Hydro One Limited

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Hydro One Limited's third quarter 2020 NLS teleconference. At this time, all participants are on a listening 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 one on your telephone. As a reminder, the call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Omar Javid, Vice President, Investor Relations at Hydro One. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us in Hydro One's third quarter earnings call. Joining us today are our President and CEO, Mark Poeska, and our Chief Financial Officer, Chris Lopez. In the call today, we will go over our third quarter results and then spend the majority of the call answering as many of your questions as time permits. There are also several slides that illustrate some of the points we'll address in a moment. They should be up on the webcast now. or if you're dialed into the call, you can also find them on Hydro One's website in the investor relations section under events and presentations. Today's discussions will likely touch on estimates and other forward-looking information. You should review the cautionary language in today's earnings release and our MD&A, which we filed this morning regarding the various factors, assumptions, and risks that could cause our actual results to differ as they all apply to this call. With that, I turn the call over to our President and CEO, Mark Proweska.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before we begin, I'm heartbroken to share with you that one of our employees lost his life in a very serious motor vehicle accident in the Port Carleen area a couple days ago. Our employee was traveling in a Hydro One pickup truck on a rural Ontario road when a concrete truck rolled onto this vehicle while rounding a corner. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends, and coworkers. Nothing is more important to me, this company, and our employees than the safety of our colleagues. This incident will further strengthen our resolve to eliminating serious injuries in our company. With respect to the business, I'd like to start by thanking all of our employees who are delivering on our corporate strategy while keeping a focus on the guiding priorities we set to help us navigate through these challenging times. From the start of the pandemic, Hydro One has been guided by two priorities, protecting our employees and delivering safe, reliable power to Ontarians. These priorities will continue to guide our decisions along with the advice of our public health experts. To date, we've had very few cases of COVID amongst our employee population, and there's only been one suspected case of workplace transmission, which occurred subsequent to the quarter end. Safety protocols such as extra PPE, on-site hand-washing supplies, adaptive work methods and site protocols have allowed us to complete our work programs. We will continue to be diligent in following these protocols as we look to the future when we get to a new normal. Our return to office plan is designed to minimize the risk to our employees. It is gradual and phased. It builds on lessons we have learned since the start of the pandemic. It is flexible in when and how we work so that everyone is protected. And it ensures that lights stay on while we continue to complete our work programs. Our customers have also been affected in many ways, and we understand this. We have been and will continue to be there for our customers. In yesterday's budget, the government announced an additional initiative to lower the global adjustment charge. This will help our business customers. The government also confirmed rate protections for our residential customers will remain in place. We were pleased to see the government's commitment to managing electricity costs so Ontario's businesses can be competitive on the global stage. At Hydro One, we continue to support residential customers by extending our ban on electricity disconnections and providing them with help through Hydro One's Pandemic Relief Program, as well as ensuring they are benefiting from the government's COVID energy assistance programs. We have a responsibility to give back to the communities where we work and live. This includes support for our Indigenous customers, businesses and families. We serve 104 Indigenous communities and have transmission assets on 23 First Nations reserves. We have a responsibility to build respectful and meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities across the province through the work that we do every day. And I'm pleased that we're making advancements. Hydro One was recently recognized by the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, or the CCAB, with Silver Level Certification in Progressive Aboriginal Relations, or PAR, advancing from our Bronze Level Certification in 2017. Awards like these are incredibly important because they track our progress. They help us improve our performance as a trusted partner with Indigenous communities, and we are honoured to be recognized in this way. This partnership mindset also extends to our employees and unions, I'm pleased to announce that the Power Workers Union, the PW, members voted in favor of renewing two collective agreements. The main collective agreement, which includes frontline operations staff, and the customer service operations collective agreement, which includes staff and customer facing roles. The collective agreements cover over 4,200 regular employees and approximately 1,500 contingent employees in critical frontline roles across the company operations in ontario these agreements reflect our shared commitment to working together and there are several notable components including employment security extended health benefits focused on mental health for employees the agreements also allow for increased productivity enhanced flexibility and a renewed emphasis on diverse and inclusive practices We are now in a period of labor stability with these agreements in place for the next several years. And as we look out to the future, we see a lot of things to be optimistic about. First, we're continuing to energize life for our customers. We're working to connect over 170 commercial and industrial customers to the grid. These new customers represent over 2,200 megawatts of capacity. which is enough to supply a city about one and a half times the size of Ottawa. Second, we are in a stable rate regulated environment. Our rate applications for the distribution and transmission businesses have been successful through 2022. We have high visibility of the capital investment and corresponding rate-based growth that is required to maintain the safe and efficient transmission of power. Our formulaic return on equity has already been determined which provides us with an incentive to work harder for our customers. In addition, we have a path to final resolution on the deferred tax asset. Our constructive relationship with our regulators is strong, and we are working with the new leadership of the Ontario Energy Board as they move forward with the regulatory reforms that will benefit all Ontarians and which we support. Third, we have successfully closed the Peterborough and Aurelia transactions. We are now welcoming them into the Hydro One family and sharing best practices between us so we can be efficient in our delivery of services to those communities. We are confident this will be a positive experience for Aurelia and Peterborough customers and employees and will be an example for other communities to join our family as well. And lastly, we are continuing to execute on our strategic plans. We are reducing costs, putting capital to work, and generating positive returns for our shareholders. This positive outlook, combined with our greater purpose of energizing life, is attracting high-caliber individuals to our talent force and motivating existing employees to step up. And with that, I'm pleased to welcome Megan Telford as the Chief Human Resources Officer. Megan was previously at Toronto Dominion, where she transitioned through increasingly challenging roles and most recently was the head of human resources for TV insurance. Her background in all areas of HR and law will be invaluable to us. Our chief safety officer, Darlene Bradley, recently retired after 33 years with the company. Darlene had been a core part of my leadership team, and I would like to thank her for her service, and we all wish her the very best in this new stage of her life. and I'm pleased to report the appointment of Lila Garzuzzi to the role of Chief Safety Officer. Lila, an electrical engineer by background, has over 15 years of experience in Hydro One, most recently as Vice President of Distribution. Given her frontline experience, she's deeply committed to improving Hydro One's safety culture. She was also recently recognized as one of Canada's Top 40 Under 40 for 2020. As an executive sponsor of Pride, Lila is also an important model who will continue to deliver on our commitment to diversity and inclusion. And to close, we're all saddened by the loss of our colleague, and this has prompted us to step back and reflect. In many ways, this quarter has been positive, but all the good is diminished when we experience a tragic incident like the one this week. We must and will continue to work towards eliminating serious injuries in this company. Chris, over to you.