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Text: We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures.
Several other executives will be available for the Q&A session.
We had another strong quarter, and I'm excited to talk to you about our progress on many different fronts.
Yesterday, we reported third quarter 2021 GAAP earnings of $0.85 per share.
Our operating earnings were $0.82 per share, which is above the top end of our guidance range.
Our customer-focused strategies, positive mix of weather-adjusted load, great operational performance and financial discipline continue to drive solid results.
Furthermore, I'm proud of our progress to resolve important legacy issues and strengthen all aspects of our company.
In Ohio, we continue to take a collaborative approach, and we're engaged in settlement discussions with a broad range of parties to resolve several of our pending cases before the PUCO.
Our meetings continue to be productive, and we're making good progress.
We are also making progress on the Ohio corporate separation, DMR and DCR audits.
The corporate separation audit report was filed on September 13 and showed no findings of major noncompliance.
The expanded DCR audit report is due by November 19.
And we continue to work through the DMR audit, which is now due on December 16.
Since our last earnings call, we've taken additional steps to strengthen our compliance program and instill a culture focused on ethics, integrity and accountability across our organization.
These include: a new Compliance & Ethics Program Charter and policies in multiple areas; instructor-led business Code of Conduct awareness training for senior leadership and individuals with significant roles in our control environment; training on the concepts of our new internal Code of Conduct for everyone in leadership, with training for all employees planned in the first quarter of 2022; and publishing our new corporate engagement report.
Additionally, we have started to develop a new integrated risk management platform to enhance our ethics and compliance, audit and risk functions.
The new tool will help us streamline case management of ethics and compliance concerns, manage the life cycle of corporate policies, assess and respond to risks, and report on our compliance with internal controls and regulatory requirements across the organization.
As we've discussed, over the last 12 months, our Board and management team acted quickly and decisively, adding additional independent board members, making changes in our management structure, establishing effective controls, reinforcing our culture change and building a best-in-class ethics and compliance program.
Our relentless focus in these areas resulted in remediation of the material weakness in internal controls associated with our tone at the top.
While this is an important step, we continue driving these cultural changes and keeping compliance and integrity at the center of everything we do.
We are working every day to continue rebuilding stakeholder trust and confidence in FirstEnergy and to ensure that our employees can be proud of our company and our mission.
Yesterday, we announced another key hire to enhance our leadership team.
Camilo Serna will join FirstEnergy on November eight as our new Vice President of Rates and Regulatory Affairs.
Camilo brings a great depth of experience, developing and implementing state and federal regulatory strategies.
His experience will be invaluable as we build a smarter electric grid and support the transition to a cleaner energy future.
We continue taking steps to achieve these goals.
For example, last month, JCP&L submitted a proposal to PJM and the New Jersey BPU for transmission investments that would connect clean energy generated from the state's offshore wind farms to the power grid, while minimizing the impact on the environment and communities.
We expect a decision on this proposal, which supports the clean energy investments driven by the New Jersey Energy Master Plan in the second half of 2022.
In West Virginia, we recognize our responsibility to operate our two regulated fossil plants for the benefit of our customers in the state.
Later this year, we intend to file an effluent limitation guideline, or ELG plan, that calls for additional capital expenditures at the two plants to comply with environmental rules and to ensure that they can continue to operate beyond 2028.
At the same time, we intend to begin discussing with stakeholders our plans for a timely clean energy transition.
As a part of that transition, later this year, we plan to file with the West Virginia Public Service Commission for 50 megawatts of utility scale solar generation.
Our wind connection and solar proposals support core components of our climate strategy, building a more climate-resilient energy system that meets our customers' changing needs, enables the transition to a carbon-neutral economy and powers a sustainable and prosperous future for our stakeholders.
In the other recent regulatory activity, this month, our ATSI transmission subsidiary reached a settlement with parties to a FERC proceeding that will address legacy issues associated with ATSI's move from MISO to PJM in 2011 and provide for partial recovery of the MISO transmission project costs that will be allocated to ATSI in the future.
It's an exciting time for our company.
We have a robust long-term pipeline to modernize our transmission network, and we plan to continue embracing renewables.
In our distribution business, we're incorporating emerging smart technologies and building a technologically advanced distribution platform.
And our industry will play a key role in the infrastructure build-out for electric vehicles, battery storage and other technologies.
We're pleased with our strong performance through the first nine months of 2021.
As we close out the year, we are raising and narrowing our operating earnings guidance from $2.40 to $2.60 per share to $2.55 to $2.65 per share.
The midpoint of this range represents a 9% increase over 2020 operating earnings results.
Finally, I can't pass the call over to Jon without acknowledging that it's been one year since I stepped into my leadership role under very sobering circumstances.
It's been a challenging year on many fronts.
I continue to be impressed by the grit and the resilience of the entire team.
Together, we are building positive, sustainable momentum, and creating a new FirstEnergy that is a forward thinking and industry-leading company.
Now Jon will provide a review of third quarter results and a financial update.
Yesterday, we announced GAAP earnings of $0.85 per share for the third quarter of 2021 and operating earnings of $0.82 per share.
As Steve mentioned, this exceeded the top end of our guidance range.
In our distribution business, results for the third quarter of 2021 as compared to last year reflect the absence of Ohio decoupling and lost distribution revenue, which totaled $0.04 per share as well as lower weather-related usage.
These were partially offset by higher revenues from our capital investment programs, new rates from our JCP&L distribution base rate case and lower operating expenses.
Consistent with the trends we've discussed over the last few quarters, total distribution deliveries increased on both an actual and weather-adjusted basis compared to the third quarter of 2020.
While weather was hotter than normal in our region this summer, it was cooler in the third quarter of 2020.
Weather-adjusted residential sales for the third quarter of 2021 were essentially flat compared to the third quarter of 2020 as many of our customers continue to work from home.
Comparing our results to the pre-pandemic levels in the third quarter of 2019, weather-adjusted residential usage was nearly 6% higher this quarter.
While the commercial and industrial classes have not yet recovered to levels we saw before the pandemic, they are starting to trend in the right direction.
Weather-adjusted commercial deliveries increased 3% while industrial load was up nearly 4% compared to the third quarter of 2020.
Industrial load increased in most of the sectors in our service territory this quarter, led by steel, chemical and fabricated metal.
In our regulated transmission business, we continue to see benefits from higher transmission investments at our MAIT and ATSI subsidiaries as part of our Energizing the Future program.
However, this was offset by higher interest from the debt issuance at FET earlier this year and a prior year formula rate true-up.
And in the Corporate segment, results reflect lower O&M and benefit expenses.
For the first nine months of 2021, operating earnings were $2.10 per share compared to $2.07 per share in the first nine months of 2020.
The increase was driven by our ongoing investments in our distribution and transmission systems, higher weather-related usage and lower expenses.
These items more than offset the $0.17 of decoupling and lost distribution revenues recognized in the first nine months of 2020.
Our strong results and financial discipline have resulted in year-to-date adjusted cash from operations of $2.4 billion, which represents an increase of $600 million versus last year.
While we expect a few offsets in the fourth quarter, we now expect cash from operations of approximately $2.8 billion for the year, which includes approximately $300 million of investigation and other related costs, the largest of which is associated with the $230 million EPA settlement.
Earlier this month, we successfully restructured our revolving credit facilities from a 2-facility model to 6, fulfilling our commitment to complete this action before the end of the year.
The 2021 credit facilities provide for aggregate commitments of $4.5 billion and are available until October of 2026, with two separate 1-year extensions.
The credit facilities and their sublimits are detailed in the strategic and financial highlights.
We are also pleased that following the restructuring of these facilities, S&P issued a one notch upgrade to the 10 distribution companies and the three transmission companies.
While we're glad to return to investment-grade ratings for these companies with all three rating agencies, we remain committed to improving our balance sheet and the overall credit profile at the parent company.
We previously communicated that we were targeting FFO to debt in the 12% to 13% range.
We're raising that target to be solidly at 13%, which will provide ample cushion to the new Moody's threshold of 12%.
And we expect to set the company on a firm glide path to mid-teens.
On a number of recent calls, we've communicated that we're contemplating a minority asset sale as we consider alternatives to raise equity capital.
Currently, we are engaged in a process to sell a minority interest in our transmission holding company, FirstEnergy Transmission, which owns ATSI, MAIT and TrAILCo.
The interest is very strong and preliminary indications are very supportive of our financial plan and targets.
But given where we are in the process, we can't comment any further on the details.
We continue to evaluate all options to raise equity capital in an efficient manner to support our longer-term outlook, which includes traditional rate base growth and formula rate investments, planned rate case activity, and incremental and strategic capex that supports the transition to a cleaner electric grid.
We are optimistic that we'll be in a position to share our overall financing plan and our longer-term outlook within the next couple of weeks.
In fact, you may have noticed that we've expanded the information in the appendix of our strategic and financial highlights document.
Given the current status of the proposed asset sale, we recognize that the fact book will be more relevant once we can include the outcome from that transaction.
During the fourth quarter, we expect to provide you with 2022 guidance and a detailed capital plan, along with the runway of our FFO-to-debt target, longer-term capital forecasts, and targeted rate base and earnings growth rates.

user
sees fy non-gaap operating earnings per share $2.55 to $2.65.
q3 gaap earnings per share $0.85.
operating (non-gaap) earnings for q3 of 2021 were $0.82 per share.

assistant