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Text: We will begin today with comments from Entergy's Chairman and CEO, Leo Denault; and then Drew Marsh, our CFO, will review results.
In an effort to accommodate everyone who has questions, we request that each person ask no more than two questions.
Management will also discuss non-GAAP financial information.
Today, we are reporting quarterly results that keep us firmly on track to meet our financial commitments.
Third quarter adjusted earnings were $2.45 per share.
With good visibility into the rest of the year, we are narrowing our 2021 guidance range and $5.90 through $6.10 per share and expect to achieve 2022 and 2023 results in line with our outlooks.
Further, we are extending our outlooks to include 2024 and see our steady predictable growth of five percent to seven percent continuing through this period.
Additionally, we achieved the milestone of raising our dividend by six percent and aligning with our earnings growth.
This happened on the schedule we previously communicated and represents another commitment met.
We have developed a more resilient business.
And despite $65 million of nonfuel revenue losses in the third quarter due to Hurricane Ida, we are maintaining our financial commitments.
Our resiliency provides stability that is valuable to all of our stakeholders, particularly customers and owners.
The quarter was heavily impacted by Hurricane Ida, which made landfall as a strong category for hurricane bringing powerful destructive wins across New Orleans, Baton Rouge and beyond.
Our coastal communities were particularly hard hit by both strong winds and storm surge.
Ida disrupted the lives and businesses of many of our customers and communities and Entergy was there to help when they needed us.
We gathered a restoration force of 27,000, our largest ever, representing Entergy employees, contractors and mutual assistance crews from 41 states across the country.
Further gratitude goes to our employees who worked restoration despite their own homes being damaged by Ida.
They epitomize what it means to put our customers first.
I never cease to be amazed by the dedication and effectiveness of the many restoration workers who step away from their lives for weeks at a time to help our customers and communities get their lives and livelihoods back up and running again.
Despite Ida's wins creating significant damage and destruction across our power grid with close to one million peak outages, our team restored customers at a rapid pace.
In just over a week, we had roughly half of all customers restored.
Metro areas like New Orleans and Baton Rouge saw restoration essentially completed by day 10.
Within three weeks, more than 98% of all affected customers were restored.
And it's easy to lose sight of the fact that this restoration was successfully accomplished while dealing with the effects of the pandemic.
Entergy also helped our customers and communities throughout the recovery process by developing -- or deploying 165 commercial scale generators to power critical community infrastructure like medical facilities, gas stations, grocery stores, municipal water systems and community cooling centers in advance of power being restored.
In addition to restoration work, Entergy's employees contributed countless hours to their communities and Entergy shareholders committed $1.25 million to help affected communities rebuild and recover.
While power has been restored to customers who can safely take it, our job is not finished.
We are committed to minimizing the effects of Ida on our customers' bills.
We will work with our regulators to seek securitization of Ida storm costs, which is a proven and low-cost means of recovery.
Further, we are coordinating with key officials and stakeholders, including Louisiana Governor Edwards, The City Council of New Orleans, Louisiana Public Service Commission, Louisiana Congressional Delegation and the Biden administration to seek federal support that could offset the cost of our customers for Ida in the 2020 storms.
There is widespread alignment among state and local leaders on the compelling case that Louisiana has to obtain federal support.
We are fully aligned with this perspective.
To be clear, any federal funding that Entergy utilities obtain will reduce the customer obligation dollar for dollar.
We're also committed to mitigating the impacts of future storms.
Entergy has made significant transmission and distribution investments, nearly $10 billion over the last five years, which made our system more resilient.
We've seen those new investments perform well under the most challenging conditions.
Wind damage to our transmission structures, for example, has occurred most almost exclusively to older structures built to prior standards.
It has become clear that major weather events of all types are occurring more frequently and with greater intensity.
Hurricane Laura made landfall as the strongest storm to hit the Louisiana Coast since 1856.
Then exactly 12 months later, Hurricane Ida hit with almost equal force.
Our resilient standards and asset programs have never been static, and we've continued to evolve them.
And as I mentioned, our investments are working as designed.
However, the uptick in severity and frequency of storms is compelling us to take a fresh look at how we can make our system more resilient, including the pace at which we can achieve it.
Even prior to Ida, we are actively deploying multiple options along the resiliency scale, particularly for our service areas south of I-10 and I-12, which has the greatest exposure to hurricane-strength winds and flooding.
Evaluating these resiliency options needs to be done under future climate scenarios.
And we are taking into account important considerations such as customer affordability and sufficiency of materials and skilled labor.
This customer-driven investment will be significant, and we will work collaboratively with our regulators and other stakeholders to determine the optimal path forward.
Coming back to the quarter, I would like to highlight that despite dealing with a major storm, the business continued to run well without missing a beat.
We've made great progress in several open proceedings.
First, Entergy Arkansas filed a unanimous settlement for its formula rate plan, and the Arkansas Commission has agreed to cancel the hearing and take up the settlement based on the filed testimony, which is positive.
New rates in Arkansas will be implemented in January.
In New Orleans, we recently implemented rates at the level that reflected all adjustments proposed by the council's advisors so there are no further proceedings there.
We also are pleased to note that Entergy Arkansas reached a settlement with key customers of its Green Promise tariff filing.
If approved, this tariff will enable us to offer green solutions to meet the growing sustainability demands of our customers.
And we're making progress on other open proceedings.
In Entergy Louisiana, its FRP rates went into effect.
Entergy Arkansas received approval for the West Memphis Solar project.
Entergy Texas reached an unopposed settlement on its 2020 storm cost filing.
And Entergy Texas also filed for approval of the Orange County Advanced Power Station.
And the Louisiana 2020 storm recovery and securitization process remains on track.
We continue to make progress on decarbonizing our fleet.
We've announced five gigawatts of solar in our supply plan through 2030 with a goal of doing more.
And an update to our supply plan and renewables growth will be provided next week at EEI.
In addition to healthy meeting -- in addition to helping meet decarbonization goals, the cost of renewable resources relative to conventional resources continues to trend favorably, and renewable resources provided an important edge against rising and volatile natural gas prices.
We will provide more details around our latest resource plans at EEI.
Last quarter, I discussed ways in which Entergy can help our industrial customers meet their sustainability goals.
While many have expressed long-term goals like net-zero by 2050, even more have developed shorter-term interim goals that will require action by the end of the decade.
Clean electrification is one of several important tools that our industrial customers have as a means to achieve their objectives.
Clean electrification provides a great opportunity for load growth and will require significant capital investment in renewable generation, transmission and distribution.
The load growth that comes with electrification will help pay for incremental customer-centric investments.
We'll have more to discuss regarding the opportunity we have to help our customers meet their sustainability objectives next week at EEI.
While it is important to discuss these longer-term growth opportunities, I want to make sure we don't lose sight of the very solid based investment plan that we have in front of us.
Over the next three years, we have a $12 billion capital plan that is designed to deliver reliability, resilience and improve customer experience and environmental and cost efficiency benefits to our customers.
When paired with our well-defined regulatory constructs, our plan will deliver five percent to seven percent adjusted earnings per share growth for our owners over the next three years.
That's a very solid base plan.
And beyond this strong foundation, these other opportunities in renewable generation, clean electrification and resilience acceleration will serve to extend our runway of growth throughout the rest of the decade.
We look forward to continuing the conversation with you at the EEI Financial Conference.
Now Drew will review the quarterly results.
Today, we are reporting solid results even with the challenges from Hurricane Ida.
Summarized on Slide five, our adjusted earnings per share was $2.45, slightly higher than a year ago.
We continue to execute our strategy, and we are firmly on track to meet our commitments.
In fact, with three quarters of the year behind us, we are narrowing our guidance range to $5.90 to $6.10.
We're also affirming our outlooks and extending the outlook period through 2024, and we recently raised our dividend to align with our adjusted earnings per share growth rate.
Turning to Slide six.
Our investments to improve customer outcomes continue to drive growth.
That includes rate changes to recover those investments as well as associated new operating expenses.
Industrial billed sales were 10% stronger than a year ago.
We saw increases across most segments with the largest increases in primary metals, petrochemicals, transportation, industrial gases and chlor-alkali.
This reaffirms the strength of our industrial customer base.
And in a world with supply chain constraints and higher energy prices, our industrial customers' businesses remain strong and competitive.
These industrial sales were strong despite Hurricane Ida.
Overall, across all classes, we estimate that third quarter revenues were approximately $65 million lower as a result of Ida.
Hurricane Laura's impact on third quarter 2020 was approximately half of that.
Other O&M was higher this quarter as planned.
This is partly due to higher costs for distribution operations, including reliability costs, higher expenses in our power generation function and higher health and benefit costs.
Moving to EWC on Slide Seven.
You'll see results were slightly lower than a year ago.
The key driver was the shutdown and sale of Indian Point.
Operating cash flow for the quarter is shown on Slide Eight.
The quarter's result is about $300 million higher than last year.
The increase is due largely to improved collections from customers, including collections associated with investments to benefit customers and Winter Storm Uri.
This was partially offset by expenditures related to higher natural gas prices.
Slide nine summarizes our credit and liquidity.
We expect to maintain our current credit ratings, and we continue to expect to achieve targeted rating agency credit metrics as storm restoration spending is securitized and we retire storm-related debt.
I'll take a minute to discuss our balance sheet, beginning with a quick update on Hurricane Ida on Slide 10.
Over the past several weeks, we've refined our cost estimates, and we've shaved $100 million off the upper end of the range.
The total cost is now expected to be $2.1 billion to $2.5 billion.
We've also updated our estimate of the nonfuel revenue loss to $75 million to $80 million, the lower half of our previous range.
While our net liquidity, including storm reserves remained strong at $4 billion, we are also working to ensure timely storm cost recovery.
That starts with a successful restoration effort and proceeds through two avenues.
First, Entergy Louisiana amended its 2020 storm filing to request an additional $1 billion to provide early liquidity for Hurricane Ida costs.
And in Texas, we reached a settlement on the 2020 storm cost filing and that is now before the PUCT.
Second, we have improved the efficiency of our storm invoice processing to accelerate our filings and ultimately, cost recovery.
We plan to complete financing for the 2020 storms by early next year and Ida by the end of next year.
And our work isn't over, we'll continue to identify ways to further reduce business risk.
As Leo highlighted, we are looking forward to a conversation with our customers, retail regulators and other stakeholders about how we best accelerate and implement a strong resilience plan.
We have already hardened more than half of our critical transmission and distribution structures along the Gulf Coast to standards implemented after Katrina and Rita, continue to move the bar higher by reevaluating current standards using the latest weather data.
In addition, a comprehensive resilience plan needs to include the strategic placement of assets to allow higher-risk communities to recover more quickly.
For example, MicroGrid's Distributed Energy Resources and the deployment of generators, Leo highlighted to certain critical customers and the aftermath of storms could be very helpful in supporting communities as they recover.
I go into more depth on this in our conversations with EEI.
In addition to physical resilience, our regulators know the importance of a healthy credit at the operating companies to support customers.
And they have put in place time-tested cost recovery mechanisms such as securitization and storm reserves to support that need.
We are fortunate that in looking to recover the 2020 and 2021 storm costs, we are starting with some of the lowest rates in the country.
We have significant electrification growth potential that could help pay for incremental customer-centric investments and future storm costs.
All of these will support our credit as our regulators and key stakeholders aligned with us around a strong, resilient acceleration plan.
In addition, we continue to execute on the exit of EWC, and we're less than a year from completing our plan.
The resulting improvements were recognized by S&P last fall through our improved business risk profile and by Moody's, just this past quarter through changes to our rating thresholds.
Those changes remain in place and our ratings reflect future storm risk.
As a result, we were able to reduce our 2021 to 2024 equity need.
Combined with our ATM transactions, our future equity need is more than 50% lower than the $2.5 billion communicated at Analyst Day last year.
Moving to Slide 11.
We have a clear line of sight on the remainder of the year.
And for the third year in a row, we are narrowing our adjusted earnings per share guidance.
In this case, for 2021 to $5.90 to $6.10.
We are also affirming our longer-term outlooks of five percent to seven percent adjusted earnings per share growth and extending the 2024.
Our confidence in our solid base plan continues to grow, and a key expression of that confidence is the dividend.
For the last several years, we've discussed our goal to align our dividend growth with our adjusted earnings per share growth.
Our Board of Directors recently declared a $0.06 increase in our quarterly common dividend, which is now $1.01 per share.
That's a six percent increase as planned.
We expect to continue this growth trend going forward, obviously, subject to Board approval.
That's good news for our owners to provide the capital needed to meet our customers' evolving needs.
Today, we are executing on key deliverables, and we have a solid base plan to meet or exceed our strategic and financial objectives.
In less than a week, Leo, Rod and I will be imported to meet with many of you in person for the first time in almost two years.
We'll provide our typical updates on considerations for next year's earnings expectations and will provide our preliminary three-year capital plan, including a positive update on our expectation for renewables.
We'll also talk about the significant long-term customer-centric investment beyond our current outlooks from renewables, clean electrification and acceleration of our system resilience.
We're excited about these opportunities ahead and look forward to talking to you about all of it at EEI.
And now the Entergy team is available to answer questions.

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q3 adjusted non-gaap earnings per share $2.45.
narrowed its 2021 adjusted earnings per share guidance to a range of $5.90 to $6.10.

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