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TerraForm Power’s (TERP) CEO Carlos Domenech on Q4 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

TerraForm Power, Inc. (NASDAQ: TERP ) Q4 2014 Earnings Conference Call February 18, 2015 5:00 PM ET Executives Brett Prior – Director, Investor Relations Carlos Domenech – Chief Executive Officer Alex Hernandez – Chief Financial Officer Analysts Paul Coster – JP Morgan Angie Storozynski – Macquarie Capital Aditya Satghare – FBR Capital Markets Gregg Orrill – Barclays Julien Dumoulin Smith – UBS Brian Chin – Bank of America Merrill Lynch Brian Lee – Goldman Sachs Operator Good day, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to TerraForm Power Fourth Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Brett Prior, Director of Investor Relations for TerraForm Power. Sir, you may begin. Brett Prior Good afternoon and thank you for joining TerraForm Power’s investor conference call and webcast covering the company’s fourth quarter financial results. I’m joined today by Carlos Domenech, Chief Executive Officer and Alex Hernandez, our Chief Financial Officer. As a customary practice, I will now review our disclosure statement. Our discussions today will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution or CAFD. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures has been provided in our fourth quarter earnings press release and financials, published on February 18th. Please note that this call contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from management’s current expectations. We encourage you to review the Safe Harbor statement contained in today’s press release for a more complete description. In addition, this call includes only information available to us at this time. To the extent you’re listening to this call at a later date via replay, please note this information may be outdated or incomplete. With that, I will now turn the call over to Carlos Domenech, Chief Executive Officer of TerraForm Power. Carlos Domenech Thank you, Brett and good afternoon and welcome to our call. Please turn to slide number four. On today’s call, we will cover in four sections. I’ll start with an overall summary. I’ll then provide an overview of our performance since the IPO and how the company’s position to execute on our growth strategy. I’ll then hand it over to Alex Hernandez, our CFO who will walk you through our Q4 financial results on our 2015 guidance and outlook. Please turn to slide number six. Our Q4 results were ahead of plan, delivering $17 million of cash available for distribution or CAFD. We also increase our fourth quarter dividend by 20% to $1.08 per share annually. Second, as we look forward to 2015, we are reaffirming our given guidance to a $1.30 per share and $214 million of CAFD. Our fleet is currently 1.5 gigawatts that inclusive First Wind assets that were included on our closing and are now on boarding. Our current fleet is operating well. It has a current run rate of CAFD approximately $180 million. This gives us significant visibility to meet our guidance for 2015. Third, we have further enhanced our visibility to grow. And as a result, we have a much larger inventory of this sponsor Drop Downs, which stands at 3.3 gigawatts. This is our three-fold from the 1.1 gigawatt we had just eight months ago at our IPO. Fourth, we have a strong balance sheet and the ability to access multiple sources of liquidity to fund our future growth. Between our cash our revolver and the $1.5 billion warehouse facility, we have the ability to secure a $190 million of incremental CAFD. Finally, we continue to see attractive and accretive M&A opportunities. The acquisition of First Wind has more than doubled our addressable market and also has increased our acquisition pipeline. Turning to slide number eight. I would like to walk you through four key drivers of dividend growth to support the significant opportunity ahead of us. On the top left chart, you see that our sponsors expected growth conversions have doubled for 6 gigawatts to 12 gigawatts in the last eight months. The chart on the top right corners shows that our inventory for Drop Down projects has tripled and is going to 3.3 gigawatts, this is approximately 80% contracted. While our prospects for organic growth remained strong, we also have been busy on the M&A front. On the bottom left chart, you see that nearly one gigawatt of third-party acquisitions have closed since going public. And finally on the bottom right chart, CAFD guidance for 2015 has doubled to $214 million as a result of several acquisition and higher Drop Downs from our sponsor. Turning to slide number nine, the resulting type of this execution has had favorable impact across several key metrics in our IPO. For example, our fleet of installed megawatts as increased by 86%. Our EBITDA and CAFD had increased by 87% and a 100% respectively. Finally, we raised our dividend guidance by 44% and our five-year dividend growth target from 15% to 24%, which is one of the highest growth rates among our peer group. Turning to slide 10. In prior calls, we’ve indicated that we saw significant opportunities on the acquisitions front in various sizes. We also indicated that we will be very disciplined and selective going from small to medium to large transactions. When we look back at the results from last year, we have been able to close acquisitions in each of the categories. The aggregate value of the equity deployed on an accretive basis is slightly over $1.1 billion. In every instance, we have been able to generate returns in excess of 9% on a cash and cash yield basis. These transactions were part of a pretty material proprietary deal flow. Turning to slide number 11. We have built a high quality portfolio, 80% of our fleet is in the U.S. with a balance either in U.S. dollars or hedged. With the acquisition of First Wind operating assets, we now have one-third of our portfolio in wind. This provides a counterbalance to the seasonality of the solar portfolio. Alex is going to give you more perspective on that in a second. As shown on the bottom chart, the vast majority of our power plants are under two years old. They have contracts with high quality counterparties with an average credit rating of A minus and they have an average remaining PPA life of 16 years. Turning to slide 12. We wanted to give you visibility to the projects that makeup at 3.3 gigawatts of Drop Down inventory, nearly 80% of these projects are expected to come online this year and 90% of them are in the U.S. The one gigawatt of wind projects on this list is PTC eligible. Our forecast is not rely on an extension of the PTC or ITC. Turning to slide 13. Our portfolio has grown from 619 new megawatts at IPO to 1.5 gigawatts currently as a result of the completion of recent transactions. We expect to take our operating fleet to 4.9 gigawatts and as we execute on the 2.3 gigawatts of Drop Down inventory. Turning to slide 14, We thought it would be worthwhile to highlight some of the key transactions of TerraForm in 2014 and to show you the performance on a relative basis to comps and the prior market since IPO TerraForm is up 30% and SMP on our yield peer group. I’ll now turn over to Alex Hernandez, our CFO, who covered the fourth quarter results. Alex? Alex Hernandez Thank you, Carlos. Turning to slide 16, we summarize our operating and financial results for the fourth quarter. We are pleased to report that continued growth of our operating fleet. As of yearend we are 930 megawatts in operation in addition to installing another 153 megawatts of organic projects during the quarter. We also added 157 megawatts the acquisitions and Drop Downs to fleet. Taking into account the closing our First Wind which occurred in January, our full operating fleet capacity is now 1.5 gigawatts. Our assets generated 266,000 megawatt hours during the fourth quarter, reflecting a capacity factor of approximately 14%. These results are consistent with the expected seasonality in the production solar energy during the fall and winter months in North America. Revenue during the quarter was $43 million and adjusted EBITDA was $34 million. Cash available for distribution or CAFD for Q4 was $17 million. Results were slightly ahead of our plan driven by the positive impact from Q4 acquisitions and Drop Downs. Turning to slide 17, I’d like to provide you with additional visibility regarding the seasonal characteristics of our fleet. Until our recent acquisition of First Wind our portfolio was comprised of 100% solar generating assets, largely located in North America. Although solar generation is highly predictable year-on-year, solar assets are also seasonal in nature as demonstrate on the chart on the left our solar fully generates greater megawatts hours during the summer months, and fewer megawatts hours during the winter months, particularly during Q4. As you can see on the right hand side of the slide, one of the main reasons we like the First Wind operating assets that they are counter seasonal to our solar fleet. Our wind assets generate most of varying production in the fall and winter months, this was driven by high capacity factors resulting from weather fronts in the Northeast during the fall and winter months. As illustrated by the Greenline line our combined portfolio, which is now two-third solar and one-third wind will reduced seasonality and drive linearity of our business. Turning to slide 18, is worth highlighting that our results were due in part to the accelerated Drop Down from SunEdison of 76 megawatts in the fourth quarter of 2014. These Drop Downs included 50 megawatts in the UK and 26 distributed generation megawatt in the U.S. providing a combine $10 million of annual levered CAFD. Turning to slide 19, here we provided summary of the financing activities occurring Q4 as well as Q1, to some of the acquisitions of Hudson, Capital Dynamics and First Wind. I am pleased to report that we successfully completed 1.5 billion of debt and equity financings fully refinancing our capital structure preserving a quality of our balance sheet and maintaining our liquidity. Of particularly note was the execution of our inaugural $800 million unsecured green bond offerings which refinanced the product term loan. The green bonds provide us an attractive fixed-rate debt instrument for eight years at a coupon of 5, 7, 8 and current yield of 5.2%. Importantly, the down also give us significant financial flexibility to fund future growth and M&A. Pro forma for these financing’s our balance sheet as well position for the yearend. Turning to slide 20, I’d like to provide further clarity to our financial policy to fund our growth. In addition to the 3 and 3.5 times Holdco leverage policy, which we have discussed with you before, we have also target in long-term consolidated leverage of 5 to 5.5 times consolidated debt for EBITDA. Our strategies to put in place long-term amortizing that’s against our largest projects, supporting by long-term contracts to provide national deleveraging of the portfolio, while preserving Holdco debt to fund opportunistic growth and M&A. This financial policy allows us to fund our growth in a discipline manner, while preserving and enhancing the quality of our balance sheet over the long-term. We also had a philosophy of maintaining ample corporate liquidity to support our growth. As you can see in the lower chart, we more than doubled the capacity of our revolving credit facility to $550 million and have $640 million of liquidity as of January 31, 2015. We are grateful to our bank group for their support and continued confidence in TerraForm. Turning to slide 21. We wanted to provide an update on the progress that we and SunEdison have made on the Drop Down warehouse facility, which give you a significant strategic innovation to finance the growth of our business. The Drop Down warehouse facility is a $1.5 billion in aggregate size comprised of $1 billion of debt commitments and $500 million anticipated investment from First Reserve infrastructure. The Drop Down warehouse is designed to provide non-recourse capital for SunEdison to finance the construction of approximately 1.6 gigawatts of First Wind call right assets. For TerraForm, the warehouse provides increased certainty from Drop Downs and the ability to stage assets for several quarters once operational before dropping them into TerraForm. This provides TerraForm Power greater certainty on our growth trajectory for years to come. As a further update from November, we are pleased to report that we have received $1 billion of new debt commitments during this indication process of the warehouse facility which have expanded our debt syndicate. This indication has been led by BofA Merrill Lynch and Citi and has attracted 14 banks and institutional investors. This warehouse is only the first of several other innovations we are working on to create additional sources of liquidity and capital beyond the traditional capital markets, while continuing to drive cost of our capital of our business down. Turning to slide 22. Liquidity offered by corporate revolver and the warehouse facility provide TerraForm total potential liquidity of $2.1 billion to support growth. It’s fully utilized this combined liquidity allows us to capture an additional $190 million of CAFD for a portfolio. I’ll now move to session four and review our 2015 guidance and longer term outlook. Turning to slide 24. We have experienced and anticipate significant growth in EBITDA and CAFD in our business. As mentioned earlier we are reaffirming our 2015 guidance of $214 million, which represents a 100% increase since the IPO in July 2014. Importantly, the current CAFD run rate from our existing fleet as of January 31st is $180 million. This CAFD growth supports the dividend illustrated on the next slide. Turning to slide 25, I’d like to give you greater visibility to our dividend growth trajectory for 2015. As a remainder, we declared a $0.90 annualized Q3 dividend at the time of the IPO. As announced earlier, we have increased the Q4 dividend by 20% to an annualized rate of $1.08 per share. Our current CAFD run rate supports a dividend of $1.03 per share which gives us confidence in our ability to deliver our $1.30 commitment for our shareholders. We anticipate the incremental $0.07 versus our current run rate will be derived from approximately 400 megawatts of SunEdison Drop Downs during the course of 2015. Please also note that the $1.30 dividend guidance is not include incremental M&A during the year and we continue to see a healthy pipeline of third-party opportunities to further supplement our organic growth. Now I’ll turn to slide 26. In closing, we continue to focus on building a great company and delivering best-in-class dividend growth and total returns for our shareholders. This slide which we discussed at the time of the First Wind announcement in November reaffirms our view of TerraForm’s long-term dividend growth trajectory of 24%. This growth is supported by 3.3 gigawatts of call right projects at a 10 gigawatt pipeline from our sponsors’ organic development engine. We will continue our philosophy of driving strong execution, delivering on CAFD growth and translating that CAFD growth to increase dividends for our shareholders. With that, we appreciate your interest in our company and we’ll be pleased to answer your questions. Operator? Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Paul Coster of JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Paul Coster Yes. Thanks very much for taking the questions. Put some first up perhaps you can talk a little bit about the longer term dividend growth especially with 2017 in mind. Do you anticipate a lot of pull forward activity ahead of the ITC reduction and PTC expiry and how do you think bridge from 2017 through to 2019 with the long-term guidance that you’ve given? Carlos Domenech Hi, Paul, good afternoon, thanks for join the call question. As I mentioned earlier our 3.3 gigawatts does not separate from PTC or ITC timing. So we’re to get there and as Alex mentioned we approximately need 400 megawatts to a deliver one or 2015 growth rate. So I think we are pretty well said for 2015. When you look at 16, 17 and 3.3 gigawatts minus the 400 megawatts for 2016, for 2015 I apologize. We didn’t plenty of visibility to grow also as I mentioned earlier we look at our presentation and see a trajectory quarter-over-quarter, page number eight. Let me turn that we talked you, we consistently that increase for our number and also with our sponsor SunEdison at the IPO were 6 gigawatts and now we sit at approximately 12 gigawatts of conversion. So when you think about how we are able to move consequently our call rights from 1.1 to 3.3 the three times increase. That value generate during eight months, so I just a tremendous confidence also when you think about M&A, Paul, we got it just shy of a gigawatt and in eight months and first of all market now with First Wind as more than double. So we really like where we are we continue to see significant M&A opportunity and as soon as continues to pick a momentum so we feel pretty comfortable. Paul Coster I appreciate it. Just one other question so you talk to this warehouse facility and how it allows SunEdison to hope that projects with several quarters improving a visible set up we understand that why their abilities to hold it back for few quarters improving your visibility? Alex Hernandez Paul, it’s Alex, thank you for the question. What is say it give us somewhat of tremendous flexibility so they can focus their capital on developing the pipeline on developing additional projects. Once the project is dropped into the warehouse and gets constructed and considering the warehouse while it becomes operational for several quarters and so we have at our sole option the ability to pull down a project into TerraForm, when we choose and I could be at COD it could be a quarter or two after COD, but it gives us again a lot of flexibility to having warehouse that can store the assets until ready to pull them down on our collections. Carlos Domenech And I’ll just stop there, Paul, when you think about our growth, we are affecting class and frankly we believe that we have ample opportunity to accelerated. So let me see some point you may have make much essentially just continue to drop assets into the vehicle. We like to ensure that we are timing this Drop Downs that makes or so simple one to build financial flexibility both for SunEdison and of course for the shareholders of TerraForm and do it on our [indiscernible]. Paul Coster Excellent, thanks very much. Operator Okay. Our next question comes from Angie Storozynski from Macquarie Capital. Your line is open, please go ahead. Angie Storozynski Thank you. So your points put out a number of announcement do you have any apparent with additional renewable projects and yet you’ve kept your 24% CAFD trigger I am change, this something that we should expect due to update on only for the much higher gross pipeline that First Wind seems to have right now. Carlos Domenech Yeah, Angie, thanks for the question. We are simply speaking to our execute CAFD growth I think I was – you look at page 25 and its important there to highlight. We’ve on-boarded already the first new projects. So on that’s a $1.23, so the deliver on the $1.30, seven additional cents with 3.3 gigawatts, we like where we are. As we continue to execute on our quarterly basis we will revise the 24% growth. Angie Storozynski Okay, because when you guys acquired First Wind you showed us that 24% based on the original 1,600 megawatts of growth. Right now, it seems like the First Wind has doubled that number right, I mean, I’m just trying to make sure I understand it. Okay and so – and you are still keeping it at 24%. Carlos Domenech Yeah. You got it, right now again we are frankly far ahead of most at all on that total return and total growth and we are going to continue to execute and yes we think that we can execute on that long-term guidelines that we’re giving you and whether we do M&A or acceleration of those projects. We’re going to take one quarter at a time. Angie Storozynski Awesome, thank you, and just one follow-up, could you talk about your foreign exchange exposure and your address and what kind of sensitivity for the next year or two we should expect. Carlos Domenech Yes, Alex? Alex Hernandez Angie, thanks for the question, it’s Alex. So to start, I think approximately 80% of our assets are in U.S, a little bit over 90% or U.S. dollar denominated and so less than 10% have currency exposure to them and less largely in U.K. with some diminimus amount in Canada. Of the 10%, we’ve hedged nearly all of it for a period of three years and so we have the diminimus currency exposure for the next three years, there is a CAFD has been hedged. Angie Storozynski Okay, thank you. Carlos Domenech Thank you. Alex Hernandez Thank you. Operator Our next question comes from Aditya Satghare from FBR Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Aditya Satghare Thank you. Good evening guys. Carlos Domenech Aditya, how are you. Aditya Satghare So two questions from my side, one sort of a market question here, so we got a small window of opportunity with the PTC extension, what impact do you think that could have on potential acquisition activity in 2015 within the lease sector. Carlos Domenech Yeah, Aditya, great question, the 1.6 gigawatt that we have is already there from a PTC, ITC and so is that a one gigawatt in wind too, we’re good and that’s great. Now beyond that when we talk to the First Wind team and SunEdison, we saw an opportunity to take down an incremental at 1.5 gigawatts of capacity, PTC capacity. So that’s incremental to what we already have that capacity, we expect to be put to work over the next three, six months is already qualified. So we like that and it’s a simple of that incremental 1.6 gigawatts of capacity that we will have visibility access too. On top of that, what we’re seeing in the industry is some of the small medium players are want to de-risk the execution and are looking for folks that can work with them. And frankly many of the financial institutions do not want to take any exposure, so there is – I’ll call it as a slight quality that is also benefiting us, so those are the three factors that we have for growth for us. Aditya Satghare Thanks. That’s very helpful and then just one follow-up, Alex, you mentioned that there is a $1 billion of syndicated debt capacity. Is that on top of the $1.5 billion liquidity for the warehouse facility or is that inclusive of that? Alex Hernandez It’s inclusive of it. You may remember the time of the deal announcement in November we had the full amount of debt committed from six investment banks in our bank group. Since November, we’ve undertaken a syndication process and so now that facility have garnered a lot of interest in its fully distributed among about 14 institutions, both banks and other financial investors. So we’re seeing some good interest and are very pleased that all of the debt was successfully spoken for. Carlos Domenech I would add to that, Alex mentioned it on our prepared remarks that we have several avenues to our capacity for capital. The structure works because it’s a blind pool of capital. There are specific projects that go against it and given the economics embedded into the structure and the sponsor with SunEdison and then the uptake from TERP. We believe that facility could be scale, but we wanted to show you here what’s committed. We have the ability to flex that up. Aditya Satghare All right, thank you. Thanks for the updates. Operator Our next question comes from Gregg Orrill from Barclays. Your line is open, please go ahead. Gregg Orrill Yes, thank you. I just wanted to double check with the 2015 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $374 million, is that guide up or is there something in comparability that right now, comparable and if you applying guidance. Carlos Domenech Hi, Gregg, thanks for your question. It some just an update that is consistent with our 2014, so again I would say no change I would simple is consistent with 2014. Gregg Orrill Okay, thanks. Carlos Domenech Thank you. Operator Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Julien Dumoulin-Smith from UBS. Your line is open, please go ahead. Julien Dumoulin Smith Hi, good afternoon. Carlos Domenech Hi, good afternoon, Julien, how are you? Julien Dumoulin Smith Congrats. Carlos Domenech Thank you. Julien Dumoulin Smith I wanted to ask about potential ROFO deals, firstly I’m curious just energy from a left interesting open the door there with the latest press release have been, where do that stand have been when opportunity is that – thoughts and then perhaps more broadly we’ve heard an industry from dominion perhaps potentially others, all potentially a ranging deals with top tier close like yourselves. To monetize their own portfolio of asset, so what your thoughts more broadly by ROFO deals and then more specifically just energy ROFO you have. Carlos Domenech Great, Julien, very big question look at. I wanted comment specifically just on, just energy, while we’ve seeing while we said before actually one of work with folks we could moment one transaction and when we talk about proprietary deal flow embedded into that is literally 100 of relationships with those have different opportunities that bring to us. And that’s part of the [indiscernible] that we have built those over years and we continue to value those – that’s been continue to be very freighting part of our growth and we create value our statement inconsistent my view with aggregate to just energy simple world. So yes, simple answer to – we have expectations for about in others. I said potentially to the medium and it’s first I would [indiscernible] the meaningful their approach to the renewables and how they’re in the last earnings call. I know take other unfortunate well. We want to work with the ITC several well in partner with them. I think that creates on opportunity, first, we are in discussions with the some big close up there that may not have necessarily the deal flow that we do. We frankly see really large set of opportunity, so we cut the deal flow and we caught the ability to structure deals work with our sponsor another large with utilities or we are happy to partner with those. Welcome back I think that you’re going to see some of the utility their more progressive – perhaps trying to our partner with the yield goes. I think that’s really a structural necessity that is respond to happen and we are happy to participating will be participating in the process. Julien Dumoulin Smith Got you. And then fast moving on in terms of your backlog of rather than somewhat assume TerraForm backlog, if you can comment what extended that backlog is emerging markets and kind have probably dedicated chose another yield vehicle versus what can we kind of say is dedicated back towards to yourself or cannot moving that on this eligible through this out being call OCD structure. Carlos Domenech Yeah, Gregg, great question. We look at first when we talk clarify, the 3.3 gigawatts so we have what we call Drop Down inventory that’s already literally from structurally secure to – I said while make sure that’s clear. From the SunEdison when you see that the conversion final we – as a matter of process pick the assets that we believed our in the next 24 months and we’re going to [indiscernible] constructions which medicine and we ultimately ups and down. So in the process well commit my brands are number of that roughly about two-third or some I think will said in the past or markets are projects that take our underwriting criteria and remaining is for emerging markets. You will year Ahmad and Brian talk more about that but you can see today just with the growth that the install base of operating project, we’ve got more than we can chew up for now. Julien Dumoulin Smith Great. And then a last one following up on your First Wind transaction and you think about the wind market and tapping into that, is it necessary to build out or – build out organically to tax build the national opportunity here or do you need to do another development like acquisition to build out the sufficient capacity to kind of grasp the national opportunity. Carlos Domenech Yeah, great question. I’m glad you asked that. On the beginning we said we started with solar and we said that for wind in particular if we do something we’ll do it with a SunEdison like machine and that was really First Wind. First Wind has the development engine and has the culture on the D&A, people that we like to work with just like the folks at SunEdison and very importantly they have a tremendous asset management, services capability that could scale easily to five gigawatts with spending another marginal dollar. So we believe that with First Wind, SunEdison has what it needs to scale not just in the U.S., but also globally, so that creates tremendous synergies in competitive advantages for SunEdison and there for us. So now we have the opportunity and we are aggressively pursuing transactions that are operating our portfolios, but also you’re going to see overtime, our First Wind updating that organic growth engine as they’re organically developed projects. Is that answered your question? Julien Dumoulin Smith Congrats again on the First Wind deal couldn’t agree with you more. Carlos Domenech Yeah, thank you. We were really pleased that the assets were I’ve been awarded and they are cranking and we’re extremely pleased with the performance and everything which is working away we anticipated it would. Julien Dumoulin Smith Thank you. Operator Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Brian Chin from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Brian Chin Hi, good afternoon. Carlos Domenech Hi, Brian, how are you. Brian Chin Very good, thanks. You guys brought up a really interesting point about how when you added the wind portfolio to your solar assets. You’ve reduced the seasonality profile of the fleet. Is that mean at some point in the future if you continue to reduce that seasonality or maintain at a much less seasonal up and down pattern, that there is room for potentially tightening the spread between your dividend and your CAFD or does that relation would be referring that potential tightening of that question going forward. Alex Hernandez Brian, thank you for the question. I think what I say is we continue to manage the business to predictability both on a year-over-year basis as well as a quarterly basis and that was one of many factors that we really like when we were looking at the First Wind transaction. As you know, they have got assets in the Northeast. Those assets run fast when the wind blows in the fall and winter. They have other projects in Hawaii which are driven by entirely different regimes and so there is really nice balance diversification in all of which was translate to our CAFD profile being more linear to the year. Now having said that, we’ll look at that those characteristics for every transaction in Drop Down that we do and look at on the portfolio basis, but I think for the moment, we’re quite comfortable with our 85% payout, but we’ll continue to drive the business towards predictability both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. Carlos Domenech Yeah, Brian, I would just add to what Alex said is what do you see on that from page 17 is not an accident on the top right and those numbers are not, they are not illustrative of the real numbers. So we spent a lot of time in and I’ll just say we’re in the business, some of you might have probably tired of hearing me say this, but we’re in the business of reducing variability that’s what we do because we want to be consistent on our portfolio, diversification and therefore predictability on outcomes, that’s why when you asked the question, how much more you’re going to bring – at some point growth for us and excess growth is not an issue. But we’re working very hard just to build the portfolio that has tremendous predictability and consistency and that’s what you see on the right hand side. We expect as we continue to increase our fleet that the variability quarter-by-quarter will continue to smooth out as we bring different asset types and different locals with different fuel types. So I like the green curves. We’re not done with it yet and it’s a key core as to when we underwrite deals were not simply just bringing CAFD. The quality of that CAFD now just from an all-state point of view, but also how we shapes up is important to us. Brian Chin Very helpful. Thank you very much. Carlos Domenech Thank you for the question. Operator Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Lee from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Brian Lee Hey guys, sorry, I was on mute and apologies if some of these questions have been asked, first I had to jump on late, first thing on your guidance, I just wanted to better understand and clarify the CAFD versus dividend per share outlook, so the CAFD guidance for $248 million that includes Drop Down, is that translate to the $1.30 per share dividend for 2015 or there another target associated with that CAFD for the year? Alex Hernandez Brian, it’s Alex. Thanks for the question. Yes, the $240 million of CAFD guidance for the year translates directly to the $1.30 dividend guidance as well. Today, we’re – we’re at $180 million run rate from our existing portfolio and so the balance little over $40 million of run rate CAFD is coming from incremental Drop Downs from SunEdison during the balance of the year. Brian Lee Okay, that’s helpful. Carlos Domenech I was very temped if we go to page 25 to actually just put the CAFD numbers there for you is make it even simpler, but I got too busy. If you look at the $1.23 is a $1.80 what was tricky in our business and I know you guys wrestle with this is a run rate right, so with First Wind which effectively on boarded on January. We now have a 1.5 operating fleet, so it’s fully I’ll call it integrated is working as cranking like the performance, this is exactly how we wanted to be, so we got $1.80 already, sorry, $180 million already on that January run rate. So the $1.30 simply us ramping up to $214, now if we were to ask me well if you exit throughout the year, that $214 million is a lot larger on a full 12-month basis because we’re simply adding CAFD throughout the year. That’s one when we look at the $0.07 on 2015, it’s only 400 megawatts associated with that because it’s just we added over the quarters, but yes of course Angie is saying, what I mean you got 3.3 gigawatt it seems like you got lot more, but the answer is yes. Brian Lee Okay, I appreciate the color that’s very helpful. Couple of more from me and I’ll pass it on I guess again on the guidance, this time looking longer term out. I was curious can you quantify how much of your 2017 $1.90 per share dividend target is already covered by the First Wind for SunEdison call rights portfolio I just stand is now and then how much would need to come from proposal if we were looking at it kind of these out year targets. Alex Hernandez Thanks, Brian, its Alex. As you look at 2017, most of that $1.90 is covered by the 3.3 gigawatt backlog that we referred to so that backlog is also largely contracted, so we feel very good about having that backlog work its way through the machine to deliver that $1.90. Brian Lee Okay. Carlos Domenech I made the comment earlier on another question that was similar that the numbers that you see here do not assume any M&A. So yeah we gone about gigawatts last eight months where we feel another gigawatt in the next eight months mainly maybe not, SunEdison continue to grow it’s organic engine maybe, maybe not but we like what we are, we like the trends and frankly was doubling our addressable market with First Wind where we got now yet another element for growth that gives us a lot of comfort. Brian Lee Yeah, okay, that’s helpful and then last one from me on that First Wind acquisition I think you mentioned at the time of the acquisition CAFD had $221 million from their pipeline and is that include just the backlog additions or does that also assume full conversion or maybe some partial conversion of the 500 plus megawatts of pipeline. Carlos Domenech Yeah, so the backlog number is approximately 1.4, the pipeline number inclusive of the backlog if 1.6 and so the $220 million number Brian equates to the 1.6 gigawatts of backlog in pipeline. Brian Lee Okay, so you are assuming just to clarify that the full conversion of anything that is in yet considered backlog to eventually become backlog? Carlos Domenech No, the First Wind had a much broader pipeline of opportunities and so we are assuming that only $200 million to $300 million of that pipeline converts into backlog to get you to that number. Carlos Domenech So as your answer is we expect a conversion overtime that’s the simple answer. Brian Lee Okay. Thanks guys. Carlos Domenech Thank you. The other thing I’ll mention as you guys think about portfolio is we haven’t talk much about this one yet, but we did mentioned this on another call is we like to continue to optimize the operational elements so our fleet we often focus on Drop Downs and acquisitions as we’re looking to the 2019 period. We do think about how do we drive higher performance out of the fleet and that’s under the element Brian that’s supporting in our ticket. Operator Thank you. I’m showing no further questions at this time. Brett Prior Great. We appreciate your join us on afternoon and we welcome your questions and look forward to just speaking to you in the next few days and our next call. Thank you. Carlos Domenech Thank you. Operator Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for participating in today’s conference. This concludes our program. You may disconnect. Have a great day.

FirstEnergy’s (FE) CEO Tony Alexander on Q4 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE: FE ) Q4 2014 Results Earnings Conference Call February 18, 2015, 09:00 AM ET Executives Meghan Beringer – Director, Investor Relations Chuck Jones – President and Chief Executive Officer Leila Vespoli – Executive Vice President, Markets and CLO Jim Pearson – Senior Vice President and CFO Donny Schneider – President, FirstEnergy Solutions Jon Taylor – Vice President, Controller and CAO Steve Staub – Vice President and Treasurer Irene Prezelj – Vice President, Investor Relations Analysts Neel Mitra – Tudor, Pickering, Holt Dan Eggers – Credit Suisse Paul Patterson – Glenrock Associates Angie Storozynski – Macquarie Stephen Byrd – Morgan Stanley Julien Dumoulin-Smith – UBS Anthony Crowdell – Jefferies Ashar Khan – Visium Paul Ridzon – Keybanc Brian Chin – Bank of America Michael Lapides – Goldman Sachs Operator Greetings. And welcome to the FirstEnergy Corp.’s Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now turn the conference over to Ms. Meghan Beringer, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you, Ms. Beringer. You may now begin. Meghan Beringer Thank you, Manny, and good morning. Welcome to FirstEnergy’s fourth quarter earnings call. First, please be reminded that during this conference call, we will make various forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements with respect to revenues, earnings, performance, strategies, prospects and other aspects of the business of FirstEnergy Corp. are based on current expectations that are subject to risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. Please read the Safe Harbor statement contained in the consolidated report to the financial community, which was released yesterday and is also available on our website under the Earnings Information link. Today, we will be referring to operating earnings, operating earnings per share, operating earnings per share by segments and adjusted EBITDA, which are all non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are contained in the consolidated report. The updated fact book, and as well on the Investor Information section on our website at www.firstenergycorp.com/ir. Participating in today’s call are; Chuck Jones, President and Chief Executive Officer, Jim Pearson, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Leila Vespoli, Executive Vice President, Markets and Chief Legal Officer; Donny Schneider, President of FirstEnergy Solutions; Jon Taylor, Vice President, Controller and Chief Accounting Officer; Steve Staub, Vice President and Treasurer; and Irene Prezelj, Vice President, Investor Relations. Now I will turn the call over to Chuck Jones. Chuck Jones Thanks, Meghan, and good morning, everyone. It’s my pleasure to talk with you today. For today’s call we are deliberately keeping our prepared remarks rather brief, so there will be plenty of time to take your questions at the end. Clearly the topic many of you will be most interested in is our 2015 earnings guidance, which we made public late last evening. But before moving to that discussion, I’d like to take a moment to thank Tony Alexander for his leadership of FirstEnergy over the past decade. Tony guided our Company through a dramatic expansion and navigated through one of the most challenging periods in the history of the utility industry. As you know, we also announced last night that Tony’s last day will be April 30th and we certainly wish him well as he begins his new chapter in his life and enjoys more time with his family. Since moving into the CEO position on January 1, I’ve had the opportunity to either meet personally or talk with many of you over the telephone. We’ve had some good two way conversation over the past couple of months. And I want you to know that the entire FirstEnergy team is committed to providing frank and open discussion about the challenges and opportunities we are facing as a company, that’s why in light of the recent Pennsylvania rate case settlements we decided to provide you with our earnings guidance range earlier than originally planned, so you would have a clear sense of what we are expecting this year. The 2015 operating earnings guidance range of $2.40 to $2.70 per share is in line with the updated drivers for our utilities business and corporate segment that we provided in November, although some street expectations have not been adjusted to reflect that information. Looking at consensus estimates, we saw a fairly widespread of about $0.50 ranging from $2.60 to over $3.10 and we understand the challenges of modelling FirstEnergy giving all the moving pieces we have right now. Given the disparity between the street consensus and our 2015 base earnings, we believe it’s very critical to ground the investment community on earnings sooner rather than later as we reset our utilities around the new growth strategy. After today, our focus shifts to customer service driven growth across the utility segment. In that light now that we have made our 2015 earnings guidance public, following this call Irene and her investor relations team will be happy to answer your detailed questions about all the disclosures we made yesterday and today including here in our consolidated report and in our updated fact book. In the future once all of the pending rate case proceedings are finalized modelling are going forward earnings power should be far more transparent. And we hope to better articulate that for you later this year during the analyst meeting where we expect to provide a growth target for our utilities as well as in overall strategic update on all three of our business segments. We continue to believe the initiatives that were put in place during 2014 laid the path for our future growth and success. So let’s several minutes to review the key events of the past year. We successfully launched our Energizing the Future of transmission expansion program. Under this program, we will invest billions of dollars with an eye towards serving our customers better. These investments will improve reliability, add resiliency to the bulk electric system and install enhanced physical and cyber security to ensure our assets perform as designed. With our multiple rate proceedings, we have also set the stage for similar investment in our regulated businesses and more timely recovery of those investments. The recent major storm events that have impacted FirstEnergy service territory have highlighted the need for hardening of our distribution systems. And of course in the wake of the polar vortex and other severe weather events last winter we began taking a far more conservative approach in our competitive business to limit risk and — focus on greater stability. We have made good progress on these efforts. Our West Virginia rate case settlement was approved by the state public service commission earlier this month and we have filed settlements in our Pennsylvania and Ohio rate proceedings that require regulatory approval. We also look forward to closure on the base rate case at JCP&L and remain hopeful that the board of public utilities final decision in that proceeding will appropriately include the $580 million incurred by JCP&L for the 2012 storms. Once that case is finalized we look forward to working with the BPU to make Jersey Central Power & Light a stronger company going forward. In our ATSI proceeding, we believe FERC’s approval of our request to move to forward looking rates as of January 1 signals support for transmission investments for grid reliability. As we anticipated FERC accepted it subject to refund and also set hearing and settlement procedures and initiated an inquiry into ATSI’s return on equity. We believe that more timely recovery associated with forward looking rates is a major benefit to us which outweighs the impact of a potentially modest ROE adjustment. This rate structure for ATSI will provide a much better co-relation to our cost as we continue to implement our Energizing the Future of transmission investment plan. That plan is comprised primarily of thousands of small, customer focus transmission projects and equipment upgrades that can be implemented relatively quickly across our existing 24,000 miles of transmission assets. These projects are designed to enhance system reliability and resiliency for our customers while providing long term and sustainable growth for FirstEnergy. I strongly believe that the right investments are those that customers value and are willing to pay for and that provide attractive returns for our investors. It’s gratifying to report on the successful first year of that program. We overcame some weather related setbacks early in the year but by December we successfully completed our plan of $1.4 billion in new investments spanning more than 1100 projects. You can see the impact that that investment when you look at our financial disclosures for the transmission segment. The plan for 2015 calls for an additional $970 million investment across 430 projects including 1000 pieces of substation equipment and 300 miles of transmission lines. By the end of this year we expect to be well on track to meet our four year goal of $4.2 billion in investments through 2017. Key projects for 2015 include construction of a new substation and transmission line near Clarksburg, West Virginia to support an existing gas processing plant and reinforce the regional grid. We are also planning construction of a new transmission substation near Burgettstown town, Pennsylvania that will support low growth and improve service reliability for more than 40,000 customers of West Penn Power. At the EEI conference last November, we told you that we have identified about $15 billion in incremental transmission projects in 2018 and beyond providing a path to both improved customer service and a long term and sustainable growth platform for our company. Lets shift gears now and look at our competitive business. The actions we continue to take with regard to our more conservative strategy have been very effective at reducing the overall risk in this business. While our open position is subject to market movement we are structuring the business to be more predictable and self sustaining. Our conservative approach will better protect us in the event of extreme weather or unplanned outages at a major generating facility. We are projecting this business to be cash flow positive each year over the 2015 to 2018 period using conservative assumptions. I’ve been asked numerous times about the possibility of divesting this business, frankly at this point in time it doesn’t make sense while we are at or hopefully near the bottom of the market to sell these assets at the lowest value they will likely ever have. In addition, capacity market reforms and pending changes to the treatment of demand or response are likely to provide near term value for this business. Once these moving pieces play out we should have a much better picture of what we can expect from our competitive business going forward, at this point it remains a core business for FirstEnergy. However, we continue to monitor closely the financial performance of some of our individual generating units, particularly those located in western PJM. While the low market revenues are build into our financial models several of our units continue to struggle to run economically. The strategies we have in place in all three of our business segments are sound. They are the right priorities for our company at this time and in this environment and we will continue to refine them as conditions require or opportunities emerge. Along the way we intend to provide clear communication about our challenges, opportunities, strategies and goals. I’m sure you will have many questions at the end of this call and we have full investor meeting schedule coming up. I will make myself available as often as necessary to ensure we address all of your questions. I also hope to get to know many of you more in the next several months. For those of you who are not yet familiar with my style, I was trained in as an engineer to solve problems. My career FirstEnergy has been focused on customers and looking for sound long term solutions. Our distribution and transmission businesses have been my main focus, although I did have the opportunity to oversee our competitive business for the couple of years as well. As I mentioned earlier, in my mind the best investments like the ones we’re making in our transmission business are those that provide both customers and shareholders with real value. Its our responsibility to provide customer with a safe, reliable, affordable and clean electricity and my philosophy is that a commitment to these principals reflected in both our decision making and our management style is good business. Lastly, I believe very strongly in transparent communications whether to employees, customers, regulators or the financial community that mean saying what we know, when we know it. That’s why we decide to write earnings guidance sooner than originally expected. Looking forward, we will remain focused on long term shareholder value, executing our regulated growth plans and taking a conservative approach to our competitive business. At the same time, we will continue to evolving [ph] to meet the needs of our customers who rely on electricity to power their businesses in everyday lives. It’s my priority to move FirstEnergy to its next period of growth and success benefiting our customers, employees and investors. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Jim for a short review of 2014 financial results and additional details on our earnings guidance. Following Jim’s remarks we’ll open the call to your questions and we should have ample time to address whatever you’d like to talk about. Jim Pearson Thanks, Chuck and good morning everyone. This morning we’ve reported 2014 fourth quarter operating earnings of $0.80 per share and full year operating earnings of $2.56 per share, which was at the upper end of our guidance range. It was a strong quarter and solid year overall with numerous achievements. In somewhat of a change to past practice I won’t cover the results for the quarter in detail by segment since that information is available in the consolidated report or from our IR team. Instead, I will speak to the major drivers and events while leaving more time for Q&A. For the fourth quarter of 2014 GAAP results were in loss of $0.73 per share. This includes special items of $1.53 per share of which $1.23 is related to our annual pension and OPEB mark-to-market adjustment and as a non-cash item. This adjustment primarily reflects a 75 basis points decline in the discount rate and revise mortality assumptions used to measure our obligation. Moving now to our fourth quarter operating earnings drivers, consistent with the guidance we provided at EEI November, the FirstEnergy consolidated effective tax rate was 21.6% in the fourth quarter of 2014 predominantly reflecting a tax benefit associated with the resolution of state tax position. This drew a quarter-over-quarter benefit of $0.12 per share of which $0.10 was included in the corporate segment. And our regulated utilities overall distribution deliveries decreased fourth quarter earnings $0.01 per share. Total deliveries were down slightly primarily driven by milder weather which drove a 2.5% reduction in residential sales quarter-over-quarter. Industrial sales were up 1.8%, the sixth consecutive quarter of growth in that sector. On the transmission side we’ve reported fourth quarter operating earnings of $0.14 per share in line with our expectations as we ramped up our Energizing the Future initiative. At our competitive operations results came in slightly better than expected for the quarter. Commodity margin was down $0.08 per share primarily due to lower contract sales that resulted from the change in retail strategy as well as mild weather. These factors were partially offset by higher capacity revenues related to the increase in the auction clearing prices. Let’s move to a short overview of some of the key earnings drivers for 2014 which included a 6% earnings improvement in our transmission segment year-over-year as we launched our Energizing the Future Initiatives. On a competitive side of the business we experienced a year-over-year earnings decline of $0.51 per share due to the extreme weather events early in 2014, partially offset by the actions we put into place to reposition our sales portfolio and effectively hedge our generation by reducing weather sensitive loads. Adjusted EBITDA was $653 million in line with our expectations. At our regulated distribution utilities we’ve reported 2014 operating earnings of $1.93 per share in line with the midpoint of guidance we provided in November. We saw the full benefit of the West Virginia asset transfer but also rising expenses for maintenance, depreciation, general taxes and interest without commensurate recovery in rates. However, as Chuck said, new rates that we expect to be effective in 2015 will reset the base line for a majority of our utilities. Distribution deliveries increased 1% compared to 2013 on both on actual and weather adjusted basis. Industrial sales were up each quarter and ended the year up 2%. At our corporate segment we benefited from multiple tax initiatives and ended the year with an effective income tax rate of 29.3%. As we have previously discussed, we anticipate an effective tax rate of approximately 37% to 38% in 2015. Let’s now move to a discussion of some of the 2015 operating earnings guidance details. On the regulated utility side which is where we believe most estimates did not fully account for the increases in ongoing expenses such as depreciation, interest and taxes, we expect a midpoint of $1.82 per share. This includes new rigs in West Virginia which will effective this month and our expectation for new rates in Pennsylvania which would be effective in May based on the pending settlement. For New Jersey, we assumed revenues neutral to 2014 levels but included $0.08 per share for amortization of deferred storm cost for both 2011 and 2012 storms. We expect moderate low growth in distribution sales of about 1%. Commodity margin at our competitive operations is expected to increase by $0.44 per share in 2015 compared to 2014 primarily due to higher ATSI capacity prices. For 2015, our committed sales currently are 67 million megawatt hours. Our 2015 adjusted EBITDA for the competitive business has been revised to $875 million to $950 million, a slight decrease from our previous range given the drop in power prices since November. At our transmission segment, this year we expect an uplift of $0.11 per share related to the implementation of forward-looking formula rates as requested in our FERC filing and high rate base at both ATSI and TrAIL. An although FERC has initiated an enquiry related to our ATSI, ROE we anticipate the range for that segment should accommodate the outcome of that process. At corporate a combination of a more normal effective tax rate coupled with increase net financing cost is expected to reduce 2015 operating earnings by $0.42 per share in line with the drivers we provided at the EEI. Last evening, we published detailed information regarding our 2015 guidance on our fact book, which is posted on our website. With that, I’d like open the call for you questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator Thank you. We would now… Jim Pearson Okay. As promised we have 35 minutes left for questions. Operator Thank you. [Operator Instructions] our first question is from Neel Mitra of Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Please go ahead. Neel Mitra Hi. Good morning. Jim Pearson Good morning, Neel. Neel Mitra Jim, I had a question on the O&M expense at the regulated utilities, so it seems to go up $0.08 in 2015 and then in your drivers in 2016, it looks like its flat. Was just wondering what’s causing the increase in 2015 and maybe what’s the normalized run rate on a percentage basis for increases going forward? Jim Pearson Going forward, Neel, I would say our O&M is going to be pretty much consistent with what we’re reflecting in 2015. In 2015, we’re seeing some additional O&M expenses associated with some of our rate filings and vegetation management mostly. That would be the primary driver. Chuck Jones And vegetation management are big piece of it, in light of the major storms that we saw, we been spending a lot of money reclaiming our rights of ways and expanding our rights of ways which has been capital expense and we’re going to be shifting more into more typically four year trim cycle which is going to shift some of that back to O&M. Neel Mitra Right. So in 2016, it looks it shows its kind of neutral, as I mean you expected to be flat or do you expect kind of a consistent percentage increases as 2014 or 2015 between 2015 and 2016? Jim Pearson No. In 2016 Neel we would expect that O&M to be flat to 2015. Neel Mitra Okay, great. And then, is there any kind of update on the timing of the higher PPAs as far as when we get a decision and whether that would be before RPM? Leila Vespoli Hi, Neel, this is Leila. Yes. So the procedural schedule slipped in Ohio little bit. We may have FirstEnergy supplemental testimony being due in March 2 as well as intervener testimony and Staff testimony on March 27 and hearings on April 13. Given that we’ve asked for – originally asked for an April 8 decision date, obviously that is not going to happen. But from our standpoint I still think we’re in a good place. Originally we had asked for April 8 date to commit two things. If you think about it from an FES perspective, FES needs to know to whether they have this generation and how to hedge it. So we need a reasonable period of time to allow FES to be put in to position to sell it. And also with regard to the RMP auction. I think given the schedule the way it is now we’re FES is going to have to bid those units in along with the rest of the competitive generation and it just kind of a missed opportunity for the utility side to do that. But again I don’t think a critical thing. it just would have been a nice to have kind of thing. So that’s – it was respect to the schedule for us. As you may AEP has a case dealing with the PPA coming up, I understand decision will probably come out in the next two to three weeks or so and I’m hopeful that will bode well for decision in our case. Neel Mitra Great. Thank you very much. Operator Thank you. the next question is from Dan Eggers from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Dan Eggers Hey, good morning guys. Chuck, I think Jim hit it well that you prior lot of us in the industry were surprised by some the expense lines of the utility, if you look at the earned ROEs for the jurisdictions how do you think those ROEs look in 2015 versus what you expect going forward meaning, are you going to see improvement in ROEs beyond this year, or we normalized at this ROE level? Chuck Jones Well, Dan, here’s what I’d say, obviously I think given fiscal policy in our country there is going to continue to be pressure on ROEs as long as interest rates stay low. But absent regulatory action on our part I don’t see any way that those are going to change. So once we get through Pennsylvania, we’ll figure out where we end up with ATSI and we get through New Jersey. I think we’re going to be in a pretty stable place there and I expect later this year when we do an Analyst Meeting that we’ll be able to give you little more transparency into what those ROEs are company by company other than we kind of did the rate making and kind of a black box type environment. So hopefully we’ll give you more clarity on that later this summer. Dan Eggers Can I maybe ask that little clumsier than I meant to. From an earned ROE perspective, if you look at the different utilities and particularly with your rate cases having gotten resolved, should the earned realized ROEs kind of level out at where you are expecting in 2015 guidance or do you look at things in 2016 and 2017 that could allow ROEs to improve? Jim Pearson I would think they’re going to certainly level out at where we’re at in 2015 and I expect overtime there will be some modest improvement. Dan Eggers Okay, and I guess here Jim on the operating expenses you know being higher on the utilities something that you expected the Pension/OPEB in depreciation expenses seem to stand out from our math, can you just talk about what was underlying in some of those increases year-on-year and how we should think about those going forward? Jim Pearson Yes let me start with the Pension/OPEB line Dan, that’s primarily driven by the absence of a credit that is expiring over the 2014, 2015 timeframe. And then you have slightly higher pension expense associated with the mortality tables. So that’s what drove the reduction in that line. From a increase in what I would say the depreciation and property taxes when I look at distribution that’s pretty consistent year-over-year and if you look at 2013 to 2014 depreciation property taxes increased about $0.09 were showing about an $0.08 increase 2015 to 2016. And when you think about it, we’re spending about $1.4 billion, $1.3 billion annually at our distribution company and we have about $650 million of depreciation, so we’re spending more in our depreciation there so. I would look for that type of a consistent increase in depreciation and property taxes. From the transmission side, we showed a increase in depreciation property taxes of about $0.03 2013 to 2014 and that was showing the ramp up of our Energizing the future program. We spent $1.4 billion in capital; in 2014 we are expecting to spend just about $1 billion in 2015. So that $0.11 increase in property tax is really associated with that increased capital and essentially the timing of when it goes into service. Dan Eggers Okay. Just one last question just on the transmission side with the CapEx down this year versus last year, I know that was part of the plan you laid out in the fall but because you have a lot of smaller projects what could motivate you guys that allow the opportunity fee you spend more money in 2015 than you’ve budgeted so far? Chuck Jones I don’t think we’re going to spend more money in 2015 than we budgeted, so wouldn’t want to leave you with that impression. You know one of the critical aspects of that plan quite frankly is getting the workforce to be able to construct these projects and there is a constraint on that across our nation, but we have locked in through a partnership with Quanta workforce that will be available to FirstEnergy well into the future and I think that it makes sense to just approach this in a kind of steady predictable fashion. The drop off from 2014 to 2015 is due to the fact that we had a number of reliability projects that PJM ordered as a result of the late plant closings that were finishing up and putting in service early this year. Dan Eggers Great. thank you guys. Operator Thank you. The next question is from Paul Patterson of Glenrock Associates. Please go ahead. Paul Patterson Good morning, sorry about that. Can you hear me? Chuck Jones Yes, we can hear you Paul. Paul Patterson On the $0.30 per transmission that you guys are projecting for 2015, how much of that is in the [Indiscernible] Forward treatment that you guys are expecting? And just on that for a quarter, as I recall my understanding was that they really hadn’t signed off on the Ford test-years treatment. Correct me if I’m wrong, I know the settlement discussions must be encouraged and I think they are still going on, can you give us any flavour for that as well in this context of the Forward test-year stuff? Leila Vespoli This is Leila, I’ll answer the latter part of the question first and then turn it back over to Jim. So you are correct, we are in the settlement of process associate with that, there has been no set procedural schedule although if thing stay inline you might expect that decision in that case maybe late this year or slipping into the first quarter of the following year. With regard to the rate they have not left the forward looking tester, what they did is put the rate into effect subject to refund. So January 1st we started it and I think the refund date was something like the 12th or 13th of January. So that’s where it stands from a procedural schedule standpoint. Jim Pearson And Paul to your first question that $0.30 uptick in revenues there, the majority of that would be associated with actually in the forward-looking test year. Paul Patterson Okay. But you guys feels confident I guess I mean with respect to your settlement discussions and what have you about the forward test year treatment is that Leila that fair enough to say? Leila Vespoli I think if you look at past President at FERC I think the forward-looking test year part of it even though that is an issue that the party is raised is something that you know from my standpoint I feel very comfortable on, I mean some of the other things they are looking at you know – Interveners allege is you know — finding the system. They are also looking at the protocols for true up. So from my standpoint officially given how Chuck described what it is we’re doing and the reliability aspects of this I feel very comfortable where we are. The one thing we have always highlighted is the rate of return and the fact that we thought that that would be an issue and not withstanding that we felt that appropriate to go in with the formula rate. If you want to think about it every 100 basis points is about $16 million and so you know if you then look at past President you can do your own calculation with regard to that. Paul Patterson Okay, great. Jim Pearson Paul, I just want to point out, I’m sure you understand this, but because the 2014 expenditures were you know lagging rate mechanism and now the 2015 expenditures are in a forward-looking mechanism what you are seeing in terms of the shift in earnings from 2014 to 2015 really is two years worth of expenditures. So that’s not the number that you are going to expect to see going forward. Paul Patterson Great. Thanks for the clarity guys. And then Chuck you mentioned in your remarks that you wanted I believe the merchant business to be more self sustaining and also that your thoughts of the market was at a very low price and – power prices and what have you in that it just being the wrong time to divest the business if that were the case. And I guess the question that I have is A, if your market outlook changed would you be willing to perhaps look at breaking off these companies if it were possible? And then just B, what’s your appetite for additional investments perhaps and merchants just and in general how do you see the merchant arm of this business which is clearly very different than the rest of the business, how do you see that strategically going forward, do you see a possibility of a spin off or just in general how should we think about how you are really looking at this business and what you might do strategically to enhance value? Chuck Jones So here’s how I am thinking about it. And I have told several others who – asked this question, I wanted to long time ago never say never and never say always. So, things can change, but for now we’re looking at running that business in a mode where we remain cash flow positive where we used those market changes that are coming to take that cash and begin retiring some of the holding company debt that’s associated with that business and overtime put that business into a position where we can have more flexibility and how we look at it. And then if you can tell me what the market’s going to be like in two years, three years, four years, I think I could answer what I would do depending on what that market’s like. But I don’t think anybody can tell us what that’s going to be. So right now we’re hedged down, we’re committed to running a cash flow positive and we are committed to de-risking it so that it doesn’t continue to be the conversation when 80% of our company is regulated and generating absent [ph] today and getting everybody kind of in line with where we are at, generating consistent predictable regulated earnings, so that’s the plan. Paul Patterson Okay. Thanks so much. Jim Pearson Hey Manny, before we go move forward, I intended [ph] to know when I was giving Dan an explanation on the increase as of depreciation year-over-year I said it increased 2016 versus 2015 I should have said 2015 versus 2014. Operator Thank you. Our next question is from Angie Storozynski of Macquarie. Please go ahead. Angie Storozynski Thank you. I wanted to go back again to the distribution earnings, I mean we are clearly missing a piece here, so you’ve just gone to rate cases in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and West Virginia. You know what if your cost structure going into these rate cases, you showed us what is the pre-tax impact of the rate case settlement or decisions and yet we have all of this $0.25 plus drag from higher cost on the distribution side, shouldn’t that have been already reflected in the rate cases that you have gone through and also is this just an attempt to basically reset the base for future growth of this business and have fetched us just incremental on them [ph] spending that basically is not recurring? Jim Pearson Angie, yes this is Jim. Some of the expenses that we had incurred was to prepare us for these rate filings that we had. As I said earlier we would expect that our O&M is going to held flat going into next year and we will be realizing the full impact of all of those rate filings next year. As Chuck said earlier, I would look at 2015 as our base line that we are going to start growing those distribution earnings from that point and you know we’ll be said that provide more clarity on that at the analyst day meeting that we have. Angie Storozynski Okay, but can you please give us a sense of this growth that other regulated utilities can offer. I mean is this a meaningful step up starting in 2016 for distribution? Jim Pearson For this point we are not giving any type of 2016 guidance but you know this is the base line that we would expect to start showing growth at our distribution utilities. I don’t think we are going to put a percent out there yet until we fully understand what’s reflected in all of the regulatory outcomes and that we’re comfortable and confident that we’ll be able to deliver on that. Chuck Jones We’re got some work to do here, we have a settlement but it hasn’t been approved by the PA regulators, so I don’t think it’s fair for us to assume that we still got work to do in New Jersey and obviously we have a big case pending in Ohio. Once all that settles out then I think we are in a better position to decide what’s our investment strategy going forward, what’s our plan for each of those states going forward and that’s what we plan to tell you later this year once we get all those answers. Angie Storozynski Okay, thank you. Operator Thank you. The next question is from Stephen Byrd of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Stephen Byrd Good morning. Chuck Jones Good morning. Stephen Byrd Wanted to just follow up I think really on Paul’s question on the sort of market outlook, you all are fairly physically close to a lot of the shale gas activity and we’re seeing a lot of development of shale gas. I was – just have a high level interested in your market take in terms of what the growth in shale gas really means longer term for power prices, what’s your expectations, it sounds like from Chuck’s earlier comments that you are relatively bullish on power prices relative to the four, I was just curious how you think about the dynamics from the shale gas that we are seeing being developed right around in your territory? Jim Pearson Well first of all I’m not sure what I said to make you think I was bullish on forward curve power freight [ph], because that’s quite to the contrary. I think as we look at the shale gas issue we have to look at it in a couple of different ways. The first way is on those forward price curves and we actually had IHS in yesterday to talk to us about their views. And I think you know for the foreseeable future, we’re not expecting any significant uptick in those forward price curves, so we are structuring our competitive business around those forwards as we know. The other side of that coin is it’s the economic development engine that’s driving growth in our territory and over the next few years we expect to connect over a 1000 megawatts of new load directly attributed to the midstream part of that business, you know there are discussions underway about upto three cracker plants in our region, if any or all of those come to fruition I think those are the foundation for an industrial revolution in the part of the country that we serve. So that’s the upside long term, the reality in short term is we expect gas prices to stay fairly low. There is some congestion in the gas markets that’s going on right now, but there is also roughly $20 billion worth of gas transmission projects that are under construction and expected to go in service over the next few years that will release some of that congestion and eliminate some of the basis difference between our zone and the rest of the country. And that might have a modest change but all in all we are planning to run our regulated business around the market forward as we see them today. Stephen Byrd Okay, great. And just wanted to touch base on your hedging strategy given that they are repaying [ph] your seen in the market any changes in terms of your thinking in terms of the volume that you’d like to hedge or given what you said about sort of your market outlook, any changes we should expect in terms of how you all think about hedging your generation fleet going forward? Chuck Jones I would say no. And what I said my prepared remarks was, we’ve structured that business in a way where we are trying to expose risks to volatility as associated to weather and to kind of protect ourselves against an unplanned generator outage, so we have the ability to generate 80 to 85 million megawatts hours a year. We’re going to sell something less than that, so that as the load fluctuates with weather our committed load fluctuates with weather and/or we have issues that any of our plants we have the ability to cover ourselves. That will – I understand were likely giving up some earnings potential from that business by taking risk out of it, but as I said earlier I’d rather make it more predictable, more stable and get it out of the conversation as much as I can so we can talk about the type of company FirstEnergy really is which is a large regulated utility with 6 million customers. Stephen Byrd That’s very clear. And just lastly very briefly the – we’ve seen some relatively extreme weather through the winter time, in general how has the fleet performed through this sort of this winter period that you are seeing, have you been satisfied with the performance of the fleet and anything compared to sort of prior years in terms of performance trends. Chuck Jones I would say our fleet has performed very well, the markets have not. So had two units at the Bruce Mansfield plant that didn’t run for six days in the last two weeks because the LMP at those plants we couldn’t make money, so we didn’t run out. So but the plants are available, they are running well, our generation team has done an amazing job between last year and this year getting ready for this winter. Stephen Byrd Great. Thank you very much. Operator Thank you. The next question is from Julien Dumoulin-Smith of UBS. Please go ahead. Julien Dumoulin-Smith Hi, good morning. Chuck Jones Hi Julien Jim Pearson Good morning, Julien. Julien Dumoulin-Smith Congratulations again. I really wanted to focus on the transmission side of the business, specifically the guidance. What are you guys assuming in terms of an earned ROE, I know that may be awkward in the context of your pending case for ATSI, but can you give us a sense of how much lag is embedded in that number and as you turn towards the forward test year and implementing that in kind of a run rate for 2016 what kind of improvement should we be thinking about there and what’s ultimately reflected in 2015 specifically? Chuck Jones All right. So I’m not sure if I got all of those, I’m going to answer the first quesztin and then you can answer or ask them one at a time, it will be easier for me to follow. So, but the first question on you know, we get that question a lot of what are we assuming about ATSI’s rate of return going forward and here’s how I view this. We just got first approval January 1st to move forward. There are – there’s a case now that going to be had and there’s a settlement process that’s going to be had and my view is we’re going to go into those arguing like 12.38%, it makes sense going forward and it’s stimulating the type of investment and reliability that I believe folks should want. And that’s our going in position, anything from there I give you a number then we are going to be negotiating from that number. So we’re not going to give you a number, we are going to go into those settlement that settlement process and we’re going to make the best case we can to make sure that we get the right return for our investors so that we can continue making these investments in the way that we are. Julien Dumoulin-Smith But from a regulatory lag perspective, what are you assuming if you can talk to that. Chuck Jones Regulatory lay we are assuming forward-looking rights. Julien Dumoulin-Smith Okay. So there’s not necessarily improvement next year as you have a full year or have you? Chuck Jones No. Julien Dumoulin-Smith Got you. And then in terms of the outlook for transmission CapEx how are you feeling about flowing dollars in the transmission versus distribution. Can you kind of elaborate a little bit on where you see capital going in the future and then subsequently I know we’ve discussed this before, on the distribution side, what kinds of future investments do you see now that you’ve gone or about to go through all of the state utility rate case? Chuck Jones So lets take transmission first. We’ve told you about 4.2 billion over a four year period that was in the second year of it was 1.4 billion the first year, it’s 900 and some million in the second year. After two years we’ll be right on track to be halfway through that and for 2016 and 2017 that will be the number. We have $15 billion worth of projects in addition to those that are in the four year plan that we can’t execute. That hopefully albeit in a position that when we talk to you later this year to articulate kind of more of a long term strategy for transmission and what we are planning to do there. But for the foreseeable future the numbers we’ve given you is what my plans are and I think one of the things that I have to start doing is saying what we are going to do and then doing what we say. So I don’t expect any change in that over the next couple of years. On the distribution front, the rate cases in Pennsylvania are a huge step. It rebases those utilities and it was a necessary step if we decide to make reliability improvement investments in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has a methodology that’s available to us called the disc that we can make investments, but as I told you when you came in, we got to get through these rate cases first and then we’ll make decisions there. And in my prepared remarks I said once we get through the base rate case in New Jersey then I look forward to the certain amount of BTU and working together to figure out how we make JCP&L stronger going forward. In Ohio we have a DCR mechanism that we have been using to invest in those utilities. So later this year I know you want numbers, I’m not prepared to give you numbers today, but later this year, I think we can lay out a strategy of how much and where we plan to invest to start using our distribution utilities to improve service to customers and improve the picture for shareholders at the same time. Julien Dumoulin-Smith Got you. And you are interested in using the disc mechanism to be clear in terms of… Chuck Jones I think we will definitely look at it once we are done and then decide is that the best way and does it allow the right investments because more importantly to me is making the right investments that truly benefit customers. And if that makes more sense to make them and just have traditional rate cases then we’ll go that way. But to me we have to lay out what the plan is for customers first and make the right investments. If that can be done under the disc then the disc would be a smart way to do it. Julien Dumoulin-Smith Great. Thank you. Operator Thank you. Our next question is from Anthony Crowdell of Jefferies. Please go ahead. Anthony Crowdell Hey good morning. More of like I guess a long term view question or I guess earlier in your remarks you had said that you are not interested in selling the generation assets and I maybe paraphrasing just you thought that was kind of a departmental market, but as I think three to five years if you are locking up the assets now in terms of the regulatory agreement, aren’t you locking that in at these depressed prices and don’t – three to five years will not be able to benefit if there is a power price recovery? Chuck Jones Well, so let me opine a little bit on what’s going on in Ohio, and you know I am of the belief that long term those states that remained fully regulated when you have the opted—the ability to optimize between generation transmission and distribution you are going to serve customers best. Some of our states chose to go to competitive markets. This whole discussion in Ohio is around whether or not we trust regulators better to look out for the long term interest of customers or whether we trust markets better to look out for the long term interest of the customers. Those states that are net importers of generation end up with the highest cost and don’t have the ability to optimize between those three segments, so if the PPA is successful we’re basically taking those plants and turning it over to the regulators to regulate them again. They will have a chance to look at how we run them, to look at the prudency of our expenses, but we are saying I think we trust the regulator to look out for a future Ohio more than we do the markets today. Anthony Crowdell Great. thanks for taking my question. Operator Thank you. The next question is from Ashar Khan of Visium. Please go ahead. Ashar Khan Most of my questions have been answered. I just wanted to thank Tony for his leadership during the very very hard period and I wanted to congratulate you on your taking over the responsibility of the new position. Thank you. Chuck Jones Well thank you. And I’m sure Tony does too, and I’m sure he’s listening. We don’t have a microphone in front of him, but I’m sure he is listening this morning. Operator Thank you. The next question is from Paul Ridzon of Keybanc. Please go ahead. Paul Ridzon Just I think you made a comment about 100 basis point of ROE at actually was it $16 million of net income? Leila Vespoli That was a comment I made and pre-tax, yes. Paul Ridzon Pre-tax, okay. And then I know you are not going to give a growth rate, but given the moving pieces we have with the timing of Pennsylvania rates coming in and New Jersey, do you think 2016 will be a step up from 2015 at the on the regulated side obviously competitive is going to be very well… Chuck Jones Well 2015 only includes seven twelfths of what Pennsylvania is worth, so in 2016 it will be a full years worth of treatment and then beyond that we need to see where we land in New Jersey and Ohio. Paul Ridzon And what was your assumption as far as New Jersey in guidance? Jim Pearson Yes what we assumed in the guidance Paul was that it would be revenue neutral and that there would be $0.08 of storm caused amortization associated with the 2011 and 2012 storms. Paul Ridzon Effective one, is that going to bleed into 2016 as well? Jim Pearson That would be effective March 1st , so you might have just slightly higher amortization year-over-year. Paul Ridzon Any sense of when you are going to hold your Analyst Day? Chuck Jones Not yet. Paul Ridzon Okay, thank you very much… Chuck Jones It will be after we have a decision in Ohio, a decision in New Jersey, a decision hopefully on ATSI and then we’ll go from there. Paul Ridzon Okay thank you very much. Operator Thank you. The next question is from Brian Chin with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Brian Chin Hi good morning. Chuck Jones Good morning, Brian. Brian Chin About a year ago the management team had expressed a possible interest in looking at the REIT structure for transmission growth opportunities and given now that there is an entity out there that’s you can see what the cost of capital is like, just wanted to see if you could give us an updated sense of that and Chuck also any comments you have there on your perspective? Chuck Jones I’m not sure. We are always looking at any option that’s out there, but I’m not sure that we saw at that time or see today any real benefit to a REIT for our company. Our company is a little complex in terms of we’ve got transmission that’s inside utilities, transmission that’s inside the ATSI, transmission that’s inside TrAILCo the transmission that’s inside ATSI, the real estate is owned by the utilities and I just think it’s a distraction that would take a lot of time and effort of the management team to figure out that we don’t need to be looking at right now because it doesn’t provide any significant long term financial advantage for us. Brian Chin That’s very clear. And then just one additional question you had mentioned in your prepared comments PJM West plant, plant box and some plants appear to be a little bit more struggling here. Is the primary criteria that you are thinking about cash flow accretion it seemed to be that you are leaning towards trying to get the merchant generation business to be cash flow positive so is that really the criteria that we should be thinking from a plant perspective here? Chuck Jones So we have the merchant generation business cash flow positive for the next four years at market forwards as we know them and with capacity as we know it. So that’s not our goal, that’s where we are at. As we see the changes that are happening with the capacity market reforms, that’s going to be additive. We’ve put ourselves in a position with our generating fleet that we’re not forced to generate because we have load committements. We’ve got a significant amount of our generation that’s going to be market driven generation. That gives us the ability like I said two weeks ago to say if Mansfield is not in the money we’re not going to run it and loose money. So we’re going to optimize it and that optimization is something that we’re going to do day in day out. We’re going to do day in kind of more as we look at any options on the retail side as new customer opportunities present themselves, but the goal is, is cash flow positive and were there. And then beyond that we want to obviously drive it more cash flow positive so that we can start getting additional flexibility in that part of our business down the road. Brian Chin Thank you very much. Meghan Beringer Manny we have time for one more question. Operator Certainly. The final question comes from the line of Michael Lapides of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Michael Lapides Hey guys, thanks guys for taking my call this late in the hour. Just thinking about the balance sheet and capital structure, you guys did a really good job year and a half or so ago of reducing the debt levels at the competitive business. You narrow in a position where you’ve got a lot of debt at the holding company level and a lot of it is short term or floating rate, many economist would argue that short term debt is probably at its all time lows and that directionally short term debt is likely heading high up. Do you have any thoughts in terms of how you can deal with the significant amount of short term debt that’s on the balance sheet, meaning whether you would turn [ph] it out and therefore kind of lock in a long term interest rate for that and kind of give yourself some multiyear certainty of that or would you potentially pay it off and if so where – how would you where would you receive the proceeds or how would you generate the proceeds to pay down some debt? Jim Pearson Michael, at this point I think we need to see how a number of these initiatives play out. If you think about the PPA in Ohio finalizing the rate cases, the potential for the capacity performance product I think that will give us a much clear sense of what our cash projections will be going forward. At this point we have no plans to term out any of the long term debt that’s sitting at the Holdco. I do agree with you that we are carrying more debt at that level than either Chuck and I are comfortable with, but as we lay out our long term plan going forward, it will be our intention to strengthen the balance sheet and with that reducing some of that debt at the holding company, but at this point I cannot give you a specific plan to do that until we know some of the outcomes of these major initiatives. Michael Lapides Got it. Thanks Jim and Chuck, congratulations. Chuck Jones Thanks Mike. Chuck Jones Okay, well I’d like to thank you all for your continued support of FirstEnergy and I think you know our goal today was to give you a clear and transparent view of our company and to build the foundation for our growth strategy that we will lay out in more detail this year at the analyst meeting. I’m proud to have the opportunity to take over for Tony. I am proud of our employees at FirstEnergy because I truly believe that’s what makes our company strong and I’m thankful for our six million customers and obviously all of our investors. Take care everyone. Operator Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.

NiSource’s (NI) CEO Bob Skaggs on Q4 2014 Results — Earnings Call Transcript

NiSource, Inc (NYSE: NI ) Q4 2014 Earnings Conference Call February 18, 2015 09:00 ET Executives Randy Hulen – VP, IR Bob Skaggs – CEO Steve Smith – CFO Analysts John Barta – KeyBanc Carl Kirst – BMO Capital Chris Sighinolfi – Jefferies Becca Followill – U.S. Capital Advisors Charles Fishman – Morningstar Operator Welcome to the NiSource Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Randy Hulen, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Randy Hulen Thank you and good morning everyone. On behalf of NiSource and Columbia Pipeline Partners, I would like to welcome you to our quarterly analyst call. Joining me this morning are Bob Skaggs, Chief Executive Officer and Steve Smith, Chief Financial Officer. As you know, the primary focus of today’s call is to review NiSource’s financial performance for the full year and fourth quarter of 2014 as well as provide an overall business update. Following our NiSource prepared remarks, we will also share a brief overview of the predecessor results for Columbia Pipeline Partners which were released this morning. We will then open the call to your questions. At times during the call, we will refer to the supplemental slides available on our website. I would like to remind all of you that some of the statements made on this conference call will be forward-looking. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the statements. Information concerning such risks and uncertainties is included in the MD&A and Risk Factors section of our periodic SEC filings. With all those items out of the way, the call is now yours, Bob. Bob Skaggs Thanks, Randy. Good morning and thank you for joining us. 2014 was a watershed year for NiSource. It was anchored by focused execution of a record infrastructure investment program and the initiation of strategic and transformational growth plans. Those notably included the creation of Columbia Pipeline Partners and the announcement of the Columbia Pipeline Group spinoff. If you will turn to slide 3 in the supplemental deck that was posted online this morning, you will see a few of the year’s highlights. The NiSource team delivered yet another year of solid operational performance and industry-leading financial results. In 2014, we generated net operating earnings from continuing operations, non-GAAP of $1.72 per share, exceeding our guidance range of $1.61 to $1.71 per share and up nearly 9% from 2013 and we delivered total returns to our shareholders of 32%, which outperformed the major utility indices for the sixth consecutive year. Our team executed on a record $2.2 billion capital investment program, made significant progress on various regulatory and legislative programs and originated several transformational growth projects at CPG. These initiatives synched closely with our company-wide modernization initiatives, delivered significant value to our customers by facilitating the development of significant shale resources and providing more modern, safe, efficient and environmentally friendly infrastructure. They also benefit our communities through job creation and economic development and our shareholders through sustainable long-term returns. During the year, we also expanded our projected long-term inventory of infrastructure investments which is now targeted at $12 billion to $15 billion at CPG over the next 10 years and $30 billion at NiSource’s utilities over 20 plus years. As I noted at the top of the call, 2014 marked the launch of two important strategic initiatives; the separation of CPG and the creation of Columbia Pipeline Partners. On that note, our team was pleased with Columbia Pipeline Partners’ $1.2 billion initial public offering in early February. The Partnership’s offering was enthusiastically received by investors. Steve will provide a brief update on the partnership as part of this morning’s call. We remain on track with the NiSource CPG separation process. A couple of weeks ago, we filed our initial form 10 registration statement with the SEC, have announced key expected board members and the majority of executive team members for both companies. Following the separation, both companies are expected to move forward as independent, investment grade pure play entities with experienced teams focusing on executing and elevating well-established platforms for growth. As we look ahead to NiSource and CPG operating, independent companies, I wanted to briefly highlight their growth expectations. As we first announced in our 2014 investor day, NiSource as a pure play utility expects its average annual long-term earnings and dividend to grow at 4% to 6% over the long term. As a pure play pipeline company with an MLP, CPG is targeting its annual adjusted EBITDA growth in the mid- to upper teens over the next several years. Its annual dividend growth is expected to be commensurate with this robust EBITDA growth. With these very strong growth rates and deep investment inventories, both companies will be positioned in the top tier of their peer groups. As the separation date gets closer, both NiSource and CPG will conduct roadshows to provide additional details on their projected performance profiles. And just to expand on the growth for one moment, we wanted to be absolutely clear on the fundamental baseline commitments of each company. Therefore, we provided earnings and dividend outlooks as well as capital expenditure outlooks. We wanted to be clear on what long-term drivers are for each of the businesses. We wanted to be helpful versus academic. And as you know, 2015 will be a split year for NiSource and CPG with significant developments unfolding during the first half of the year, including the IPO of CPPL, the recapitalization of CPG and NiSource, as well as the separation itself and the ongoing development of Mountaineer XPress and Gulf XPress. Again, we wanted to provide what was helpful, what was most constructive, therefore our key commitments are key fundamental drivers. As we mentioned, roadshows will occur prior to separation to provide additional detail on 2015, 2016 and the long term. Now with that, let me turn the call over to Steve Smith to review our 2014 financial results highlighted on page 4 of our supplemental slides. Steve Smith Good morning, everyone. As Bob mentioned, we’ve exceeded our guidance range for the year by generating non-GAAP net operating earnings of about $545 million or $1.72 per share, which compares to about $495 million or $1.58 per share in 2013. On an operating earnings basis, NiSource was up about $125 million. By GAAP comparison, our income to continuing operations was about $530 million for 2014 versus about $490 million for 2013. At the segment level, you will see in today’s release that each of our three core business units delivered solid financial results. CPG delivered operating earnings of about $491 million compared to about $441 million in 2013. CPG’s net revenues excluding the impact of trackers were up about $80 million. NIPSCO’s electric operations delivered about $288 million in operating earnings compared to about $265 million for the prior year. Net revenues excluding trackers were up about $47 million. And finally, our Gas Distribution business unit came in at about $517 million, compared to about $449 million in 2013. Net revenues, again excluding the impact of trackers, were up about $126 million. As our numbers attest, it was another strong year for the NiSource team. Full details of our results are available on our earnings release issued and posted online this morning. Now turning to slide 5, I would like to briefly touch on our financing and liquidity positions. We retained a strong liquidity position with approximately $720 million of net available liquidity at the end of the year. Of our record $2.2 billion capital investment program, approximately 76% of these investments were focused on revenue-generating opportunities. Our debt to capitalization came in at about 62% of the end of the year. And as Bob mentioned, we remain on track with the NiSource CPG separation. In that regard, we have taken several key steps to establish a strong financial foundation for both companies. The first step was to secure two separate credit facilities that will become effective at the separation. We entered into two $1.5 billion five-year credit facilities, one for NiSource and the other for CPG. These facilities will replace NiSource’s existing $2 billion agreement. At the same time we entered these agreements, we also entered into a $500 million five-year facility at Columbia Pipeline Partners which went into effect at the time of the IPO. The next major step in this process is the recapitalization, which is on schedule to commence in the second quarter. We will provide additional updates on this process in our first quarter earnings update and through other public announcements. With that, I will turn the call back to Bob to discuss a few execution highlights from each of our business units. Bob Skaggs Thanks, Steve. Let’s start with CPG highlights on slide 6. The CPG team continues to advance a steady stream of transformational growth and modernization projects. As I noted earlier, CPG expects to invest up to $15 billion in growth capital over the next 10 years, with most major projects currently in execution or in advanced stages of development. During 2014, CPG placed more than $300 million in system expansion projects and service, adding approximately $1.1 billion cubic feet of system capacity. An additional $200 million in midstream projects were put in service during the year and CPG’s modernization work approached $320 million. So in total for 2014, we added more than $800 million in new revenue-generating assets in service all on time and on budget. Meanwhile, the CPG team is in full execution mode on several ongoing and transformational growth projects. In December, the FERC approved the construction of the East Side expansion project which will provide approximately 315 million cubic feet per day of additional capacity for Marcellus supplies to reach growing mid-Atlantic markets. This $275 million project is expected to be placed in service later this year. In addition to the East Side expansion, CPG has more than $3 billion of growth projects in progress that will add approximately 4 billion cubic feet of transportation capacity. These projects include the Leach and Rayne XPress projects, the WB XPress project and the Cameron Access project. The Rayne and Leach projects collectively involve about $1.8 billion in system expansion, creating a major new pathway for transporting shale production to attractive markets and liquid trading points. Both projects are expected to be in service by the end of 2017. WB XPress is almost a $900 million project to transport about 1.3 billion cubic feet of shale gas to East Coast markets and various pipeline interconnects including access to the go point LNG terminal and Cameron Access is a roughly $300 million investment that involves new pipeline facilities to connect with the Cameron LNG terminal in southern Louisiana. The project will offer initial capacity of up to 800 million cubic feet per day. Our Columbia midstream team also is continuing to capitalize on CPG’s strong asset position in the Marcellus and Utica regions. Midstream projects currently in progress include $120 million Washington County gathering project and the $65 million Big Pine expansion project. Big Pine in the first phase of Washington County will be placed in service before the end of the year. As you may recall during our prior discussions, we’ve outlined plans for the potential Mountaineer XPress project. We’re now in advance commercial discussions with customers on this major project, as well as a complementary project called Gulf XPress. If implemented, these projects would provide substantial transportation capacity out of the Marcellus and Utica shale regions. These two projects could involve an investment as large as $2 billion to $2.5 billion. We hope to complete commercial terms and clear all contractual outs by July. As you can see, on all fronts, the CPG team is executing against an impressive and indeed transformational growth agenda. In 2015, we’re targeting a capital investment level of approximately $1.1 billion of CPG. As you’ve heard us say before, our intent is to triple our net asset base over the next five years. With that, let’s now shift to our utility businesses starting with NIPSCO, our Indiana electric and natural gas business summarized on slide 7. NIPSCO is continuing to deliver on its commercial and customer strategy with an inventory of investment opportunities approaching $10 billion for electric infrastructure and $5 billion for gas infrastructure over the next 20 plus years. 2014 was a strong year for NIPSCO as well. In the first half of 2014, NIPSCO commenced its seven-year natural gas and electric infrastructure modernization programs now expected to reach an investment level of nearly $2 billion and completed approximately $120 million of projects in 2014. These investments will help improve reliability, maintain system safety for the next generation. On the environmental front, in December NIPSCO placed the final FGD new unit in service at Schahfer Generating Facility. This unit, like the one placed in service during the fourth quarter of 2013 was delivered on time and on budget. A third FGD unit at NIPSCO’s Michigan City Generation Facility is on schedule to be placed in service by the end of 2015. Following the completion of the Michigan City units, all of NIPSCO’s coal burning facilities will be fully scrubbed. On the growth side, progress also continued on two major NIPSCO electric transmission projects. Right of away, acquisition and permitting are underway for both projects and preliminary construction will begin on the 345 kV Reynolds to Topeka line in the first half of this year. If you recall, these projects involve an investment of about $0.5 billion for NIPSCO and are anticipated to be in service by the end of 2018. Finally, in addition to the continuation of NIPSCO’s electric energy efficiency programs, the IURC approved the extension of the green power rate program. NIPSCO also reached a settlement on the continuation of its feed-in tariff program. NIPSCO’s agenda in 2015 remains focused on enhancing the reliability and environmental performance of the systems through modernization and replacement investments. In addition to delivering customer programs that help reduce energy usage and manage bills, these investments expected to reach nearly $400 million in 2015 deliver significant economic development and job creation activity in northern Indiana, while at the same time delivering value to our investors. Turning to our Gas Distribution Operations on slide 8, you can see a similar story of large-scale infrastructure investment paired with complementary regulatory and customer initiatives. Touching on a few highlights from the year, in November, the Pennsylvania Commission approved the settlement in Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania’s base rate case. The case provides for recovery of CPA’s investments in its well-established infrastructure modernization program and will increase annual revenues by approximately $33 million. New rates went into effect in December. Also in December, Columbia Gas of Virginia reached a settlement with customers for its rate case, which if approved would increase base rates by about $25 million. Notably in January, the hearing examiner in the case recommended approval of the settlement. Final commission decision is expected by the end of the first quarter. These rate cases, along with one completed in Massachusetts, provide for continued recovery of investments related to our well-established infrastructure programs which are designed to maintain and improve the safety and reliability of our systems. Also in the fourth quarter, Columbia Gas of Massachusetts filed its 2015 system, gas system enhancement plan under new legislation authorizing accelerated recovery of gas infrastructure modernization investments. If approved as filed, cost recovery would increase annual revenues by approximately $2.6 million. Across the gas utilities, we expect to invest almost $900 million in 2015. Together, NiSource’s industry-leading platform for utility growth provides significant reliability, safety and environmental benefits to our existing and new customers while also delivering shareholder returns through transparent recovery mechanisms. Shifting to slide 9, our key takeaways for 2015, we plan to execute our current business and customer plans while at the same time delivering the CPG spinoff on schedule in mid-2015. We’re moving ahead with another year of record capital investments, targeted at $2.4 billion across our utilities and pipelines and a complementary regulatory and customer service agenda. As for the separation, we’re well on our way to standing up two premier companies, with an experienced slate of management and directors at both companies. CPG and NiSource will be well-financed and strongly positioned to execute on their distinct strategies and deliver enhanced long-term earnings and dividend growth. As I mentioned, both NiSource and CPG will conduct roadshows prior to separation to provide detailed business profiles. With those highlights for NiSource, we will now shift to slide 11 in the NiSource deck and Steve will discuss Columbia Pipeline Partners IPO and its predecessor results. Steve? Steve Smith Thanks, Bob. With the launch of CPPL, we’ve introduced a best in class MLP to the market. One with a strong supportive sponsor, stable and predictable cash flows that are virtually insensitive to fluctuations in commodity prices and volumes, a robust growth profile with a deep inventory of long-term infrastructure investments. The strategic footprint overlaying the Marcellus and Utica shale production areas. The financial strength and flexibility and a premier execution focused and experienced leadership team. Our offering was very well received and we’re very pleased with the continued positive response. Let’s quickly touch on our IPO and predecessor results on page 12. The offering of approximately 54 million units at $23 per share raised nearly $1.2 billion. The pricing offering on February 5 and subsequently began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CPPL the following day. These units include the full [inaudible] allotment executed by the underwriters. And as I mentioned previously, our $500 million five-year revolving credit facility we entered into in December came effective upon the IPO. Now let’s turn to our predecessor results issued this morning for periods prior to the IPO. As we outlined during our earlier NiSource remarks, Columbia Pipeline Group executed on and placed into service a wide variety of high-value projects during the year. These projects recorded CPPL’s predecessor growth and will serve as the model for the partnerships growth in 2015 and beyond. The predecessor reported net income of about $269 million for 2014 compared to about $267 million for 2013. The increase is primarily a result of new growth projects placed in service, new firm contracts and higher mineral rights royalties. On an adjusted EBITDA basis, the predecessor reported about $599 million in 2014 versus about $543 million in 2013. These results provide us with a solid footing as we move forward with CPPL’s strategy. Bob? Bob Skaggs Thanks Steve and thank you for participating today and for your ongoing interest and support of NiSource and Columbia Pipeline Partners. With that Nicholas, we’re ready to open the call to questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from the line of John Barta with KeyBanc. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question. John Barta Bob, thanks for the color on the Columbia kind of growth rates there. First off, are there any certain milestones we should be looking for regarding Mountaineer and Golf pipeline or did you say everything was going to be finalized in July? Bob Skaggs Yes, we mentioned we hope to clear all of our contractual outs by July. At the moment, we’re still working on agreements with the foundation shippers. One event that we would point you to is open seasons, both Mountaineer XPress and Gulf XPress. If you see those in the coming weeks, or so, that would be a positive sign that the projects continue to be moving forward. I would add those open seasons will be binding open seasons. That would be one guidepost. Operator Our next question comes from the line of Carl Kirst with BMO Capital. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question. Carl Kirst If I could just maybe stay with Mountaineer and Gulf XPress for a second but perhaps ask it in a way to see if there has been any shift in tone in producer conversations and in particular, if you’ve seen any reticence or pulling back midstream versus pipeline? Certainly your enthusiasm for the pipelines to hopefully have contracts by July would indicate that they are staying pretty positive and constructive. But I just wanted to make sure I’m getting the right read here. Bob Skaggs Yes. You’ve hit the nail on the head. It remains positive, constructive. We have been in very, very close contact with our producer shipper customers both on the big work projects as well as the midstream projects. Carl Kirst Do you find a difference in the tenor of conversations between the midstream and the pipelines, or just given the exposure to the region, both are continuing to move forward? Bob Skaggs It’s the latter. There is not a material difference in tone. As you know, folks are being prudent with their CapEx for 2015. Having said that, they still remain fully committed to the Marcellus and Utica and they still focus on take away capacity particularly when you get into the 2017, 2018, 2019 timeframe. Carl Kirst And then maybe one last question on the larger pipes and recognizing hopefully we have a binding open season not too far away. I guess should we think about the risk to the project? Is this more of a — do you guys feel like you are in a competitive shootout with anybody, or is this just a matter of getting the producers comfortable with the economics and trying to get to the right region, but once they make that decision, you guys or these projects are the obvious choice? I just want to make sure I got a good sense of that. Bob Skaggs I wouldn’t go so far as to say obvious choice, but I would say that the focus tends to be on your latter point. That being the economics, the in service date and the like. Carl Kirst And then last question if I could and then maybe one for Steve. I know of very tiny thing, but I’m just curious given the difference of commodity prices, is there any way we should think about the delta or the change in mineral or royalties that you guys are getting from the upstream exposure between 2015 and 2014? Steve Smith This is Steve. I would say it’s immaterial to the overall results going forward. Operator Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Sighinolfi with Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question. Chris Sighinolfi I just wanted to follow-up on of couple things. I appreciate your color and comments on the CPG ex EBITDA and dividend growth profiles. I was just curious assuming that you’re not going to answer a question as to where the starting point is for 2015, if you could just help us frame as you think about it and the board thinks about it the policy considerations around the initial level. I get the growth rate, but as we think about where — the variables that might shape where you guys ultimately set the starting point upon which we’re going to grow at that mid to upper teens level. Can you just give us some additional color on that front? Bob Skaggs Yes. Two key considerations. Number one, as you know we’re very sensitive to credit. We’re fully committed to investment grade credit. We need to go through the credit rating process in the March timeframe as we prepare for recap. So that starting point quite frankly is somewhat sensitive, somewhat dependent on credit considerations. The other is that the huge CapEx needs we have and so it’s balancing credit, CapEx and financing coming out of the gate. Those are the key considerations for starting point. Chris Sighinolfi Okay. And so to dovetail on prior questions, if some of the projects that are currently in discussion, sounds like they are moving forward into execution, like Mountaineer and Gulf that could be significant capital deployment. I would imagine then that would be part of this conversation. Bob Skaggs Correct. As I pointed out in my prepared remarks that we do have the significant events as we come up to separation and that’s certainly a huge, huge variable as we look at the financials and the outlook for the business. Chris Sighinolfi Perfect. And I guess switching and perhaps this is a question for Steve. Given the IPO, I know priced 15% or so above the range and I’m imagining the full overallotment exercise. Does that change at all the amount you had talked previously about a $3 billion debt recap. Does that shape at all the expectations around that modestly or at all? Steve Smith Not to a large extent. I mean, it does help obviously from a credit perspective, so we’re very pleased with the outcome of the IPO. With respect to the recapitalization, it is not going to move the needle too dramatically either way. Bob Skaggs We suggest still thinking in terms of $3 billion. Chris Sighinolfi Okay. And that I imagine will be profiled out in various tranches the various duration. Am I incorrect in thinking that? Steve Smith That is correct. Our current debt portfolio has a weighted average life of approximately 13.5 years. We would shoot for something north of 10 years, weighted average life. So probably issue a basket of 5, 10 and 30s to achieve that. Chris Sighinolfi One final question for me, there was a slight uptick even if I exclude the transaction costs for the fourth quarter that you reported in your corporate segment. There was an uptick in the corporate line item. Is there anything specific that’s driving that or is that just a variance from year-to-year? Bob Skaggs That’s just a variance from year-to-year. We have a bit more outside services costs in there as well as a result of all the activities we have going on here currently with respect to the separations. Operator Our next question comes from the line of Becca Followill with U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is now open. Please proceed with your question. Becca Followill The growth rate that you’ve outlined for CPG of mid- to upper-teens, over what time frame is that? Bob Skaggs Next three to five years. Becca Followill And are you willing to talk at this point about what type of payout ratio that assumes? Bob Skaggs Not at this point, Becca. Becca Followill Okay. I understand. And then the large CapEx program that you have at CPG, how do you finance that going forward? Bob Skaggs Well, the MLP is the sole source of equity through the period and we will be using it frequently to support that. Operator [Operator Instructions].Our next question comes from the line of Charles Fishman with Morningstar. Your line is open. Please proceed with your question. Charles Fishman I assume you will take a couple questions on NIPSCO. Slide 7, Bob, the $67 million of the electric modernization plan to be expected to be spent in 2015. 100% of that is covered by trackers? Bob Skaggs That’s correct. Charles Fishman And then I would assume if my math’s correct $1.1 billion over seven years, that’s probably likely going to accelerate that number in 2016 or is this thing backend loaded? Bob Skaggs It gradually steps up and you may have heard us say in prior calls, prior discussions, as we complete the scrubber program, the modernization program begins to tick up or step up. Charles Fishman Okay. And then last question on NIPSCO, the clean power plan, if you look at what the EPA is proposing for Indiana, a lot of coal plant heat rate improvement, a lot of renewables, a lot of efficiencies at the customer level. Not a lot of gas CCDTs, but have you had any initial discussions with Indiana about what, what would be expected of NIPSCO if this thing comes in even close to what they are proposing? Bob Skaggs Yes. We’re in constant communications with our stakeholders, with the state. At this point nothing definitive has really been exchanged or decided. But clearly we’re working day to day with all those folks. Charles Fishman Now in the CPP plan for Indiana, a lot of renewables, is that something that’s even on the radar screen as far as the electric utility or the NIPSCO that’s after the separation that that’s an investment opportunity that they might consider? Bob Skaggs Yes, it could be down the road, but I would say over the next few years, still continues to play a modest role in the portfolio. Operator Thank you. And with no further questions in the queue, I will now like to turn the call over to the speakers for any closing remarks. Bob Skaggs Thank you and thank you once again for your ongoing interest in NiSource and your ongoing support. We greatly appreciate it. Have a good, safe day. Thanks, everyone. Operator Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Have a good day, everyone.