Hydro One Limited

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Hydro One Limited's first quarter 2021 analyst teleconference. At this time, all participants are in 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.

Thank you, Shen. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us in Hydro One's first 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 first 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 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 MDNA, 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 Poeska.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us this morning. As we continue to work through the pandemic, we are encouraged by the vaccine rollout and the prospect of returning back to normal in the near future. However, we remain vigilant as we are still in the midst of a third wave of the pandemic in Ontario, and the virus continues to surge globally. Despite the recent increase in case counts in Ontario, Hydro One fulfilled its responsibility as an essential service and maintained its field work programs. Our robust processes and safety measures resulted in a low COVID-19 case incident rate compared to the Ontario and the Canadian national averages. Safety protocols, good governance, and revised work processes and methods have allowed us to complete our work programs while keeping our employees safe. We will continue to be diligent in following these protocols and look forward to a bright future when we can ease up on the restrictions. I'm very pleased that Hydro One continues to make progress in working for and with our stakeholders. As Chris will discuss in detail in his remarks, our financial results remain resilient and stable. We continue to demonstrate our leadership role in the electricity sector in Ontario. We continue to execute on our operational plans and progress through our work programs. And most importantly, we continue to support our employees, customers, and communities. In the first quarter, we solidified our position as the provider of choice and the steward of the electricity sector in Ontario. The independent electricity system operator requested us to develop a new transmission line between Chatham and Lambton. The new 230kV double circuit transmission line, which, if approved by the OEB, could be in service by 2028 and would provide electricity to support rapid agricultural growth in the Windsor-Essex and Chatham areas. We see a lot of potential for economic activity in Ontario. which will result in a sustained strong demand for electricity. The award for this new line further demonstrates the trust that is placed in us by the people of Ontario to build a better and brighter future for all. We also continue to strengthen and operate our existing assets. Capital investments continue at a pace that is in line with our stated objectives, and our teams have maintained focus on transmission and distribution reliability to ensure families, businesses, and essential services have the power they need. Hydro One continues to support its customers and communities as they navigate the pandemic. As referenced in the last call, Hydro One launched Connected for Life, a promise that helps customers stay connected to safe and reliable power while we help them access support. Since it launched, The support provided to customers was four times higher than during the previous quarter. During this quarter, more than 32,000 customer transactions were processed for various financial assistance and flexible payment options. Similarly, during the quarter, we launched the Small Business Pandemic Relief Program to provide financial assistance and flexibility to our small business customers. Combined with the Government of Ontario's COVID-19 Energy Assistance Program for small business, our new relief program helps customers with up to $3,000 in financial assistance. We continue to see our efforts being rewarded with strong customer satisfaction scores. During the quarter, our residential and small business customer satisfaction came in at 91%. versus 87% in the first quarter of 2020. Last call, I spoke about the release of the government's provincial budget, which included a commitment of an additional $1.3 billion over 27 months to help reduce global adjustment costs for commercial and industrial customers. I am pleased that this has come into effect January 1st and has resulted in a bill savings of 14 to 16% on average for commercial and industrial customers. At the same time, at Hydro One, we continue to work hard to reduce long-term costs for our customers. We've all learned the value of robust IT services, especially during this challenging period. And I'm pleased to report that we repatriated some of our IT services functionality and welcomed back a number of employees to Hydro One. In addition, we signed a new master service agreement for the remainder of our information technology services with Capgemini Canada. The agreement allows us to further reduce overall IT costs, increase efficiency, and maintain a high level of service. Our collective agreement with the Society of United Professionals expired on March 31st, and we are currently in the bargaining process with both parties remaining committed to reaching a resolution. To respect the process and both sides, we will not be making any specific comments. In general, as with all of our union partners, our priority is to advance our corporate strategy and our shared goals such as safety, diversity and inclusion, and supporting our employees through the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our overall focus on cost control will feed into our upcoming joint rate application and ultimately will benefit all of our customers. We are close to finalizing our application and expect to file it sometime in the third quarter of this year. The application will contain our view of the capital investments required to maintain and improve the quality of infrastructure so that Ontario can continue to have safe, reliable electricity to support a brighter economic future. We undertook extensive customer engagement, developed evidence supported by independent studies, and leveraged a robust asset management approach to develop our application, which will meet the long-term needs of customers and the system, as well as support economic growth in Ontario. We are also pleased that our efforts to control OM&A costs in our business since our last filing will be shared with our customers in the upcoming rate filing, further ensuring affordability. Subsequent to the quarter, we were pleased that the OEB rendered their decision regarding the implementation of the deferred tax asset recovery. This decision puts to rest the regulatory back and forth over the past few years on the matter. We value our constructive relationship with our regulator and are pleased with this outcome. Chris will deal with the financial impact of the decision in his comments. And finally, I'm pleased to report that the Board has approved an increase to the dividend by 5%, reflecting our resilient and stable performance last year. This continues the track record of an annual dividend increase since the initial public offering in 2015. Chris, over to you.