NRG Energy, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the NRG Inc. Second Quarter 2022 Earnings 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 the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to today's speaker, Kevin Cole, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Felicia. Good morning and welcome to NRG Energy's second quarter 2022 earnings call. This morning's call will be 45 minutes in length and is being broadcast live over the phone via webcast. which can be located in the investor section of our website at www.nrg.com under Presentations and Webcasts. Please note that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements, which are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. Actual results may differ materially. We urge everyone to review the safe harbor in today's presentation, as well as the risk factors in our SEC filings. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of future events, except as required by law. In addition, we will refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. For information regarding our non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to today's presentation. And with that, I now turn the call over to Mauricio Gutierrez, NRG's President and CEO. Thank you, Kevin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for your interest in NRG. I'm joined this morning by Alberto Fornaro, Chief Financial Officer. Also on the call and available for questions, we have Elizabeth Killinger, Head of Home Raul Gaudet, head of business and market operations, and Chris Moser, head of competitive markets and policy. I'd like to start with the three key takeaways of today's presentation on slide four. We are maintaining our financial guidance ranges as we continue to navigate through volatile market conditions and are increasing our capital available for allocation by $140 million. We continue to make good progress in achieving our strategic growth priorities, particularly on direct energy integration. And finally, our share repurchase program continues with approximately $600 million in remaining capacity to be executed this year. Moving to the second quarter financial and operational results on slide five, we delivered $358 million of adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter. 70% of the difference compared to last year are items that we previously identified, including asset sales and transitory items. The remaining variance is primarily driven by the forced outage of our 610 megawatt cold unit at the WA Parish Facility. This outage began on May 9 and is expected to be back for summer operation next year. The unit is covered by both business interruption and property damage insurance. I am pleased to report that we once again achieved top decile safety performance for the quarter and that we published our 12th sustainability report, a testament to our commitment to transparency and accountability. We also continue to realize strong customer retention, which I will discuss in more detail shortly. We continue to make progress on our five key strategic priorities, integrate direct energy perfect our integrated platform by better matching retail with supply, grow our core electricity and natural gas businesses, integrate adjacent products and services that will allow us to expand margins and terms from our customers, and return capital to our shareholders. I'd like to give you a quick update on those priorities. The direct energy integration is going well. And we are on track to achieve our run rate synergies of $300 million by the end of 2023. In late June, we received ERCIP securitization proceeds related to winter, storm, and URI in line with our expectations. We have continued to make progress on our mitigation efforts and now expect an additional $80 million in recovery, bringing our total mitigation efforts to 70% of the original impact. We continue to optimize our supply portfolio through monetization of the Watson Generation Facility in California and retirements of fossil assets in PJM. We have also expanded our Capital Light PPA strategy to focus on energy storage and quick-start natural gas generation. I expect PPA market conditions to improve into year-end, especially if the proposed Inflation Reduction Act is passed. Our retail brands continue to perform well with a strong customer count, retention metrics, and an unmatched ability to generate insights on price elasticity. We remain focused on expanding our product offerings and improving our digital customer experience. I am proud that one of our flagship brands, Reliant Energy, was also recognized as the best electricity company in Houston, our hometown. Last quarter, I spoke about Goal Zero, a resilience and battery storage business, and the significant opportunity it represents given growing grid instability and extreme weather events. During the quarter, we launched a marketing campaign in one of its core markets, California, to increase awareness for the product and brand with very strong results. As a result of this targeted campaign, Web traffic increased 400%, and the average order increased by almost a third. We continue to make progress in other areas, but remain keenly focused on pacing our investments as we navigate ongoing supply chain constraints and recessionary environments. Finally, we are maintaining our financial guidance range, but due to the impact of the WA Parish Unidate outage, we're currently trending towards the bottom end. We have been focused on taking steps like one-time cost savings and incremental direct energy synergies to improve our results. Alberto will provide details on these and the additional capital available for allocation. Turning to slide six for our market review in Texas, ERCOT experienced record heat during the quarter, 32% above the 10-year average, resulting in record peak demand. However, real-time power prices were mixed versus what the forward indicated, driven primarily by the performance of renewable energy on any given day. As we look into the summer, we expect prices to remain volatile and highly dependent on renewable performance. Turning to the right-hand side of the slide, beginning with retail, we saw strong performance through the quarter, with retention 5% ahead of expectations and customer count increasing 1.2%. We also extended term length of customer offers, which enables meal management and improves margin predictability. This occurred while consumers grappled with inflation, only further demonstrating the resilience of our retail brands and pricing strategy. On supply, The unplanned outage at WA Parish Unit 8 impacted performance. While there is an earnings recognition delay even the timeline to receive business interruption insurance proceeds, insurance is an effective tool to mitigate this risk. Beyond that, we have seen strong operational performance from our fleet due to our expanded spring outage maintenance plan and opportunistic maintenance outages. that best positions are fleet to perform through these extreme and extended summer conditions. Finally, our balance hedging strategy that uses both own generation and third-party contracts further de-risks our portfolio through optimizing operational versus counterparty risk, which are important attributes through current market conditions. now moving to slide seven just like we did last quarter on goal zero today i want to focus on one area of growth that is complementary to our core offerings and presents an exciting opportunity heating and cooling or hvac maintenance and installation airtron is our home services hvac company which was acquired as part of direct energy it represents a complementary offering to our existing core products as HVAC systems use the most energy of any single home appliance, responsible for up to 50% of a home energy consumption. The HVAC industry, with a total US addressable market of $100 billion, is highly fragmented and traditionally served by local providers with limited scope and reach. In contrast, Ertron operates in nine states, which represent a $10 billion serviceable market, including Texas, where they hold leadership positions in both Houston and Dallas, with a single recognizable brand and scale that is unmatched. Combined with our existing consumer services platform, we can grow both within our existing customer base and through expansion into new territories creating a significant and compelling opportunity. In the last three years, Ertron has grown revenues 11% per year to $450 million, with gross margins of 30% or more. The revenues come from residential new construction, services and maintenance, as well as direct-to-consumer home replacement. Our early insights suggest that there is significant growth potential in direct-to-consumer home replacement, given energy efficiency initiatives and extreme weather that shortens the lifetime of HVAC systems. The ability to leverage our existing consumer base and sales channels to augment the direct-to-consumers growth while cross-selling with our electricity and gas customers is precisely the type of value opportunity that increases margin and retention that we highlighted during our investor day. I look forward to providing you updates on their progress as we integrate these solutions closer with our core energy offerings. So with that, I will pass it over to Alberto for the financial review.