TAESA "Leverage outweighting growth - Increase PT" (Sell) Ajeje

Research evidence excerpt

TAESA "Leverage outweighting growth - Increase PT" (Sell) Ajeje

TAESA UBS Research

Debt holders taking most of value generation

While we understand the potential opportunity for synergies in the acquisition from

Taesa, it further stresses the financial leverage of Taesa, which was already

relatively high. Even for a company exclusively in the transmission business, which

tends to be more cash-flow predictable and allows for higher leverage, we view

current leverage of 4.7x as overleveraged (4.7x in a consolidated view, as opposed

to the 4.2x reported in Taesa's 1Q26 release, which considers pro-forma leverage in

assets in which it has a minority stake). The acquisition from Energisa should add

~0.5x to Taesa's leverage, which coupled with deleveraging during the year, we

estimate at 4.8x at the end of 2026. In a macro environment with high interest

rates, this weighs on Taesa's value generation for shareholders. The expected

deleverage of Taesa through cash generation or a lower interest rate curve ahead

could lead to a more attractive outlook to shareholders.

EBITDA growth chasing capex

Taesa is going through a strong growth period, with greenfield projects starting

operations after investing heavier capex in recent years, but with EBITDA that

grows with a timing mismatch to investments. Now, it enters a phase of solid

EBITDA growth, still with high capex this year, but that decreases materially going

forward. Worth pointing out that our base case assumes R$230mn in R&M projects,

but this could be higher. Despite this high growth story, we believe current stock

prices do not leave much room for upside gain, demonstrated by our calculated real

IRR of just 7.1%.

Figure 1: Taesa's EBITDA and capex estimates

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stima

ITDAa pex e

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Taesa

Source: UBS estimates