Avista Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Avista Corporation Q2 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Stacey Wentz. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Welcome to Avista's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Our earnings and our second quarter 10Q were released pre-market this morning. Both are available on our website. Joining me this morning are Avista Corp President and CEO Dennis Vermillion, Senior Vice President CFO, Treasurer and Regulatory Affairs Officer Kevin Christie, and Vice President, Controller, and Principal Accounting Officer Ryan Krasult. Today, we will make certain statements that are forward-looking. These involve assumptions, risks, and uncertainties which are subject to change. The information we will share this morning is based on our current expectations of normal precipitation, temperatures, and other operating conditions, as well as below normal hydroelectric generation as of today's date. And various factors could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations discussed in today's call. please refer to our 10-K for 2022 and our 10-Q for the second quarter of 2023, which are available on our website for a full discussion of these risk factors. I'll begin by recapping the financial results presented in today's press release. Our consolidated earnings for the second quarter of 2023 were 23 cents per diluted share compared to 16 cents for the second quarter of 2022. For the year-to-date consolidated earnings,

96 cents per diluted chair for 2023 compared to 1.15 last year i'll now turn the call over to dennis well thanks stacy and good morning everyone i hope you're all enjoying the summer so far it's been a hot one for sure um i'd like to begin this morning by congratulating our employees who recently won one of the Chartwell's Best Practices Awards in outage operations for Avista's weather and incident forecasting tool. This innovative tool leverages our historical database for weather, infrastructure, and previous outages to predict future outages. It allows us to proactively plan and prepare for potential weather events, which helps us better utilize our resources, it improves our response times, and enhances the overall customer experience. This is just one great example of how Avista's spirit of innovation informs how we approach what we do every day to deliver safe, reliable energy to our customers. In that spirit, we are continuing to invest capital across our service territory to harden the grid, maintain and upgrade our infrastructure, and enhance reliability for customers, while at the same time moving closer to earning our allowed return. Regarding rate cases, we've made significant progress on the regulatory front this year, We reached a multi-party settlement agreement in our Idaho rate cases and new electric and natural gas rates will go into effect in September. We also reached a settlement in principle in our Oregon general rate case, which is in line with our expectations. In June, we filed our 2023 electric integrated resource plan with the Washington and Idaho commissions. And you might remember every two years we produce an electric IRP which details projected growth and demand for energy, and then the new resources that we'll need to serve our customers over the next 20 years. Thanks to the resource selections from our recent all-source RFP, we are in really good position to meet our customers' needs now and into the future. With respect to earnings, our results are slightly ahead of our expectations for the first half of the year, and I'd like to Take a minute just to acknowledge our leaders and employees for their ongoing actions to manage our costs, to offset the impacts of inflation that we continue to experience, including higher interest rates and additional financing costs. Our results show the good work and the benefit of these efforts. We are confirming our annual consolidated guidance for 2023 with a range of $2.27 to $2.47. However, we expect to be in the lower end of the range due to higher than expected costs under the IRM in Washington, resulting from faster than normal snow melt and one of the worst hydro years we've seen in many, many years. Now, I'd like to turn this presentation over to Kevin, who will share more about our earnings. Kevin.