Avista Corporation

today's conference is scheduled to begin shortly please continue to stand by thank you for your patience today's conference is scheduled to begin shortly please continue to stand by thank you for your patience Thank you. Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Avista Corporation Q3 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to our speaker today, Stacey Wentz. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Avista's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. By way of introduction, I have been with Avista since 2009, working in our accounting group. I'm very excited to be taking over from John for my first earnings call, and I look forward to working with all of you in the coming year. Our earnings were released pre-market this morning and are available on our websites. Joining me this morning are Avista Corp President and CEO, Dennis Vermillion, Executive Vice President, Treasurer and CFO, Mark Thies, Senior Vice President, External Affairs, and Chief Customer Officer, Kevin Christie, and Vice President, Controller, and Principal Accounting Officer, Ryan Crossell. 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 and 10-Q for the third quarter of 2021, which are 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 third quarter of 2021 were $0.20 per diluted share compared to $0.07 for the third quarter of 2020. For the year to date, consolidated earnings were $1.38 per diluted share for 2021 compared to $1.04 last year. Now, I'll turn the discussion over to Dennis.

Well, thank you, Stacey, and welcome to the IR team. Thanks for heading up the team for us. As you heard, this is Stacey's first call today and We're just so happy to have her in this role, and she's gonna be with us at EEI, too, so everybody will have a chance to meet Stacey and get to know Stacey a little bit. So good morning, everyone. I'd like to start our conversation this morning by acknowledging that it's been more than a year and a half since we started this pandemic journey, and unfortunately, looks like we still have a ways to go. We will no doubt face more challenges as we move forward. you know, our region and our nation, you know, we're recovering and rebuilding from this and, you know, we're ready and ready for the challenge. I continue to be extremely proud of our employees and I'm just so grateful for the resolve and resiliency that they've all demonstrated, you know, and the flexibility they've displayed and then the commitment and concern they have for our customers and communities. Just really fantastic and just so proud of our team. I'm confident that no matter what the future brings that we have the team and we have what it takes to manage through whatever the future may bring. Now let me turn to our earnings results at Avista Utilities. Our earnings were above expectations primarily due to the timing of the recognition of income taxes. And over at AEL&P, their earnings remain on track to meet the full-year guidance. And in our other business, we've had a great year so far, and we are pleased with our investments. You know, they produced significant gains in 2021, exceeding expectations. We continue to expect these investments to contribute 5 to 10 cents per diluted share going forward. In regards to regulatory matters during the third quarter, we concluded our Idaho and Washington general rate cases with rates effective September 1 and October 1, respectively. We are pleased with both commissions' support of our ongoing investments in the infrastructure that serves our customers and offers us the opportunity to continue to provide our customers with safe and reliable and affordable energy without immediately impacting customer bills. However, we did not get recovery of certain operating expenses through the Washington general rate cases. In October, we filed our general rate case in Oregon. We have proposed that the increase in base revenues included in the rate case be fully offset for a two-year period with tax customer credits of the same amount, resulting in no impact to customer bills. Early in the first quarter of 2022, we expect to file general rate cases in Washington, both electric and gas. They will be multi-year rate plans as required under the new law, and we will seek to include in rates all capital investments and expected operating expenses through the end of the rate plan period in an effort to earn our allowed return by 2023. In other regulatory filings, we were the first utility to file to file its clean energy implementation plan with the Washington Commission in October. Our plan sets the course for an equitable transition to clean energy and provides a roadmap for specific actions to be taken over the next four years to show the progress we're making towards achieving clean energy goals established by the Clean Energy Transformation Act, or CETA. That plan is available on our website under the Clean Energy Future tab, and there's a good executive summary there if you have interest in checking that out. Focusing back on earnings, we are confirming our consolidated earnings guidance for 2021 and 2023 of $1.96 to $2.16 per diluted share for 2021. and $2.42 to $2.62 per diluted share for 2023. We are lowering our consolidated guidance by $0.10 per diluted share in 2022 to a range of $1.93 to $2.13 per diluted share. So with that, I'll turn this presentation over to Mark.