Xcel Energy Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Xcel Energy year-end 2019 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. Questions will only be taken from institutional investors. Reporters can contact media relations with inquiries. Individual investors and others can reach out to Investor Relations. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Paul Johnson, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to Xcel Energy's 2019 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today are Ben Folk, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Bob Frenzel, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In addition, we have other members of the management team available to answer your questions. Today, we will discuss and review our 2019 results, update you on financial plans and objectives, share recent business and regulatory developments. Slides that accompany today's call are available on our website. As a reminder, some of the comments during today's conference call may contain forward-looking information. Significant factors that could cause results to differ from those anticipated are described in our earnings release and our findings with the SEC. On today's call, we will discuss certain metrics that are non-GAAP measures, including ongoing earnings and electric and natural gas margins. Information on the comparable GAAP measures and reconciliations are included in our earnings I'll now turn the call over to Ben.

Well, thank you, Paul, and good morning, everyone. 2019 was an excellent year with a long and impressive list of accomplishments. Let me share a few. We delivered EPS of $2.64 in 2019, which is the 15th consecutive year of meeting or exceeding our earnings guidance. We raised our annual dividend by $0.10 per share, which is the 16th straight year we've increased our dividends. Our stock hit an all-time high of $66.05 in September and subsequently hit an all-time new high of $67.69 this week. We achieved a total shareholder return of just over 32%. Our O&M declined almost 1%, even while making incremental investments in our system. The Minnesota Commission approved our purchase of the Long Road wind assets, and finally, we resolved multiple rate cases. We also had a strong year operationally. We continue to achieve important milestones in our nation-leading wind expansion program with the completion of our Foxtail, Lake Benton, and Hale projects. These three projects represent over 700 megawatts and were completed under budget. In addition, we have almost 2,000 megawatts of wind projects under construction, which are expected to be completed in 2020. We're very excited to continue our clean energy transition which will result in significant customer savings and carbon reductions. Our nuclear team continues to make great strides in transforming performance while reducing cost. The fleet achieved a capacity factor of 92.6% in 2019, even with two refueling outages. We have one of the top performing nuclear fleets in the country as rated by the NRC and INFO. And in addition to strong performance, we have continued to lower our cost structure, with O&M costs declining a little over 2% in 2019, and this is the fourth straight year of declining O&M in our nuclear operations. I'm extremely proud of the effort and results of our nuclear employees and their leadership in our industry. Moving to the wire side of our business, our advanced grid efforts have progressed well and will enable increased reliability and security faster storm restoration, better efficiency, and new offerings for our customers. In 2019, we implemented foundational software and completed our initial meter deployment in Colorado as planned with full-scale implementation to follow. In November, we requested approval to expand our advanced grid program to benefit our Minnesota customers, and we expect a commission decision later this year. Beyond our strong financial and operational performance, I'm also very proud of our ESG leadership. In 2009, we estimate we reduced carbon emissions by more than 40% from 2005 levels, and we remain on track to achieve an 80% carbon reduction by 2030. In recognition of our carbon-free vision, S&P Global gave us their award of excellence, and we continue to proactively mitigate the impacts of our clean energy transition on our employees and our communities. We've provided assistance to impacted employees, offering retraining and relocation opportunities, and we're levering natural attrition. As a result, we've managed our transition with no layoffs from coal plant retirements. We've also partnered with our communities impacted by the closing of coal plants to build new generation at existing sites, and we worked hard to attract new businesses to those communities as well. In Minnesota, There's continued progress to build a Google data center and relocate a metal recycling plant next to our closing Sherco coal plant. In Colorado, we've worked to develop a solar solution to retain a steel mill, which is our largest customer and a major employer in Pueblo, where we are closing two coal units. Now, these collaborative economic development efforts will help sustain local economies in terms of both jobs and tax base. And our results have been recognized by others. We were named as one of Fortune Magazine's most admired companies for the seventh consecutive year, one of Corporate Responsibility Magazine's 100 best corporate citizens, and among Newsweek's most responsible companies. We earned another perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index and remain among the best places to work for LGBTQ equality. In addition, various publications continue to recognize our strong leadership as a veteran employer. All of this adds up to an outstanding ESG record, which is becoming increasingly important to investors. So I'm really pleased with our accomplishments, and looking forward, I'm excited about the opportunities we have in 2020 and beyond. We will continue executing on our multi-state wind investment program, which will provide clean, affordable energy to our customers. Longer term, we'll add more universal solar, storage, and firm capacity to our system as part of our plan to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2030. We'll deliver on our planned transmission projects while collaborating with others to solve congestion issues over the next decade. This work is critical to maintaining reliability as more renewables are added to the system, and it also creates significant investment opportunities well into the future. Implementation of our advanced grid program will also keep the grid reliable, secure, and efficient and allow for the integration of more renewables while enabling new offerings for our customers. We will continue working with our customers, policymakers, and other stakeholders to build nation-leading EV programs, which will improve the customer experience and reduce emissions across the transportation sector. So with that, let me turn the call over to Bob. who will provide more detail on our financial results and outlook, as well as a regulatory update. Bob?