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California Water Service Group’s (CWT) CEO Martin Kropelnicki on Q2 2015 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

California Water Service Group (NYSE: CWT ) Q2 2015 Earnings Conference Call July 30, 2015 07:30 ET Executives Thomas Smegal – VP & CFO Martin Kropelnicki – President & CEO Paul Townsley – VP, Regulatory Matters Analysts Spencer Joyce – Hilliard Lyons Jonathan Reeder – Wells Fargo Operator Welcome to the California Water Service Group Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Results Teleconference. Today call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Thomas Smegal, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir. Thomas Smegal Thank you, Kim. Welcome everyone to the second quarter earnings call for California Water Service Group. With me today is Martin Kropelnicki, our President and CEO and Paul Townsley, our Vice President of Regulatory Matters. A replay of today’s proceedings will be available beginning today July 30, 2015 through September 30, 2015, at 1-888-203-1112 or at 1-719-457-0820, with a replay passcode of 1770876. Before looking at this quarter’s results, we would like to take a few moments to cover forward-looking statements. During the course of the call, the company may make certain forward-looking statements. Because these statements deal with future events, they are subject to various risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from the company’s current expectations. Because of this, the company strongly advices all current shareholders, as well as interested parties to carefully read and understand the company’s disclosures on risks and uncertainties found in our Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and other reports filed from time-to-time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, let’s look at the quarterly results. I’m going to go through the income statement and then turn it over to Paul for an update on our regulatory activity for the quarter. So for the second quarter our financial results, our revenue was a 144.4 million that’s down 8.8% or 14 million and that’s two things going on there, the MCBA, the modified cost balancing account which tracks our production cost that’s reflected an entry of 6.7 million and then unbuilt revenue adjustment which we will talk about in a little bit more detail later reduced revenue by 10 million and those both result really from decreased consumption in the quarter and at the end of the quarter. Our production cost for the quarter 53.0 million that’s down 14.4%, 8.9 million and again that water production volume is down 21% for the quarter. So we see that conservation is having effect on our production cost. Our production mix, well production within the quarter was 52% of total water production, while purchased water represented 45% and surface water accounted for the remaining 3%. In 2014 in the same quarter, 51% of water production was from wells, 46% from purchase sources and 3% was surface water. Our administrative and general expenses for the quarter were up 11.9% or 2.8 million and that’s really driven by pension expenses which were higher by 2.6 million. For our other operations expense, that was 17.5 million for the quarter up 9.4% or 1.5 million. Conservation expense increased to 0.5 million and expenses recorded to the drought memorandum account for future recovery was 0.9 million during the quarter and just as a reminder in our past calls we are confirming that the company still expects to spend $4 million to $6 million on drought response this year and Marty will talk more about our drought response. And maintenance, we got 5.3 million for the quarter up 6.8% or 0.3 million driven by maintenance in services maintenance within the quarter. Depreciation and amortization was 15.4 million, a decrease of 4.6% that’s driven as it was last quarter by lower depreciation rates that were adopted with the DRC [ph] decision late in 2014. Our net other income was a loss for the quarter of $15,000 that’s down about 800,000 from the second quarter of 2014 and the biggest driver there is a change in the value of the company’s non-qualified benefit plans which are mark to market each quarter. For income taxes during the quarter they decreased 2.1 million to 5.1 million and that’s due primarily to a decrease in pretax income and partially offset by changes in tax benefits. During the second quarter of 2014 the company has realized tax benefit of 2.5 million associated with implementation of the tangible property regulations. No similar benefit was achieved in the second quarter of 2015. Consequently the effective tax rate for 2015 is estimated to be 38%. So our net income for the quarter was 9.8 million, compared to net income of 17.2 million in the same period last year for a decrease of 7.3 million and talk about two main factors there of course is the unbuilt revenue and the tax benefit that we had received in the prior year. Earnings per share $0.21 and earnings per share on a fully diluted basis for the quarter is compared to earnings per share of $0.36 in the second quarter of 2014. Please go through the year-to-date results, revenue 266.4 million for the year down 1% or 2.5 m. Production costs are down 8.5% or 9.1 million over the first six months and that is reflecting of course decrease in volume. Our production mix was 51% for the first six months was well production as compared to 49% in the first six months of 2014 and purchased water decreased from 48% to 46%. This reflects a scarcity of surface water during the drought and more pumping from our groundwater wells. Our administrative and general expenses for the first six months of the year were up 11% or 5.4 million again that’s pension expense which was 5 million of 5.4 million. Other operations, 33.4 million for the year up 3% for 1 million and that’s to be driven primarily by wages. Maintenance expense is 9.8 million for the year to-date down 2.1% or 200,000. So there is a decrease in well and pumping equipment maintenance for the year-to-date. So net income for the first six months of the year 11.4 million, that’s down 2.3% or 300,000. The earnings per share is $0.24 on a fully diluted basis for 2015 and that’s the same $0.24 as we achieved in the first six months of 2014. So now I would like to turn it over Paul for an update on regulatory activity during the quarter. Paul Townsley Thank you, Tom. Good morning everybody. I would like to provide you with an update on our regulatory activity in both California and our subsidiaries. Let me start with Hawaii, our subsidiary Hawaii Water Service Company received three decisions from the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission during the second quarter of this year. These three decisions will provide the company with an additional revenue of $2 million annually. The three decisions conclude general rate cases for our Waikoloa Water Company, the Waikoloa Sewer Company and the [indiscernible] water Service Company, all of which are located on the Big Island of Hawaii. In addition to revenue increases to offset changes in operating expenses and to provide a return on our invested capital, these decisions also authorize the company to establish power cost pass through mechanisms so that energy cost are shown directly on customer’s bills and cost saves are pass through rather than eroding range [ph]. These three decisions conclude a series of Hawaii Water Service Company rate cases that is being working their way through the regulatory process since 2011 and 2012. Our net rate cases in Hawaii are for our Maui based, [indiscernible] service areas which we plan to file early next year. In California we filed our 2015 general rate case application in early July of this year. The application was covered of three year forward looking period request California Public Utility commission approval to increase revenue by $94.8 million in 2017, $23 million in 2018 and $22.6 million in 2019. The application also requests commission approval for Cal Water to invest $693 million in capital over the three year period of 2016 through 2018. The main driver for the requested revenue increase in this rate case application is investment and infrastructure. About 80% of the requested revenue increase in the rate case is attributable to capital investment and of the $693 million in requested capital investment over 40% or about $280 million of it is because of our stepping up of our pipeline replacement program. By stepping up our pipeline replacement program we can ensure that we’re replacing older pipeline in a systematic and timely manner which will reduce failure and leakage rates over the long term and the balance of the capital request that we have made to the commission is for other types of normal utility investments wells, pumps, tanks, treatment plants and water meters and service lines and technology, the usual bread and butter of our water utility investments. The rate case filing also reflects Cal Water’s aggressive cost control measures which include reduced benefit costs and increasing employee head count for all positions except for those that are required and make water supply improvements. We also want to point out some other important elements of the rate case application. In this case we’re proposing to consolidate a number of our service areas, our application details proposals to combine for rate making purposes 16 of our service areas in the five regions. We believe that proposed consolidation will help with a customer affordability concerns and also improve administrative efficiency. We have also requested that the commission continued the company’s sales reconciliation mechanism also known as SRM that was approved in our last rate case and to further enhance it to make it better reflect annual changes in customer sales. And finally we’re proposing to improve construction work and progress also known as [indiscernible] in rate base rather than including capitalized interest in our project announced. This last change will make Cal Water’s approach to construction accounting more consistent with other California Public Utility commission regulated water companies. The commission has not yet established a schedule for our rate case. However in accordance with the commissions established rate case plan new rates should go into effect on January 1, 2017. That’s my update, Tom. I will give it back to you. Thomas Smegal Thanks, Paul. Now I would like to cover some highlights on the balance sheet. So our plant balance at the end of the period net utility plant grew to 1.64 billion as of June 30 of 2015. The work in progress as Paul was talking about, construction work in progress increased to a 135 million. Our capital investments from both company funded and developer funded activities were 75.8 million on a year-to-date basis, it’s a 32% increase from the same time in 2014. This increase is primarily driven by increased activity on projects approved in the 2012 California General rate case application which went into effect last year. And as we have mentioned earlier the company expects to spend between a 125 million and a 145 million on company funded improvements in 2015, so we’re well on our way to meeting our target goals there. Cash on hand was 24.5 million. We did have a 126.6 million outstanding on our revolving credit facilities as of June 30th. I wanted to talk a little bit about our accrued unbilled accounts receivable what we call unbilled revenue and because that was the main driver of the change in earnings for the period. Unbilled revenue accrual represents water which has been used but not built for at the end of the period. The unbilled revenue is not reflected in the RAM decoupling mechanism which is recorded on a cash basis. Once built of course the revenue is recorded in the RAM and it flows through the normal decoupling process. The accrual we do this every quarter and it is very seasonally and very with REIT changes typically as in 2014 the accrual is higher at the end of the second quarter as compared to the end of first quarter. This year we asked our customers to conserve 25% to 30% state wide and they really came through as Marty will talk about in the discussion of the drought, our customers in June conserve 30% based upon their usage in 2013. With that consumption our unbilled revenue accrual is down as compared to 2014 and that’s what’s really driving the change in earnings this year. This has the seasonal effect, this is a transitory effect. We’re going to be doing this accrual every quarter and it’s just a natural part of us doing it. And of course the company cannot predict the future effects on net income due unbilled revenue accruals but we will see how it goes throughout the rest of the year. And just a final update from me on the balance sheet net RAM and MCBA balance actually decreased 0.3 million during the quarter to 47.9 million from 48.2 million at the end of the first quarter. The balance is up 2.7 million for the year from 45.2 million at the year-end. So now I’m going to turn it over to Marty for some comments on the drought and the quarter’s results. Martin Kropelnicki Thanks, Tom. Good morning everyone. If we sound like we’re a little off because Tom and I are in Boston after our board meeting yesterday we flew out east and we will be meeting with investors in Boston today to talk about the rate case we just filed. So it’s really early in the morning our time and we struggled to find Tom coffee this morning and me a cold diet coke but we got the first shot. I think we’re warming up here. So I want to cover really five things, one talk a little bit about the operating results for the quarter. Two, spend most of my time giving you kind of detailed drought update and what’s being going over the last really 60 days in the State of California. Three, give some thoughts on the GRC and highlight some of the things in what we’re doing that Paul talked about. Four, talk about the [indiscernible] workplace which we won for the fourth year in a row and then lastly talk about our plans as we move into the second half of the year what are our priorities as we move into the last part of the year and one of our goals for the company. So first and foremost, as Tom mentioned we saw significant decline in demand, our consumption laid in the quarter. So if you remember, Jerry Brown, Governor of California signed the executive order by extending the Emergency Drought Declaration in April that was ultimately put into place about May end of the first week in May and then we had to ramp up to be in compliance with that role start in June 1st. So it’s interesting that we did see the consumption prior that declaration being extended if you recall the medium wasn’t very good and in most places the consumption was down anywhere from 0% to 7% and that was really driven by the fact we had a very long dry winter. So people continue to use water. Once we did the public participation meetings, we communicated the drought plans. We sort of implemented our customer first approach. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that we saw a significant decrease in consumption that really hit in the month of June and Tom kind of hit the bad news with that and it does affect the revenue accrual which is outside the regulatory accounting mechanism. That’s a good news in that and that most of our districts hitting or exceeding the conservation targets, what are the major step from where they were 60 days ago. So while that’s create a little bit of short term volatility the fact that is it’s step in the right direction for the company being able to hit it’s required targets as prescribed by that emergency declaration by the governor. Tom, you might want to take a quick minute if you can just to go through kind of the surcharge accounting and now that we’re into the penalty phase where people are charged a surcharged regarding their allocation how their accounting is going to work for that, because they will start showing us really in the Q3 numbers. Thomas Smegal Sure, Marty. The commission adopted our what’s called schedule 14.1 which is our drought plan and our drought water budget plan. In it there is two types of monetary penalties, one is a surcharge on excessive use over the budget that the customer has, each of our customers is given a specific budget that’s based upon their past usage in 2013 in the similar period. That surcharge money that comes is going to be put in the RAM of decoupling account, so that goes offset the deficit that might occur in the RAM with reduced sales. So that’s something that are going to be looking at very carefully to see where that goes. There are also penalties that would be associated with customers that misuse water or use water against the rules that have been established by ourselves, by the state and by local ordinances such as washing their car at an inappropriate time or watering at an inappropriate time or wasting water down the side walk. Those penalties, those fines really will be put into the drought memorandum account. That drought memorandum account I mentioned has we recorded 900,000 for the quarter and as we go forward that will be collected on a future basis so that’s drought memorandum account, it’s not something that we will recover immediately it will be something we recover probably in 2017. Martin Kropelnicki Right, so the end build revenue versus the ramp kind of creates a timing difference and the ramp balances for the quarter really went down actually slightly from where they were at the beginning of the year, so now you will start, we believe we believe you will start to see as the RAM balances start to grow as we move into the summer month and it’s kind of the change in consumption is being recorded now in June. It will start moving through the regulatory accounts going forward. As Tom we spent about a $1 million incrementally on our drought response and we’re still stand at the 4 million to 6 million is about the right amount. About 40 people dedicated full time in our drought centers working in each of our regions and through a dedicated call center to assist our customers and help high volume users in each of our districts. In addition on the numbers for the quarter, the 75.8 million and the capital program that the company has recorded that’s really good news. So we’re actually ahead of plan on a year-to-date basis, our goal is a 125 million to 145 million the significance in why I’m pushing this number and I want to highlight this number a little bit is because of the rate case numbers that Paul mentioned. We [indiscernible] $700 million of new capital and that is a significant increase what we asked for in the last rate case, the largest components of that being made and then pumps treatment, water supply, water [indiscernible] items. So this is kind of a transition here in terms of our ability to execute a $200 million year capital program. So we have been very focused internally looking at our capital processes and making sure we have the ability to implement a significantly larger capital program in the coming years and as we said before we don’t see the capital slowing down as Tom and I have mentioned before, you know our mains are getting older. We need to start changing out those mains. Obviously water supply and scarcity is playing in the California so we have a lot of projects to bring new water supply on board and also make sure as the water level has dropped in California while the quality issues become more difficult to deal with. So we’re dealing — we’re spending more money on purification for our programs. By the way we know that it’s very complicated on the RAM accounting and all everything gets involved in it. So when we look to our 10Q there will be a lot of disclosure around this and we try to highlight the changes in the MD&A so people can really follow in our 10Q that we plan to file shortly. Now moving on to the drought, so bad news is out of the way, the decline in consumption now let’s stick to the good news and that’s really the customers and our footprint within the State of California has done an outstanding job at the first month of required mandatory conservation. To give you an idea how our districts faired, we had six districts that achieved greater than a 40% reduction, and the water consumption we had 15 districts that achieved greater than 30% reduction and 19 out of our 24 districts were in compliance that means 80% of our districts were in compliance. The ones that were out of compliance most of them was the exception of one district which I will come back were a stone throw away from hitting the targets. So that’s first month of reporting that’s required and the penalties are rolling in, I’ve been very, very happy with the drought response and our customers’ ability to hit their conservation target. Call center volumes have leveled off from a higher 45,000 calls per week down to approximately 20,000 calls per week and in total we have received approximately 4000 customer applications for appeals are requesting changes to their water budget. If you put that into perspective of how many meters we have in the State of California that’s less than 1% of their customers are coming back saying they need a little bit more out of their water budget. So we have an approved approximately 1600 applications and adjusted water budget and those are remodeled or we just had twins or my in-laws has just moved in with me and so we go and we verify all that and we will adjust their water budgets based on the supporting documentation that’s put in. But nonetheless, it’s less than 1% of the customers coming and asking for a change in the water budget and to me it speaks the fact that the message of the drought in what we need to do is really clearly being understood by our customers. In addition towards the end of the quarter we did a few customer focused groups, and the feedback has been mainly positive. What we try to do is get customers in a room and ask them what’s working, what’s not working, what is it going to take them to help conserve and overall it’s been a very supportive environment with the customers and the communities that we serve. In addition to the focus groups about 82% of the media coverage in our service areas has been neutral to positive versus 18% which is negative and again we believe that’s reinforces, that’s the message is getting out and it fits nicely with decline that we have seen in consumption at our customers understand that we need to hit these targets. [Indiscernible] supply standpoint our water supply conditions have been steady and we’re in the process of launching five new conservation programs that will bring us upto 12 conservation programs that have been launched over the last 60 days, the new programs will drive our outreach and continued success, and allow us to continue to target high end users, high volume users and the water that they use. In addition, we started rolling out a new report. This new report was traded with an application called BEACON. We have partnered Badger Meter to design and build an application to produce easy to read graphical reports for customers to help them track and understand their water usage compared to people in their neighborhood so it doesn’t identify who your neighbors are but it’s basically a graphical report that we produced and give to the customers, that shows their trends and how they are trending compared to people in their neighborhood. And so that was a good project that we partnered with Badger Meter and we’re in the process that we’re rolling it out. We’re rolling it out to the high volume districts first and then we will roll out to the districts that aren’t as hard hit with the drought, what the idea that is being fully rolled out here during the third quarter. So overall I’m very pleased with the progress that we have made on the drought, I think we’re off to an outstanding start, it has been a lot of work for the team but all this indications are heading in the right way. Customer usage is down, customer understanding is up, media coverage has been good and we’re hitting our targets and I think that’s the most important story here. In addition as Paul mentioned you know the rate case, the rate case we’re moving into the next stage so it’s being filed. We start our tours with the regulators here in next month and we start notifying our customers. I believe this week with build notifications of the rate case process. We get what’s called an exception report from the — we file a prelim rate case and then give us a deficiency report and then we have to correct those deficiencies before make the final filing. Our deficiencies in this rate case were down about 65% from where they were with the last rate case, I think that speaks to the companies extra care and timing is put into preparing this rate case, in particular the capital work and the capital program across the state. So as we move into the rate case space here and continue to deal with the drought those are our two priorities as we go into the end of the year. Droughts number one, rate cases number two. Lastly I want to take a couple of minutes to talk about the award we announced a couple of weeks ago, the Bay Area Top 100 Workplace so this effects our employees in the Bay Area which is about — it’s about 25% to 35% of the company. For the fourth year in a row we have been named a Top 100 Workplace in the Bay Area and once again we’re the only utility to win this award and we take great pride in being an 89 year old water utility located in the heart of Silicon Valley competing with 1000 of tech companies that are around us. It’s nice to be a winner and I believe that the award shows the type of company that we’re, the type of employees that we have and I sincerely believe that happy employees help create good customer service and that good customer service also helps [indiscernible] response. So we’re very happy to have won that award for the fourth year in a row. We did take a small moment to have lunch with the employees to celebrate their success and it was back to our come back to dealing with the drought. So in closing while the drought is creating a little bit of volatility on the unbuild of revenue side which is outside the regulatory mechanism, the fact is there is a lot of great things are happening in Cal Water. We’re off to a great start with the drought and we’re hitting our targets and really because we’re in the emergency declaration, it’s about doing the right thing right now and dealing with the short term volatility and so I’m very pleased to where we ended the quarter in terms of the products with drought and think we’re off to a great start. So, Tom with that I will turn it back to you. Thomas Smegal Okay, great Marty and Kim that is the end of our presentation and we’re happy to take questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions]. Our first question is from Spencer Joyce from Hilliard Lyons. Spencer Joyce Couple of quick ones for me here, first I think you briefly touched on, did you say the CapEx spend so far this year has been about 75 million? Thomas Smegal Yes 75.8 million so almost 76 million. Spencer Joyce Okay, so we’re over half way to kind of the full year goal here. Thomas Smegal Spencer that does include a little bit of developer contributions so that’s not all what we call company funded CapEx and when we’re targeting we’re targeting the company funded CapEx. So we’re right about half way there little bit better than half of our goal right now. Spencer Joyce In any case tracking well may be at least if we think about last year where we kind of undershot a little bit. Thomas Smegal I think Spencer, one think to look at is the company funded over the last 12 rolling last 12 months, half of last year we really accelerated and then this has continued that trend. So I think that shows a good track record of what we can spend in the future. Spencer Joyce Separately with the drought kind of dominating the conversations here over the last year or two, I want to ask about acquisition potential. Has the drought or any other external factors perhaps brought any potential targets kind of to the forefront or have any opportunities maybe percolated on that front? Martin Kropelnicki What’s the drought done, I think is really highlighted kind of some of the weakness in the State of California around the long term planning for water supply and Spencer you’re right, NAWC Financial forum I shared with the people of the financial forum what the population growth curve was for California versus kind of the water supply and the demand curve and the supply curve are growing apart right now, they are not going together which is highlighting a lot of need for a lot of capital infrastructure both for new water supply but also upgrading existing water supply and that’s start with the state and goes all the way through to companies like us. So [indiscernible] covers a lot of stones and when that babbling brook [ph] goes down you start to see the rocks that usually lie under the water. So we’ve seen some of the rocks, just some of the weakness in the system right now. Having said that, our water supply has been fine that we have a few cities that were trucking water to help get them through the summer months because they have just run-out of supply. I also mentioned at the conference that none of the investor-owned utilities have run out of water, it’s been more a small kind of undercapitalized city or meeting systems have been the ones that have been strained and run out of water. So it hasn’t popped into any type of M&A market, in California it’s hard to buy a muni system because it requires a vote of the local taxpayers to approve it but clearly you’re seeing the stress on the smaller systems and the inability to meet water quality standards or add adequate supply for their customers. So I think the jury is still out on that. I think part of it’s going to depend on what happens over the next 12 to 18 months, it’s drought, if it continues. I will say it’s fascinating to me that we are focused on California but Oregon declared a drought here in the month of June, Washington declared a drought in I believe it was late April, early May and I was recently talking to somebody who is from Vancouver, British Columbia who was telling me how horrible the drought conditions are in Vancouver. In fact their water restrictions are worse than ours. So the drought is really a whole west coast item right now and I think it’s going to be changing some behaviors and changing how capital is directed within the state and whether that leads more M&A I think the jury is still out on that. Spencer Joyce So it sounds like maybe nothing eminent but at least you guys are kind of keeping your ear to the ground there. One final, one from here. I know if we think back to last year Q3 was a pretty strong quarter, Q3 ’14 that is as we recouped a little bit of benefit via the rate case or the generate rate case that may have been otherwise earned during the first half of 2014. Correct me if I’m wrong there first off and then second if you could, what is roughly the kind of net revenue benefit that might come out of Q3 this year in order to maybe get a more fair comp looking at Q3. Thomas Smegal I would have to go back to our communications in Q3 of last year and unfortunately don’t have that open in front of me. We did recognize the benefit of the rate case and the interim rates associated with the rate case in the third quarter but I think that was fully disclosed in the press release so that number is pretty quantifiable. As far as on a go forward basis I think you would look to that adjustment to get to your comp. As far as the rate changes and the way to think about our the profitability of the company from last year to this year we have identified that we had step, what’s called the escalation step increases of about 5 million, a little less than 5 million. We did at the beginning of July, get approval from the CPUC on $5 million revenue requirement worth of these [indiscernible] letter capital projects that they have been approved in the prior rate cases, this all on an annual revenue basis and of course what’s going on in Hawaii we will start to see in August the revenue coming in from those rate changes that we got at the end of June. And so those are just some of the things that are going on and obviously the drought response is another factor that we have identified it could be a change as we go forward. Operator [Operator Instructions]. We will move on to Jonathan Reeder from Wells Fargo. Jonathan Reeder Couple of questions, first on the revenue, since this will essentially get captured by the RAM in Q3 it’s about $0.30 headwind for Q2, should we view that as something that’s just going to reverse and add $0.13 of incremental earnings in Q3? Thomas Smegal Jonathan, I think that this is the line on the balance sheet, you can go back and then anybody can pick this up out of the Qs and the Ks. We see a variability in the accrued revenue, from anywhere from 15 million to 30 million at the end of every quarter. Right now we are at — I think it’s 26 million, at the end of the year last year we were 23 million so this is a very small increment. If you follow that, it’s really — it’s kind of a sea level change or it’s the tide going in and out. If it happens that in the third quarter we get that popped in and what we mean by that not that it’s going to up higher but that is not going to fall like it fell in the third quarter in the prior year. So always going to vary, it varies a lot less the second quarter because of the conservation whether it comes back to a normal level at the end of year. I think it’s dependent upon a couple of factors both the customer conservation, the effect of the surcharges that will be calculated in the end bill and also the effect of the rate design that we have seen over the last couple of quarters where more service charge revenue less quantity charge revenue. So it will come back it’s a question of timing really, will it come back in the third quarter, fourth quarter when the droughts over-rise I can’t say at this point. Martin Kropelnicki Yes I think it was interesting to know Jonathan that typically in the second quarter we see a really big step in that number and in this quarter we see that down because of the consumption, that consumption really had in June and that’s what it relates on that calculation as the 21 day average of what people consumer. So it — when you flipping in the context of what the swing was that we typically see this time the year, it’s a pretty big swing. Jonathan Reeder And then on the mark to market life insurance in Q2, what was the absolute like benefit or loss, I mean you said it was 800,000 quarter to quarter. Thomas Smegal So the loss in that area was about 200,000 so that’s made the rest of that category includes benefits from other unregulated activities. Jonathan Reeder So anything else that we should be thinking about in terms of ongoing earnings number for you all in Q2? Thomas Smegal No just the things that we mention the drivers on the rate changes that are going to hit in Q3 from Hawaii and from the rate base offsets. Martin Kropelnicki Yes. And again when the Q comes out you will see in the rate section we have that identifying what those increases were both the escalation in steps and the Hawaii changes and for this quarter John it really comes down to those three items, the changes and the end build revenue, the non-recurring tax credit and now I’m blank on the third item because it’s early but it’s really the [indiscernible] that we talked about, those are called out in the press release and also in the Q that will be filed. Operator [Operator Instructions]. And it appears there are no further questions today. Gentlemen I will turn the conference back over to you. Thomas Smegal Great. Well I want to thank all of you for your continued interest in California water service group and we look forward to talking with you again after the third quarter. Thanks. Operator And that does conclude our conference today. Thank you all for your participation.

Exelon (EXC) Christopher M. Crane on Q2 2015 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Exelon Corp. (NYSE: EXC ) Q2 2015 Earnings Call July 29, 2015 11:00 am ET Executives Francis Idehen – Vice President-Investor Relations Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Joseph Nigro – Executive Vice President, Exelon; Chief Executive Officer, Constellation, Exelon Corp. Jonathan W. Thayer – Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive VP Darryl M. Bradford – Executive Vice President & General Counsel Analysts Greg Gordon – Evercore ISI Steven Isaac Fleishman – Wolfe Research LLC Dan L. Eggers – Credit Suisse Securities (NYSE: USA ) LLC (Broker) Jonathan Philip Arnold – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. Julien Dumoulin-Smith – UBS Securities LLC Christopher J. Turnure – JPMorgan Securities LLC Operator Good morning. Thank you for standing by. At this time, I’d like to welcome everyone to the Exelon Corporation Quarter Two 2015 Earnings Conference Call. Your lines have been muted to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Thank you. I’d now like to turn today’s conference over to Francis Idehen. Thank you, you may begin. Francis Idehen – Vice President-Investor Relations Thank you, Ali. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining for our second quarter 2015 earnings conference call. Leading the call today are Chris Crane, Exelon’s President and Chief Executive Officer; Joe Nigro, CEO of Constellation; and Jack Thayer, Chief Financial Officer. They are joined by other members of Exelon’s senior management team, who will be available to answer your questions following our prepared remarks. We issued our earnings release this morning along with the presentation, each of which can be found in the Investor Relations section of Exelon’s website. The earnings release and other matters which we discuss during today’s call contain forward-looking statements and estimates that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ from our forward-looking statements based on factors and assumptions discussed in today’s material, comments made during this call, and in the risk factors section on the 10-K which we filed in February, as well as in the earnings release and the 10-Q, which we expect to file later today. Please refer to the 10-K, today’s 8-K and 10-Q, and Exelon’s other filings for a discussion of factors that may cause the results to differ from management’s projections, forecasts and expectations. Today’s presentation also includes references to adjusted operating earnings and other non-GAAP measures. Please refer to the information contained in the appendix of our presentation and our earnings release for a reconciliation between the non-GAAP measures to the nearest equivalent GAAP measures. We’ve scheduled 45 minutes for today’s call. I’ll now turn the call over to Chris Crane, Exelon’s CEO. Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Thanks, Francis, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining. We’re pleased to report another strong quarter with our earnings coming in at $0.59 per share, surpassing our guidance of $0.45 to $0.55 per share. You’ll hear more from Jack in a minute on the specifics, and Joe Nigro will also provide some color around the performance. We’ve seen a number of positive developments that affect various business this quarter. The two primary catalysts for us this year are the PHI acquisition and the capacity market auctions. We received approval from the merger since our last call in Maryland in May, and leaving D.C., Washington, D.C. as our only outstanding jurisdiction to close the merger, which we expect to hear from soon and we’re looking forward to a positive outcome there. Upon closing the merger, our focus will shift to the integration of PHI Utilities into the Exelon Utilities to align our operations to better serve the PHI customers base. Another major catalyst is the capacity performance revisions that have been made. While we continue to believe that FERC came to the right conclusion, putting reliability at the center of its planning process to ensure that customers in the region are well served, we always were aware that DR and Energy Efficiency were in the 2018-2019 auction. The most recent change that allows DR and Energy Efficiency to provide – to participate in the transition auctions, we believe to be non-material to the outcome. We are disappointed in the delay, but we think that we’ll be on the right track into recognize the value of our highly reliable fleet going forward. And we remain confident that the capacity construct is the best way to protect the grid as we await further clarification on the timing of these transition auctions. I think we’re getting that in the last days. So, by the September timeframe, we should have clarity on the value proposition, along with the reliability measures being enacted. In Illinois, the legislative session ended without a resolution on the market redesign for the Low Carbon standard, the Low Carbon Portfolio standard. We were disappointed that we were not able to get this outcome before the session ended, but understand where the state is focused right now on its budget priorities. The nuclear plants provide significant value to the state and its economy, and it’s mostly important to its consumers. Looking ahead, we have certain regulatory and operational triggers in September that require us to make some tough choices on the specific assets this fall, particularly in light of the continued pressure on the power markets. So we are continuing on with our disciplined plan on evaluating the assets and their likelihood to stay within the stack, and we’ll bring that to closure with our decision in September. Despite these market challenges, we continue to find ways to create value in our Constellation business, which Joe is going to talk about shortly. Part of our resilience to the power market weakness is driven by our ability to capitalize on our generation to load strategy. And this quarter, we showed the benefit from the lower cost to serve load. And the – increasing our utility business has been able to reduce the overall volatility at the enterprise level and deliver growth. You can expect that even more to be true over time. Not only is it shifting our business mix with the acquisition of PHI, but it also, with our infrastructure improvement investments, we’re investing $16 billion in our existing utilities over the next five years, which provides respectable growth rates, and roughly another $7 billion with the addition of PHI. I want to remind everybody that we can perform well even with a rising interest rate environment, which is typically a headwind in our industry. This is because our EPS is positively correlated to interest rates, due to both ComEd’s formula rate and ROE being tied to the 30-year Treasury rate, as well as the discount of our pension – discounting the rates of our pension liability. Overall, we are positive the company is able to provide more stable and durable earnings streams for our shareholders with our operational expertise in driving performance across the enterprise. With that, I’ll turn it over to Joe, who will discuss the markets. He’s followed by Jack on the financial performance. Joseph Nigro – Executive Vice President, Exelon; Chief Executive Officer, Constellation, Exelon Corp. Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone. The Constellation business has continued to perform well in 2015 as a result of our generation to load matching strategy. My comments today will address market events during the second quarter, and what they mean for our commercial business going forward, including our hedging strategy in our updated disclosures. Starting with slide four, the spot power markets in the second quarter have been defined by mild weather and lower natural gas prices, which drove the price in power considerably lower than in 2014 across all of PJM. The impact of low spot market conditions has carried through to the forward markets, with prices down approximately $0.45 per megawatt hour in 2016 and $1 per megawatt hour in 2017, at both PJM West Hub and NiHub since the end of the first quarter. The lack of liquidity in the forward markets has exacerbated the drops in power prices and heat rates, with the forward markets exhibiting volatile price moves on very little trading volumes for calendar 2017 and beyond, especially at NiHub. During the quarter, our hedging activities for 2016 to 2018 were executed through our retail and wholesale load businesses rather than on the over-the-counter market. Our fundamental view of power prices has not changed, but given the drop in market prices, there is a greater gap between the market and our fundamental view due to current natural gas prices, expected retirements, new generation resources, and load assumptions. Moving to slide five, I will discuss the forward market and its impacts on our hedging profile. During the second quarter we maintained our behind ratable strategy and increased our cross-commodity hedge position to increase exposure to power price upside. We have successfully used this behind ratable hedging strategy in the past when our view showed upside in the market. We are 4% to 5% behind ratable in 2016 and 2017, and 7% to 8% behind ratable if you will remove our cross-commodity hedges at NiHub. We are confident in our ability to adjust our hedging strategies to capitalize on our fundamental view. Turning to slide six, I will review our updated hedge disclosure and some key changes since the end of the first quarter. In 2015 we have a net $50 million increase to total gross margin since the end of the first quarter, driven primarily by strong performance and execution. We executed on $200 million of power new business and $50 million of non-power new business during the quarter. Based on 2015 performance to date and expectations for the full year, we have increased our power new business target by $50 million. Our generation to load strategy was successful last year during the extreme polar vortex conditions, and it’s serving us well this year under weaker load and price conditions. It is further augmented by strong performance from our portfolio optimization activities and our Integrys acquisition. For 2016, we saw prices decrease across most regions, decreasing around $0.45 per megawatt-hour in both the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest. This resulted in a decrease in our open gross margin of approximately $200 million, which was offset by our hedging activities. During the quarter we executed $100 million of power new business and $50 million of non-power new business, and are raising our power new business targets by $50 million additional due to commercial opportunities, for a gross margin increase of $50 million in 2016. For 2017, prices decreased by approximately $1 per megawatt hour in both the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. This resulted in a decrease of $300 million in our open gross margins. Despite the drop in prices, our total gross margin is only down $50 million due to our hedged position and an increase in our power new business target of $100 million in case we have line of sight into additional commercial opportunities. Since the beginning of the year, prices have fallen due to mild weather, lower gas prices, lower load demand in the Midwest, and a lack of liquidity in the markets. Prices have fallen more in 2017 and beyond than in 2016. Although this weakness in the spot market has impacted forward markets, we are confident in our fundamental view of the gas and power markets and are positioning our portfolio to take advantage of this. Now I’ll turn it over to Jack to review the full financial information for the quarter. Jonathan W. Thayer – Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive VP Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everyone. We had another strong quarter. My remarks will cover our financial results for the quarter, third quarter guidance range, and our cash outlook. Starting with our second quarter results on slide seven, Exelon exceeded our guidance range and delivered earnings of $0.59 per share. This compares to $0.51 per share for the second quarter of 2014. Exelon’s Utilities delivered combined earnings of $0.25 per share and were flat to the second quarter of last year. During the quarter, we saw favorable weather at PECO and unfavorable weather at ComEd. Cooling degree days were up nearly 37% from the prior year and 47.4% above normal in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and down 34% from the prior year and 21.6% below normal in Northern Illinois. Distribution revenues at ComEd and BGE were higher quarter-over-quarter. In addition, BGE had a decrease in uncollectible accounts expense compared to the second quarter of 2014. Exelon Generation had another strong quarter, delivering earnings of $0.36 per share, $0.09 higher than the same period last year. As Joe mentioned, our generation to load matching strategy continues to prove effective. We benefited from a lower cost to serve both our retail and wholesale customers, and had strong performance from our portfolio management team. In addition, compared to the second quarter of 2014 we had fewer outage days at our nuclear plants, which had a positive contribution from the Integrys acquisition, higher realized nuclear decommissioning trust fund gains, and received additional benefits quarter-over-quarter from the cancellation of the DOE spent nuclear fee. These positive factors were partially offset by higher tax and interest expense. More detail on the quarter-over-quarter drivers for each operating company can be found on slides 18 and 19 in the appendix. For the third quarter, we are providing guidance of $0.65 to $0.75 per share. Accounting for the impact of the increased share count and the debt associated with the Pepco Holdings transaction, and assuming the transaction closes in the third quarter, we are narrowing our full-year guidance from $2.25 to $2.55 per share, to $2.35 to $2.55 per share. Our guidance does not assume that bonus depreciation is extended. Slide eight provides an update on our cash flow expectations for this year. We’ve simplified the format of our slide to provide a clearer view of our cash flow at each operating company, including explicitly showing free cash flow. We project cash from operations of $6.6 billion. We project free cash flow of $900 million at Generation in 2015. 80% of our total growth capital expenditures are being invested in our utilities over the next three years, which will provide stable earnings growth. In June we completed the debt portion of our financing for the Pepco transaction by issuing $4.2 billion in senior notes, with the majority of these proceeds being used to fund the transaction. Strong market demand allowed us to upsize the offering, enabling us to pull forward some future-planned corporate debt issuances. We issued across the tenor spectrum with an average maturity of approximately 14 years and an average weighted average coupon of 3.79%. Earlier this month we completed the settlement of the equity forward transaction. The combination of these financings allows us to close the merger quickly upon receiving approval from the D.C. Public Service Commission. Our balance sheet remains strong and gives us the ability to invest and grow our business. As a reminder, the appendix includes several schedules that will help you in your modeling efforts. Thank you, and we’ll now open the line for questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator And our first question will come from the line of Greg Gordon with Evercore ISI. Greg Gordon – Evercore ISI Good morning. Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Hi, Greg. Greg Gordon – Evercore ISI Couple of questions. First, when you talk about commercial opportunities, in the context of your comfort level raising your guidance for power new business/to go, are we talking about sort of the inherent counter-cyclicality of the margins in that business in the low wholesale environment, i.e., are we moving closer off the $2 floor in margins and closer to the $4 sort of peak of the cycle margins that you see in that business historically, or is it simply new customers, more volumes than you had projected in either the gas or the electric business? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Joe? Joseph Nigro – Executive Vice President, Exelon; Chief Executive Officer, Constellation, Exelon Corp. Yeah, Greg. In this specific instance, specifically for 2016 where we’re raising our power new business/to go by $50 million and 2017 by $100 million, it’s really – it’s not related to those load margins. It’s more specifically related to some proprietary structured commercial opportunities that we have really solid line of sight into on the wholesale side of the business, quite frankly. To your point though, I think it’s important to note we have raised our targets each – $50 million each quarter for 2015, for a total of $100 million so far year-to-date. And a lot of that has been driven by really three things. One is the monetization of loads that we sold at higher prices last year. So, we have seen increased value from that load-serving business, some of our optimization activities. And then we went in, as you saw from our disclosures last quarter, we went in with a short bias with a backstop of our own generation, and given the results of market prices in 2015 to date, that’s performed well. We would only look to raise those targets, the power/to go targets or non-power/to go targets, if we have good line of sight into specific opportunities. And in this case, we do. Greg Gordon – Evercore ISI Okay. Follow-up to that. If these are fairly chunky opportunities and you win them, will we get a sort of a discrete disclosure or would that just – would we get – would you just update it on a quarterly basis as per your usual, moving from to go to, into the hedges? Joseph Nigro – Executive Vice President, Exelon; Chief Executive Officer, Constellation, Exelon Corp. Yeah. Yeah. We’ll disclose that when the negotiations are complete. Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director And Greg, it will be in the MD&A disclosure in our interview (19:24), when it occurs. Greg Gordon – Evercore ISI Okay, great. Second question. In light of economic conditions in Texas, most of your investors would probably rather see you pull the plug on this gas-fired project that you’re pursuing. What gives you the confidence that the through-the-cycle economics of that investment are still worth going forward in this environment? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director So as we said, we’ve got a very good deal on acquiring these assets on our brownfield site. Minimal infrastructure investment. They still have a double digit IRR with these market forwards. If you just projected we stay here for 10 years, and then plug the fundamentals in after, we’re still at a double-digit IRR. This is a solid investment. These are going to be dispatched first. They’re the highly efficient, air-cooled, and at the right price. Greg Gordon – Evercore ISI Concise answer. Thank you. Take care. Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director All right. Operator And your next question will come from the line of Steve Fleishman, Wolfe Research. Steven Isaac Fleishman – Wolfe Research LLC Yeah. Hi, good morning. Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Good morning. Steven Isaac Fleishman – Wolfe Research LLC First to Jack, clarification. So in the updated 2015 guidance, are you including some amount of POM, both the business and the financing costs? And if so, is it positive or negative within the year? Jonathan W. Thayer – Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive VP So Steve, we are including – we are including the equity and the debt associated with the PHI acquisition. So for share count purposes, that incorporates a weighted average share base of 892 million shares. It does assume the third quarter close of PHI. But there is a measure of dilution this year that’s related to the increased share count, the debt, and as we pursue rate cases on PHI, improve their revenues and earnings, we’ll see the accretion that we anticipate with that transaction in future periods. Steven Isaac Fleishman – Wolfe Research LLC Okay. So just to clarify, when you net for this short period into year-end, when you net POM revenue and the financing cost, it’s actually – your numbers would have been higher in this guidance if you hadn’t included that. Jonathan W. Thayer – Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive VP Modestly, Steve. Steven Isaac Fleishman – Wolfe Research LLC Okay. But then we’ll get the… Jonathan W. Thayer – Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive VP It (22:02), but not materially so. Steven Isaac Fleishman – Wolfe Research LLC But the future accretion guidance that you gave, I think, at the last quarter, or recent commentary, that’s still good for future years? Jonathan W. Thayer – Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive VP The impact on rate cases and the deferral of those rate cases modestly impacts the accretion, but we’re still at the – as we disclosed at the last quarter, we’re still at the sort of bottom end of the range in 2017 that we gave. Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director And so, it’s 2018 to get to that – more to that midpoint of the run rate that we talked about. Steven Isaac Fleishman – Wolfe Research LLC Right. But you said that – you clarified that, I think, the last call or so. That’s not new. Okay. Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Yes. So, $0.15 in 2017, and you’ll see us head to the upper end in 2018. Steven Isaac Fleishman – Wolfe Research LLC Okay. Second question is just with respect to the power views. I kind of feel like just, the last few calls you’ve been a little bit more mixed on your power views. You’re a lot more bullish right now, at least, I guess, with respect to NiHub. Is that mainly just a fact that you had to pull back as of Q2 end, and so you’re just more bullish because the starting price is lower, or are you more bullish even if the prices had stayed flat? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director It’s, the prices have gone lower. We’re more bullish, they’re non-sustainable at this level. Joseph Nigro – Executive Vice President, Exelon; Chief Executive Officer, Constellation, Exelon Corp. Yeah. And, Steve, what I would say is, our view of the absolute value of power price hasn’t changed quarter-over-quarter, and what’s changed is we saw a material drop in the back end of the power curve and I’m talking to NiHub, but it’s attributable to West Hub as well, but our upside is really baked at NiHub where we see material upside as you move out into that 2018, 2019 timeframe. We see upside as well in that 2016, 2017 period, and what’s changed is the market has fallen so much, quarter-over-quarter; our absolute view of power price hasn’t changed. So that spread has gone wider. And when we look at our fundamental models at NiHub, in particular, we see a lot of value that’s still to be derived, and that’s due to the changing dispatch stack and some of the other things that we’ve talked about previously. Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Talk about the lack of liquidity. Joseph Nigro – Executive Vice President, Exelon; Chief Executive Officer, Constellation, Exelon Corp. Yeah, the liquidity piece of it is a big part of it, Steve. We had a $0.40 – approximately $0.40 a megawatt-hour drop in PJM, in West Hub and NiHub in calendar 2016. That’s the most liquid period on the forward curve. When we’ve pulled data and we have access to and look at what’s going on in the out-years, 2018, 2019, 2020 where we saw a material drop in prices, there is absolutely nothing trading at NiHub. There had been some few sporadic trades at West Hub, and you see the market set prices off of those trades. And our view is through time, that spread relationship between the West Hub and NiHub is going to collapse because of the retirements on the western side, the new builds on the eastern side, and that’s why we think there is material upside. But our fundamental absolute view on power price hasn’t changed. It’s just the way the market reacted quarter-over-quarter. Steven Isaac Fleishman – Wolfe Research LLC Okay. Thank you very much. Operator And your next question will come from the line of Daniel Eggery (sic) [Daniel Eggers] (25:35) with Credit Suisse. Dan L. Eggers – Credit Suisse Securities ( USA ) LLC (Broker) Hey, good morning, guys. On Pepco, could we just talk about the process? So assuming that the D.C. decision comes soon, what is the process for closing from this point, and what bearing does the Maryland appeal have on your ability to close right now? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director I’m going to get Darryl Bradford to cover that. Darryl M. Bradford – Executive Vice President & General Counsel Hey, Steve. Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director It’s Dan. Darryl M. Bradford – Executive Vice President & General Counsel I’m sorry. Dan, we expect to – assuming a acceptable order from the D.C. Commission, we expect to close promptly after that order. Our contract would indicate that that will take place within 48 hours of approval by the D.C. commission. And we don’t think that the Maryland motion should be any bar to us closing. We don’t believe that that motion has any merit whatsoever. As you know, the alleged conflict of interest of one of the commissioners having a preliminary interviewing discussion, which she stopped, with a non-party, isn’t a basis under Maryland law to question the independence of that decision, let alone to stay the proceedings. No court in Maryland and no commission in Maryland has ever suggested there’s a conflict with the commissioner of any agency having a conversation with a non-party. Particularly where, as here, Exelon is one of some 45 board members, 140 members in an agency that includes public interest groups like Public Citizen, which was a party below and was the first one to raise this conflict issue. So we don’t think that that motion has any merit. We filed a response yesterday with the court, and we plan to go ahead and close promptly after the D.C. commission issues an order, assuming that that order has acceptable conditions. And we have faith that the D.C. commission will do the right thing. We think we’ve put in a strong case with a lot of benefits for customers and protections for customers. And we look forward to a prompt closing. Dan L. Eggers – Credit Suisse Securities ( USA ) LLC (Broker) Okay. Got it. And then I guess just on the nuclear plants in Illinois with PJM, I guess, probably moving the closure date to October. That’s still probably before Illinois can act legislatively. With the drop in the forward curves, is there a practical way where you can look at those plants and think that they stay economic without some sort of legislation in Illinois? And does that force your hand come October? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director The capacity market fixes, focused on reliability, will not be enough to keep all the units economically viable. It does give us some support for the investments that we continue to make on the assets to maintain the reliability but it’s not totally there. We need a market fix in Illinois to stop the non-competitive nature of the market. And short of the legislation to fix that, we will have to make decisions on retiring assets that are not economically viable. As we talked about previously, we have requirements around notification to PJM of our intent to retire units. It’s an 18-month notification. We also have commitments around when we have to notify of our availability for the 2018-2019 auction in participation on that. And very importantly, we have to order and design cores that – fuel cores that take a while for us to – or 2019-2020 auction instead of 2018-2019, 2019-2020 auction, our participation there. And we have to order the cores, and there’s a long lead time there. Are we going to run for an additional year or are we going to run for a longer period of time? And that’s a very expensive decision to make. So, at least on the PJM (30:34) we’ll make the decision, the final decision, if we’re going to do that, in the September timeframe. We’ve been in consultation with the Board and we’ll continue to consult with the Board, and where management’s made their decision we’ll pass that to the Board for the final approval in that timeframe, and continue with the outreach to our stakeholders. Dan L. Eggers – Credit Suisse Securities ( USA ) LLC (Broker) Chris, just given the fact that you’re not going to have legislation realistically done before September, and you kind of laid out the other challenges, doesn’t it – what would cause you to not close the plants come September, based on the fact pattern you just laid out for us? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director If the units clear the 2018-2019 auction, that would show that they’re financially viable. That is a long shot in our opinion, just because of the cost structure and how the forwards have continued to collapse at the bus at a couple of these units. We’ve got the transmission constraints, we’ve got the overproduction and importation of wind that not only drops the spot but continues to collapse the forward curve. The disconnect between NiHub and the bus at some of these units is $6, $7. And we have worked very closely with all the stakeholders involved for over a year and a half on trying to come to resolution, and it is the time that we’ll have to make the decision after we see what happens with the capacity auctions. We don’t take the decision lightly. We understand the effect that we have on the communities and potential effect on employees, but this has been a long-term issue that we’ve been evaluating and trying to come to resolution, and we’re staying within the timeline. Actually, we extended our timeline last year to give more time to come up with the proper market fixes, and to be compensated adequately for operating these units versus subsidizing a low-cost market. Dan L. Eggers – Credit Suisse Securities ( USA ) LLC (Broker) And I don’t mean to beat this to death (32:49) for this, but would closing a Quad or a Clinton show up noticeably as accretive to you guys on 2017 numbers? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director We don’t – we have not looked at that, and don’t look at it. We analyze the plants as a standalone in their own economics, so it’s about a plant losing money. We have not evaluated; others have and others have talked about the impact to consumers on those units closing. The state itself did that assessment, and there is some material impact on the consumer, but we have not evaluated anything specific to Exelon. Dan L. Eggers – Credit Suisse Securities ( USA ) LLC (Broker) Okay, very good. Thank you. Operator Your next question will come from the line of Jonathan Arnold with Deutsche Bank. Jonathan Philip Arnold – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. Good morning, guys. Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Hey. Jonathan W. Thayer – Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive VP Good morning. Jonathan Philip Arnold – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. One – just – given your comments about liquidity in the forward curve, is it fair to assume that you’ve probably not done much in the way of 2018 hedging yet? Because ordinarily you would have been a couple of quarters into it. Just curious if you could give us any insight? Joseph Nigro – Executive Vice President, Exelon; Chief Executive Officer, Constellation, Exelon Corp. Yeah, Jonathan. We are behind our ratable sales plan in 2018. As you know, we have a very big load-serving book of business, so we’ve captured opportunities, both in our retail and wholesale load-serving businesses to the extent possible, in 2018. And in addition, at times, as we’ve spoken about in other years, we used the gas market as well. But to sell straight OTC power in 2018, we’ve not done much, if any, of that at all. Jonathan Philip Arnold – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. Okay. And then just to revisit the commercial opportunities comment. Can you give us any insight as to what kind of opportunities you’re talking about? And is it, are they the result of others pulling back from the market, or just successful discussions with potential clients I guess? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director It’s early on that one, Jonathan. We’ll do the full disclosure when we complete the negotiations. Jonathan Philip Arnold – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. Okay. Sorry to re-ask that. And then, Chris, at the outset, you made the comment that you saw the inclusion of DR in the transition auctions as being, I think you said, nonmaterial to the outcome? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Yes. Jonathan Philip Arnold – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. Could you share a bit more of your kind of logic and thought process behind that statement? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Yeah. Joe? Joseph Nigro – Executive Vice President, Exelon; Chief Executive Officer, Constellation, Exelon Corp. Jonathan, it’s Joe. First of all, we lost over $1 billion of market cap post the announcement of that, of the inclusion of DR in 2016-2017 and 2017-2018. And we really thought it was a little bit of an overreaction. As Chris mentioned, we’re disappointed in the delay, but we don’t believe there’s going to be a material impact to either of those transition auctions. As you’re aware, DR was already included in 2018-2019 and beyond. The reason why we don’t think it’s a material impact in the transition auctions is really related to how the auctions themselves cleared on the base residual, and the separation in price in 2016-2017 on one side, and then the amount of DR that clears in the 2017-2018 auction, and when we put that all into our models, it’s very similar to what we’ve read, quite frankly, from a lot of what’s been written by the equity community, that it’s going to be a limited impact. Jonathan Philip Arnold – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. Okay. Thank you for that. Operator And your next question will come from the line of Julien Smith with UBS. Julien Dumoulin-Smith – UBS Securities LLC Hi. Good morning. Jonathan W. Thayer – Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive VP Hey, Julien. Julien Dumoulin-Smith – UBS Securities LLC Hey. So, first quick question and it does kind of rehash a little bit here, but on the fundamental upside you’re talking about, just to be clear, what does that assume in terms of retirements, just to be clear? Your own retirements, particularly as you’re thinking about the life of your portfolio here in the back half of the year? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Yeah. We have not evaluated the potential retirement of any our assets on market-forward prices. And, so this is just based off of fundamentals of what has been announced, and what we see for retirements, what we see for the economic viability of the existing fleet in what they would have to clear to stay viable going forward. So it’s not a sustainable market forward with the asset mix that’s currently in. It has nothing to do with any forward decision we would make. Julien Dumoulin-Smith – UBS Securities LLC Right. So just to be clear, nuclear retirements would be incremental to your fundamental upside? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director We don’t know that. We have not analyzed it and I wouldn’t want to project one way or the other. It’s, there are two different things. The nuclear asset retirement is based off of the economic viability of the asset on the stand-alone. And we have had losses and free cash flow losses in the trailing five years of some significance. And we project going forward with these market forwards, them to be even worse than they were a year ago, which is driving us to make that decision. It is not based off of any potential impact on the market forwards or the rest of the fleet’s viability. Julien Dumoulin-Smith – UBS Securities LLC Got it. And then two subsequent questions here. First, in terms of the FCF losses, what would you estimate those as being, both for the eastern portfolio and for the ComEd portfolio as it stands today? And then secondly, tied into that, as you evaluate the remaining life of some of these assets, would you imagine layering one announcement after another? So I suppose specifically, there’s a timing issue related to ordering new cores. I imagine certain units have to get those orders in before others. Could we see one nuclear retirement and then subsequently, depending on what happens in the legislative arena, et cetera, see further announcements later this year, in trying to reconcile the bigger issues around FCF deficit? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director Yeah. We’ve discussed fairly openly the units, the affected units. PJM’s rules require us an earlier notification than MISO’s rules. And so, we would be moving forward, if we have to, on PJM units before MISO units. We don’t project a MISO decision until beginning of next year, looking at the opportunities we have with that unit either through legislation or other mechanisms, to secure the required revenues that we need there. We’ve talked about New York units. We’re still working with our partners in our stakeholders in New York to look at, is there a viable way beyond – a reliability must-run situation to maintain economic viability there? And the final asset that’s been in discussion is Oyster Creek, which we’ve already had an agreed-upon early retirement date at the end of 2019. So, short of the – short of a, some type of failure that was a costly failure on the unit, we would run into that period to allow adequate transition, utilization of the fuel, and adequate transition of our employee base to other facilities. Julien Dumoulin-Smith – UBS Securities LLC Got it. But just to be clear about the MISO unit there, depending on the success this year in the legislative arena, would that drive that decision? Christopher M. Crane – President, Chief Executive Officer & Director It would have a – it would heavily weight our decision. Julien Dumoulin-Smith – UBS Securities LLC Great. Thank you. Operator And we have time for one final question. Your final question will come from the line of Chris Turnure with JPMorgan. Christopher J. Turnure – JPMorgan Securities LLC Good morning, guys. I wanted to get a little bit more color on the Pepco approval process here, and the court challenge, than what you’ve already talked about. Do you have any sense of the precedent, or a precedent, for actually staying a commission order? Obviously you disagree with the merit of this case. But you do you have any precedent there, and what would be the path forward if it was not stayed, and you got the decision out of D.C.? Darryl M. Bradford – Executive Vice President & General Counsel Thanks. It’s Darryl again. Yeah, the precedent on a stay is very clear in Maryland. It’s an extraordinary remedy. It is rarely granted. You have to show a likelihood of success on the merits. And the motion does not, on the merits of the underlying merger, raise any issues whatsoever. The only issue that raises is this specious purported conflict claim, which we think is very, very weak. So, we don’t think they’ve attempted to meet that. They would also have to show irreparable harm, which – they spend a paragraph trying to satisfy that. It’s really not very persuasive, in our view. They would have to show that a stay is in the public interest. And, of course, not only has the Maryland Commission, but the New Jersey Commission, the FERC, the Delaware Commission have all found that this merger is in the public interest. And they’d also have to show that the hardships favor them, and in our pleading we lay out why disrupting – the hardship of potentially disrupting a $7 billion merger outweighs any hardships that would occur from the grant of the stay. So we think it’s an extraordinary remedy. We don’t think that they’ve come close to meeting those standards in any respect. And the law is also very clear that in Maryland, it’s not a balancing. They have to satisfy each and every one of those elements, and in this case, in our view, they haven’t satisfied any of them. So, that leaves us in a position where, upon D.C. approval, and assuming that the court agrees with the pleading we filed yesterday and doesn’t grant a stay, that promptly upon the D.C. Commission joining the other commissions in finding that this is in the public interest, and assuming that any conditions it imposes are not unduly burdensome, that we would close promptly. Christopher J. Turnure – JPMorgan Securities LLC Okay. Great. That’s very helpful. And then, is there – or my understanding is that D.C. has to rule by the end of August. Is there any flexibility around that timing? Can they extend that again? Darryl M. Bradford – Executive Vice President & General Counsel Yeah. There is no clock in D.C., so they are not under any time constraint. Generally, the D.C. Commission has ruled within 90 days of something being fully briefed and submitted to them. This was fully briefed at the end of May. So that 90 days would end at the end of August. I think that’s where that date comes from. Obviously, we’re hopeful that sooner is better than later, but that will be up to the D.C. Commission, and they’ll rule when they have finished their work. They are, I think, acutely aware that a lot of people are looking for a decision from them, and they understand that. But they will take the time that they deem necessary in order to do their job right. Christopher J. Turnure – JPMorgan Securities LLC Okay. And then if I could, real quick, Joe, I just wanted to follow up, you’ve mentioned lack of liquidity in the forward markets a couple of times on the call here. Is this a lack of liquidity that exceeds just the general nature of these markets and what you’ve seen historically? Has that increased, and if that is the case, do you have an opinion as to why there might be so few trades going on out there? Joseph Nigro – Executive Vice President, Exelon; Chief Executive Officer, Constellation, Exelon Corp. Yeah, I think it’s probably worse than it has been historically. And I think some of it is, there is just no natural buyers out on, that far out on the forward curve, as I said. The back end of the forward curve was dropped much more than in like 2016, where there were more natural buyers, whether we talk about retail or speculators or other participants. So I think with some of the folks that used to participate in the markets not doing that, some on the banking side and others, I think it’s had a material impact. Christopher J. Turnure – JPMorgan Securities LLC Great. Thanks a lot. Operator Thank you. And that will conclude today’s conference call. We appreciate your participation. You may now disconnect.