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Text: President and CEO, Dennis Vermillion; Executive Vice President, Treasurer and CFO, Mark Thies; Senior Vice President, External Affairs and Chief Customer Officer, Kevin Christie; and Vice President, Controller and Principal Accounting Officer, Ryan Krasselt.
Our consolidated earnings for the fourth quarter of 2020 were $0.85 per diluted share, compared to $0.76 for the fourth quarter of 2019.
For the full year, consolidated earnings were $1.90 per diluted share for 2020 compared to $2.97 last year.
Now, I'll turn the discussion over to Dennis.
As we begin 2021 continuing to work through the COVID pandemic, we hope you're staying safe and healthy.
Looking back on the last year, I'm just so proud of our employees for navigating the challenges presented by the pandemic, continuing to provide energy like they always do to our customers and progressing our business plans forward.
We continue to help those who are struggling and most in need in our communities.
In 2020, Avista and the Avista Foundation provided more than $4 million in charitable giving to support the increased need for services that community agencies are still experiencing throughout the areas we serve.
Financially, our earnings for 2020 were better than expectations, and Mark will provide further details here in just a few minutes.
Operationally, we finished installing nearly all of our smart meters, electric smart meters and natural gas modules across Washington in one of the largest projects in our history.
The deployment of this infrastructure will provide customers with more real-time data, so they can better manage their energy use.
The technology enables us to proactively push high energy alerts to notify customers, if they could exceed their preset energy budgets, which of course, helps eliminate surprises when their bill arrives at the end of the month.
Beyond generating bills, we're using the data from smart meters to run a more reliable and efficient power grid and to deliver a higher level of service for our customers.
For example, we now have more visibility into our system, which allows us to detect and restore power outages more quickly.
We also made strides to meeting our clean energy goals, as the Rattlesnake Flat Wind Farm went online last December.
During its construction the project created clean energy jobs for our local communities and now that it's completed the project's 20 -- project's 57 wind turbines excuse me will provide 50 average megawatts of clean renewable energy for our customers at an affordable price.
That's enough energy to power 38,000 homes for years to come.
As wildfires continue to have an impact on our region we implemented a new comprehensive 10-year wildfire resiliency plan that aims to improve defense strategies and operating practices for a more resilient system.
We expect to invest about $330 million implementing the components of this plan over the life of the plan, which as I said was 10 years.
We were proud to announce yesterday that Avista has been recognized again as one of the 2021 World's Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices.
This marks the second year in a row that Avista has achieved this distinction.
We are only one of nine honorees recognized in the energy and utilities industry based on their assessment.
In 2021, 135 honorees in total were recognized spanning 22 countries and 47 industries.
In January, we published Avista's 2021 Corporate Responsibility Report on our avistacorp.com website and I urge you to check it out when you have some time.
This content provides a broad look at our operations and how we're fulfilling our commitments to our people, our customers, our communities and our shareholders.
The website also provides links to Avista's reporting on a series of industry and financial ESG disclosures.
The updated content supports Avista's long-standing commitment to corporate responsibility and sharing this information with our stakeholders.
Switching gears with respect to regulatory filings, in January we filed two-year general rate cases in Idaho.
And as you know in 2020 we filed general rate cases in Washington.
And we continue to work through the regulatory processes in both of these jurisdictions.
We take our responsibility to provide safe, reliable energy at an affordable price very seriously.
And we work hard to make prudent financial investments in our infrastructure, manage our costs and identify ways to best serve our customers that contribute to keeping energy prices low.
For example, our proposed tax customer credit would completely offset an immediate increase in electric and natural gas bills for our Washington customers.
In Oregon new rates went into effect on January 16 of this year and we expect to file another rate case in the second half of 2021 in Oregon.
Looking ahead, we remain focused on running a great utility and continue to invest prudent capital to maintain and update our infrastructure and provide reliable energy service to our customers.
We are initiating our 2021, 2022 and 2023 earnings guidance with consolidated ranges of a $1.96 to $2.16 per diluted share for 2021, $2.18 to $2.38 in 2022 and $2.42 to $2.62 per diluted share for 2023.
This puts us on track to earning our allowed return by 2023.
Lastly, earlier this month the board increased our dividend by 4.3% to an annual dividend of $1.69 per share and a dividend increase approved by the board marks the 19 consecutive year the board has raised the dividend for our shareholders, and I believe it demonstrates the board's commitment to maximizing shareholder value.
We had low expectations coming into this year.
No, not the company, the Blackhawks and the Blackhawks have really started off pretty good after a slow first four games.
We've had five rookies score their first goals ever in the NHL, so pretty exciting times for all you hockey fans out there.
For the company in the fourth quarter, Avista Utilities contributed $0.81 per diluted share compared to $0.67 last year.
Our earnings increased primarily due to higher utility margin and customer growth.
Also in the fourth quarter, the Oregon and Washington Commissions joined the Idaho Commission to allow for the deferral of certain COVID-19 related expenses for future -- possible future recovery.
Additionally, Avista Utilities earnings were better than expectations due to higher utility margin and lower income taxes, which were partially offset by higher operating expenses.
With respect to COVID-19, as I mentioned earlier, we have now received accounting orders in each of our jurisdictions to defer the costs and benefits associated with COVID-19.
And those will be addressed in future proceedings with each of those commissions.
We expect a gradual economic recovery that will still have some depressed load and customer growth in '21.
We expect that to start improving in the second half of '21, our economy.
We do have decoupling and other regulatory mechanisms, which mitigate the impacts of changes in load for our residential and certain commercial customers.
Over 90% of our revenue, as you recall, is covered by regulatory mechanisms.
As Dennis mentioned, we continue to be committed to investing the necessary capital in our utility infrastructure.
We expect our capital expenditures in 2021 to be about $415 million and at AEL&P we expect about $7 million and about $15 million in our other businesses.
With respect to our liquidity, as of December 31, we have $270 million of available liquidity under our committed credit line at Avista Utilities and in 2020 we issued about $72 million in stock in 2020.
In '21 we expect to issue about $75 million of equity or stock and up to $120 million of long-term debt.
As Dennis mentioned, we are initiating guidance not only for 2021 but also for 2022 and 2023.
And as we mentioned those ranges, this is to get us back to earning our allowed return by 2023 and our guidance does assume timely and appropriate rate relief in each of our jurisdictions relative to the capital expenses that we have going forward.
We experienced regulatory lag during '20 and expect this to continue through the end of '22 due to our continued investment in infrastructure and our delayed filings.
We again delayed last year as we talked about with the pandemic in Washington and Idaho.
Dennis mentioned those earlier.
We expect our cases in Washington and Idaho along with new rates to provide some relief in 2021 and begin reducing that regulatory lag.
Going forward we'll strive to continue to reduce debt and closely align our returns to those authorized by '23.
After '23 we expect to grow at 4% to 6% our earnings.
Our '21 guidance reflects unrecovered structural cost estimated to reduce the return on equity by approximately 70 basis points and in addition our timing lag, which is what we're trying to reduce with rate cases has reduced it by about 100 basis points.
This results in expected return on equity for Avista Utilities of approximately 7.7% in 2021.
We are forecasting operating cost growth of about 3% and customer growth of about 1% annually, which has slightly improved from prior numbers on the customer growth side.
For 2021 we expect Avista Utilities to contribute in the range of a $1.93 to $2.07 per diluted share and the midpoint of our guidance does not include any expense or benefit under the ERM.
Our current expectation for the ERM is in the benefit position within the 75% customer, 25% company sharing band which is expected to add $0.05 per diluted share.
For 2021 we expect AEL&P to contribute in the range of $0.08 to $0.11 per diluted share and our outlook for both Avista Utilities and AEL&P assumes among other variables, normal precipitation and hydroelectric generation for the year.
We expect a loss between $0.05 and $0.02 per diluted share for our other businesses as we continue to develop opportunities for the future.
We'll spend a little bit of money in the next couple of years to continue to get those earnings up over the course of the next five years and we look forward to those opportunities.
They're both in our service territory and in funds.
Our guidance generally includes only normal operating conditions and does not include any unusual or non-recurring items until the effects are known and certain.

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q4 earnings per share $0.85.
earnings guidance of $1.96 to $2.16 per diluted share in 2021.
earnings guidance of $2.18 to $2.38 per diluted share in 2022.
earnings guidance of $2.42 to $2.62 per diluted share in 2023.
expect to experience increased costs in 2021 associated with exploring strategic business opportunities.

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