Eversource Energy (D/B/A)

Good morning, and thank you for attending today's Eversource Energy First Quarter 2020 Theory Earnings Call. My name is Jason, and I'll be the moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, Jeff Kotkin.

Thank you very much, Jason. 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 yesterday 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 afternoon. 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 31st, 2022. Additionally, our explanation of how and why we use certain non-GAAP measures and how those measures reconcile the GAAP results is contained within our news release and the slides we posted last night and in our most recent 10-K. Speaking today will be Joe Nolan, our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and John Marrera, our Executive Vice President and CFO. Also joining us today are Jay Booth, our VP and Controller, and Bob Becker, our Director of Investor Relations. Now I will turn to slide three and turn over the call to Joe.

Thank you, Jeff, and thank you, everyone, for joining us on this call this morning. I know that you had many other choices of calls that you could have joined, so I'm very grateful. We had an excellent start in 2023 as we continued to deliver safe and highly reliable services to our 4.4 million customers. Our key metrics illustrate the continued strong state of our operations. Our service reliability, as measured by months between interruptions, remains in the top decile, and our safety ratings remain very strong. Our employees also performed very well in completing significant storm restoration in New Hampshire following a March northeaster that caused widespread damage and brought historic snowfall amounts that made it extremely difficult for crews to access certain regions to make repairs. Turning to slide three in our offshore wind partnership with Orsted, we continue to advance our three projects through the development process. Construction continues at South Fork, which will be the first large-scale offshore wind project completed in North America. Installation of the South Fork subsea transmission cable that will deliver wind power to New York is half complete, and the installation of the foundations, wind turbines, and offshore substation will follow. We continue to expect that Southwalk will be fully operational by the end of the year. In early April, the U.S. flagged Eco Edison, the first Jones Act-compliant wind farm service operation vessel, reached the 50% completion milestone. This vessel, which will be based in Port Jefferson, New York, will play a key role in supporting our partnership's offshore wind projects. Just a few days ago, Eversource in Orsted were joined by Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee to announce the start of construction of our advanced foundation components for our Revolution Wind Project. This $100-plus million investment is creating more than 125 union jobs for Rhode Island's skilled tradesmen and women and represents the largest supply chain commitment in Rhode Island yet. Also last week, we announced with Orsted our single largest New York offshore wind industry supply chain contract with the selection of Long Island-based contractor Hogland Energy. This contract with Hogland will create more than 400 jobs for New York union workers to install the underground duct bank system for Sunrise Wind's onshore transmission line in Brookhaven on Long Island. That contract helped raise the percentage of costs locked in for our three projects to approximately 92%. You will see this reflected on our offshore wind project updates on slide four. You'll notice that some of the spend has been moved from 2023 into 2024, which John will touch on in his remarks. This change does not impact the in-service dates for our projects, as you can also see here on slide four. We continue to make progress on the strategic review of our offshore wind investment. We have shortlisted final interested parties in both our three offshore wind projects in nearly 175,000 acres. of uncommitted lease areas that are part of our 50-50 joint venture with Orsted. We are making progress through extensive due diligence and continue to expect updates on an outcome of the strategic review later this quarter. Although offshore wind may not be a right fit for our portfolio of regulated T&D assets, we are big believers in the essential role offshore wind will play in bringing much needed clean energy to the New England region in lessening our reliance on natural gas for power generation. Eversource is well positioned to be the leading electric infrastructure provider connecting this clean energy supply to New England's load centers. We remain focused on advancing our numerous climate initiatives in support of our region's efforts to significantly reduce carbon emissions. We continue to make progress in facilitating solar development in Massachusetts through our distributed energy resources investments at NSTAR Electric. After receiving DPU approval late last year for the first cluster of six capital investment projects, regulatory proceedings for the remaining five clusters are now complete. We expect Massachusetts regulators to issue final orders on those five clusters sometime this summer, This innovative model put in place by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities with full participation of Eversource will alleviate significant distributed energy development roadblocks, and it's expected to lead to the addition of up to 1,000 megawatts of new solar energy capacity in Massachusetts. Turning to slide five, design work on our geothermal Network project in Framingham, Massachusetts is now complete and construction proposals are being evaluated. We expect to commence operation in time for the 2023 winter heating season. If the pilot is determined to be successful, we intend to make it available as a clean energy solution for customers. Last, I'd like to provide a very positive update on the trajectory of customer builds. While the mile went to mitigate the impact on bills as a result of lower consumption, it also contributed to a significant decline in natural gas prices that is currently being reflected in natural gas customer bills. Natural gas prices also help drive electric generation supply rates in New England, and electric supply rates are expected to decline significantly in July for customers on basic or default service in Connecticut and in Massachusetts. We will file proposed tariffs with regulators later this month. This will be very welcome relief for customers following the unprecedented spike we saw in electric bills in January. Thank you again for your time. I will now turn the call over to John Marrera.