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Text: Reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the appendix and posted on our website.
I'm pleased to share we've delivered another strong quarter and continue to be ahead of plan for the year.
I'll walk through the specifics in a moment, but I couldn't be more pleased with the strong execution demonstrated by the team, both operationally and financially.
We continue to deliver every day for our customers, coworkers and for you, our investors.
Earlier this month, we completed the sale of EnerBank, grossing over $1 billion in proceeds.
The sale of the bank simplifies and focuses our business model squarely on energy, primarily the regulated utility, an important step as we continue to lead the clean energy transformation.
The proceeds from this sale will fund key initiatives in our utility business related to safety, reliability, resiliency and our clean energy transformation.
As shared in previous calls, we have eliminated our equity needs from 2022 through 2024.
The keyword there, continued.
As we double down on the clean energy transformation, I'm also pleased to share that we received approval for our Voluntary Green Pricing program, which would add an additional 1,000 megawatts of owned renewable generation to our growing renewable portfolio.
This program is in high demand and currently oversubscribed.
And more importantly, it's what our customers are asking for, an important step in offering renewable energy solutions for our customers.
As we prepare for the grid of the future, we have a highly visible and detailed capital plans outlined in our recently filed electric distribution infrastructure investment plan.
This plan provides a 5-year view of the projects down to the circuit level where we plan to invest to ensure the reliability and resiliency of our electric infrastructure and aligns with our operational and financial plans.
As always, we balance these investments with customer affordability.
Our prices remain competitive as the average residential customer pays about $2 a day to heat their home and $4 a day to keep the lights on.
And because we know our most vulnerable customers still struggle, our team has mobilized resources at the state and federal levels to ensure their protection.
In fact, as we approach the winter heating season, our 90-day arrears are back to prepandemic levels with an 80% reduction in our uncollectible accounts.
Our commitment to identifying and eliminating waste means that we keep our prices affordable.
This commitment is evident in our results.
In the first nine months of this year, we surpassed our full year cost reduction target of more than $40 million.
The CE Way is in our DNA, and we continue to deliver savings in the near term and well into the future.
Speaking of the future, this year, we grew our EV program with PowerMIFleet.
This is part of our long-term planning in collaboration with Michigan businesses, governments and school systems looking to electrify their vehicle fleets.
Within just a few months of the program introduction, we were working with nearly 20 different customers on their fleets and have another 50 who have indicated interest in the next tranche, exceeding our expectations.
This is an important contribution to our long-term sales growth.
And finally, one of my favorites which speaks to our culture, our coworkers and our ability to attract the best talent.
Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion continues to be recognized nationwide and most recently by Forbes, where we were ranked the #1 utility in the U.S. for both America's best employers for women and #1 for diversity, delivering excellence every day continues to position the business for sustainable long-term growth.
Strong execution leads to strong results.
but two are linked.
One drives the other.
In early August, we experienced one of the worst storms in our company's history.
Our team established and into command structure to deploy resources and took decisive action to restore customers.
We had a record number of crews on our system.
The speed of our response led to the highest positive customer sentiment we have ever received during a major storm.
During the storm, we had more than 3,700 members of our team working around the clock to safely restore customers.
Like we do every year, through storms, pandemics, and on seasonal weather, we continue to deliver.
And when there's upside, we reinvest.
This is the CMS model of responding to changing conditions that allows us to deliver consistently year after year.
Year-to-date, we've delivered ahead of plan with adjusted earnings per share of $2.18 for continuing operations.
Our strong performance, coupled with the completion of the EnerBank transaction and the financial flexibility that provides -- gives us further confidence in our ability to meet our full year guidance, which we've raised to $2.63 to $2.65 from $2.61 to $2.65 for continuing operations.
For 2022, we are reaffirming our adjusted full year guidance of $2.85 to $2.87 per share.
And our continued strong performance in 2021 builds momentum for 2022 and beyond.
Longer term, we are committed to growing our adjusted earnings per share toward the high end of our 6% to 8% growth range as we highlighted on our Q2 call.
As previously stated, we are committed to growing the dividend in 2022 and beyond.
That's what you expect, why you own us, and we know it's a big part of our value.
As we move forward, we continue to see long-term dividend growth of 6% to 8% with a targeted payout ratio of about 60% over time.
Many of you have asked about gas prices and the impact on our business and more importantly, our customers.
Let me tell you about our gas business.
We have one of the largest storage field in the U.S. and compressing resources to match.
That is a significant advantage.
We started putting natural gas into our storage field in April and continued throughout the summer when natural gas prices were low.
Right now, our fields are full and ready to deliver for our customers' heating needs throughout the winter months.
Most of the gas is already locked in at just under $3 per thousand cubic feet, which is well below current levels in the spot market and offers tremendous customer value.
Given the operational certainty of storage as well as the financial protection of a pass-through clause, our customers stay safe and warm all winter long and have affordable bills.
Heat in Michigan is not an option.
And we don't leave it up to the market.
We buy, store and deliver.
That's what we do.
Michigan's strong regulatory construct is known across the industry as one of the best.
It includes the integrated resource plan process, which is a result of legislation designed to ensure timely recovery of the necessary investments to advance safe, reliable and clean energy in our state.
It enables the company and the commission to align on long-term generation supply planning and provide certainty as we invest in our clean energy transformation.
Here's what I like about our recently filed IRP.
There is a win in it for everyone.
It is a remarkable plan that addresses many of the interests of our stakeholders and ensure supply reliability.
It reduces costs and it delivers industry-leading carbon emission reductions.
We continue to have constructive dialogue with the staff and other stakeholders, and we anticipate seeing their positions later today.
I'm pleased to offer the details of another strong quarter of financial performance at CMS, as a result of solid execution across the company.
As a brief reminder, throughout our materials, we report the financial performance of EnerBank as discontinued operations thereby removing it as a reportable segment in reporting our quarterly and year-to-date results from continuing operations in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.
Now on to the results.
For the third quarter, we delivered adjusted net income of $156 million or $0.54 per share.
The key drivers for the quarter were higher service restoration expenses, attributable to the August storms that Garrick mentioned and planned increases in other operating and maintenance expenses in support of key customer and operational initiatives.
These sources of negative variance for the quarter were partially offset by favorable weather, the continued recovery of commercial and industrial sales in our electric business and higher rate relief net of investment-related expenses.
Year-to-date, we've delivered adjusted net income of $628 million or $2.18 per share, which is up $0.19 per share versus the first nine months of 2020, exclusive of EnerBank's financial performance.
All in, we continue to trend ahead of plan and have substantial financial flexibility heading into the fourth quarter.
The waterfall chart on Slide eight provides more detail on the key year-to-date drivers of our financial performance versus 2020.
For the first nine months of the year, rate relief continues to be the primary driver of our positive year-over-year variance to the tune of $0.45 per share given the constructive regulatory outcomes achieved in the second half of 2020 for our electric and gas businesses.
As a reminder, our rate relief figures are stated net of investment-related costs such as depreciation and amortization, property taxes and funding costs at the utility.
This upside has been partially offset by the aforementioned storms in the quarter, which drove $0.16 per share of negative variance versus the third quarter of 2020 and $0.11 per share of downside on a year-to-date basis versus the comparable period in 2020.
To round out the customer initiatives bucket, planned increases in our operating and maintenance expenses to fund safety, reliability and decarbonization initiatives added the balance of spend for the first nine months of the year, which, in addition to the August storm activity, added $0.35 per share of negative variance versus the comparable period in 2020.
As a reminder, these cost categories are still net of cost savings realized to date, which as Garrick mentioned, have already exceeded our target for the year with more upside to come.
To close out our year-to-date performance, we also benefited from favorable weather relative to 2020 in the amount of $0.07 per share and another $0.02 per share of upside, largely driven by recovering commercial and industrial load.
As we look ahead to the remainder of the year, we feel quite good about the glide path for delivering on our earnings per share guidance range, which has been revised upward to $2.63 to $2.65 per share, as Garrick noted.
As we look ahead, we continue to plan for normal weather, which in this case, translates to $0.06 per share of positive variance, given the absence of the unfavorable weather experienced in the fourth quarter of 2020.
We'll also continue to benefit from the residual impact of our 2020 rate orders, which equates to $0.07 per share and is not subject to any further MPSC actions.
And we'll make steady progress on our operational and customer-related initiatives which are forecasted to have a financial impact of roughly $0.07 per share of negative variance versus the comparable period in 2020.
Lastly, we'll assume the usual conservatism in our utility non-weather sales assumptions and our nonutility segment performance.
All in, we are pleased with our strong execution to date in 2021 and are well positioned for the remainder of the year.
Turning to Slide 9.
I'm pleased to highlight that this year's financing plan has been completed ahead of schedule.
In the third quarter, we issued $300 million of first mortgage bonds at a coupon rate of 2.65%, one of the lowest rates ever achieved at Consumers Energy.
We also remarketed $35 million of tax-exempt revenue bonds earlier this month at a rate of under 1% through 2026.
Due to the strong execution implied by these record-setting issuances coupled with the EnerBank sale, which provided approximately $60 million of upside relative to the sale price announced at signing, we now have the flexibility to reduce our equity needs for the year even further, which will now be limited to the $57 million of equity forwards we have already contracted.
Our simple investment thesis has stood the test of time and continues to be our approach going forward.
It is -- it's grounded in a balanced commitment to all our stakeholders, enables us to continue to deliver on our financial objectives.
As we've highlighted today, we've executed on our commitment to the triple bottom line through the first nine months of the year.
We're pleased to have delivered strong results.
We're positioned well to continue that momentum into the last three months of the year as we move past the sale of the bank and continue progress to the IRP process.
This is an exciting time at CMS Energy.
With that, Rocco, please open the lines for Q&A.

user
sees fy adjusted non-gaap earnings per share $2.63 to $2.65 from continuing operations.
reaffirms fy adjusted earnings per share view $2.85 to $2.87.
q3 adjusted earnings per share $0.54 from continuing operations.
q3 earnings per share $0.54 from continuing operations.
sees fy 2021 adjusted earnings from continuing operations in the range of $2.63 per share to $2.65 per share.
raised its full-year 2021 adjusted earnings from continuing operations guidance to $2.63 to $2.65 per share.
reaffirmed 2022 adjusted earnings guidance of $2.85 - $2.87 per share.

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