NextEra Energy, Inc.

Good day, and welcome to the NextEra Energy and NextEra Energy Partners LP second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mark Eidelman, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Danielle. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our second quarter 2024 Combined Financial Results conference call for NextEra Energy and NextEra Energy Partners. With me this morning are John Ketchum, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of NextEra Energy. Brian Bolster, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of NextEra Energy, Rebecca Chiava, President and Chief Executive Officer of NextEra Energy Resources, and Mark Hickson, Executive Vice President of NextEra Energy, all of whom are also officers of NextEra Energy Partners, as well as Armando Pimentel, President and Chief Executive Officer of Florida Power and Light Company. John will start with opening remarks, and then Brian will provide an overview of our results. Our executive team will then be available to answer your questions. We will be making forward-looking statements during this call based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from our forward-looking statements if any of our key assumptions are incorrect or because of other factors discussed in today's earnings news release and the comments made during this conference call and the risk factors section of the company presentation or in our latest reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. each of which can be found on our website, www.NextEraEnergy.com and www.NextEraEnergyPartners.com. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. Today's presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. You should refer to the information contained in the slides accompanying today's presentation for definitional information and reconciliations of historical non-GAAP measures to the closest GAAP financial measure. With that, I'll turn the call over to John.

Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. NextEra Energy delivered strong second quarter results with adjusted earnings per share increasing more than 9% year-over-year. In addition, through the first six months of the year, our adjusted earnings per share has increased 9.4% year-over-year. The continued strong financial and operational performance at both FPL and and energy resources position our company well to meet its overall objectives for the year. At FPL, we have continued to deliver for our customers on multiple fronts since the start of our most recent rate settlement in 2022. We are making smart capital investments in low-cost solar generation and battery storage, which are continuing to reduce our overall fuel costs and combined with generation modernizations, have saved customers nearly $16 billion since 2001. We are delivering best-in-class non-fuel O&M, where we're 70 percent better than the national average, saving our customers $3 billion every year compared to the average utility. A big driver of our outperformance has been our team and culture of continuous improvement and productivity. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than through our annual company-wide initiative to reimagine everything that we do, which we call Project Velocity. This year, we identified a record $460 million of run rate cost savings opportunities through 2027, part of which benefit FPL and its customers. By finding opportunities to take costs out of the business and making smart capital investments to reduce its fuel costs, FPL has kept residential bills nearly 40% below the national average and by far the lowest among all of the Florida investor-owned utilities. FPL's reliability also ranks among the best in the industry, where we are 66% better than the national average and the number of minutes a customer's power is interrupted per year. I'm most proud of the fact we continue to deliver on our customer value proposition during a period of unprecedented growth in Florida. Florida continues to be one of the fastest growing states in the U.S., with roughly 1,000 people moving to Florida every day. And it's not just the residential sector. We're seeing the commercial and industrial sector growing, too. As a result of this accelerated growth, FPL's regulatory capital employed has grown at a 12 percent compound annual growth rate since the beginning of 2022, compared against an estimated 9 percent compound annual growth rate that was originally anticipated for the four-year settlement period. We have shouldered this additional growth through our reserve amortization mechanism. which enables FPL to absorb the cost for these capital investments without increasing customer bills in the interim. While these efforts have helped us to meet customer growth and deliver for our Florida customers, our reserve amortization mechanism has been utilized faster than expected. FPL fully expects to seek recovery of these increased expenditures in its rate case filing next year. FPL ended the second quarter with a remaining reserve amortization balance of $586 million, which is expected to be sufficient to support FPL's capital investment plan and its ability to earn an 11.4% regulatory ROE this year and next. An 11.4% regulatory ROE is expected to have a six-cent EPS impact in each of 2024 and 2025. which has already been taken into account in our financial expectations. And we will be disappointed if we are unable to deliver financial results at or near the top of our adjusted earning per share expectation ranges each year through 2027 at NextEra Energy. We expect to continue to demonstrate the benefits and protections that the reserve amortization mechanism provides customers when we file our rate case next year. Our vision is for FPL to be the best utility franchise in the country by doubling down on what we do best, delivering low bills and high reliability for our customers by making smart capital investments and being an industry leader on cost. These attributes are important to our customers and regulators, and they are important to us. We look forward to continuing to deliver on what we believe is an outstanding customer value proposition at FPL. Growth is not only occurring inside Florida, but outside Florida as well. At Energy Resources, we are benefiting from two types of demand, replacement cycle and growth cycle demand. With regard to the former, we have long been a beneficiary of a replacement cycle where higher cost, less efficient generation has been retired in favor of low-cost renewables and battery storage. We expect this to continue, and while replacement cycle demand has been around for a long time, growth cycle demand is new. With the exception of a few states such as Florida, power demand from new growth has been static in our industry for decades. That's changing as power demand is projected to grow four times faster over the next two decades compared to the prior two. That growth is being driven by demand across multiple sectors, which is expected to create a long-term opportunity for fast-to-deploy, low-cost generation. As we highlighted at our investor conference, we expect the demand for new renewables to triple over the next seven years versus the prior seven to help meet this increased power demand. Energy resources couldn't be better positioned. As it has a 300-gigawatt pipeline, half of which is in the interconnection queue process, or is already interconnection ready. Our scale, experience, and technology, coupled with our ability to build new transmission where required, enable us to meet the growing demands of our power and commercial and industrial customer base. Underpinning these competitive advantages are our decades of data, analytical capabilities, and experience with system operators and relationships with utilities that position us well to get the power to where it needs to go. Our continued ability to drive origination results speaks for itself. Energy Resources added over 3,000 megawatts of new renewables and storage projects to the backlog this quarter, 860 megawatts of which come from agreements with Google to meet their data center power demand. This marks our second best origination quarter ever. These results support our belief that the bulk of the growth demand will be met by a combination of new renewables and battery storage. The importance of renewables and storage to help meet our economy's growing demand for power has never been more evident. As data center growth accelerates to facilitate our economy's shift to artificial intelligence, And as we continue to re-domesticate and electrify across multiple sectors, our nation must embrace an all of the above strategy to meet increasing electric demand. Renewables and storage are energy independent as they rely on American wind and sunshine. They also are extremely fast to deploy compared to alternative forms of generation, making them vital to our country's success going forward. And importantly, the country has stood up a significant domestic industry to support their growth, which is driving investment in factories and is creating good-paying jobs and a tax base that is revitalizing rural communities across America. As customers increasingly demand smart, clean energy solutions, we are the company with experience in every part of the energy value chain and are uniquely positioned to help them make the right decisions for their business. As the owner and operator of a large natural gas-fired fleet in Florida, we are also conscious of the importance of natural gas-fired generation as a bridge fuel. Yet, we also are well aware of the realities of new-build gas-fired generation. It's more expensive in most states, is subject to fuel price volatility, and takes considerable time to deploy given the need to get gas delivered to the generating unit and the three- to four-year waiting period for gas turbines. Low-cost, fast-to-deploy renewables help keep power prices down, making our economy more competitive globally. Ultimately, our country needs all forms of energy as we move forward, and the future has never been brighter for the power generation sector as a whole and renewables in particular. As I've been saying, NextEra Energy was built for this moment, and our future outlook has never been stronger. Our strategic focus is to deliver low-cost clean energy and storage for our customers, both inside and outside Florida, while building new transmission where required to support new generation. We have the playbook and the platform to win in any environment, and most importantly, We have the team. Our competitive advantages continue to grow every day, providing industry differentiation that is over two decades in the making and difficult to replicate. And I firmly believe we will continue to expand that strategic distance, creating value for customers and shareholders. Nobody is better positioned to meet the demands of the energy customer of tomorrow than NextEra Energy, and I wouldn't trade our opportunity set with anyone. With that, I will turn the call over to Brian to cover the detailed results beginning with FPL.