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Text: Speaking on the call today will be Tom Meissner, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Bob Hevert, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer.
The accompanying supplemental information more fully describes these non-GAAP measures and includes a reconciliation to the nearest GAAP measure.
The company believes these non-GAAP measures are useful in evaluating its performance.
Turning to Slide 4.
We provide an outline for topics to be covered in today's call.
Beginning on Slide 5.
Today, we announced net income of $0.3 million or $0.02 per share for the third quarter of 2020.
The company estimates that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic unfavorably impacted third quarter net income by approximately $0.01 per share.
Through the first three quarters of 2020, net income is $18.6 million or $1.25 per share.
For comparison purposes, recall that in the first quarter of 2019, the company recognized a onetime net gain of $9.8 million, or $0.66 per share, on the company's divestiture of its nonregulated business subsidiary, Usource.
Adjusting for this onetime gain, net income is down about $4.4 million or $0.29 per share compared to 2019.
The year-to-date decrease in earnings is primarily due to the warmer than normal winter weather in Q1, which unfavorably affected net income by approximately $3.1 million or $0.20 per share.
In addition to the warmer winter weather, we estimate that net income has been unfavorably impacted by approximately $0.04 per share due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Turning to Slide 6.
And similar to last quarter, I'd like to recap the company's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our highest priority continues to be the safety of our customers and of our employees.
In response to the ongoing pandemic, we implemented our crisis response plan to help execute preventive and proactive measures during which are during this unprecedented time and have also enacted a phased reopening plan.
The company is currently in its limited reopening phase and is still requiring all office employees to work remotely wherever possible.
The company also employed a large number of field workers to construct and maintain its energy infrastructure.
These workers have adopted new policies and personal protective equipment to ensure the health and well-being of themselves and of our customers.
Operationally, the company has continued to provide safe and reliable service throughout the pandemic.
Employees entering customers' homes are being routinely tested to ensure the safety of both our customers and our employees.
We quickly adapted to social distancing and other recommended guidelines while ensuring operational continuity and our workforce has seamlessly transitioned to work from home where appropriate.
Our employees have return to this extraordinary challenge while continuing to provide exceptional customer service.
In fact, after tropical storm Isaias, we were able to restore power to all of our customers within a 24-hour period.
An example of our best-in-class storm restoration system and our ability to adapt in order to serve our communities safely and reliably.
We've also been able to provide mutual aid to support other utilities in the region and their restoration efforts seven times this year.
I would also briefly point out that the states where we operate are managing the pandemic relatively well in comparison to other regions of the country.
The positive test rates in each of our states rank in the lowest 10 of all 50 states.
And less than half of the national average.
On Slide 7, we're pleased to announce that our 2020 corporate sustainability and responsibility report was recently issued on October 22.
This report expands on the inaugural corporate responsibility report released last year and outlines our vision for sustainability and explains how our business strategies will align with the environmental, social and economic expectations of our customers and communities.
This report also -- the reports to be published in the future will also define our objectives and strategies and report on key metrics to track our progress and illustrate the benefits to stakeholders.
Sustainability is central to our mission and vision, the interactive report can be found on our website at unitil.com.
Turning to Slide 8.
Our sustainability goals primarily fall under three categories.
First, we are focused on advancing the grid.
The need to reduce carbon emissions has driven a fundamental transformation within the energy sector, as customers adopt new technologies and as clean renewable energy resources are increasingly distributed across the electricity delivery system, the fundamental architecture of the electric grid must advance.
We are actively investing in five key areas that will support our objective of advancing the electric grid and transforming the customer experience.
This includes advanced metering, grid intelligence, distributed energy, customer services and innovative rate design.
These initiatives will provide customers with greater control and visibility into their energy use, enabling and will enable distributed energy resources, access to the system and advance the system security, safety and reliability.
The company also believes that natural gas remains key to a sustainable future as a cleaner and more affordable option for our customers.
We estimate that the impact over the last 10 years from our customers choosing natural gas rather than home heating oil has had the impact of taking roughly 60,000 cars off the road.
Nearly 2/3 of main households still rely on fuel oil as their primary energy source for home heating, a larger proportion than in any other state in the United States.
In New Hampshire, more than 2/5 of households rely on fuel oil, the second highest proportion of the nation behind Maine.
This unusually high penetration of fuel oil presents significant opportunities to reduce emissions through continued customer conversions to natural gas.
As we continue to expand the availability of natural gas to more customers, we also will continue to replace outdated infrastructure and modernize our gas system.
As a result, we decreased our fugitive emissions from natural gas distribution by 47 metric tons over the last two years, lowering our total generation of fugitive greenhouse gas emissions by 9% in 2019 when compared to 2017.
We also continue to look for opportunities to add renewable natural gas to our supply portfolio.
In Q3 of this year, we issued a request for expressions of interest to several parties to identify sources of existing or planned RNG resources.
We will continue to evaluate the viability of adding RNG into our supply.
Another area central to sustainability is creating a sustainable future through our people.
Finding and retaining quality, highly motivated employees is critical to our sustainability over the long term.
We are also committed to providing a safe and healthy working environment to our employees and our contractors and the public.
In fact, our safety metrics place us in the top 1/3 of our industry peers and have continued to improve over time.
Not only is it important to keep employees safe in the field, but also to ensure that they are respected in the workplace.
At Unitil, we strive to be an employer of choice for everyone regardless of race, religion, color, gender or sexual orientation by maintaining and accepting, respectful and nondiscriminatory workplace where people are encouraged to bring their unique perspectives to the table.
We believe the framework we've established from employee relations has been successful as backed by a recent employee survey where 90% of our employees report being proud to work for Unitil.
Our goal is to be the most technologically advanced utility in the region or the utility of the future.
Our vision and mission have grounded us during this historically uncertain time and will guide us to a clean and sustainable energy future as we provide energy for life.
Turning to Slide 9.
As I mentioned on last quarter's call, our investment forecast still has not changed as a result of the COVID pandemic.
In fact, compared to the prior year, we have increased our capital investment by more than 20%.
We anticipate continuing to realize strong rate base growth, given our broad investment opportunities and advancing the grid and supporting and modernizing our gas distribution infrastructure.
To provide one example where we are facilitating the integration of distributed energy resources and overall system efficiency.
We are installing a 2-megawatt utility-scale battery storage system in our Massachusetts service area.
This energy storage system has the ability to serve over 1,300 homes for over two hours and is designed to reduce peak loading on the substation equipment.
This project has a capacity representing over 2% of our system peak in Massachusetts and offers a solution to advanced grid operations control cost variability and aid in the overall system reliability as we support renewable energy solutions.
I'll begin with the sales and margin discussion on Slide 10.
Year-to-date 2020, our electric gross margin was $70 million, a decrease of $0.6 million compared to 2019.
The decrease in electric margin reflects lower C&I demand sales related to the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lower average usage per customer associated with energy efficiency and warmer winter weather.
We estimate the COVID-19 pandemic unfavorably affected electric margin by approximately $0.7 million.
Through the first nine months of 2020, total electric kilowatt hour sales increased 1.2% relative to 2019.
Residential sales increased 8.2% primarily reflecting stay at home orders and continuing remote work, along with warmer summer weather relative to the prior year.
C&I sales decreased 3.6%, reflecting lower usage due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moving to Slide 11.
For the first nine months of 2020, our gross gas margin was $83.3 million, a decrease of $2.2 million over 2019.
That decrease was driven principally by the historically warm winter weather in the first quarter, which we have discussed in the past.
The company estimates that year-to-date gas margin was lower by $3.2 million due to warmer weather.
We also estimate that the COVID-19 pandemic unfavorably affected gas margin by $1.3 million due to lower commercial and industrial usage.
Those unfavorable variances were partially offset by higher distribution rates and customer growth of $2.3 million.
Through the first nine months of 2020 natural gas therm sales decreased 7.1% compared to 2019.
We attribute the decline in gas sales to the historically warm winter weather and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company estimates that weather-normalized gas therm sales, excluding decoupled sales, were down 1.9% year-over-year.
I also note, we currently are serving 2.9% more gas customers than in the same time in 2019, illustrating our growing customer base.
Moving on to Slide 12, we provide an earnings bridge analysis comparing 2020 results to 2019 for the nine months period ending September 30.
As we've provided in the past, this layout is slightly different than the Form 10-Q as we isolate the effect of the Usource divestiture and related revenues and expenses.
As I noted, 2020 year-to-date gross margin -- excuse me, gross sales margin is lower than 2019 by $2.8 million.
Core operation and maintenance expenses decreased by $0.9 million compared to the same period in 2019.
This decrease primarily is due to lower employee benefit costs of $1.2 million as well as lower maintenance expense of $0.3 million, partially offset by higher bad debt expense of $0.4 million and higher professional fees of $0.2 million.
Depreciation and amortization was higher by $1.7 million, reflecting higher levels of utility plant and service.
Taxes other than income taxes increased by $0.9 million, reflecting property taxes associated with higher levels of net plant and service and a nonrecurring tax abatement realized in 2019 of $0.6 million, that increase was partially offset by $0.6 million of payroll credits realized in the third quarter associated with the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, also known as the CARES Act.
Interest expense decreased by $0.2 million, reflecting lower interest rates on short-term debt.
Other expense increased by $0.4 million due to higher retirement benefit costs.
Next, we've isolated the full Usource effect of $10.3 million, which was realized in 2019.
This includes the after-tax gain on the divestiture of $9.8 million and $0.5 million, reflecting the net of revenues and expenses realized through Usource operations in 2019.
Lastly, income taxes decreased $0.8 million, reflecting lower pre-tax earnings in the period.
Next, on Slide 13, we summarize the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are closely monitoring the pandemic and any potential effect on the company's financial health.
As Tom mentioned earlier, we estimate that the COVID-19 pandemic affected earnings per share by $0.01 in the quarter, bringing the year-to-date effect to $0.04 per share.
The combined effect on gas and electric sales margin was $0.8 million in the third quarter of 2020 and $2 million year-to-date.
The company has been able to largely offset the decline in revenue with lower expenses.
Although O&M expenses in the third quarter were minimal.
Year-to-date O&M expenses have been favorable by $0.7 million.
That favorable variance was driven principally by lower health insurance claims, slightly offset by higher pandemic costs related to PPE supplies and cleaning expenses.
As noted earlier, the company was able to lower taxes other than income taxes by $0.6 million by recognizing payroll tax credits associated with the CARES Act.
To help stakeholders gauge the potential effect of COVID-19 pandemic on sales margin, the company has provided sensitivities between usage and margin for the fourth quarter of 2020.
Now turning to Slide 14.
In the third quarter, we received proceeds of $95 million of long-term debt.
The debt was placed at our regulated subsidiaries and carries an average interest rate of 3.72% with a 20-year tenor.
The proceeds were used to refinance existing short-term debt and to better match the long-term nature of our utility plant assets.
As a result of the financing, we have liquidity of about $161 million, enabling the company to continue executing on our long-term plan.
On Slide 15, we are pleased to announce that our gas transmission pipeline, Granite State Gas, recently filed an uncontested rate settlement with the FERC providing for an annual revenue increase of $1.3 million, with rates to become effective in the fourth quarter of this year.
We reached that settlement with the New Hampshire and Maine state regulators and agencies.
The settlement includes a 3-year capital tracking mechanism that will accelerate cost recovery for investments made after the test year.
The settlement illustrates our healthy and productive relationship with state agencies and regulators.
Turning to Slide 16.
Our regulatory outlook in 2021 includes the planned filing of base rate cases in New Hampshire for both Unitil Energy, our electric distribution utility, and Northern Utilities, our natural gas utility.
We plan to file decoupling mechanisms in both cases.
If those mechanisms are approved, the percentage of our decoupled sales to total sales would increase from approximately 25% to 75%, and over 80% of our meters would be under decoupled rate structures.
Turning to Slide 17.
We believe that our long-term capital investment goals remain intact with ample investment opportunities in modernizing and expanding our utility system.
We believe we are well positioned to continue executing our growth strategies, while pursuing our sustainability goals, all while maintaining excellent service to customers throughout these unprecedented times.
Lastly, we expect to provide any updates to our capital spending plan during our Q4 earnings call.

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