from the last quarter. We have here the operation of incorporation of Eletrosul and CGTEE, the incorporation of both companies. This is a single operation and thereafter in January of 2020, we also had the transference of Amazonas GT to Eletronorte and now it acts as a subsidiary of Eletronorte. These are the two main things that have taken place in the last quarter.We also report our workforce. We have, as all of you know, an extensive program. We also started the second event in the beginning of the year. Well, 1,845 people are adhering to the PDC 2019, and the economy is estimated is R$746 million per year. And this is added to -- well, we had a big team of subcontracted parties at Furnas with over 1,000 employees, and just as we subcontracted that we're adhered to the voluntary leave program, we had an economy estimated for this year of R$280 million. These are two important actions, and we can reduce, therefore, our cost with personnel of around R$1 billion from 2021. We also will comment the transaction for the increase of capital that we did in December. This increase in capital -- well, we have an increase of the total capital of the company of R$7.7 billion, with that we had an adherent well -- differentiated investors in this process.Through this transaction, we had the liabilities here. The reclassification of the noncirculating liabilities of -- in the order of R$4.1 billion regarding the AFACs to the union and also the…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question will be from Andre Sampaio from Banco Santander.

Andre Sampaio

Analyst

I'd like to ask a question -- two questions. First, the expectation that you have -- well, in regards to the pandemic. And the second question, the discussion of the designation price, which is being discussed with the government.

Wilson Ferreira

Analyst

In terms of GCP, the Senate is what is holding today, now using teleconference. In the case of the Senate with 80 senators, it's more factual than with the Congress. But I had the opportunity of seeing some of the Senate discussions. This is where it is going. The Minister should come back this week. And I think that we are going to work with assistance. He -- once he finishes the week of quarantine, he should come back tomorrow, and this is a subject that is prioritized. It was matured throughout the Senate and can occur over the last few days.I'm sorry, I forgot about the company -- about the question. The designation period. We had a report that we prepared and always going to use and we're going to discuss it with the government. There was a commitment towards the end of the year. We need to keep the deliberations of ANEEL and all the things that are priorities to ensure the CCC. We have had a big investment. We are awaiting a few deliberations. And from then on, we are waiting for the last deliberations. So we can basically get the three types of credits, the CCC, inefficiencies and losses during the designation period. Once we close the deliberations of ANEEL, then we can make our pledge.

Operator

Operator

Next question will be from Marcelo Sa from Banco Itaú.

Marcelo Sa

Analyst

Two questions. First is the -- you talked about the energy. You had a very high volume that has been procured and I wanted to understand what is the strategy for procurement over the next years now that we got to the minimum price. And the next question will be the fusion of SNTT [ph]. Are you, in fact, discussing the proposition? And do you have any idea about that?

Wilson Ferreira

Analyst

Well, I'm going to start by the last. And now SNTT [ph]; well, we have a small participation, 7%. We had also the news of this process. And we haven't submitted the proposal from the financial area so it can be discussed in the Board of Directors, and we will do this discussion briefly. Your first question in regards the volumes of energy that are decontracted. This is important when we look at the values in bilateral contracts, over 3,000 megawatts. What we will be affected in the short term, I think that everybody will be affected. In regards to the PLD, and here is just the operations for the generation of energy. And as you can observe, it's 1,300,000,000 last year. And we are talking theoretically in value average of 173 and liquidation then, it can drop 70% if we have PLD until the end of the year. I'm still optimistic that we will not have this situation, but this is the only one that we would have a high risk, even though we have here operations that are ongoing to -- well, they were ongoing to decrease the volume that we had because some of the things we operated, we wanted to mitigate the risks. We have the committee for commercialization. That is permanent, I wanted to mention that since we have the risk committee, we have the subcommittees for this and some things that are important for us, and this is one of them. We want to work to honor the bilateral contracts that we have. And obviously, we want to have a perspective of regrowth of the economy in such a way that we still have the bilateral operations. And we would reduce by half the risk that you mentioned today. To avoid the requisition of…

Marcelo Sa

Analyst

You talked about the potential reduction in the free market. And my doubt is in regards to the regulated market. Is there any risk that the government will try to review the volumes to reduce the volumes of the subcontracting of the distributors?

Wilson Ferreira

Analyst

This part of the regulated, you're not going to, let's just say, mess with it. With the regulated contract, it's a risk to the distributor. For that, they have a gain, and then if taken in the range of 5%. To use a number, 15, and reduction of volumes, let's just say that during the quarter, for example. You have an impact of 15% throughout the quarter. That's a quarter of a year. 15% in an annual basis will be okay for that and it will give you less than 4%. It would be within the range of 5% that they can deal with. So I have no doubt that this will be faced, but we cannot get a number that was verified one day of the week. I wanted to say that the effect over the weekend is not so brief as a problem that was a subcontracting that was enormous because we shouldn't differentiate between one month and two months in the range that we have, the entire effect.So a negotiation that needs to be established needs to assure liquidity and deadline for your commitment. But we are still -- the distributor will start to verify the effects from now on. We have COVID for two weeks taking place and actually the last that we got last week, there was no reduction because it's regarding the previous month. Now every invoice that they are working with, they have two days of COVID, one day of COVID, so that gives you a time. We have a good team trained in the ministry that knows these problems. And obviously, their eventual work with the publications to come up with a solution. Now see -- for you to change the liquidation of CP is always as a last resource. When you do a contract that is longer with a lower price, you are going to repeat the baseline over the next three months, three, four months, and this will reflect the real price. If the prices are higher, once you do a contract of two years, you tend to go to the marginal cost. If I do the contract two, three years, it will reflect the baseline for 12 months, and it will reflect 20 months of prices that are more normal. The recovery in the contracts that will be done, we are going to try to make them recognize the higher values. This will be a moment that because of the attraction to the lower prices.

Operator

Operator

Next question will be from Pedro Manfredini from Eletrobras.

Pedro Manfredini

Analyst

This is from Goldman. Two questions. I just wanted to confirm one thing. What is the level of flexibility that you have in the market? You didn't comment if that concerns you. And we had a discussion, the contract with flexibility. You need to ponder if you're going to run the risk if you run the contract until the deadline. I just wanted to hear your comment on that. Second point, you expect that [indiscernible] are included in this discussion. Well, the potential problems that we might have, the cascade of events that starts by the distributor in the moment that you have a lengthening of COVID, you'll have some distributors with problems with collections, the increase in PDD, maybe their PDD will flow through the chain. If you can comment on what would be the solutions that the government can take at this time to protect the entire chain as to we don't have capital events that increases PDD.

Wilson Ferreira

Analyst

Well, starting with the flexibility issue, the contract that Eletrobras has are long contracts. These are contracts that have flexibility and can be negotiated bilaterally. But what was -- the object of the activity of the contracted counterpart is because you have a long deadline with Eletrobras, and once again, can you do adjustment? Of course, you can. I doubted that people are interested of breaking a contract because of perspective that is short term, forgoing the advantage that these contracts have on the long run. Obviously, we have a very well-trained team in the area. And a part of our contracts are bilateral. There are guarantees in place. So I believe that there will be a balance between the parties in this negotiation.As to what you mentioned, everybody -- well, here in my 11th work of remote working, the world is remote working. I want to say that the minister, even though he's in quarantine, he is working. And I want to spare him, but he is very active. This is a personal opinion. I cannot share with you what they're exactly working with because they are negotiating and they're talking strongly with the distributors, which is where the problem can be clearly identified. This is where we have the effect of the limitation of the payment from the consumers because of mobility and social isolation. Here is the problem where we start to see the reduction in demand. It's not all the sectors that should receive these reports. The companies of machinery, you can see that some segments are growing very much and some segments had important reductions. But for the distributors, we have the effect -- the distributor invoices energy every day, 2021 quotas of readings. And in the invoicing process, we have the composition that, as…

Pedro Manfredini

Analyst

Just to finish. I just wanted to understand all these legal discussions, statutory discussions. We have RBSE, the discussion of compulsory and the discussion of Angra. All of this at this time is on hold. Nothing is evolving in the regulatory framework. Is that correct or no?

Wilson Ferreira

Analyst

At the exception of Angra, we have a team of CPPE [ph] working. But without a doubt, we have an emergency. It affects us. The emergency will affect us certainly, I hope that for a short term. But if you're not sure of what's going to happen, then this is not the time for you to use the reserves. We are leaving everything that we can in terms of investment of transmission, everything that we're doing, even maintenance of Angra. Everything is happening as we manage to do it. Last year, we had problems with mobility. There was an official publication I talked about the importance of the electric system so we can operate and keep the systems without any issues. We have to manage the priorities. The priority is to keep the system under the conditions of servicing Brazilians, and many of them are working. Well, we have a lot of commerce, but we have the industry. And we have the obligation since our service is essential.

Operator

Operator

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we close the Q&A session. Therefore, we return the floor to the President, Wilson Ferreira Junior, to give final thoughts.

Wilson Ferreira

Analyst

First of all, I would like to thank you for your attention for this long presentation that we've done, well, me and my team, Elvira, and all the colleagues so we can clarify any doubts. We are here to serve you. The importance of this balance is that we already present the perspectives for the big transformation that Eletrobras had over this time. We had a reduction in the personnel cost. These are things that are allowing us to think about, dreaming about being one of the best companies in the world. We have SAP, and we have an evidence. We have remote working. We are working with everybody that is important. Our IT systems are good, and we are working in a way that we didn't imagine that was possible. This is a lesson learned for all of us, regardless of the segment that you work. But we are seeing the issues of the collaboration as being something very important. We are seeing the advantage, for example, for collective purchases, for protective equipment, for other things.The first page shows what we invested. More recently, we have the subcontracted parties and the reductions there, and this will bring more advantages for the company. I also want to highlight the simplification of our partnership the reduction in the company's reduction of FTEs, focus in generation and transmission that is efficient, we are working with that as well. Third, the issue focusing in the theme of our discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic and commercialization to leave everybody at ease, and we've been working with this for two weeks. I think that companies are mobilized in this issue are recognized of the importance of this moment for us to use this time to have a better future so we can think very well about this and we will face this obstacle with a lot of collaboration, also with the cash flow in this situation. In the past, we didn't have the robust position that we are at now. And we want to leave the pandemic in a very well, very good standing. In this crisis, we have to have the opportunity to think about new ways of working, and we have the opportunity of doing that. And I am sure that we can work with a sector that has a great infrastructure in Brazil because we have good people working here, the quality, the entities that participate in the ministry, ANEEL, or the organisms. We have an island of a lot of confidence. And with everything that we're working, we will be stronger.Thank you to all of you. And once again, I remain at your service, if you have any more questions. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Well, at this time, the teleconference of Eletrobras is closed. Thank you very much for your participation, and have a wonderful weekend.