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Great Plains Energy Inc. (NYSE: GXP ) Q2 2015 Earnings Conference Call August 7, 2015 9:00 a.m. ET Executives Lori Wright – VP of IR and Treasurer Terry Bassham – Chairman, President and CEO Jim Shay – SVP, Finance and CFO Analysts Ali Agha – SunTrust Paul Ridzon – KeyBanc Shar Pourreza – Guggenheim Partners Brian Russo – Ladenburg Thalmann David Paz – Wolfe Research Operator Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Great Plains Energy Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference may be recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host for today’s conference, Ms. Lori Wright. You may begin. Lori Wright Thank you, operator, and good morning. Welcome to Great Plains Energy’s second quarter 2015 earnings conference call. Today, Terry Bassham, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jim Shay, Senior Vice President, Finance, and Chief Financial Officer will provide an overview of our second quarter results. Scott Heidtbrink, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of KCP&L and Darrin Ives, Vice President, Regulatory Affairs are also with us this morning, as our other members of our management team who will be available during the question-and-answer portion of today’s call. I must remind you of the inherent uncertainties in any forward-looking statements in our discussion this morning. Slide 2 and the disclosure in our SEC filings contain a list of some of the factors that could cause future results to differ materially from our expectations. I also want to remind everyone that we issued our earnings release and second quarter 2015 10-Q after the market closed yesterday. These items are available, along with today’s webcast slides, and supplemental financial information regarding the quarter on the main page of our website at greatplainsenergy.com. With that, I’ll now hand the call to Terry. Terry Bassham Thanks, Lori. And good morning everybody. As you saw in the 8-K that was filed yesterday, we are announcing a change in our officer team. Jim Shay will be leaving the company effective September 2 to take a new role as CFO at Hallmark Cards here in Kansas City. It’s truly been an honor and pleasure to work with Jim and we appreciate his leadership. Replacing Jim as Senior Vice President Finance, Strategy and Chief Financial Officer will be Kevin Bryant. Many of you know and have already worked with. Kevin is currently our Vice President, Strategy Planning and has been with Great Plains Energy for 12 years. His responsibilities at the company include Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer and Vice President of Energy Solutions. He is very eager to assume his new responsibilities and in particular working with each of you. I hope you’d join me to wishing Jim the best in his new opportunity and welcoming Kevin to his new role. On our call this morning, we will discuss our second quarter results and provide an update on KCP&L’s rate cases in Missouri and Kansas. We’ll also give an operations update and an overview of Transource’s new project in West Virginia. I will begin with Slide 4 in the presentation. Yesterday, we announced second quarter 2015 earnings of $44 million or $0.28 per share compared to $52 million or $0.34 per share in 2014. Drivers for the quarter included favorable operations and maintenance expense, positive weather normalized demand growth and milder weather with cooling degree days 15% below the second quarter 2014. We also reaffirmed our 2015 EPS guidance range of $1.35 to $1.60. Jim will discuss more details on the quarter in his comments. On the regulatory front, KCP&L’s rate cases are on schedule to be completed during the third quarter. In Missouri evidentiary hearings were completed in July and founder reply briefs were filed earlier this week. KCP&L’s initial request in revenue increase of $120.9 million was subsequently adjusted to $112.7 million as a result of updates to the case and negotiated partial stipulations and agreements. As a reminder, KCP&L’s request is based on a return of equity of 10.3%. Missouri Public Service Commission staffs recommended revenue increase ranges in the $76.8 million to $87.3 million predicated on our ROE range of 9.0% to 9.5%. The partial stipulations and agreements that have already been approved by MPSC resolved several issues in the case. The remaining unresolved items include ROE as well as the company’s ability to utilize a fuel clause and trackers for property taxes and critical infrastructure protection standards or CIPS cybersecurity expenses. In Kansas, evidentiary hearings concluded in June and reply briefs were filed earlier this week. KCP&L requested a revenue increase of $67.3 million based on a return of equity of 10.3. The Kansas Corporation Commission staff recommended a revenue increase of $44 million based on an ROE of 9.25. Turning to the Missouri case, we were able to resolve a majority of the issues in our Kansas case and partial stipulations and agreements were filed in June. The agreements include the ability for KCP&L to implement a transmission delivery charge rider and a CIPS cybersecurity tracker. Stipulations and agreements have yet to be approved by KCC. With most of these issues settled, ROE remains as one of the few unresolved items in the Kansas case. We anticipate new rates to be effective in both KCP&L’s jurisdictions by the beginning of the fourth quarter of the year. You can find summaries of the rate cases in the appendix of this presentation. We remain confident in our ability to deliver constructive regulatory outcomes in our current proceedings, reinforcing our commitment to deliver 4% to 6% earnings growth from 2014 to 2016. In addition, we remain on target to grow rate base to 6.5 billion by 2016. Turning to operations. Earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Agency issued the final standards for its Clean Power Plan. As we analyze the more than 1500 page document we are getting a better understanding of the plan and its potential impact. Although KCP&L and the electric power industry have spent more than a year working with EPA on a viable solution, the final version of the Clean Power Plan has significantly changed from the draft, we will continue evaluating the new rules. In recent months, our service territory has been impacted by the number of severe weather events, including a storm in late June that led to our largest customer outage since 2002. Storms uprooted or caused significant damage to over 50,000 trees, left over 150,000 customers without power. Our employees and our neighboring utilities worked diligently and safely to restore power to our customers, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their efforts and execution. I will wrap up with a few comments on transmission. We are pleased that Transource, our joint venture with AEP, was selected by PJM to develop the competitive portions of the thoroughfare area project in West Virginia. Construction on the 60 million 138 KV line is expected to begin in 2017 and to be in service in 2019. This win in the emerging competitive transmission market combined with its existing SPP projects reinforces our belief that Transource is well-positioned to successfully compete and deliver innovative solutions. I’ll now turn the call over to Jim to discuss our financial performance. Jim Shay Thank you, Terry and good morning everyone. I will begin with Slide 6 which presents a comparison of the second quarter and year-to-date earnings-per-share results for 2015 compared to 2014. As Terry indicated, our second quarter 2015 earnings was $0.28 per share compared to $0.34 per share last year. Lower operating and maintenance expense, positive weather normalized demand growth and new retail rates in Kansas were positive drivers that were more than offset by milder weather, decrease in AFUDC and increases in depreciation and amortization. For the year-to-date period, earnings were $0.40 per share compared to $0.49 per share last year. Through the first half of 2015, we’ve seen favorable O&M expense driven by diligent cost management and lower cost at Wolf Creek, related to the planned 2014 mid-cycle maintenance outage and lower refueling amortization. For the second half of 2015, we expect our O&M expenses to increase above the 2014 level. Consistent with our 2015 guidance, we expect overall O&M for the full year to increase 3% to 4% which include increases in regulatory amortizations and items which have direct revenue offsets. As a reminder, the O&M items with direct revenue offsets include our Missouri Energy Efficiency Investment Act programs. These investments allow us to invest in our customers by providing long-term energy solutions and ability to generate shareholder returns. We recover program costs and a throughput disincentive for these programs, which is included in our gross margin. Our projected O&M increase for the full-year 2015, exclusive of regulatory amortizations and items which have direct revenue offsets, is 1% to 2%. Turning to Slide 7. As we think about the third quarter compared to a year ago, we will be impacted by a decrease in AFUDC and increasing O&M. We will also expect continued lag from property taxes, transmission costs and depreciation until new rates are in effect. Lower natural gas prices are negatively impacting off-system sales, which have an earnings impact to KCP&L and Missouri, where we do not have a fuel clause. As Terry discussed, KCP&L’s ability to utilize a fuel clause is one of the remaining items to be determined by the commission in the Missouri rate case. A fuel clause would mitigate the exposure to off-system sales going forward. Finally, in the third quarter of 2014 we had unrecognized tax benefits that will have an unfavorable year-over-year comparison. As a result of these drivers, we expect third quarter 2015 earnings will be lower than the same period in 2014. Weather normalized demand, net of the impact of our energy efficiency programs, was up 1.2% for the quarter and up 0.6% year-to-date through June. The results are in line with our full year projection of flat to 1.5% net of energy efficiency. Year-to-date we’ve seen strong residential and commercial demand partially offset by lower industrial demand which has the lowest margin among the sectors. The Kansas City region has experienced 47 consecutive months of seasonally adjusted job growth and in June the unemployment rate of 5.3% was below the national rate of 5.5%. Construction is well underway at Cerner Corporation’s new Trails Campus in South Kansas City. The first two towers which will accommodate more than 3500 employees are under construction and a move-in date likely in early 2017. Over the next 10 years, a total of 16 new buildings containing 4.7 million square feet of office space supporting approximately 16,000 employees are planned, making it the largest economic development project in Missouri’s history. On the industrial front, we were impacted by a customer relocating to a more energy-efficiency facility within our service territory and a general decrease in usage from a handful of customers. Demand at Ford’s Kansas City assembly plant remains strong. Sales of Ford’s F-150 pickup truck had benefitted from gasoline prices that are near a five-year low. The Ford plant is operating with three shifts to keep up with demand for the F-150 America’s best-selling vehicle. On the capital markets front, we expect to issue long-term debt at KCP&L this year with no plans at this time to issue equity. We are reaffirming our 2015 earnings-per-share guidance range of $1.35 to $1.60. We are on plan to deliver on our financial objectives for the year and we remain confident in our ability to deliver 4% to 6% earnings growth from 2014 to 2016. Thanks for your time this morning. We would now be happy to answer any questions you may have. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Ali Agha of SunTrust. Ali Agha Terry or Jim, in the past, I had a call coming out of the last rate case cycle, you had mentioned that target earnings power for the company, should be between 50 to 100 basis point lag from the authorized ROE. Is that still a good rule to think about as we come out from this better [ph] rate cycle? Terry Bassham Yes, I think that’s what we’ve said all along, as the first year out of the case you should see that kind of range. Obviously what can affect your ability to deliver within that range, so it will be based on the outcomes of these cases. A few issues around riders and trackers and things like that. But certainly coming out as we did in the last cycle, the year after should be better matched to our historical test year. Ali Agha And then on the riders, trackers, fuel adjustment clause, any insights into how the commission may be looking at that, any sense of or conviction level in terms of the ability to get those this time around? Terry Bassham Well obviously we’re still awaiting an order, so probably little premature to have handicapped those. I would say that they remain very important to us. You can see some things that have happened in other cases that could indicate where they ruled on those before. But I will again remind you that we did get the CIPS tracker in Kansas and that’s a positive going forward for sure. We certainly – Commonwealth [ph] is expected to see those orders and rates implemented in this quarter. Ali Agha And assuming you do get those trackers and fuel adjustment clause, is it possible for you to hold on to that earned ROE in the following year like in ‘17 or is that just the natural lag in the way things work that you see some slippage as you go beyond the – on to the next year from the rate case? Terry Bassham Well obviously depend on which of the trackers, obviously we feel confident and think it important that we get the fuel factor itself in Missouri. There is a transmission piece and in the other asks we’ve made. Obviously if we’ve got all of the trackers, riders and asks we’ve made in that front makes it easier the second year, the extent you don’t get on this certainly makes it more difficult. What I would say to you is that if the — we don’t get those riders and trackers because they are considered general rate case type ask we will have to file rate cases on a much more frequent basis and we will do that. That was our response in this case with our prior asks and so what you’ll see from us if we are not allowed to deal with those in that manner is filing general rate cases much quicker. It’s just the nature of what we would assume is an indication from the commission. Ali Agha And lastly can you just remind us when you talked about the ’14 to ‘16 earnings growth outlook, can you just remind us what that base for ’14 is? Jim Shay It’s $1.60, off of the original guidance range. $1.60 was the bottom end of the original guidance range. Operator And our next question comes from Paul Ridzon of KeyBanc. Paul Ridzon Jim, congratulations on your new position and new role. I wish you the best of luck. It’s been a pleasure working with you over the years. Jim Shay Thank you. Paul Ridzon Quick question. How much of a headwind is not having the Missouri fuel clause? Terry Bassham Well, obviously it would be a disappointment and in the way we believe we’re entitled to it, it’d be a great disappointment candidly. In terms of actual financial effect, we already talked about the fact that we would have to file case again pretty quickly and at this point with off-system sales which are embedded in that being a very low level and an update on coal cost at the time it wouldn’t be a bigger drag as it historically has been. But it certainly would be one more challenge we’d have to face but we would again quickly file as appropriate ask for that in the next case. Paul Ridzon So just historically you had a fuel clause but you had to give it up as part of the deal. Is this how you treat, correct? Terry Bassham No, not really. Back in ‘04 when the original comprehensive energy plan was signed, there weren’t fuel clauses in Missouri. There was some discussed legislation that could create that. And so as we finalized the comprehensive energy plan and the deal, if you will, included gives and takes on both sides. It was agreed by the company not to ask for a fuel clause if and when legislation provided for that for our 10 year period. So that brings us to 2015 as our first opportunity to ask for it. Paul Ridzon And just on the transmission and property tax in Missouri, where does that stand as far as legislation or are you seeking more of a regulatory solution at this point? Terry Bassham Well again we’ve asked for both of those in the case. We will know again this quarter the result of that request from a commission standpoint, certainly if we’re not allowed to get those from the commission’s standpoint that would become part of our legislative agenda for the upcoming session. Operator And our next question comes from Brian Chen [ph] of Bank of America. Unidentified Analyst On the thoroughfare area project, can we get a sense of the spending pattern for that? Is there a ramp up as you sort of gear, should we think about even spending between now and ’19, just a little bit more color there would be great? Terry Bassham It will be about $60 million that will get spent from the period of from 2017 to 2019 would be the run rate. Unidentified Analyst And just as a clarification, the $60 million is the investment opportunity for Great Plains or is that the investment opportunity for the entirety of the project? Terry Bassham For the entire project. Great Plains will have 13.5% of that. Unidentified Analyst And Jim, hey congratulations on the new position. I’m just glad that I won’t have to potentially wear a Kansas Jayhawks tie again. Operator [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Shar Pourreza of Guggenheim Partners. Shar Pourreza Just one question, I am curious to get a refreshed viewpoint a little bit on sort of the requested ROE adjustment mechanism that Westar filed and obviously the staff recommended against it but also left it open for potential generic proceedings. I am curious to see if that’s something you would potentially look to go after with your Kansas utility? Terry Bassham Yes, I can mean, obviously each case presents its own issues and opportunities, that was a request from Westar that they left open, and certainly to the extent that there was a discussion on a more statewide level we would want to participate, work with both the commission and the staff and Westar to discuss that opportunity. Shar Pourreza Has conversations begun as far as the joint collaboration yet or is it too preliminary? Terry Bassham The cases they don’t file, settlement just happened. So we’ve been busy getting ready for this call. Operator And our last question comes from Brian Russo of Ladenburg Thalmann. Brian Russo Just curious if we could just talk some more about the lower gas prices and the sensitivity on the wholesale sales at the Missouri utilities. Could you just give us a sense of kind of like the total amount of wholesale sales in terms of megawatt hours, just kind of the mechanics of that, like what’s the base line that the sensitivity is based off of? Terry Bassham We don’t really have a lot of information in the public domain with respect to specifics but you recall in the last case we got offset of off-system sales established in rates and relative to over or under performance we will either get the benefit or give up an opportunity. And we have seen some pressure on gas prices this year which has been putting some pressure on off-system sales but in the upcoming rate case we will get a – we will get that trued up and hopefully a fuel clause and eliminate that volatility moving forward. But we really don’t have any numbers in terms of actual sensitivity in the public domain. And recall that the prices obviously were at lows, so I mean opportunity hopefully will be that they would tick up a little bit but – Operator I am showing a question from David Paz of Wolfe Research. David Paz I just wanted to clarify a statement I think I heard earlier. Can you remind me on the 4% to 6% growth target over the ’14-15 period? What is the base again? Terry Bassham It’s off of the original guidance for ’14 which is $1.60 to $1.75. So a pretty wide range using 4% to 6% growth rate off of that range. David Paz I thought I heard you say $1.60, I just want to make sure – Terry Bassham No, I was pointing to the bottom end of the range but the original – but the guidance target is off of the full range. End of Q&A Operator I am showing no further questions. I’d now like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks. Terry Bassham Thank you, operator and thank you everybody for joining us this morning. We appreciate as always your participation in the call. Look forward to meeting with many of you in the weeks, months ahead. So thank you and have a good weekend. Operator Ladies and gentlemen this concludes today’s conference. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day. Copyright policy: All transcripts on this site are the copyright of Seeking Alpha. However, we view them as an important resource for bloggers and journalists, and are excited to contribute to the democratization of financial information on the Internet. 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