Portfolio Associate

Company Description

This is an opportunity to join the Octopus Australia team in either our Melbourne or Sydney office. The successful applicant will be able to join the Octopus Investments Australia team on their mission to accelerate Australia's transition to a future powered by renewable energy.

We are looking for a Portfolio Associate to report to the Assets lead of the Asset Management team at Octopus Australia. This exciting role will sit at the intersection between our Investment, Funds and Asset Management teams.

The successful candidate will be responsible for supporting the assets team with looking after the operational portfolio of assets at Octopus, helping to drive returns for investors and ensuring project value is maximised. Strong commercial acumen and financial modelling skills are essential.

About Octopus Group

Octopus Group is one of the largest owners of renewable energy projects in Europe and Australia. It owns some 260 assets, on behalf of wholesale and institutional investors. Domestically, Octopus Australia is responsible for managing over $1 billion of assets for local and international investors.

Octopus Investments Australia

Established in 2018, Octopus Australia is a dynamic multi-disciplinary team of over 55 highly skilled people which spans the expertise required to realise and operate a renewable energy and storage portfolio.

With an existing multi-GW portfolio of operating and development assets, including solar, wind and battery storage across the country. We are continuing to grow to create a long-term business that can deliver a firmed energy product to meet the evolving needs of Australia's energy future.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities

• Developing, maintaining and validating financial models:
• Updating financial models for actual operating results
• Continuous improvement of financial models, including:
• Reducing the risk of error
• Ensuring modelling is aligned with actual project performance

• Ensuring the models can be used quickly and easily to aid decision making

• Ability to restructure and make significant changes to financial models

• Playing a central role in the quarterly asset valuations process, including:
• Refreshing financial models with updates to assumptions on a regular basis
• Working with various Octopus teams and external partners for information to feed into the valuation process
• Assisting with the preparation and presentation of asset and fund valuation reporting to Valuation Committees
• Performing scenario and sensitivity analysis at an asset level to assess impact on asset returns.

• Assisting in liaising with model auditors, answering audit questions and making relevant changes to models, where required

• Assisting with distributions and cashflows for operating assets

• Working closely with the Assets team to drive performance of Octopus' operating portfolio including:
• Reviewing and analysing operational and financial data for operating portfolio to assist with decision making and to ensure accuracy
• Assessing value creation opportunities across the operating portfolio and building business cases
• Working with the wider Octopus Australia teams, external stakeholders and consultants to drive asset performance
• Assisting with all asset management and investor reporting
• Assisting with loan compliance and lender reporting for Project Finance
• Driving automation in asset management reporting and processes, for example KPI dashboards

Qualifications

Ideally, you will have some or all of the following qualifications, skills and experiences:

Essential

• 3-5 years of work experience
• Educated to degree level with a strong academic record and formal financial qualification (e.g. CA, CFA, ACA, ACCA)
• Strong MS excel abilities, preferably with PowerQuery and VBA experience
• Formal training in modelling best practices
• Comfortable performing data analysis
• Excellent written and presentation skills
• Strong communication skills to drive engagement with internal and external stakeholders

Desirable

• Experience in the energy or renewables sector desirable but not essential
• Understanding of valuation methods for real assets
• Prior experience in Big 4, funds, funds management or asset management

Additional Information

What we offer

• A competitive salary package including bonus and medical insurance benefits
• Extra Annual Leave entitlement
• Flexible working
• Ongoing learning and career development opportunities

Octopus has built an exciting and inclusive high-performance culture where employees feel empowered. We also understand the value of diversity, and we are dedicated to creating an inclusive workplace environment. We would welcome people of all backgrounds to apply. This role can be performed on a full-time or part-time basis.

Our Values

At Octopus we don't just focus on what we do but also how we do it. Everyone to shares our values of being straightforward, helpful, and bold. Our culture is critical to our success and is built around three principles that underpin how we pursue our goals:

• Be Bold – We like people who make decisions quickly and are OK changing their mind if it turns out there's a better way of doing things.
• Be Helpful – We like People who behave like it always day one and who remember without our customers there is no business.
• Be Straightforward – We like people who have opinions and express them in a way that's respectful and easy to understand.