FirstEnergy Corp.

Greetings, and welcome to the First Energy Corp. Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Irene Prezel, Vice President, Investor Relations for First Energy Corp. Thank you, Ms. Prezell. You may begin.

Good morning, and welcome to our third quarter earnings call. Today we will make various forward-looking statements regarding revenues, earnings, performance, strategies, prospects, and other matters. These statements are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by these statements can be found on the investor section of our website under the earnings information link and in our SEC filing. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures, the presentation that supports today's discussion, and other detailed information about the quarter can be found in the strategic and financial highlights document on the investor section of our website. We'll begin today's call with presentations from Steve Straw, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and John Taylor, our Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Strategy. Several other executives will be available for the Q&A session. Now I'll turn the call over to Steve.

Thank you, Irene. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. We had another strong quarter, and I'm excited to talk to you about our progress on many different fronts. Yesterday, we reported third quarter 2021 GAAP earnings of 85 cents per share. Our operating earnings were 82 cents per share, which is above the top end of our guidance range. Our customer-focused strategies, positive mix of weather-adjusted load, great operational performance, and financial discipline continue to drive solid results. Furthermore, I'm proud of our progress to resolve important legacy issues and strengthen all aspects of our company. In Ohio, we continue to take a collaborative approach and we're engaged in settlement discussions with a broad range of parties to resolve several of our pending cases before the PUCO. Our meetings continue to be productive and we're making good progress. We are also making progress on the Ohio corporate separation, DMR, and DCR audits. The corporate separation audit report was filed on September 13th and showed no findings of major noncompliance. The expanded DCR audit report is due by November 19th, and we continue to work through the DMR audit, which is now due on December 16th. Since our last earnings call, we've taken additional steps to strengthen our compliance program and instill a culture focused on ethics, integrity, and accountability across our organization. These include a new compliance and ethics program charter and policies in multiple areas. Instructor-led business code of conduct awareness training for senior leadership and individuals with significant roles in our control environment, training on the concepts of our new internal code of conduct for everyone in leadership, with training for all employees planned in the first quarter of 2022, and publishing our new corporate engagement report. Additionally, we have started to develop a new integrated risk management platform to enhance our ethics and compliance, audit, and risk functions. The new tool will help us streamline case management of ethics and compliance concerns, manage the lifecycle of corporate policies, assess and respond to risks, and report on our compliance with internal controls and regulatory requirements across the organization. As we've discussed, over the last 12 months, our board and management team acted quickly and decisively, adding additional independent board members, making changes in our management structure, establishing effective controls, reinforcing our culture change, and building a best in class ethics and compliance program. Our relentless focus in these areas resulted in remediation of the material weakness in internal controls associated with our tone at the top. While this is an important step, we continue driving these cultural changes and keeping compliance and integrity at the center of everything we do. We are working every day to continue rebuilding stakeholder trust and confidence in First Energy. and to ensure that our employees can be proud of our company and our mission. Yesterday, we announced another key hire to enhance our leadership team. Camilo Serna will join First Energy on November 8th as our new Vice President of Rates and Regulatory Affairs. Camilo brings a great depth of experience developing and implementing state and federal regulatory strategies. His experience will be invaluable as we build a smarter electric grid and support the transition to a cleaner energy future. We continue taking steps to achieve these goals. For example, last month JCP&L submitted a proposal to PJM and the New Jersey BPU for transmission investments that would connect clean energy generated from the state's offshore wind farms to the power grid, while minimizing the impact on the environment and communities. We expect a decision on this proposal, which supports the clean energy investments driven by the New Jersey Energy Master Plan in the second half of 2022. In West Virginia, we recognize our responsibility to operate our two regulated fossil plants for the benefit of our customers in the state. Later this year, we intend to file an affluent limitation guideline or ELG plan that calls for additional capital expenditures at the two plants to comply with environmental rules and to ensure that they can continue to operate beyond 2028. At the same time, we intend to begin discussing with stakeholders our plans for a timely clean energy transition. As a part of that transition, later this year we plan to file with the West Virginia Public Service Commission for 50 megawatts of utility scale solar generation. Our wind connection and solar proposals support core components of our climate strategy. building a more climate resilient energy system that meets our customer's changing needs, enables the transition to a carbon neutral economy, and powers a sustainable and prosperous future for our stakeholders. In other recent regulatory activity, this month our ATSI transmission subsidiary reached a settlement with parties to a FERC proceeding that will address legacy issues associated with ATSI's move from MISO to PJM in 2011 and provide for partial recovery of the MISO transmission project costs that will be allocated to ATSI in the future. It's an exciting time for our company. We have a robust long-term pipeline to modernize our transmission network and we plan to continue embracing renewables. In our distribution business, we're incorporating emerging smart technologies and building a technologically advanced distribution platform. And our industry will play a key role in the infrastructure build-out for electric vehicles, battery storage, and other technologies. We're pleased with our strong performance through the first nine months of 2021. As we close out the year, We are raising and narrowing our operating earnings guidance from $2.40 to $2.60 per share to $2.55 to $2.65 per share. The midpoint of this range represents a 9% increase over 2020 operating earnings results. Finally, I can't pass the call over to John without acknowledging that it's been one year since I stepped into my leadership role under very sobering circumstances. It's been a challenging year on many fronts, and I want to publicly thank our employees for their hard work and unwavering dedication to our customers. I continue to be impressed by the grit and the resilience of the entire team. Together, We are building positive, sustainable momentum and creating a new First Energy that is a forward-thinking and industry-leading company. Thank you for your attention this morning. Now, John will provide a review of third quarter results and a financial update.