Company: BIP-PB
Filing Date: 2025-03-24
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001628280-25-014380
Chunk: 187

Company: Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P.
Filing Date: 2025-03-24
Form: 20-F
Item: Item 4
Chunk 187
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 flows that escalate annually with or in excess of inflation.

76 Brookfield Infrastructure

Our sub-metering business is a leading non-utility sub-meter provider in Canada and the United States, achieving significant economies of scale. Our business provides an integrated, critical component of an essential service and is directly tied to the underlying infrastructure of the building. Due to a proven ability to reduce energy consumption, sub-meters are required in all new multi-residential buildings in the province of Ontario. We believe our business is positioned to deliver customer service and prices that provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace. We expect this to help the business expand its long-term contracted revenue stream.

Our smart meter business in Australia and New Zealand has long-term contracts with high quality counterparties providing highly certain cash flows linked to annual inflation and protection against churn and early termination. These contracts may include minimum guaranteed smart meter deployments and exclusive deployment rights with major retailers. We believe the business is well positioned to accelerate deployment of smart meter installation in Australia and expand on ancillary data metering services.

Regulatory Environment

Our U. K. regulated distribution operations compete with other connection providers to secure contracts to construct, own and operate connections to the home for seven product lines which include: natural gas, electricity, fiber, water, wastewater, district heating, and cooling. Once connections are established, we charge retailers rates based on the tariff of the distribution utility with which we are interconnected. The connection rate is typically adjusted annually and provides inflation protection as it escalates at inflation. The gas connection rate is subject to a cap and floor that escalates by an inflation factor minus an efficiency factor determined by the U. K. regulator, providing a high degree of certainty of income following installation. Connections revenue does not vary materially with volume transported over our system.

Our Colombian natural gas distribution business earns a regulated return on the replacement cost of the system plus a charge to cover operating expenses. Our rates are determined during tariff reviews which commence every five years. Our annual regulated return is approximately 13% and is adjusted by an inflation factor between rate reviews. The Colombian Comisión de Regulación de Energía y Gas is in the process of issuing a rate reset which we believe will fairly remunerate our gas distribution operation.

Our sub-metering services operation is governed by local sub-metering legislation in the provinces and states that we operate in. In Ontario and New York, the largest markets in which we operate, the legislation sets out a high-level framework for individual suite sub-metering and provides regulatory bodies such as the Ontario