Avista Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Amistar Communications Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. As a reminder, today's program is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's program, Mr. John Wilcox, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Avista's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2020 earnings conference call. Our earnings and our 2020 Form 10-K were released pre-market this morning and are both available on our website. Joining me this morning are Avista Corp President and CEO, Dennis Vermillion, Executive Vice President, Treasurer and CFO, Mark Theis, Senior Vice President, External Affairs, and Chief Customer Officer, Kevin Christie, and Vice President, Controller, and Principal Accounting Officer, Ryan Krasold. I would like to remind everyone that some of the statements that will be made today are forward-looking statements that involve assumptions, risks, and uncertainties which are subject to change. For reference to the various factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in today's call, please refer to our 10-K for 2020, which is available on our website. To begin this presentation, I would like to recap the financial results presented in today's press release. Our consolidated earnings for the fourth quarter of 2020 were 85 cents per diluted share compared to 76 cents for the fourth quarter of 2019. For the full year, consolidated earnings were $1.90 per diluted share for 2020 compared to $2.97 last year. Now I'll turn the discussion over to Dennis.

Well, thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. As we begin 2021, continuing to work through the COVID pandemic, we hope you're staying safe and healthy. Looking back on the last year, you know, I'm just so proud of our employees for navigating the challenges presented by the pandemic, continuing to provide energy like they always do to our customers, and progressing our business plans forward. I would like to thank all of our employees for their dedication and determination throughout the last year. We continue to help those who are struggling and most in need in our communities. In 2020, Avista and the Avista Foundation provided more than $4 million in charitable giving to support the increased need for services that community agencies are still experiencing throughout the areas we serve. Financially, our earnings for 2020 were better than expectations, and Mark will provide further details here in just a few minutes. Operationally, we finished installing nearly all of our smart meters, electric smart meters and natural gas modules across Washington in one of the largest projects in our history. The deployment of this infrastructure will provide customers with more real-time data so they can better manage their energy use. The technology enables us to proactively push high energy alerts to notify customers if they could exceed their preset energy budgets, which of course helps eliminate surprises when their bill arrives at the end of the month. Beyond generating bills, we're using the data from smart meters to run a more reliable and efficient power grid and to deliver a higher level of service for our customers. For example, we We now have more visibility into our system, which allows us to detect and restore power outages more quickly. We also made strides to meeting our clean energy goals as the Rattlesnake Flat Wind Farm went online last December. During its construction, the project created clean energy jobs for our local communities, and now that it's completed, the project's 57 wind turbines excuse me, will provide 50 average megawatts of clean, renewable energy for our customers at an affordable price. That's enough energy to power 38,000 homes for years to come. As wildfires continue to have an impact on our region, we implemented a new comprehensive 10-year wildfire resiliency plan that aims to improve defense strategies and operating practices for a more resilient system. We expect to invest about $330 million implementing the components of this plan over the life of the plan, which as I said was 10 years. We were proud to announce yesterday that Avista has been recognized again as one of the 2021 World's Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices. This marks the second year in a row that Avista has achieved this distinction. We are only one of nine honorees recognized in the energy and utilities industry based on their assessment. In 2021, 135 honorees in total were recognized spanning 22 countries and 47 industries. We are honored to receive this recognition because it acknowledges our belief that integrating corporate responsibility into our business builds trust, forges lasting relationships, strengthens morale, reduces risk, and delivers enhanced value to our shareholders, and ultimately enables us to more effectively deliver on our vision to provide better energy for life. In January, we published Avista's 2021 Corporate Responsibility Report on our avistacorp.com website, and I urge you to check it out when you have some time. This content provides a broad look at our operations, and how we're fulfilling our commitments to our people, our customers, our communities, and our shareholders. The website also provides links to Avista's reporting on a series of industry and financial ESG disclosures. The updated content supports Avista's longstanding commitment to corporate responsibility and sharing this information with our stakeholders. Switching gears, with respect to regulatory filings, In January, we filed two-year general rate cases in Idaho, and as you know, in 2020, we filed general rate cases in Washington, and we continue to work through the regulatory processes in both of these jurisdictions. We take our responsibility to provide safe, reliable energy at an affordable price very seriously, and we work hard to make prudent financial investments in our infrastructure, manage our costs, and identify ways to best serve our customers that contribute to keeping energy prices low. For example, our proposed tax customer credit would completely offset an immediate increase in electric and natural gas bills for our Washington customers. In Oregon, new rates went into effect on January 16th of this year, and we expect to file another rate case in the second half of 2021 in Oregon. Looking ahead, we remain focused on running a great utility and continue to invest prudent capital to maintain and update our infrastructure and provide reliable energy service to our customers. We are initiating our 2021, 2022, and 2023 earnings guidance with consolidated ranges of $1.96 to $2.16 per diluted share for 2021. $2.18 to $2.38 in 2022, and $2.42 to $2.62 per diluted share for 2023. This puts us on track to earning our allowed return by 2023. Lastly, earlier this month, the Board increased our dividend by 4.3% to an annual dividend of $1.69 per share. And the dividend increase approved by the Board marks the 19th consecutive year the Board has raised the dividend for our shareholders, and I believe it demonstrates the Board's commitment to maximizing shareholder value. At this time, I'll turn this presentation over to Mark.