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Monday, August 17, 2020

Update on Strategic Initiatives…Brookfield Infrastructure Partners

Update on Strategic Initiatives…Brookfield Infrastructure Partners

 The economic cost of the downturn will be that many industrial companies and all governments will be significantly more indebted. Once the immediate measures to stabilize economies and businesses have been implemented, governments and businesses alike will need to evaluate alternatives to source capital to repay excessively high debt levels. We have spoken in the past about the secular trend of governments seeking investment from the private sector to acquire and build out infrastructure. With inflated deficits, along with the desire to stimulate economic activity, we expect the impetus for this to become even more pronounced. In addition, many corporations will be susceptible to tighter credit markets and they will need to reduce debt levels through asset sales. Suffice it to say, this is an attractive environment for Brookfield Infrastructure to source investment opportunities for the foreseeable future.

 At the moment, the vast majority of our global investment team have returned to the office, which has reinvigorated our transaction and outreach activities. We are currently focused on executing several medium sized tuck-in acquisitions for various businesses in our energy, transport and data operations. As a result of the potential synergies, we believe that these acquisitions should be highly accretive if secured. Furthermore, we are evaluating numerous new investment opportunities in all of our regions.

 During the quarter we made progress on various initiatives:

 • North American Electricity Transmission – The sale of our North American electricity transmission operation closed in July, resulting in $60 million of proceeds to BIP and an IRR of 21%. We are advancing two other asset sale processes that we expect will generate over $700 million of additional liquidity. We believe that essential and de-risked infrastructure businesses that performed uninterrupted throughout this recent period will attract strong interest at premium prices.

 • Indian Telecom Towers – The closing of our large-scale acquisition of 130,000 telecom towers in India from Reliance Jio is expected shortly. We have received positive feedback recently from Indian regulators that the remaining approvals are on track. Since we signed our deal, Reliance Jio has raised approximately $20 billion of equity capital from technology companies and private equity investors which has further solidified the credit quality of our anchor tenant. We will invest approximately $500 million of equity (BIP’s share) in the business.

 • Capital Markets Investments – During the broad market sell-off in March, we acquired stakes in several high-quality infrastructure companies at attractive entry points. The ensuing rebound allowed us to monetize some of our positions and realize substantial profits in a short period of time. We have fully exited a number of these investments, realizing total profits of approximately $40 million (BIP’s share – approximately $25 million). We continue to accumulate positions in a handful of companies that we hope will lead to broader strategic initiatives in time.

 U.S. Midstream – Dislocation in North American energy markets may provide unique opportunities to invest at value. Our focus is on highly contracted businesses with solid counterparties, limited exposure to volume and pricing risk and long-life, critical infrastructure that complements our existing operations. We believe several opportunities exist to implement this strategy, both in the public and private markets.

 Lastly, we are very pleased with the market’s response thus far to Brookfield Infrastructure Corporation (BIPC). Not only has there been significant demand for these shares but BIPC was also recently added to the Russell 2000 Index. We intend to support the growth of BIPC’s public float to improve the company’s trading liquidity, and recently completed our first initiative in this regard in coordination with Brookfield Asset Management, who agreed to sell a portion of its holdings in BIPC. This successful secondary offering in Canada increased the public float of BIPC by approximately 15%.

 Sam Pollock

Chief Executive Officer

Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P

August 5, 2020

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