Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. Common Shares

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Algonquin Power and Utilities Corp. 2019 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Analyst and Investor Earnings Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Christopher Jarrett, Vice Chair of Algonquin Power and Utilities Corp. Please go ahead, Mr. Jarrett.

Great, thanks. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our 2019 fourth quarter and full year earnings results conference call. As mentioned, my name is Chris Jarrett. I'm the Vice Chair of Algonquin Power and Utilities Corp. And joining me on the call today are Ian Robertson, our Chief Executive Officer, and David Bonachewski, our Chief Financial Officer. We have a supplemental webcast presentation that accompanies the call, and this can be accessed from our website at algonquinpowerandutilities.com. Our audited financial statements and management discussion analysis are also available on the website, and also on CEDAR and EDGAR. Before continuing the call, we would like to remind you that our discussion during the call will include certain forward-looking information and may also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. And at the end of the call, Amelia, from our investor relations team, will read a not-so-brief legal notice that's in respect of both forward-looking information and non-GAAP financial measures. We've had what we believe to be a pretty good fourth quarter and full year. And so today, Ian's going to start with the strategic highlights, followed by David summarizing the financial highlights. We'll then turn things back to Ian and conclude the prepared portion of the call with an overview of our strategic growth plan for 2020 and beyond. And then, as usual, we'll open up the lines for questions. Also, as usual, we'll ask you to restrict your questions to a maximum of two and then re-queue if you have additional questions to allow others the opportunity to participate. Now with that, I'll turn things over to Ian, and he'll discuss the main focus areas of 2019.

Thanks, Chris, and good morning to everyone who's able to join us. We're coming to you from our offices here in Oakville on a sunny but cold morning. I always welcome the opportunity on the last quarterly call of the year to reflect on the progress we made over the course of the previous year with a number of corporate achievements supporting a solid year of financial performance. We'll then spend some time looking in a bit more detail at our plans for the current year and longer term as our team works on successful execution against our recently updated five-year strategic plan. Before I begin my formal remarks, I wanted to extend a warm welcome to Arun Banskota, who has now been with us for three weeks. Arun brings to APOC a unique combination of experience in renewable energy development, proven financial acumen and a results-driven leadership style. I'm sure you'll share our confidence that Arun's background makes him a great addition to Algonquin's executive leadership team. Over the coming year, I'll be working closely with Arun to help him expand his knowledge of our business in the newly created role as president of our company, to provide the opportunity for Arun to fully engage in our business and the culture which has so distinguished this company, making it the fastest growing utility in North America. Over the coming months, I hope you'll all have the opportunity to meet and build a relationship with Arun. I trust everyone takes comfort from financial results that confirm it's business as usual as we continue to deliver solid performance and execute on our $9 billion pipeline of growth. I'm personally enthused by the prospect that the time is right for me to transition away from the direct management role of CEO, of being able to continue to contribute to APOC's success. We've been cooperating on the creation of an independent investment platform to collaborate with APOC. on incremental growth opportunities, which is intended to provide for a continuation of the passion and forces which have driven this company's extraordinary track record. Obviously, these plans are in an early stage, but the measured pace of our leadership transition process will give us all time to sort things out. And lastly, after almost 14 years on the APOC rocket ship, David Bronachewski has decided to retire this coming fall. He shared that family considerations at this stage of his life have made it the right time for him to move forward towards retirement and allow our deep talent base and our finance team to step forward. Well, we'll certainly wish David the best when he finally embarks on his well-deserved retirement later this year. The strong financial program that's contributed to our success will remain in capable hands with Arthur Kazbrzak, assuming the role of Deputy Chief Financial Officer. Given that this is our year-end earnings call, let's start with some of the highlights for 2019. and how those initiatives contributed to another year of solid financial performance. Firstly, I'm pleased to report strong and stable year-over-year growth in our key financial metrics. Top-line profit continued to grow with 2019 adjusted EBITDA of close to $840 million. Secondly, as we discussed at our recent Investor Day, excluding the one-time impacts related to U.S. tax reform from our 2018 EPS, 2019 EPS of 63 cents represents year-over-year growth of approximately 10%. The organization exited 2019 with nearly $11 billion in assets, a 16% increase over 2018 levels. We're very mindful of the important role our dividend plays in the total return expectations of our shareholders, and we delivered annual dividends per share of approximately 55 cents, which represents a 10% increase from the previous year. Secondly, the company completed many successful growth initiatives and achieved a number of important milestones during the year. I'm proud to say that we completed two acquisitions in the past quarter. We closed the acquisition of our first Canadian utility, New Brunswick Gas, together with St. Lawrence Gas in New York. Both acquisitions are expected to provide opportunities for future growth. During the quarter, we also announced an agreement for the acquisition of America Water's New York jurisdictional assets. It represents a sizable regulated water and wastewater acquisition, with the addition of close to 125,000 customer connections across seven counties in southeastern New York. During 2019, the regulated services group successfully completed several rate reviews representing a cumulative annualized revenue increase of approximately $8.5 million. And lastly, before I turn things over to David, I wanted to highlight the positive impact that our recent utility acquisitions have had on our growing customer count, putting the March to a Million campaign milestone squarely in our sights. As previously mentioned, the completion of our two recent acquisitions and the two acquisitions we announced in 2019, the Bermuda Electric Company and America Waters New York jurisdictional assets, will bring the millionth customer into view. Not that long ago, our regulated services group was 100% based in the United States, and we're thrilled that these recent acquisitions have provided the company with the opportunity to expand our skill set beyond those borders and serve the utility needs of customers in Canada, the United States, and soon to be Bermuda. And with that, I'll turn things over to David for a review of Q4 and the full year of financial results. David?