布魯克菲爾德基礎建設合夥公司 (BIP) 2026年第三季財報電話會議：FFO達7.17億美元

重點摘要

• Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (BIP) 2026 年第三季營運資金 (FFO) 達 7.17 億美元，即每單位 0.91 美元，為連續第三個季度實現其 每單位 FFO 成長 10% 的目標。
• 數據部門為成長最快的業務板塊，其 FFO 年增 25% 至 1.72 億美元。中游業務 FFO 成長 14%，運輸業務成長 10%，公用事業業務則增加 5%。
• BIP 年初至今已投入約 18 億美元的股權資本，且仍有望於 2026 年投入超過 20 億美元，其中包括約 7 億美元投資於內部有機成長專案。
• 年初至今的資產出售已獲取近 15 億美元收益。若能達成具約束力的報價並完成交易，處於後期階段的出售流程有望在年底前額外帶來超過 10 億美元的收益。
• 該公司擁有約 32 億美元的企業流動性資金。不計巴西地區，超過 90% 的債務為固定利率，短期內的再融資需求相當有限。
• 管理層依然充滿信心，認為 BIP 能夠在 2026 年締造強勁的財務表現，並達成其 每單位 FFO 成長 10% 的目標。

關鍵財務數據

業務與營運表現

公用事業：FFO 成長 5% 至 2 億美元。此成長反映了與通膨掛鉤的定價調整、約 6 億美元資本已計入費率基礎，以及南韓工業氣體業務與紐西蘭能源基礎設施平台的貢獻。過去 12 個月內完成的資產出售則部分抵銷了上述成長。

運輸：FFO 成長 10% 至 3.15 億美元，主要受惠於港口吞吐量增加、收費道路車流量及費率提升，以及收購北美鐵路車廂租賃業務所帶動。然而，出售澳洲貨櫃碼頭以及部分出售英國港口業務所導致的獲利減少，部分抵銷了此項成長。

中游：FFO 成長 14% 至 1.78 億美元。加拿大多元化中游業務受惠於高資產利用率及高檔大宗商品價格。此外，該部門亦享有 2025 年第三季收購之美國成品油管線帶來的整季貢獻。

數據：FFO 成長 25% 至 1.72 億美元。成長動能包括內部有機成長、BIP 完成股權注資後的亞利桑那州英特爾半導體晶圓代工合作夥伴關係，以及 2025 年第三季收購之美國骨幹光纖網路帶來的整季貢獻。

AI 基礎設施仍是資本投入的重點領域。BIP 與 NAVER 的合作涵蓋亞太地區大型 AI 工廠超過 200 百萬瓦的算力容量。首批 GPU 預計於 2027 年上半年部署，並放眼在 2028 年底前完成全面部署。

管理層估計 BIP 與 NAVER 相關的股權出資承諾約為 1 億至 2 億美元。GPU 總資本支出預計約為 90 億美元，集團層級的總股權資本約為 17 億至 18 億美元，貸款對成本比率 (LTC) 融資約為 80%，可能略低於此水準。

管理層指引

管理層維持 2026 年每單位 FFO 成長 10% 的目標，並預期全年的總股權資本投入將超過 20 億美元。

BIP 亦設定前瞻性目標，計劃平均每年在 AI 基礎設施投入約 5 億美元。該公司表示，其潛在投資案源涵蓋跨多個領域與地區的傳統併購 (M&A) 及策略性資本合夥關係。

在獲得必要批准後，已宣布的公司架構簡化預計將於 11 月 19 日完成。管理層預期合併後的架構將立即提高自由流通量與交易流動性，而潛在的指數相關需求及資金流入則預估在 三至九個月內逐步顯現。

風險與關注焦點

• 管理層表示，現在評估美國政治與監管環境的變化將如何影響資料中心發展，仍為時過早。
• 由於供應限制與資本取得有限，資料中心及 AI 基礎設施的發展速度可能放緩。管理層指出，未來供應減少可能提升既有產能的價值，而擁有充足資金及在地支援的開發商仍將處於更有利的競爭地位。
• 電網用電戶權益保護與額外的電力供應，是推進 AI 基礎設施專案的重要條件。
• 超過 10 億美元的潛在額外資產出售所得，取決於處於後期階段的流程能否達成具約束力的協議並完成交易。
• 公司架構簡化帶來的指數相關效益，其發酵時機與規模仍存在不確定性。
• 西澳政府已提出相關法案，可能允許政府回購 Arc Infrastructure 貨運鐵路網路。BIP 表示相關討論仍在進行中，但未透露可能的結果。

分析師問答集錦

管理層將 數據 評為潛在資本投入中最活躍的板塊，其次為 中游、運輸 及 公用事業。公用事業交易規模往往較大但頻率較低，而運輸領域的機會通常規模較小但持續性更強。

在 AI 算力融資方面，管理層表示，以每百萬瓦金額規模計算，可服務算力市場約為資料中心市場的三倍。BIP 的目標是與投資級交易對手建立「照付不議」(take-or-pay) 架構，在合約期內完整收回資本並獲取資本報酬，且不承擔技術風險。

管理層預期，美國與資料中心、表後發電、公用事業及中游基礎設施相關的機會將持續湧現，儘管熱度可能有所放緩。此外，管理層也看好加拿大、紐西蘭和歐洲的能源安全機遇、公用事業的費率基礎投資需求，以及與全球貿易和供應鏈安全息息相關的運輸基礎設施持續需求。

法說會逐字稿全文

完整財報電話會議逐字稿

管理層陳述

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P. Third Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, David Krant, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

David Krant

Thank you, Shannon, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Brookfield Infrastructure Partners Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. As introduced, my name is David Krant, and I am the Chief Financial Officer of Brookfield Infrastructure. I'm joined today by our Chief Executive Officer, Sam Pollock; and our Chief Operating Officer, Ben Vaughan. Also joining us today is Dave Joynt, a managing partner in our investments team; and Lief Williams, a Managing Director focused on AI infrastructure investments.

I'll begin the call today with a discussion of our financial and operating results, followed by a discussion of our asset sale initiatives and balance sheet strength. I'll turn the call over to Sam then to -- who will discuss our capital deployment activity and provide an outlook for the business.

Now at this time, I'd like to remind you that in our remarks today, we may make forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks, and the future results may differ materially. For further information on known risk factors, I'd encourage you to review our latest annual report on Form 20-F, which is available on our website.

Now beginning with our financial and operating results, we're pleased to report that we generated FFO of $717 million or $0.91 per unit. This marks the third consecutive quarter in which we've achieved our 10% FFO per unit growth target. The increase was driven by strong organic growth at the high end of our target range, supported by inflationary price increases, strong asset utilizations and the commissioning of approximately $1.4 billion of capital projects from our backlog. Results also benefited from contributions from new investments completed over the last 12 months. which continues to generate returns above the lost yield from asset sales completed over the same period.

I'll now go through our results by segment in a little more detail. Starting with our Utilities, where we generated FFO of $200 million, an increase of 5% over the prior year. The increase was driven by inflation indexation and the contribution of approximately $600 million of capital commissioned into rate base. Results also benefited from recent acquisitions including our South Korean industrial gas business and our New Zealand energy infrastructure platform. These contributions were partially offset by foregone earnings from asset sales completed over the last 12 months.

Moving to Transport, where FFO was $315 million, representing a 10% increase over the prior year. The increase was driven by volume strength in our port operations, increased volumes and tariffs on our toll roads and the contribution from the acquisition of our North American railcar leasing platform. Results were impacted by foregone earnings from asset sales completed in the prior year, including the sale of our Australian container terminal and a partial sale of our U.K. port operation.

In Midstream, our FFO was $178 million, up 14% compared to the prior year. The increase reflects strong organic growth across the portfolio, particularly at our Canadian diversified midstream business, which benefited from strong asset utilization and elevated commodity prices. Results also reflected a full quarter contribution from our U.S. refined products pipeline, which we acquired in the third quarter of 2025 compared with the partial closure of this year.

Lastly, FFO from our Data segment was $172 million, representing a 25% increase over the prior year. The increase was driven by strong organic growth across the segment, including contributions from our partnership with Intel to develop semiconductor foundries in Arizona, following the completion of our equity funding during the quarter. Results also included a full quarter contribution from our U.S. bulk fiber network, which we acquired in the third quarter of 2025.

I'll now turn to an update on our asset sales. And on a year-to-date basis, you note we have secured nearly $1.5 billion of proceeds. We are also nearing binding offers on several advanced sale processes that could generate over $1 billion of incremental proceeds next to the partnership before year-end. In parallel, we continue to advance additional monetization opportunities, which position us for a strong start in 2027 for our capital recycling plan.

In terms of our balance sheet, our approach to financing remains straightforward: Maintain conservative leverage, extend maturities when opportunities arise and ensure our businesses have the financial flexibility to perform through market cycles. Today, more than 90% of our debt, excluding Brazil, is fixed rate, and our debt maturities are well staggered. This provides meaningful protection against movements in interest rates and allows us to focus on operating and growing our operations. At the corporate level, we have approximately $3.2 billion of liquidity together with our access to a broad range of capital markets and limited near-term refinancing requirements, this puts us in an excellent position. We have the flexibility to fund our existing growth initiatives and the capacity to pursue new investments when attractive opportunities arise.

And with that, that concludes my remarks for this morning. I'll now turn the call over to Sam.

Samuel J. B. Pollock

Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. Building on the progress David just outlined, we've also been active in deploying capital. Year-to-date, we deployed approximately $1.8 billion of equity across new investments and organic growth projects, and we remain on track to deploy over $2 billion in 2026. One of the most compelling aspects of our business today is the growing scale and breadth of organic investment opportunities within our portfolio. Across our 4 segments, we are deploying capital to expand utility systems, increase capacity in our transport networks, enhance our midstream capabilities and develop data infrastructure to support accelerating demand for digital connectivity. So far in 2026, we have invested approximately $700 million of equity into organic growth projects. These projects leverage our existing asset base, establish customer relationships and operating expertise, allowing us to deploy capital at attractive risk-adjusted returns with greater visibility and lower execution risk.

Alongside this organic activity, investment across AI infrastructure continues to accelerate, adding to our established pipeline of M&A in traditional sectors. The significant capital required to develop AI factories, deploy compute capacity and secure associated energy infrastructure is creating new avenues for us to deploy capital, particularly through strategic partnerships with leading global corporations. This momentum is reflected in our recently signed agreement formalizing a strategic partnership with NAVER to develop sovereign AI capabilities, including over 200 megawatts of compute capacity for of the largest AI factories in Asia Pacific. As part of the partnership, we will finance and own the compute capacity through a dedicated leasing company with contracted cash flows providing a return on and full recovery of our invested capital over the initial contract term. The first GPU deployment is expected in the first half of 2027 with full deployment by the end of 2028. This expected equity commitment is approximately $100 million.

Now beyond NAVER, our growing pipeline of actual investment opportunities gives us confidence in achieving our forward-looking objective of deploying approximately $500 million of capital on average annually in AI infrastructure. Most recently, we entered into a strategic partnership with Drax to potentially develop a large-scale AI factory in the United Kingdom.

So with that, let me now turn to the outlook. We remain confident in our ability to close out the year with strong financial performance and achieve our 10% FFO per unit growth target. A key focus is converting our expanding investment pipeline into new capital deployment. We're advancing opportunities across sectors and geographies through both traditional M&A and strategic capital partnerships, providing multiple avenues to deploy capital at attractive risk-adjusted returns. Our scale, operating expertise and track record have established Brookfield as a partner of choice for leading global corporations seeking long-duration capital and an aligned operating partner. This position provides access to differentiated investment opportunities that often arise from relationships developed over many years rather than competitive options.

Another key priority is completing the announced corporate simplification. Following the successful BIP unitholder and BIP C shareholder votes, we have now received all required approvals and expect the simplification to close on November 19. Following closing and subject to approval by its Board of Directors, BIP Bank intends to declare and pay a fourth quarter dividend on its Class A shares in an amount consistent with BIP's current quarterly distribution of $0.455 per unit. We believe the simplified structure will make Brookfield Infrastructure easier to own, improve consolidated trading liquidity, broaden our investor base and support increased index demand.

This concludes my remarks, and I'll pass it now back to the operator, and we'd be happy to take some questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Cherilyn Radbourne with TD Cowen.

分析師問答

Cherilyn Radbourne

Thanks very much, and good morning. I was hoping to get some perspective on what the U.S. midterms mean, if anything, for the value of your in-place DC capacity and the development pipeline.

Samuel J. B. Pollock

Cherilyn, I guess we expected that question. Maybe I'll just make a couple of quick comments, and we have Lief Williams from our AI strategy group here as well. And maybe I'll ask him just to give a general sense of what's happening these days in that sector. But I think the 2 obvious things to say is that it's far too early to speculate on changes that might occur to regulation and other impacts to the sector because we're still in the heightened political environment.

But obviously, to the extent that development slows down, which, frankly, we expected it to slow down in any event because of constraints to supplies as well as capital. So I think a slowdown was expected in any event. But to the extent that there is a lower supply in the coming years, that's going to make existing assets more valuable. And so for businesses like C-Square, where we have it in place, set of data centers and customers providing compute. We expect rates to get higher, and it should be good for the business.

In terms of development, I think for developers who have a strong track record, access to capital and strong local support and that means having projects in the right jurisdictions, I think they will continue to be successful. And in our case, we've been running our business extremely prudently. And maybe just to add to that, that's where I'll turn it over to Lief, just to describe how we've been running the business to position ourselves for this particular environment.

Lief Williams

Yes. Thank you, Sam. I think what I would add is from a bipartisan perspective, A big area of focus has been great payer protection and really trying to ensure that from a grid perspective, the ratepayer is protected and from a power perspective, there is additionality. That's a theme we've been looking forward to for the last 18 months. I would say if you look at the large 3 AI factory projects we've been [indiscernible] so the Edmonton site, the Paduca site and the [indiscernible] in the U.K. All 3 of those hit all of those attributes. And so we think that development will continue for the right projects to develop the right way. And that's really been the priority from our perspective.

Cherilyn Radbourne

Great. And for my second question, maybe flipping to a jurisdiction that's a bit more friendly, opened. Can you talk about what you think Build Canada Strong and the mega productivity deduction imply for your Canadian midstream business?

Samuel J. B. Pollock

Okay. Well, maybe I'll start there. And if any of my colleagues want to add to it, they can jump in as well. Look, I think as we've probably said on previous calls, the tone from the various governments over the last year has been trending positive. And we've seen both federally and provincially a number of governments much more supportive of new projects, particularly projects out West. We think that there's a lot of momentum in the energy sector, in particular, to expand egress both to Asia and south. And I think while we can't point to a number of projects yet the direction of travel is positive. And so we remain optimistic that things will get done and that our pipeline today of energy projects has probably never been larger and continues to be -- our view -- our favorable view on the sector has not changed.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Maurice Choy with RBC Capital Markets.

Maurice Choy

Maybe to take even bigger picture as we talk about the changing policy and political landscapes around the world that seems to be quite rapid, not at least being the U.S. Just keen to hear where you think you see the greatest opportunities in this location in any of the 4 pillars of business that you have.

Samuel J. B. Pollock

Maurice, so today, if we look from a geographic perspective the for the last couple of years, most of the opportunities have arisen out of the U.S. and a lot of that was driven by the explosion in data center activity, which led to behind the meter power opportunities, utility opportunities as well as midstream. So a lot of that took place. And as we just said, I think we expect that to continue even if it's moderated somewhat.

The other theme that has been very prevalent has been energy security. And we just touched on that a little bit, I guess, with Cherilyn's question regarding projects in Canada, which really, I think, are being developed in response to energy security issues around the world. We have participated in investments in New Zealand, where energy security was part of our Clarus thesis. And we're pursuing a number of opportunities in Europe related to that theme as well. So I would say energy is still a big component. There are opportunities in New York, in particular, related to utilities, not dissimilar to what we see here in North America. They have issues there as well with raising capital to invest in utilities so that they can expand transmission and distribution in particular, and so investments into rate base opportunities are quite prevalent.

And then on the transportation side, maybe I've got Dave joined here with me, who runs our transportation business. do you want to comment on where we see transportation opportunities.

David Joynt

Yes, I would probably just make 2 comments on that. I think, number one, despite what you might think, Global trade continues to be really strong. And it's not just as direct as it was in the past or would go directly from factories in Asia and go directly into demand markets in Europe and North America, but it's actually making many steps kind of along the way. And so I think that overall demand for global trade just increases overall investment requirements in everything from ports to rail and other sort of like inland infrastructure assets. So I think overall, that is probably very strong.

And then I think the second thing that I would comment is another large theme continues to be around supply chain security. So beyond Sam's comment about energy security, people are also concerned about the security of their supply chain, and there are significant investments being made around the world in order to -- whether it's resort or simply to create captive supply chains in order to get their goods from their supply destinations to the end markets, a lot of investment in that market as well.

Maurice Choy

Understood. And if I could just finish off with a question on the corporate simplification. My congratulations to your team for the hard work and getting this across the line. And I just wanted to hear your sense as to when the benefits that you've outlined for the simplification may materialize timing-wise, over the coming weeks, months or quarters?

David Krant

Maurice, it's David. Look, I think in terms of the benefit, it's going to be -- and to remind everyone, we think there's a number of them. Obviously, the combined company is going to have a much larger market cap, a bigger free float and therefore, better trading liquidity. And so I would expect those benefits to come in from day 1 in terms of liquidity. People have access to trade the shares, as we noted in our release yesterday, from the 23rd onwards. And so I think that, that's probably more imminent.

Some of the other maybe medium- to longer-term benefits in terms of index demand and flows will be harder to predict and will happen at various times over the next 3 to 9 months based on our estimates. But we think that the initial benefits will be soon. And so that we're really excited to have that chapter behind us.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Devin Dodge with BMO Capital Markets.

Devin Dodge

So I'm going to start with a question on Radiant. We started to see more of these arrangements with third parties to fund compute capacity including Brookfield's agreement with NAVER's, I know the total addressable market is really large. But just wondering how much of that is currently in discussion with technology companies? And how do you differentiate versus your competitors?

Samuel J. B. Pollock

Yes, sure. Thanks for the question, Devin. Look, I think you're right. The addressable market is significantly size. I would say from a sheer dollars per megawatt perspective, the compute market is about 3x larger than the data center market. So we see a tremendous addressable market, but I would say we're very focused on the Brookfield side and on the Radiant side. at sticking to our knitting. And so this is take-or-pay contracts, full return on and of capital over the contract period. No technology risk and investment grade counterparties. The NAVER transaction is a great example of that focus. And I would say you'll see more transactions like that from us over the coming quarters.

From a differentiation perspective, I think you're starting to see that in the market right now. I think having access to capital in periods of volatility will be a difference maker. Capital is becoming more scarce. And I think that strong sponsor like Brookfield with deep access to capital, will be able to take advantage of the volatility.

Devin Dodge

Okay. Second question is on Arc infrastructure. There were some legislation that came forward in Western Australia involving the renationalization of the freight network, at least to the extent that you're able. Can you speak to where you are in those discussions with the government? And what's the range of outcomes that are being considered?

Samuel J. B. Pollock

Devin, I don't think we can really talk about that at the moment. I think the government has put forward legislation that allows them to have the opportunity to buy back. And those are conversations that we're having today, and we'll see where they end up.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Frederic Bastien with Raymond James..

Frederic Bastien

Question on the NAVER partnership. Your $100 million equity commitment looks relatively modest against the $9 billion project size. Given that you typically invest alongside Brookfield and some institutional partners. Can you give us a sense of the total equity commitment at the group level and perhaps clarify whether the $9 billion represents total project costs, including debt financing or equity alone?

David Krant

I can start. Frederic, it's David. Yes. So the $9 billion -- I'll start backwards. The $9 billion is the total capital spend for the GPUs. And so that's the CapEx component. From an equity funding perspective, typical for these structures, you would have a loan to cost in the 80% range, maybe slightly lower than that. So you're probably around $1.75 billion of equity. And so we're estimating here BIP's share of that will be somewhere in the 5% to 10%. We do expect to offer equity investments here to potential fund investors. And given we're in the fundraising process, it's hard to speculate on where that shakes out. But I'd say the investment we wanted to put a number just so people had a sense of what to expect. So $100 million, maybe upwards to $200 million would be where we'd expect it to be once it's settled.

Frederic Bastien

And can you clarify what sort of investments you'd be looking at the group level, including Brookfield and your partners?

Samuel J. B. Pollock

It's plus or minus $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion total equity into the deal.

Frederic Bastien

And that's yours. Like that's the group level investment.

Samuel J. B. Pollock

At a group level, and as Dave mentioned, a portion of that will go into the fund, the AI fund, and then a portion will go to co-investors who are partners in the fund, and BIP will participate through the fund.

Frederic Bastien

Okay. Super. Okay. My other question around, I guess, you've been super active in data and certainly feels like investment opportunities are heating up in midstream. How is the opportunity set evolving across your 2 other segments, utilities and transport.

Samuel J. B. Pollock

I would say if we had to rank sort of pace of deployment, data would still be the most active followed by midstream. I think those are the 2 areas where we're seeing the most deal flow at the moment. And then probably transportation would be next and then utilities, I'd say, they can be lumpy. So the utility transactions tend to be larger, just less frequent. And so it's possible in any given year, we could have a large utility transaction, and there's some that we're pursuing at the moment, but they tend to be a little bit more sporadic. So whereas the transportation side tend to be smaller deals, but more often.

So that's kind of the lay the land. It's always hard to speculate because we have, as you can appreciate, a large number of transactions underway at any one particular time. And it's hard to predict which ones will become actionable and which ones might fall away for various reasons.

Operator

And I'm currently showing no further questions at this time. I'd now like to hand the call back over to Sam Pollock, Chief Executive Officer, for closing remarks.

Samuel J. B. Pollock

All right. Thank you, operator, for helping us out today, and thank you to everyone who joined the call. I think we'd like to wish everyone a happy upcoming holiday season. and we look forward to providing you our fourth quarter and year-end results early in the new year. Thank you, and have a great weekend.

Operator

This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.