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spk05: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Portland General Electric Company's fourth quarter 2020 earnings results conference call. Today is Friday, February 19, 2021. This call is being recorded, and as such, all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer period. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key on your telephone keypad. If you do intend to ask a question, please avoid the use of speaker phones. For opening remarks, I will turn the conference call over to Portland General Electric Senior Director of Investor Relations, Jordan Jaramillo. You please go ahead, sir.
spk01: Thank you, Shalon. Good morning, everyone. I'm pleased that you're able to join us today. Before we begin this morning, I'd like to remind you that we have prepared a presentation to supplement our discussion, which we'll be referencing throughout the call. The slides are available on our website at investors.portlandgeneral.com. Referring to slide two, some of our remarks this morning will constitute forward-looking statements. We caution you that such statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from our expectations. For a description of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, please refer to our earnings press release and our most recent periodic reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which are available on our website. Leading our discussion today are Maria Pope, President and CEO, and Jim Agello, Senior Vice President of Finance, CFO, and Treasurer. Following their prepared remarks, we will open the line for your questions. Now, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Maria. Thank you.
spk04: Thanks, Jordan, and thank you all for joining us today. I'd like to take a moment to formally introduce Jim Agello, our new CFO, who many of you already know. Please join me in extending a warm welcome to Jim. As many of you know, and many of you may also be experiencing yourself firsthand, millions of Americans have been impacted by severe winter storms this past week. In Oregon, we have had a historic storm system move through over a four and a half day period. It brought punishing wind, ice, and snow through three separate storm systems and left hundreds of thousands of PG customers, over a third of our customer base, without power. The significant ice late in the storm system was particularly punishing to trees and power lines. In less than a week, we have restored over 600,000 customers, and we still have about 68,000 customers to go. Many customers have experienced multiple outages. As restoration continues, we appreciate the fatigue and deep frustration of customers who have been without power for extended periods. Our deepest gratitude to everyone who was working 24-7 to restore power. In addition to our PGE coworkers, hundreds of line workers from neighboring utilities and contractors are working tirelessly alongside our crews in very challenging conditions. As we look back over 2020 and into the new year, we are proud of how we have responded to significant challenges that tested us like never before. From the pandemic, civil unrest, trading losses, and historic wildfires to these recent winter storms, our team has remained focused on delivering for customers, supporting the communities we serve. We take very seriously our role as an essential service provider. Given the trading losses, our financial results were disappointing, but we delivered solid operational performance and improved throughout the past year and through the pandemic. We also have consistent momentum that is in line with our long-term growth strategy. We took actions beginning early in the pandemic to control customer prices with an appreciation for the economic hardships of many of our customers. Today, we are more efficient with improved reliability and getting more work done. We are also seeing the positive impact of investments in our distribution system, including investments in substation upgrades, new wood and steel poles, distribution automation, and other resiliency investments. We improved operational efficiency by leveraging technology, improving overall workflow and operations, We deployed solutions to better serve customers with innovative and clean energy solutions. We are enabling our employees to work more efficiently. 2020 was an important year for us in our journey towards a clean energy future. We announced significant decarbonization goals of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, including at least 80% reduction in the power supplied to customers by 2030 relative to 2010 levels. This ambitious company-wide goal will touch every aspect of our business, from the power we serve customers, to the vehicles we drive, to how we operate our buildings and operations. In the fourth quarter, we closed the Boardman Coal Plant and opened the Wheat Ridge Energy Facility. one of the nation's first facilities to integrate solar and wind generation with battery storage at scale in one location. We are also working to serve many municipal and industrial customers with 100% renewable energy under our green tariff programs, building on their number one decade-long residential clean energy programs. Partnership and support for our community's employees is also central to who we are. To that end, PGE, along with employees, retirees, and the PGE Foundation, donated $5.6 million and volunteered over 18,000 hours to more than 400 nonprofits across Oregon. Diversity, equity, and inclusion has long been a core value, and we measure and publish progress as well as pay equity and other key metrics publicly. Inclusion in the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index and a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Corporate Equality Index reflects our years of focus and work in this area. However, we know that there is still much work to do. As we reflect on 2020 and look to the year ahead, The responsibility we have as an essential service provider, a leader within Oregon's economy, and a crucial partner to customers and communities we serve has never been more important. I want to give a special thanks to our teams who have spent considerable time and energy operating a more efficient, customer-focused utility, executing on our strategy to deliver clean energy to Oregonians. Through these historic storms and record outages, many are working 24-7 to restore power. I'm humbled by the strength, dedication, and resilience of our teams. We will not stop working hard until every customer is back online. Now let me turn the call over to Jim. Thank you.
spk03: Thank you, Maria. And nice to speak with all of you today. I want to start by echoing Maria's comments. The number of customer power outages and widespread damage to our electric system is unprecedented. And we recognize the hardship these events have created for our customers. Our entire company is focused on restoring power to our communities and repairing our system. And I'm so impressed with my new teammates at PGE. Although PGE faced a number of challenging circumstances in 2020, It's clear that this team's hard work and focus on advancing our strategy is paying off. PGE is in a strong position to build on the momentum we've established and deliver long-term, sustainable growth. I'm excited for the opportunities ahead to further reduce carbon emissions, invest across our service territory, and continue to reduce costs company-wide to keep customer prices low. Now, I'll briefly comment on the economy in our service territory. While recovery is continuing in the hardest-hit segments of the economy, such as lodging and restaurants, other segments of our economy have been less impacted by COVID-19 and performed well from a load growth standpoint, like residential, high-tech manufacturing, and digital services. In the long run, our 1% average load growth anchors on the strength of these sectors, as well as continued in migration. Our load growth this year remained consistent with long-term trends, despite the change in composition due to the economy's response to COVID-19. And our customer base continues to grow. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Oregon continued to rank high among the states, ranking third for inbound moves. Construction spending on both residential developments and commercial projects throughout our service territory is strong, and several major infrastructure projects are on the horizon. Let's cover our financial results on slide five. In 2020, we recorded GAAP net income of $155 million, or $1.72 per diluted share, compared to GAAP net income of $214 million, or $2.39 per diluted share in 2019. We finished the fourth quarter earning GAAP-based earnings per diluted share of 57 cents, compared with GAAP-based earnings per diluted share of 68 cents in the fourth quarter of 2019. Our 2020 non-GAAP net income was $247 million, or $2.75 per diluted share. This amount is adjusted to reflect the previously disclosed one-time energy trading losses of $1.03 per diluted share. Looking ahead, we are initiating 2021 full-year earnings guidance of $2.55 to $2.70 per diluted share. We are also affirming our long-term earnings guidance of 4 to 6 percent growth off 2019 earnings per share of $2.39. Turning to slide six, allow me to walk through the earnings drivers for 2020. First, we saw a six-cent increase in retail revenue. as load increased 0.4% year over year, weather adjusted. This increase was partially offset by the impacts of changing load composition on our decoupling mechanism. We also achieved a 12 cent increase due to lower net variable power cost as a result of low market prices and the effective dispatch of our generating facilities. As we've been saying to you all along, wind was particularly strong. In fact, our wind resources produced 23% more energy when compared to 2019. We drove a 33 cent increase in connection with our lower operating and maintenance expenses. This year served as a catalyst for making long-term sustainable operational improvements company-wide. I'll discuss these in more detail in a moment. Continuing on slide six, we have a 26 cent decrease associated with higher depreciation and amortization, which consisted of $0.09 from higher plant in service in 2020 and $0.17 attributed to a measurement of the company's only non-utility asset retirement obligation on land we own along the Willamette River at our Sullivan plant. In 2020, we reassessed stakeholder needs in the long-term strategy for the site, which included an updated fourth quarter study. The site study resulted in a significant increase in our retirement asset liability. These changes, however, de-risk our ability to respond to long-term strategic opportunities at the property. Further, there was a 10-cent increase associated with higher production tax credits from favorable wind generation compared to our forecast, and then a 1-cent increase for miscellaneous items. This brings our non-GAAP earnings per share, diluted share, to $2.75. The third quarter energy trading losses represented a negative impact of $1.03 per diluted share for the year, and our gap earnings per diluted share were $1.72 for 2020. The corresponding ROEs are 6 percent and 9.3 percent, respectively. As it relates to the regulatory environment, we are keeping our focus on customer price impacts given the concerns around economic recovery in our service territory. We continue to evaluate our cost structure to ensure that we are providing safe, affordable, and reliable service for our customers. Right now, we are evaluating our need to file a general rate case with the Oregon Public Utilities Commission for a 2022 test year. It is important that we continue to operate in a way that is cost efficient to keep prices low for our customers, regardless of our outlook for a new general rate case. With respect to our future resource needs, we filed an update to our 2019 integrated resource plan last month. The action plan was previously acknowledged by the Commission and remains unchanged as we continue to target 150 average megawatts of renewables to go online by the end of 2024 and secure up to 511 megawatts of capacity, as indicated on slide seven. We are planning to work with stakeholders to seek approval of our RFP and launch the process later this year, but we are continuing to consider customer and stakeholder interest as it relates to timing. Given recent updates to federal tax credits, we plan to issue an RFP for both renewables in our remaining capacity. We will bid a benchmark resource into this competitive process. On other regulatory proceedings, last October, the OPUC approved our deferral request for wildfire-related expenses. As of December 31, 2020, we've deferred $15 million related to wildfire response. We also applied for and received deferral treatment from the OPUC for certain COVID-19 expenses, principally bad debt expense. As of December 31, 2020, we've deferred $10 million relating to COVID-19. Earlier this week, we filed a deferral request for restoration costs associated with the severe winter events that Maria discussed and that we've recently experienced. Because of the magnitude and duration of the event, we are uncertain as to the costs associated with the full restoration service. We will continue to discuss the impact of this deferral on existing storm recovery mechanisms with regulators and stakeholders. Turning to slide eight. This shows our updated capital forecast through 2025. We are providing enhanced recovery here for our capital expenditures forecast. The majority of our investment in future years are concentrated in low-risk, stable distribution infrastructure upgrades to improve safety and reliability of our system. Investments here are also intended to make us more efficient and help facilitate savings and improve reliability. The recent weeks and the wildfire impacts in 2020 demonstrate the importance of maintaining a safe and reliable grid. We added $200 million to the outer years of the capital plan through 2025, and our capital plan now includes $2.9 billion over the next five years. As a reminder, these projections do not include any generation build investment that may arise from a renewable energy RFP. On slide nine, We continue to maintain a solid balance sheet, including strong liquidity and investment grade ratings accompanied by a stable outlook. Based on our strong financial condition, we do not anticipate to issue equity in 2021. We expect to fund 2021 capital expenditures and long-term debt maturities with cash from operations during 21, which is expected to range from $600 million to $650 million. The issuance of debt securities of up to $300 million and the issuance of commercial paper as needed. After 2021, there are no maturities of long-term debt until 2024. Turning to slide 10, we are initiating full-year 2021 earnings guidance of $2.55 to $2.70 per diluted share. Our assumptions for this guidance range are on the slide. I'd like to dive deeper and walk through a few key drivers that we're confident will help us grow within the 4% to 6% range in 2021. Because of continued low trends we're currently seeing with residential customers and commercial customers that are slowly reopening, we expect to refund residential customers under the decoupling mechanism and will again hit the 2% cap on collections for non-residential decoupling. We continue to recognize the challenges faced by our customers and will continue to make sustainable changes to our cost structure throughout the company. We've accelerated the use of technology throughout the business, and our 6% reduction in O&M year-over-year and about half is from lowering our IT costs and using technology to enable process improvements. But here are just a few examples. We have reduced and restructured our software license agreements as PGE continued to move to the cloud. We rolled out a new mapping software to our line crews, and they are now using tablets for better access in the field. We're using new customer relationship management software to better improve our customer relationships. We continue to leverage our billing system to drive efficiencies while providing customers with increased functionality. I am confident we can continue to identify and implement efficiencies in 2021 as we continue to grow. We are also reaffirming long-term earnings growth guidance of 4% to 6% off a 2019 base year. The drivers of our long-term guidance are consistent with what we've previously discussed, including load growth from in-migration and industrial customer expansion, operational efficiencies, and potential investment opportunities in our system and renewable resources. With respect to dividends, our Board recently declared a dividend of 40.75 cents per share, reflecting an annualized dividend of $1.63 per share. With this dividend, we completed our 14th consecutive year of dividend growth, with the last five years at a compounded annual growth rate of 5.4%. And now, operator, we're ready for your questions.
spk05: As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star 1 in your telephone keypads. Your first question comes from the line of Julian Dumoulin-Smith from Bank of America. Hey, good morning, team.
spk09: Thanks for the time. Hey. So, well done all around. Perhaps if we can just kick it off here, after adding in the additional CapEx, can you talk about where that puts you in this 4% to 6% long-term range that we've talked about so much in the past? And then maybe what your thoughts are about equity financing given the higher CapEx and obviously considering the impact last year as well. Just curious on how you would frame that.
spk03: Yeah. Hi, Julius, Jim. I would say to you that the CapEx year that we've laid out for you, which is an increase of a couple of hundred million dollars over the out years, and as I mentioned, 2.9 billion altogether over this period of time, you know, puts us really squarely in that range. I feel that that actually ensures that we actually stay in that range. With respect to equity, no equity is required for that this year. there's pretty good and strong cash flow production. And I don't see equity for a bit of time here, but let's take it one year at a time in terms of our forecast.
spk09: Got it. And when you say squarely, you mean midpoint or you mean squarely as in above the low end? Sorry, not to nip it, but you kind of said it a couple times in different ways.
spk03: Yeah. You know, I would say we're comfortably in that range. How about that?
spk09: Excellent. I like the punchiness. Quick follow-up there, if you don't mind, and obviously this could drive some of the considerations here. How do you think about the timing of a Ray case? You alluded to a 22 test year in the commentary just now, but what does that mean in terms of timing of filing? And then related, is this driven by the outcome of the storm deferral? If you get that or not, would that dictate the precise timing here potentially?
spk03: I would, no pun intended, decouple the storm restoration expenses and any deferral that might arise from it with the timing of the rate case. Secondly, we file our annual AUT in April. That's a fairly prescribed event, and so that's the first chunk of the filing right there. In terms of the general rate case, we're evaluating the timing right now, looking at our expenses, making sure we're efficient, and actually taking stock of the local economy, customer bills and the like. This company is becoming a lot more efficient as we go, so we have a lot of flexibility here. It'll be this year, but the actual timing hasn't been set yet.
spk09: Got it. But it will be this year. Got it. Okay. Excellent. Thank you, guys. Best of luck. Congrats. Sure.
spk05: Thank you, Julian. I think your next question comes on the line of Insochem Goldman Sachs.
spk04: Good morning, Insu.
spk07: Good morning, Maria. Congrats, Jim, again. My first question is on the storms. I know you asked for the deferral, but just educate me a little bit. Currently, there is no automatic deferral mechanism, or is there any threshold amount where you would book certain expenses before deferring, anything like that?
spk04: So thank you, Insu. We accrue for storms on a regular basis. This storm that we are seeing is a one-in-40-year type of storm. The governor on Saturday declared a state of emergency, and we are currently restoring customers at a rate that we have never seen in the history of our utility. We have had extensive damage throughout the entire system. Not unlike what we saw with the devastating wildfires and high winds events in early September, This is what we've thought of as an unprecedented event, but clearly these are unprecedented times. And we'll be working collaboratively with the commission. We filed earlier this week, and we'll work through how we handle all the expenses.
spk03: And then, Sue, I'll just tell you that coming into 2021, we have a storm deferral of $8 million built at that point in time, so starting the new year. Understood.
spk07: And I guess going back to potentially the timing of the rate case, you know, depending on how you see efficiencies this year that you could achieve maybe beyond what you see right now. As of this point, if you were to file more later in the years, you know, instead of towards the first half of the year, And most of that rates won't go into effect in 2022. Do you still see that four to six range as likely even without a full year of a rate increase in 2022?
spk03: I do. I wouldn't necessarily pick a time for filing. As I mentioned to Julian, we're still working on that. But I am extremely impressed with our achievement last year in reducing expenses by 6%. I called it a catalyst for other things. And so I'd like to sit back here with the team and figure out how we could manage through that, given the difficult economy, given the storms that we've had. We've got to take that into account. And given the pace of COVID recovery, right? So I look at it as a balancing act, and I want to be very judicious, and I also want to be very, you know, have our customers squarely in mind here. But we're managing well. I think last year demonstrates that.
spk07: Got it. Seems like the crazy 2020 seems to be extending through the first part of this year, so please stay warm and safe. Thank you.
spk05: Your next question comes online with Sylvie Karp from KeyBank. Good morning.
spk06: Hi, good morning. Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. So I have two questions. First, on the storm response calls, right, so... What did you assume in the guidance range with respect to the outcome of the deferral here? Is that basically, does that basically assume the full deferral and could we see a guidance revision if that does not materialize and kind of what is the timing of that?
spk03: Hi Sophie, it's Jim. We haven't built in any specific expense for the storm deferral in the guidance that you see. As I mentioned, INSA, we do have a storm deferral account already existing. And we just simply don't have an estimate of what the storm deferral accounts are. But right now, our guidance is independent of that.
spk04: One of the things I think is really important to appreciate is the level of destruction from the ice that coated trees and power lines has resulted in damage that is truly unprecedented. And we have Thousands of people working in the field today. They will continue working 24-7 until we get customers restored. But we are still learning more about the damage as we get into some of the more remote areas and see tremendous amount of trees out, power lines out. And many of the customers that we are now putting on lines are increasingly hard to reach, either because of the amount of debris or because of their location. So we have still more to learn here. But right now, getting power back on to all of our customers is our highest priority.
spk06: Great. Thank you. And, you know, following with the storm questions, I get it that this is a once in a 40-year event, and maybe it doesn't make sense to harden the grid for, you know, events that come once every 40 years. but would there be an opportunity maybe at some point to do a postmortem of this and see if there's an opportunity for capital investments to mitigate potential impacts of similar events in the future?
spk04: Peggy O' That's a great question, and it's something that community members or customers and many other leaders across the state are asking ourselves. Please know that after every significant event, we do after action reports and root cause analysis and figure out how we could do better. After the significant wildfires and windstorms we had in September, we made a number of adjustments, not only in our processes and procedures, our incident command response, our partnerships with first responders throughout our area, but also in terms of equipment standards and other tools and technologies, and quite frankly, just the kinds of repair and restoration we do. Over the last number of years, we have been increasing our investments in our distribution system quite significantly, and we have seen the results of those investments as part of the contributor to our lower O&M costs this year. Because we have had significantly less outages on average throughout the year, we've had less overtime, less truck rolls on Saturdays, and Sundays, and overall better outcomes for customers.
spk03: Sophie, if I can add, if you look at our CapEx projections, really I want to leave you with the point that these projections are really all about making us more reliable and efficient. So, invest capital to make us more efficient down the line. Secondly, I've been through a lot of storm recovery efforts, and I know you've observed them over the years with utilities. There is always some capital that comes back into the system in the restoration process. We don't know what the restoration expense will be. Therefore, I can't provide any more clarity on what the capital versus O&M would be. But there's always a mixture, as you'd appreciate.
spk06: Right. Thank you. This is helpful. And lastly, I guess you mentioned that your capital plan does not include potential upside from renewable RFPs. Is there a way to frame kind of the range of outcomes of these RFPs and the potential impact on your CapEx plans at this point, or is it just too early to say?
spk03: Impossible to handicap at this point. I mean, these will be competitive efforts. We'll bid a benchmark resource. I think we've been successful in the past with some of our efforts. I was very pleased to see the way we prosecuted Wheat Ridge. While there's been, as they say in the investment community, past success is no guarantee of future results. So we don't exactly know how that will come out. So we'll just have to wait and see.
spk06: I think it's super helpful. I appreciate your answers.
spk03: Sure.
spk05: Your next question comes on the line of Brian Russo from SideLD. Morning, Brian.
spk04: Hi, good morning.
spk00: Good morning. Most of my questions have been asked and answered, but I'm just curious, you know, with the recent storms and where, you know, water supply levels or snowpack is as we approach the upcoming hydro season, you know, maybe at the Clackamas or Deschutes, et cetera.
spk04: You know, that's a great question. We have had great snowpack levels in comparison to prior years. They're significantly above normal levels. The big issue that we have, in addition to snowpack levels driving hydro conditions, is the runoff rate. What we've seen is runoff has tended to be earlier than it has been in the past, and that has changed some of our profile. Also know that as we get these really cold periods, we tend to have much less wind generation. We are seeing less wind than we saw last year on our system so far in 2021.
spk00: Oh, I see. So the forecast is for above-normal temperatures, which would create an earlier than normal runoff?
spk04: Excuse me. The forecast is for above-normal snowpack levels.
spk00: Okay.
spk04: Then the question is, when does it run off? Because that will determine the impact on the company.
spk00: Understood. Great. And then in terms of the dividend policy, it looks like the announcement you just made, dividend remained flat. I think historically it was the April timeframe where the board considers increases, although you delayed it last year due to the COVID pandemic. Should we expect the April time period for an increase in the dividend evaluation by the board?
spk03: Yes, Brian, thanks. It's Jim. So you're right. So just to make it crystal clear, this was the, you know, final CAPR dividend of 2020, and the board traditionally does look at that, you know, in the April timeframe, and I would expect them to do that then, yes. Okay, great.
spk00: Thank you very much. Sure.
spk05: Your next question comes from Travis Miller from Morningstar.
spk02: Good morning. Hi, thank you. He just answered my question on the dividends, so I'll skip that one. But the other one was just generically speaking, with the storms that you have experienced and obviously the storms making the headlines in Texas and other places in the U.S., what do you think and what have you seen impact on renewables? Are they performing well? Do you think there would be any policy changes coming out of discussion across the entire U.S. in terms of cold weather? What are your thoughts along those lines?
spk04: Sure. You know, this is something that obviously people are talking about. Renewable generation remains very strong in the Pacific Northwest. I think you see across the West as a result of the wildfires, there was not a reduction in interest in expanding renewable generation across the West. Even with the significant wildfires, there actually was an interest in accelerating the pace of renewable generation. transformation in the energy sector. My sense is that this may accelerate where we were going. We are clearly investing a lot in technologies, bidirectional grid capabilities. Much of the equipment that we're putting in place handling some of these additional renewables also adds to more resiliency and reliability of the underlying system and allows us to restore faster during regular storms and catastrophic storms like we have now.
spk02: Okay. Have you had any of the cold weather issues or the icing such that we're seeing in Texas? I guess the other way of thinking about that, are your renewables and the renewables up there designed differently? I'm thinking particularly wind, such that you wouldn't have those issues that they're having in Texas.
spk04: Yes. So most of our wind generation takes place in the eastern part of our state, eastern Washington, and then even farther east than that. They have regular and ongoing cold winters, and we design our system to be able to withstand a fair amount of ice on the wind side. In our service territory, we have seen unprecedented levels of ice that have caused significant damage to the distribution system, but Yes, because normal cold weather is normal for our wind facilities, we have built them differently than they have in Texas.
spk02: Okay. Great. That's really helpful. Thank you very much.
spk04: Thank you.
spk05: Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Levi from HitEdge.
spk08: Hey, guys. How are you? Good, Andy. I guess the first question I have, It's just on this Green Future Impact Program that you guys are doing. Is that the same program that you've talked about in the past, Maria, that you've been kind of growing?
spk04: Yes, Andy, it is. This is an opportunity for us to deliver 100% green energy to those customers that want to move further, faster than regular RPS standards. They tend to be municipalities, large tech and digital companies, and it's been a very successful program.
spk08: And where are you at as far as, like, your run rate? Because, you know, it seems like you just signed a deal as well, but, like, earnings-wise, I know you do. There is a margin that you capture. Is there a run rate that you can kind of give us on what you're making on this?
spk04: That's a good question. I would probably not want to give you a runway that's been chunky. For example, our last announcement with Intel was significantly higher volume than we had announced previously. But we do earn a margin on this. It reflects the risk and the integration and other costs for these programs as well as gives recognition to the company's role So we will continue. It's been very beneficial, and I would expect to do more.
spk08: Is it like ongoing earnings because you said chunky, or is it like a one-time type of chunk?
spk04: No, it would be ongoing. It would be ongoing, Andy.
spk08: Okay, okay. And so this is a line of business that clearly is going to grow. Obviously, it's part of your forecast. Is it – Is it significant enough where at some point it kind of goes in the direction that you anticipated to go that it could end up being broken out, or is it more kind of for proprietary reasons and things like that that you don't feel comfortable sharing it?
spk04: So, you know, I think we're going to keep the information as part of our regular disclosure. You know, it's not big enough that it would be broken out by any SEC agency. standards of any sort. I'm not so sure I'd call it proprietary. Really, it's about meeting customer needs with the green energy that they want.
spk03: Andy, I'll add a couple of quick points. Number one, I think it has a lot of growth opportunities as customers, such as Intel and others, increasingly require renewable energy for their own ESG goals, number one. Number two, I would say that these are negotiated transactions, right? You have an IPP in this case of on-grid, and you have a consumer, an anchor tenant on the other side with Intel plus 16 or 17 other commercial customers. So these are prices, rates, and development costs that are confidential, frankly. So I don't think you're going to see that transparency because they're negotiated transactions. there'll be competitive bidding associated with this too, to make sure that we deliver to those customers like Intel the best available price we can from the market.
spk08: Okay. And then, then my second question, um, is kind of more of like a, a bigger picture question. So, um, you know, looking at whether it's this opportunity, um, which, you know, it's big, but you know, we're not sure what the earnings are. So how big it turns into as far as earnings per share. The potential IRP or IRPs you're going to have out there, you know, you just raised, you have $665 million of CapEx this year, if I'm not mistaken, and potential to raise in the outer years. And a very good balance sheet, you know, despite, you know, what happened last summer. And also, I'll throw in one more thing, a tremendous amount of T&D opportunities absent the storm. And then you have this 4% to 6% growth rate. Again, you know, I'm not pushing you for this year, of course, because, you know, obviously we want to see you make your numbers this year because of what happened last year. But longer term, what are kind of the aspirations? Obviously, you have to weigh customer rates. Your rates are not high. But you obviously have to weigh those. But do you guys see a relatively longer term where, and again, I'll say one more thing, that you just kind of implemented a growth rate, which was a big thing for you off of base. But do you see opportunities longer term or are there aspirations longer term, which would be beneficial to both the shareholders and the state and the customers for the growth rate because of the way the the service territory is transforming that the growth rate is going to go higher.
spk03: Andy, I think I got all of that. Sorry.
spk08: There's a lot of good stuff. What can I say?
spk03: There's a lot of opportunity here at this company to become more efficient, to afford more CapEx and resiliency to benefit customers in the market. As you know, we have one of the most unlevered balance sheets, pound for pound, in the industry. We have one of the best cash flow producers in the industry, pound for pound. This sets us up with a tool to be able to move in the direction that you're talking about if we could manage our O&M expenses to offset the additional capital. We have plenty of capital to deploy in the future years, especially in the grid, and even putting aside anything that we might competitively win in the RFP. Those investments are off the chart here on page eight, right? These are sustainability investments that will make us more reliable and efficient. I'm personally convinced that these kinds of investments are going to improve our operating costs so one follows the other. They're not detached from each other. So that's the goal, right? But we've got to do the balancing that you so, I think, well articulated. And so I think there's opportunity here down the line.
spk08: Okay. Thank you, guys, and good luck cleaning up after the storm. Thanks, Sandy.
spk04: Thank you.
spk05: Our line is open.
spk04: Operator, it looks like we may be finished with the questions.
spk05: Okay. Well, I'll turn the call back over to Maria Pope for closing remarks.
spk04: Thank you very much for joining us today. We look forward to further following up with questions as well as virtual investor conferences coming up in the first quarter. We'll be announcing our first quarter results at the end of April, and thank you very much for your time today and interest in the company. Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.
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