Northwest Natural Holding Company

Good day and welcome to the Northwest Natural Holding Company fourth quarter 2020 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 Nikki Sparley, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Nikki Sparley Thank you, Tom. Good morning and welcome to our fourth quarter 2020 earnings call. As a reminder, some things that will be said this morning contain forward-looking statements. They are based on management's assumptions, which may or may not occur. In addition, some of our comments today reference non-GAAP adjusted measures. For a complete reconciliation of these measures and other cautionary statements, please refer to the language and reconciliation at the end of our press release. We expect to file our 10-K later today. As mentioned, this teleconference is being recorded and will be available on our website following the call. Please note these calls are designed for the financial community If you are an investor and have additional questions after the call, please contact me directly at 503-721-2530. News media may contact Melissa Moore at 503-220-2436. Speaking this morning are David Anderson, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Frank Burkhartsmeyer, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. David and Frank have prepared remarks and then we'll be available along with other members of our executive team to answer your questions. With that, I will turn it over to David.

Well, thanks, Nikki, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to our 2020 year-end call. Well, years come and go, but 2020, as we all know, was unforgettable. The pandemic affected many aspects of our daily lives and I'm proud of the way our employees pulled together to provide our customers with superior service. We successfully navigated a number of challenges while still achieving our key financial and operational goals. We reported net income from continuing operations of $2.30 per share for 2020. That's driven by solid performance at the gas utility and a strong contribution from our new platform of water utilities. On the gas operations front, our field crews successfully handled everything from wildfires to restoring service in several towns over Christmas to navigating COVID, social unrest, etc. Just a few weeks ago, our employees in the natural gas system once again rose to the occasion and provided reliable service through an extreme weather event. Our storage facilities and overall hedge positions worked to mitigate the amount of gas purchased on the spot market and help to minimize the impact to our customers' bills. This was incredibly important as prices, as everybody knows, spiked across the country from the widespread cold snap. Our balance sheet remains strong with ample liquidity. In 2020, we also executed on one of the largest capital programs in the company's history aimed at supporting reliability. We continued to operate one of the most modern and tightest systems in the nation, a system that has no cast iron and no bare steel. In 2020, we invested over $270 million in our natural gas infrastructure. From an economic perspective, 2020 was truly unprecedented. Prior to the pandemic, we had a very fundamentally sound, sustainable, growing economy with record low unemployment both nationally and in our service territories. We continue to see economic recovery and steady growth in several important areas. Portland's unemployment rate now is 6.1% in December, essentially matching the national rate. That's down from a 14.9% high in April. Single family housing activity remains strong. In the Portland metro region, home sales were up 8.3% from 2019 with price growth of about 12%. And new single family permits issued last year were up 4% compared to 2019 levels. At Northwest Natural, we continue to see good customer growth. New construction plus conversions translated into connecting over 13,000 meters during the last 12 months into December 31st. Our overall customer growth rate as a result was 1.5% for the same period based on this strong single-family home construction, partially offset by the loss of some commercial customers due to the pandemic.