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Text: By way of introduction, I have been with Avista since 2009, working in our accounting group.
I'm very excited to be taking over from John for my first earnings call, and I look forward to working with all of you in the coming year.
, 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 third quarter of 2021 were $0.20 per diluted share compared to $0.07 for the third quarter of 2020.
For the year-to-date, consolidated earnings were $1.38 per diluted share for 2021 compared to $1.04 last year.
Now I'll turn the discussion over to Dennis.
As you heard, this is Stacey's first call today, and we're just so happy to have her in this role, and she's going to be with us at EEI too.
So you'll -- everybody will have a chance to meet Stacey and get to know Stacey a little bit.
And unfortunately, looks like we still have a ways to go.
We will, no doubt, face more challenges as we move forward.
Our region and our nation, we're recovering and rebuilding from this, and we're ready for the challenge.
I continue to be extremely proud of our employees, and I'm just so grateful for the resolve and resiliency that they've all demonstrated and the flexibility they've displayed.
And then the commitment and concern they have for our customers and communities just really fantastic.
And just so proud of our team.
I'm confident that no matter what the future brings, that we have the team and we have what it takes to manage through whatever the future may bring.
Now, let me turn to our earnings results at Avista Utilities.
Our earnings were above expectations primarily due to the timing of the recognition of income taxes.
And over at AEL&P, their earnings remain on track to meet the full year guidance.
And in our other business, we've had a great year so far, and we are pleased with our investments.
They produced significant gains in 2021, exceeding expectations.
We continue to expect these investments to contribute $0.05 to $0.10 per diluted share going forward.
In regards to regulatory matters during the third quarter, we concluded our Idaho and Washington general rate cases with rates effective September one and October 1, respectively.
We are pleased with both Commissions' support of our ongoing investments in the infrastructure that serves our customers and offers us the opportunity to continue to provide our customers with safe and reliable and affordable energy without immediately impacting customer bills.
However, we did get -- we did not get recovery of certain operating expenses through the Washington general rate cases.
In October, we filed our general rate case in Oregon.
We have proposed that the increase in base revenues included in the rate case be fully offset for a 2-year period with tax customer credits of the same amount, resulting in no impact to customer bills.
Early in the first quarter of 2022, we expect to file general rate cases in Washington, both electric and gas.
They will be multi-year rate plans as required under the new law, and we will seek to include in rates all capital investments and expected operating expenses through the end of the rate plan period in an effort to earn our allowed return by 2023.
In other regulatory filings, we were the first utility to file its Clean Energy Implementation Plan with the Washington Commission in October.
Our plan sets the course for an equitable transition to clean energy and provides a road map for specific actions to be taken over the next four years to show the progress we're making toward achieving clean energy goals established by the Clean Energy Transformation Act or CETA.
And that plan is available on our website under the Clean Energy Future tab, and there's a good executive summary there if you have interest in checking that out.
Focusing back on earnings, we are confirming our consolidated earnings guidance for 2021 and 2023 of $1.96 to $2.16 per diluted share for 2021, and $2.42 to $2.62 per diluted share for 2023.
We are lowering our consolidated guidance by $0.10 per diluted share in 2022 to a range of $1.93 to $2.13 per diluted share.
We look forward to seeing everybody down at EEI as well and talking about our company, which we're excited about.
For everybody's reference, the Blackhawks are on a one game winning streak.
I can only say that because it's the only game they won this year.
We've had a tough start.
But for us, at Avista, the third quarter has been a good quarter for us.
As we mentioned, Avista Utilities is up, we have $0.13 a share compared to $0.08 in the prior years.
But this is really primarily due to income taxes and how we record the timing of such income taxes, and we expect that outperformance to offset in the fourth quarter to back to normal performance for Avista Utilities.
The ERM, the energy recovery mechanism in Washington had a pre-tax expense of $3.8 million in the third quarter compared to a benefit in the prior year.
And for the year-to-date, we've recognized an expense of $7.1 million compared to a benefit of $5.9 million.
But when we look at it for the year compared quarter-over-quarter, last quarter, we expected for the full year to be a negative $0.08, and we currently expect it to be a negative $0.09.
So it's really just a slight move in our expectations over the year, within the year, and we had a big recognition in the quarter though.
For capital expenditures, we continue to be committed to investing the necessary capital, as Dennis mentioned, in our utility infrastructure.
We currently expect Avista Utilities to spend about $450 million in 2021 and $445 million in '22 and '23 to continue to support customer growth, and maintain our system to provide safe, reliable energy to our customers.
To fund that capital, we expect to issue approximately $140 million of long-term debt and $90 million in equity in 2021.
$70 million of the debt has already been issued.
We issued that and also $61 million of the common stock has been issued through September.
During 2022, we expect to issue $370 million of long-term debt, which is really covering a $250 million maturity and then also $90 million of common stock, which will help us fund our capital expenditures and maintain a prudent capital structure.
As Dennis mentioned, we are confirming our '21 and '23 guidance, but we're lowering '22.
And as we look at it, for lowering '22, there are a few factors.
As he mentioned earlier, we didn't get all the recovery.
We believe we had a fair order in our Washington rate case and our Idaho rate case, and we had many big projects that Kevin will be able to answer questions on in the order in Washington, but we didn't -- so we got our capital, we believe in a fair way, but we had some operating expenses that we were not allowed to recover.
We believe that we'll be able in our next case.
We expect to file our next case in -- early in the first quarter of '22, and we expect that case to be completed by the end of '22 if the normal timing works.
And we believe we'll be able, as Dennis mentioned, to get our capital and our operating expenses for the rate period in that rate case.
With respect to our guidance range at Avista -- we expect Avista for '21, we expect Avista Utilities to contribute in the range of $1.83 to $1.97 per diluted share.
And primarily due to the impact of the ERM, as I mentioned earlier in my comments, we expect to be down about $0.09.
We expect to be near the bottom of the range at Avista Utilities.
Our current expectation is to be in a surcharge position in the 90% customer/10% company band, which is expected to decrease earnings by $0.09.
In addition, based on our year-to-date results, we expect to be above the top end of our range with respect to our other investments.
We had, as Dennis mentioned, significant gains.
We've had strong performance in our investments that we've been investing for the last several years.
A number of different investments, not just one, a number of different investments had positives, and we expect to be above the top end of the range.
So when you add that together with AEL&P matching their expectations, we expect to be near the middle of our range for 2021, including the negative impact of the ERM.
For 2022, we are lowering our guidance due to the lower recovery of certain costs.
And those costs really included insurance costs, increases in labor as we've seen inflationary pressures impacting labor and other costs, IT costs and certain Colstrip-related costs.
Early in -- in the first quarter of '22, we do expect to file our general rate case, and it will, as Dennis mentioned, be a multi-year plan as required by our new law, and we will seek to include all of our capital and projected operating expenses for the planned period to allow us to have the opportunity to earn our allowed return by 2023.
As always, our guidance assumes, among other things, timely and appropriate rate relief in all of our jurisdictions as well as normal operating conditions and does not include any unusual or non-recurring items until they're known and certain.

user
compname reports q3 earnings per share of $0.20.
q3 earnings per share $0.20.
lowering consolidated guidance by $0.10 per diluted share in 2022 to $1.93 to $2.13 per diluted share.
lowering 2022 guidance due to lower recovery of certain operating costs in washington general rate cases, and higher operating costs.

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