Eversource Energy (D/B/A)

Good morning, and welcome to the Eversource Energy Second Quarter 2021 Results Conference. My name is Brandon, and I'll be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, during which you may dial star 1 if you have a question. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Jeffrey Kotkin. You may begin, sir.

Thank you, Brandon. Good morning and thank you for joining us. I'm Jeff Kotkin, Eversource Energy's Vice President for Investor Relations. During this call, we'll be referencing slides that we posted last night on our website. And as you can see on slide one, some of the statements made during this investor call may be forward-looking as defined within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risk and uncertainty, which may cause the actual results to differ materially from forecasts and projections. These factors are set forth in the news release issued yesterday. Additional information about the various factors that may cause actual results to differ can be found in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, and on our form 10-Q for the three-month ended March 31st, 2021. Additionally, our explanation of how and why we use certain non-GAAP measures and how those measures reconcile to GAAP results is contained within our news release and the slides we posted yesterday and in our most recent 10-K and 10-Q. Speaking today will be Joe Nolan, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Phil Lembo, our Executive Vice President and CFO, Also joining us today are John Marrera, our Treasurer and Senior VP for Finance and Regulatory, and Jay Booth, our VP and Controller. Now I will turn to slide two and turn over the call to Joe.

Thank you, Jeff. We hope that all on the phone are safe and well, and we look forward to seeing you in person later this year. I will cover a few topics this morning and then turn over the call to Phil to discuss our mid-year financial results and some new and important grid modernization in AMI developments in Massachusetts. I know the most recent months have resulted in weather challenges across the country. In the West, our peers have needed to deal with heat and wildfires. In New England, with that increased level of thunderstorm activity, topped off by a glancing blow from Tropical Storm Elsa. Crews have worked around the clock, many days restoring power to our customers from tree-caused damage to our overhead system. While our implementation of new technology and vegetation management has limited the scope of many of the resulting power outages, our dedicated crews continue to be on the front line, completing a large amount of emergency restoration work in hot and humid conditions over the past month and a half, and doing so in a safe and effective manner. Their work has been excellent, and we continue to receive notes of appreciation from both our customers and municipal leaders. I was out all day in Connecticut the day Elsa passed through, and I cannot say enough about our team in preparing for and responding to storm damage in coastal regions of Connecticut and Massachusetts. We greatly appreciate the recognition of those efforts that we received from Connecticut PIRA commissioners at the July 14th meeting. As I mentioned during our first quarter earnings call, improving our relationship with Connecticut policymakers and customers is my top priority as CEO. Earlier this week, a number of Connecticut legislators joined several state, community, education, and labor leaders at our Berlin, Connecticut campus to celebrate the first class of students who are completing our new line worker certification program in partnership with the Hartford-based Capital Community College. We continue to see steady monthly improvements in our customer favorability ratings. and we appreciate the positive feedback we are receiving from municipal leaders. But we have to prove ourselves during the next major storm. I strongly believe that the changes we are implementing to our communication systems and processes will put us in a much better place the next time a multi-day storm cleanup effort occurs. Next, I want to provide an update on the offshore wind partnership with Orsted. Over the past few months, we have continued to make significant progress on the three projects that are noted on slide three. Perhaps the most significant development was the agreement we reached with Dominion Energy to charter their U.S.-built, Jones Act-compliant wind turbine installation vessel currently under construction in Brownsville, Texas. Once construction of the vessel is complete in late 2023, it will sail to New London, Connecticut, where it will be used to install wind turbines for Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind. The vessel will be one of the largest, most advanced of its kind in the world and will provide a more efficient approach to construction than the use of feeder barges. Work has recently begun in New London at the state-owned ocean-facing Deepwater Pier to convert it into a major staging area for offshore wind. As you know, the primary variable in our construction timetable is siting approval. We continue to be on a good path to secure Federal Bureau of Ocean Management, or BOEM, approval of a 132 megawatt Southwark project in January of 2022, which will enable construction to begin early next year and be completed before the end of 2023. During hearings this spring that resulted in Rhode Island Coastal Resource Management Council approval of the project, we indicated that we would install 12, 11 megawatt turbines in connection with this project. We are making progress on the two larger projects as well. State permitting applications in Rhode Island for Revolution Wind and in New York for Sunrise Wind were filed last December. In April, the Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board issued a plenary decision in order on Revolution Wind's schedule, with advisory opinions for local and state agencies to be submitted by August 26, 2021. Evidentiary hearings are due to begin by mid-October. The Sunrise Wind application was deemed complete by New York officials on July 1, initiating the formal review process for the project. As we noted in May, BOEM is targeting the completion of the review of Revolution Wind for the third quarter of 2023. Based on that review schedule, we now expect to be able to achieve commercial operation in 2025. We have not yet received the schedule for BOEM's review of the Sunrise project, but we are in a good position with our new London staging area. our turbine installation ship, and our suppliers. So depending on the BOEM review schedule that we expect to receive within the next few months, we expect Sunrise will reach commercial operation in 2025 as well. These dates are consistent with the vision of the Biden administration, which continues to accelerate the review of offshore wind projects proposed for the Atlantic coast. It is also consistent with the administration's target of having 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind operating in the United States by 2030. Offshore wind is one of several initiatives underway to help our states achieve their greenhouse gas reduction targets. On July 14th, PIRA took a major step forward in furthering the state's clean energy goals when it approved a comprehensive program to support the state's push for having at least 125,000 zero-emission vehicles on the road by the end of 2025. The order is described on slide four. We appreciate a number of the changes that PURA made to the draft decision to enhance the program's expected success. We will submit an implementation plan based on the PURA order by October 15th. Also on that slide is a description of a proposal that Massachusetts utilities submitted on July 14th to further develop the infrastructure that is needed to support rapid conversion of the state's vehicles to zero emissions. As you can see on the slide, by the end of this year, we will have invested $55 million in our Massachusetts electric vehicle program, helping to connect about 4,000 charge ports. However, Since transportation is responsible for more than 40% of the state's greenhouse gas emissions, significantly more support is needed to help the state meet its targets of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 and 75% by 2040. Massachusetts had only 36,000 electric vehicles registered as of January 1st, 2021. And in 2020, only 3% of the light duty vehicles sold in the state were EVs. While that percentage is above average for the country as a whole, it needs to be enhanced significantly going forward, since at the current pace, we will have fewer than 500,000 EVs in Massachusetts as of 2030. We need more than 1 million EVs by then for the state to reach its targets. We have proposed spending more than $190 million on EV support from 2022 to 2025, including $68 million of capital investment. These investments are described on the slide and include expanded charger infrastructure investment, some rate incentives, and new opportunities to add EV infrastructure in environmental justice communities. Our support for our state's greenhouse gas reduction efforts is discussed at length in our 2020 sustainability report, which was posted on our website earlier this month. A link to the new report is included on slide five. The revamped report has incorporated a number of enhancements to provide you with more visibility into our environmental, social, and governance efforts. We're also pleased to share updates on our 2030 carbon neutrality goal, including our first third-party verification of our 2020 greenhouse gas footprint. We have a number of teams within Eversource tasked with making our 2030 goal a reality. They include a team focusing on reducing emissions in five principal areas. Another team working on developing a strategy to offset emissions that cannot be eliminated by 2030. And another team that is encouraging all 9,300 Eversource employees to contribute to their best ideas on how we can achieve our 2030 goal. They've already developed some truly innovative proposals that we are evaluating. Their enthusiasm is just more evidence on why I am so confident about Eversource's future. Now I will turn the call over to Phil Wemble.