California Water Service Group

Thank you for your patience and welcome everyone to the California Water Service Group second quarter 2023 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Marty Kropelnicki. Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Kropelnicki, please go ahead.

Great. Thank you, Jack. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us this morning. Apologies for the technical difficulties. We had some problems with our telecommunication line getting through, so sincere apologies for that. With me today is Dave Healy, our Interim Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Greg Milliman, Vice President of Rates and Regulatory Affairs. Prior to getting into the results for the quarter, I'm going to turn over to Dave Healy to go through our statement on poor looking statements. And Dave, why don't you jump into the financial results for the quarter, please?

Thank you, Marty. Replay dial-in information for this call can be found in our quarterly results release, which was issued earlier today. The replay will be available until September 25th, 2023. As a reminder, before we begin, The company has a slide deck to accompany the earnings call this quarter. The slide deck was furnished with an AK yesterday afternoon and is also available at the company's website at www.calwatergroup.com. Before looking at this quarter results, we'd like to take a few moments to cover forward-looking statements. During the course of the call, the company may make certain forward-looking statements. Because these statements deal with future events, they are subject to various risk and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from the company's current expectations. Because of this, the company strongly advises all current shareholders as well as interested parties to carefully read and understand the company's disclosures on risk and uncertainties found in our Form 10-K, Form 10-Q, press releases, and other reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Our presentation starts on slide four with our values and priorities. And moving on to slide five, I'll discuss the second quarter results. So during the second quarter of 2023, net income attributable to group was $9.6 million in diluted earnings per share was 17 cents as compared to net income attributable to group of 19.5 million in diluted earnings per share of 36 cents for the quarter ended June 30th, 2022. As we discussed last quarter, second quarter results primarily reflect the temporary absence of 2023 California general rate rate increases and regulatory mechanisms included in our 2021 general rate case. As a result of the delay, California general rate case, there was a decrease in second quarter 2023 operating revenue as compared to the same period last year. Additionally, operating revenue decreased 13.8 million due to a 10.4% decrease in customer usage. General rate increases during the quarter were approximately 3.4 million, with most of it in California. Along with the delay to our GRC, the Commission authorized a 4% general rate increase for most of our California districts effective May 5, 2023, until the final, 2023 GRC general rate case increases are authorized by the Commission. This added approximately $3 million to operating revenue during the second quarter. Total operating expenses decreased slightly in the second quarter of 2023 as compared to the same period last year. Net interest expense increased $1.7 million mostly due to an increase in interest rates, and $23 million of additional borrowings on our short-term lines of credits. We invested $95.2 million in capital improvements during the second quarter of 2023, a 25.1 percent increase over the same period last year. This was the second quarter record for our company. In California, the governor, extended the state's arrearage program to help customers struggling to pay monthly water bills. The program covers delinquent customer balances 60 days past due or written off during the period from mid-June 2021 to December 31, 2022. Our plan is to file our application for these funds with the State Water Resources Control Board at the end of September. One last item. We filed a California advice letter in July to increase annual operating revenues 24.6 million to offset known increases in California water production costs. Our EPS bridge is on page 10. And now I'll turn it over to Greg Milliman to discuss the temporary absence of 2023 California's general rate case, general rate increases, and regulatory mechanisms.

Thank you, Dave. Looking at page seven, consistent with the first quarter, we are using the same mechanisms available from the California Public Utility Commission to track the temporary impact of revenues lost revenues from the delayed decision. The three primary mechanisms are shown on this slide. Moving to page 8, we currently estimate that the temporary impact of the delayed decision on second quarter 2023 operating revenues could be between $19 and $29 million. Based on current positions of parties in the 2021 GRC filing, and consumption-driven regulatory mechanisms. While I'm on this topic, I'll call your attention to slide 13, which is the same information except for the year-to-date activities where the temporary delay in revenues is estimated to be $43 to $63 million. With that, I'll turn it back to you, Dave, for slide 9. Thank you, Greg.

The second quarter earnings bridge is on slide 10 and moving to slide 11. For the six month period ended June 30th, 2023, net loss attributable to group was 12.7 million or 23 cents loss per diluted common share compared to net income attributable to group of 20.6 million or 38 cents earnings per diluted common share for the six month period ended June 30th, 2022. As Greg discussed, results for the six month period ended June 30th, 2023, reflect the temporary absence of 2023 general rate case, 2023 California general rate increases and regulatory mechanisms included in our 2021 general rate case. Operating revenue was $325.1 million for the six-month period ended June 30, 2023, compared to $379.2 million for the same period in 2022. The $14.3 percent revenue decrease was due to a $21.8 million increase in revenue deferral, a $15.2 million decrease in RAM and MCBA revenue, and a $22.9 million decrease in customer usage, which was partially offset by general rate increases of $5 million. Total operating expenses for the six-month period ended June 30, 2023. $326.7 million compared to $342.8 million in 2022, a decrease of $16 million or $4.7 million. Other operations expenses for the six-month period ended June 30, 2023, were $42.4 million compared to $55.3 million in 2022, a decrease of 23.2% or $12.8 million. The decrease was primarily attributable to the deferral of $17.8 million in costs related to the revenue deferral. Water production costs decreased $6.6 million or 5% to $125.9 million in 2023 compared to $132.4 million in 2022. The decrease in water production costs was primarily attributable to a 9.7% decrease in customer usage. These decreases were partially offset by increases in administrative and general expenses of 4.9 million, depreciation and amortization of 2.2 million, and property and other taxes of 1.5 million. During the first six months of the company invested $177.2 million in infrastructure improvements. This is also a record for the company. The company's ATM program increased cash by $112.7 million during the first six months of 2023. We're pleased with the results of our ATM program. And we will continue our at-the-market or ATM program through March of 2025. The year-to-date EPS bridge is on slide 15. And now I'll turn it over to Greg Milliman for a regulatory update.

Thank you, Dave. In regards to the cost of capital proceeding, the key point related to this decision is that it is prospective. from July 31st, 2023 going forward. After implementation with the water cost of capital mechanism, our ROE will have increased from 9.2% to 9.57%, and our debt will be trued up to our actual lower cost to borrow of 4.23%. Further, if the bond index continues as it is current and following its current trend, We expect the water cost of capital mechanism will be triggered again at the end or the beginning of October and have an increased effective January 24. On slide 17, it is the California 2021 GRC update. Shortly after extending the decision on June 29 to The end of the year, December 31st, 2023, the commission assigned a second judge to our proceeding. This judge has had a long career with the commission, and he's already started working on our general rate case. Considering that now we have two ALJs on our case, we're hopeful that we will have a proposed decision before the end of the year. Moving forward to slide 18, I will turn it over to Martin.

Great. Thanks, Greg. Just a quick update on the PFAS, PFOA events that are happening. I think as we put in the last quarter deck, the draft regulations came out from the EPA for a way to see if those can be termed. Based on those draft regulations, we think it's incremental $200 million approximately of investment needed to treat approximately 75 wells in the five states that we operate, 75 million wells as of right now. If the draft regulation is adopted as is, we'd have to be in compliance by 2026. So that's a bit of a tight timeframe. But having said that, in California, and California has some of the strictest water quality standards in the state, we started working on this back in 2018. So we are well ahead of the curve here and continue to move ahead judiciously as we wait to see when those get adopted. Also, noteworthy, and this is a pretty big pivot for all of us that belong to NAWC, the National Association of Water Companies, we've all gone after the polluters. And some of you may have seen in the Wall Street Journal, there's been a number of proposed settlements that have gone before the courts and waiting to be finalized. We are personally involved in that litigation for the states that we operate in. And any recovery costs will go to offset the costs for customers as we implement treatment necessary to remove PFOA and PFOS from our drinking water. Moving ahead to the next slide, I want to take a moment to talk about business development. As in the past, BD has had another busy quarter, really since we talked last time at the end of Q1. We announced the California Public Use Commission approved us closing on the Skylanda Mutual, which is in the Bay Area. That is not a big number of customers. It's 176, but it's a small system that's on both sides of our system. So by acquiring Skylanda, it allows us to build an interconnect between three parts of the Bay, the two parts that we own and the one part that Skylanda owns. and improve reliability and resiliency in the Bay Area. In addition, we closed on the STROS system in the state of Washington. That's adding 900 connections to our Washington Water Service Company in the Pacific Northwest. And we got Hawaii Commission approval to move ahead with the HOA utility. So, HOH and KSSC are both on the island of Kauai. So this gets us in our fourth island. It's a wastewater system that'll add approximately 2,200 wastewater connections. That means we'll be on Maui, we'll be on the big island of Hawaii, we're on Oahu, and now we're moving into Kauai. So overall, it was a busy quarter for our business development team, and pipeline continues to be full. The team's busy. Again, you know, in the water space, there's not really, really big acquisitions. They're pretty few and far between, but certainly there's enough of kind of bolt-on things that we're seeing that complement our existing business that are close or parallel to our existing businesses that we can acquire and bring onto our system and achieve economies of scale to help reduce costs for customers and improve service. Looking ahead on the next slide, on the capital investment and depreciation slide, As Dave said, it was a record quarter for us in terms of new capital at 95.2 million, getting that in the ground. Clearly, we're making up some of the ground for a long, wet winter out on the West Coast. I think the team's done a good job at speeding that up. And also, year-to-date, it was up 22.5%, which gets us to 177.2 million. So we are on track for our targets for 2023. I think more importantly, if you pull back a little bit, you know, give you an idea of why our rate case is probably a little more complex than some of our peers in the state of California. For 2022, 2023, and 2024, that's over a billion dollars of capital that we will have invested in our system. So, the rate case that's delayed, it's a billion-dollar rate case. So, it's a big thing to work through. I'm glad I'm not Greg Millman. He gets to deal with all the details of that, but it's complicated as we work with the Commission and move forward. But the good news is the capital investment is continuing. They continue to stay on track with our investment dollars and the steps we're taking to improve resiliency and sustainability. Looking at the next slide, this is just a snapshot of what our regulator rate base looks like for group. Assuming the rate base is adopted as is, this will obviously change when we get a proposed decision. We'll update this slide accordingly. But this will give you a sense of what the earnings growth will look like as the rate base continues to grow. So, kind of where are we? Just taking a step back and looking at the quarter. Obviously, we're still in a holding pattern with the delayed general rate case in California. And while that is disappointing, as I mentioned, it is very complicated. I will say we were very happy with the cost of capital decision that came out and was adopted in the second quarter. That moved quickly once the proposed decision came out. As Greg mentioned, we're encouraged by the second ALJ being added to our general rate case. We're very familiar with this judge. We've had other cases before this judge. And I think he's very schedule driven. He's very by the book. And I think he's very objective, which is good in terms of adding a new ALJ. I don't think you can want anything more than that. And hopefully it will help kind of facilitate the process. Obviously, despite the delays, we continue to make significant progress with our business plan, whether it was the record capital that was put into the ground for the quarter, the continued growth through business development. In this case, it was in California, Hawaii, and the state of Washington. And we also published our third annual ESG report, including what we're doing, our scope one and scope two admissions and what we're doing. half of our customers and improve sustainability and reliability. So as we wait, we are going to keep executing the business plan. And as Greg said, we're optimistic that hopefully we'll get a rate case before the end of the year. Once that rate case, proposed decision comes out, that will allow us to book a number of mechanisms that we can't book right now. And that's why we've shared the numbers that we shared and the ranges are provided to give you a sense of what the high and the low is based on those mechanisms that we're not building right now. Lastly, I want to take a moment to talk about a new board member who joined our board of directors. Some of you may have seen that. Charles Patton joined our board. Some of you may know Charles. He's a 37-year utility veteran with an outstanding background in operations in external and governmental affairs and rates. He is an outstanding leader. We're very, very lucky to get him on our board. And he had his first board meeting with us yesterday. So welcome, Charles, to the California Water Service Group board. So, Jack, that's the update for now. Why don't we open it up for questions, please?

Certainly. At this time, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad.

We'll pause for a moment to compile the Q&A roster.

Our first question comes from the line of Angie Starzynski with Seaport. Your line is open.

Oh, thank you. So, I mean, there's just so many moving pieces in your earnings power. So just a couple of things. One, you were hoping to actually have a final decision in the GRC this year. or just a proposed one, and I'm assuming that you need a final decision to book all of these revenue adjustments back to retroactively to 1-1-23. Is that correct?

Andy, we are hoping to have a proposed decision by the end of the year. With a proposed decision, that should provide enough confidence for the accounting department to go ahead and book the various items that have been deferred.

Okay. And if I were, I mean, you show us all of the revenue adjustments that would have happened for the first half. There's obviously the gain on pension. But is there like a rule of thumb that we can apply just to even have a ballpark sense of the earnings power? Like what is roughly the distribution of earnings? For example, you know, we can infer what the first half earnings would have been based on the adjustments you had showed us. I mean, can I assume a certain percentage of contribution to the total earnings of 23?

Yeah, Angie, that's why we gave you the ranges, what we believe the high and the low are. You know, you'll have to determine kind of what point in that range you think is the best one to look, but we thought the best thing we can do is kind of show the two goalposts, and obviously we'll come out between those two goalposts. Historically, we've done, especially the last two rate cases, we've done very well in our rate cases. I think that the Cal Water team has really upped their game the last three cycles in terms of putting together a quality rate case and getting to a successful resolution. with the Public Utilities Commission in California. The harder thing is we are officially decoupled from decoupling. So under the old decoupling rules, we could show you what the consumption curve was that was in the rate case. And obviously our pattern followed that consumption curve. Now that we're really demand driven, you know, it's going to move around a little bit, and we haven't had to really kind of look at it or think of the business that way in over 12 years. So this year, while we're going through getting away from decoupling, the earnings will move around a little bit based on seasonality and based on the weather and based on consumption. And obviously, we had a very, very wet first quarter. We had a fairly wet second quarter, and consumption was down, but now we're hitting this massive heat wave, which is happening all over the U.S., and I would expect consumption to jump up quite a bit in the third quarter. So I know that's not a super clear answer, but those are the variables that we deal with internally as we do the accounting and work on our rate cases.

Okay, I understand. Thank you.

Thank you, Angie. Jonathan Reeder with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Good morning, Marty and team. Can you hear me? Good morning, Jonathan. Hey. Yeah, no, it's very difficult given the moving pieces this year. Just to maybe kind of expand on Angie's question there, can you discuss, I guess, how customer usage is tracking against the usage levels that are included in the GRC's partial settlement agreement? Obviously, it's weather influence to some degree in the first half, or not to some degree. It is weather influence in the first half of the year, but maybe how you expect the full year to come in against those usage levels.

Jonathan, that's challenging to predict into the future what would happen. But right now, without decoupling, and I believe Dave reported that we're at about 10% 90% of consumption that is predicted in the rate case and because of that all the mechanisms but for the one mechanism related to lost revenues from the drought the other mechanisms are based on actual consumption and the drought memoranda the mechanism related to lost revenues from the drought is will capture the lost consumption revenues associated with the drought for a period of time. But that is uncertain as to how long that mechanism will continue with the governor having removed mandatory conservation and left in place, still left in place his executive orders related to continuing drought or conservation efforts for the state.

Right. And when did those mandatory conservation measures get lifted? Was it in like early April? It was in April. Okay. Okay. So that 90% is against what's actually included in the GRC settlement, partial settlement. Correct. That's right. Okay. Gotcha. So I guess, you know, with the loss of full decoupling and taking into account, you know, those usage trends, as well as, I guess, the cost to supply, you know, the water that should be coming in, you know, much more favorable to you. Do you expect, I guess, like having the monorail ram this year, is it going to be, you know, a headwind or a tailwind to kind of EPS? Is it still a headwind given the loss of decoupling or, you know, these lower supply costs? Are they potentially going to help you to a decent amount that's low to the bottom line?

Hi, Jonathan. I can take that question for you. So I don't know what the consumption is going to be in the second half of the year. But if it is, if we're still at 90%, there will be a small positive value in the Monterey-style RAM mechanism.

Okay. And that's netting, I guess, the revenue impact against the supply?

Yeah. It tracks the single quantity rate to the actual quantity rates billed. And there's a certain level. And right now we're at 90%. We're not at 100%. So, but it's going to be, it's not going to be a big value.

Okay.

Okay. All right. No, I appreciate the help there. Congrats on a good outcome in the cost of capital and good luck to, you know, getting the rate case, at least proposed decision, your end results. Thanks for the time today.

All right. Thanks Jonathan.

Again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Davis Sunderland with Baird, your line is open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Hi, David. Good to see that it has continued to go without the proposed decision this year.

Don't get too deep into hypotheticals, of course, but in the event that there isn't a proposed decision by the end of the year, How should we think about any changes to CapEx deployment next year or risk going beyond the end of 2023? And then I have one follow-up.

Sure. That's a good question because obviously our capital program is included in the 2021 general rate case, and the company takes a risk-based approach to prioritizing its capital. So The capital spending we're doing now, we feel are necessary improvements that we have to make in order to maintain the system and to do things like wildfire hardening, things that we've had to step up our efforts for climate change adaptation. In the event there's a capital project that is not approved of the rate case, it'll get picked up in the 21 rate case, it'll get picked up in the next rate case, the 24 rate case. So any financial exposure is really going to be associated with the depreciation and the interim period until we pick it up in the next rate cycle.

Got it. Thank you. That's helpful. And one other question maybe about the PFAS legislation. You mentioned going into litigation against some of the parties that may have been responsible or the polluters. Is there any estimate on quantifying some of these benefits or timeline associated with that? And I know you guys called out some potential other sources of funding that could maybe offset a portion of the $200 million in CapEx costs. Just any other detail about what those funds may be or when those might be applied? Thanks.

Yeah, you know, we don't know yet. And if you follow the litigation and the paper, these are multibillion-dollar settlements. And obviously, there's a group of claimants to that. settlement where one of those claimants. So we don't know how it's going to kind of work out or how it's going to be distributed. I will tell you, though, our general counsel is very active and is the class representative in the lawsuit. So we work very closely with the counsel, the group's plaintiff's counsel, to understand how those pieces will work. So once the settlements get more clarity and the judge approves them, then we'll get into the position of working with the the reps, the people involved in the litigation, of how those funds will be distributed. Then that goes, a proposal is made to the judge, and the judge has to adopt it, and they start distributing those funds. I anticipate, and this is just a personal opinion, but I anticipate that those settlements are going to be millions and millions of dollars. And, you know, again, the main point about it, it's not going to help from an investor standpoint because those funds will all go to offset the capital costs associated with the treatment. So it really benefits the customer, and that's where it should be. And so then what's left over that doesn't cover the invested capital for PFO and PFOS treatment, that'll get rate-based treatment. But obviously we want to try to offset as much of that cost because it's incremental to our capital program. That billion dollars that I talked about for 22, 23, and 24, this $200 million is going to be on top of that And so you run the risk of having rate shocks. We really want to try to minimize the effect of the customers. So settlement funds, I think in 2024 or 2025 are very, very likely. In addition to that, we're looking at trying to get grant funds and other money from the state and federal level, especially for underserved or poorer communities. You know, it's one thing to put in PFAS treatment, you know, in the Bay Area for Silicon Valley. It's really different when you go to some of the rural areas of California that have the same water quality standards. And, you know, it's a much lower number of customers, a much lower number of connections, and it's overall economically not the same environment as a fluent area like the Bay Area. So grant funds and proceed dollars from the litigation will all go to offset those costs for customers.

That is very helpful. Thank you, guys. Appreciate the time. Thanks, David.

That was our final question. I'll now turn the call back over to Mr. Krafelnicki for closing remarks.

All right. Hey, Jack, first of all, thank you for getting my name right. You're about one out of 100 who can get it right. And just for the record, it took me until about the age of 12 before I could spell it or say my name right. So thank you for having my name correctly. Everyone, thanks for joining us. Again, all eyes on the general rate case. That's a focal point. While we're doing that, we're not taking our eyes off the business model. We're going to execute our business plan to our full avail that we can. We'll look forward to talking to everyone at the end of Q3, and our earnings call will be on October 26th. So thank you for being with us this morning. Apologies for the technical delays. We had some issues with technology and the lines working correctly, so thanks for bearing with us, and we'll talk to everyone later. Thank you and have a good day.

This concludes today's conference. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect