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The Best Companies To Work For Provide The Best Returns

Summary I use employee review site Glassdoor to find the best companies to work for in America. Companies with high employee satisfaction seem to provide less volatile returns. The best company to work for in 2015 was Google. Do you work for a great company? Does it take care of your needs? Does it have a happy workforce overall? If so, are you tempted to invest in its share program? Maybe you should. In this article, I look at some of the best and worst-rated companies in America in order to see which companies give the best investment returns. Introduction When it comes to analyzing stocks, many investors focus on traditional measures of valuation such as company finances, financial ratios , or earnings projections. But one problem with this is that all investors are looking at the same things. I believe that there is sense in looking at some other, more qualitative, factors too. After all, there is more to a company that just a set of numbers on a piece of paper. Companies are made up of individual people and as English philosopher Alain De Botton said: To write up the goings-on in businesses only in economic terms, to sum up an entire company as being +1.20 or to compress the experiences of 8,000 people into a turnover of 375,776 seems as limited as reducing a novel of the complexity of Price and Prejudice to a ledger of the characters’ bank accounts. – The News, Alain De Botton . Knowing this, I believe it is important to not only analyze the financials of a business but also the manner in which the company treats its employees. And in my view , a company that treats its employees well is likely to perform more reliably and make better returns for investors. To analyze this concept, I decided to gather data from the employee review site Glassdoor . If you haven’t heard of Glassdoor, it’s basically a site that allows employees to leave anonymous reviews of employers. By storing up this data, Glassdoor has been able to rate companies across the globe based on levels of employee satisfaction. I therefore took the best and worst companies (as rated on Glassdoor) and analyzed which companies had performed the best over the subsequent few years. Best Companies To Work For In 2012 In 2012, Glassdoor released a list of the best 50 companies to work for in America and gave top place to Bain & Company. The highest publicly listed company was Facebook (NASDAQ: FB ), which was praised for its “attractive salary and friendly employees.” The following table shows 2012’s best 11 companies to work for in America and the subsequent share price of those companies, beginning 8/11/2012: (Note, I only included companies on the list that were publicly listed on one of the major US exchanges). As the table indicates, the best publicly listed company in 2012 according to Glassdoor ratings was Facebook. The stock went on to give a 77% one-year return and a 240% three-year return. Investing $1000 into each of the 11 best-rated companies would have made a 20.28% return on investment over one year and a 61.62% return over three years. Worst Companies To Work For In 2012 Turning now to the companies that were rated worst. This data was gathered from 24/7 Wall Street , originally from Glassdoor. The table below shows the worst rated 11 companies and their subsequent share performance: As shown in the table, the worst company to work for in America was Dish Networks (NASDAQ: DISH ). However, investing in DISH would have produced an excellent one-year return of 47.57% and a 3-year return of over 100%. Moreover, investing $1000 into each of the worst-rated companies would have returned 67.46% over one year and 110% over three years, sharply outperforming the return for the best-rated companies. RadioShack (NYSE: RSH ) It’s also worth noting though, that one company on this list (RadioShack) would have been a very bad choice for your portfolio. Users on Glassdoor criticized RadioShack for its “poor management, below average pay, and strenuous hours.” And if you’d invested in RadioShack alone, you would have lost 81% of your capital. In fact, the company was later forced into liquidation in February 2015. Best Companies To Work For In 2013 In 2013, the highest rated public company on Glassdoor was Facebook again. And following is the top 9 companies to work for in 2013 and their subsequent share performance from 7/20/2013: As is clear, investing in the best-rated companies would have been a good strategy in 2013. The top rated company, Facebook, produced a 166% return over the first year and a 276% return over two years. Investing $1000 into each stock would have returned 29.84% in the first year and 49.73% over two years. Worst Companies To Work For In 2013 In 2013, there were some new entries into the worst-rated companies to work for in America including businesses such as NCR Corp. (NYSE: NCR ) and Dollar General (NYSE: DG ). As you can see from the following table, the worst 9 companies to work at in 2013 produced poor returns over the next one and two-year time horizon: Investing $1000 into each of the worst-rated companies in August 2013 would have produced just a 0.75% return on investment in the first year and a 6.84% return over two years. (click to enlarge) So what can we make of these results? The goal of this piece was to try and find a link between employee satisfaction and share price performance, and on first glance, our findings are not completely compelling. In 2012, the worst places to work actually turned out to be the best stocks to invest in. This suggests that a contrarian type strategy, where investors look for businesses on the verge of turnaround could be worthwhile. However, this finding was reversed in 2013 where the worst-rated companies significantly underperformed. Less volatility One interesting insight to be culled from this study is the case of RadioShack. The stock ended up in bankruptcy in 2015 with its stock price going to zero. And the inclusion of the company in the worst-rated list in both 2012 and 2013 is telling. So, using this data on its own might not be particularly wise. But it does seem likely, that the best companies to work for give less volatile, more reliable, stock returns overall. In general, companies should be evaluated not just on their finances but based on the individuals that make up the business as a whole. Personally, I would rather invest in those companies with the most content employees. – As of 2015, the best company to work for in America was Google ( GOOG ). – Dates chosen to reflect release of the worst companies list in order to avoid look-ahead bias – Number of companies used chosen in accordance with the number available on the worst companies list. Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. (More…) I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

UIL Holdings’ (UIL) CEO Jim Torgerson on Q2 2015 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

UIL Holdings Corporation (NYSE: UIL ) Q2 2015 Earnings Conference Call August 06, 2015 10:00 AM ET Executives Susan Allen – Vice President, Investor Relations Jim Torgerson – President and Chief Executive Officer Rich Nicholas – Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Analysts Andy Levy – Avon Capital Caroline Bone – Deutsche Bank Eric Guo – Gabelli & Company Andrew Weisel – Macquarie Capital Paul Patterson – Glenrock Associates Andy Levy – Avon Capital Operator Good morning. My name is Bobby Jane. I will be your conference operator for today’s call. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the UIL Holdings Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Susan Allen. Susan Allen Thank you, Bobby Jane and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss UIL Holdings second quarter 2015 earnings results. I’m Susan Allen, Vice President of Investor Relations. Participating on the call is Jim Torgerson, UIL’s President, Chief Executive Officer and Rich Nicholas, UIL’s Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. If you do not have a copy of our press release or presentation for today’s call, they are on our website at www.uil.com. During today’s call, we will make various forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Significant factors that could cause results to differ from those anticipated are described in our earnings release and filings with the SEC. With that said, I’ll turn the call over to Jim Torgerson. Jim Torgerson Thanks Susan. Good morning everybody. Second quarter turned out to be pretty good for us as we have seen from our earnings release, the net income was 15.8 million or $0.28 per diluted share that was compared to the 9.3 or $0.16 diluted share in ’14. Year-to-date, for the first six months, we had net income of 73.4 million, which was $1.28 per diluted share and that was compare to the 64.8 million or $1.13 a share in the first half of ’14. There were a number of one-time or non-recurring items during both 2015 and 2014 merger-related expenses with our pending merger with you Iberdrola had an impact and slight impact in the first– in the quarter, but mainly more year-to-date. And then again in 2014, we have the now terminated proposed acquisition of the Philadelphia Gas Works, which have which had an impact in 2014. We also recognize the reserves related to the transmission, return equity related to the proceedings at FERC and we had booked some charges mainly in the first quarter of 2015, but also found in the 2014 and there was a minor adjustment in this most recent quarter. We also had which is not shown as a non-recurring item and we did have an IRS tax audit adjustments negative about $0.02 a share which Rich will explain, but with all that said after these non-recurring items, not including the tax adjustment, the quarter was actually up $0.03 or about 12% and year-to-date for the first six months were $0.05 a share about 4%. Turning to page six, I’m going to talk about the Iberdrola, USA and UIL merger here are the some of the timelines and what’s been happening. We received a Hart-Scott-Rodino process that was completed, pretty quickly after we filed back in the end of March and on that one. The Federal Communications Commission, we got approval there. FERC approved in early part of June. The Committee on Foreign Investments, the review was completed and early on, so those have all been completed. Connecticut Public Utility Regulatory Authority has aimed you all aware in their draft final order graph decision, denied the request. And so we actually hold the request and terminated that proceeding and then filed a new application on July 31. Now, that is still subjected to the 120-day time frame in order for the PURA to give us a decision. So we would expect a decision in late November. Massachusetts DPU, we filed in the end of March, the DPU really it’s kind of I say suspended the filing that we will be making supplemental testimony that will be filed very shortly that will reflect what we filed in Connecticut, but really on our prorated basis more or less with what we have in Connecticut, reflecting the size of our assets of Berkshire Gas, which is about 5% of total in Massachusetts. We also filed our EBITDA filed the S4 and then our preliminary proxy which is a combined document on July 17. We are waiting comments from the SEC on that pulmonary filing– pulmonary proxy. Once we get through the SEC filings and everything is approved and we can schedule the shareholder vote. I want to go over a few things about this but the new application entailed and some of it in the commitments we made. The start, we have a rate credit. We will be providing the customers that would be $20 million and we are putting three options for the surbs decide on because we didn’t get feedback of their living for long-term benefit. So one of the options is closure, just provider rate credit upfront for customers, second one was to do it all ten years which nominally would be $26 million but the present value is $20 million and also a third option which would be to mimic what would be a reduction in rates something they’ve talked about, amortize that over like a 30 year timeframe. It still comes back to a net present value of $19 million to $20 million. But the rate credit would be like $1.5 million a year over the 30-year time frame. Further value is still the same, but it allows for a little longer term look at and benefits that could be provided to customers. We also put in for suggested distribution base rate freeze be till January 1, 2018 and will be to go into effect for the two gas companies in Connecticut, Southern Connecticut Gas and Connecticut Natural Gas. And for United Illuminating, our electric distribution business, new rates couldn’t go into effect until January 1, 2017. We would make a contribution to the clean energy fund, that would be $2 million a year for over three years of $6 million, and then a contribution to disaster relief of $1 dollar. And we left that up to appear to decide what the entity or agency that could go to, but we did make some suggestions. We also would accelerate our investment in electric distribution system resiliency, and the plan there was to provide [indiscernible] within six months of our closing the transaction. The opportunities we have for investments in realized and resiliency, and these things such as rising of our [indiscernible] period on to flooding and walls are to again prevent flooding, also some things with microgrids, and some cabling that we could replace to help resiliency. What we would contemplate is the first $15 million of this distribution investments, we would not get the equity return on until the projects are complete, which is expected to be around 2019, and then the subsequent rate case would pick that up. In the meantime, we would request to get the debt recovery and the depreciation. We also suggested that we would accelerate the cast iron and bare steel replacement program for selling Southern Connecticut Gas, doubling it from $11 million to $22 million over the three-year subsequent to the closing. And this will provide a benefit to customers by accelerating that. We would then not get that in the rates until we actually filed that rate case that would be talking about, which would not have rates into effect until these January 1, 2018. Those would provide benefits just because of the present value of not recovering from the cost immediately of about $7 million to customers. Then we’re negotiating a consent order with DEEP to remediate English Station. Our English Station is a plant that we sold back in 2000. It’s in New Haven, and there are PCBs at the site or negotiating with DEEP on the consent order, and the Attorney General, the estimates from DEEP as far as the clean-up costs is about $30 million, we would then undertake that. But again, that’s subject to negotiating our consent order. We also agreed to maintain our high levels of safety and reliability, but also improved customer service metrics now for the customer service metrics. Those would be for the average speed of answer abandon calls and appointments captain the agreement would be that we’ve been approved by 5% over the next three years. Also then we wouldn’t want to maintain the safety leak response in the third party damage leak response third party obviously for gas, it’s the high level that we have today and maintain those levels. From a local management commitment and if you read the PURAs draft decision they want to make sure that there was going to be a focus on local management. We would appoint an individual as President of the Connecticut operations who would come from the existing management team of UIL or one of the UIL utilities and then that individual would be headquartered in Connecticut and at the UIL companies would be head quartered there for at least seven years. We said we would not change the day-to-day management operations of any of the Utilities in Connecticut and there we would had no involuntary terminations of employees except obviously for cause of performance for at least three years following closing. We also said we would hire 150 employees or contractors over three years in Connecticut. This will allow us to do a lot of projects that we have on our plate to begin with mainly transmission project that we’re going to need contractors for and we can fill some our existing positions and looking at those attrition occurs. So the 150 employees are contractors we think it’s good for the stay. Ring-fencing protections that we would implement mainly to of provisions to avoid bankruptcy or adverse conditions that could occur in any of the affiliates, other than the UIL companies that would have — could have an impact on the UIL Utilities and this would involve the creation of a special purpose entity with at least one independent director and implementation of an independent, non-economic interest and the special purpose entity they call it Golden Share. What it really allows is that that individual holding that share would have what amount to be if there was going to be a voluntary bankruptcy of any of the UIL Utilities. And then we also would committed to maintain separate corporate existence and the provision against forming with the funds and some dividend restrictions in the event that any of the utility of drop below investment grade which we don’t anticipate. So as you can see we’ve put forth a lot to the peer of and at big proportionate when we do actually filed within it’s our supplement to make sure that we’re addressing all of the concerns that they raised in the draft decision, which again was pulled. Now, moving on to things that are going on with the UIL, as many of you know, we did acquire 2.5% equity interest in the Kinder Morgan proposed Northeast Energy Direct gas pipeline project. This really commits us to an initial capital investment of up to 80 million and again, it depends on the final pipeline configuration and design. It also committed UIL to taking 70,000 dekatherms a day, which actually, we could reduce that under certain circumstances as others come in and want the capacity on the pipeline and we can release that directly to them and reduce our commitment. We also have an option to acquire an additional up to 12.5% of equity under some limited circumstances and the limited circumstances really relates, if we can’t reduce that 70,000 dekatherms by the time the pipeline goes into operation or even later than that, a couple years after that. Then also, if the electric distribution companies, there is a project that they would get capacity on the pipeline, which then they could release to electric generation projects that you’ve heard about the Nesco proposal that was done. These are things that are going on in New England, mainly in Massachusetts and Connecticut and Rhode Island. But as these projects can come on, we’re — the electric distribution companies get capacity, we can then increase our equity interest in the pipeline as the pipeline within the more capacity to serve these needs. The project, obviously, is going to supply the needs to growing residential, commercial and industrial demand for gas, but also for— it could be a very reliable supplier fuel for the power generation, and this would be again probably under that EDC proposal. And it does provide direct access to the Marcellus and the [Utica] shale. The pipeline will extend about 180 miles, which will be new pipeline from New York through Massachusetts and then into New Hampshire. They will be making a filing with FERC at some point and Kinder Morgan can probably give you a little more details on when that will be, but we understand it should be in late fall or maybe even at the fourth quarter of this year. And then commercial operation is expected by the fourth quarter of 2018. Getting to our gas heating customer additions [indiscernible] we had just under 3,900 through the end of June. We believe we’re still on track and to meet the 12,000, we said we’d get this year. Current home heating prices obviously lower than what they had been and the margin that we customers can get as it has often quite a bit but natural gas is still more cost effective and has more benefits, so we are still seeing a number of conversions and we are confident that we’ll have the 12,000 for the year. Turning to page 11 the transmission ROE proceeding is a lot on this chart. Basically you know that comments— the complaints have been ongoing. We have the three complaint periods with different time frames for a refund periods. We’ve been through this before, but basically the 10.57 base ROE is still being challenged in the subsequent complaints and the timing right now is the hearings were held, the end of June and early July. The Administrative Law Judge decision is expected by the end of 2015 so the FERC decision isn’t expected till end of 2016. The one point here in mid-July, the New England transmission are actually filed a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for review of the second and third complaint, challenging their first decisions allow hearings on the merits of the second and third compliance. So that will go along with the petition we had to challenge the first complaint. But there was lot of legal activity going on with ROE for FERC. I will turn it over to Rich Nicholas is going to run through the financial results. Rich Nicholas Thank you, Jim and good morning everyone, Thanks for joining us today. On slide 12, we have the tabular results by business segment break out the non-recurring merger and all we reserve it. Jim mentioned earlier and beginning on slide 13 then is the narrative that goes through the various business segments. So looking at Slide 13 and focusing first on the electric distribution, second quarter ’15 earnings kept as compared to the second quarter ’14, it were down about $700,000, but that does include the $1.1 million charge from the IRS audit. By the audit did cover four years from 2009 to 2012, it was a routine audit and those periods are now close and resolved, but it was a of a $0.02 charge in the second quarter as a result from looking year-to-date. Again on electric distribution, a decrease from $25.2 million in ’14 to $21.8 million in 2015 again, which includes the $1.1 million charge from the IRS audit. But higher employee-related expenses depreciation and amortization as a rate base grows and some other operating taxes for things like property taxes, it was offset in part by a rate increase that took place in August of last year was the second year of a two year rate plan for UIL and we so do see some benefit from that. GenConn was up slightly quarter-over-quarter primarily due to billing adjustment, so up above 400,000 quarter-over-quarter. The 12 months rolling at distribution return on equity came in at 9.09% and that compares to our allowed of 9.15%. Turning to the electric transmission segment, earnings there were down as well, both in the quarter and year-to-date. We did recorded additional reserves in the first quarter of this year. To reflect the order run we are hearing from FERC in the first complaint, clarified that the ROE cap was at the project level not at the company level. So on slide 14, you can see the results with or without the reserve adjustments that have been made that’s been the primary driver both in the quarter and year-to-date. Both the reserve and lower ROE now going forward, the 10.57% that came out of the first complete order. Overall excluding the reserves to transmission ROE came in at 11.35% and if you were to include the reserves into 10.98%. Now looking at our gas distribution business, earnings for the quarter $1.4 million compared to a loss of $2.2 million last year and the increase in earnings is primarily due to and we’ve seen lower uncollectible expenses slightly lower corporate charges last year. We had recorded earnings sharing at CNG and we’re not in that position at this point this year. It was offset somewhat by higher O&M expense in the second quarter that we saw, we benefited on the revenue side from the cold weather but as the ground began to thaw and [indiscernible] begin to move we did have additional O&M expense to address leaks in the second quarter and that cost was about to $0.025 a share for the higher O&M. Moving to slide 15, year-to-date for gas distribution increased in earnings certainly benefited by the cold weather in the first quarter. Year-to-date we are almost 13% colder than normal, and almost 3% colder than last year, it was warmer in the second quarter of this year compared to last year, but not big heating degree day loans in the second quarter. So it was actually 16% warmer than normal, didn’t feel like it, but that was the actual data. So the impact of weather, normalized use per customer, customer growth, you can see we’re still benefiting significantly from our customer growth almost $1 million in margin quarter-over-quarter, $3 million year-over-year. Normalized use per customer is pretty stable, actually, a positive 200,000 in the quarter. And you’ll note, particularly on the year-to-date column, there the decoupling adjustment for C&G only with the cold weather in the first quarter, we do have a liability for a refund to customers resulting from that. So the results of all of that on slide 16. Our 12-month average return on equities at the gas companies, Southern Connecticut gas are about 97% to 98% as compared to the allowed 936, and at C&G 945 to 965 as compared to the allowed 918. On a weather adjusted basis, there is no weather adjustment at C&G since we have decoupling, but SCG, as you can see 8.86 to 9.06. The corporate segment where we retained certain corporate costs for interest on Holding company debt, as well as the merger related charges, both from Philadelphia, last year, and for Iberdrola this year are included in the corporate segment. If you were to exclude those merger related expenses, the quarter was essentially flat year-over-year, and year-to-date, we’re actually have $0.03 less of a loss at corporate, primarily due to increased returns on share to capitalize that are held at the Holding company for the benefit of all those subsidiaries. As we look forward now, to the rest of the year, on Slide 17, our earnings guidance, we did reduce the top end of the guidance by $0.05, effectively, reducing the midpoint then by 2.5, primarily result from the higher [indiscernible] then was expected as the gas companies, resulting from the leak repairs due to the cold weather in the first quarter. So if you exclude the non-recurring items, our current guidance is $2.30 to $2.45. And that compares to previously it was 2.30 to 2.50. We did reduce the gas guidance by $0.03 on the upper end. So that it’s now $0.95 to $1.02 versus previously it was $0.95 to $1.05. So with that, I will now hand it back to our operator Bobby Jane for the question-and-answer session. Question-and-Answer Session Operator Thank you very much, sir. [Operator Instructions] We do have one question coming to queue from Andy Levy, Avon Capital. Your line is live. Andy Levy Just a quick question on the merger on the S4, I noticed that you gave 16 guidance and you also gave 2019, I believe our record growth rate out to 19 but I remember if I’m not mistaken that on the original announcement of the merger, you also have 17 guidance as well, but I want to make sure that your reaffirming 17 as well as we did 16 on S4? Jim Torgerson Yes, there’s been no change there. Andy Levy Okay. So it’s 17 is still at 2.59-2.75? Jim Torgerson I don’t have the document from me, but there’s been no change. Andy Levy Okay and then why that was left out of the S4? Jim Torgerson We provided the information that demonstrates the growth rate through the planning period. Andy Levy Okay, thank you and then the other question I had was, just on the makeup of the Board, under the new company. How will that be? Jim Torgerson The event through USA Board there will be two people from the current UIL Board going onto that Board along with me as of CEO and they will retain the people that are there today on the EBITDA USA Board. Andy Levy Was there any change in that when you made your filing, your revised filing in Connecticut is up to same? Jim Torgerson That’s what still it had assets in the agreement. That’s still the same. Andy Levy Okay, got it. Thank you very much. Jim Torgerson Yes, the work Board is the one where we’re going to add one Connecticut person, that’s not the EBITDA US Board though. Andy Levy Okay, I understand. Thank you very much sir. Operator Okay and then our next question comes from line of Caroline Bone, Deutsche Bank. Your line is live. Caroline Bone It’s Deutsche bank but thank you. So I guess I’m wondering if you could talk to bit more about what makes you so confident that you’ll hit that 12,000 customer gas conversion target for the full year. It just seems like you guys are tracking pretty well behind right now. Jim Torgerson Yes, we were looks like July was doing a little bit— quite a bit better. We didn’t release that number yet, but it’s looking better. So think what if we have then we’re having a good enough number of leads going on and a lot of interest in the commercial and industrial, mainly commercial not that not much industrial. Commercial aspects then the main expansions we’ve been doing are moving into other towns that actually we hadn’t even served before like Essex and couple others that [would be] doing some extensive pipeline expansions main expansions that are going to pick up some new customers [indiscernible] one of them. These are all small towns. But we’re hitting some major loads that we can then pick up and pick up some more customers along the way. Mostly commercial, so we’re pretty confident about the 12,000 I mean it’s going to be high, but because of the prices heating on it but our folks seemed very confident right now and I do too. So we had a much better month in July and now we’re getting to the point in the season where people will be looking to convert when they start thinking about their heating for the next winter. Caroline Bone So didn’t have anything to do with that I guess guidance reduction at gas? Jim Torgerson No, the guidance reduction of gas was as Rick said we had to do some maintenance as a result, of the very cold winter. And things spot out we had a bunch, number of gas leaks obviously you have to fixed right away. And that was the charge the other part of the reduction in the guidance was not for gas, but was just really when we look at the $0.02 we had from the federal income tax adjustments. So the other two items. Caroline Bone And I guess just selling gas. I mean I know that utilities in New York City are seeing an uptick in volume of units, people reporting potential gas leak system just in the wake of the Harlem explosion, a year ago and the most recent East village incident and I’m just wondering if you guys are seeing similar trend in your territory? Jim Torgerson We’re not hearing of any more people reporting gas leaks. Obviously, we jump on those as soon as we hear or people call and say that they can smell gas, so that we send people out immediately and we are pretty happy with our results for that we get out there, 98% of the time. We’re there within. You know the minute’s requirement at least 45 minutes in the state. And so we get on that pretty quickly and then we fix all the Class 1 leaks those the ones we have to fix immediately and the Class 2 lakes were getting on those pretty quickly in out too. So we’re not hearing more people calling about it that not than more usual. Caroline Bone Okay that’s good to hear. And then just a minor one on the DC Circuit Court, with regards that they appeal there on the ROE case, when do you guys expect them to rule on that? Jim Torgerson Caroline, I really don’t know. Caroline Bone Okay. Jim Torgerson I wish I did. It still be a while. Caroline Bone Okay. All right, just curious. Well, thanks very much. Jim Torgerson Sure. Operator Our next question comes from the line of Eric Guo at Gabelli & Company. Go ahead. Eric Guo Hi guys, thanks for taking my call. Jim Torgerson Sure. Eric Guo Just trying to get a better idea of the decision process, regarding NED pipeline investment, was this made exclusively at the UIL level or was this decision made with some input from the [indiscernible] guys? Jim Torgerson Well, based on our merger agreement, we — if we’re going to do something that’s outside of what we gave them, the budget, our capital spending plan, we have to get their consent, which we did so we’ve talked to them about it. After our Board then agreed that it made sense, so we did as if we have the consent, but it wasn’t really done not so in concert with them, because as we can’t, I mean, we believe at the [indiscernible] circumstance for making investments that would be significant. Eric Guo Got you. Okay, thanks. And just a second quick question on, did you guys provide — Can you provide some color regarding the earnings sensitivity related to conversions and how much in incremental 100 conversions with [will metered] for earnings are, something along those lines? Rich Nicholas Unfortunately, the quick answer is, it depends, because of the way the regulators have implemented the comprehensive energy strategy. We actually earn our return on rate base on the conversion, so it depends, if you’re on main or off main, how much capital is invested prior to that, we did say on average $250 to $300 of net income per conversion. But again, it’s a broad average and it depends, in particular, how far the main extension has to be. Eric Guo Okay, got you. Thanks. Operator And our next question comes from the line of Paul Patterson, Glenrock Associates. Your line is live. Paul Patterson your line is live. I’m going to the next question. Next question comes from Andrew Weisel, Macquarie Capital. Your line is live. Andrew Weisel Jim, on this Connecticut application, first is the S4 is it fair for me to assume that the numbers in the S4 for future income reflect all of these concessions that you’ve made in the Connecticut application? Jim Torgerson Not really, because what will probably happened as many other concessions are the things that occur, some of them get booked in 2015. Assuming we get the approval before the end of the year and actually before even close. And some of them will be right at year-end. So I would expect that a lot of those will get booked and shouldn’t have a big impact on the future and if you look at even the stuff. Let’s say they do the credit over the 10 or 30 years. As long as we can estimate it and we know exactly what is going to be and we can book it right up front, which is where we want to do. Some of the other things really get to be smaller items that it just — we’re not really loses anything long-term like other than the contribution of book those right away too. So I don’t think you’ll see much impact on the financials under. Rich do want to? Rich Nicholas Fine, under the accounting guidelines, once it’s profitable and estimatable than we’ll book in our crew if you will, and immediately and even if things in great credit by years and we’ll just pump those up against the reserve as we go forward. Andrew Weisel Okay, that’s very helpful. And then in the S4, those net income number you gave, do that essentially reflects earning you’re allowed ROE for all of those years, have quick think better inverse allowed ROEs? Rich Nicholas We haven’t put some of those specific type of assumptions out there. But those are planning forecast of today. Andrew Weisel Okay, fair enough. Next is another question on the Northeast Energy Direct. Could you elaborate a bit more detail the option to acquire additional equity maybe just dig a little deeper into the circumstances and the timing of when we might know more about that? Rich Nicholas Yes. A lot of this is under our agreement with Kinder Morgan but in broad terms, the one area where yet— for example, because we are taking on an obligation for another 70,000 Dekatherms a day to the extent that doesn’t get really say we can’t. No one else signs off on the Kinder Morgan pipeline and it remains at its current level. Then we would have the ability, once the pipeline into operational to increase our equity percentage should our option, because we couldn’t release the 70,000 to any insure people who want to have capacity that’s one; another areas with the assuming is an EDC process for the electric distribution companies, then take on capacity which are allowed the pipeline to expand then in certain states in Connecticut, I think just about every states expect one we would then have the ability, electric distribution companies take on capacity to gain additional equity interest. Now we have to pay for two but that we’ve could have increased our equity interest based on how much is added in the New England state as a result of that and its there is formulas for each state as to what percentage we can add— of people of— that take on additional capacity. So it’s all formula driven and I don’t think much of that’s has been release on just going to— that’s how it works though. Rich Nicholas Andrew we are just to be fact of re-correct. The forecast are as of the date the [indiscernible] was filed July 17. Andrew Weisel Okay, thank you both for those points there. Then just one last one the increase in O&M at gas due to cold winter is there or would it be fair to think of that as pulling forward future expenses. In other words we might this help next year’s O&M or these kind of incremental cost and in next year’s O&M budget would be unlikely to change? Jim Torgerson Right, but you can view that more is incremental cost. Andrew Weisel Okay, thank you very much. Jim Torgerson Might want to say kind of one-time or two. Operator And your next question comes from Paul Patterson, Glenrock Associates. Your line is live. Paul Patterson Can you hear me? Jim Torgerson Yes. We can hear you Paul. Paul Patterson Okay I don’t what happened last time. But anyway, just really quickly and I apologize for this but kind of got slightly distracted when you guys were talking about the settlement process. You mentioned the England station or English station. And I’m just wondering so just to clarify, are you guys in the global settlement discussion right now with the parties in Connecticut and English stations part of that? If you just, if you could, if you don’t mind elaborate a little bit more on that again? Jim Torgerson It’s not really a global settlement discussion. It was, we were having discussions with the, as we said in the application with the Attorney General Department of Energy, Environment Protection in the governor’s office as to looking at things, we could do the application and English station was one area where the city and the state would like to have cleaned up. [indiscernible] we have owned in 15 years and so [indiscernible] said we’ll look at working to get a consent order that would allow the cleanup of that facility and that we were looking at a number of the deep and put out to say that it was that the cleanup was expected, about 30 million that’s really where it went. And then really right now, there are no— we’re not talking about a settlement this point. That was a discussion that we had with the parties before we made the application filing and its really getting some of theirs to what would help gets processed using and get an application that’s hopefully PURA can accept— will accept and [indiscernible]. Paul Patterson And just to sort of understand the new application procedure, you guys have major filing, do we go through the same again or could it be abbreviated, that you can enter into a settlement negotiations, if that’s what you guys intend to do. Sooner than how the normal course of– in other words, there’s a lot of ground you guys have already covered. I would assume that perhaps. And perhaps, inaccurately assumed that maybe you guys could did act faster in terms of working with the other parties in the Connecticut case. This is– how should we think about that? Jim Torgerson Right now, I would assume that it will take the full 120 days that the peer has not decided the case. I think right now, there is no anticipation that it would be accelerated, would hope it would be, because we found a lot of ground already, but– and those parties– and those who have to– they have the right to exercise those and do their investigation and ask questions, and follow their briefs and get their interrogatories in, so I would expect that particularly, the OCC and the consumer council is going to want to go through all that. Paul Patterson Okay, but it means, so I guess, a settlement process if that were to take place, when might that happen? Jim Torgerson Yes, I guess the parties wanted to discuss settlement, and that could happen anytime, but I think in the past, what we’ve seen from the consumer councils, they want to go to all the hearing process and then do their briefs and then talk about it. So it’s not going to– short it, if the units that were to occur, I don’t think it would shorten things very much. [indiscernible] history, Paul. Paul Patterson Well, I appreciate the clarity. Like I said, that’s why I asked the question [indiscernible I was assuming too much that they might — that maybe some of the previous work that’s been done so far might somehow be helpful in making a little bit quicker, but apparently, I’m wrong. Jim Torgerson It might, but I don’t expect that the — even if it’s shortens it, you may be talk in a week or so. So I don’t think, we could count on anything less than 120 days right now. But it will still allow us to have it done before the end of the year. Paul Patterson I got you. And then the supplemental testimony in Massachusetts, that’s going to be filed against relatively soon, and then, after that we’ll get — how much, how long should we expect for interveners respond to them? Jim Torgerson They haven’t put off its full schedule or revised schedule, and so then, really the intervening party is the Attorney General. And there may be a couple of others, but those truly the Attorney but in general in Massachusetts as you know, I would expect that they’ve already given us interrogatories will probably give us more on our supplemental filings. So then the hearing schedule will hearing we were supposed to have hearings this month now is that we pushed off because we are following the supplement. I would guess it’s probably going to be September, October, hopefully we can get an answer shortly after — practically speaking there at all see what happens in Connecticut. And so I would expect to be shortly after that. Paul Patterson Thanks so much. Appreciate the clarity Operator Our next question comes from the line of Andy Levy, Avon Capital. Your line is live. Andy Levy The some fact S4 page 93 of the S4 talks about in preparing the EBITDA U.S.A projections considered by UIL’s management modified the financial forecast by the EBITDA USA management and new kind of know what it does that’s based on like weighted adjustments certain forecast. Could you just describe more the methodology that we use and how that played into coming up with the CapEx numbers that you put out there, particularly main. Jim Torgerson Sure, Andy, this is Rich. Getting forecast on before the long time, food grade agrees of uncertainty that are rounded and so working with our financial advisors. We did make some adjustments to what we thought would be good view of what the future looks like. Andy Levy Okay and have no one have asked about this before but has any of the — I guess it’s really a question for EBITDA, I’m not going to ask you but I guess or just on what’s been identified up with name that’s really question for EBITDA. Jim Torgerson I think that you probably right about that. Andy Levy Thank you. Operator And that was the last question in queue [Operator Instructions]. At this time, there is no further question in queue. Jim Torgerson Okay, well thank you all for participating today. If you do have further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact our Investor Relations people [indiscernible] and thank you all for participating today and have a great day. Good Bye. Operator And this concludes our afternoon teleconference. You may disconnect your line.

Chesapeake Utilities’ (CPK) CEO Mike McMasters Discusses Q2 2015 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Chesapeake Utilities Corp. (NYSE: CPK ) Q2 2015 Earnings Conference Call August 7, 2015 10:30 ET Executives Mike McMasters – President and Chief Executive Officer Beth Cooper – Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Analysts Michael Gaugler – Janney Montgomery Roger Liddell – Clear Harbor Asset Management John Hanson – Praesidis Operator Good morning. My name is Mariana and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Chesapeake Utilities Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Beth Cooper, you may begin your conference. Beth Cooper Thank you and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us this morning to review our second quarter and year-to-date 2015 results. Joining me on the call today with prepared remarks is Mike McMasters, President and CEO. We also have several additional members of our management team here with us today to answer questions following prepared remarks. The presentation to accompany our discussion today can be accessed on our website at www.chpk.com under the Investor section and Events and Webcast subsection or via our IR app. Moving to Slide 2, before we begin, let me remind you that matters discussed in this conference call may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements and projections could differ materially from our actual results. The Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements section of the company’s 2014 Annual Report on Form 10-K, provides further information on the factors that could cause such statements to differ from our actual results. Finally, please note that earnings per share data, is shown on a fully diluted basis and reflects the company’s 3-for-2 stock split effective September 8, 2014. While second quarter results are typically lower due to the seasonality of our regulated and unregulated energy business segments, we are pleased to report quarter-over-quarter increases in net income and earnings per share driven by continued strong growth in our regulated energy distribution and natural gas transmission businesses. We also continue to execute on our strategic growth plans. On April 1, we closed on the acquisition of Gatherco. During the quarter, we made significant progress in our integration of Gatherco, which we have re-branded as Aspire Energy of Ohio. We are also continuing to develop and cultivate profitable growth opportunities in our natural gas and propane businesses across Delmarva and in Florida. Our Florida Gas Reliability Infrastructure Program, or GRIP, as we commonly refer to it, is generating increased earnings as we make natural gas infrastructure investments to further enhance the safety and reliability for our systems. Finally, the outcome of the Florida electric base rate case supplemented our earnings for the quarter. As shown on Slide 3, on Thursday, we announced second quarter 2015 net income of $6.3 million, or $0.41 per share, an increase of $1.2 million, or $0.06 per share compared to the same quarter in 2014. Second quarter 2015 results reflect the continued successful execution of our strategy to generate profitable growth from service expansions, acquisitions, major projects, continued investment in the GRIP program and the electric rate case in Florida. The growth in our Regulated Energy segment generated increased operating income that offset the weather-sensitive unregulated energy businesses. The second quarter’s results also included $900,000 after-tax gain or $0.06 per share from a settlement with a vendor related to a customer billing system implementation. As we look out over the rest of the year, we believe we are well-positioned to build on our successful track record given the Gatherco acquisition, several major projects currently in progress, and other key strategic actions we are undertaking. Mike will elaborate on these later in the call. I will now highlight the accomplishments and results for the two business segments during the second quarter. Detailed discussions of the changes in gross margin and other operating expenses by business segment for the quarter and six months ended June 30, 2015 are provided in our press release and quarterly report on Form 10-Q, both of which were filed on Thursday. Turning to Slide 4, Chesapeake’s Regulated Energy businesses, which include our natural gas transmission and distribution and electric distribution operations generated operating income of $13.6 million in the second quarter of 2015 compared to $10.7 million for the same quarter in 2014. The increase in Regulated Energy operating income reflected $4 million in additional gross margin from customer growth, the GRIP service expansions and the electric rate case. Other operating expenses increased by $1.1 million, which included a $1.5 million credit offset to expenses associated with the settlement for billing system implementation, which was mentioned earlier. Absent the offset, other operating expenses increased by $2.6 million. The increase in other operating expenses reflected higher payroll costs to support growth and as a result of increased quarterly results, other transaction cost, costs associated with system integrity and facility improvements as well as depreciation and other related costs because of increased investments. As shown on Slide 5, the Unregulated Energy segment reported a second quarter 2015 operating loss of $540,000 compared to an operating loss of $43,000 for the same period in 2014. A $2.1 million increase in gross margin for this segment was offset by a $2.6 million increase in other operating expenses. The Unregulated Energy segment has typically reported an operating loss or very modest earnings during the second quarter due to the seasonal nature of the propane distribution operations. Slide 6 highlights the key variances between second quarter net income and earnings per share results for 2015 and 2014. As mentioned earlier, earnings per share was $0.41, an increase of $0.06, or 17% quarter-over-quarter. First, there were several unusual items that in total resulted in a $0.05 increase in 2015 second quarter earnings per share. As previously mentioned, a settlement with a vendor on the implementation of a customer billing system contributed $0.06 per share. Also of a non-recurring nature, the sale of our Florida fuel line maintenance contracts to third-party during the second quarter of 2014 offset by the absence of BravePoint, which was sold in 2014 resulted in $0.01 lower earnings per share in the second quarter of 2015. In our Regulated Energy segment, increased gross margin of $0.17 per share was generated from the key growth drivers previously highlighted. In the Unregulated Energy segment, margins generated by Aspire Energy of Ohio, as well as higher retail propane margins accounted for an increase of $0.10 per share. The expenses associated with operating Aspire Energy of Ohio as well as higher operating expenses largely driven by our continued growth, increased transaction cost as well as cost associated with system integrity and facility improvements offset this additional gross margin by $0.19 per share. Finally, interest and other net changes reduced quarter-over-quarter earnings per share by $0.06, including a $0.02 per share impact of dilution from the issuance of shares for Gatherco. Slide 7 highlights the financial results for the first six months of 2015 and 2014. We are pleased to report that the first six months have been very strong. The company reported diluted earnings per share of $1.83 for the first six months of 2015, up $0.26 or 17% over the same period in 2014. Increased operating income from the Regulated and Unregulated Energy segments contributed almost equally to the higher earnings for the first six months, which was supplemented by the absence of an operating loss in 2015 from BravePoint. Slide 8 highlights the key variances in terms of net income and earnings per share contribution between the results for the first six months of 2015 and 2014. Unusual items resulted in an $0.08 increase in earnings per share for the first six months of 2015. In our Regulated Energy segment increased gross margin of $0.34 per share was generated from natural gas customer growth, service expansions in the natural gas transmission businesses, the GRIP program in Florida and the electric rate case. In the Unregulated Energy segment, margins generated by Aspire Energy of Ohio, higher retail propane margins, and increased customer consumption which were partially offset by lower wholesale propane volatility opportunities for Xeron accounted for an increase of $0.28 per share. Higher operating expenses associated with the addition of Aspire Energy of Ohio, the cost of serving growth and expansions as well as increased results year-to-date, other transaction costs and system reliability and facility improvement costs partially offset this additional gross margin by $0.34 per share. Interest charges and other changes reduced year-to-date earnings per share by $0.10, including a $0.04 per share impact of dilution from the issuance of shares for Gatherco. Slide 9 highlights the company’s commitment to maintaining a strong balance sheet, which should facilitate access to competitively priced capital to fund our growth initiatives. Our equity to permanent capitalization was 69.2% and equity to total capitalization was 57.5% at the end of June 2015. We target to maintain a ratio of equity to total capitalization of 50% to 60% and will access longer term capital as necessary to meet our financing needs. Our financial success has been a result of our ability to identify significant opportunities to invest in growth, while maintaining our disciplined capital allocation process. We set targets for new investments and pursue profitable growth opportunities that meet our investment objectives, while achieving target returns. The level and impact of the capital investments we have made has continued to fall through the earnings and dividend growth and ultimately the shareholder return that have consistently set us apart over the last eight years. The current forecast for 2015 capital expenditures is $160 million to $190 million as shown on Slide 10. This does not include the $52.5 million acquisition of Gatherco, net of the cash acquired in the transaction. The current forecast is less than our original budget of $223 million. The change in our forecast represents a shift in the timing of the spending on some items from 2015 to 2016 and does not reflect a reduction in our planned investments for future growth. Of the forecasted expenditures for 2015, $115 million to $145 million are expected to be invested in our regulated energy operations. In terms of the large projects, we have previously disclosed the associated 2015 capital expenditures include $27.7 million for the Eight Flags combined heat and power plant and related facilities; $12.7 million for the Calpine mainline expansion; and our projected spend of approximately $29 million for GRIP. Our team works closely with our customers to develop and deliver customized solutions that fulfill their energy needs and also achieve the financial objectives of both parties. The projects we are undertaking today are much more diverse and larger in terms of their magnitude. In addition, it is important to note that there is a lag between the finalization of a budget estimate for a project and inclusion in our capital budget when we are positioned to announce the project and then ultimately when it is placed into service. The permitting and regulatory processes have become much longer and have expanded the overall timeline of the projects. As we have mentioned previously, we have historically spent 82% to 88% of the original capital budget that we announced at the beginning of the respective years. We are committed to making future investments in our businesses in a disciplined manner that represents valued, customized energy solutions for our customers at attractive returns for our shareholders. Now, I will turn the call over to Mike. Mike McMasters Thank you, Beth. Good morning, everyone. As we have previously discussed, we update our strategic plan every year. We ask our business unit leaders to engage our employees to figure out ways to go at rates faster than they could if they simply continued to do what they are doing today. As reflected on Slide 11, we are continuing to the implementation of our aggressive growth strategy. This slide summarizes the largest projects and acquisitions that are contributing to our growth in 2015. The recent Gatherco acquisition, now Aspire Energy, contributed approximately $1.6 million in margin during the second quarter, as expected to contribute approximately $8.8 million in 2015. The expansions to provide new services to transmission customers in New Castle and Kent Counties, Delaware and Polk County, Florida added $919,000 in gross margin during the second quarter of 2015 and $2.4 million of gross margin during the first six months of 2015. For the full year of 2015, these expansions are expected to generate gross margin of $5.3 million, an excess of the margins that they generated last year. We expect to spend about $29 million on the GRIP safety program during 2015. The increase in margin contribution from the GRIP program for the second quarter and first six months of 2015 were $1.1 million and $1.8 million, respectively. Turning to Slide 12, on April 1, 2015 we completed the acquisition of Gatherco and merged the company into our newly formed subsidiary, Aspire Energy of Ohio, LLC. The enterprise value net of cash acquired was $52.8 million. Aspire operates 16 gathering systems and over 2,400 miles of pipeline in the areas in and around the Utica Shale in Eastern and Central Ohio. The company serves more than 300 producers with gathering and liquids processing services and also delivers natural gas to two local distribution companies that serve approximately 30,000 customers. We believe that there are significant growth opportunities period to add both production and distribution customers to the system. Aspire also owns variable rights of way that could present additional opportunities for growth as shale development continues in Ohio. We are making good progress in the integration of Gatherco into the Chesapeake family. As we indicated, we announced the transaction we have rebranded Gatherco as Aspire Energy. We recently announced that Doug Ward joined our team as Business Unit Leader and Vice President of Aspire Energy. Doug has 25 years of leadership experience in the natural gas industry. We have moved some administrative functions to Chesapeake’s headquarters and have began the implementation of our safety, environmental compliance and other programs. We have completed the management transition and have been successful in our employee and customer retention efforts and are in the process of filling the positions to support our growth plans for this business. We believe that Aspire Energy of Ohio will be accretive to earnings in its first full year of operations. Approximately 92% of the margins from natural gas services to producers and deliveries to the commercial and residential markets, which are tracking as expected. As anticipated, the current reduction in natural gas versus natural gas liquids spread has reduced margins for processing. Approximately 8% of the margin is from two processing facilities on the system. As a part of Chesapeake, Aspire Energy now has the resources to accelerate their growth in accordance with our strategic plan. We expect growth to come from additional sales to local distribution companies that we serve and additional gathering systems – gathering services to producers. Turning to Slide 13, in November of last year, we implemented a $3.8 million rate increase in our Florida electric distribution system. This increase generated $731,000 and $1.5 million in additional margin during the second quarter and first six months of 2015, respectively. We are also in the process of preparing a rate case for our Sandpiper Energy operation in Maryland. This filing is required to support the original rates that the Maryland PSC approved and we filed for approval of the acquisition and our original tariff. Finally, as a part of a settlement in Eastern Shore Natural Gas Company’s most recent rate increase, we are required to file a rate case with the FERC that will establish new rates effective February 1, 2017. Slide 14 summarizes two large projects that are currently under construction that are expected to be completed and contribute to earnings in 2016 and Eastern Shore’s system reliability project proposal filed with the FERC this year. In total, the two projects under development are expected to produce approximately $13.1 million in gross margin annually. In addition, at these projects we are continuing to work with our customers to develop projects and services that are responsive to their needs that are also expected to generate growth. Slide 15 describes in further detail the pipeline expansion to serve Calpine Energy Services’ Garrison Energy Center power plan. The project currently under construction will generate significant additional margins beginning in 2016. Eastern Shore Natural Gas will invest approximately $30 million to build facilities to serve Calpine Energy’s Garrison Energy Center in Kent County. Eastern Shore provided Calpine with firm service during the non-heating months from May to October and provided interruptible service from November to April. This project is expected to go into service during the first half of 2016 and should provide an additional $5.8 million of annual margins. Turning to Slide 16, as a part of our ongoing efforts to maintain the quality of our service to our customers, we continuously monitor our systems to ensure that they are operating as designed or expected. During the polar vortex, in the first quarter of 2014 we experience sort of challenges. Accordingly, we reevaluated or system and concluded that we should invest in more facilities to maintain the reliability of our system and provide more operating flexibility to address future unforeseen circumstances. The project is estimated to cost $32.1 million and involves the installation of one compressor and 10.1 miles of 16-inch pipeline. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or FERC has accepted and publicly noticed Eastern Shore application. Eastern Shore has requested FERC issue an order granting the certificate for the project by December 2015. The targeted in-service date for this project is the third quarter of 2016. Slide 17 describes in further detail the second major project under construction, Eight Flags Energy. Eight Flags Energy is constructing a combined heat and power plant that will be located on Amelia Island, Florida at the Rayonier Advanced Materials paper mill. The plant will have 19 megawatts – 20 megawatts of generation capacity and all electricity generated will be sold to our electric distribution system in Florida. Steam from the plant will be sold to Rayonier Advanced Materials and a contract for these sales has been executed. The combined heat and power plant and the related facilities will cost approximately $40 million to construct. Site construction has started on July 13, 2015. In addition to generating approximately $7.3 million in incremental annual gross margin, the electric output from the plant is expected to reduce our purchased electric costs thus saving our electric customers approximately $3 million to $4 million annually. The project is expected to be online in the third quarter of 2016. Turning to Slide 18, the environmental and economic advantages of natural gas continued to provide opportunities for the expansion of its use in our service territory and across the United States. Natural gas is an abundant, clean and affordable fuel and the significant reserves that we have here in the United States continued to provide security of supply and price. This is reflected in the comparison of energy prices on the Slide 18. As indicated, even with the falling price of oil last year, natural gas still enjoys a price advantage compared to oil and is expected to maintain this advantage for the foreseeable future. This natural gas price advantage coupled with our other competitive advantages creates the opportunities for continued growth. Turning to Slide 19, we see attractive opportunities for growth across our energy businesses. As in the past, we will continue to look for profitable opportunities in natural gas distribution and transmission businesses. As a result of past expansions, we continued to be positioned to provide service to many new customers where service was not previously available. To maximize this opportunity, we have implemented conversion programs to make it easy for these customers to convert to natural gas. As evidenced by the development of our Eight Flags’ CHP plant, we are also looking to provide new services to our existing customers. Finally, we expect to generate additional margins for initiatives such as the GRIP program, providing natural gas service to power generators and other applications for natural gas. In the unregulated business we will continue to pursue profitable opportunities both inside and outside of our current footprint. Increased housing activity will generate growth in our community gas system and startups initiatives. In the vehicular fuel market, we currently operate five public and six private propane fueling stations. We are currently negotiating with a number of companies and organizations to provide this service and expand our market in Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware. While this initiative is relatively small today, it is an example of a strategy that could supplement our growth down the road. Additionally, combined heat and power projects, compressed natural gas and midstream opportunities all represent potential avenues to supplement growth in this segment. Turning to Slide 20, we believe that the key to our success has been and will continue to be our ability to identify and develop opportunities to invest significant amounts of capital at returns to justify investment. As the chart on Slide 20 shows Chesapeake ranks near the top of 43 gas distribution, electric and combination companies in terms of capital invested and return on capital over the past 3 years. Our ability to achieve higher than industry average returns while investing higher than industry average levels of capital relative to our size is the cornerstone of our strong financial results. Slide 21 shows our continuous dividend growth. On May 6, 2015, the Board of Directors increased the company’s annualized dividend by $0.07 or 6.5%. Compound annual growth in the dividend over the past 5 years has been 5.5% and has been supported by earnings growth, as evidenced by an average payout ratio of 46% over the 5 years ended 2014. We understand how important dividends are to investors, particularly given the expectations for broad total market returns. We also believe that superior earnings and dividend growth will enhance shareholder value going forward. We are committed to dividend growth supported by earnings growth and believe that with the growth potential in and outside our service territories and our low payout, we are well-positioned to provide superior dividend growth in the future. As the shareholder return chart on Slide 22 shows, Chesapeake has produced top quartile total return to shareholders for the FERC 1, 3, 5, 10 and 20 years ended June 30, 2015. For each of the five periods shown said, Chesapeake shareholders have earned more than 14% returns on a compound annual basis. Slide 23 shows our financial performance over the past 1, 3 and 5 years. I am proud to say that our employees have delivered top quartile performance in 18 out of 20 categories. Further, our 10 year and 20 year compound annual total shareholder returns are 14% and 14.4% respectively, ranked the first amongst our peers. We will work hard to sustain our performance and track record going forward. Turning to slide 24, as we have said before our success starts with engaged, dedicated and capable employees that construct and operate safe, reliable energy delivery systems whether they are pipelines, wires or trucks. Our employees take care of our customers and the communities we serve. They also do a remarkable job of identifying, developing and transforming growth opportunities in a disciplined manner. We manage regulation to produce the free returns to shareholders. Our employees drive for growth, their determination and consistent performance enables us to deliver clean, reliable, low cost energy solutions to our customers, generate returns on capital that are above peer group medians and as a result access the capital necessary to sustain our growth. We will now be happy to take questions. Thank you. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Michael Gaugler from Janney Montgomery. Your line is open. Michael Gaugler Good morning everyone. Mike McMasters Good morning Mike, how are you doing? Beth Cooper Good morning. Michael Gaugler Just one question Mike, on the White Oak mainline expansion project, the 7 miles or so, 16-inch pipe that’s going to loop in Chester County, does that actually in Chester County open up any other opportunities for further service expansions in the region perhaps maybe a little more in Pennsylvania versus Delaware or both? Mike McMasters Well, I guess every time – generically, I guess, Mike, every time we extend a pipeline facility somewhere there are some opportunities that get opened up. We haven’t identified as we speak here today any opportunities along that section of pipe. Michael Gaugler Okay. Just notice where that’s probably going to cross and figure there might be something else behind it in terms of expansions? Mike McMasters Yes. We do look for those, Mike, so… Michael Gaugler Okay, thanks. Operator Your next question comes from the line of Roger Liddell from Clear Harbor Asset Management. Your line is open. Roger Liddell Thank you and good morning. Mike McMasters Good morning, Roger. Roger Liddell I wanted to follow-up with a question on combined heat and power opportunities in Florida. And of course, Eight Flags looks to be a superb example of those opportunities. And I wanted to put it in the context of there is some nuclear construction underway in South Carolina and Georgia. And my recollection is that Turkey Point is still assumed to be built in Southern Florida. The most recent publicity I have seen on Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 is that the dates and budgets are almost unknowable. And assuming the last published figures on budget and on completion dates holds, which I think is highly unlikely. The present value of continuing the construction and benefit over the lifetime of Plant Vogtle versus just stopping now and going gas that benefit of continuing nuclear eroded at almost 40% in the last year. So, here it is close to Florida, what could be a startling example of the questions, the issues of pursuing nuclear, which takes us to Turkey Point and it maybe that those plants wind up being canceled out of common sense and prudence. So, I should think the opportunities in Florida for meaningful rollout of additional combined heat and power could be an even more attractive opportunity. Could you respond to that? Mike McMasters I would say, Roger, we agree with that. The opportunity on Amelia Island was one. There is multiple opportunities that we see in the southeastern part of the country and we are looking at those – and they are, as you know, very complex, at least from our perspective, they are complex to develop and to some degree, you have to be careful with what’s the economic situation given the replacement power cost, but we are optimistic about that and are looking at opportunities for combined heat and power more than one. So, this project actually has opened up, has caught some people’s attention. I think we are cautiously optimistic that we will be able to get something develop. It will take some time. I suspect this project in particular that we are doing took several years to come to a contractual agreement and then obviously some permitting etcetera and then finally construction. So, there will be a long lead time on these projects. Roger Liddell Well, fair enough. But if you think they are complex, how would you like to be building nuclear? Mike McMasters That would be, I would agree, multiple increased complexity. Roger Liddell Yes. Well, I understand your point of the lead times and the caution that you have demonstrated before you go after these opportunities. I appreciate that. I guess you are not in a position to throw goals or aspirations out there perhaps in the future call you would be able to do so but I remain optimistic on the opportunity for the company? Mike McMasters Yes. If we – as we move down this road, if there comes a point where we may, we have multiple opportunities that were close to and maybe able to put some sort of expectation out there. But right now, it’s we are talking about multiple opportunities, but we are not at a place where we are getting to a point where it’s even 50% probable, I would say. Roger Liddell Fair enough. Thank you. Mike McMasters You are welcome. Operator [Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of John Hanson from Praesidis. Your line is open. John Hanson Good morning. Mike McMasters Good morning, John. Beth Cooper Good morning. John Hanson Just a quick question, you mentioned the CapEx was going to slide from ‘15 to ‘16, what kind of projects are we sliding? Beth Cooper In particular, John, some of those projects that we talked about, for example, the Eight Flags project in total, that’s a project. The capital cost is about $40 million. We expect to incur about $28 million of that this year, but there will be a chunk that moves into next year. And in our original capital budget, more of that was actually falling into the current year. Similarly, some of the other larger projects that we are looking at that necessarily, they haven’t been finalized. The timeline on some of those have also slipped. So, from our standpoint, its expansion projects that we are trying to look at, those that are both announced as well as those that are in the pipeline as well as – there maybe a few dollars as it relates to the Calpine project, those types of things that may move from year-to-year. Mike McMasters And some of that, John, is driven by permitting and regulatory timelines, expanding here more recently. John Hanson On the Eight Flags project, it is still targeting that in service July next year? Beth Cooper Yes. John Hanson Okay. Alright, thanks. Mike McMasters Yes. Operator There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to President and CEO, Mike McMasters. Mike McMasters Thank you everyone for joining us on our call today and for your interest in Chesapeake Utilities. We are proud of what our team has accomplished for shareholders in the past and we are committed to working hard to deliver superior shareholder results in the future. Thank you. Beth Cooper Thank you. Operator This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.