Ecofin Global Utilities and Infrastructure Trust (LSE:EGL) — Investor Presentation

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the ECOFIN GLOBAL UTILITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE TRUST PLC Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and they can be submitted at any time using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to Neil Wynwood from First Row Capital. Good morning to you.

0:28 Good morning. Good morning, everybody, and thank you very much for joining us today. And we thought in keeping with the meteorological conditions, we'll give you something hot today. ECOFIN GLOBAL UTILITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE TRUST managed by Jean Houc de la Mes, who is joining us today, the lead portfolio manager of the trust. He has been for many years now, and this particular fund produces a daily NAV. And we're just through the end of the half year to the end of March, so it's a great time for an update. And, of course, this particular trust invests in the utilities and infrastructure sectors. Jean Houge is going to provide an update for us covering off why we should consider an investment in the strategy, why the Red Wheel team, and why today is the right time to consider this fund as an investment.

1:24 I suspect the presentation is gonna last around thirty minutes or so, give it... Give or take a few minutes, but plenty of time for q and a in the second half of this hour long session. We're aiming to finish by roughly 11:00 on the dot. Jean Luc, if I can hand over to you now for your presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Neil, and good morning all. Thank you for attending. I'm Jean Luc de la Maize, Portfolio Manager for ECOFIN GLOBAL UTILITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE TRUST, EGL, is the ticker on the London Stock Exchange. We we did launch EGL just ten years ago, 2016, out of a predecessor.

2:11 ECOFIN is a specialist investor of utilities infrastructure and the energy transition. We joined the Red Wheel asset management platform last year, actually a year and a half ago. And Red Wheel is a name which you would be familiar with because this is notably the home of Tempenbar, our famous investment trust launched, I believe, about a hundred years ago. So we're happy to benefit from Red Bull's expertise in the running of investment trust. So this is EGL, and I'm going... As Neil just explained, I'm going to present the the the team, the investment strategy, and we'll go through investment thematics, which we believe are real, actually, drivers of the investment universe and the rationale for the investment strategy. ECOFIN's investment team has been pretty stable over the years.

3:08 We are actually expanding it. We have a new analyst joining in a couple of weeks' time, and we're looking for a seventh member of the team. So this is the investment team of ECOFIN covering the global investment universe.

3:27 Just a quick word of introduction on infrastructure and the beauty of listed infrastructure as an asset class. You will, I believe, be very familiar with the fact that infrastructure provides kind of exposure to long duration trends. And those long duration types of business models really provide predictability of future cash flows and ways to offset the effects of inflation. That's probably the way I would characterize that. So it's a space where typically you have good capital preservation characteristics. And as of today, structural drivers as well, which, again, I'm going to go through in the next few minutes, which largely have to do with the energy transition with a dramatic transformation of the type of business models that we see in the world of utilities and infrastructure globally.

4:21 Also, earnings tailwinds and overall valuations, which I believe are far from discounting those types of structural drivers and transformation phenomenons. So let me explain that a little bit more details. This slide, slide four, gives you an overview, a snapshot of EGL's investment strategy. As I mentioned, we have a global perspective. However, we've decided to cap exposure to emerging markets at 10%, very much for risk purposes. So we typically aim at maintaining a good balance between North America and UK, Europe as a way to gain exposure to all the underlying investment themes, but also diversify the risk.

5:09 So global, but largely an OECD type of strategy, I would say. And then income and growth. And what we mean by that is typically, I refer to capital preservation characteristics that are illustrated by a typical dividend yield of the portfolio of around four percent. But also, we want exposure to growth. And what we mean by growth is structural growth, much more than cyclical. We estimate that the dividends of our portfolio are able to grow by five to 7% per annum over the medium to long term. So if you put those two on top of one another, dividend yield of around four with dividends growing at around 6% per annum, you get to double digit total return, which are very much our typical objective when we select the names, and you'll see in a couple of minutes that this is actually what we have delivered over the past decade and even a little bit little bit more so.

6:11 Large investment universe, around 640 companies, we have counted through three subsegments. That's the way we define utilities and infrastructure with electric and gas utilities. That's the most typical part of it, including some exposure to renewable energy as a subcomponent. Then environmental services, we're talking here about water and waste management. And then transportation in FRA, transportation infrastructure consisting largely of toll roads, airport service management companies. All of those are services businesses. We do not invest in any industrial type of business model. Equipment manufacturers are not part of our investment universe.

7:00 So that's the the snapshot of EGL's investment strategy. A quick look at the track record. That's the performance as at the close of the last fiscal year at the end of September twenty twenty five. 2025 was a pretty solid year. And you see the the the NAV of EGL was up around 15%. And interestingly, since admission as at the end of September, you had the double digit increase in annual NAV and even more so of share price over the period since 2016. One thing I should... I would like to highlight on this slide five is what has happened to the dividend paid out to our shareholders.

7:52 EGL detaches a quarterly dividend, which our board has been very sensitive at increasing, very focused on increasing by an average of 5% per annum over the past five years. And that gives you a good idea of the type of trends, which, again, our directors want to deliver for our shareholders and very similar to the dividend growth path that I just alluded to for our portfolio holdings. More granularity of the track record. This is more recent data because it is at the end of April twenty twenty six. Pretty solid recent track record. You have the numbers over six months, one year since admission.

8:39 Maybe one thing to highlight here is if you look at the since admission total returns per annum, 11.7% per annum over the past decade for the NAV, close to 15% per annum for the share price. That compares very favorably to the sector indices. You see the SMP Global Infrastructure Index up 7.7% per annum over the period. It also compares well to the FTSE index for those of you who take it as a benchmark. And even maybe more interestingly, it very much compares to the MSCI World Index performance, obviously, with no tech exposure. So with the volatility typically much lower than the general equity indices, EGL has delivered over the past decade very similar total returns, similar to the MSCI World Index. So that gives you an idea of the type of characteristics and beauty of the investment strategy of EGL.

9:44 Quick word on discount premium over the past decade, three big phases so far. And hopefully, a fourth one is now starting. As very recently, EGL has moved back to a slight premium to NAV, which has given us the opportunity to issue at a premium and therefore in an enhancing way for existing shareholders. As you can see, EGL was trading at a discount until 2020, then three years at a... An average premium, derating as of the middle of twenty three for three years and now again, hopefully, the start of a new era for EGL as investors are starting to very much value the characteristics of the long duration types of business models that EGL invest in.

10:40 Characteristics of the stocks, we look at highlighting, identifying. Again, very much asset backed services based on long term contracts. Those long term contracts provide, as I mentioned, predictability of future cash flows, and this is the best way we find to provide sustainable and growing dividends with high degrees of predictability. So this is the main characteristic of the stocks we're looking to identify in our portfolio. Now moving into the underlying investment themes, very much the drivers of global infrastructure. This is... This slide nine is the the broad picture. What I would say is that we are at the very beginning of an intense CapEx requirement phase.

11:32 Why is that? Because we live in a world where the bulk of infrastructure was built in the post World War two era, the nineteen fifties, sixties, seventies. Those were decades during which infrastructure investment used to account for eight, nine, 10% of GDP sometimes, which compares with around 2.5% average these days. So over the past forty, fifty years, we've only been maintaining our infrastructure rather than renovating it. And that means that we live in infrastructure, which is largely obsolete. And all governments, states have very much identified this as a major concern.

12:21 What I would say is that the beauty of entering a CapEx phase is that CapEx in infrastructure is fruitful, enhancing for returns. And you have on this slide nine on the right hand side an illustration of that phenomenon. We've taken the example of Telna, which is an Italian power grid operator. And as you can see over the past ten years, the more CapEx, the better it's been for the share price for the returns of Telna, which is a purely regulated infrastructure business, very typical what we are seeing across our investment universe. So more CapEx, the more, the better for the returns of our space.

13:06 So you'll tell me obviously that this represents a major financing challenge. What I would highlight is that those states and governments which can afford investing in infrastructure do spend records amounts of cash to renovate their infrastructure. We've seen on this chart, page 10, the example of the German infrastructure program, which was voted last year in 2025, €700,000,000,000 to invest in power grid, renewables, transportation, infra, three of the core sub segments of EGL's investment strategy, extremely supportive trends. The US IRA inflation reduction act that voted in 2022 corresponds to the same ambition to renovate infrastructure.

14:00 But, obviously, not many countries can afford those types of large scale investment programs. What it means for others, maybe like like The UK in particular, is that it represents some pressure on the regulators to actually incentivize private investment so that investment is actually delivered. So all of that we believe is supportive. Now, more specifically to EGL investment strategy, we've highlighted... We've identified three very critical drivers, which we believe are largely overlooked by generalist investors. The the first one has to do with the evolution of demand for electricity.

14:48 Over the past twenty five years, electricity consumption has actually been declining in The UK or in Europe and has been flattish in The US as you can see in the upper part of this slide 11. Why is that? Because while historically, consumption of electricity was very much tracking GDP growth, over the past twenty five years, we've seen significant efficiency gains, notably in the lighting, the lighting above us. Those light bulbs consume about 80% less electricity than their predecessors of fifteen years ago. So dramatic efficiency gains mean that in The UK, notably, we consume less electricity today, 2026, than in 2000.

15:40 Very counterintuitive. Expectations are that this is going to change dramatically in the next decade.

15:49 Expectations are that consumption of electricity is bound to increase by 50%, five zero, 50% in The UK in the next ten years, 40% in The US. This is a dramatic structural change inflection point driven by a general electrification electrification trend. You know, industrial processes are being electrified. Our home uses are increasingly based on electricity.

16:17 So general electrification trend. Electric vehicles, definitely a driver, not as fast growing as expected, but it is coming. And then, obviously, the last factor which has emerged over the past couple of years, which you read about every day in the press today, the development of AI data center demand. When you you speak to the major tech companies today, they will tell you that they have one potential hurdle to their growth outlook. It's about electricity procurement and energy in general. So demand for electricity is bound to increase significantly at a time when power generation resources are as scarce as they have ever been.

17:06 The reason notably being that OECD economies are largely phased out of coal. You know, in The UK, coal used to account for 50% of electricity generation about fifteen, eighteen years ago. It, last year, it accounted for zero. So The UK has entirely phased out of coal in about fifteen years, and the world has hardly invested in nuclear. So scarcity of power resources at the time when power consumption is picking up, this is a major structural trend ahead of us and major opportunity for the incumbents. So on the bottom right hand side of this slide 11, we've listed...

17:51 We've shown the example of two traditional US utilities, Constellation and Vistra, both large holdings in our portfolio over the past eighteen months, which have dramatically rerated on the back of that phenomenon. And the reason being that those two, Constellation and Vistra, had significant nuclear power generation capacity, a technology which until about three years ago was largely sidelined in The US. You know, who three years ago was believing in the future of nuclear. Well, nuclear is actually today the sole technology able to provide carbon free electricity twenty four seven. So baseload electricity with no carbon emission, which is typically what tech AI operators are looking for. So you see the dramatic rerating that Constellation and Vistra have benefited from over the past, let's say, two and a half years on the back of a few individual contracts signed by companies like Amazon in, for example, Pennsylvania, like a contract that Amazon signed in 2024, which are twenty, thirty, forty year contracts signed in very attractive conditions for utilities.

19:14 So that rerating is only at a beginning, starting phase. We have not seen any such contracts signed in UK or Europe yet. So this is an emerging phenomenon, which we believe will lead to rerating of a lot of those companies. So that's the first trend. Major electrification inflection point as a booster, major tailwind to our investment universe. The second phenomenon is the de risking of business models, largely overlooked as well by generalists, we believe. Look at this pie chart on slide 12 and the evolution of the business mix of the 10 largest utilities in Europe.

19:59 2,008, 42% of the operating profits of this sample of the 10 largest utilities, 42% was stemming from conventional power generation businesses, typically very much merchant driven businesses. Great businesses when commodity prices were going up and declining businesses when commodity prices were going down. This proportion, almost half of the operating profits, have shrunk to 10% today for this same sample of the 10 largest utilities in Europe. And what has replaced this merchant type of business is a combination of regulated businesses or fully contracted businesses based on long term contracts, those famous PPA power purchase agreements.

20:47 And the combination of those two regulated or long term contracts type of business models account for 80% of the operating profits of the cash flows of this sample of the 10 largest utilities. This is a major trend, which we believe represents significant derisking of the business models. We have plenty of examples of that type. It's actually a phenomenon which we've seen more developed in Europe than in The US. It is starting in The US. But every single utility you speak to today is focused on that strategy to derisk their business mix, to gain exposure to long term contracts, to predictable cash flows at the expense of merchant driven businesses. Major de risking, which you'll see is far from being discounted by equity markets.

21:41 And there's a third phenomenon. So I mentioned electrification, derisking of business models, and house returns. And that's also somewhat counterintuitive. You know, when you read the press and notably about what's going on in The US, you see the US administration very much anti renewables trying to hit one after the other all renewable development projects in The US. We'll look at what is happening to actually the prices at which utilities sign long term contracts, those famous PPAs, so power purchase agreements. You have The US situation to the left hand side of this slide and the European situation to the right. If you look at the past twenty, twenty five years average,

22:30 typical price of electricity was around, let's say, $30 per megawatt hour or $30.35 euros per megawatt hour. Very similar prices. This is more than doubled, and actually, it keeps on going up. So as you can see in The US on the left hand side, we're now talking about prices of about $70 per megawatt hour. But when tech companies sign long term contracts to secure their electricity procurements over payers of twenty years with closest to renew this for an additional ten, fifteen, twenty years, very long term contracts, they quite typically signed above $100 per megawatt hour.

23:17 And I don't think they are out of their mind. I believe this is symptomatic of, again, a major challenge for those tech companies to secure their energy supplies at a

23:27 time when you have significant scarcity of power generation resources. A scarce market leads to rising prices, extremely profitable context for the incumbents in our space. And look at what it means for earnings growth outlook. We've indicated on this chart on the top left side of this slide 14 how the consensus of earnings predictions of sell side analysts has evolved over the past twelve months. As you can see, both US and European utilities have raised their guidance, their outlook for earnings predictions by about 10%.

24:15 This is major. I don't think I've ever seen that in the space of utilities. We have similar trends in infrastructure. So a major inflection point for earnings growth. As you can see, this is expressed for The US utility side on the the the top right hand side of this slide, major acceleration of the typical annual EPS growth for our investment universe, which is obviously supportive. You see for each of the subsegments that EGL invests in, the typical EPS growth profile for the next couple of years, 5% for utilities, 8% for water and waste, 12% for transportation infra, very much supportive of the underlying structural trends that I was referring to.

25:04 So those are the three main driving themes which we've identified, electrification, derisking, and all three towns. And now I think we need to pay attention to the valuation of this space. Because interestingly, you see this on page 15, relative valuations of global infrastructure has hardly evolved. We're talking about relative peace, which are below where they were ten, fifteen years ago despite the structural trends that I'm referring to, which I just explained. So the space is far from having been rerated. We see it as extremely attractive. I mentioned a couple of examples earlier of some companies which have dramatically rerated in a short period of time. This is far from being representative of our investment universe of listed infrastructure.

26:02 And the last thing I would highlight on this slide 15 is the fact that actually EGL's portfolio is even cheaper than the average of global infrastructure universe. We've listed, you know, the typical price earning multiple of infrastructure stocks worldwide, the global S and P Global Infrastructure Index averages about 19 and a half times price earning, while EGL's portfolio averages 16 and a half times. So we invest in the companies which tend to be cheaper than their own investment universe while generating... While providing slightly higher dividend yield. So that's the result of our stock selection very much based on investment in the companies that derisk and gain exposure to the fastest growing segments of the investment space.

26:56 So big anomaly there from our perspective with valuations, which remain on the historic lows for global infrastructure. At the same time, what we have noticed that private infrastructure specialists are using much higher valuation criteria as in the past. So the valuation gap, which we express here on on page 16, between private infrastructure transactions and listed infrastructure valuation terms is as high as it's ever been. To give you an example, last year, there was a major take private transaction in Canada of, Innergex, a Canadian renewable developer, which was taken private by Quebec.

27:48 So they knew very much what they were buying. Same, you know, typically location. And CDPQ, Quebec paid an 80% premium to the average share price of Innergex to take it private. That's the type of, you know, different approach between private and listed equity investors when valuing infrastructure assets. And the example of airports is even more striking. That's the bottom right chart on this slide 16. The average of the 10 the last 10 transactions in private airports have been around 19.5 times EV EBITDA, while the average of listed airports is below 10 times, around nine and a half times ECOFIN GLOBAL.

28:34 Major valuation spread, valuation gap, which we see as an anomaly. Obviously, there's competition in private markets, the private infrastructure specialists like Brookfield, KKR, Macquarie, Blackstone, BlackRock, those top five have raised more than $200,000,000,000 of fresh cash in the past couple of years. This is a record, I believe, asset raising for private infrastructure specialists, so they need to invest the money. Having said that, we see listed equity investors are still very influenced by interest rates and the fact that obviously US treasury yields have moved from 1% to 5% over the past five years roughly has been very detrimental to the typical valuation terms of long duration models like utilities and infrastructure on listed equity markets.

29:31 This is in our view a significant opportunity, compelling opportunity to invest in the space for listed equity investors. This is what EGL specializes in.

29:45 I'm going to finish with this because obviously we reviewed the investment drivers that we've identified. This is a snapshot of the top 10, the largest holdings of EGL as of today. You see good diversification of geographies, types types of business models, you know, between the three subsegments I mentioned. You have utilities, environmental services, transportation, infrastructure names, and you have a combination of regulated and nonregulated businesses, are more trying to grab exposure to the structural growth trends that I mentioned with overall for EGL's portfolio, a beta versus MSCI World of around point 7.75.

30:31 So that's the volatility profile that I was referring to upfront, much lower volatility than the general equity markets while providing typically, at least over the past decade, double digit total return per annum. That's how we structure the portfolio, obviously. And, hopefully, you'd be familiar with all of those names. It's a highly liquid and scalable type of strategy. I'm going to stop here, and I'm very happy obviously to answer your questions now. So Neil, I'll give it back to you. I think we've managed to pretty much stick to the thirty minutes you allocated for this first part of the call.

31:20 Thank you for listening in. Up to you for the Q and A session and up to you, Neil. That's great. I'll just jump back in here, Jean Hu. Thank And you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q and A tab situated on the corner of your screen. While the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Jean Hu, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation, and I wanted to start off the Q and A session with the first one here, which reads as follows. Where are you currently finding the best risk adjusted opportunities geographically? So thank you for the question.

32:06 The main driver that we see today is really this phenomenon of combination of electrification, very supportive, with scarcity of power generation resources and derisking. I would say that we've only seen this theme developing in The US so far. So, what we see is that, US utilities in particular have rerated over the past two years, while their relative fee remain, very low in terms of absolute fee that some of the names have rerated. So where we sense the biggest opportunities today related to exposure to that potential theme without being discounted in valuations is very much in UK, Europe.

32:53 Actually, The UK has been the main laggard in the world of, utilities over the past five, six years. You see some names which are trading at significant discount to their their peers. You see that, you know, the main holding in our portfolio today of EGL is National Grid, a name which you will all, I guess, be very familiar with. But National Grid sits at the center of this strategic positioning of power transmission. In periods of accelerating demand for electricity and scarcity of power generation resources, the critical positioning is to be exposed to power grid. We need more transmission networks in order for electricity to circulate. As we all know, battery technology is not yet fully operational, so you can't store electricity to the extent that, obviously, would make intermittent sources of power baseload.

33:53 So you still need more and more power grid power transmission. This is why a company like National Grid trades on on fairly low multiples, which are more UK type multiples. While listed in The US, National Grid would rerate quite significantly. Its USPS are trading at a major premium to its valuation term. So I would say UK and Europe. And in Europe, the reason being that we still have typical business models in Europe of integrated utilities, which are trading sometimes at, you know, 11, 12 times p while delivering double digit earnings growth profile ahead of you. And and that type of PE is typically much lower than their US peers, which are more trading around 17, 18 times PE quite quite often.

34:43 So the bulk of the opportunities in terms of valuation sit in UK, Europe from our perspective. We we tend to overweight those regions compared to the components of the, you know, global infrastructure indices. We're not a benchmark strategy, but we we we tend to, you know, overweight those geographies. And we believe that this is still an area... An era... An area, UK, Europe, so Pan Europe, which is bound to benefit from also data center contracts. We haven't seen any of the large long duration contracts that we've seen signed over the past eighteen months in in The US. So clearly, UK, Europe, a a key area of focus. And in terms of underlying themes and subsegments, I would say power generation is a critical strategic positioning for a trust like like EGL's portfolio.

35:39 Fantastic. Thank you very much. The next question here is how confident are you in the long term dividend growth outlook?

35:49 We're quite confident in the long term dividend growth profile. Actually, what we are seeing, first of all, is that over the past decade, a lot of companies in our space have reduced their gearing. So if you look at the credit rating of our companies, it's improved one or two or two notches over the past decade. So... And this has happened through notably noncore asset disposals... Core asset disposals. So a lot of companies have refocused their businesses, got rid of the the the long core, and have therefore improved their balance sheet positioning. So it provides more ability to deliver dividends for shareholders. On top of that, you've seen the earnings tailwind that we are seeing companies exposed to.

36:42 To be honest, in the past eighteen months, the bulk of our companies have increased their guidance. It's become very much the exception to here a utility or, an infrastructure company in OECD market, lowering its guidance. They are either telling you that they deliver on on targets or they do raise their guidance these days. So that's the type of EPS acceleration trend, which we believe is extremely sound for for dividends. So we... Our degree of conviction and and comfort in the delivery of the annual growth in dividends is actually higher than it was five years ago and actually improving. So quite a high degree of confidence about the ability of the space and our portfolio to deliver on dividend growth.

37:35 Thank you. Moving on topics. Are utilities now transitioning from defensive income assets to structural growth assets? And if so, why do you think the market hasn't fully recognized that yet?

37:48 Definitely. Very good question, actually. Thank you so much for asking. If you ask most generalist investors, listed equity investors, about utilities infrastructure, the the the first answer they will give you is that this is a bond proxy type of investment universe. Bond proxy. You only buy utilities and infrastructure in periods of recession when the the the world is falling apart. You... You've seen that track record of EGL over the past decade, and this is, I guess, the best answer to that. It's proved a wrong theory, not because it's it's always been wrong, but because I believe the profile of utilities utilities and infrastructure companies has dramatically evolved, and this is far from being discounted...

38:37 Accounted for by generalist investors. Correlation to interest rates, which remain a a major driver of the relative performance of the space, has diminished. It's actually a correlation which remains valid for the pure regulated companies. But even in regulated, we've seen a development of the typical inflation pass throughs model, which you you had in The UK, but it was not the model. You know, in Spain, regulated utilities do not have inflation pass throughs. You have them in The UK. You have them in Italy. It's a developing phenomenon, and most of the long term contracts that I'm talking about have inflation pass throughs, which means that gradually, the correlation of utilities and infrastructure to interest rates has actually diminished, not for short term phenomenons. When you have a fast deepening of the yield curves in The US, typically, you see the space coming back down. We've seen it.

39:37 You know, we've had two big examples of Donald Trump elections over the past decade, 2016, 2024. Every time, a sharp steepening of the yield curves, focus on growth, forget about defensive strategies like utilities infrastructure. The whole space took a big hit. Then for us specialists, they've proved great opportunities to acquire the high quality names on the cheap. And the the the following twelve months have usually been very fruitful for the the total return of EGL's investment strategy because we've managed to grab high quality names on the cheap. So why isn't this discounted by markets?

40:18 Really, I think the main driver of the perception of utility infrastructure for generalist equity investors has been the movement in interest rates. So the one... The move from 1% to 5%, as I mentioned before, of US treasury yields between 20 to two one and twenty four roughly, and we will be still very much on the highs, has represented a major headwind. And as you've seen in our valuation chart, has led to a major de rating de rating of the listed valuation of infrastructure. We yet have to recover from that. As you can see, private and as I explained, private infrastructure specialists have gone well beyond that. They sense the the beauty of long duration models like like infrastructure, while listed equity investors are still largely influenced by interest rate. That's our main explanation.

41:13 But, again, the bond proxy status of utilities and infrastructure

41:18 is far from being representative of the typical business model. And, again, I think I'm repeating myself, but the track record of EGL over all those years gave a good illustration of our capability to navigate in such a context and grab compelling investment opportunities on discounted valuations. Perfect. Thank you very much. Another question being asked here is, are there enough place on the nuclear theme in Europe and The UK?

41:50 No. There are not many investment opportunities to gain exposure to nuclear. You know, the world leader in the nuclear was the French EDF, which was nationalized a few years ago. So delisted. In in The US, you you had a few companies only, a few utilities. Again, because three, four years ago, you know, most of my US colleagues were telling me that in The US, nuclear technology was really not considered the future. It was a technology of the past. The US were not investing in in the renewal of a new generation of nuclear plants. It was extending the lifespan of its existing nukes with no additional new capacity built.

42:41 So in The US, you had... You have a few names. You know, I mentioned Constellation, Vistra, PEG, a few companies of that type which still own some nuclear. A reminder that Constellation that I referred to was actually a spin off of Exelon, a larger utility, which spun it off about four years ago on the the rationale that they didn't know what to do with their nuclear. So they spun it off in a specific entity, which is actually the one which has rerated the most. But a few opportunities in The US, not much. In Europe or The UK, nuclear is usually part of integrated utilities. So you have ways to gain exposure to nuclear when you invest in, you know, in an NG and which has exposure to Belgium nuclear, actually about to be nationalized.

43:36 You have some exposure to nuclear in in Spain, not in Italy as we know because Italy has phased out of nuclear. No longer in Germany because Germany has phased out of nuclear as well. So scarce opportunity. What I would say though is that besides nuclear, the next technology to benefit from long term contracts is more likely to be natural gas, which obviously is less carbon intensive than coal and still able to provide twenty four seven electricity. And then, obviously, renewables as soon as battery technology will develop, and and we should expect that in the next

44:14 five to ten years as the auto industry is obviously investing big time on on on batteries for the the EVs. That could be a game changer for utilities. So not many opportunities to invest in in nuclear, for sure. Those that have it are seeing a major rerating, a potential rerating ahead of them. But generally speaking, it's the baseload power generators and those that are able to provide a mix of power generation sources, which have the the the winning mix, we believe, in the current market conditions.

44:51 Thank you. The next one we've got here is what indications would imply a data center overbuild?

45:00 So, obviously, you've understood that we are not investing in tech. So, you know, the challenges that, NVIDIA, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft may may face are are are not directly our our issue as exposed to EGL's portfolio. EGL's portfolio benefits from overall increased demand for electricity. And I believe this is a structural trend. I'm very conscious that in The US, we're starting to see some new data center builds being challenged. So you may see a slowdown in the new builds of data center. But let's not forget that kind of eighteen months ago, this was an on existing theme in our investment universe and and investment strategy.

45:57 And EGL used to offer a very attractive growth outlook, and I I believe we will continue to do so. Electrification trends are structural because we use more and more electricity. Our iPhones are more and more, you know, AI intensive. Whether our data centers will become more efficient, whether you're gonna see some areas where data centers are being challenged, very possible. I don't think this is bound to really affect at least the foreseeable future trends that we have identified into growth of demand for electricity at the time when you have significant power generation, lack of power generation resources.

46:42 So it's not gonna be a straight line. There's gonna be challenges. We've always had challenges, tech challenges, but we invest in the indirect beneficiary of the structural trends much more than into the short term cycle of tech. So I believe EGL remains exposed to the most defensive part of that trend, the most structural trend of of this phenomenon, and we believe in friction point in consumption of electricity. Thank you. Last couple of questions here is, do you have some exposure to the hydrogen sector?

47:20 Hydrogen?

47:21 So very hardly so. Actually, you you don't have any of the the the significantly quit listed names directly exposed to hydrogen. A lot of groups are looking at that potential emerging technology. To be honest, it's less of a considered a future technology as it was five years ago. Green hydrogen was was considered the future. You know, there were a lot of talks about this notably in Germany, which had big big mining sites, which were considered great opportunities to store hydrogen there. Green hydrogen is not proving to be economically viable on a large scale basis.

48:06 So, you know, you see low... Local municipalities, you know, introducing some hydrogen driven buses. It remains very local rather than a large scale technology. It's less considered a potential solution to energy transition challenges than it was five years ago. So no exposure, to be honest, is extremely marginal, negligible. We have exposure to a company in in Italy, SNAM Retegas, which talks a lot about the potential developments into green hydrogen, but it remained negligible at the scale of the company, and therefore, it's not yet tangible in the earnings generation mix. So negligible exposure at this stage.

48:53 Thank you, Jean Luc. And the last question we've got here is regarding the premium discount chart. Can you confirm if the Board of EGL act to defend the discount if it widens, for example, by using buybacks?

49:06 Was this used during the period noted prior to the current premium? Yes. Thank you for asking because I should have highlighted this. Over the past two to three years, the board of EGL has systematically favored buybacks. And we we we talk about tangible numbers. So the the the the board of EGL is really committed, and you'll see that in our documentation, committed to supporting as much as it can EGL shares through enhancing buybacks, the payers of a discount, and then potentially growing the trust, increasing liquidity by issuing premiums, again, only in conditions which are enhancing for the returns of existing shareholders.

49:59 So, the Board of EGL has been very proactive in buying back shares over the 2425 period in particular. And we believe that this has largely contributed to gaining credibility, confidence of the shareholder base and in the end leading to the premium which we've just reached a few weeks ago.

50:31 Great. Well, if I can just jump in at this stage and say a few summary words because we're getting to the end of our of our time today. So, John Hooke, thank you very much for your update on the fund ECOFIN GLOBAL UTILITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE TRUST. And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your time listening today via our friends at Investor Meat Company. We've learned a great deal about some of the key structural trends benefiting this sector, including aging infrastructure and the likely significant growth in electricity consumption. These are very long term trends that will take many years to play out, and in our opinion, will provide long term support for this investment opportunity. Also learned about the strength and depth of the growing team at Red Wheel and the characteristics of the companies that are held in the portfolio and the use of the investment trust structure for this strategy with respect to gearing and dividend growth.

51:30 We think, in particular, the clear disconnect between public and private equity capital makes this fund investing only in listed equities a very interesting and differentiated proposition. And just to note, ladies and gentlemen, the shares are available to buy on all leading retail investment platforms with the ticker EGL. So look, many many thanks for your time today. I'll hand back to Alex, and we'll look forward to updating you next time. Fantastic. Thank you very much indeed for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.