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Text: David Lesar, our CEO; Jason Wells, our CFO, will discuss the company's third quarter 2021 results.
Actual results could differ materially based upon various factors as noted in our Form 10-Q on their SEC filings and our earnings materials.
We will also discuss non-GAAP EPS, referred to as utility EPS, earnings guidance and our utility earnings growth target.
In providing these financial performance metrics and guidance, we use a non-GAAP measure of adjusted diluted earnings per share.
As a reminder, we may use our website to announce material information.
Information on how to access the replay can be found on our website.
Now I'd like to turn the discussion over to Dave.
As you know, we laid out our first ever 10-year plan back at our Analyst Day.
We expressed that and are reiterating today that we are a management team who can execute.
We believe we will continue to demonstrate that for you.
This marks my sixth quarter with CenterPoint and Jason's fifth.
I'd like to first start by laying out how we are building a consistent track record of delivery.
First, if you recall, the CenterPoint value proposition we laid out at our recent Analyst Day focused on our efforts to achieve sustainable earnings growth for our shareholders, sustainable, resilient and affordable rates for our customers and a sustainable positive impact on the environment for our communities.
I believe we are continuing down the path of achieving this value proposition.
Each quarter under the new CenterPoint leadership, we have met or exceeded quarterly utility earnings per share and dividend expectations.
We have increased our annual utility earnings per share guidance for both 2020 and 2021.
And as I will discuss shortly, today, we are increasing our 2021 utility earnings per share guidance once again.
Our 2021 through 2024 annual utility earnings per share growth rates of 8% are top decile among our peers, and we also expect to achieve at the mid- to high end of our 6% to 8% utility earnings per share guidance range each year from 2025 to 2030.
I am confident in our team's ability to achieve that growth.
Last year, we had a $13 billion 5-year capital plan.
We increased that to $16 billion in our 2020 Analyst Day.
In this year, we increased it yet again to $18 billion plus.
We introduced our first ever 10-year capital plan.
CenterPoint remains ripe with opportunities across our footprint to expand and harden our system to benefit customers and shareholders.
Our current 10-year plan contains no external equity issuances.
We will fund the equity portion of our capital needs to internally generated operating cash flows and our already announced strategic transactions.
We are also executing on our plan to become a pure-play regulated utility as we approach the closing of the Enable ET merger expected by the end of this year and then our subsequent sell-down of our midstream stake.
With the recent settlement agreement among the parties in Arkansas, we are also moving toward the completion of our LDC asset sale.
The remaining steps include the Oklahoma approval, which is anticipated to be received in November and the all-party settlement in Arkansas is expected to be approved by mid-December.
And with our newest announcement around our industry-leading ESG targets, we are on the path to executing our goals to be net 0 on direct emissions by 2035.
We continue to believe that this is an achievable path delivering for customers, regulators, investors and the environment.
In the third quarter of 2020, I said that I will not be satisfied until we are recognized as a premium utility.
In the theme of our Analyst Day was again establishing a path toward a premium.
I believe we are making tremendous strides down that path.
The storm headwinds of up to 90 miles an hour, leaving 470,000 of our Houston Electric customers without power.
Within three days, we had 95% of the power restored for those customers.
And within five days, the whole system was back online.
Now for this quarter's headlines.
Our year-to-date financial progress has been strong.
We are reporting a utility earnings per share beat and are raising our full year outlook this quarter.
For the third time this year, we are increasing our 2021 utility earnings per share guidance this time to $1.26 to $1.28 for the full year.
And for the first nine months, we've already achieved nearly 80% of that full year goal.
More importantly, we are still targeting an 8% annual growth rate for 2022 to 2024.
So this raises our guidance for 2022 utility earnings per share to $1.36 to $1.38.
For the third quarter of 2021, we reported $0.25 of utility EPS, which compares to $0.29 in the third quarter of 2020.
In the third quarter of this year, we had a onetime impact to earnings of $0.04 per share related to our most recent Board implemented governance changes.
Jason will get into more detail on the variances shortly.
As I mentioned earlier, we have increased our five-year capital plans to $18 billion plus over the next five years and $40 billion plus over the next 10 years.
This is nearly a 40% increase in our five-year capital investment plan since the third quarter of 2020.
This includes new opportunities that stem from the latest legislative session in Texas.
One of those opportunities was the ability to lease and put into rate base mobile generation units.
We move quickly on this opportunity and procured [Indecipherable] five-megawatt and 30-megawatt mobile generation units, some of which we were able to deploy during Hurricane Nicholas as backup while crews worked to repair our system.
And recently, during an ERCOT forecasted Texas wide load-shedding event, the Texas PUC [Indecipherable] to make sure our units were ready to support customers.
We were the first the utility in the state to act on this legislative opportunity and had them in place to utilize them in the way the law intended.
We look forward to mobilize quickly on the other tools provided to us by the Texas legislature to improve the resiliency of the electric grid and help reduce the risk of prolonged outages.
We already have an outstanding RFP for additional mobile generation, which could bring our total up to 500 megawatts and hope to have this procured in the coming months.
We believe that with the deployment of these additional tools, we will be able to mitigate some of the impacts of future extreme weather events on our customers.
Due to recent weather events in both Louisiana and Texas, we are running slightly behind on our capital spending plans on a year-to-date basis.
These weather events pulled away many of our contract crews, so they could provide mutual assistance to our fellow utilities, especially in Louisiana.
Therefore, while deployed elsewhere, they cannot work on our capital projects, but we have a catch-up plan in place and anticipate making the short fall of.
In anticipation of continued labor shortages and as we ramp up our capital plans in the coming years, we have now moved to procure additional contractor resources from multiple suppliers.
We believe that this will help to support continuity and crews on a long-term basis and reduce the impact of any labor disruptions in executing our $40 billion-plus capital spend over the next 10 years.
We remain committed to our continuous improvement cost management efforts and our target of 1% to 2% average annual reductions.
We've already realized the benefit of some of these improvements this year.
We stated in the second quarter that we could accelerate approximately $20 million of recurring O&M work forward from 2022 into this year if we had the available resources.
So far, we've achieved approximately 20% of this goal year-to-date and remain confident around our team's ability to continue to execute toward this goal for the balance of the year.
This allows us the luxury of reducing near-term run rate O&M costs which helps to mitigate rate pressures while maintaining continued focus on reliability and safety of our service for customers, all while sustaining growth for our shareholders.
In addition to O&M continuous improvement efforts, we are fortunate to operate in growing jurisdictions.
This combination plays a key role in keeping our growth plans affordable for our customers.
As we discussed during our Analyst Day, Houston is the fourth largest city in the U.S. and the only one of those four that's growing.
Houston's organic growth has been multi-decades long.
That organic growth rate continued for yet another quarter.
We are also seeing strong growth in many of our other jurisdictions as well.
On a year-over-year basis, we saw about 2% customer growth for electric and 1% for natural gas through September.
Again, this organic growth is the luxury, most other utilities just do not have.
Now let me shift gears and give a brief regulatory update.
A recent highlight in Indiana happened just this past week.
As part of our long-term electric generation transition plan, we received the CPCN approval from the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission for the first tranche of solar generation, 75% of which we expect to own and 25% due a PPA.
This approval shows the commission's alignment and support of our 2020 IRP, which bridges our coal generation into a mix of lower carbon and renewable sources.
We anticipate the CPCN decisions for our Gas CT plant in the second or third quarter of 2022 and the incremental solar PPA in the third quarter of 2022.
As outlined in our IRP, we are targeting to own approximately 50% of our total solar generation portfolio.
Our continued build-out of renewables is a key driver in achieving our net zero direct emissions goal by 2035.
Shifting to gas cost recovery from the February winter storm.
We continue to make progress.
And as we previously mentioned, we have mechanisms in place or have begun recovery in all jurisdictions.
We are happy to report that just this past week, we reached a settlement on the prudence proceedings supporting securitization of 100% of gas costs in Texas, including all of related carrying costs.
We look forward to the commission approval of the agreement.
We anticipate a financing order for the securitization bonds by the end of the year.
With this time line, we anticipate receiving the proceeds sometime mid next year.
In Minnesota, we started a recovery as of December and are working with stakeholders on ways to reduce the impact on our customers.
We filed a rate case earlier this week, and also proposed an alternative rate stabilization plan to address the unique set of circumstances customers are experiencing.
The full rate case requests $67.1 million per year, while the rate stabilization plan requests $39.7 million per year and an extended recovery period for winter storm costs.
The proposed rate stabilization plan would resolve the rate case and limit the bill impact on customers, in part by recovering the winter storm costs over a 63-month period.
We're asking the PUC to review and approve the stabilization plan by the end of this year, which would allow rates to take effect on January 1.
To summarize, we are working with stakeholders to align our focus on safety and related investments while minimizing the burden to our customers.
Largely as a result of mechanisms in our Houston Electric in Indiana South gas jurisdictions, we have recently received approval for $40 million of increased incremental annual revenue.
As discussed in our Analyst Day, we anticipate approximately 80% of our 10-year capital plans to be recovered through interim mechanisms, which demonstrates the constructive jurisdictions in which we operate.
In Texas, our PUC is now appointed a fourth commissioner.
Jason and I have now had the opportunity to meet all four commissioners and are very encouraged by the dialogue and expertise that all of these commissioners bring to the PUC.
We look forward to continued engagement with the commissions in all of our jurisdictions.
So those are the headlines for the quarter.
I remain excited about what's to come for CenterPoint.
We have a growing track of execution and believe it more than demonstrates what we can do in the near future and the unique value proposition that CenterPoint offers to you.
This marks my one year of earnings calls with CenterPoint and the story keeps getting better.
To reemphasize Dave's message, we are focused on establishing a track record of consistent execution, and I fully believe the best is yet to come here at CenterPoint.
On a GAAP earnings per share basis, we reported $0.32 for the third quarter of 2021 compared to $0.13 for the third quarter of 2020.
Looking at slide five, we reported $0.33 of non-GAAP earnings per share for the third quarter of 2021 compared to $0.34 for the third quarter of 2020.
Our utility earnings per share was $0.25 for the third quarter of 2021, while midstream investments contributed another $0.08.
Favorable growth in rate recovery, lower interest expense and reversal of the net impacts from COVID last year, each contributed $0.01 of favorability.
Board implemented governance changes recorded this quarter and another $0.03 of unfavorable variance attributable to weather and usage.
For context, we experienced 73 fewer cooling degree day in Houston for the third quarter of 2021 compared to the third quarter of 2020.
We estimate that each cooling degree day above normal has approximately a $70,000 a day impact in our Houston Electric business.
Turning to slide six.
For the first nine months, we've achieved nearly 80% of our full year 2021 utility earnings per share guidance, which we are now raising to $1.26 to $1.28.
And as Dave said, we are also raising our utility earnings per share guidance for 2022 to $1.36 to $1.38, which is an 8% increase from our new 2021 estimates.
Looking beyond that, we are focused on delivering 8% annual utility earnings per share growth through 2024 and at the mid- to high end of our 6% to 8% annual utility earnings per share range over the remainder of our 10-year plan, strong growth each year and every year, no CAGRs for earnings.
The last thing I'll mention for this quarter is the share count.
Our preferred Series B shares converted into 36 million common shares as of September 1, further reducing the number of share classes outstanding.
We expect the conversion will have no impact on earnings as the increase in shares is effectively offset by the termination of our Series B dividends.
Going forward, I want to reiterate we have no external equity included in our current [Indecipherable] and only expect our share count to modestly increase from dividend reinvestment or incentive plans.
Now I want to offer some color on the capital plans supporting our rate base and utility earnings per share growth.
We've spent approximately $2.3 billion year-to-date on capital investments.
As Dave mentioned, we had some slight delays due to recent weather events and are focused on making that up over the coming months.
We outlined on our Analyst Day the three buckets that we are investing in, safety, reliability and growth and enabling clean investments that are included in our $40 billion plus 10-year capital investment plan.
This investment profile should benefit our shareholders, our customers and the environment.
We see those opportunities weighted nearly 60% toward investments in our electric business throughout the plan.
While we are slightly behind the capital plan on a year-to-date basis, we are in the midst of ramping up to a sustained increase in our capital investments and we are restructuring contract crews in a way that helps support our labor needs to execute this level of investment.
We are confident we will make up the shortfall by early 2022.
Moving to the financing updates.
Our current liquidity remains strong at $1.8 billion, including available borrowings under our short-term credit facilities and unrestricted cash.
Our long-term FFO to debt objective remains between 14% and 15%, aligning with Moody's methodology and is consistent with the expectations of the rating agencies.
As mentioned during the Analyst Day, it's our intention to stay within this range throughout the course of our long-term plan.
Lastly, as we near the end of the calendar year, we are getting incrementally closer to the expected closing of the strategic transactions we've announced.
We recently filed a settlement in Arkansas that represents an agreement among all parties.
We anticipate that Arkansas Commission will issue its final approval by mid-December.
In Oklahoma, a hearing was held on November 3, and we expect a final order soon.
Finally, as Energy Transfer expressed on their earnings call earlier this week, the Enable and Energy Transfer merger is also expected to close before year-end.
Once that transaction closes, we will remain absolutely focused on reducing and then eliminating our exposure to midstream through a disciplined approach.
Analyst Day, we anticipate being fully exited from the midstream sector by the end of 2022.
We will then be nearly a pure-play regulated utility.
As we continue to express, we take our commitment to be good stewards of your investment very seriously and realize our obligation to optimize stakeholder value.
And with that, we look forward to more of these shorter earnings calls in the future.
As you heard from us today, and others from our full management team during the Analyst Day, the outlook for CenterPoint just keeps getting better.
As I said, we now have six quarters of meeting or exceeding expectations, but we believe there is much more to come.
We are demonstrating the pathway to premium, and we hope that you will be on board with us as a shareholder when that happens.
We will now take a few questions being mindful of today's earnings schedule and the upcoming EEI conference.

user
q3 non-gaap earnings per share $0.33.
q3 earnings per share $0.32.
utility earnings per share guidance range for 2022 raised to $1.36 - $1.38.
reiterating 8% utility earnings per share annual growth rate target for 2022 through 2024.
raising 2021 non-gaap utility earnings per share guidance range to $1.26 - $1.28.

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