Exelon Corporation

Hello and welcome to Exelon First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. My name is Olivia and I will be your event specialist today. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Please note that today's webcast is being recorded. During the presentation, we will have a question and answer session. You can ask questions by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to view the presentation in a full screen view, click the full screen button by hovering your computer mouse cursor over the PowerPoint screen. Press the Escape key on your keyboard to return to your original view. And finally, should you need technical assistance, as best practice, we suggest you first refresh your browser. If that does not resolve the issue, please click on the Help option in the upper right-hand corner of your screen for online troubleshooting. It is now my pleasure to turn today's program over to Jean Jones, Senior Vice President of Comfort Finance. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Olivia. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Leading the call today are Chris Crane, Exelon's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Joe Nigro, Exelon's Chief Financial Officer. They're joined by other members of Exelon's senior management team who will be available to answer your questions following our prepared remarks. We issued our earnings release this morning along with the presentation, all of which can be found in the investor relations section of Exelon's website. The earnings relief and other matters which we discussed during today's call contain forward-looking statements and estimates that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ from our forward-looking statements based on factors and assumptions discussed in today's material and comments made during this call. Please refer to today's 8K and Exxon's other SEC filings for discussions of risk factors and other factors that may cause results to differ from management's projections, forecasts, and expectations. Today's presentation also includes references to adjusted operating earnings and other non-GAAP measures. Please refer to the information contained in the appendix of our presentation and our earnings release for reconciliations between the non-GAAP measures and the nearest equivalent GAAP measures. We've scheduled 45 minutes for today's call. I'll now turn the call over to Chris Crane, Exxon's CEO.

Thanks, and good morning to everybody, and thanks for joining us. We're pleased to host our first post separation earnings call as the nation's premier T&D utility company. We closed, as you all know, on the separation on February 1st, delivering on our commitment to close within the first quarter of 2022. The transition has really unlocked significant value for our shareholders. In the time of announcing a year ago through mid-April this year, the total shareholder return was 76%, far exceeding the UTY index in the S&P. At the same time, we continue to demonstrate our reliability, focused on operational and financial excellence. We earned 49 cents per share on a GAAP basis and 64 cents a share on non-GAAP basis. We also completed a successful bond deal for our holding company with attractive pricing showing the value of our strong balance sheet, even in a challenging market. Joe will cover the financial highlights in his presentation shortly. On the regulatory front, it is quite a year, but we've made progress in several jurisdictions to support our investment plans on behalf of our customers. This includes a settlement in Delmarva, Maryland, in the electric case, the gas filing for Delmarva, Delaware, and PECO, and our last distribution filing under the ComEd distribution formula rate. In addition, ComEd continues to work with the stakeholders on the CEJA last year landmark clean energy legislation. They continue to support what our customers and our stakeholders want. It's a clear path for Illinois' electric utilities to transition into a rate-sending process. While we're ensuring the state can support its ambitious climate goals and its social equity goals, we feel comfortable in our process going forward. Comment has proposed a performance metrics plan before the ICC, which includes eight performance metrics and 13 tracking metrics. As we adjust our proposal, for stakeholder feedback. We're optimistic that the metrics approved by the commission will support continued improvement in our top tier service for customers. We expect the final order by the end of the third quarter. There's a lot of work to be done between here and there. ComEd's also participating in the stakeholder process in a multi-year integrated grid plan workshop. The plan will help ComEd's long-term investment planning process and priorities with the exception of the regulators and CEG pay. This is in preparation for our filing in early 2023. for rates effective in 2024. Joe will cover that case in a little bit more detail. Beyond the financial performance and operational performance, we continue to focus on our communities and the transition to a cleaner grid. We joined the DOE's Better Climate Challenge in February, reinforcing our path to clean commitment to reduce scope one and scope two greenhouse gases by 50% by 2030. As part of the HBCU corporate scholars program announced last fall, we have 24 students were awarded $2.4 million in scholarships. This program will support the next generation to lead our clean energy future. It's astounding to sit with these young students and see their passion on where they want to go in the future. We are funding support for small business development and underserved communities in our service territory for more than 65 workforce type programs. where we train and make individuals capable of coming into our areas ready for work. And our fifth annual STEM Academy will be held this summer in Philadelphia, Chicago, D.C., Baltimore area with approximately the goal now is 60 women, young women to be involved. Moving to our operations on slide five, we're delivering safe, reliable service across the jurisdictions. Performances remain solid and outage durations and frequency remain our top priority. Our utilities are working together to improve in specific areas. As you saw this weekend on the Mid-Atlantic utilities, the storms continue to intensify and the duration continues to be lengthened, but our operations teams are really focused on that and continuing to drive standards of construction reliability up. ComEd's reliability performance was top decile in both KD and safety, delivering on the highest first quarter reliability to customers for any year on record. We made improvements in OSHA performance, bringing PECO up to top quartile, but we're not satisfied with anything but the safest experience for our employees and our communities. And we still have work to go on that. There's no shunning that away. It's a top priority of all our operations, folks. UGE and ComEd and PECO all achieved top quartile and customer satisfaction for the quarter. And all three of our utilities that distribute gas were in top decile on odor response. PHI had perfect execution responding to all its gas odors in less than one hour. And that's a very large service territory acreage-wise. So being able to roll the trucks and the employees out is a good feat that they've achieved. Joe will highlight some of our investments we're making to help deliver this performance. And with that, I'll turn it over to Joe and for you to hear the financial update and some of the strategic actions we're taking.