从各季度#博枫基建股东信# 中摘抄一些时效性不高的文字。使用有道机器翻译。$Brookfield基础设施(BIP)$
【Water Infrastructure 水务基础设施】
Three years ago, a decision was made to expand into the water sector as it exhibits many attractive investment characteristics. Relative to the scale of our other asset classes in the portfolio, it may appear that our progress has been limited, however several strategic initiatives are underway which we expect to lead to meaningful growth in the future. Our thesis on the sector hasn’t changed but our investment approach has been refined to correspond with the current investment environment.
三年前，由于水务部门表现出许多有吸引力的投资特点，公司决定将业务扩展到水务部门。相对于我们投资组合中其他资产类别的规模，我们的进展似乎是有限的，但我们正在进行几项战略计划，希望在未来带来有意义的增长。我们对该行业的观点没有改变，但我们的投资方法已经改进，以适应当前的投资环境。
As a reminder, our interest in water infrastructure exists because it provides arguably the most essential of services – the provision of clean, fresh water for consumption and irrigation – and is a critical input for many industrial processes.
值得提醒的是，我们对水基础设施的兴趣之所以存在，是因为它提供了可以说是最基本的服务- -为消费和灌溉提供清洁的淡水- -并且是许多工业过程的关键投入。
Water assets generally benefit from both scarcity and high barriers to entry, frequently producing stable, inflation-linked cash flows that are underpinned by either regulatory frameworks or long-term supply relationships with strong counterparties, such as municipal governments and industrial customers.
水资产通常受益于稀缺性和高进入门槛，通常产生稳定的、与通胀挂钩的现金流，这些现金流得到监管框架或与稳健对手方(如市政府和工业客户)的长期供应关系的支持。
As the world’s population grows and development and urbanization continue apace, demand for water will follow, highlighting the need for considerable additional investment in water-related infrastructure. It is well-documented that developing nations require the build-out of new projects to provide access to safe water for drinking and agricultural uses. At the same time, developed countries face issues with aging and ineffective infrastructure, and the declining quality of existing water resources. Given this growing capital need and amid ongoing concerns regarding droughts, floods and water quality failures around the world, we are observing growing interest in privately-funded solutions.
随着世界人口的增长以及发展和城市化的迅速进行，对水的需求也将随之增加，因此需要对与水有关的基础设施进行大量额外投资。有据可查的是，发展中国家要求建设新的项目，以提供安全的饮用水和农业用水。与此同时，发达国家面临着基础设施老化和效率低下以及现有水资源质量下降的问题。鉴于日益增长的资金需求，以及对世界各地干旱、洪水和水质问题的持续关注，我们注意到对私人资金解决方案的兴趣日益浓厚。
From an investment perspective, water infrastructure opportunities generally fall within one of three markets: (i) regulated water utilities; (ii) private water infrastructure, which typically takes the form of long-term contracted assets either servicing communities or supplementing larger water systems, including desalination facilities and water transportation systems; and (iii) industrial water infrastructure, supporting manufacturing and processing activities. In developing a strategy for investing in the water infrastructure sector, we have taken into account the unique characteristics of each of these markets.
从投资的角度来看，水务基础设施的机会一般属于以下三个市场之一:
(i)受管制的水务公司;
(ii) 私营供水基础设施，通常采取长期合同资产的形式，为社区服务或为较大的供水系统提供补充，包括海水淡化设施和供水运输系统;以及
(iii)工业用水基础设施，支持制造和加工活动。
在制定投资水务基础设施部门的战略时，我们考虑到了每个市场的独特特点。
Consistent with our approach in other parts of our business, our strategy in the water sector is to remain patient and focus on opportunities to leverage our competitive advantages to acquire high-quality assets for value and build scale and operating expertise over time. In deploying this strategy, our focus is on three areas:
与我们在其他业务领域的做法一致，我们在水务领域的战略是保持耐心，专注于利用我们的竞争优势，以价值收购优质资产，并随着时间的推移建立规模和运营专业知识。在实施这一战略时，我们主要关注以下三个方面:
Utilizing global industry relationships – We seek to utilize our extensive network of relationships to generate proprietary deal flow. In following this strategy, we were recently invited to partner with Suez, a major player in the water industry, to invest in a water irrigation project in Peru consisting of two irrigation systems operating under favourable concessions with take-or-pay agreements and fixed tariffs linked to local and U.S. inflation. Industrial water opportunities are also a focus, which would involve leveraging our global relationships to partner with industrial and mining companies to develop and operate critical water infrastructure solutions for their production processes.
利用全球行业关系-我们寻求利用我们广泛的关系网络来产生独家的投资机会。根据这一战略，我们最近受邀与水务行业的主要参与者苏伊士集团(Suez)合作，在秘鲁投资一个灌溉项目，该项目包括两个灌溉系统，在优惠的优惠条件下运行，采用“不收即付”协议和与当地和美国通货膨胀挂钩的固定关税。工业用水机会也是一个重点，这将涉及利用我们的全球关系与工矿公司合作，为其生产过程开发和运行关键的水基础设施解决方案。
Leveraging local presence – As a global investor, our team has a well-established, proactive outreach program that enhances deal sourcing capabilities. In each target market, our local people build relationships with owners of desirable infrastructure assets and identify specific opportunities with the potential to become actionable transactions. This strategy was deployed in California, resulting in a modest but highly strategic investment in a water infrastructure developer that constructed the largest water desalination facility in the U.S., located in Carlsbad, California. We established ourselves as a partner of choice having the requisite experience to support the company in undertaking its current ~$1 billion desalination project in Huntington Beach, California. The company is equally well positioned to successfully pursue additional opportunities in similarly situated markets, such as Texas and other states in the southern U.S., as well as Chile.
利用本地业务——作为全球投资者，我们的团队拥有完善、积极的外联计划，以增强交易采购能力。在每个目标市场，我们的当地人员与理想基础设施资产的所有者建立关系，并确定有可能成为可操作交易的具体机会。这一策略在加州得到了应用，结果是对一家位于加州卡尔斯巴德的水基础设施开发商进行了适度但高度战略性的投资，该开发商建造了美国最大的海水淡化设施。我们将自己确立为具有必要经验的合作伙伴，以支持该公司目前在加利福尼亚州亨廷顿海滩进行约10亿美元的海水淡化项目。在类似的市场，如德克萨斯州和美国南部的其他州，以及智利，该公司同样处于有利地位，能够成功地寻求更多的机会。
Building scale through organic growth – At existing operations, opportunities are being sought to expand our presence in water infrastructure. For example, at our UK regulated distribution business, the company provides new water connections and water and wastewater services to end consumers, in addition to gas, electricity and fibre connections. Today, the business has over 7,600 in-place water connections and nearly 6,900 wastewater connections, with sizeable order books of over 25,000 connections for each. Additionally, our district energy business delivers an integrated multi-utility offering including energy, gas, electricity, water and recycled water services to over 16,000 customers across Australia. In Australia, the focus on water-related services includes drinking water, recycled water, wastewater services, embedded energy networks, and hot water systems at greenfield and urban infill communities. The business acts as the appointed local water utility for 11 communities, including more than 30,000 dwellings, over 8.6 million square feet of commercial retail space, and various new urban and industrial developments.
通过有机增长扩大规模——在现有业务中，我们正在寻找机会扩大我们在水务基础设施领域的业务。例如，在我们英国受监管的分销业务中，除了天然气、电力和光纤连接外，该公司还为终端消费者提供新的水连接和水和废水处理服务。如今，该公司拥有7600多个供水接驳设备和近6900个污水接驳设备，每个接驳设备的订单数量均超过2.5万个。
此外，我们的地区能源业务提供综合多公用事业服务，包括能源、天然气、电力、水和循环水服务，为全澳大利亚超过16000名客户提供服务。在澳大利亚，与水相关的服务包括饮用水、循环水、废水处理服务、嵌入式能源网络以及绿地和城市填充社区的热水系统。该公司是11个社区的指定自来水公司，其中包括3万多所住宅，超过860万平方英尺的商业零售空间，以及各种新的城市和工业开发项目。
Growing our water infrastructure presence in a meaningful way is a priority. While this will take time, our experience and success in growing our district energy operation to a total enterprise value of almost $2 billion exemplifies the strategy and scale we will target in water over the next few years.
以有意义的方式增加我们的水基础设施是一个优先事项。虽然这需要时间，但我们将地区能源业务发展到企业总价值近20亿美元的经验和成功证明了未来几年我们在水务领域的战略和规模目标。
【Inflation and Interest Rate Pressures 通胀和利率压力】
Where there is growth, there must be a discussion on the prospect of rising inflation and interest rates. While statistically there currently appears to be only benign levels of inflation in most of the jurisdictions where we operate, there is some evidence of wage and price increases in certain markets. It is unclear to us whether this will translate into higher inflation rates or whether it will be offset by the deflationary impact of technology.
只要有经济增长，就必须讨论通货膨胀和利率上升的前景。虽然从统计数据来看，在我们开展业务的大多数国家和地区，目前的通胀水平似乎只是良性的，但在某些市场，有一些证据表明工资和价格出现了上涨。我们还不清楚这是否会转化为更高的通胀率，或者它是否会被技术的通缩影响所抵消。
As approximately 75% of our revenues are indexed to inflation, all other factors remaining the same, we are positioned to benefit from higher inflation. Should inflation rates increase, we feel that our contractual frameworks will protect our cash flows and allow us to outperform many other businesses that do not have these protections.
由于我们大约75%的收入与通货膨胀挂钩，如果其他因素不变，我们将从更高的通货膨胀中受益。如果通货膨胀率上升，我们认为我们的合同框架将保护我们的现金流，并使我们超过许多没有这些保护的其他企业。
With respect to interest rates, we have been in the midst of a rate tightening cycle by central banks. So far, the yield curve has mostly flattened and long-term rates have stayed under 3% in the U.S. The prudent assumption is that the yield curve will edge upward over the next year. We have expected for some time that interest rates may move up and as a result, over the past few years, have proactively refinanced our businesses and extended debt maturities. Consequently, Brookfield Infrastructure has only approximately 25% of its debt maturing before 2022 and approximately 80% of the debt is fixed-rate.
在利率方面，我们一直处于中央银行收紧利率的周期之中。到目前为止，美国的收益率曲线基本上已经变平，长期利率也保持在3%以下。谨慎的假设是，收益率曲线将在未来一年缓慢上升。一段时间以来，我们一直预期利率可能会上升，因此，在过去几年里，我们积极为我们的企业进行再融资，并延长了债务期限。因此，BIP只有大约25%的债务在2022年之前到期，而且大约80%的债务是固定利率的。
As a result, our financial costs are, for the most part, locked-in and we have little exposure to rising rates in our operating cash flows for the foreseeable future. In our recent investment activities, we applied a conservative approach to our underwriting assumptions including with respect to financing. In the models used to assess our returns on new investments in jurisdictions with historic low interest rates, we believe our refinancing assumptions incorporate a layer of conservatism in addition to expectations of higher interest rates.
因此，我们的财务成本在很大程度上是固定的，在可预见的未来，我们的经营性现金流几乎不会受到利率上升的影响。在最近的投资活动中，我们对包括融资在内的投资假设采用了保守的方法。在评估在利率处于历史低位的地区的新投资时，在回报模型中我们除了包含对利率上升的预期外，再融资假设还在保守上更进一步。