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spk07: Good afternoon and thank you for joining Northwestern Corporation's financial results webcast for the March 31st, 2023 quarter ending. My name is Travis Meyer. I'm the Corporate Development and Investor Relations Officer for Northwestern. Joining us today to walk you through the results and provide an overall update are Brian Byrd, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Crystal Ale, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. All participant lines are currently muted. After the presentation, we have a lot of time for a question and answer session. I will provide instructions for asking questions at that time. However, if you intend to ask a question and are joining us by computer, please set your Zoom identity to your first and last name and firm name so we can call you by name to let you know when your line is open. Northwestern's results have been released and the release is available on our website at northwesternenergy.com. We also released our 10Q pre-market this morning. Please note that the company's press release, this presentation, comments by presenters, and responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. As such, I'll direct you to the disclosures contained in our SEC filings and safe harbor provisions included in the second slide of this presentation. Please also note this presentation includes non-GAAP financial measures. Please see the non-GAAP disclosures, definitions, and reconciliations also included in the presentation today. The webcast is being recorded. The archived replay of today's webcast will be available for one year beginning at 6 p.m. Eastern today and can be found in the financial results section of our website. With that, I'll hand the presentation over to Northwestern CEO Brian Byrd.
spk08: Thanks, Travis. We're actually speaking to you today from Billings, Montana. We have our board meetings in our service territory primarily and This particular trip to Billingsby is also an opportunity not only to meet with our employees, but also to visit the Yellowstone County Generating Station. And it's approximately two-thirds completed as we've built that project. You know it's certainly in the pause at this point in time. But the board, the management team, and the employees, matter of fact, certainly understand the value that plant will have, not just for the Billings area, but for Montana as a whole. and demonstrate, will continue to demonstrate our support. We'll talk about that more in a minute. Regarding the first quarter, from a regulatory execution standpoint, we reached a constructive multi-party settlement on the Montana Rate Review. And I think you all know we're currently pending a commission approval. We're hopeful that the settlement will be approved. We also did receive final approval necessary for our holding company formation. We also safely executed on our capital plan. During the first quarter, we invested nearly 150 million and then we're on track to invest a total of 510 million of capital this year in 2023. We also pointed out in the 10Q that even with the delay in Yellowstone County, we do expect that that plan will be ready to serve our customers by the end of 2024. Driving reliability and affordability. We have announced an agreement with Avista to transfer its coal strip ownership 222 megawatts effective December 31st, 2025. And I think as we conveyed that transfer will be for $0 upfront. And lastly, a strong and growing service territories where overall 1.4% customer growth, that's better than industry average. That's for the first quarter. And we also have the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, not just better than the national average we have from a national perspective. South Dakota is number one, Nebraska is number two, and Montana is number four for lowest unemployment in the U.S. The last thing I would just note, I'm very proud of our employees and their response to storms in our respective jurisdictions. In May of last year, Our response in South Dakota to derechoes, we had two of those during the month. High, very high wind experience. And then in Montana, storms and flooding that occurred in various parts of Southern Montana and Yellowstone National Park. And our response to that was so phenomenal that we did receive an award from EEIs and our peers from an emergency response perspective. So I was very, very proud in terms of our employees' reactions to serve our customers. And so with that, I'll pass it over to Crystal.
spk01: Thank you, Brian. I'll begin my comments on page four, but as Brian started us off with significant, I think as we start off 2023, significant execution on both the operational side of doing what we do in a service territory that you'll hear me say we had a significant weather in Q1, but also significant regulatory execution, driving a strong first quarter financially. And then also the opportunity to conclude that first quarter sitting here in Billings and seeing that the key backbone of our system related to substations and also the under construction Yellowstone facility brings those things to a finer point. From a Q1 execution, from a financial statement perspective, you see an improvement and net income versus Q1 of last year of 3.4 million or 5.8%. That improvement on both the gap and non-gap basis of just under 6% versus 2022. However, on an EPS basis, you'll see a reduction of 3 cents. And that's really the effect of shares outstanding from our prior equity issuance. When you compare quarter over quarter, that's about a 9 cent drag or impact versus last year. So really strong financial performance. And I'll give you a bit more color on slide five as to What drove that? You can see the margin line, an improvement of 11.4% over first quarter of 2022, $289 million versus $259.4 million. And then you'll see that's offset by some pressure in operating costs, both at the OANG level and then property taxes and depreciation, resulting in net income of $62.5 million for the first quarter of 2023, compared with $59.1 million in 2022 or 3.4 million or the just under 6% that I have referenced right in my prior comments. Slide six gives you the key drivers overall. Significant impacts quarter over quarter are improvement at the margin line that I just referenced. I'll give you some more color on that a couple of slides later. Certainly driven by strong customer growth, weather and interim rates, and an offset by operating costs I would mention that the biggest drivers really on the OANG side of that were generation maintenance costs and labor and benefits. A bit on the generation maintenance side, certainly we saw colder weather in Q1 and that asks our generation facility, some of them to run more and those costs are not passed through in trackers. So we see an impact from that. And then certainly the inflationary pressures on labor and benefits, we're seeing some of that. You'll also see certainly us and everyone else, the interest expense line being higher than it was in the comparable first quarter of last year, and then depreciation reflecting the assets that are serving customers. The other thing I would highlight here is the tax line. You will see about six cents of detriment related to, we received a notice from the IRS in first quarter related to a previously claimed AMT credit and had a resulting adjustment out of that of approximately 3.2 million. All of that resulting in what I mentioned earlier, which is a three cent reduction versus last year Q1, but an overall improvement at the net income line versus the prior period. On slide seven, you'll see, I just mentioned that tax impact. It is an out of period impact. And so we've adjusted that out from a non-gap adjustment perspective. You'll see the 3.2 million on that slide. Also, we adjusted out favorable weather. On a net income basis of 2.7 million, you'll see that brings our non-GAAP earnings to 63 million. That compares with the first quarter of last year where we had a small amount of unfavorable weather, resulting in 59.5 million in the prior period as compared on a non-GAAP basis. Slide eight provides more detail about margin, which I was alluding to earlier as the most significant driver in Q1. You'll see higher retail and natural gas volumes. Those two taken together are approximately 13.5 million of improvement against solid customer growth. And then weather in our jurisdictions, you know, a lot of the country was warmer. I can tell you from where we sat, it was definitely colder. And so that was across Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska. So you see that impact in your first and third columns there. The other thing I would highlight in the middle there is the impact of our Montana interim rates and We'll talk a bit about the settlement that we've reached, but the interim rates related to the settlement related to our base rates are certainly what's reflected in our financial statements here are lower than that settlement, but still a significant driver in Q1 of the impact of that of approximately 8.5 million. The other thing I will note here, and for those of you who have followed us closely, we talk about the PCAM, and I will say I generally negatively talk about the PCAM, but here in first quarter, we actually have a Favorable variance, you will see that last year there was about $800,000 of expense recognized related to the sharing portion of that PCAM. Here in Q1 of 23, we actually have $500,000 of favorable associated with that PCAM. So quarter over quarter, that's a $1.3 million favorable adjustment. What drove that favorable adjustment? I would point out the increase in base of the PCAM amount that we received on an interim basis in October. is the key piece of that. I think most of you who are familiar with that mechanism also know that it's a non-calendar year basis. So it begins July 1, goes through June 30. So where we were at through December was a significant detriment to both our earnings, over $7 million last year, and our customers. And what happened in Q1 is a bit of reduction to that deferred balance and certainly a reduction to the hit that we've taken. And so I would highlight that as a positive moment because I haven't had a chance to say that very often. The other thing I would comment here is a continuing trend in the next column of transmission revenues, where we see a favorable impact to our loads and our system sits in, I think, position of strength with regard to transmission revenues in the future. And you can see a favorable impact of transmission revenues quarter over quarter of 1.2 million as well, all leading to what I alluded to, which is strength in the margin line. versus last year, Q1, so concluding at $285.1 million of gross margin in the business. The next page, I would refer you to cash flow impacts. Again, here, this all comes back to both the combination of the items I just mentioned from a margin perspective, being customer growth and weather, and then also interim rates, resulting in solid improvement in our cash flows, and the interim rates contributing to collecting our supply costs on a more timely basis, driving stronger cash flows for the quarter, and that improvement is noted here. The other thing I would note is we did issue first mortgage bonds, all of that leading to significant liquidity as we close out Q1 here. The other thing I would mention is consistent with our prior comments is that we do expect to issue the remaining $75 million on our at-the-market equity program that's outstanding currently, and we'll do that in the back part of 2023. So having covered the financial results, I'll turn my attention to the Montana Rate Review. We were able to reach a constructive settlement with the primary interveners from a revenue requirement standpoint and filed that in early April. That was after filing rebuttal testimony in early March. And the comments I made earlier is that the interim rates were a significant positive to us from a cash flow perspective and margin perspective, but also as a reminder, those set the dates of which we would expect the settlement outcome to be retroactive to. And it's certainly driving improved metrics already. You'll see the detail provided on slide 10 gives you a view of our rebuttal revenue request versus what we had received through interim rates. And then the impacts of the settlement are noted in the far right column. The base rate settlement provides what we believe is a reasonable revenue requirement outcome with also adjustments for a variety of policy items as it relates to this settlement, including the ability to recover some degree of cost for the Yellowstone Generating Station once it is placed into service and also to defer certain costs related to our enhanced wildfire program. Again, the key of this settlement and what was presented to the Commission over the last couple weeks is what we believe is a fair outcome based off our cost of service and assets already serving customers and updating our rates to reflect that. The process with the Commission was a well-run hearing, a hearing from all sides. We expect briefing to continue from that hearing, which concluded, I believe that was last week, but my days are running together with briefing going through the months of May and June and hopefully a hearing or a final decision on the commission sometime in the July, August timeframe. From a financial outlook perspective, I think you're all familiar with us not issuing guidance for 2023 due to the significant impact of the Montana rate review. With that, we still are not issuing guidance for the year, but I would point you to slide 10 as to the impacts of that most significant item. Again, pending approval by the Montana Commission. And once we do have an outcome there, we will issue guidance for the period. The other thing I would note is each year in Q1, we announced whether we expect to file a rate review. And we do expect a file in our South Dakota jurisdiction on the electric side. And that, as many of you know, we closed out the Bob Glancer generating station last year and we'll be coming in to request recovery of that and our other assets. In addition, we remain on plan for our capital plan for 2023. You heard Brian mention some of the challenges with the construction at Yellowstone County, but we do expect to remain on course for that to be in service in 2024. And then our overall targets from an EPS and rate base have remained unchanged. And with that, I will turn it back to Brian.
spk08: Thanks, Crystal. Slide 12, speaking about capital investment, I think it's quite impressive when you look at the capital, the growth in our capital over the five-year time period shown nearly a 16% kegger over that time period, a total of $2.1 billion. That high-level investment is going to need to continue on So we think about investment necessary for capacity, asset life, reliability, compliance, and much of that investment is in the transmission and distribution. Crystal just mentioned Yellowstone, but there are some other generation investment that is included in that plan. And then any other new resources brought on is not included in that 2.4 billion. And until those assets are ever identified, they're not included in our plan. But nonetheless, our forecast going forward is an increase of investment over where we were over the last five years. That investment level should continue to provide a rate-based growth of approximately 4% to 5%. The next slide, speaking to our supply update, Crystal also mentioned the Bob Glanzer Station 58 megawatt facility that was put in place in May of 2022. for a total cost of approximately $83 million. That plant has been dispatched even more than we anticipated. So we're extremely pleased with our ability to provide capacity to our South Dakota customers. Speaking of capacity, that's exactly what we're trying to do with our Montana Yellowstone County Generating Station. The 175 megawatt facility went to start construction in April of 22. We're about two-thirds of the way in terms of the investment at investing $173.5 of the $275 million anticipated. And as I mentioned earlier, we anticipate that the plant will be in service during 2024. Regarding IRPs, we did file our South Dakota IRP in September of 22. That plant identified 43 megawatts of need, some of which is due to retirements and just an incremental capacity. And we We'll be running competitive solicitation in the 23-24 time period associated with that IRP. And Montana will be filing our IRP here at the end of April. And so stay tuned. You'll get a chance to look at that very, very soon. And with that, I guess we'll turn it back over to Travis to help us handle any questions.
spk07: Thank you, Brian. If you're joining us by computer and would like to ask a question, please signal your intent by using the raise hand button that is typically found within the bottom toolbar of your screen. Please ensure that your microphone is unmuted if you're in the queue to ask a question. If you're dialed in by phone, you can press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute your line and ask a question. Again, star nine to raise your hand, star six to unmute. If you haven't provided your name and your Zoom ID or dialed in by phone, please be listening for us to announce your Zoom ID or the last four digits of your telephone number to notify you that your line is open.
spk04: We'll give it just a moment to get some questions in the queue here. Looks like we'll take our first question from Julian at B of A. Julian, your line should be open, or Paul, or somebody on the team there?
spk03: Hey, can you hear me now?
spk04: There we go.
spk00: All right, sweet. Sorry about that. I apologize. You got to hit accept when you unmute me here. I got excited. Hey, so good afternoon, you guys. Thank you very much. So just coming back to Yellowstone here, and the timeline obviously reaffirmed, but can you talk a little bit about the legislative angle here, 971, just what that could portend for the project and ultimately maybe some of the construction related items.
spk08: Yeah, I would say this, that two pieces of legislation were introduced late in the session as a result of the decision regarding the air quality permit. And so I think what happened is people looked at that and I'm sure some were thinking about Yellowstone County, but many were thinking about how this could impact other construction going on in the state and There was a very quick move by the legislature. I believe 557 is already on its way to the governor and 971 is its third reading, I believe is this afternoon. So I, you know, I'm cautiously optimistic that 971 will pass in its third reading and ultimately be on its way to the governor. I appreciate the state understanding what that ruling could have for the growth of Montana. and from, I would argue, our ability to service that growth in terms of serving our customers. So we feel good about it. What does it do, Julian? Those two pieces of legislation in combination effectively should allow us to expedite our ability to get a renewed or reissued air quality permit.
spk00: And either way, the timeline is looking like 2024. Do you want to be any more precise on that?
spk08: Yeah, I guess what I'd say this, I'm hopeful that if things could move quickly, we might be able to meet our summer peak, which is really what our intent is with the plant. And obviously we want to be able to meet the winter peak in 2024. So our hope is to be able to achieve both of those. But I'm cautiously optimistic that those things happen and it helps us expedite. But in either way, we feel confident that we'll get this thing construction going again and have it in service by the end of 24.
spk03: Excellent.
spk00: And Brian, just if I can follow up on this, I mean, we've talked at various times about a new baseline for an outlook and, you know, you reaffirmed here this four to 5% rate-based outlook. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, EPS CAGR and maybe kind of the timeline for addressing that considering the newfound settlement and visibility coming on the Montana side?
spk08: Well, Julian, I appreciate you asking me that question, but I believe that question is really appropriate for Crystal. So I'm looking at her now to answer your question.
spk01: Sure. Hi, Julian, and happy Friday afternoon. The question I think on everyone's mind is certainly our long-term outlook in EPS growth. And the key I would say there is the settlement we reached in the Montana case is critical to providing us visibility as to where we're headed. But I also don't want to front run the Montana Commission. And so you see in the materials here what you've heard from us in the past. And once we receive an outcome from the Montana Commission, we will certainly be updating every one of where we think that growth looks like coming out of that rate review.
spk00: Okay. And conceivably by next quarter, we could get some updated baseline for what that would look like too, not just an update to the research.
spk01: Indeed, I think what you're referring to is the question of what is our base period that we would be driving that growth off of. And I can tell you it won't still be 2020. We will refresh what the growth period is off of. And I think that most likely looks like 2022. Excellent.
spk00: Sorry, one last one. on the outlook i mean your core retail sales looking quite solid here any commentary i mean crystal you made you alluded to it in your remarks here but any further thoughts about just what supported the outlook here in the first quarter on the gas electric side certainly other than don't jinx it julian uh it was a really solid uh first quarter i think you we all know that there was a good solid customer growth in our service territory
spk01: We certainly saw that in, you know, we are both a winter and summer peaking utility, but certainly in the winter here, we saw significant usage trends there. So we'll be paying close attention to how those roll forward.
spk03: Excellent. Certainly don't want to jinx it. All right, I'll leave it there, guys. Have a good one. Thanks, everyone.
spk07: Thanks, Julian. We'll take our next question from Alex Mortimer at Mizzou Hole.
spk04: Your line should be opening up. Alex, can you hear us? There we go. We can hear you.
spk05: Beautiful. So you highlight the need for kind of increased generation, or I guess a generation shortfall, kind of multiple times during the call and in your queue. So how do you look at potential upside on the CapEx side above what's in your forecast, just given the additional need for generation that you've highlighted?
spk08: Yeah, I don't necessarily want to frontrunner IRP here too much, but I would tell you that one thing we've been talking about for years is just the deficit on capacity and that the ability of incremental coal strip and the Yellowstone County Generating Station bring this to a level of sufficient capacity for a number of years. That doesn't mean that we have to stop there. Obviously, we're going to need incremental capacity in a relatively short term. And also we have to, as a commitment, start thinking about opportunities to invest in non-carbon emitting resources and committed as a company not to invest in carbon emitting resources in 2035 and beyond. And so we will be doing planning beyond that too. But I think there's still going to be some needs for some capacity investment in the latter half of this decade.
spk05: TAB, Alex Weinheimer, Okay understood and then quickly just to round out the questioning on yellowstone. TAB, Alex Weinheimer, Can you give a detail on sort of the scale of costs that you might be currently incurring with construction currently being halted and then, is there any concern that they can potentially be disallowed when you do eventually go to get this project into right.
spk08: TAB, Alex Weinheimer, yeah two things, first of all, Alex I should have finished my first thought on their than your first question. I should remind you that in South Dakota there will be incremental investment there from a capacity standpoint I think we're looking at approximately 40 ish megawatts there and then we're looking at long term solutions in that state as well. Back to what's happening at Yellowstone County from a delay perspective. and how that could impact costs. Yeah, there are going to be some costs of demobilization and the like. And from our perspective, we don't anticipate that's going to be for a very long time. We certainly hope not. But if there are incremental costs here, I would hope that the commission would understand that this was based upon a judge's decision that I think we had very little... control over uh and i i hope that's how they look at it so i'll say there's always risk they're going to be looking at any project that we have and think about it from approved's perspective but i i'd like to think uh particularly in the response we've seen in the legislature associated with this decision uh that uh i think they they won't look upon this delay and favorably towards northwestern at least that's my hope and my view
spk05: Okay, understood. Thank you for the color and congrats on the quarter and enjoy your weekend.
spk07: Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it. Take our next call from Chris Ellinghouse at Siebert William Shanks.
spk02: Hey, everybody. How are you? Hey, Chris.
spk08: How are you?
spk02: I'm good. Thanks. Question about the rate case. And I just wanted to sort of get your perception of this. There certainly were some disagreements from the interveners in their, you know, cross-examination and testimony, but the commissioners seem to be less contentious and maybe less voluminous in their line of questioning. Would you agree with that sort of perception? Yeah.
spk08: I would say this. Chris, I believe that I've been through quite a few rate cases at the commission. I thought the commission handled this extremely well. They allowed tremendous amount of public commentary. They ran a good hearing. I thought the process is really well done throughout. I feel good about how the case has been handled.
spk02: Okay, great. You know, outside of the potential legislation, can you just sort of walk through what you would envision the Yellowstone process being, you know, in terms of reviewing or re-examining the air permit?
spk08: Yeah, I think if you're saying excluding the legislation, Yeah. Yeah. I think excluding the, we'll have to do, and then the DEQs all has to think this through too. Obviously it's the DEQs issued air quality permit. And there's going to be, you know, some time associated with what we actually need to do from an evaluation standpoint, from a greenhouse gas perspective. And after that's done, there's a reissue. And this is my expectation. There would be a reissued permit. They would have a comment period. And during that time period before the permits actually issued so there'd be a time period that would have to take place. If in fact they have to do that analysis. Again, sans the legislation.
spk02: Okay. The South Dakota filing, I might have missed this, what Crystal was talking about, but what's your anticipation of that filing timeframe? And, you know, what do you see that process thereafter looking like?
spk01: So from a timing perspective, Chris, I would say we'll file it sometime over the summer here. We're working through that. we'll turn our attention from the Montana rate review, which has been a little bit all encompassing to finalizing that filing. You know, the South Dakota commission in the past has run a very efficient process and they've been very good to work with. So I would think that we'll be able to work with them on interim rates sometime in the latter part of the year and then progress the filing along.
spk02: Okay, great. Thanks for the details. I appreciate it.
spk04: All right, we'll take our next question from a line that ends in 2528. Thanks.
spk06: Quick question, just to understand the timeline. If the legislation is adopted, when would you be able to, in your best estimation, be able to recommence construction on Yellowstone?
spk08: Yeah, I don't know exactly. If the legislation's passed, greenhouse gas wouldn't necessarily have to be a consideration. And so I think we'd still have to deal with the lighting issue. Obviously, DEQ would have to evaluate that and have a comment period, not knowing what that comment period is. But I hope it's a matter of a couple months instead of multi-months, if you will. So that's my expectation as I sit here today. Got it.
spk06: And then when the plant... goes into commercial operation, do you have to wait for it to go into commercial operation to file for rate relief on the plant? Or what would be the timing of when you would file for rate relief?
spk01: Hey, Crystal here. From a rate perspective, we do receive AFUDC on the plant while under construction. And so once that plant is in service and part of the settlement that we reached, we had asked for, I think most of you know, a full reliability rider We settled for something less than that, but we agreed that once that plant is serving customers, we could come in and ask for a reset on our PECAN base because, of course, the cost today, we're buying the services that Yellowstone will provide in the market. So we'd reset that base, but at the same time, get some recovery of the operating costs and at that same time, work through the prudency evaluation of that plant if we choose to make that filing. So that would coincide. side with about the timing of in-service to, again, provide full recovery of costs on a timely fashion as it relates to the operating side of that. But importantly, recovery of the rate base would be subject to another rate filing.
spk06: So the operating costs would somehow be incorporated into the PCAM proceeding or?
spk04: Yes.
spk06: Okay. And then last question. Can you talk at all about sort of equity need beyond this year?
spk01: We haven't given guidance beyond this year as to our financing plans. We mentioned, as I noted earlier, we'll finish out the ATM plan. But the thing I would just note overall there is we're looking to fund our capital plans on a self-funded basis, absent when we have additional growth, things like Yellowstone or other opportunities that that aren't baked into our current capital plan, those are the types of things that would push us into more equity needs.
spk06: So should we not assume sort of continuing equity beyond this year? I'm not understanding what you're trying to say.
spk01: Sure. I'll say it this way. We haven't given guidance past 2023 as to our equity needs.
spk06: Okay.
spk04: Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Paul. And with that, I think we've exhausted our Friday afternoon queue.
spk07: I'll turn it back over to Brian for any closing remarks.
spk08: I just, obviously we're pleased again with the settlement. Again, we hope the commission gives it a good hard look and hopefully we get approval of that settlement so we can continue to do as we must, continue to invest in the Montana system and help it grow. And I think also We ultimately need to build the Yellowstone County plant for our customers. We need to have this incremental capacity from Coal Strip to serve our customers. And ultimately, we believe we'll get to that point and people will appreciate what we're trying to do to serve our customers. So with that, thank you all and have a great weekend. See ya.
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