Entergy Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Interdict Corporation second quarter 2021 earnings release conference call. At this time, all 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 will need to press star 1 in your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star then 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Bill Abler, Vice President and Vexster Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. We will begin today with comments from Entergy's Chairman and CEO, Leo Denault, and then Drew Marsh, our CFO, will review results. In an effort to accommodate everyone who has questions, we request that each person ask no more than one question and one follow-up. In today's call, management will make certain forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to a number of factors which are set forth in our earnings release, our slide presentation, and our SEC filings. Entergy does not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Management will also discuss non-GAAP financial information. Reconciliations to the applicable GAAP measures are included in today's press release and slide presentation. both of which can be found on the investor relations section of our website. And now I will turn the call over to Leo.

Thank you, Bill, and good morning, everyone. I'm happy to report another solid quarter. Our adjusted earnings were $1.34 per share, including a negative impact from milder than normal weather. The underlying utility performance was strong, and our team successfully executed on multiple deliverables across the business. Our execution not only this year, but over the last several years has resulted in strong growth and lower risk. This in turn has provided us more financial flexibility, which was most recently recognized by Moody's. The result is enhanced ability to manage risk and lower equity needs to fund our growth. The bottom line is we are on track to deliver on our commitments, including our financial results. We have a clear line of sight to achieving our 2021 guidance, as well as our longer-term financial outlooks, and with the added financial flexibility from our lower business risk profile, we expect to be in the top half of those ranges. Our three-year, $12 billion capital plan is the foundation. It is designed to deliver important benefits to our customers and will result in 5% to 7% adjusted EPS and dividend growth. Our capital investments will improve customer outcomes along several dimensions, including reliability, resiliency, affordability, and sustainability. Our plan also supports our expectation of at least 5,000 megawatts of renewables by 2030, delivering on our environmental stewardship commitments. There is a great deal of certainty around the execution of our plan as more than 90% of our investments today are tied to enhancing technology across our system to improve reliability and resiliency. 90% of our investments will be recovered through efficient and timely regulatory mechanisms, such as FRPs and riders, and 90% of these investments are ready for execution from a regulatory standpoint. Additionally, we are able to manage our costs to provide certainty to our stakeholders, through both our flex spending program and continuous improvement. These initiatives allow us to manage our customers' bills and keep them affordable while also providing steady, predictable growth in earnings and dividends for our owners. We have consistently maintained rates among the lowest in the country, and we have achieved 7 percent compound annual growth in adjusted EPS for 2016 to 2020. Our accomplishments so far this year keep us firmly on the path to meet our objectives. One important objective is increasing our renewable and clean energy resources. To that end, Entergy Texas began the process to seek approval to construct the Orange County Advanced Power Station, a large-scale hydrogen-capable facility that represents a significant milestone in our strategy to provide clean energy that also supports reliability. We received approval from the Arkansas Commission for the Walnut Bend Solar Project. We will own this 100 megawatt facility, which is expected to be placed in service in 2022. It will provide clean energy for our customers in Arkansas and possibly provide capacity under a green tariff. We recently filed our proposed green promise tariff in Arkansas. to allow for the sale of designated renewable energy to interested customers. Many customers have expressed interest in such an offer, and in fact, customers had input into the development of the proposal. We have received signed non-binding letters of interest from 20 customers, including Walmart, a global technology company, a major retail pharmacy company, nearly a dozen hospitals or hospital networks, an Arkansas university, and a number of large manufacturing customers. Our customers are telling us what they want and we're listening. We're working to bring them offerings such as Green Promise to help them achieve their sustainability goals. We also continue to make progress on our annual FRPs, which provide for timely recovery of investments that benefit customers. Entergy Mississippi's FRP was approved and the full rates are in effect. And we submitted our annual filings in three jurisdictions, Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Orleans. Many of you are interested in our storm recovery filings and they remain on track. Legislation to support off balance sheet securitization passed in Louisiana and Texas, and we expect to receive proceeds by mid 2022. In fact, Entergy Louisiana filed its request for securitization this past Friday. As I've mentioned before, building greater resiliency into our system is an ongoing focus. Some of our resiliency improvements have been occurring as normal course of business as we replace aging transmission and distribution infrastructure with assets designed the latest standards and able to handle higher wind loading or flood levels. At times, these resiliency improvements are accelerated, like when we build back better after a major storm. However, We won't wait for another storm to continue to strengthen our system. We're conducting a review of our critical infrastructure. We are developing long-term plans to continue this progress on the path to greater resiliency. Customer affordability continues to be a cornerstone of our plan. We're starting at a great place, and looking ahead, even after accounting for storm recovery, we will still expect our rates to be well below the national average. And the annual growth rate for average bills from 2021 to 2024 is slightly above 2%. Bottom line, so we have a solid plan with significant certainty and a strong growth outlook. We consistently execute on our key deliverables that underlie our commitments. We have a proven track record of delivering on those commitments. We're confident that we will be successful, but we're not stopping there. we aspire to do even better. Over the last several years, we've been highlighting the opportunity we see in customer solutions. We've begun to commercialize some of those solutions, such as power through, our backup generator solution, and shore power, the electrification of ships while in ports. We're also developing other products to further electrification of industrial processes to accelerate the development of EV infrastructure. We're expanding our product and service offerings to help our CNI customers meet their sustainability objectives. We're actively working to reduce our carbon emissions, and that will help all of our customers reduce their Scope 2 emissions. To further support our customers' aggressive decarbonization goals, we will leverage green tariffs to provide carbon-free resources to further reduce their Scope 2 emissions. As you all know, Entergy has a large industrial base with about 40% of our demand coming from industrial customers. Some have viewed this as a risk, but we disagree. We see continued opportunity in this sector, and here's why. Our industrial customers are efficient, diverse producers with infrastructure and labor competitive advantages. Our Gulf Coast refineries produce a wide variety of feedstocks and finished products highly integrated into the value chain. This is not going away. Even as products like cars evolve toward more sustainable options, the components of these products will still be needed. For example, cars and trucks will still have tires, frames, and dashboards, all things created from feedstocks produced by Entergy's industrial customers. Additionally, in a carbon-constrained world, we see opportunity for additional growth and demand from our industrial customers. We talked about green tariffs as one way to help them meet sustainability goals, but that only addresses Scope 2 emissions that come from their power purchases. The lion's share of our industrial carbon emissions come from Scope 1 emissions from fossil fuels that they use on site. Again, we're developing ways to help customers reduce their Scope 1 emissions through electrification, including electrification with green options. Substantial opportunity exists for us to help them electrify processes such as compression for LNG or product pipelines, cogeneration, replacing a fossil fuel process with an electric alternative, and process heat to convert on-site boilers to electric heating. And as our customers adopt carbon capture utilization and storage, we can provide green energy to maximize the benefit of that technology. As we discussed, Entergy's geographic positioning in the heart of hydrogen producers, pipelines, storage, and consumers represents another unique opportunity. We have the ability to help our hydrogen customers, both producers and consumers, convert to carbon-friendly hydrogen alternatives. The bottom line is that we believe our large industrial base gives Entergy a unique advantage and growth opportunity in a rapidly decarbonizing world. Turning to our efforts around hydrogen, which we see as a critical part of a clean energy future, we are working with Mitsubishi Power to advance technologies and expertise in hydrogen for the benefit of our customers. Part of our collaboration involves the hydrogen-capable Orange County Advanced Power Station, which I mentioned earlier. We're also continuing our work on Montgomery County Innovation Center, a 25-megawatt electrolysis facility to demonstrate green and clean hydrogen production capabilities. Finally, we recently participated in the DOE's Hydrogen Energy Earth Shots Initiative. Our goal is to secure federal funding to help jumpstart hydrogen demonstration projects in our region in a matter that mitigates impacts on our customers' bills. We expect to see a request for proposal notice from the DOE later this year or early next year. At Entregy, we have a solid strategy to achieve our objectives. We are an industry leader in sustainability. We have one of the cleanest large-scale generation fleets in the countries, and we're working to make it even cleaner. We have a robust capital plan to meet our customers' evolving needs. Our low rates position us well. We're committed to continuous improvement for the benefit of our stakeholders. We have a clear line of sight to 5% to 7% earnings and dividend growth, and we have a unique advantage with our customer base to provide sustainability solutions that could result and incremental sales growth. Even with our excellent positioning today, our goal is to do more. These are exciting times, and we're working to create a very bright future for our company. I will now turn the call over to Drew, who will review our financial results for the quarter, as well as our outlooks.