OGE Energy Corp

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the OGE Energy Corp first quarter 2023 earnings conference 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 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jason Bailey, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Jason.

Thank you, Hope, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to the call. With me today, I have Sean Trotsky, our Chairman, President, and CEO, and Brian Buckler, our CFO. In terms of the call today, we will first hear from Sean, followed by an explanation from Brian of financial results. And finally, as always, we will answer your questions. I would like to remind you that this conference is being webcast and you may follow along at OGE.com. In addition, the conference call and accompanying slides will be archived following the call on that same website. Before we begin the presentation, I'd like to direct your attention to the Safe Harbor Statement regarding forward-looking states. This is an SEC requirement for financial statements and simply states that we cannot guarantee forward-looking financial results, but this is our best estimate to date. I will now turn the call over to Sean for his opening remarks. Sean?

Thank you, Jason. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call. We're off to a really strong start for the year. As you know, the first quarter typically represents less than 10% of the electric company's earnings. However, this quarter does provide momentum for the year, and I really like what I see. Earlier this morning, we reported consolidated earnings for the quarter of 19 cents per share, with 20 cents per share from OG&E and a holding company loss of a penny. I'm pleased with the overall performance of this electric company, with results up year over year, and Brian will discuss our financial results in more detail shortly. Our plan for the future is strong when you consider increased demand for electricity to support our growing communities. Business expansion is broad, representing many sectors, including manufacturing, defense, tribal enterprises, and healthcare in both Arkansas and Oklahoma. Some of these expansions include significant job growth, including 900 new military personnel who will be stationed at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith, Arkansas. along with Pratt & Whitney's announcement last month of a new sustainment center associated with its operations near Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. Our customer initiatives have gained steam, particularly in the digital experience. One quarter after launching our new Bumble app, more than 10% of our customer base has downloaded the app. More importantly, they're using it, from bill payment to outage reporting. We're making it easier for customers to self-serve online, Enrolling in programs, enrolling in services that help them manage their energy usage and monthly bill. These efforts pay off in a multitude of ways, from improving our customer experience to driving costs out of our business. Our grid and weather hardening investments are also paying off for customers and helping us achieve strong operational performance. Something that's really important when you know that Oklahoma is a top five state for federally declared storms. These investments are eliminating and reducing outages during severe weather. Two weeks ago, severe storms hit our service area, with two communities highly impacted, Shawnee and Cole, Oklahoma. That night, there were 18 tornadoes, and what struck Shawnee left more than a mile-wide path of destruction and people without power. And yet, within 48 hours, 75% of our customers were back online, and by Monday, that number was 95%. The total customer impact to our system on the night of the storms was less than one-half of 1% of our customer base. You just don't see those results following severe storms in other parts of the country. The folks in those towns have a long road ahead to rebuild, and we'll be right there with them all along the way. I'm proud to work alongside our team every day, and it's times like these that I am in awe of the dedicated men and women who understand our obligation to serve and don't stop until the work is done. We continue to invest in the grid, improving distribution circuits, substations, and structural resiliency to mitigate the impact of severe weather, like the storms I mentioned earlier. We're excited about the opportunities through the IIJA to advance our reliability and resiliency work for our customers, while grounding our work in affordability with a 50% cost share through the federal grant. Supporting a growing customer base and thriving communities translates to a growing need for generation capacity. As you know, we are actively working through multiple RFPs to meet our capacity needs, and we're making progress on finalizing agreements and plan to file for approval this summer. Not all the RFP responses delivered the value we were looking for, so we will be issuing a new IRP later this year with updated planning assumptions, as well as exploring how opportunities in the IIJA and IRA to advance clean energy for the future might fit into the overall plan. Our goal is to implement a generation plan that supports our customers and the business, smoothing investments in a steady, incremental way without large spikes or bumps. We'll deal with all of these factors in the most cost-effective way, ensuring we lead with affordability. And I've mentioned the IJA a couple of times, and we continue to pursue opportunities through the Act, with two full proposals under review, one for good resiliency and one for storm protections. Last month, we also submitted two concept papers under the Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas program. With three-quarters of our service area considered disadvantaged or tribal communities, we will relentlessly pursue every opportunity to improve reliability and resiliency for those customers. Along with these programs, we're excited to be part of the HALO Hydrogen Hub, a three-state partnership between Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, which is applying for the Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs program. allocated through the IIJA. The full application is for $1.25 billion in federal funding and was submitted just last month. We were also pleased the Oklahoma Corporation Commission approved our 2021 fuel prudency audit last month. And given the robust growth of our communities and the capital investments required to ensure reliable and resilient electricity, we're evaluating the timing of our next rate review, which could be filed during the second half of this year. In March, the Arkansas Public Service Commission approved a settlement in the annual formula rate plan review, and new rates went into effect April 1st. We'll file the last formula rate plan update later this year. And as I close, I want to share a few thoughts on where we're headed. This is an exciting time to be part of this industry and work at this company, especially when you do business in a service area that is growing. We are truly in an opportunity-rich environment. Our significant investment opportunities correlate directly to our economic development engine that drives community growth and business expansion in our service area. This widens the competitive advantage we have in adding customers to the cities and towns we serve. As we ground our plans and affordability for our customers and maintaining our low rates, the future of OG Energy is bright. Our investments are delivering results with a 99.96% uptime. Our service area is thriving. Our customer base is growing, our business fundamentals are excellent, and our team, I think, is the very best in the business, and they're focused on delivering premium electric company results. So we're operating from a strong base and are confident in delivering our commitments to you and as well to our customers. Now I'll turn the call over to Brian. Brian?