Drax Group plc (DRX) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. I will provide a short introduction and overview, and then I'll hand it over to Andy for the numbers and operations, and then I'll come back to talk more about our investment program and capital allocation, and then we'll take questions. You're all familiar with our purpose, which is to enable a zero-carbon, lower-cost energy future. And I want to start with that, as I always do, as it guides everything about our company. And critically, our people are at the heart of Drax, and I want everyone here to feel a valued member on a winning team with a worthwhile mission. We delivered a strong performance in the first half of the year. We produced more power than last year, reflecting a continued high demand for dispatchable renewable power and compensating for lower renewables elsewhere on the system. We accounted for 5% of UK power, as we have for many, many years now, and 11% of UK renewables. And importantly, in certain periods of peak demand, we have been over 50% of UK renewable generation. I'm very pleased also to say that we delivered a record level of pellet production, 5% higher than last year, which also drove increased EBITDA in our pellet business. We're very pleased with the progression of our CFD agreement, with the government, and I'll come back to that in a minute. And we're continuing to target EBITDA of six to 700 million from flex-gen tele-production and from the Brax power station, post-2027. And we have strong confidence in the earnings and cash flow that we can generate from this high-quality portfolio, which is critical to the UK power system, both today, but well into the future. And delivery of that cash flow and associated earnings are a top priority for my group. We're excited about the...