Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc.

good afternoon thank you for attending today's full year and q4 2021 hawaiian industries incorporated earnings conference call my name is amber and i will be your 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 would like to ask a question please press star 1 on your telephone keypad at any time i would now like to pass the conference over to our host julie smolinski Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Sustainability with Hawaiian Electric Incorporated. Julie, please proceed.

Thank you, Amber. Welcome, everyone, to HEI's full year and fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. Our press release and the presentation we'll review on this call are available in the Investor Relations section of our website. During today's call, we'll be using certain non-GAAP financial measures to describe our operating performance. Our presentation contains reconciliations of these measures to the equivalent GAAP measures. As a reminder, forward-looking statements will be made on today's call. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations can be found in our presentation, our SEC filings, and in the investor relations section of our website. Now, Scott Hsu, HEI President and CEO, will begin with his remarks. Scott Hsu, HEI President and CEO, will begin with his remarks.

Aloha, everyone, and mahalo, or thank you for joining us today. As you know, Connie Lau retired as HEI CEO at year end. I'm very excited to build on the strong foundation Connie handed to me and to take HEI forward with the help of our leadership team. With me on today's call are Greg Hazelton, HEI Executive Vice President and CFO, who will discuss our financial performance and earnings guidance. Shelley Kimura, who became Hawaiian Electric President and CEO on January 1st of this year, and Tara Nishi, who became American Savings Bank President and CEO last May, and other members of senior management. 2021 was a year of strong achievement for our companies, for the customers who rely on us, for our communities, and for the long-term health of our state. On the financial front, consolidated net income and earnings per share each rose 24% to $246 million in net income and earnings per share of $2.25. We exceeded the high end of our latest guidance range. Hawaiian Electric's hard work on cost efficiencies enabled us to deliver strong financial results for the utility while providing significant customer savings and advancing our ambitious Climate Change Action Plan. Improved credit quality and Hawaii's recovering economy drove bank earnings above initial expectations as we were able to release reserves for unrealized credit losses, resulting in significant negative provision for the year. Coupled with net interest income growth from earning asset expansion and PPP fees, as well as strong execution on its digital transformation, our bank had a good year. Last week, we raised our annual dividend for the fourth year in a row. At the utility, we made significant progress on our 2021 to 2025 strategic plan, which centers on three pillars, creating customer value, strengthening our foundation, and building a stronger Hawaii. We created customer value on several fronts in 2021. We delivered $8 million in customer savings from cost efficiencies and supported customers who faced financial challenges during the pandemic. We did this through bill relief programs, including a $2 million bill credit program, extended and deferred payment plans, and facilitating customer use of government assistance. We also launched programs giving customers more options to benefit from the clean energy transition, including Battery Bonus to incentivize customer-owned energy storage, and Quick Connect to enable customers to interconnect solar and battery systems to the grid faster. This work also helped us earn a financial award under our Interconnection Experience Performance Incentive, a win-win-win for customers, the fight against climate change, and the company. We've worked on strengthening our foundation for a while, including working with the Public Utilities Commission and stakeholders to create the new performance-based regulation, or PBR framework, which we successfully transitioned to in June. Our focus now is on continued execution under PBR to advance operational efficiencies and customer and clean energy initiatives. Our workforce and culture, which are critical to our success, were also a focus in 2021. We implemented new programs for leadership development, continued to promote equity and inclusion within our diverse employee base, and successfully concluded negotiations with our union leading to ratification of a new three-year contract. All of this supports our work to build a stronger Hawaii. In 2021, we showed continued climate leadership, committing to reduce carbon emissions from power generation 70% by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, and to reach net zero or better by 2045. We achieved a renewable portfolio standard of 38.4%, putting us well ahead of schedule to reach Hawaii's statutory goal of 40% RPS by 2030. And with our customers, we reached one gigawatt of installed solar capacity, mostly customer owned. That's a major milestone considering the peak load of our five island system is about 1.6 gigawatts. We made great strides in our electrification of transportation strategy as well, which is crucial to decarbonizing our economy and reducing the per unit cost of energy for customers. Our eBus Make Ready and commercial EV charging rate pilot programs have now been approved, and we filed an application to dramatically expand our public EV charging network. We'll build on this momentum in 2022. We will eliminate coal in Hawaii this fall when the AES coal plant contract expires. and we have a diverse portfolio of measures to support reliability when that happens. We're working with developers, state and county government, and community members to move renewable energy and storage projects forward as quickly as possible. Like others in the industry, we've seen some delays due to global supply chain dynamics and inflationary conditions. We're committed to our goals and you'll see us continue to procure additional clean energy resources in the future to meet them. In 2022, we remain focused on operating within the PBR framework with an ongoing emphasis on cost efficiency. We'll continue to work collaboratively with the PUC and key stakeholders in the ongoing process to develop additional performance incentive mechanisms. and will soon be filing a significant resilience strategy that will seek cost recovery for under the Exceptional Project Recovery Mechanism, or EPRM. American Savings Bank has performed very well through the pandemic, demonstrating the value of its conservative management approach, good credit quality, and low-cost funding base. It continues to produce solid earnings that provide efficient capital to support a consolidated investment-grade capital structure and growing dividends to HEI shareholders. The bank's solid 2021 financial performance was matched with robust execution on a number of strategies and initiatives. Customers' reliance on online and other self-service options grew dramatically through the pandemic. We aggressively accelerated our anytime-anywhere banking transition to meet their needs. In 2021, we executed on several projects to expand customer options and our capabilities, including completing our ATM refleet, opening four new digital centres, the first of their kind in Hawaii, and implementing more online and remote functionality. We also implemented the second and third rounds of Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, loans, achieved mortgage production volume of $1.2 billion, on par with our record in 2020, and grew our commercial real estate loan portfolio, all while continuing to support our community and local economy. As Greg will discuss further, in 2022, we expect a reset of bank earnings after the last two pandemic years, which created some volatility with respect to reserves for credit losses. We expect provision for credit losses to resume in 2022 with anticipated growth in loans. The outlook for Fed rate increases is promising and is expected to benefit our margin as our balance sheet is asset sensitive. In 2022, the bank will continue to focus on its digital transformation to position itself to compete and grow in the future. I'll hand it off to Greg now, who will review our financial results and earnings guidance. Thank you, Scott.