This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk01: Hello and welcome to Essential Utilities Q1 2023 earnings call. My name is Melissa and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this conference is being recorded and for the duration of the call your lines will be listened only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star 0 and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Renee Marquis, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
spk00: Thank you, Melissa. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Essential Utilities first quarter 2023 earnings call. Unfortunately, Brian Dinger just couldn't be here today because he's under the weather, so I'm filling in. I'm Renee Marquis, the Director of Investor Relations at Essential. If you do not receive a copy of the press release, you can find it by visiting the investor relations section of our website at essential.co. The slides that we will be referencing and the webcast of this event can also be found on our website. Here is our FLS. As a reminder, some of the matters discussed during this call may include forward-looking statements that involve risk, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Please refer to our most recent 10Q, 10K, or other SEC filings for a description of such risks and uncertainties. During the course of this call, reference may be made to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures is included at the end of the presentation and also posted on the investor relations section of the company's website. Here is our agenda for the call today. We will begin with Chris Franklin, our chairman and CEO, who will provide an update on the company. Next, Dan Schuller, executive vice president and CFO, will discuss our financial results. And lastly, Chris will then provide an update on our acquisition program and conclude the presentation portion with a summary of our guidance before opening the call for questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Chris Franklin.
spk04: Thanks, Renee. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining the call. Let's just start here with a quick mention that last week we held our board meeting and our annual meeting of shareholders, and I'm very pleased to report that all of the items on the ballot were voted in accordance with management's recommendations, so we're very pleased with the outcome of our annual shareholders meeting. All right, let's take a quick look at the first quarter. We reported earnings per share of 72 cents, and that was despite the unusually warm weather and the challenges of inflation and interest rates. We mentioned in February that weather was warmer than normal, and similar weather patterns continued through March. I remind you that we don't currently have weather normalization in our Pennsylvania tariff. Previous owners of the company never filed for it, so we're going to do it in our upcoming rate case. We're going to file a Pennsylvania natural gas rate case end of the year this year. In that filing, we will include weather normalization. Now, if the PUC follows its precedent decisions on weather norm, then we should expect to have it at the conclusion of our rate case, and that would be call it spring of 2024. Again, this will be the first natural gas rate case we filed in Pennsylvania under our ownership, so we need to get that work underway. Now, despite the unfavorable weather in Q1, I want to tell you that we remain confident in our ability to meet our full-year earnings per share guidance of $1.85 to $1.90. We'll continue to evaluate our various options and initiatives that could help us make up for the first quarter weather. One of those initiatives was already in the plan, but it's the current sale process for our energy projects at Peoples. So you may recall that we operate the Pittsburgh airport microgrid, another district energy project which is downtown, and a combined heat and power project at a hospital in Pittsburgh. This, again, was a planned process for this year, and we expect to close the sale this year. This transaction is consistent with our longtime strategy of focusing on regulated growth opportunities. In this case, we hope to continue to work with the buyer of these assets to develop new projects in the future, given the residual benefits they have for our customers and for our gas utility. All right, let's talk about capital work. In the first three months of 2023, we invested over $243.7 million in infrastructure improvements as compared to $183 million in the same period last year. Currently, we have asset purchase agreements signed for nine municipal acquisitions totaling over $380 million in purchase price. Finally, as you may be aware, Earth Day was in April. So last month, we were excited to kick off our second annual Essential Earth Day series of events throughout our 10-state footprint. I'm really proud to mention that we had hundreds of employees participate in over 30 local volunteer events again this year. These activities included opportunities for customer education, employee volunteerism, community engagement, and we made contributions from our company foundation to many of the environmental initiatives, all of which was centered around protecting and providing Earth's most essential resources. Finally, another announcement with big impact was made recently on PFAS. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finally proposed a maximum contaminant level, or MCL, for PFAS chemicals. We recognize that EPA's proposed maximum contaminant level for PFAS chemicals, you remember these are also called forever chemicals, is an important step in protecting human health. Now, remember in 2020, in order to better protect the health of our customers and communities we serve, we set an industry-leading commitment to ensure all of our finished water across our entire footprint would not exceed 13 parts per trillion for multiple PFAS chemicals. Also, at that time, the EPA had a health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion for PFAS chemicals. We chose to adopt a much more stringent standard to protect the health of our customers and communities. To my knowledge, we're the only multi-state company that made such a commitment. The following year in 2021, we cut the ribbon on our new state-of-the-art environmental laboratory, which was just one of the two accredited labs and the only utility certified to test for PFAS chemicals in Pennsylvania. We believe our commitment to operational excellence, along with the experience and expertise we've gained in our PFAS mitigation work, will not only help us facilitate our compliance with the new EPA standards, but will also be an important part of our value proposition to municipal leaders struggling with PFAS issues. Now, I want to remind you at the same time, we're also going to continue to advance our litigation strategy to force the polluters to pay the cleanup costs so that our customers don't bear the total cost, total burden of these costs. And of course, we will continue to cooperate and support the EPA in their efforts to ensure all Americans have safe, quality drinking water. Now, as the national focus on water quality and safety continues to gain momentum, the technical and operational expertise of our people at Essential Utilities continues to be recognized. We understand our responsibilities as a provider of utility services. and it's also our responsibility to keep our customers and our communities well-informed regarding their access to life-sustaining resources we provide. We were reminded of this recently when a pipe ruptured at a chemical plant which spewed chemicals into the Delaware River less than a half mile downstream from one of our water plants. Fortunately, our employees' quick decision to close the plant intake, ensure there was no impact to our customers, and we were able to disseminate timely information, provide reassurance of the safety of our water, and lend a hand to neighboring systems. I continue to be impressed with the professionalism of our team and their ability to respond so quickly to ensure there was no interruption to our customers. If you look at that photo in the center on this slide, You can see that latex-type material floating down that left side of the picture, close to intakes along the river, and that went on for miles. This was an important operational catch by our team. And with that, let me hand it over to Dan to review the financial results.
spk03: Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. I'll start off with some of the first quarter highlights. We had revenues for the quarter of $726.5 million. up 3.9% from $699.3 million last year. A regulated water segment contributed $267.3 million, and a regulated natural gas segment contributed $441.3 million. The largest contributor to the increase in revenues for the quarter was the recovery of higher natural gas commodity prices, and therefore, purchase gas costs increased by $28.6 million year over year for the first quarter. Additional revenues from regulatory recoveries, water and wastewater customer growth, and other items also contributed positively or offset materially by decreased volumes in the natural gas segment due to the warmer than normal temperatures that Chris mentioned a moment ago. O&M expenses decreased to $138 million for the quarter, down from $142.6 million in the first quarter of last year. Higher water production costs and growth from added water customers were offset by lower employee-related costs, recoverable costs related to our natural gas segment customer assistance program, improved bad debt, and other items for the quarter. Net income was down year over year from $199.4 million to $191.4 million, and GAAP EPS was $0.72 for the quarter. Next, we'll walk through the waterfall slides starting with revenue. In the first quarter of 2023, revenues increased 27.2 million or 3.9% on a GAAP basis. You'll notice the primary drivers were the recovery of higher purchase gas costs of 28.6 million due to the significant increase in natural gas commodity prices and regulatory recoveries of 22.9 million. Customer growth from our regulated water segment, which includes both acquisitions and organic growth, and other items provided an additional $6.4 million towards the revenue increase. The primary offset to these increases was decreased gas volumes of $30.5 million from our regulated natural gas segment due to the warmer than normal winter weather. And with that, let's review the first quarter weather on the next slide. As you know, there's a strong correlation between weather and gas consumption and thus associated revenue. And typically, the majority of gas is consumed by our customers in the first and fourth quarters, with the largest portion of gas being sold in the first quarter in Pennsylvania. This winter, for our regulated natural gas segment, the weather in the first quarter was dramatically warmer than normal, with 2,330 heating degree days. This metric compares unfavorably not only to the first quarter of last year, which was colder than normal, but it also falls short of the 20-year first quarter average in western Pennsylvania of 2,814 heating degree days. In fact, this was the warmest first quarter in the last decade and the fourth warmest first quarter since 1955. Next, let's move on to operations and maintenance expenses. Operations and maintenance expenses were $138 million for the first quarter, a decrease of 3.2% compared to $142.6 million for the same period in 2022. Increased production costs, including inflationary increases in chemicals, purchased water, and sludge hauling, and expenses related to newly acquired water and wastewater customers, added a combined $4.5 million. These were offset by lower employee-related costs of 2.7 million, decreased gas customer assistance program expenses of 2.5 million, and a decrease in other items of 2.5 million, mainly related to lower maintenance expenses and a non-recurring charge in 2022. And finally, bad debt was lowered by 1.5 million. Next, we'll spend a minute on the earnings per share waterfall. Beginning on the left side of the slide, Gap EPS for the first quarter of 2022 was $0.76. Regulatory recoveries contributed $0.06. Growth from our regulated water segment added $0.01, and reduced expenses added $0.07. These were offset by decreased volume from our regulated natural gas segment of over $0.08, other items of $0.03, and decreased volume from our regulated water segment of $0.01. The 3-cent impact in other includes increases in interest costs and depreciation offset by income taxes. The result is GAAP EPS of 72 cents for the first quarter of 2023. As Chris mentioned earlier, we continue to expect to meet our annual earnings per share guidance for the year. Moving on to regulatory activity and other matters, So far in 2023, we completed rate cases or surcharge filings in four of our regulated water states with a total annualized revenue increase of $3.6 million. Also, we currently have base rate cases or surcharge filings underway in North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas for a regulated water segment and a surcharge filing in Kentucky for a regulated natural gas business. As we previously indicated, We expect to raise approximately $500 million in equity or equity-linked securities this year to maintain our credit metrics while we invest capital and close municipal acquisitions. And with that, I'll hand it back over to Chris.
spk04: Chris? Thanks, Dan. Good segue. Let's talk a little bit about municipal transactions. Matt Rhodes and his team have been busy as of this call. We have eight signed asset purchase agreements for nine systems across four states. in which we have existing water operations. So this includes the recently announced Greenville wastewater system that has over 2,300 customer connections. It also serves over 1,700 additional customers through two wholesale customers in the neighboring townships of West Salem and Hempfield. Collectively, these acquisitions are expected to add nearly 219,000 customers or customer equivalents and total over $380 million in purchase price. Five, and I count two in Frankfurt, right? Five transactions on this slide are on track to close in Q2 or Q3 of this year. It includes Shenandoah, Southern Oaks, Union Rome, and Frankfurt, with other acquisitions expected to close in Q4 2023 and, of course, some in Q1 of next year. As many of you know, progress on the Del Cora regulatory process is under a stay by the federal bankruptcy court handling the bankruptcy of the city of Chester. The next hearing of the bankruptcy court is next week, May 15th. Settlement discussions do continue, albeit at a slow pace, but we remain optimistic that a settlement can ultimately be reached. Importantly, our rate projections, along with the last rate projections I've seen from Delcoura, continue to indicate that customer rates will be lower under our ownership when compared with Delcoura remaining independent. So this transaction remains to be good for the customers. It's probably important to reiterate again that despite the delay in Delcoura process, we still plan to meet our current earnings for the year. I should also note that our sale of our small West Virginia gas operation remains on track in the regulatory process, and we expect to close the transaction in the third quarter of this year. So in addition to the signed municipal transactions on the previous slide, we continue to see a strong and healthy pipeline of opportunities for growth. As illustrated on this slide, we are currently engaged in active discussions with municipalities pursuing over 400,000 potential water and wastewater customers. Our teams in each of our eight water states focus on potential acquisitions that have between 2,500 and 25,000 customers. We continue to offer many benefits beyond just a competitive purchase price, including our technical and operational expertise, commitment to spend the needed capital and make improvements, and to provide long-term clean, safe, reliable utility service to the communities we serve. So let me wrap up with a reminder of our 2023 guidance that we had previously published. As we've said throughout the call, we continue to expect to meet guidance for the year. Earnings is expected to be between $1.85 and $1.90 per share, with three-year earnings per share growth of 5% to 7% through 2025. Our capital plans include investing approximately $1.1 billion annually to rehabilitate and strengthen our water, wastewater, and natural gas systems through 2025. Continue to expect that rate-based growth will be between 6% to 7% for water and between 8% and 10% for natural gas, and that customer growth will be between 2% and 3% on average for water and stable for natural gas. Finally, We remain committed to environmental stewardship, sustainable business practices, employee safety, diversity and inclusion, enhanced customer experience, and a strong community engagement. We're supportive of the EPA's proposed new regulations on PFAS, and we'll continue to pursue our legal action against those polluters to offset our overall cost of mitigation on the PFAS side. So with that, let me conclude our formal remarks and open the line for questions. I'll turn it back to you, Melissa.
spk01: Thank you, sir. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star 2. You will be advised when to ask your question. And our first question comes from Ryan Connors of North Coast Research. Sir, please go ahead. Good morning, Ryan.
spk06: Great, thank you. Morning.
spk01: Hey, Ryan.
spk06: Good morning, Dan. Three things for me this morning. The first is pretty quick and straightforward. You know, nothing in Pennsylvania right now on the rate pipeline side. A desic filing in Pennsylvania, is that something that's contemplated for 23, or is that you think will be a little further out?
spk03: Ryan, I'd anticipate that we would have desic filings for both water and gas in Pennsylvania later this year.
spk06: Okay, okay. Secondly, Chris, you mentioned the gas rate case and the weather normalization component of that. Conceptually, if you're being asked, you're taking a risk like you took in the quarter where sometimes you get hit on lower volumes. Conceptually, You get paid for taking that risk maybe with a better return on equity. So what's your thought process on the balance between asking for the weather normalization but trying to make sure that that doesn't end up biting you on the back end if there's going to be an argument that less risk should come with less return in terms of an ROE?
spk04: Yeah, I think what we found is as you look at other utilities who currently have weather normalization in Pennsylvania, there's been no discounted return on equity. And I think we would expect if the Commission stays with their precedent decisions that we would see something similar in a case that we'd requested. And, you know, listen, I think, you know, as you realize, as it's constructed, you give away the upside as well as the downside. But I think when you think about water utility investors, typically people want certainty, steadiness, right? And so we think weather normalization is a better outcome than taking the downswings and the upswings.
spk06: Yep. Okay. And then, yeah, lastly, wanted to chat just a little bit about this Delaware River issue. spill and cleanup. And congrats to the team there on a great job managing that issue. You know, we're very close to that here, you know, in terms of location. And, you know, it really, the way ACWA handled that really stood in contrast to a lot of the neighboring communities. I mean, there was outright panic in a lot of the communities, not only Philadelphia, but some of the Bucks County communities as well. And you just didn't see that because I did think ACWA's, you know, communication and and remediation was really tight. And so my question is, you know, obviously your name gets dragged through the mud a lot locally, especially in Bucks County with the whole acquisition attempt last year. How do you use something like this to get the message out? And have you done anything locally to try to get that word out about what a great job the company does relative to not all, but to some of the you know, the local government-owned systems out there?
spk04: Yeah, it's a good question. And I would say, just for clarity's sake, Ryan, you live here, some others may not live You know, when we say get dragged through the mud, it's really only with regard to acquisitions. The company's operational record is stellar, and our general reputation in all the communities, including southeastern Pennsylvania, is really strong. But where we get into these scuffles on acquisitions, we're always looking for opportunities to tell our story. And I think a couple of things. we started to get much, much more favorable press. It's a really designed strategy, and I give credit to our new vice president of communications, Gene Russo, who's done a beautiful job in telling our story in a fashion that I think really resonates with people. But in this case in particular, we had pushed down authority to the plant level. In years past, they may have had to go through the chain of command in order to shut down a plant intake. That doesn't happen anymore. Those plant operators and management teams are really, really on top of it, and that's where the decision should be made and was made in this case. So we kept that contaminant from coming into the plant. And then further, to be able to put the communication out there that was strong and steady. As you mentioned, and it actually made national news, the city of Philadelphia came out and suggested people may need to be in bottled water. So there was a huge run on bottled water in the city of Philadelphia, and probably unnecessarily so in hindsight. But I think people have grown accustomed to our style of operational response, including communications, and it was just something I'm very, very proud of in this instance.
spk06: Got it. Thanks for your time.
spk04: You bet. Thank you. Take care, Ryan.
spk01: Thank you. And our next question comes from Paul Zimbardo of Bank of America. Sir, please go ahead.
spk02: Hey, Paul.
spk01: Good morning, Paul.
spk02: Hi. Good morning, Tim. And could you just give a little more quantification on some of the offsets to the very warm weather, again, Delcor timing? I think you mentioned that there's an asset monetization in plan. Just if you could quantify that and help build up the bridge a little bit to the full year guidance.
spk04: Thank you. Yeah, listen, it's a process that is taking place right now, and so I can't give a whole lot of detail on the process, but there is a process to sell the CHP. as well as the microgrid at the airport, and as well as the steam system in the city. So it's three projects. We think about them as a unit, but they're not interconnected, and there's an ongoing process. So I can't give you a great deal of detail. Dan, do you have anything to add to that?
spk03: I guess the only thing I'd add, Chris, is, you know, Paul, as you would expect, we're taking a really close look at our O&M expenses this year. to see if there are areas where we should be optimizing. And then also being exceptionally diligent with regard to regulatory filings, whether that's a pass through or a sick filing, being diligent with respect to those. And frankly, we've been helped by a little bit of colder than normal weather in the April time frame and into May, which has helped a little bit when we think about the significant shortfall in the first three months.
spk02: Okay, I understand that on the cost flex. And then shifting over to the credit side, what FFO to debt do you expect now for 2023? And if I read the materials right, it looks like you went to the top end of that 400 to 500 million range, and now it's all in 2023. If you could just help explain that evolution there.
spk04: Well, I think when you think about FFO to debt, you also have to keep in mind we're in the middle of repair at People's. So you're seeing a lot of our income come from the tax line. So I just want you to keep that in mind as we think about how the credit agencies don't always see exactly how we see it. But what we will say is in our five-year plan, our FFO debt continues to move northward in a positive fashion.
spk03: Yeah, that's absolutely right, Chris, and I think maybe just for clarity, what we've been told is that, you know, and this is widely communicated, that our downgrade threshold is 12% FFO to debt, and if we're below that on a sustained basis, we would be having conversations with the agencies. Given what Chris mentioned about repair, you know, we tend to have conversations with the agencies where we calculate FFO to debt on kind of a straight basis, and then we also add in adjustments for the fact that we've been out of rates in Pennsylvania due to repairs. So rather than seeing a pickup in an FFO and having the revenue associated with those earnings with that rate base, we're picking up those earnings on the tax line. So we do an adjustment for that and we have conversations with respect to weather as well. So I think it's fair to say that we have an impact here relative to weather. as well as interest rates, and so we're working to offset that.
spk04: Yeah, Dan, I think, you know, importantly, and this is something to think about, Paul, as we come through the people's rate case, right, which was filed at the end of this year, that FFO calculation becomes much more straightforward, and I think alignment with how the credit agencies see it and how we see it becomes very clear. So that's only another, you know, this time next year, things should return to what we would call normal. But in the meantime, there is a little bit difference in how we think about those numbers versus some of the credit agencies.
spk02: Okay, I appreciate that. And I can follow up offline as well. It sounds like that change is going to in response to kind of preserve against that, the rating agency trigger. Is that fair?
spk03: You know, I think it's fair that, you know, we're always looking at what's the right way to finance the business, and these things evolve over time, and they evolve from, you know, quarter to quarter, and so we put a little more, you know, a little finer point on what we said today in terms of the amount of equity that we would look to raise.
spk02: Okay. Great. And then following up, since you mentioned it, I know there was that new IRS guidance on natural gas repairs tax. Just any implications or impacts on whether earnings cash flow or anything of the like. Thank you very much.
spk03: Yeah. So, Paul, that literally just came out a few weeks ago and obviously had been anticipated for a long time. Everyone's just trying to get their hands around it today to see what does this possibly mean and, you know, working with the various big four accounting firms. So let us do our work on that and we'll get back to a later date when we know more. But it's, as I say, really early days.
spk02: Okay. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot, team.
spk03: Yep, thanks, Paul.
spk01: And our next question comes from Travis Miller of Morningstar. Please go ahead.
spk07: Good morning, everyone. Thank you. Hey, Travis. Hi, Travis. Back on that Pennsylvania gas potential filing here later this year, apart from the stuff you already discussed, the ROE, the tax issue, the weather normalization, the core part of the rate case, what are you thinking or what have the trends been since the last filing, since the acquisition on stuff like O&M, capital investment, some of the other core items.
spk03: Yeah, so as you can imagine, Travis, we've made significant capital investments since the prior Ray case, and as Chris noted, the prior Ray case was really done before our ownership of the company. So, yeah, we would see this, and the other thing that I guess was included in the last one, but we obviously will include it here, is, you know, fully projected future test years. So, this case look for this to recover the capital that we've invested so far the capital and expenses through that fully projected future test year to incorporate the repair benefit into the case so that that repair is part of the I should say it this way the tax the lower effective tax rate from repair is becomes part of the revenue requirement, and thus the benefit of repair is going to the customers. And then, as Chris noted, weather normalization.
spk04: So those are the points I guess I would make in terms of... And obviously any of the inflation that we've experienced, we start to pick up. Absolutely.
spk07: Yep. Yep.
spk04: Okay.
spk07: That makes sense. And then more of a high-level conceptual question is, Talking about that 2% to 3% customer growth for water, flat for gas, again, just high level, it seems like when you build a house, you need water and gas. So I wonder if you could square the difference. Are you seeing more houses electrified? Is there some kind of efficiency? I don't know. What are the thoughts there? What's the big delta? Yeah.
spk03: Travis, I think it's mainly geography. So if we talk about where we have larger organic growth, we probably have more of that organic growth in southeast Pennsylvania than southwest. And we see that large organic growth in North Carolina, Texas, Indiana, around the Indianapolis area. So we do tend to see more building, if you will, in our service territories in those states that I just walked through.
spk04: I've just seen recently a couple of housing developments that were all gas in the Pittsburgh region, which says it's still growing, but not enough to really move the needle. That's why we call it steady.
spk03: Yeah, and even, Chris, we have pulled some data recently, and it's hard to get exact data in terms of housing construction and gas connections out in western Pennsylvania. But we are seeing there's still that desire to have natural gas in new construction, and And so we think it's pretty well correlated out there that as you see new construction around Pittsburgh, they are gas connections.
spk07: Okay. Very good. So no material electrification type of trends that you're seeing. Not seeing any trends in the areas where we serve, right? No, not at all. Okay. Very good. That's all I have. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Take care, Travis.
spk01: Thank you. And our next question comes from Greg Orle of UBS. Please go ahead. Hey, Greg. Good morning, Greg.
spk08: Yeah, hi. Good morning. Just wondering, you know, what sort of updates on PFAS we should be looking for around the, you know, the May 30th filings with the EPA?
spk04: Listen, I think a couple things. One, the current reg suggests that we would have our work complete on mitigation by 2027. I think that's going to be a stretch, and I think hopefully that gets extended a little bit. But, you know, we're running as fast as we can. It's just a big effort. Secondly, I would say, you know, this is a much bigger project or set of projects than I think EPA is talking about. I think they're probably coming to terms with it. but they've estimated that the cost for this nationally is somewhere around $2 billion, and I would say that's a gross underestimate, and I think that will come out as time goes along here. As we look at the projects across our areas, there's concentrations, so it's not focused on systems across the platform. It's focused on key areas, areas like North Carolina, New Jersey, And it's a little spotty, so it's not like you take this and spread it over the whole customer base. But when you think about where we were at 13 parts per trillion and the cost associated with that, and now where we are at four parts per trillion, the MCL that the EPA has announced, it's fairly dramatically different. Four parts per trillion is almost a non-detect, and so the costs are vastly different. But, listen, we're going to be supportive. You know, I think the administration is going to press this one. So we don't anticipate seeing any changes. We think the four parts probably goes, and we'll do our part to get there.
spk08: Okay, thanks. You bet.
spk01: Thank you. And our next question comes from Davis Sunderland of Baird. Please go ahead.
spk05: Good morning, David. Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Yeah, good morning. Good to see some updates on the pending muni transactions and the five that are going to close in the next two quarters, roughly. Just wanted to ask high-level thoughts on any changes that have been in the pipeline, whether there have been difficulties or opportunities related to the worsening macro environment, banking stress, or Any difficulties you guys are seeing with maybe competitors having financing challenges or just any opportunities that may be coming in that pipeline?
spk04: Yeah, you know, I guess the news over the last several months has been an exit of what could have been a fairly large player in the space, right? NextEra decided to exit the space. So that's probably one of the interesting pieces of news. I haven't heard particular financing challenges of peers, but I think what you probably start to see is some challenges materializing in the municipal sector, and certainly PFAS will contribute, right? We believe the PFAS issue is much larger, again, than EPA is estimating, and once the municipals find these challenges, again, assuming that enforcement will be a key element here, then there will be a lot of municipals looking for help on PFAS. And whether that's help implementing their own solution, where we might be able to help, or, you know, oh my gosh, this is so expensive, we need to exit. And so that could be a key contributor toward our acquisition program as we offer our set of solutions.
spk05: That's helpful. Appreciate the time, guys. Thanks.
spk04: You bet.
spk08: Take care.
spk01: As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your keypad. And we have a – our next question comes from Jonathan Reeder of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hey, Jonathan. Good morning, Jonathan.
spk09: Hey, good morning. Thanks for the time. A lot of my questions have been asked, but just a few follow-ups. So I guess given the offsetting efforts already made and, you know, the favorable Q2 weather that you kind of mentioned, how much additional work do you think you have to do to, you know, fully offset, you know, what I think was the roughly eight cent headwind from the Q1 gas volumes?
spk03: Yeah, let me just clarify, because I don't want you to overthink the impact of, or overestimate the impact of a warm, a cold, I should say, April. You know, think about an weather impact in the first three months of the year, you know, we might have sort of a penny of that coming back in the fourth quarter, maybe a little bit more. But it was just one month. And as you know, when you get into April, your heater just kicks on less. So it's not days as we go further toward summer don't have as much impact as they do in January, February, and March. So, you know, we have, you know, Work to do here, as Chris mentioned, obviously, though, the sale of the energy project and the O&M focus and the diligence around regulatory filings that I mentioned all contribute to that work in terms of making up for that shortfall.
spk09: Okay, but like the O&M decrease that we saw in Q1, was that related to you guys starting to kind of flex that muscle already, or has that stuff not really kicked in yet?
spk03: I would say it's a mix. There were some other things that helped in Q1, certainly weather being warmer. You do have fewer main breaks, lower maintenance expenses. I'd say some of that focus you would have seen in the first quarter, but more of that focus is to play out through the next nine months of the year.
spk09: Okay. Gotcha. And then I think you kind of did allude to it that you put a finer point on the amount of equity needed. I think you said $500 million in 2023. So kind of two questions on that. Does that $500 million, I guess, does that include the like $50 to $75 million that you issued in late 2022 under the ATM? And then, you know, also what would that total look like? if Del Cora, you know, slips into 2024 from a closed perspective?
spk03: Yeah, there's a lot of, you know, some specificity there, Ryan. Let me talk about that a little bit. So, we think about kind of approximately $500 million more incremental to what we did under the ATM. So, that's the first part of that. And then as we continue to evaluate our credit metrics relative to acquisitions, you know, we'll give more clarity beyond this point. So this is what we're going to talk about, I think, leaving it at that today. I mean, for the year so far, too, you know, under the 18, if you think about the raise, we did some last December. We did a little bit in January, but it's less than $20 million worth. It wasn't a big number. Okay.
spk09: But as we think about, like, I guess Delcor, I mean, should we still be thinking, like, the M&A deals are 50-50 or because of this thought around the credit metrics, you know, is it capitalizing at, you know, or the equity portion being greater than 50% now?
spk03: No, I think 50-50 is the right way to think about acquisitions. But I also would, you know, would remind you, we have a significant CapEx program that we're running today too. So it's capital, it's acquisitions, think of the big dividends, big cash users, all demand that we continue to look at how we finance the business. Okay.
spk09: Okay. And then lastly, did you give an estimate of what the expected proceeds from the sale of those kind of three people's projects are? Is it like anything meaningful from, you know, an equity offsetting perspective?
spk03: Well, you know, we're in the midst of a process there, so we really can't comment on the, you know, either what we think that top line price could be or, you know, what kind of gain might be built into that.
spk09: Okay. The gain would flow through to help, I guess, the hitting guidance this year and then one of the proceeds. Yeah.
spk03: Yeah, think of it as twofold, right? There's a gain that helps from an income perspective and there are proceeds that help in terms of financing the business in lieu of capital gains by another means.
spk09: Okay. Awesome. Appreciate you taking the time today. Thanks.
spk03: All right. Thanks, Jonathan. Take care.
spk01: Thank you. At this time, we have no further questions, so I'd like to hand it back over to Chris Franklin for any closing remarks. Please go ahead. Great.
spk04: Thank you, everybody. Thanks for your time today. As always, we'll remain available for questions, follow-ups at any time. Renee's standing in today for Brian. Brian will be back in action soon, though, and I appreciate you being with us today. Take care.
spk01: Thank you, everyone. At this time, you may disconnect. Hosts, you can stay on the line.
Disclaimer