Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the PG&E Corporation first quarter 2021 earnings call. I will now let the panel conference over to Matt Bowen, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in PG&E's first quarter earnings call. Joining us today are Patty Poppe, our Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Foster, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I want to remind you that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements about our outlook for future financial results, which are based on assumptions, forecasts, expectations, and information currently available to management. Some of the important factors that could affect the company's actual financial results are described on the second page of today's first quarter earnings call presentation. The presentation also includes a reconciliation between non-GAAP and GAAP measures that can be found online along with other information at investor.pgcorp.com. We also encourage you to review our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31st, 2021. Before I turn it over to Patty, I'm excited to announce that we'll be hosting you for our Investor Day on August 9th here in California. Please keep an eye out for the invite. With that, I'll turn it over to Patty.

Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everybody. It's so great to be with you for our first quarter earnings call. We delivered solid Q1 non-GAAP core earnings of 23 cents per share in our first quarter. This morning, we're reaffirming our 2021 non-GAAP core earnings per share guidance of 95 cents to $1.05. We're also maintaining our longer-term 2021 to 2025 non-GAAP core earnings per share CAGR of 10%. we gave on the q4 call we're holding our equity guidance range for 2021 at zero to four hundred million dollars we're taking a conservative approach as we await a final decision on the securitization order from the cpuc and as we continue to make progress on legacy issues rest assured chris and i are laser focused on minimizing our 2021 equity needs we want you to have confidence in our forecast and we have several more months this year to make progress on the equity range Chris will describe the financials a bit more in a few minutes. As I finished up my first 100-day listening tour, we've accelerated our move from listening to action. Our priorities fall into three categories. First, to end utility-caused catastrophic wildfires by demanding excellence of ourselves in our wildfire prevention work. to create a culture of performance by deploying our lean operating system across the enterprise during 2021. And third, by continuing to lead in the clean energy transition through the latest technologies in battery storage, electric vehicle infrastructure, and microgrid solutions. Our near and long-term financial performance is inextricably linked to these three focus areas. We can deliver on these objectives and thereby serve our customers and our investors better than ever before. Thankfully, I don't need to do this alone. I've hired key senior leaders who represent the best in the business. We added some very experienced senior leaders to the PG&E team who we highlighted on the Q4 call. Since then, we've announced additional new senior leaders to round out our team, including Chris Foster as CFO, Jason Glickman as EVP of Engineering, Planning, and Strategy, Carla Peterman as EVP of Corporate Affairs, and Wade Smith as Head of Electric Operations. I'm pleased with the team that we have here at PG&E, and I would stack our operating experience up against anyone. The common thread in all of our leaders is a tenacity to perform and the skills to deliver. Before diving into the substantial changes we're making here at PG&E, there's something I'd like to address right up front. Earlier this month, the Sonoma County District Attorney filed criminal charges related to the Kincaid fire against the company. We do not agree with these charges, and we'll defend them in legal proceedings. In the meantime, we'll make it right by working to resolve victims' claims fairly and justly, and each day we'll continue to make it safe by prioritizing the work that needs to be done to deliver energy to our customers. One organizational enhancement I'd like to highlight is our interim wildfire risk organization, announced last month, led by Sumit Singh. This team's been instrumental in responding to the criticism we faced on our enhanced vegetation work. As a part of our lean operating system implementation, the federal monitor and the governor's operational observer are included in our daily operating reviews associated with wildfire work. You may wonder, won't Lean take years to implement? The answer is no. We've already started our implementation on our most important work, and the system will provide benefits immediately, as well as for years to come as we grow our capability and our maturity. One simple example happened in the very first week of our daily operating reviews. We were off track on our distribution sectionalizing device installations. We'd completed 12 devices as compared to a goal of 30. And as a result of the daily operating review, we gained visibility of the problem and built a recovery plan that's been outlined and managed to make sure we get back on track. Look, it may sound very simple, but this is the sort of thing that gets lost without an operating system. Next thing we know, the problem snowballs, we're too late to fix it, another commitment missed. Great operators keep their promises and have a system to manage them. We will be a great operator thanks to our lean operating system. We have the right team implementing the lean system on this critical work, and they'll be a valuable resource as we implement lean across the enterprise throughout the year. On that point in early March, I attended a CPUC workshop on a regionalization pilot. I was able to share my thoughts on how PG&E could benefit from implementing a lean operating process on a localized level. We'll leverage the benefit of the lean system and the regionalized teams focused on engaging customers and communities and incorporating their input. We've listened and we've seen that we need to improve our local presence and our performance, and we are going to do just that. As we implement the lean operating system, we'll continue to uncover opportunities to improve and take actions to close the gaps. In addition to getting our senior leadership team in place, establishing our lean operating system, and ensuring a hometown experience, we're able to begin measuring our performance to the triple bottom line of people, planet, and California's prosperity. For PG&E and for California, serving our planet means continuing our leadership role, delivering clean energy to our customers. In 2020, 88% of our bundled sales were from greenhouse gas-free sources of energy, more than twice the average across U.S. utilities. We're not resting there, and we're working to bring on over 900 megawatts of additional battery storage by this August, assuring that we have both adequate supply and cleaner resources. I'm particularly excited about these storage opportunities. In fact, earlier this month, I visited the Moss Landing Project, where we have one of the largest utility-owned storage facilities in the world and a great example of a brownfield conversion from fossil fuels to batteries, leveraging the existing transmission resources. We'll continue to evaluate opportunities to add battery storage across our territory, including opportunities in high-fire threat areas. Another major initiative is, in fact, our microgrid program. There are many locations across our high-fire threat service area where microgrids make a lot of sense. One example is in Mariposa County, where we had five customers that lost power in 2019 when the line serving them was destroyed. There, we're deploying a utility-owned hybrid renewable stand-alone power system to energize these isolated customers. This option is designed to reliably repower the customer without the need to rebuild the overhead lines. The remote grid offers an alternative at a lower lifetime cost and, importantly, at a lower risk of future fire. As you can see, we've got a lot going on here at PG&E. The company has embraced the new vision. The senior leadership team is focused on achieving what all 25,000 PG&Eers and all of our other stakeholders in California want, a company that delivers clean, affordable, reliable energy safely. We'll meet that objective through a relentless focus on people, planet, and prosperity, underpinned by performance. With that, I'll turn it over to Chris.