Regulated and contractual return on capital employed
Our utilities platform is comprised of energy and transportation businesses which earn a regulated return, as well as businesses with long term contracts designed to generate a return on capital over the life of the contract. These assets typically earn an allowed return on a regulated or notionally stipulated asset base which we refer to as RAB, and in our portfolio include: electricity and gas distribution, a connections business, as well as one of the world's largest coal terminals. The businesses within our utilities platform are geographically diverse, spanning five countries on four continents − Australia, New Zealand, UK, Chile and Canada -- and share a number of key attributes:
Key attributes:
- Stable revenues with inflationary growth
- Strong free cash flow generation through regulated or contractual frameworks
- Diversity across regulatory regimes
- Significant opportunities to invest in system expansions at attractive returns
Objectives and Performance Measures
Our objectives for our utilities platform are to operate open access systems that provide safe and reliable service for our customers and to invest capital in expansions in order to meet our customers' growth requirements.
If we are successful we will be well positioned to earn an appropriate return on our RAB. As a result, our performance can be measured by the growth in our RAB, our return on RAB, as well as our AFFO yield.