You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: We have Kevin Fletcher, our President and CEO; Scott Lauber, our Chief Operating Officer; Xia Liu, our Chief Financial Officer; and Beth Straka, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations.
John will provide you with more detail on our financial metrics in just a few minutes.
But first, I'm pleased to report that we delivered a record year on virtually every meaningful measure of performance, from customer service to network reliability to earnings per share, despite the challenges posed by the Covid19 pandemic.
Our focus on efficiency and financial discipline and an encouraging rebound in energy demand during the second half of the year resulted in the highest net income from operations, and the highest earnings per share in Company history.
And throughout the difficulties of a pandemic year, we also accelerated our support for the communities we serve.
In total, our companies and foundations donated more than $20 million dollars to non-profits across our service area, including more than $2 million to direct Covid19 relief efforts.
We also made significant progress on diversity and inclusion.
We spent a record $303 million with diversifiers during the year, and through our Board refreshment, 46% of our Board members now are women and minorities.
In addition, we set new aggressive goals as we continue to improve our environmental footprint.
In fact, I'm pleased to report that based on preliminary data for 2020, reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 50% or (technical difficulties) 2005 levels.
And we have, as you know, a well-defined plan to achieve a 55% reduction by the end of 2025.
Over the longer term, expect to reduce carbon emissions by 70% by 2030, and as we look out to the year 2050, the target for our generation fleet is net-zero carbon.
Our new five-year capital plan lays out a roadmap for achieving these goals, we call it our ESG progress plan.
The largest five-year plan in our history.
It calls for investment in efficiency, sustainability, and growth, and it drives average annual growth in our asset base of 7% with no need for additional equity.
Highlights of the plan include 1,800 megawatts of wind, solar, and battery storage that would be added to our regulated asset base in Wisconsin.
And we have allocated an additional $1.8 billion to our infrastructure segment, where we see a robust pipeline of high-quality renewable projects, projects that have long-term contracts with strong creditworthy customers.
All in all, our plan positions us to deliver among the very best risk adjusted returns our industry has to offer.
And now, let's take a brief look at the regional economy.
There was, of course, an unusual year for everyone, but many of our commercial and industrial customers proved to be quite resilient, providing essential products and services such as food, plastics, paper, packaging, and electronic controls.
The latest available data show Wisconsin's unemployment rate of 5.5%.
That's more than a full percentage point better than the national average.
And as we look to the year ahead, we see positive signs of continued growth.
For example, Green Bay Packaging is building a major expansion of its mill in northeastern Wisconsin, the $500 million addition, and is expected to be completed later this year.
The Foxconn Komatsu Mining, Haribo, and Milwaukee Tool projects that we've reported to you in the past are all moving forward as well.
So, we remain optimistic about the strength of the regional economy and our long-term sales growth.
Finally, I know many of you are interested in our rate case calendar for the year ahead.
As you know, under normal circumstances, our Wisconsin utilities would be filing rate reviews later this spring for energy rates that would go into effect on January 1, 2022.
Of course, we're in the middle of anything but normal times, and I can tell you that we've begun discussions with the Commission staff and we'll be talking with other major stakeholders to determine whether a one-year delay in the filing would be in everyone's best interest.
I expect the final decision on this around the end of the first quarter.
Turning now to sales.
We continue to see customer growth across our system.
At the end of 2020, our utilities were serving approximately 11,000 more electric and 27,000 more natural gas customers compared to a year ago.
Retail electric and natural gas sales volumes are shown beginning on Page 17 of the earnings packet.
Overall retail deliveries of electricity, excluding the iron ore mine, were down 2.1% compared to 2019, and on a weather normal basis, deliveries were down 2.9%.
Natural gas deliveries in Wisconsin decreased 7.9% versus 2019.
And by 2.4% on a weather normal basis.
This excludes gas used for power generation.
On the electric side, you'll note the positive trend that we've seen in residential sales has continued.
Importantly, it has counterbalanced the weakness in small commercial and industrial sales caused by the pandemic.
Meanwhile, large commercial industrial sales excluding the iron ore mine were down 7.1% for the full year compared to 2019, on a weather normal basis.
However, these sales were only down 4.6% for the fourth quarter.
A notable positive trend reflecting the recovery of Wisconsin's economy.
Now, I'd like to briefly touch on our 2021 sales forecast for our Wisconsin segment.
We are using 2019 as a base for 2021 retail projections.
We're using 2019 because it represents a more typical year.
We are forecasting a decrease of 1.5% in weather normal retail electric deliveries, excluding the iron ore mine compared to 2019.
This would represent a 1.4% increase compared to 2020.
We expect large commercial and industrial sales to continue to improve and anticipate the same positive offsetting relationship between residential sales and small commercial industrial sales.
For our natural gas business, we project weather normalized retail gas deliveries to decrease by 2.4% compared to 2019, this leaves the projected sales outlook compared to 2020, relatively flat.
With this in mind, we remain focused on operating efficiencies and financial discipline across our business.
We lowered operations and maintenance cost by more than 3% in 2020 and we continue to adopt new technology and apply best practices.
We plan to reduce our operations and maintenance expense by an additional 2% to 3% in 2021.
I also have an update on our infrastructure segment.
The blooming Grove and Tatanka Ridge projects are in-service now and came in ahead of time and on budget.
As a reminder, our Thunderhead Wind investment is projected to go in service by the end of the third quarter.
We accept -- expect [Phonetic] this segment to contribute an incremental $0.08 to earnings in 2021.
Throughout 2020, we kept the energy flowing to our customers safely and reliably.
Our largest utility, We Energies, was named the most reliable electric company in the Midwest for the tenth year running, and our Peoples Gas subsidiary was named the most trusted brand and a customer champion for the second year in a row by Escalent, a leading behavior and analytics firm.
Now, I'll review where we stand on current projects in our ESG progress plan.
As you heard in our last call, the Two Creeks Solar Farm is now operating.
As we've mentioned, the very large project, in fact, just days after achieving commercial operation this past November, our share of this project accounted for more than 20% of the solar output in the entire MISO generation market.
Also, in Wisconsin, We Energies is making progress in the approval process for two liquefied natural gas facilities, which would provide enhanced savings and reliability during our cold winters.
If approved, we expect to be in construction in the fall of this year and to invest approximately $370 million in total to bring the facilities in operation in 2023.
And as Gale just mentioned, our ESG progress plan includes 1,800MW of wind, solar, and battery storage.
Filings with the Wisconsin Commission for a number of these projects will begin in the first quarter.
As you may recall, we were in the midst of a rate review for one of our smaller subsidiaries, North Shore Gas, which serves approximately 160,000 customers in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
Rates for North Shore Gas were last set more than five years ago before we acquired the company.
Since then, we have consistently invested capital to serve our customers while reducing operating costs.
The Illinois Commerce Commission has set a schedule for concluding the case.
Meetings are expected to begin in late April, with the final order in September.
We're confident that we can deliver our 2021 earnings guidance in the range of $3.99 a share to $4.03 a share.
This represents earnings growth of between 7% and 8% of our 2020 base of $3.73 a share.
And you may have seen the announcement that our Board of Directors at its January meeting raised our quarterly cash dividend to $0.6775 a share for the first quarter of 2021.
That's an increase, folks, of 7.1%.
The new quarterly dividend is equivalent to an annual rate of $2.71 a share and this marks the 18th consecutive year that our company will reward shareholders with higher dividends.
We continue to target a payout ratio of 65% to 70% of earnings, right smack dab in the middle of that range now, so I expect our dividend growth will continue to be in line with the growth in our earnings per share.
Next up, Xia will provide you with more detail on our financials and our first quarter guidance.
Our 2020 earnings of $3.79 per share increased $0.21 per share compared to 2019.
Our favorable 2020 results were driven by a number of factors, these included the execution of our capital plan rate adjustment at our Wisconsin utilities, ROE improvement at American Transmission Company, production tax credit in our infrastructure business, and continued emphasis on operating efficiency.
These factors helped us to overcome the sales impact of Covid19 and mild winter weather, and all of our utilities met their financial goals in 2020.
I'll walk through the significant drivers impacting our earnings per share.
Starting with our utility operations, grew [Phonetic] our earnings by $0.22 compared to 2019.
First O&M expenses were favorable.
This includes $0.08 from lower day-to-day O&M expenses and $0.09 from lower sharing amounts in 2020 at our Wisconsin utilities.
Second, despite the impact of Covid19 and reduced wholesale and other margins, rate adjustments at our Wisconsin utilities continue -- continued capital investment, and fuel drove a net 21% increase in earnings.
Third, we had $0.12 of higher depreciation and amortization expense and an estimated $0.05 decrease in margins related to mild winter weather year-over-year.
These factors partially offset the favorable items we discussed.
Overall, we added $0.22 year-over-year from utility operations.
Earnings from our investment in American Transmission Company increased $0.08 per share compared to 2019.
Recall that $0.07 of the $0.08 were driven -- were due to ROE changes from FERC orders issued in November, 2019, and May, 2020.
$0.04 resulted from the November 2019, order and $0.03 from the May 2020, order.
The penny came mainly from continued capital investment.
Earnings at our energy infrastructure segment improved $0.05 in 2020 compared to 2019, primarily from production tax credits related to wind farm acquisitions.
These include the Coyote Ridge Wind Farm placed in service at the end of 2019.
Additional 10% ownership of the Upstream Wind Energy Center and the Blooming Grove Wind Farm came online in early December.
Finally, you'll observe that we recorded a $0.09 charge in Corporate and Other to account for the make-whole premiums we incurred in the fourth quarter as we refinanced certain holding company debt to take advantage of lower interest rates.
The remaining $0.05 decrease is related to some tax and other items, partially offset by lower interest expense.
In summary, WEC improved on our 2019 performance by $0.21 per share.
Now I'd like to update you on some other financial items.
Our effective income tax rate was 15.9% for 2020, excluding the benefit of unprotected taxes flowing to customers, our rate was 20.2%.
Looking to 2021, we expect our effective income tax rate to be between 13% and 14%.
Excluding the benefit of unprotected taxes flowing to customers, we project our 2021 effective tax rate to be between 19% and 20%.
Adding past years, we expect to be a modest taxpayer in 2021.
Our projections show that we will be able to efficiently utilize our tax position with our current capital plan.
Looking now at the cash flow statement on page 6 of the earnings packet.
Net cash provided by operating activities decreased $149.5 million.
Our increase in cash earnings in 2020 more than offset by higher working capital requirements, primarily related to Covid19 and by higher pension contributions.
Total capital expenditures and asset acquisitions were $2.9 billion in 2020, a $345 million increase from 2019.
This reflects our investment focus in our regulated utility and contracted renewable businesses at our energy infrastructure segment.
In terms of financing activities, in the fourth quarter of 2020, we opportunistically refinanced over $1 billion of holding company debt, reducing the average interest rate of these notes from 3.3% to 1.5%.
We continued to demonstrate our commitment to strong credit quality.
As expected, our FFO to debt ratio was 15.4% in 2020.
Adjusting for the impacts of voluntary pension contributions and customer arrears related to Covid19, our FFO to debt was 16.9% in 2020.
At the end of 2020, our ratio of holding company debt to total debt was 28%, below our 30% target.
In addition, as Gale mentioned, we have no need for additional equity over the five-year forecast period.
Finally, let's look at our guidance for the first quarter of 2021.
Last year we earned a $1.43 per share in the first quarter.
We project first quarter 2021 earnings to be in the range of $1.45 per share to $1.47 per share.
We have taken into account mild went -- weather to-date and this forecast assumes normal weather for the rest of the footer.
For full year 2021, we are reaffirming our annual guidance of $3.99 to $4.03 per share.
All, we're on track and focused on delivering value for our customers and our stockholders.
Operator, we're ready to open it up for a little trash-talking and the Q&A portion of our conference call today.

user
reaffirming company's 2021 earnings guidance.

assistant