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: They are based on management's assumptions, which may or may not occur.
We expect to file our 10-Q -- or 10-K, excuse me, later today.
This teleconference is being recorded and will be available on our website following the call.
Please note, these calls are designed for the financial community.
2021 was a year of success for our company, and we continue to build on our fundamental strengths in our gas and water utilities group, and we launched a competitive renewable natural gas business.
For 2021, we reported net income of $2.56 per share, which is an 11% increase compared to net income from continuing operations of $2.30 per share in 2020.
New rates in Oregon drove results for the natural gas utility, along with solid customer growth, and we saw higher revenues at our interstate storage business.
This financial growth is a product of multiyear efforts, a keen focus on our long-term plan and proof that consistent progress yields positive results.
We also see positive momentum in our local Portland Metro Area economy.
Unemployment rates in this area declined to 3.9% in December 2021, compared to 7.3% a year ago.
And single-family housing activity remains very strong.
Home sales were up 10% during 2021 compared to 2020, with the average sales price up 16%.
And new single-family permits issued were up 12% with multifamily permits up 37% in Oregon this past year compared to the prior period.
Construction and development remained robust in our region.
This translated into over 11,000 new customers connecting to our gas system during 2021 for a growth rate of 1.5%.
Our water and wastewater utilities also continued to grow.
Strong residential housing construction, primarily in Idaho and Texas, translated into a 3% organic customer growth rate.
We also closed four acquisitions in 2021.
Most notably, we acquired a stake in the largest privately held water company here in Oregon.
The combination of organic growth and acquisitions increased our water utility connections by nearly 30% last year.
Now a few comments on gas facility.
On November 1, new rates for gas utility customers went into effect for the current heating season.
That included the impact of the general rate case we concluded in the State of Washington.
Despite these increases, our customers continued to pay nearly 30% less for their natural gas today than they did 15 years ago.
And this reflects the decline in commodity costs, energy efficiency efforts and prudent expense management, along with smart investments in gas storage assets that continue to reap benefits for customers.
The result, natural gas continues to maintain its competitive position of fuel of choice.
Added to its performance benefits, natural gas enjoys up to a 60% price advantage over an electric or oil formats for the typical home we serve.
And our customers are central to our success at Northwest Natural.
That's why I'm thrilled Northwest Natural ranked second best among large natural gas utilities in the J.D. Power Residential Customer Satisfaction Study.
This continues a nearly 20-year legacy of outstanding results.
I'm proud of all of our employees who make this exceptional service happen every day.
And as you know, growth is not always linear, and in certain years, the focus will be on initiatives that set stage for future growth.
2022 for us is such a year.
To that end, 2021 and 2022 include robust capex plans related to crucial spend for safety and reliability, technology system upgrades and cybersecurity investments.
To recover these long-planned project costs, we took the necessary step at the end of 2021 and filed in the rate case.
The request includes a revenue requirement increase of $73.5 million based on a 50-50 cap structure and ROE of 9.5% and a cost of capital of about 6.7%.
We filed an increase in average rate base of $294 million since the last rate case.
The Oregon Commission and stakeholders have 10 months to review the case, and we expect new rates to be effective November 1.
At the same time, we continue to make progress under the Landmark Oregon Senate Bill 98 Legislation, which supports renewable energy procurement and investment by natural gas utilities.
I'm happy to report we signed an agreement with Archaea to procure RNG on behalf of our customers in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Northwest Natural also recently committed -- excuse me, completed commissioning the first of four RNG projects with Tyson Foods and BioCarbN.
Construction on our second facility began this month with commissioning slated for early 2023.
To date, we signed agreements with options to purchase or develop RNG on behalf of our customers, totaling about 3% of Northwest Natural's current annual sales volume in Oregon.
I am very proud of the progress we've made in less than two years.
To put it in perspective, today, wind and solar account for about 11% of our total nation's electricity supply after decades of investment.
We intend to continue to take these critical steps to source more and more of our supply for renewables, knowing that our customers want a decarbonate system and a clean energy future.
A new survey conducted by an independent leading opinion search -- research firm showed that 77% of Oregon and Southwest Washington voters want access to all forms of energy, renewable energy, hydro, wind, solar and renewable natural gas for a balanced low-carbon future.
In fact, 78% of voters value the natural gas system for its critical role in lowering emissions with both affordability and reliability and, of course, resiliency as top priorities.
And nearly 80% of owners support local government's efforts to encourage the use of natural gas.
Creating value across all of our businesses allowed our board of directors to increase our dividend for the 66th consecutive year.
Our annual dividend -- indicated dividend rate is now $1.93 per share.
We are very proud to provide returns to our shareholders and be one of only three companies on the NYSE with this record.
I will begin by discussing the highlights of the fourth quarter and full year 2021 results and conclude with guidance for 2022.
I'll describe earnings drivers on an after-tax basis using the statutory tax rate of 26.5%.
As a reminder, Northwest Natural's earnings are seasonal with the majority of revenues and earnings generated in the first and fourth quarters during the winter heating months.
For the quarter, we reported net income of $40.5 million or $1.32 per share, compared to net income of $45.8 million or $1.50 from continuing operations for the same period in 2020.
The decrease in net income over last year was driven by results of our gas utility, which posted a $0.15 per share decline in earnings.
The other businesses posted a $0.03 per share decrease in earnings, driven by higher business development costs.
Lower earnings at the gas utility were primarily related to higher operations and maintenance and depreciation expenses, partially offset by new rates in Oregon and Washington.
Utility margin in the gas distribution segment increased $4.5 million as a result of the new rates and customer growth.
Utility O&M increased $5.7 million, reflecting higher levels of expense for payroll and benefits, contractor and professional services and information technology upgrades.
Utility and depreciation and general taxes increased $1.6 million due to higher property, plant and equipment as we continue to invest in our system.
For the full year 2021, we reported net income of $78.7 million or $2.56 per share, compared to net income from continuing operations of $70.3 million or $2.30 per share for 2020.
This $0.26 per share increase was driven by both the gas utility, which contributed an additional $0.16; and our other businesses that contributed an additional $0.10 per share.
Higher earnings at the gas utility were primarily related to new rates in Oregon and Washington, along with customer growth.
Utility margin increased $30.7 million as higher customer rates and customer growth contributed $30.9 million.
This was partially offset by a loss from the gas cost incentive sharing mechanism as we purchased higher-priced gas during the February '21 cold weather event.
Utility O&M increased $14.2 million, driven by higher employee compensation and benefit costs, lease expenses for our new operations and headquarters building and higher costs related to information technology system upgrades.
Depreciation and general taxes increased $9 million.
Net income from our other businesses increased $3 million, largely due to higher asset management revenues from the cold weather event in February.
For 2021, cash provided by operating activities was $160 million, an increase of $15 million compared to last year.
We invested $300 million into the business, most of which was for the gas utility capital expenditures.
Our balance sheet remains strong with ample liquidity.
Moving on to 2022 financial guidance.
Gas utility capital expenditures for the year are expected to be in the $310 million to $350 million range, including significant projects related to system reinforcement and technology upgrades.
These capital investments, coupled with higher forecasted expenses from technology and payroll, supported our decision to file the Oregon rate case with rates effective in November of this year.
Consistent with these business drivers, the company initiated 2022 earnings guidance today for net income in the range of $2.45 to $2.65 per share.
Guidance assumes continued customer growth, average weather conditions and no significant changes in prevailing regulatory policies, mechanisms or outcomes or significant changes in loss legislation or regulations.
We continue to see solid long-term growth in our natural gas and water utilities.
And as discussed last quarter, we've launched our competitive renewable natural gas business.
As a result, we are now targeting a long-term earnings-per-share growth rate of 4% to 6% from 2022 to 2027.
This past year, we made significant progress on our business strategy.
Our focus moving forward is clear: maximizing returns from our strong and growing regulated gas utility and positioning our business for incremental long-term growth by investing in water utilities and the competitive renewable natural gas business.
We'll keep our focus on the future, making sound investments today to ensure sustainable growth for tomorrow.
And to that end, we released our Destination Zero scenario report for the gas facility in November last year.
This report illustrates different possible scenarios to transform into a provider of carbon-neutral energy by 2050.
Kim Heiting, our senior vice president of operation, will touch on the details of this work in a minute.
But central to it is our belief that diversified energy system is more affordable, more reliable and importantly, more resilient.
Events in Texas and California are stark reminders of why two energy systems are better than one.
The electric and gas systems depend on each other to serve our communities, and each system provides different benefits.
In fact, by their nature, each system complements the other and hedges against certain risks, with wires above ground delivering renewable electrons and pipes below ground delivering renewable molecules.
This diversification helps us effectively meet different energy needs and will be even more important going forward as climate change and the potential for more severe weather post new risk.
With that, let me turn it to Kim to give a little bit more details on Destination Zero analysis.
Our Destination Zero analysis is the next evolution for us and built off our 2016 carbon savings goal for our customers' use, and the 2019 study we commissioned with the Environmental Consultant E3, Paris Climate Accord reduction targets by 2050.
Since then, we've continued to build on our internal carbon-modeling capabilities and evaluate new developments that allow us to evolve our thinking about the possibilities for our system.
In this new work, we evaluated multiple scenarios with technologies that exist today, some of which are further along the development path in Europe, but all of which are considered viable tools that we are either actively pursuing or evaluating now.
The three scenarios we modeled use both supply and demand side levers designed to achieve carbon neutrality for the emissions associated with our sales customers' energy use and future customer growth.
All of them use varying levels of renewable natural gas, clean hydrogen, synthetic gas and enhanced energy efficiency, including gas heat pumps and hybrid heating systems, as well as a conservative level of offsets and carbon capture.
We use different assumptions to tackle these components to stress test our ability to achieve carbon neutrality under different conditions and views of future technology adoption and availability of renewable supply.
We believe the most likely scenario will be a combination of activities that make usage more efficient and also reduce the carbon intensity of the energy we deliver.
And of course, all scenarios rely on the adoption of supportive policies over time to lower costs for technology innovations like renewable or clean hydrogen.
Driving that policy support is a focus of Northwest Natural and our industry going forward.
While our analysis and modeling continues to evolve as we progress through this transition, our view of the future remains consistent, which is a transformed gas system distributing renewable molecules, enabling our region's ability to achieve its ambitious climate goal in a reliable, resilient and more affordable way.
I'm very proud of our team and their efforts.
And under Kim's leadership, we're in a great place there.
I believe this is one of the first in-depth decarbonization scenario reports by gas utility, and it's a critical planning tool that helps us continue to make progress.
In addition to moving our gas utility toward a renewable future, last year, we also launched a competitive renewable natural gas strategy and formed a new non-regulated subsidiary, Northwest Natural Renewables.
By forming this new organization, we are committed to leading the energy transition and providing renewable natural gas to the utility, commercial, industrial and transportation sectors.
We're focused on providing cost-effective solutions to help these sectors decarbonize using existing waste streams and renewable energy resources.
As you know, we're in the beginning of a historic energy system transformation, and we're confident the demand for renewable fuels is going to continue to grow.
We project the substantial increase in renewable natural gas demand to meet voluntary and compliance-driven targets instituted by states and utilities.
We see promising investment potential in RNG and believe we're well-positioned to help fulfill this need as it aligns with our core competencies and is a natural extension of our sustainability efforts.
We're also an attractive counterparty for developers and feedstock owners seeking a reliable, long-term strategic partner.
Most RNG projects are sized right for us to effectively transact and to provide meaningful growth and cash flow.
And as you know, we've already taken our first steps with a 20-year RNG supply agreement and a total of $50 million investment.
I'm excited to announce that as of the end of January, Mike Kotyk joined our team to lead our competitive RNG efforts.
Mike brings more than 25 years of experience in this sector, and I know we're ready and resourced to pursue these opportunities.
In conclusion, we intend to remain disciplined and focused as we assess other RNG investments to support the energy transition and provide additional earnings and cash flow growth for the company.
Turning to our water utility business.
Since announcing our initial transaction four years ago, we solidified our water strategy and increased the number of customers we serve fivefold through nearly 20 acquisitions across four states.
And we're not stopping there.
Last year, we signed purchase agreements that will more than double our total number of connections.
And most notably, we signed our largest acquisition today to acquire Far West Water and wastewater utilities in Yuma, Arizona, which serves approximately 25,000 customers.
I'm pleased to expand into our fifth state and in a region that is fast growing.
The acquisition, subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year and be accretive to earnings per share after its full -- first full year of operations.
Just this month, we also announced additional agreements to acquire two water utilities near our existing systems in Texas.
And central to the water utility business is strong and collaborative relationship with regulators, and we've been pleased with their support to consolidate this fragmented industry with final approval of acquisitions and recovery for prudent investments for safety and reliability.
We remain excited about the investment potential for this business, and we look forward to more announcements soon.
So in conclusion, your company is financially strong, and I'm pleased the opportunities in the renewables and water sectors have allowed us to increase our long-term earnings-per-share growth rate of 4% to 6%.
We intend to continue working on your behalf to pursue sustainable growth.

user
q4 earnings per share $2.56.

assistant