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Text: I'm Jeff Kotkin, Eversource Energy's Vice President, Investor Relations.
Speaking today will be Joe Nolan, our new President and Chief Executive Officer; and Phil Lembo, our Executive Vice President and CFO.
Also joining us today are John Moreira, our Treasurer and Senior VP for Finance and Regulatory; and Jay Buth, our VP and Controller.
We hope that all on the phone remain healthy and that your families are safe and well.
I'm looking forward to meeting many more of you over the coming years and sharing my optimism and enthusiasm for Eversource's future and excellent investment thesis.
I'm grateful to the Eversource Board of Trustees and to Jim for allowing me to lead an incredibly dedicated and high-performing organization.
In approving these Executive level changes, the Eversource Board is signaling its confidence in our long-term strategy that focuses on our core regulated business with an exciting investment in offshore wind.
We are in a world where customer service, safety, and reliability have never been more important.
We will never forget that we would not be in the business without our 4.3 million customers; they are our top priority.
Customers pay the bills and they deserve the reliable and safe utility service that we must provide.
Over the coming decades the tens of billions of dollars we will invest in our energy and water delivery systems will be critical in helping New England prepare for a clean energy future, and we expect to be a central catalyst to that clean energy transition.
But first, I need to address our Company's relationship with Connecticut.
We have thousands of employees in Connecticut, who work hard each day to provide our 1.7 million natural gas, water, and electric customers with the most reliable and responsive service possible.
During emergency situations, which we have had far too often over the past year, due to the historic storm levels, they are working up to 16 hours a day for as many days as it takes to ensure that our customers have their service restored promptly and safely, even in a pandemic.
So I cannot tell you how painful it was for me to read certain elements of the Tropical Storm Isaias decision that was released on April 28th.
It did not reflect the hard work of our dedicated employees in a company I've been chosen to lead.
Our customers, PURA, and our company all want the same thing, great service each and every day of the year.
And, when there is a strong event power restoration as safely and quickly as possible.
The women and men of Eversource work hard each and every day to meet these expectations.
The PURA auto [Phonetic] on storm response clearly identify the areas for improvement.
We know we have to work to not only our response plan but also on our relationship with PURA.
This was apparent from the April 28 decision in a subsequent notice of violation.
I can assure you that we hear this loud and clear and already doing all we can to improve on both accounts.
Turning to our clean energy initiatives.
You are probably aware of the climate legislation that Massachusetts Governor Baker signed into law earlier this spring.
Among many elements, the law will allow each of the state's utilities to build up to 200 -- 280 megawatts of solar generation, NSTAR Electric will be able to increase its level of solar generation in rate base from 70 megawatts to 350 megawatts.
As Phil mentioned during our year-end earnings call, we have budgeted approximately $500 million for this initiative from 2022 to 2025.
The other item with a direct impact on us is a 2,400 megawatts expansion of Massachusetts offshore wind authorization from 3,200 megawatts to 5,600 megawatts.
This expansion will help me [Phonetic] to stay at the forefront of offshore wind development in the United States.
As you can see on Slide 2, there are now more than 10,000 megawatts of unawarded offshore wind authorizations in Southern New England and New York, with Massachusetts set to award up to 1,600 megawatts later this year.
In fact, Massachusetts RFP was just issued on Friday of last week.
Our offshore wind partnership with Orsted is very near and dear to my heart.
Since I'm always seeing that relationship and worked closely with our partner in recent years, it is an important element of our clean energy growth strategy.
And we have had a number of positive offshore wind developments already this year.
Starting with Slide 3 in early January, the Bureau of Ocean Management or BOEM released its draft environmental impact statement on South Fork project.
Comments received by late February, and we expect to see a final EIS way this summer.
BOEM is scheduled to rule on our final federal permits for that project in January of 2022.
Assuming that the January data is met, we expect to begin construction early next year and complete the project in late 2023.
Additionally, in late March, The New York Public Service Commission approved the necessary New York state sighting permit for the project, while the local town and trustees of East Hampton approved the local real estate rights required for the project.
Turning to Revolution Wind.
Late last month BOEM released a schedule for reviewing the 704 megawatt project.
The schedule calls for a final environmental impact statement to be issued in March of 2023 and for a final decision on construction and operating plan by the end of July 2023.
The release of that schedule represents a significant step forward with this project.
Revolution Wind and South Fork are two of only three projects in the Northeast, that have achieved that milestone.
Over the coming months, we and Orsted will be reviewing the BOEM and the state of Rhode Island permitting process to develop a projection for the Revolution Wind construction schedule.
Finally, we expect to receive BOEM review schedule for our 924 megawatt Sunrise Wind project later this year.
We continue to make significant progress in preparing for the commencement of construction.
Over the past couple of months, we have announced agreements with two critical ports that will serve as staging grounds for construction.
New London, Connecticut will serve as a hub for turbine construction and Providence, Rhode Island will be the center for foundation construction.
Enormous economic benefits will accrue to these communities, as a result of their role in our construction activities, including hundreds of direct jobs.
We are also very encouraged by the extremely positive signs we see from Washington.
President Biden has underscored his support for offshore wind construction along the Atlantic seaboard and has marshaled multiple members of his cabinet to support it.
The goal was to have about 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines operating in the U.S. by 2030.
We expect to be a significant contributor to that output through our partnership with Orsted.
Already more than 1,750 megawatts are under contract to serve load in Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Islands.
Again, I look forward to speaking with many of you at the AGA Virtual Conference later this month.
Now, I will turn over the call to Phil.
So I'll start with Slide number 4 and noting that earnings were $1.06 per share in the first quarter, compared with earnings of $1.01 per share in the first quarter of 2020.
Results for both years included after-tax costs associated with our recent acquisition of the assets of Columbia Gas, Columbia Gas of Massachusetts and that's $0.02 per share this year and $0.01 per share in 2020.
Results for our Electric Distribution and Natural Gas Distribution segment showed the most significant changes year-to-year.
Electric Distribution earned $0.27 per share in the first quarter of this year, compared with earnings of $0.39 per share in the first quarter of 2020.
Lower results were driven by a couple of principal factors.
The first is that we recorded a charge of $30 million or $0.07 per share, primarily to reflect customer credits of $28.4 million and an additional penalty of $1.6 million to be paid to the state of Connecticut.
These credits relate to a Notice of Violation that Connecticut regulators announced last week, as a result of our performance in restoring power following the catastrophic impact of Tropical Storm Isaias last August.
The docket established by PURA to review the penalty is scheduled to run through mid-July of this year.
Additionally, Electric Distribution results were negatively affected by approximately $20 million of higher storm-related expenses in the first quarter of 2021 and that's compared to a pretty quiet and warm first quarter in 2020.
And in fact, in this quarter, we experienced 31 separate storm events across our three states versus fairly limited activity in Q1 of 2020.
So, by contrast, our Natural Gas Distribution segment showed a sharp increase in earnings because it's now about 50% larger than it was a year ago.
It earned $0.43 per share in the first quarter of 2021 compared with earnings of $0.26 per share in the first quarter of 2020.
Improved results were due primarily to the addition of Eversource Gas of Massachusetts, which earned $0.14 per share in the quarter.
In addition, we had higher revenues at NSTAR Gas and Yankee Gas and these were partially offset by higher O&M and depreciation expense.
I should note that the transition process for Eversource Gas of Massachusetts continues to progress extremely well.
As we continue to migrate off of NiSource business systems and onto Eversource platforms, reducing costs and improving service.
To date, more than 80% of the business processes have been transferred to Eversource from NiSource's, great progress has been made.
Eversource ownership of the distribution system is being well received by customers, communities, and employees, and we continue to meet or exceed the financial and operational targets we'd set for ourselves.
On the Electric Transmission segment, we earned $0.39 per share in the first quarter of 2021, compared with $0.38 per share in the first quarter of 2020.
Improved results were driven by a higher level of investment in transmission facilities and this was partially offset by dilution of additional shares issued.
Our Water Distribution segment earned $3.6 million in the first quarter of 2021, compared with earnings of $2.1 million in the first quarter of last year.
Improved results were due largely to lower interest expense and lower effective tax rate.
As you may have noticed, last month Aquarion announced an agreement to purchase a small investor-owned water system that is based in Connecticut, but also serves portions of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
New England service company, as it's called, serves about 10,000 customers in the three states and has rate base of about $25 million.
This acquisition is consistent with the growth strategy we've discussed for our water delivery business.
And assuming timely regulatory approvals, we expect to close the transaction by the end of this year and for it to be accretive right away in 2022.
As you probably noted in our news release and you can see on Slide 5, we are reaffirming our long-term earnings-per-share growth rate in the upper half of the 5% to 7% range.
However, we modified our current year 2021 earnings guidance to reflect the customer credits I mentioned earlier.
We now project earnings per share toward the lower end of the $3.81 to $3.93 range and this includes the $0.07 per share impact of the credits.
On the regulatory side.
While our primary operating companies don't have any base rate reviews pending, we have several regulatory dockets open in Connecticut and I'll summarize the status of a few of them.
In addition to the penalty I described previously, PURA also identified a 90 basis point reduction in our authorized distribution ROE.
This is likely to be addressed in the current CL&P interim rate decreased proceeding.
Given the revised schedule the PURA released last week, we believe any ROE reduction would take -- would not take place or take effect until October 1st of this year.
To help you size that impact currently, CL&P's authorized ROE is 9.25% and we have approximately $5 billion of rate base at CL&P.
Also, on April 28th, PURA finalized an interim decision on the recovery of certain tracked cost by CL&P.
This decision would result in a number of changes to those track cost that would be implemented on June 1st, with other modifications deferred until October 1st.
The interim decision implemented a number of positive modifications to an early draft and we appreciate PURA making those decisions -- making those changes in its decision.
PURA also continues to review several other dockets, including potential for grid modernization initiatives, including AMI electric vehicle programs and storage.
And the status of the major open PURA docket is listed in an appendix to our slides.
Turning from Connecticut to Washington.
We were disappointed last month in the developments around the ongoing notice of proposed rate making concerning incentives that FERC is granted for many years to utilities that participate in regional transmission organizations or RTOs.
FERC will be taking comments and replies on the proposed changes over the next several weeks before deciding on a final order.
I would expect that the New England transmission owners and others will file comments opposing the change, which some see as being inconsistent with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and with President Biden's focus on building out the nation's electrical infrastructure to bring more clean-energy resources to market.
As a helpful rule from a 10 basis point reduction in our transmission ROE effects consolidated earnings by about $0.01 per share.
In terms of financings, we completed $450 million of debt issuances so far this year, primarily to pay off maturities at Eversource parent and at the Aquarion in Connecticut -- Aquarion company in Connecticut.
We've not issued any additional equity this year other than through our ongoing dividend reinvestment and employee incentive programs.
However, as you know and we've stated in the past, we continue to expect to issue approximately $700 million of new equity through some sort of after market program and that would occur at various points in time over our forecast period.
In terms of our operations, we've gotten off to a very strong start this year.
Electric reliability continues to be in the top quartile of the industry versus our peers.
Through March, our above-average safety record improved even further with fewer employee injuries than we experienced in the first quarter of 2020.
All three of our natural gas utilities are outperforming on their emergency response requirements and Aquarion's water quality is solidly exceeding its target.

user
compname reports q1 earnings per share of $1.06.
q1 earnings per share $1.06.
reaffirmed projected long-term earnings per share growth rate in upper half of range of 5 to 7%.
estimates it will earn toward lower end of 2021 recurring earnings per share guidance of $3.81 to $3.93 per share.

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