This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
Operator
Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the DTE Energy second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, our 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 this session, you need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Robert Tuckfield. Please go ahead.
Robert Tuckfield
Thank you and good morning, everyone. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone to read the safe harbor statement on page two of the presentation, including the reference to forward-looking statements. Our presentation also includes references to operating earnings, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. Please refer to the reconciliation of GAAP earnings to operating earnings provided in the appendix. With us this morning are Jerry Norcia, President and CEO, and Dave Rue, Senior Vice President and CFO. And now, I'll turn it over to Jerry to start the call this morning.
Jerry Norcia
Thanks, Barb, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. I hope everyone is staying healthy and safe. This morning, I'll recap our performance for the second quarter, then Dave will provide a financial review of the quarter and wrap things up before we take your questions. Let's start on slide four. We are making great progress this year at DT for our team, our customers, and our communities, positioning us to deliver for our investors. This progress has produced a strong second quarter and positions us well for continued growth. Our distinctive team of 10,000 plus employees continues to be recognized for our engagement by Gallup with our ninth consecutive Great Workplace Award. continue to build on this strength with our focus on diversity equity and inclusion to create an even better workplace for all our employees where everyone feels valued welcome and able to contribute their best energy our company celebrated june 10th together last month with a series of virtual meetings we paid tribute to this important day with local community partners a number of employees offered reflections on what the day means to them personally Overall, it was a great way to come together and honor this significant holiday. We understand that all people thrive and succeed when they feel included and welcome. We continue to focus on service excellence for our customers and delivering clean, safe, and reliable energy as we continue our clean energy transformation. BT Electric received approval from the NPSC to further expand the voluntary renewable program, My Green Power. while also making it even more affordable, including increased access for low-income customers. Additionally, we partnered with Ford Motor Company to install new rooftop solar and battery storage technology at the Ford Research and Engineering Center. The array includes an integrated battery storage system and will be used to power newly installed electric vehicle chargers. This can generate over 1,100 megawatt hours of clean energy. We also continue to support the communities where we live and serve. We were also recognized by Points of Light for the fourth consecutive year as one of the Civic 50. This award highlights DT as one of the top 50 community-minded companies nationwide in corporate citizenship. We also launched the Tree Trim Academy to create 200 high-paying jobs in Detroit. DT has a need for tree trimmers, and the community has a need for good high quality jobs. It will also help us continue to improve electric reliability as trees account for over 70% of our customer outages. On the investor front, we completed the spin of the midstream business. Now BTE Midstream is a standalone company and BTE Energy is a predominantly pure plain utility with 90% of operating earnings coming from our utilities. The transaction went very smoothly and was well received by all stakeholders. We didn't miss a beat on a very strategic transaction, and many said we made it look easy. Many thanks to the BTE team and our advisors that made this effort a great success for our employees and our investors. We delivered a strong second quarter with earnings of $1.70 per share, and we are raising our 2021 operating earnings guidance and continue to pay a strong dividend. Let's turn to slide five. BT is continuing to deliver successful operating results. At BT Electric, we made another significant step toward our goal in reducing carbon emissions as we retired the River Rouge Power Plant in the second quarter. For over 60 years, Michigan. River Rouge is one of the three coal-fired power plants ETE is retiring by the end of 2022, which is an integral part of our company's clean energy transformation. We continue to look at ways to accelerate our coal fleet retirements and potentially file our updated IRP before September of 2023. We continue to expand on our voluntary renewable program, which is exceeding our high expectations. In the first quarter, we announced the commitment of new customers to My Green Power, including the state of Michigan, Bedrock, and Trinity Health. During the second quarter, we signed up a number of new large customers, including Detroit Diesel, which is now one of our largest voluntary renewable customers. The program continues to grow at an impressive rate. So far, we've reached 950 megawatts of voluntary renewable commitments with large business customers and approximately 35,000 residential customers. We have an additional 400 megawatts in the very advanced stages of discussion with future customers. My Green Power is one of the largest voluntary renewable programs in the nation and helps advance our work toward our net zero carbon emission goal. while helping our customers meet their decarbonization goals. We have made progress with our expedited tree trimming program, which is greatly improving reliability for our customers and have received Michigan Public Service Commission approval to securitize the tree trimming costs along with costs associated with the River Rouge power plant retirement. At DP Gas, we're on track to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. We began the second phase of construction on our major transmission renewal project in Northern Michigan in June. The project includes the installation of a new pipeline, as well as facility modification work, which will reduce the risk of significant customer outages. The project is on track to be in service by the first quarter of next year. Last quarter, we announced our new Clean Vision Natural Gas Balance Program, This program provides the opportunity for customers to purchase both carbon offsets and renewable natural gas to enable them to reduce their carbon footprint. We are proud of how fast the program is growing. Currently, we have over 3,000 customers subscribed, and we are looking forward to seeing it become as successful as our voluntary renewable program at BT Electric. On our power and industrial business, we continue to add new projects, as we began construction on a new R&G facility on a large dairy farm in South Dakota. This will be P&I's largest dairy R&G project to date. The project will directly inject R&G into the Northern Natural Gas System for sale into the California transportation fuels market. The facility is expected to be in service in the third quarter of 2022. There are also advanced discussions on several new industrial energy and RNG projects. We'll provide updates on these as they progress. P&I was also recognized by the Association of Union Contractors with the 2020 Project of the Year Award for the Ford-Dearborn cogeneration project. Overall, I am extremely proud of the team's accomplishments. Now, moving on to slide six. As I said, we've had a very strong start to 2021. We are raising our operating earnings guidance midpoint from $5.51 per share to $5.77 per share, moving our year-over-year growth in operating EPS guidance from 7.4% to a robust 12.5%. We are able to use some of this favorability to position the company to continue to deliver in future years. We mentioned in Q1, we were deep into planning for 2022 in a great level of detail. With all of this work, we feel great about achieving a smooth 5% to 7% growth trajectory into 2022 and through the five-year plan. You're not going to see any surprise from us in our growth rate in 2022, in spite of the RAF roll-off and the converts coming due. 90% of our future operating earnings will be from our two regulated utilities, but we have a large investment agenda with $17 billion of capital investment in our five-year plan, focused on clean energy and customer reliability. Overall, we feel very confident with our performance in 2021 and our future operational and financial performance. Now I'll turn it over to Dave to discuss DT's financial performance. Dave, over to you.
Barb
Thanks, Jerry, and good morning, everyone. Let me start on slide seven to review our second quarter financial results. Total operating earnings for the quarter were $329 million. This translates into $1.70 per share. You can find a detailed breakdown of EPS by segment, including our reconciliation to GAAP-reported earnings in the appendix. I'll start the review at the top of the page with our utilities. The second quarter was a really warm quarter for us here in Michigan. In fact, it was the seventh warmest on record. DT electric earnings were $238 million per quarter, which is $19 million higher than the second quarter of 2020, primarily due to higher commercial sales, rate implementation, and warmer weather, offset by non-qualified benefit plan gains that we had in 2020. As we mentioned in the first quarter call, we've taken steps to reduce the variability of these investments going forward. Moving on to DT Gas, operating earnings were $7 million, $4 million lower than the second quarter last year. The earnings decrease was driven primarily by the warmer weather in 2021, offset by new rates. Let's keep moving to gas storage and pipelines business on the third row. Operating earnings for GSP were $86 million. This is $16 million higher than the second quarter of 2020, driven primarily by the LEAP pipeline going into service and strong earnings across the pipeline segment. On the next row, you can see our power and industrial segment operating earnings were $34 million. This is a $9 million increase from second quarter last year due to new RNG projects beginning operation. On the next row, you can see our operating earnings at our energy trading business were $21 million, which is $16 million higher than second quarter earnings last year due primarily to strong performance in the gas portfolio. Year to date through the second quarter, this positions us positive to our expectation and our original guidance for the year. Finally, corporate and other was unfavorable $22 million quarter over quarter, primarily due to the timing of taxes and higher interest expense. Overall, DT earned $1.70 per share in the second quarter of 2021, which is $0.17 per share higher than 2020. Moving on to slide eight. Given a strong start to the year, we were able to use this favorability to position ourselves to continue to deliver for our customers and investors in future years. And we are also increasing our 2021 operating EPS guidance midpoint $5.51 per share to $5.77 per share. The increase in guidance is due primarily to warmer than normal weather, sustained continuous improvement, and uncollectible expense variability at ET Electric, higher RAF volumes at P&I, and stronger performance energy trading due to the realization gains from the small, long physical storage position during the extreme cold weather event in Texas in the first quarter. In the third quarter, we are seeing additional sales upside for electric compared to our plan and higher than planned REF volumes at P&I. We are continuing to explore opportunities to support future years through our invest strategy and to support future customer affordability. As you can see on the slide, there is no gas storage and pipeline segment in our operating guidance for this year. The GSP segment will be classified as discontinued operations starting in the third quarter. Let's turn to slide nine to briefly discuss our balance sheet and equity issuance plan. We continue to focus on maintaining solid balance sheet metrics. Due to our continued strong cash flows, DT is targeting no equity issuances in 2021 and has minimal equity needs in our plan beyond the convertible equity units in 2022. We have a strong investment grade rating and target an FFO to debt ratio of 16%. With the proceeds from the spinoff of DPM, we are retiring long-term parent debt of approximately $2.6 billion after debt breakage costs. These were NPV positive transaction and immediately EPS accretive, as we were able to retire our higher interest rate debt to support our current plan and to deliver our 5% to 7% operating EPS growth rate. Now I'll wrap up on slide 10, and we'll open the line for questions. We feel great about our second quarter accomplishments, and we are confident in achieving our increased 2021 guidance and continuing to deliver on our long-term 5% to 7% operating UPS growth rate. Our utilities continue to focus on our infrastructure investment agenda, specifically investments in clean generation and investments to improve reliability and the customer experience. We continue to focus on maintaining solid balance sheet metrics and are targeting no equity issuances in 2021. In closing, after executing a successful spin of our midstream business, BP continues to be well-positioned to deliver the premium total shareholder returns that our investors have come to expect over the past decade, with strong utility growth and a growing dividend. With that, I thank you for joining us today, and we can open the line for questions.
Operator
At this time, if you would like to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star and the number one. Your first question comes from the line of Char Perizza with Guggenheim.
Shar
Hey, good morning, guys. Morning, Char. Hi, Char. So just on the IRP that, you know, Jerry, you kind of referenced and you prepared, your peer obviously has an aggressive decarbonization plan out there, probably one of the more aggressive plans. Can we maybe just get a sense on how you're thinking about your upcoming IRP and sort of not front-run the process, but can you get out of all your coal prior to the 2030s?
Jerry Norcia
Well, we're looking, Shar, we're looking at how we can accelerate our coal retirements. You know, we've started with a larger position in our coal fleet and our self-generation fleet. So we are looking very closely at how we can accelerate all of these retirements prior to 2040. So you'll recall that in our prior IRP, we were retiring all of our coal by 2040. So we're looking at acceleration scenarios to pull that forward. And as I've mentioned in past discussions, we will update you likely at the end of the year or early next year as to what those plans may look like. And we're spending a lot of time with various stakeholders through the summer, including our board, having those conversations, trying to balance the interest of acceleration And, of course, affordability and reliability.
Shar
Scott, and just to share, can EEI be the right podium to disclose the updated plan?
Jerry Norcia
It'll either be there, sure, or early in the new year. That's the range of timing that we're looking at right now. We'll get a little tighter on that as we go forward.
Shar
Got it, got it. And then just as a follow-up, sort of between, you know, kind of already strong, you know, rate-based growth at the electric and gas, which obviously exceeds your earnings guidance growth rate, you know, and you have the potential to accelerate, you know, decarbonization with the updated IRB coming. And I guess, how does all this kind of play into your 5% to 7% growth rate? You know, obviously, I understand you're taking a conservative bend here, but Could we see some incremental upside here in time, especially if you decarbonize faster than what's in your current internal planning assumptions?
Jerry Norcia
Well, we're looking, you know, obviously we're in the middle of all of that analysis. And as you've mentioned, Char, typically we update our capital forecasts at EEI for our five-year outlook. And as we start to build in these earlier retirements, there could be impact on the back end of that plan. As you recall, the back end of our plan returned more to the average in terms of rate-based growth and earnings growth of the two utilities. So likely it will be impactful in the back end of that plan. So more to come on that, Char, but we're working through all those details now. All right. Terrific. Thanks, guys. That's all I had. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question is from Jeremy Tannet with J.P. Morgan.
Jeremy Tannet
Hi. Good morning.
Jerry Norcia
Good morning. Hi, Jeremy.
Jeremy Tannet
I know that GSP is now discontinued, so obviously not a focus going forward in the same way. But just wanted to better understand, I guess, what was happening here. If I look at the results so far, it seems like GSP put up 56% of the high end of the guidance already. And so I was just wondering if you could expand a bit more on what specifically GSP did to kind of exceed expectations in the first half or if there was something baked into later in the year that was going to weigh down. Just trying to understand a bit better what was happening there.
Jerry Norcia
Well, we can comment on the first half, and I know – The pipeline company will have their earnings call here later, I think early next month. So I'm sure they'll comment on that. But what we can talk about is the first half of the year. And we just saw favorability in all the platforms across the board, you know, our southern platforms and our northern platforms.
Jeremy Tannet
Got it. I mean, were those sustained or is there anything kind of one time in nature that was a positive benefit?
Jerry Norcia
Again, it was a pickup in activity and value across all our platforms, both in the Appalachian platforms and the Haynesville platform. I think in terms of forward-looking, that will be more appropriate for DPM to describe.
Jeremy Tannet
Got it. And maybe just kind of pivoting over to the electric utility, some really strong results there. And just wondering if you could provide a bit more color with regard to low-trend recoveries there. It seems like commercial sales were coming better. But just wondering if you could provide a little bit more detail on how things materialize versus your expectations, you know, versus your guidance for the segment and how you see that kind of trending.
Jerry Norcia
Dave, do you want to take that?
Barb
Sure, yeah. First, if you look at quarter over quarter that we have in there, you can see that was way up. And that was, you know, especially a commercial industrial. And that was really because we were comparing back to the worst period of the pandemic. So quarter over quarter, we saw commercial industrial way up. Interestingly, we saw residential stay pretty flat quarter over quarter. And that's interesting because last year with people working from home, And we saw our residential load running on average about 8% higher than we would have expected pre-pandemic. And this year so far, we're seeing that continue. Even though there has been some return to work, we still see that we're seeing this favorability at residential. And that's what's driving some of the favorability. So we've expected it to reduce more, but at this point it's pretty sticky. So we're going to be watching this closely to see how it plays out. how it can impact really customer affordability going forward if it's if it remains sticky got it yeah i'd say on commercial load i mean that's come pretty much all the way back from up to what we would have expected uh we you know at the kind of the height of the pandemic we thought we'd see some more bankruptcies and closures in the commercial and we really haven't seen that so we've seen our commercial load really come back to as expected Industrial load was coming back and pretty much came back, but that has some variability in it due to some of the instability really or the challenges at the auto plants right now with the chip shortages. They're running a little more sporadically. But really, it's been a great return to load, and then the residential remains really sticky for us.
Jeremy Tannet
Got it. That's very helpful there. If I could slip in one more on R&G. Just wondering if you could expand a little bit on how large do you see this business kind of growing over time? It seems like there's more of a focus there. And how do you see the growth rate of that business kind of comparing to the rest of BP?
Jerry Norcia
Well, the non-utility business will make up no more than 10% of overall growth. operating earnings for the company. So the growth will be modest compared to the growth that we're seeing at our two utilities. You know, we're planning to put $17 billion to work over the next five years in our two utilities and somewhere between that one and a half and $2 billion to work in our nine utility businesses. So it'll be modest levels of investment. We don't need a lot of income growth from that business. So we're being really picky and discerning about the type of projects that we invest in in R&G, where we're seeing three- to four-year paybacks, simple cash paybacks, and unlevered IRs after tax and appease. So that's what we're going after. So not a lot of pressure to grow there, and so we're being very discerning about our growth projects.
Jeremy Tannet
Got it. I'll leave it there. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question is from Julian DeMolin Smith with Bank of America.
spk04
Hey, good morning, Steve. Congratulations on the results.
Jerry Norcia
Thank you, Julian. Good morning, Julian.
spk04
Absolutely. Quick question. I think you've alluded to it a couple times, and I think Jeremy might have been trying to get at this, but you've alluded to a smooth trajectory here of 5 to 7 into 22. We just want to make sure that, you know, sort of on balance net of all these items that the ballpark we should still be assuming, right?
Jerry Norcia
That's correct, Julian. Typically, we target the midpoint of our growth rates, right? That's how we plan for our business. That's how we build contingency plans, and that's what we're going to deliver next year.
spk04
Excellent. And then perhaps even more importantly here, as you think about layering in these incremental items, be it the IRP at some point or, frankly, some of the renewable opportunities that are more on the voluntary side, and or some additional, as you say, perhaps late stage or advanced stage conversations on the industrial and R&G side. What's that outlook, the timeline here? Some of the IRP updates may be beyond the five-year, or do you think that some of that actually accrues to the near term? I would presume the voluntary renewables and the non-utility businesses would be more in that five-year period.
Jerry Norcia
Yeah, the Volcare Renewables update that we'll provide in the fall will certainly play into the five-year plan. I would say the IRP work that we're doing could come into the five-year plan, the latter part of the five-year plan, but certainly there'll be a good story beyond the five-year plan as well.
spk04
Got it. And maybe to clarify your earlier comment about sort of showing a normalization in the rate-based growth trajectory when you commented to Shar, is that beyond the five years that you were talking about, or is that even within the five years that you're kind of alluding to potentially seeing a more sustained current level of rate-based growth rather than that normalization trend?
Jerry Norcia
Well, what we are seeing, Julian, is – growth rates and our operating earnings for our two utilities higher than our average that we've advertised, right? The 9% at the gas company and the 7.8 at the electric company in the first couple of years of our five-year plan. And that's helping us deliver that smooth EPS growth rate that we've described. And then that returns more to the average in the out years of the plan as we've described.
spk04
Right. So despite the long-term nature of some of the IRP, on balance, we could see some of that really accrue into the back half of this five-year plan, regardless.
Jerry Norcia
That's possible. Early, too early to tell, but certainly possible.
spk04
Excellent. All right. And just, again, to come back to Jeremy's quick clarification there on the RNG side, again, you're 10%. You're sticking with it, right? So we should really be thinking about scaling it and sizing it within that bucket, right?
Jerry Norcia
That's correct.
spk04
Excellent. Thank you so much for the clarifications here. All the best. Thank you, Julian. Thank you.
Operator
The next question is from Insu Kim with Goldman Sachs.
Greenfield
Thank you. My first question on the financing side of things, when you think about the five-year growth plan and beyond 2023, how should we think about potential equity needs in the back half of that plan and what's embedded in your guidance?
Barb
Please. Right now, you've seen we've given the guidance through the three years, which only has the only acquisitions is those converts that come in 22. As we look out of the five-year plan, our goal is going to be to continue to minimize the acquisitions we need, and that's how it fits within the plan that we're looking at right now.
Greenfield
Got it. So based on the base, the current CapEx plan, you're looking at more moderate level of needs. It's kind of like what you're seeing on the 2023 fund. Right. Got it. And then just going back to R&G a little bit, appreciate the earnings mix that's going to have in the overall portfolio. When you talk about the strong returns that you're talking about, are you seeing increased You know, competition now with a lot of other players focused on that. And, you know, as you look out at potential new projects, are you seeing those, you know, translating into tougher returns on a comp basis?
Jerry Norcia
You know, what we're seeing is with the level of investment that we have to make, which is a couple of R&D projects a year, a couple of dairy farms a year is another way to think about it. not really having trouble originating Greenfield. Where we've seen things get a little more frothy is when assets are up and running. People are paying a lot of money for these assets that are up and running, private equity and other types of investment vehicles. But on the origination front, Greenfield, we're able to get the returns we want and get the projects that we want.
Greenfield
Understood.
Jerry Norcia
Thank you so much.
Operator
Your next question is from Jonathan Arnold with Vertical Research.
Jonathan Arnold
Good morning, guys.
Jerry Norcia
Good morning, Jonathan. Hey, Jonathan.
Jonathan Arnold
Well, on the trading in the quarter, which you said was, you know, gas portfolio, was that really, you know, this sale of storage out of, you know, that related to the winter storm event, or was that favorability more in the first quarter, and this was just continued good performance? Just curious. Let's try it in that.
Barb
This was just continued good performance of the trading group in the gas portfolio. I can't say what gave us the confidence to raise the guidance was the favorability we had from that small physical storage position that gave us the gain during the first quarter during that cold weather in Texas. So our expectation going forward in future years is that, you know, we'll be more in line with our original guidance when we don't have those kind of unexpected one-time things.
Jonathan Arnold
Okay. And then just back to the growth rate and the comments about smooth, Jerry, just to be clear, you're talking off of the original 2020 midpoint, right, which was, I think, 513. I just want to be sure. And is that the number off which you're intending to show? smooth 5% to 7% growth, and we should think of sort of this Q21 favorability, which kind of puts you above that range, but you're still using that as the base. I just want to be clear about that.
Jerry Norcia
You're correct. We're using the original 2021 guidance that we provided as the basis for our growth rate.
Jonathan Arnold
2021 or 2020? 2020.
Jerry Norcia
But it would be similarly smooth for 21 because we're talking at midpoint for each of the years in terms of original guidance at the starting point.
Jonathan Arnold
Okay. So we should just be calibrating off of original guidance in both cases. Correct. Great. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from with Evercore.
spk09
Hey, good morning team. Thanks for taking my question. You've answered the most good morning. Maybe just update us on the recent, you know, what's the most latest on the gas rate case front and then the timing of the electric rate cases. Is that still sort of late this year?
Jerry Norcia
So on an electric rate case, yes, it's still late this year, no earlier than October of this year that we will file. And on the gas case, we've engaged in conversations with interested parties to try and move the case towards some form of settlement. But we're feeling pretty good about that in terms of how that case is progressing and its final outcome.
spk09
Excellent. And then just real quick clarification, I know you sort of addressed the demand trends, pretty strong quarter, you know, Q221 versus Q220. Obviously, a ton of concerns around this Delta variant. Anything sort of that is striking or sort of material for us to sort of, you know, talk about anything that you're seeing in your territory, any cause of concern as it relates to Delta variant?
Jerry Norcia
We are not at this point. Certainly the large manufacturing outlets are starting to take actions to make sure that the Delta variant doesn't impact their operations. Things like masking and social distancing are starting to be reintroduced somewhat. in preparation for a potential Delta variant surge here in Michigan. But we're not seeing anything that puts any of our margin at risk at this point in time.
spk09
Excellent. Thank you, guys. Great quarter. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question is from Andrew Weisel with Scotiabank.
Andrew Weisel
Hey, good morning, everyone. A lot of my questions on the outlook... Andrew. Hi. Hi. A lot of my questions were answered, appreciating the conservatism, given that you're growing 12.5% this year and you grew 9% or you beat by 9% in 2020. But we'll stick with 5 to 7 for now. Just two clarifying ones on 2021 outlook. First of all, does the updated guidance reflect July weather?
Barb
Yeah, we do take into account weather, but there hasn't been too much weather in July yet.
Andrew Weisel
Okay. Then on cash flow, excuse me, I see you updated the outlook from cash from operations to reflect the midstream spinoff. What about the underlying DTE business? It looks like cash has been stronger than expected since you're pointing to no equity needs this year. Of that $300 million reduction, can you talk about how much was midstream and if there was any change to the base business?
Barb
In the guidance update, that was all taken out the second half of midstream. And you're right, we have seen some strength, too, and we're coming in a little bit above our plan in cash so far this year, mainly due to strength in operating cash flows from electric and from some of the other businesses, too.
Andrew Weisel
Okay, but that strength is not reflected in the updated guidance, right? So there might be some upside?
Barb
Yes, there might be some upside. The guidance was really just taken out the midstream part.
Andrew Weisel
Okay, great. Thank you for clarifying.
Operator
Your next question is from the line of Ryan Levine with Citi.
Ryan Levine
Good morning. Can you update us on longer-term O&M outlook and now that we're emerging from a COVID environment, if you're seeing any more structural changes to your cost profile?
Jerry Norcia
We constantly work. to maintain our O&M as flat as possible. And I think you'll see from our history that we're one of the better performing utilities in terms of being able to keep our O&M costs relatively flat. I think over the last several years, we've been about 1% bigger on O&M. We do have significant opportunities to continue to do that looking forward. And that certainly is built into our growth plans as well as our affordability go-gets for our two utilities.
Ryan Levine
Are you seeing any inflationary pressure for labor or any other component of your cost structure?
Jerry Norcia
You know, we've been looking at debt pretty hard as we started to build our plans for 22 and beyond. And, you know, we've got long-term contracts for some of our key commodities on the materials side. So we're not seeing pressure there. And with our contractors that do a good portion of our work, you know, those are obviously negotiated prices. And, again, not seeing anything that – would give us a great concern at this point in time.
Ryan Levine
Okay. And then on energy trading, you had highlighted the increase in guidance range that largely was reflecting the year-over-year increase for the second quarter. Is there embedded conservatism for the second half outlook, you know, in light of some of the volatility in the gas prices and rise in higher prices? Or is there any color you can share on on what's driving the relatively no change to the second half.
Barb
Yeah, there's conservatism in that. As you can see, we put our guidance from 25 to 35, and we're pretty much within that range or at the top of that range already. So we do have some conservatism in that number, and we'll just have to watch how it plays out throughout the year. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Operator
And next question is from James Dallacher with BMO Capsule Markets.
James Dallacher
Good morning. Can you guys hear me? Yes. Good morning. Good morning. One real quick question, and I know it's early and the IRP is sort of the end of next year, but as you're approaching the acceleration potentially of more coal, how are you thinking about, I guess, the regulatory recovery mechanisms for accelerating that coal retirement? Are you thinking more obligatory asset model or securitization potentially?
Jerry Norcia
What we're looking at are various techniques that we have at our disposal. One is accelerated depreciation. We're also looking at ways to make the assets, asset lives longer in terms of remaining used and useful. There's all kinds of physical options for that that we're considering. And we're also looking at some tax strategies that could help smooth affordability as well. So multiple ways that we're looking at making financing of the retirement of coal earlier more affordable to our customers and also making sure that our investors get their value out of these assets.
James Dallacher
Great. Thanks so much, guys.
Operator
You have a follow-up from Jonathan Arnold with Vertical Research.
Jonathan Arnold
Thank you, guys. Just a quick one. On the convert, post the spin, I believe the numbers may change in terms of the other shares it'll convert into and what have you. Will that be disclosed in the queue, or can you give us some guidance here as to what the implications of the spin were for conversion?
Barb
Yeah, there will be an adjustment to the settlement rates to ensure consistency of the economics, so it'll change the convert price kind of in proportion with with the equity price so that equity holders remain whole. And Barb can send those mechanics to you. You can contact Barb and get the actual mechanics of that if you want after the call.
Jonathan Arnold
So those are now set, Dave. That's really my question. Or are they still pending on trading levels?
Barb
I think with the trading levels, seeing where the stock price will be at the time of the convert still will affect that.
Jonathan Arnold
Okay, great. Thank you.
Operator
And your final question comes from the line of Anthony Crado with Mizuho.
Anthony Crado
Hey, good morning, Jerry. Good morning, Dave. Morning. Hey, hopefully two easy ones. I guess the first one, Jerry, earlier in the call you were highlighting how the transaction team worked. You got the spin of DT Midstream seemed very seamless. I mean, you seem like your transaction team is in mid-season form right now. Any thought to keeping them in shape with other transactions?
Jerry Norcia
Well, right now, Anthony, we're really focused on our $17 billion growth agenda at the utilities, which is the lion's share of our CapEx. And, of course, having nice, modest growth for our non-utility business, P&I, and R&G and Cogen primarily. So that's really our play right now for the next five years.
Anthony Crado
Great. And then just lastly, post-spin, and I just don't know the process, do you know if your ESG score is under evaluation now that the company has removed the ESP business and looking at your new, I guess, environmental footprint, you know, DTE Classic. I mean, how often does that review happen or any insight do you give on the potential for a change in your ESG score?
Jerry Norcia
So I would venture to say that our ESG metrics will improve with the spin of BDM. But Barb, maybe I'll get Barb to provide some insights to you, Anthony, as to when that might happen, when might we get the next score.
Robert Tuckfield
Sorry about that. Yes, those happen annually, typically, and right now we're sitting above average on quite a few of those metrics.
Anthony Crado
Great. Thanks so much. Thank you, Anthony.
Operator
I will now turn the call back over to Chair Nocero for closing remarks.
Jerry Norcia
Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I'll just close by saying that DP had a very successful first half of the year, and we're feeling really good about the remainder of 2021 and also how well we're setting up for 2022. So I hope everyone has a great morning and stay healthy and safe.
Operator
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer