Clearway Energy (CWEN)·Q4 2025 Earnings Summary

Clearway Energy Delivers at Top of Guidance, PPA Pricing Doubled From 3 Years Ago

February 23, 2026 · by Fintool AI Agent

Clearway Energy (NYSE: CWEN) reported full year 2025 results at the top end of its original guidance range, with Adjusted EBITDA of $1.217 billion and Cash Available for Distribution (CAFD) of $430 million . Despite the strong operational execution, shares fell approximately 4% in after-hours trading to $38.30 as investors digested a wider net loss and lower Q4 cash distributions compared to the prior year.

On the earnings call, CEO Craig Cornelius highlighted that PPA pricing has roughly doubled compared to three years ago , and the company has signed approximately 2 GW of contracts with hyperscalers and utilities serving data centers in 2025 alone . The clean energy yieldco also advanced its growth pipeline significantly, signing three long-term power purchase agreements with Google totaling approximately 1.1 GW and receiving offers to invest in the 650 MW Swan Solar and 520 MW Royal Slope projects .

Did Clearway Energy Beat Earnings?

Clearway delivered full year results at the high end of management's expectations, though the company doesn't provide explicit EPS or revenue guidance to compare against.

Full Year 2025:

CEO Craig Cornelius characterized the results as "strong operational and growth execution across our platform," noting the company is "on a solid path to achieve our $2.90 to $3.10 of CAFD per share target for 2030" .

What Did Management Guide?

Clearway reaffirmed 2026 CAFD guidance of $470 million to $510 million, representing potential growth of 9% to 19% from 2025 .

Management also expressed optimism about growth beyond 2030, stating they expect to "continue to grow CAFD per share 5-8%+ in the years beyond 2030, including growing at the top end of that range in 2031" .

The longer-term outlook is underpinned by:

• 2030 CAFD Target: $2.90 - $3.10 per share
• Post-2030 Growth: 5-8%+ annual CAFD per share growth
• Sponsor Pipeline: 11.2 GW in late-stage development opportunities

How Did the Stock React?

CWEN shares closed at $39.94 during regular trading on February 23, 2026, but fell in after-hours trading:

The modest selloff likely reflects:

1. Q4 CAFD declined from $40M to $35M year-over-year due to higher project-level debt service
2. Net loss widened significantly to $199M from $48M, driven by higher income tax expense and mark-to-market hedge losses
3. Wind resource was below median expectations across the fleet in Q4, including California
4. Liquidity declined to $1.061B from $1.330B a year ago as the company funded growth investments

What Changed From Last Quarter?

Several material developments emerged since Q3 2025:

Growth Investments Accelerated:

• Signed three long-term PPAs with Google totaling ~1.1 GW
• Received offers to invest in 650 MW Swan Solar ($215M) and 520 MW Royal Slope ($200M) projects
• Committed to 291 MW battery storage portfolio (Rosamond South II and Spindle) for ~$90M

Capital Markets Activity:

• Closed $600M senior unsecured notes at 5.75% due 2034
• Raised $50M through Class C share issuances at $34.60 weighted average
• Used proceeds to repay $361M revolving credit facility borrowings

Data Center Opportunity Expanded:

• 2 GW of contracts signed with data centers in the last 12 months
• Sponsor's late-stage pipeline now at 11.2 GW
• Multi-technology generation complexes in development across five states
• First co-located data center resources could come online as early as late 2028

ERCOT Recontracting:

• Awarded two offtake contracts in Texas, one with a "prominent hyperscaler"
• Contracts could extend project life by up to 11 years at higher prices and more favorable settlement structures
• Expected to be effective in 2026, contributing "single-digit millions in CAFD enhancement" near-term

Incremental Capital Deployment Opportunity:

• $650M+ of capital incremental to prior goals over 2028-2030, with optionality to scale higher

Segment Performance

Renewables & Storage drove the growth story:

For the full year, Renewables & Storage generated $1.039B of Adjusted EBITDA, up 9.6% from $948M in 2024 .

Operational Highlights:

• Flexible Generation availability: 96.8% vs 91.5% in Q4 2024
• Solar MWh generated: 1,907 thousand vs 1,659 thousand (+15%)
• Wind MWh generated: 2,623 thousand vs 2,473 thousand (+6%)
• Total Renewables MWh: 4,530 thousand vs 4,132 thousand (+10%)

Capital Allocation & Dividend

Clearway declared a quarterly dividend of $0.4602 per share for both Class A and Class C common stock, payable March 16, 2026 to shareholders of record as of March 2, 2026 .

At the after-hours price of $38.30, the annualized dividend of $1.84 (based on the Q4 rate) implies a yield of approximately 4.8%.

Balance Sheet & Liquidity

Liquidity declined by $269M year-over-year "primarily due to the execution of growth investments" .

Looking Ahead: Key Catalysts

Near-term (2026):

• Imminent: Deriva acquisition closing "well in advance of the end of the first half"
• Q2 2026: Expected close of Rosamond South II and Spindle acquisitions
• 2026: ERCOT recontracting PPAs become effective, enhancing quality of earnings
• 2026: Goat Mountain wind repowering completion

Medium-term (2027-2028):

• 2027: Royal Slope 520 MW solar + storage COD
• 2028: Swan Solar 650 MW COD
• 2028: Catamount Wind COD

Long-term:

• 2030: CAFD per share target of $2.90 - $3.10
• Post-2030: 5-8%+ annual CAFD growth

Q&A Highlights

The earnings call Q&A revealed several key themes:

On M&A Outlook (Mark Jarvi, CIBC): Management remains disciplined on M&A despite strong cost of capital. CEO Craig Cornelius noted: "The strength that we are demonstrating in our own organic growth outlook puts us in a position to be every bit as disciplined as we were last year when evaluating opportunities because we're in the luxurious position of evaluating M&A as something that would need to be demonstrably accretive to the outlook that we have already."

On PPA Pricing (Hannah Velásquez, Jefferies): Pricing environment remains robust across all geographies. "Rough rule of thumb is that pricing on PPAs that we signed this year, in comparison to pricing on PPAs in those same comparable markets signed 3 years ago, is about double. We're not seeing pricing necessarily escalate higher observably today than where it was, say, 3-4 months ago, but it is very much solid and sustained."

On Data Center Return Profile (Justin Clare, ROTH): Digital infrastructure complexes will offer similar economics to traditional drop-downs. "You could think of they're presenting similar CAFD yield investment opportunities with similar sort of 20-year type tenor contracts." The gas components at these sites would be structured as long-term tolls similar to Carlsbad Energy Center.

On Drop-Down Yields (Angie Storozynski, Seaport): Despite CWEN's improved cost of capital, sponsor continues to offer attractive yields. "Royal Slope and Swan, which were made in the course of the current month, certainly after we've seen a share price increase for CWEN, each of those were offered within that same 10%-11% CAFD yield range where assets were being offered last year."

On Deriva Acquisition (Nelson Ng, RBC): The pending acquisition is on track: "We expect to be able to close well in advance of the end of the first half of this year. The closing of the transaction is imminent."

On Fleet Hybridization (Nelson Ng, RBC): The Utah solar fleet hybridization with battery storage is a template for broader fleet optimization. "Much of that solar fleet is contracted well into the next decade. The ability to install hybridizing battery resources that qualify for tax credits based on the provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill extends well into the next decade."

Key Management Quotes

"We need to build about 2 gigawatts a year worth of projects. At the project sizes that we're increasingly developing, that could translate into, say, something like 6 projects a year on average. We are finding that we've got a point of view around our ability to do better than that as we look later into the decade." — Craig Cornelius, CEO

"We feel very good about our ability to execute in the current permitting environment, and we think that that is a unique differentiator of our enterprise." — Craig Cornelius on regulatory relationships

"The spread to Treasuries was the second tightest high-yield issuance spread in the broader power sector since 2020, demonstrating the quality of our credit." — Sarah Rubenstein, CFO on January bond offering

Key Risks

Management highlighted several risk factors in the filing:

1. Weather variability impacting renewable energy production throughout the year
2. Interest rate exposure on the growing debt load ($8.6B total debt)
3. Counterparty risk on power purchase agreements
4. Execution risk on growth investments and acquisition closings
5. Sponsor dependency for dropdown pipeline and development opportunities

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Clearway Energy hosts its Q4 2025 earnings conference call at 5:00 PM ET on February 23, 2026. The webcast will be available at investor.clearwayenergy.com.

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Related Resources:

• CWEN Company Profile
• CWEN Q3 2025 Earnings
• CWEN SEC Filings