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California Water Service Group’s (CWT) CEO Martin Kropelnicki on Q2 2015 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

California Water Service Group (NYSE: CWT ) Q2 2015 Earnings Conference Call July 30, 2015 07:30 ET Executives Thomas Smegal – VP & CFO Martin Kropelnicki – President & CEO Paul Townsley – VP, Regulatory Matters Analysts Spencer Joyce – Hilliard Lyons Jonathan Reeder – Wells Fargo Operator Welcome to the California Water Service Group Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Results Teleconference. Today call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Thomas Smegal, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir. Thomas Smegal Thank you, Kim. Welcome everyone to the second quarter earnings call for California Water Service Group. With me today is Martin Kropelnicki, our President and CEO and Paul Townsley, our Vice President of Regulatory Matters. A replay of today’s proceedings will be available beginning today July 30, 2015 through September 30, 2015, at 1-888-203-1112 or at 1-719-457-0820, with a replay passcode of 1770876. Before looking at this quarter’s results, we would like to take a few moments to cover forward-looking statements. During the course of the call, the company may make certain forward-looking statements. Because these statements deal with future events, they are subject to various risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from the company’s current expectations. Because of this, the company strongly advices all current shareholders, as well as interested parties to carefully read and understand the company’s disclosures on risks and uncertainties found in our Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and other reports filed from time-to-time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, let’s look at the quarterly results. I’m going to go through the income statement and then turn it over to Paul for an update on our regulatory activity for the quarter. So for the second quarter our financial results, our revenue was a 144.4 million that’s down 8.8% or 14 million and that’s two things going on there, the MCBA, the modified cost balancing account which tracks our production cost that’s reflected an entry of 6.7 million and then unbuilt revenue adjustment which we will talk about in a little bit more detail later reduced revenue by 10 million and those both result really from decreased consumption in the quarter and at the end of the quarter. Our production cost for the quarter 53.0 million that’s down 14.4%, 8.9 million and again that water production volume is down 21% for the quarter. So we see that conservation is having effect on our production cost. Our production mix, well production within the quarter was 52% of total water production, while purchased water represented 45% and surface water accounted for the remaining 3%. In 2014 in the same quarter, 51% of water production was from wells, 46% from purchase sources and 3% was surface water. Our administrative and general expenses for the quarter were up 11.9% or 2.8 million and that’s really driven by pension expenses which were higher by 2.6 million. For our other operations expense, that was 17.5 million for the quarter up 9.4% or 1.5 million. Conservation expense increased to 0.5 million and expenses recorded to the drought memorandum account for future recovery was 0.9 million during the quarter and just as a reminder in our past calls we are confirming that the company still expects to spend $4 million to $6 million on drought response this year and Marty will talk more about our drought response. And maintenance, we got 5.3 million for the quarter up 6.8% or 0.3 million driven by maintenance in services maintenance within the quarter. Depreciation and amortization was 15.4 million, a decrease of 4.6% that’s driven as it was last quarter by lower depreciation rates that were adopted with the DRC [ph] decision late in 2014. Our net other income was a loss for the quarter of $15,000 that’s down about 800,000 from the second quarter of 2014 and the biggest driver there is a change in the value of the company’s non-qualified benefit plans which are mark to market each quarter. For income taxes during the quarter they decreased 2.1 million to 5.1 million and that’s due primarily to a decrease in pretax income and partially offset by changes in tax benefits. During the second quarter of 2014 the company has realized tax benefit of 2.5 million associated with implementation of the tangible property regulations. No similar benefit was achieved in the second quarter of 2015. Consequently the effective tax rate for 2015 is estimated to be 38%. So our net income for the quarter was 9.8 million, compared to net income of 17.2 million in the same period last year for a decrease of 7.3 million and talk about two main factors there of course is the unbuilt revenue and the tax benefit that we had received in the prior year. Earnings per share $0.21 and earnings per share on a fully diluted basis for the quarter is compared to earnings per share of $0.36 in the second quarter of 2014. Please go through the year-to-date results, revenue 266.4 million for the year down 1% or 2.5 m. Production costs are down 8.5% or 9.1 million over the first six months and that is reflecting of course decrease in volume. Our production mix was 51% for the first six months was well production as compared to 49% in the first six months of 2014 and purchased water decreased from 48% to 46%. This reflects a scarcity of surface water during the drought and more pumping from our groundwater wells. Our administrative and general expenses for the first six months of the year were up 11% or 5.4 million again that’s pension expense which was 5 million of 5.4 million. Other operations, 33.4 million for the year up 3% for 1 million and that’s to be driven primarily by wages. Maintenance expense is 9.8 million for the year to-date down 2.1% or 200,000. So there is a decrease in well and pumping equipment maintenance for the year-to-date. So net income for the first six months of the year 11.4 million, that’s down 2.3% or 300,000. The earnings per share is $0.24 on a fully diluted basis for 2015 and that’s the same $0.24 as we achieved in the first six months of 2014. So now I would like to turn it over Paul for an update on regulatory activity during the quarter. Paul Townsley Thank you, Tom. Good morning everybody. I would like to provide you with an update on our regulatory activity in both California and our subsidiaries. Let me start with Hawaii, our subsidiary Hawaii Water Service Company received three decisions from the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission during the second quarter of this year. These three decisions will provide the company with an additional revenue of $2 million annually. The three decisions conclude general rate cases for our Waikoloa Water Company, the Waikoloa Sewer Company and the [indiscernible] water Service Company, all of which are located on the Big Island of Hawaii. In addition to revenue increases to offset changes in operating expenses and to provide a return on our invested capital, these decisions also authorize the company to establish power cost pass through mechanisms so that energy cost are shown directly on customer’s bills and cost saves are pass through rather than eroding range [ph]. These three decisions conclude a series of Hawaii Water Service Company rate cases that is being working their way through the regulatory process since 2011 and 2012. Our net rate cases in Hawaii are for our Maui based, [indiscernible] service areas which we plan to file early next year. In California we filed our 2015 general rate case application in early July of this year. The application was covered of three year forward looking period request California Public Utility commission approval to increase revenue by $94.8 million in 2017, $23 million in 2018 and $22.6 million in 2019. The application also requests commission approval for Cal Water to invest $693 million in capital over the three year period of 2016 through 2018. The main driver for the requested revenue increase in this rate case application is investment and infrastructure. About 80% of the requested revenue increase in the rate case is attributable to capital investment and of the $693 million in requested capital investment over 40% or about $280 million of it is because of our stepping up of our pipeline replacement program. By stepping up our pipeline replacement program we can ensure that we’re replacing older pipeline in a systematic and timely manner which will reduce failure and leakage rates over the long term and the balance of the capital request that we have made to the commission is for other types of normal utility investments wells, pumps, tanks, treatment plants and water meters and service lines and technology, the usual bread and butter of our water utility investments. The rate case filing also reflects Cal Water’s aggressive cost control measures which include reduced benefit costs and increasing employee head count for all positions except for those that are required and make water supply improvements. We also want to point out some other important elements of the rate case application. In this case we’re proposing to consolidate a number of our service areas, our application details proposals to combine for rate making purposes 16 of our service areas in the five regions. We believe that proposed consolidation will help with a customer affordability concerns and also improve administrative efficiency. We have also requested that the commission continued the company’s sales reconciliation mechanism also known as SRM that was approved in our last rate case and to further enhance it to make it better reflect annual changes in customer sales. And finally we’re proposing to improve construction work and progress also known as [indiscernible] in rate base rather than including capitalized interest in our project announced. This last change will make Cal Water’s approach to construction accounting more consistent with other California Public Utility commission regulated water companies. The commission has not yet established a schedule for our rate case. However in accordance with the commissions established rate case plan new rates should go into effect on January 1, 2017. That’s my update, Tom. I will give it back to you. Thomas Smegal Thanks, Paul. Now I would like to cover some highlights on the balance sheet. So our plant balance at the end of the period net utility plant grew to 1.64 billion as of June 30 of 2015. The work in progress as Paul was talking about, construction work in progress increased to a 135 million. Our capital investments from both company funded and developer funded activities were 75.8 million on a year-to-date basis, it’s a 32% increase from the same time in 2014. This increase is primarily driven by increased activity on projects approved in the 2012 California General rate case application which went into effect last year. And as we have mentioned earlier the company expects to spend between a 125 million and a 145 million on company funded improvements in 2015, so we’re well on our way to meeting our target goals there. Cash on hand was 24.5 million. We did have a 126.6 million outstanding on our revolving credit facilities as of June 30th. I wanted to talk a little bit about our accrued unbilled accounts receivable what we call unbilled revenue and because that was the main driver of the change in earnings for the period. Unbilled revenue accrual represents water which has been used but not built for at the end of the period. The unbilled revenue is not reflected in the RAM decoupling mechanism which is recorded on a cash basis. Once built of course the revenue is recorded in the RAM and it flows through the normal decoupling process. The accrual we do this every quarter and it is very seasonally and very with REIT changes typically as in 2014 the accrual is higher at the end of the second quarter as compared to the end of first quarter. This year we asked our customers to conserve 25% to 30% state wide and they really came through as Marty will talk about in the discussion of the drought, our customers in June conserve 30% based upon their usage in 2013. With that consumption our unbilled revenue accrual is down as compared to 2014 and that’s what’s really driving the change in earnings this year. This has the seasonal effect, this is a transitory effect. We’re going to be doing this accrual every quarter and it’s just a natural part of us doing it. And of course the company cannot predict the future effects on net income due unbilled revenue accruals but we will see how it goes throughout the rest of the year. And just a final update from me on the balance sheet net RAM and MCBA balance actually decreased 0.3 million during the quarter to 47.9 million from 48.2 million at the end of the first quarter. The balance is up 2.7 million for the year from 45.2 million at the year-end. So now I’m going to turn it over to Marty for some comments on the drought and the quarter’s results. Martin Kropelnicki Thanks, Tom. Good morning everyone. If we sound like we’re a little off because Tom and I are in Boston after our board meeting yesterday we flew out east and we will be meeting with investors in Boston today to talk about the rate case we just filed. So it’s really early in the morning our time and we struggled to find Tom coffee this morning and me a cold diet coke but we got the first shot. I think we’re warming up here. So I want to cover really five things, one talk a little bit about the operating results for the quarter. Two, spend most of my time giving you kind of detailed drought update and what’s being going over the last really 60 days in the State of California. Three, give some thoughts on the GRC and highlight some of the things in what we’re doing that Paul talked about. Four, talk about the [indiscernible] workplace which we won for the fourth year in a row and then lastly talk about our plans as we move into the second half of the year what are our priorities as we move into the last part of the year and one of our goals for the company. So first and foremost, as Tom mentioned we saw significant decline in demand, our consumption laid in the quarter. So if you remember, Jerry Brown, Governor of California signed the executive order by extending the Emergency Drought Declaration in April that was ultimately put into place about May end of the first week in May and then we had to ramp up to be in compliance with that role start in June 1st. So it’s interesting that we did see the consumption prior that declaration being extended if you recall the medium wasn’t very good and in most places the consumption was down anywhere from 0% to 7% and that was really driven by the fact we had a very long dry winter. So people continue to use water. Once we did the public participation meetings, we communicated the drought plans. We sort of implemented our customer first approach. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that we saw a significant decrease in consumption that really hit in the month of June and Tom kind of hit the bad news with that and it does affect the revenue accrual which is outside the regulatory accounting mechanism. That’s a good news in that and that most of our districts hitting or exceeding the conservation targets, what are the major step from where they were 60 days ago. So while that’s create a little bit of short term volatility the fact that is it’s step in the right direction for the company being able to hit it’s required targets as prescribed by that emergency declaration by the governor. Tom, you might want to take a quick minute if you can just to go through kind of the surcharge accounting and now that we’re into the penalty phase where people are charged a surcharged regarding their allocation how their accounting is going to work for that, because they will start showing us really in the Q3 numbers. Thomas Smegal Sure, Marty. The commission adopted our what’s called schedule 14.1 which is our drought plan and our drought water budget plan. In it there is two types of monetary penalties, one is a surcharge on excessive use over the budget that the customer has, each of our customers is given a specific budget that’s based upon their past usage in 2013 in the similar period. That surcharge money that comes is going to be put in the RAM of decoupling account, so that goes offset the deficit that might occur in the RAM with reduced sales. So that’s something that are going to be looking at very carefully to see where that goes. There are also penalties that would be associated with customers that misuse water or use water against the rules that have been established by ourselves, by the state and by local ordinances such as washing their car at an inappropriate time or watering at an inappropriate time or wasting water down the side walk. Those penalties, those fines really will be put into the drought memorandum account. That drought memorandum account I mentioned has we recorded 900,000 for the quarter and as we go forward that will be collected on a future basis so that’s drought memorandum account, it’s not something that we will recover immediately it will be something we recover probably in 2017. Martin Kropelnicki Right, so the end build revenue versus the ramp kind of creates a timing difference and the ramp balances for the quarter really went down actually slightly from where they were at the beginning of the year, so now you will start, we believe we believe you will start to see as the RAM balances start to grow as we move into the summer month and it’s kind of the change in consumption is being recorded now in June. It will start moving through the regulatory accounts going forward. As Tom we spent about a $1 million incrementally on our drought response and we’re still stand at the 4 million to 6 million is about the right amount. About 40 people dedicated full time in our drought centers working in each of our regions and through a dedicated call center to assist our customers and help high volume users in each of our districts. In addition on the numbers for the quarter, the 75.8 million and the capital program that the company has recorded that’s really good news. So we’re actually ahead of plan on a year-to-date basis, our goal is a 125 million to 145 million the significance in why I’m pushing this number and I want to highlight this number a little bit is because of the rate case numbers that Paul mentioned. We [indiscernible] $700 million of new capital and that is a significant increase what we asked for in the last rate case, the largest components of that being made and then pumps treatment, water supply, water [indiscernible] items. So this is kind of a transition here in terms of our ability to execute a $200 million year capital program. So we have been very focused internally looking at our capital processes and making sure we have the ability to implement a significantly larger capital program in the coming years and as we said before we don’t see the capital slowing down as Tom and I have mentioned before, you know our mains are getting older. We need to start changing out those mains. Obviously water supply and scarcity is playing in the California so we have a lot of projects to bring new water supply on board and also make sure as the water level has dropped in California while the quality issues become more difficult to deal with. So we’re dealing — we’re spending more money on purification for our programs. By the way we know that it’s very complicated on the RAM accounting and all everything gets involved in it. So when we look to our 10Q there will be a lot of disclosure around this and we try to highlight the changes in the MD&A so people can really follow in our 10Q that we plan to file shortly. Now moving on to the drought, so bad news is out of the way, the decline in consumption now let’s stick to the good news and that’s really the customers and our footprint within the State of California has done an outstanding job at the first month of required mandatory conservation. To give you an idea how our districts faired, we had six districts that achieved greater than a 40% reduction, and the water consumption we had 15 districts that achieved greater than 30% reduction and 19 out of our 24 districts were in compliance that means 80% of our districts were in compliance. The ones that were out of compliance most of them was the exception of one district which I will come back were a stone throw away from hitting the targets. So that’s first month of reporting that’s required and the penalties are rolling in, I’ve been very, very happy with the drought response and our customers’ ability to hit their conservation target. Call center volumes have leveled off from a higher 45,000 calls per week down to approximately 20,000 calls per week and in total we have received approximately 4000 customer applications for appeals are requesting changes to their water budget. If you put that into perspective of how many meters we have in the State of California that’s less than 1% of their customers are coming back saying they need a little bit more out of their water budget. So we have an approved approximately 1600 applications and adjusted water budget and those are remodeled or we just had twins or my in-laws has just moved in with me and so we go and we verify all that and we will adjust their water budgets based on the supporting documentation that’s put in. But nonetheless, it’s less than 1% of the customers coming and asking for a change in the water budget and to me it speaks the fact that the message of the drought in what we need to do is really clearly being understood by our customers. In addition towards the end of the quarter we did a few customer focused groups, and the feedback has been mainly positive. What we try to do is get customers in a room and ask them what’s working, what’s not working, what is it going to take them to help conserve and overall it’s been a very supportive environment with the customers and the communities that we serve. In addition to the focus groups about 82% of the media coverage in our service areas has been neutral to positive versus 18% which is negative and again we believe that’s reinforces, that’s the message is getting out and it fits nicely with decline that we have seen in consumption at our customers understand that we need to hit these targets. [Indiscernible] supply standpoint our water supply conditions have been steady and we’re in the process of launching five new conservation programs that will bring us upto 12 conservation programs that have been launched over the last 60 days, the new programs will drive our outreach and continued success, and allow us to continue to target high end users, high volume users and the water that they use. In addition, we started rolling out a new report. This new report was traded with an application called BEACON. We have partnered Badger Meter to design and build an application to produce easy to read graphical reports for customers to help them track and understand their water usage compared to people in their neighborhood so it doesn’t identify who your neighbors are but it’s basically a graphical report that we produced and give to the customers, that shows their trends and how they are trending compared to people in their neighborhood. And so that was a good project that we partnered with Badger Meter and we’re in the process that we’re rolling it out. We’re rolling it out to the high volume districts first and then we will roll out to the districts that aren’t as hard hit with the drought, what the idea that is being fully rolled out here during the third quarter. So overall I’m very pleased with the progress that we have made on the drought, I think we’re off to an outstanding start, it has been a lot of work for the team but all this indications are heading in the right way. Customer usage is down, customer understanding is up, media coverage has been good and we’re hitting our targets and I think that’s the most important story here. In addition as Paul mentioned you know the rate case, the rate case we’re moving into the next stage so it’s being filed. We start our tours with the regulators here in next month and we start notifying our customers. I believe this week with build notifications of the rate case process. We get what’s called an exception report from the — we file a prelim rate case and then give us a deficiency report and then we have to correct those deficiencies before make the final filing. Our deficiencies in this rate case were down about 65% from where they were with the last rate case, I think that speaks to the companies extra care and timing is put into preparing this rate case, in particular the capital work and the capital program across the state. So as we move into the rate case space here and continue to deal with the drought those are our two priorities as we go into the end of the year. Droughts number one, rate cases number two. Lastly I want to take a couple of minutes to talk about the award we announced a couple of weeks ago, the Bay Area Top 100 Workplace so this effects our employees in the Bay Area which is about — it’s about 25% to 35% of the company. For the fourth year in a row we have been named a Top 100 Workplace in the Bay Area and once again we’re the only utility to win this award and we take great pride in being an 89 year old water utility located in the heart of Silicon Valley competing with 1000 of tech companies that are around us. It’s nice to be a winner and I believe that the award shows the type of company that we’re, the type of employees that we have and I sincerely believe that happy employees help create good customer service and that good customer service also helps [indiscernible] response. So we’re very happy to have won that award for the fourth year in a row. We did take a small moment to have lunch with the employees to celebrate their success and it was back to our come back to dealing with the drought. So in closing while the drought is creating a little bit of volatility on the unbuild of revenue side which is outside the regulatory mechanism, the fact is there is a lot of great things are happening in Cal Water. We’re off to a great start with the drought and we’re hitting our targets and really because we’re in the emergency declaration, it’s about doing the right thing right now and dealing with the short term volatility and so I’m very pleased to where we ended the quarter in terms of the products with drought and think we’re off to a great start. So, Tom with that I will turn it back to you. Thomas Smegal Okay, great Marty and Kim that is the end of our presentation and we’re happy to take questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions]. Our first question is from Spencer Joyce from Hilliard Lyons. Spencer Joyce Couple of quick ones for me here, first I think you briefly touched on, did you say the CapEx spend so far this year has been about 75 million? Thomas Smegal Yes 75.8 million so almost 76 million. Spencer Joyce Okay, so we’re over half way to kind of the full year goal here. Thomas Smegal Spencer that does include a little bit of developer contributions so that’s not all what we call company funded CapEx and when we’re targeting we’re targeting the company funded CapEx. So we’re right about half way there little bit better than half of our goal right now. Spencer Joyce In any case tracking well may be at least if we think about last year where we kind of undershot a little bit. Thomas Smegal I think Spencer, one think to look at is the company funded over the last 12 rolling last 12 months, half of last year we really accelerated and then this has continued that trend. So I think that shows a good track record of what we can spend in the future. Spencer Joyce Separately with the drought kind of dominating the conversations here over the last year or two, I want to ask about acquisition potential. Has the drought or any other external factors perhaps brought any potential targets kind of to the forefront or have any opportunities maybe percolated on that front? Martin Kropelnicki What’s the drought done, I think is really highlighted kind of some of the weakness in the State of California around the long term planning for water supply and Spencer you’re right, NAWC Financial forum I shared with the people of the financial forum what the population growth curve was for California versus kind of the water supply and the demand curve and the supply curve are growing apart right now, they are not going together which is highlighting a lot of need for a lot of capital infrastructure both for new water supply but also upgrading existing water supply and that’s start with the state and goes all the way through to companies like us. So [indiscernible] covers a lot of stones and when that babbling brook [ph] goes down you start to see the rocks that usually lie under the water. So we’ve seen some of the rocks, just some of the weakness in the system right now. Having said that, our water supply has been fine that we have a few cities that were trucking water to help get them through the summer months because they have just run-out of supply. I also mentioned at the conference that none of the investor-owned utilities have run out of water, it’s been more a small kind of undercapitalized city or meeting systems have been the ones that have been strained and run out of water. So it hasn’t popped into any type of M&A market, in California it’s hard to buy a muni system because it requires a vote of the local taxpayers to approve it but clearly you’re seeing the stress on the smaller systems and the inability to meet water quality standards or add adequate supply for their customers. So I think the jury is still out on that. I think part of it’s going to depend on what happens over the next 12 to 18 months, it’s drought, if it continues. I will say it’s fascinating to me that we are focused on California but Oregon declared a drought here in the month of June, Washington declared a drought in I believe it was late April, early May and I was recently talking to somebody who is from Vancouver, British Columbia who was telling me how horrible the drought conditions are in Vancouver. In fact their water restrictions are worse than ours. So the drought is really a whole west coast item right now and I think it’s going to be changing some behaviors and changing how capital is directed within the state and whether that leads more M&A I think the jury is still out on that. Spencer Joyce So it sounds like maybe nothing eminent but at least you guys are kind of keeping your ear to the ground there. One final, one from here. I know if we think back to last year Q3 was a pretty strong quarter, Q3 ’14 that is as we recouped a little bit of benefit via the rate case or the generate rate case that may have been otherwise earned during the first half of 2014. Correct me if I’m wrong there first off and then second if you could, what is roughly the kind of net revenue benefit that might come out of Q3 this year in order to maybe get a more fair comp looking at Q3. Thomas Smegal I would have to go back to our communications in Q3 of last year and unfortunately don’t have that open in front of me. We did recognize the benefit of the rate case and the interim rates associated with the rate case in the third quarter but I think that was fully disclosed in the press release so that number is pretty quantifiable. As far as on a go forward basis I think you would look to that adjustment to get to your comp. As far as the rate changes and the way to think about our the profitability of the company from last year to this year we have identified that we had step, what’s called the escalation step increases of about 5 million, a little less than 5 million. We did at the beginning of July, get approval from the CPUC on $5 million revenue requirement worth of these [indiscernible] letter capital projects that they have been approved in the prior rate cases, this all on an annual revenue basis and of course what’s going on in Hawaii we will start to see in August the revenue coming in from those rate changes that we got at the end of June. And so those are just some of the things that are going on and obviously the drought response is another factor that we have identified it could be a change as we go forward. Operator [Operator Instructions]. We will move on to Jonathan Reeder from Wells Fargo. Jonathan Reeder Couple of questions, first on the revenue, since this will essentially get captured by the RAM in Q3 it’s about $0.30 headwind for Q2, should we view that as something that’s just going to reverse and add $0.13 of incremental earnings in Q3? Thomas Smegal Jonathan, I think that this is the line on the balance sheet, you can go back and then anybody can pick this up out of the Qs and the Ks. We see a variability in the accrued revenue, from anywhere from 15 million to 30 million at the end of every quarter. Right now we are at — I think it’s 26 million, at the end of the year last year we were 23 million so this is a very small increment. If you follow that, it’s really — it’s kind of a sea level change or it’s the tide going in and out. If it happens that in the third quarter we get that popped in and what we mean by that not that it’s going to up higher but that is not going to fall like it fell in the third quarter in the prior year. So always going to vary, it varies a lot less the second quarter because of the conservation whether it comes back to a normal level at the end of year. I think it’s dependent upon a couple of factors both the customer conservation, the effect of the surcharges that will be calculated in the end bill and also the effect of the rate design that we have seen over the last couple of quarters where more service charge revenue less quantity charge revenue. So it will come back it’s a question of timing really, will it come back in the third quarter, fourth quarter when the droughts over-rise I can’t say at this point. Martin Kropelnicki Yes I think it was interesting to know Jonathan that typically in the second quarter we see a really big step in that number and in this quarter we see that down because of the consumption, that consumption really had in June and that’s what it relates on that calculation as the 21 day average of what people consumer. So it — when you flipping in the context of what the swing was that we typically see this time the year, it’s a pretty big swing. Jonathan Reeder And then on the mark to market life insurance in Q2, what was the absolute like benefit or loss, I mean you said it was 800,000 quarter to quarter. Thomas Smegal So the loss in that area was about 200,000 so that’s made the rest of that category includes benefits from other unregulated activities. Jonathan Reeder So anything else that we should be thinking about in terms of ongoing earnings number for you all in Q2? Thomas Smegal No just the things that we mention the drivers on the rate changes that are going to hit in Q3 from Hawaii and from the rate base offsets. Martin Kropelnicki Yes. And again when the Q comes out you will see in the rate section we have that identifying what those increases were both the escalation in steps and the Hawaii changes and for this quarter John it really comes down to those three items, the changes and the end build revenue, the non-recurring tax credit and now I’m blank on the third item because it’s early but it’s really the [indiscernible] that we talked about, those are called out in the press release and also in the Q that will be filed. Operator [Operator Instructions]. And it appears there are no further questions today. Gentlemen I will turn the conference back over to you. Thomas Smegal Great. Well I want to thank all of you for your continued interest in California water service group and we look forward to talking with you again after the third quarter. Thanks. Operator And that does conclude our conference today. Thank you all for your participation.

Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEP) Q4 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Korea Electric Power Corporation (ADR) (NYSE: KEP ) Q4 2014 Earnings Conference Call February 11, 2015 02:30 AM ET Executives Bon-Woo Koo – VP and Treasurer Changyoung Ji – Senior IR Manager Analysts Pierre Lau – Citibank Yun Hee-do – Korea Investment Securities Joseph Jacobelli – Bloomberg Intelligence Sujin Bum – Samsung Securities Bon-Woo Koo Good afternoon. This is Bon-Woo Koo, Vice President and Treasurer of KEPCO. On behalf of KEPCO, I would like to thank you all for participating in today’s conference call to announce earnings results for the fourth quarter of 2014. We will begin with a brief presentation on the earnings results, which will be followed by a Q&A session. Today’s call will be presented in both Korean and English. Please note that the financial information to be disclosed today is on a preliminary, unaudited, and consolidated basis in accordance with KIFRS. Any comparison will be on a year-on-year basis between 2013 and 2014. Business, strategies, plans, financial estimates, and other forward-looking statements included in today’s call will be made based on our current expectations and plans. Please be noted that such statements may involve certain risks and uncertainties. Now Senior IR Manager, Mr. Changyoung Ji will begin with an overview of earnings results of the fourth quarter of 2014, first in Korean and repeated in English. Changyoung Ji Now we will provide the overview in English, starting with operating income. In the fourth quarter of 2014, KEPCO recorded a net operating income of KRW5.78 trillion. Taking a closer look, operating revenues increased 6.4% to KRW57.47 trillion. This was attributable mainly to 4.9% increase in power sales revenue, totaling in KRW52.62 trillion and 34.7% increase in revenue from the overseas business amounting to KRW3.22 trillion. Moving on to main operating costs, cost of goods sold, SG&A expenses decreased 1.6% to KRW61.68 trillion. Fuel cost decreased 14.9% to KRW20.59 trillion. Power generation affected by the lower power demand decreased 1.4% and unit cost of fuel declined by 13.7%. Meanwhile, purchased power cost increased 11.2% to KRW12.60 trillion. Unit cost of purchase power decreased 5.6% because of the decrease of S&P caused by the increase of new highly efficient top line and purchase volume increased KRW16.1 trillion. Depreciation cost rose 5.3% to KRW6.09 trillion, mainly due to the newly constructed power substations and new facility additions by power plants. Now let me explain KEPCO’s non-operating segment. Net financial loss was KRW2.25 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2014, which was improved by KRW47 billion. As a result of the foregoing, we recorded a consolidated net income of KRW2.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2014. This concludes the overview of KEPCO earnings results for the fourth quarter of 2014. Now let me move on to the Q&A session. Q&A session will be hosted by Mr. Bon-Woo Koo. Question-and-Answer Session A – Bon-Woo Koo This is Bon-Woo Koo, I’m joined with our IR committee members in charge of major business areas at KEPCO. We are prepared to take any questions. Since we will proceed in both Korean and English all Q&As will be interpreted. Please make sure your questions and answers are brief and clear. Operator Now Q&A session will begin. (Operator Instructions). The first question will be given by Mr. Pierre Lau from Citibank. Please go ahead, sir. Pierre Lau I have three regarding your 2014 results. The first one is regarding your unit LNG cost, in the fourth quarter it is up 7.3% year-on-year. So I would like to know why your unit LNG cost increased in the fourth quarter year-on-year despite of the lower oil prices. And also what is your guidance for your unit LNG cost in 2015? That’s question number one. Question number two is what is your guidance for your unit coal cost in 2015? And question number three is what is your expected generation mix for coal and nuclear in 2015? These two kinds of fuel generate 35% and 46% of your total generation in 2014 respectively. And also will you buy net IPP next year — this year in 2015 given that you have more capacity now. Bon-Woo Koo To answer your first question first we have witnessed the drop in the oil price starting in September and October last year and there is inevitably time lag between oil and LNG price decrease and we expect the time lag to be about four to six months’ time. Having said that, we saw the oil price drop in the fourth quarter or starting in October last year and we expected to see that impact on LNG unit price in early 2015. On our guidance for the fuel unit cost for 2015 is as following. For coal, we anticipate the coal price should be KRW120,000 per ton and for LNG, we expect the LNG price to be KRW820,000 per ton. And on the fuel mix to answer your third question, on the fuel mix we believe the LNG to be 10% of overall fuel mix and quarter reporting 9% and nuclear to be 38%. Pierre Lau Okay if LNG 10%, nuclear 48% and coal how many percent? Bon-Woo Koo Coal 49%, nuclear 38% and LNG 10%. Pierre Lau And lastly we will finance output from IPP in 2015. Bon-Woo Koo To answer your question on the energy mix if you look at the IPP proportion, the current number for IPP from 2014 was 14% of overall volume. But in 2015 we expect the number to go up to 19%. And the reason for that is that we are going to increase the co-generation for the high efficient power generation in 2015. Did that answer your question. Pierre Lau Yes thank you. Operator Currently four participants are waiting with your question. The following question is by Mr. Hee-do Yun from Korea Investment Securities. Please go ahead sir. Hee-do Yun Thank you for giving me the opportunity to ask the question. I have two questions first it seems that your operating profit performance is slightly less than we have expected. We believe the reason for that is because executed about KRW350 billion to 3 billion [ph] nuclear waste of Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Generation Corp. Could you elaborate on what that is really and the back ground of it? Is it going to be a one-time expense for KEPCO? We understand that we launched a project to have a treatment facility for the nuclear waste in [indiscernible], we spent KRW300 billion as a one-time investment. Is this investment by KHNP a similar type of investment or a different one? That’s question number one. The second question is on the dividend payout ratio. Coal gas has just announced that their dividend payout would be about 25%, which is lower than what market has expected. How is KEPCO doing in terms of your discussion with the government in determining your dividend payout ratio? Bon-Woo Koo So clearly our operating profit is lower by about KRW300 billion than market expectation and that is because we have allocated additional cost for trading the waste of nuclear power plant which was ordered by the government. All of that expense was executed in fourth quarter alone and we didn’t have an expense allocated for the first quarter to third quarter of this year. So hence the accumulated expense that we have set aside for this quarter was KRW320 billion and which has resulted in KRW300 billion GAAP in our expected operating profit. This is one-time expense that we have accumulated and moving forward we’ll be accumulating about KRW50 billion per year moving forward under this same expense category. This is however different from the liability for commissioning the nuclear power plant cost, which is a separate line item on our accounting book. To answer your second question, we’re currently in discussion with the government in terms of determining our dividend payout ratio. Current estimation is that our dividend payout ratio will be higher than previous year and we’re discussing with the government to have this impaired ratio higher than 25%. Follow up question for the first question is that will the KRW320 billion for this fourth quarter this year will no longer take place in the subsequent year and going forward there will be only KRW50 billion expense allocated for this category? Is that correct? And what was the reason behind accumulating KRW350 billion this year? And the answer is because we are adding incremental cost to that waste treatment cost because we want to support the region that is going to set up this facility for shipping nuclear waste. And as part of that we have increased the budget in the fourth quarter of this year to support those regions. Operator The following question is by Mr. Shin Ji Yoon from KTB Investment Securities. Please go ahead sir. Shin Ji Yoon I have two questions. First is on the dividend payout ratio. You have stated that you are going to discuss with the government to maintain about 25% dividend payout ratio. Is that going to consider the consolidated balance sheet fees? That’s question number one. Second question is on your generation mix. You said that KEPCO will have a percent LNG and its lower than previous year and IPP ratio will be 19%, which is higher than year-on-year. Is those numbers correct? I would like to verify those numbers. Having said that in 2015, it seems that the base load will be also coming from the new nuclear power plant as well as in the core power plant. What are the neutralization assumptions you’re taking into for 2015 in terms of overall coal generated power and nuclear generated power? Bon-Woo Koo To answer your first question on dividend payout ratio it will be based on the individual Company, not consolidated leases. And because of that the dividend payout will be slightly lower or decreased than previous payout ratio which is before we were introducing the KIFRS in our accounting system. That’s why we’re discussing with the government to maintain 25% or above at the minimum. However the details haven’t been determined and we will let the market know as soon as something has been decided. To answer your second question on the generation mix where the LNG proportion will slightly go down and IPP will go up to 19%, we will verify those numbers for you and get back to you with the accurate number later on and communicate back to you on that. On the utilization rate for different energy mix is that for nuclear it will be about the similar level with 2014 at 84.4%. For coal however there will be slight decrease from 2014 to 93.2%. Shin Ji Yoon On the question on the coal and the nuclear energy mix, so there won’t be any additional increase for coal power plant but for nuclear power plant are we going to consider both Shin Wolsong and Shin Kori or just one of them? Bon-Woo Koo To answer that question in 2015 we said the utilization rate will be 84.4% and that number considers both Shin Wolsong No. 2 and Shin Kori No. 3 facility. Operator The following question is by Joseph Jacobelli from Bloomberg Intelligence. Please go ahead sir. Joseph Jacobelli I wanted some clarity with regards to power plants commissioning schedule in 2015 and 2016, including nuclear and another other coal or gas plants that you maybe commissioning during the period. And the second question is with regards to the debt management. How are the other assets sales going and the overall debt management going? Bon-Woo Koo To answer your first question, for nuclear power plant we are going to add two nuclear power plant in the second half of 2015 which is Shin Wolsong No. 2 and Shin Kori No. 3 power plant. As for coal power plant in 2015 we expect to have 2 power plant within 1000 megawatt capacity by end of the year and in 2016 we expect to add six more on coal powered power plant which will be providing capacity of 8000 megawatts in total. On our equity sales plan, we plan to sell the equity of our KEPCO KPS equity, which we own about 3% and for KEPCO EMC company we plan to sell our 50.4% of the equity that we own and for KEPCO industry development that we own, we planned to sell our 29% of our equity that we own, which is all the equity that we own for that subsidiary. Joseph Jacobelli If I may just a supplement question with regards to the first answer. What about outside Korea? Any commissioning of invested power plants outside Korea please? Thank you. Bon-Woo Koo The new power plant for the overseas office, we’re currently pursuing the project at the moment, but nothing has been determined looking here at the moment. Operator The following question is by Mr. [indiscernible] Private Investor. Please go ahead sir. Unidentified Analyst Your overseas revenue has gone up by 6% – 7%. What has driven this increase in revenue coming from overseas margin? Could you share with us your revenue trend in overseas market in the last five years and what is your expectation for just here? Bon-Woo Koo To answer your question on the overseas business, most of our revenue generated in overseas market is coming from our projects in UAE which has contributed by KRW780 billion this year in revenue. There are other revenues coming in from our outsourcing work from transmission and distribution projects, as well as pipe construction projects. But most of our revenue from overseas market is coming from our UAE project. To elaborate on our overseas business performance, we are seeing our business grow in the Philippines. Also in the second half of last year we have seen the commercial operation of our Mexican power plant in Norte. That has also contributed in our increased revenue. We’re also seeing revenue growth in our China project as well. Also we had a commercial operation for the Amman Asia project in April of 2014. To share with you the profitability level coming from our overseas business is that for our hydraulic and thermal power energy, we’re seeing the profitability compared to our revenue at 15% to 20%. Unidentified Analyst Could share with us the trend for the last five years in terms of your overseas revenue and your expectation for this year? Bon-Woo Koo The numbers that we have shared with you at the moment is our historical revenue for the last three years. We don’t have the numbers for the past years. We will be more than happy to share that with you when we have those numbers. To give you a brief trend on our five year performance for the overseas business is that our revenue in 2011 for the overseas revenue was KRW1.7 trillion whereas this it’s KRW3.2 trillion. In terms of revenue mix overseas business was 3.9% in 2011 but now it’s 5.6% which is based on a consolidated basis. Unidentified Analyst And what is your expectation for this year? Bon-Woo Koo Let us follow up with you on that question. Currently we do not have the numbers for this year’s items. Operator The following question is by Ms. Sujin Bum from Samsung Securities. Please go ahead madam. Sujin Bum First question is on the operating expense for the UAE project. Can you share with us the operating expense? And second question, although it could be difficult for you to share the information regarding this at the moment, but could you if possible share with us your timeline for adjusting tariff this year? Is there any information that you can share with us at this moment? Next question is on the CapEx, it means that there are additional CapEx set aside for the nuclear and coal-fired power plant facility enhancement in 2015 and that’s a significant amount. What is the nature of this CapEx this year? Bon-Woo Koo To answer your first question on the cost of revenue for UAE project, we have seen the cost of revenue go up by — cost of revenue to be KRW2.2617 trillion for this year because we have seen significant progress into the project. To answer your second question on the tariff adjustment discussion with the government, we see that market has had a significant interest in the tax adjustment since the old price of trench [ph] starting in the fourth quarter in 2014. Although the fuel cost decrease is a factor that [indiscernible] have significantly, we’re also seeing some of the factors that drive up tariff such as the Transmission Act as well as the tax rate which is part of the policy cost that is raising tariff. We’re going to submit report on tariff to the government in June of this year and the tariff adjustment will take place afterwards. To answer your question on the CapEx on the power plant is for Thermal power plant, we plan to spend KRW3.3 trillion in construction of thermal power plant and for new renewable energy we have allocated KRW820 billion in CapEx for the new renewable energy. And in refining the power plant facility for thermal power plant the CapEx amounted to KRW1.4 trillion for this year. Just for your information when it comes to our power plant construction if you consider the overall approval process that we have to go through with the government for power plant construction, we assume that about 80% of the CapEx allocated with the project will be executed. Operator The following question is by Mr. [indiscernible] from Shinhan Finance Investment. Please go ahead sir. Unidentified Analyst First I have question on the CapEx following up the previous question. It seems that there is significant purchase set aside for the refinement of nuclear power plant facility and that number increases this year. Do you believe that the nuclear power plant utilization rate of 88% is feasible this year with such a large investment in enhancing these nuclear power plant? Because if you look at previous year, without such a huge CapEx being executed, we only saw 85% of utilization rate for the nuclear power plant. Also last year it seems that you’re setting a sight KRW2 trillion for additional power plant set up. Could you elaborate on those numbers? And third question is on the traffic adjustment. You’re going to be reporting on the total cost of power supply this year and will that include the investment coverage for the subsidiary as well? If not could you be able to share that with us? Bon-Woo Koo To answer your first question, on the nuclear power plant facility enhancement, the number does increase by about two fold this year compared to 2014. But the utilization rate is not 88%. It’s actually 84.8%. On the reason why we’re seeing the increase in CapEx for nuclear power plant is because to give you a high level answer that we are seeing enhanced criteria coming from the government side on the safety of these nuclear power plant which is leading to a higher quality requirement. We would like to share with you the details of that in a separate session. On the 2015 profit guidance, if we exclude the profit coming in from the headquarter sales in last year, we anticipate the number to be at similar level with 2007 at about KRW2 trillion. On our total cost of energy supply calculation, that is actually based off of our regulations set off Ministry of Trade Industry and Energy and KEPCO will be listed as an independent separate entity. Therefore we will not be considering the cost and CapEx on five GENCOs or our subsidiaries. However there our numbers will be reflected in terms of purchased energy cost only. Unidentified Analyst It’s not on a consolidated basis. It will be very difficult for us to anticipate a fair rate of return on your investment. Having said that is there any possibility that you’ll be willing to share with us this separate data for all the GENCOs? Bon-Woo Koo To answer your question the cost and the rate of return for our GENCOs is not directly reflected on the cash calculation of KEPCO. That is done independently by KEPCO. However the adjustment coefficient from the power market will be reflected. Operator The following question is by [indiscernible] from UBS. Please go ahead, sir. Unidentified Analyst First question is on your power demand or cash flow 2015. It seems that your CapEx is less than about KRW800 billion compared to last year. But having seen the enhanced fixed requirement on your facility and new project that is planned in your Company, we see about KRW2 trillion increases in those investment. So could you elaborate on that and is it safe to understand that the investment increase CapEx from KEPCO is offset by decreasing CapEx in the subsidiaries or GENCOs. Second question is on the utilization rate or your coal fired power plant. I would like to clarify the utilization rate. In 2014 you said 88% and in 2015 you anticipate the number to go up to 93.2%. Is that right? Bon-Woo Koo On our 2015 guideline on the power sales is that we see a 2.3% increase year-on-year in terms of power sales and our assumptions for GDP growth is at 3.7%. With the revenue increase at 2.3% we believe the profit to increase by 3.2% year-on-year. On your question on the CapEx, earlier this year yes, we did announce to the media that there will be KRW2 trillion in increase in our CapEx on the facilities. But however the total CapEx so much goes down when we consider the long term transmission and distribution investment cost on a year-on-year basis. When you translate that on our account that will actually decrease the overall CapEx investment and you’re right intense of our subsidiaries’ CapEx decrease offsetting our increase in CapEx by KEPCO. On your question on the coal-fired power plant utilization the rate was 88% in 2014. However we do not have the actual forecast number for 2015. So we use the five year average for the utilization rate for the coal-fired power plant. Our generation mix in 2015 is going to be 49%, which is an increase from 46%. So we also assume that the utilization rate will therefore increase. Unidentified Analyst Another follow up question on the dividend payout ratio. You said it’s going to be over on 25%. It seems up until 2007 your dividend payout was up to 30%. Is it safe for us to assume that level this year? But having had the consolidated basis, is it going to be much higher than the 25% level? Bon-Woo Koo The dividend payout ratio target for the government this year is 25%. However KEPCO is targeting 30% in discussing with the government. So we will do our best to have our dividend payout ratio at 30% level. Just to add to that we are aiming for 30% ex minimum, however currently we haven’t fully discussed this with the government yet. So we will let the market know as soon as something becomes concrete. Because we are approaching the end of our allocated time. We will accommodate just one last question. Operator Currently there are no participants to question. (Operator Instructions). Last question will be given by Pierre Lau from Citigroup. Please go ahead sir. Pierre Lau I have two follow up questions. The first one is your early guidance for coal cost in 2015 will be KRW121,000 per ton. But I find this number even higher than your actual coal cost KRW104,000 per ton. So why the guidance for coal cost unit cost in 2015 higher than the actual number in fourth quarter last year? And the second question is you just mentioned that you will submit your tariff review proposal to the government in June 2015. Why it takes so much time to submit only in June? Bon-Woo Koo To answer your question on the coal unit price, the last year the unit cost price for coal has dropped to a level that is very close to the production cost level. So there is actually no room for the coal price to drop further even if we see the huge drop in the oil price. That is why our guideline for 2015 is slightly above the unit cost of last year. And on your second question on why the submission to the government on the total cost of energy supply is scheduled in June, it is because the cost, although it is based on our budget base, we also have to reflect the previous year’s financial performance into those numbers. So once that financial statement is settled in March and finalized, then we need to do a separate accounting for calculating the tariff calculation, which will be done as a separate effort. Once that is done, we have to go through another auditing process and because of the series of administration process that we have to go through, is it only scheduled to be done in June. Changyoung Ji All right, we will conclude this conference call. Once again, thank you for joining us today. Thank you and good bye.

Unitil’s (UTL) CEO Bob Schoenberger on Q4 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Unitil Corporation (NYSE: UTL ) Q4 2014 Earnings Conference Call January 28, 2015 14:00 ET Executives David Chong – Director, Finance and Assistance Treasurer Bob Schoenberger – Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Collin – Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Tom Meissner – Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Larry Brock – Chief Accounting Officer and Controller Analysts Shelby Tucker – RBC Capital Markets Dave Parker – Robert W. Baird & Company Operator Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2014 Unitil Earnings Conference Call. My name is Tony and I will be your moderator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. David Chong, Director of Finance. Please proceed. David Chong Good afternoon and thank you for joining us to discuss Unitil Corporation’s fourth quarter 2014 financial results. With me today are Bob Schoenberger, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Mark Collin, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer; Tom Meissner, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; and Larry Brock, Chief Accounting Officer and Controller. We will discuss financial and other information about our fourth quarter on this call. As we mentioned in the press release announcing the call, we have posted that information, including a presentation to the Investor section of our website at www.unitil.com. We will refer to that information during this call. Before we start, please note that comments made on this conference call may contain statements that are commonly referred to as forward-looking statements, which are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include statements regarding the company’s financial condition, results of operations, capital expenditures and other expenses, regulatory environment and strategy, market opportunities and other plans and objectives. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as may, will, should, estimate, expect or believe, the negative of such terms or other comparable terminology. These forward-looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve risks and uncertainties, and the company’s actual results could differ materially. Those risks and uncertainties include those listed or referred to on Slide 1 of the presentation and those detailed in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company’s Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2014. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. With that said, I will now turn the call over to Bob. Bob Schoenberger Thanks, David. I would also like to thank everyone for joining us today. I will give a summary of our year end financial performance. If you turn to Slide 4 of our presentation, today we announced 2014 net income of $24.7 million or $1.79 per share, an increase of $3.1 million or $0.22 per share compared to 2013. This 14% increase in earnings in 2014 over prior year was driven by higher natural gas and electric sales margins partially offset by higher net operating expenses. Turning to Slide 5, the graph shows that our financial results have increased sharply over the past few years. The continued growth of our natural gas business along with recently completed gas and electric rate cases helped the company to achieve strong financial results in 2014. As we look forward to 2015, the continued expansion of our natural gas utility business and investments in the company’s gas and electric distribution infrastructure will provide a strong foundation for sustained future growth. On Slide 6, we are benefiting from improved economic activity underlying our service areas. Currently, average unemployment is just above 5% in the three states served by Unitil and signs of an improving economy are everywhere. We estimate that there is approximately $0.5 billion of new commercial construction underway in two of the largest cities we serve, Portland, Maine and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We are benefiting from this economic growth and our focus on converting more and more of our customers to natural gas. Since 2010, our weather normalized gas unit sales have grown annually at 4.7%. And in 2014, our gas customer count grew 2.6%. Slide 7 highlights our historic annual return on equity. Strong customer growth paired with successful base rate cases continues to drive the company’s return on equity. In 2014, we earned a 9.2% return on equity, which is in line with the ROEs allowed by our regulators. As Mark will discuss later, we have long-term capital cost trackers in place to recover a significant portion of current and future capital spending, which we expect will help to maintain the level of earnings across our subsidiaries. Finally, on Slide 8, as you may have already seen, we recently announced an increase to our quarterly dividend from $0.345 to $0.35 a share. This equates to an annual increase in the dividend of $0.02 per share. We recognized the importance of the dividend to our shareholders. This increase reflects the confidence we have in our business. Going forward, we will continue to assess our dividend level to provide this continuing source of value to our shareholders. So, I will turn the call over to Tom Meissner, our Chief Operating Officer, to discuss details of our capital budget for 2015 and other operational highlights. Tom Meissner Thanks, Bob and good afternoon. As Bob mentioned, we have seen significant growth in our gas distribution business both in terms of the number of customers served in sales growth as well as the increased level of investment we are making to modernize and expand the reach of our system. Over the next few slides, I will go through our 2015 capital budget highlighting our growth spending, infrastructure replacement programs and our electric substation construction plans. If you turn to Slide 9, we have provided a more detailed look at our 2015 capital budget and our historical growth in rate base. We plan to spend about $58 million on gas projects, $31 million on electric projects, and $9 million on business systems and supporting technology for a total of $98 million of spending in 2015. Spending on new customer additions will be a significant component of this budget. In 2015, we plan to spend about $35 million or 36% of our total capital budget on expansion of our gas and electric distribution systems to achieve new customer growth. Of this, $21 million will be spent on expansion of our natural gas delivery system targeting new customers and increased sales, while on the electric side we plan to spend about $14 million on growth in expansion. Our capital spending plan continues to drive growth in our gas and electric rate base, which has resulted in annual growth rates of 10% and 3% respectively since 2009. We expect our gas rate base to continue to grow on the order of 10% in the future given our system expansion initiatives and infrastructure replacement programs. Now, turning to Slide 10, this slide highlights our infrastructure replacement programs, which consists primarily of cast iron and bare steel placement. We plan to spend about $22 million on infrastructure replacement programs in 2015 and we will be replacing about 14 miles of cast iron and bare steel gas mains annually through 2017. After 2017, our New Hampshire pipe replacement program will be finished and we expect to level out at about 9 miles per year thereafter. As a result of our infrastructure replacement programs, our customers currently enjoy a modern system with over 90% of our gas mains consisting of plastic or protected steel. Lastly, as a reminder, the majority of our infrastructure replacement projects are recovered under a capital cost recovery tracking mechanism, which provides for annual recovery of capital spending. Slide 11 provides an overview of our current electric distribution substation projects in New Hampshire. Construction began in 2014 on two new substations that will be completed over the next three years. These electric substations will be completed at an estimated cost of $12 million and $11 million respectively and will provide the capacity needed for continued load growth on our New Hampshire systems while addressing constraints at existing substations and improving reliability. Now, I will turn the call over to Mark Collin who will discus our financial results for the quarter and year end. Mark Collin Thanks, Tom. Good afternoon. As Bob stated earlier, net income increased by $3.1 million or 14% to $24.7 million for this past year ended December 31, 2014. Results were positively affected by higher natural gas and electric sales margins partially offset by higher net operating expenses. For the quarter, net income was $9.4 million or $0.69 per share compared to net income of $10.3 million or $0.75 per share for the same period in 2013. Earnings in the fourth quarter reflect warmer weather than the fourth quarter of the prior year as well as lower gas margins due to an increase in the amount of margin recovered through fixed charges, which results in less seasonality in our gas margins. That is more of our gas margin is now recovered during the non-heating period of the year. Turning to Slide 12, natural gas sales margins were $97.4 million in 2014, an increase of $12.2 million or 14.3% compared to 2013. Natural gas sales margin in 2014 were positively affected by higher therm unit sales, a growing customer base and recently approved distribution rates. Therm sales of natural gas were up 7.7% in 2014 driven by colder winter weather in the first quarter of 2014 and new customer additions in 2014 compared to 2013. There were 5.9% more heating degree days in 2014 compared to the prior year, which we estimate positively impacted earnings by about $0.06 per share. Excluding the effect of weather on sales, weather normalized gas therm sales in 2014 are estimated to be up a very healthy 5.2% compared to the prior year. Slide 13 highlights our electric business sales and margin. Electric sales margins were $80.8 million in 2014, an increase of $4.6 million or 6% compared to 2013. These increases reflect recently approved electric distribution rates and higher electric kilowatt hour sales and billing demands. Total electric kilowatt hour sales increased 0.6% in 2014 compared to the prior year. Commercial and industrial customer kilowatt hour sales were up 1.4% and billing demands were also up slightly for this customer group year-over-year. Turning to Slide 14, operation and maintenance expenses increased $4.4 million in 2014 compared to 2013. The change in O&M expenses reflects higher compensation and benefit cost of $2.8 million and higher utility operating cost of $1.6 million. The increase in utility operating costs included $0.7 million in higher electric and natural gas maintenance cost, $0.6 million in higher bad debt expense, and higher all other utility operating costs net of $0.3 million. Depreciation and amortization expense increased $3.6 million in 2014 compared to the prior year reflecting higher depreciation of $2.2 million on higher utility plant assets in service, higher amortization of major storm restoration costs of $1.3 million, and an increase in all other amortization of $0.1 million. The increase to major storm restoration cost amortization is currently recovered in electric rates. Taxes other than income taxes increased $2.2 million in 2014 compared to 2013 primarily reflecting higher local property taxes on higher levels of utility plant in service. Net interest expense increased $2.1 million in 2014 compared to the prior year reflecting lower interest income on regulatory assets and higher interest on long-term debt related to the issuance of $50 million of new long-term debt in October 2014. We also announced in December 2014 that Standard & Poor’s assigned a BBB+ issuer rating to Unitil Corporation and its utility subsidiaries. Now, turning to Slide 15, we have provided an update on our financial results at the utility operating company level. The chart shows the trailing 12 months actual earned return on equity in each of our regulatory jurisdictions. Unitil Corporation on a consolidated basis earned a total return on equity of 9.2% in 2014. Also as we discussed in the past and as shown on the table on the right, we have constructive regulatory rate plans and long-term capital cost trackers in place to recover a significant portion of current and future capital spending, which we expect will help to maintain the level of earnings across our subsidiaries. Now, this concludes our summary of our financial performance for the period. I will turn the call over to the operator who will coordinate questions. Thank you. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Shelby Tucker of RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed. Shelby Tucker Good afternoon guys. I have a question on the dividend and first of all, congratulations on increasing the dividend. Bob, could you maybe go through your policy on the dividend or how you are thinking about the dividend as you continue to grow your gas business? Bob Schoenberger Yes, first, how you are doing, Shelby? Shelby Tucker Good, thank you. Bob Schoenberger Yes, I mean, over the last couple of years, we have been telling our shareholders that as we began to realize the earnings power of the assets that we operate that it was our intent to return to a dividend policy where we would target a payout ratio of 70% to 75%. And once we have achieved that, it was our intent and desire to begin to implement a dividend policy with regular annual dividend increases. So, this $0.02 increase is really kind of a signal that we have full confidence in our business plan. And as we achieve that payout ratio over the next couple of years, our intent is to again begin to implement regular annual dividend increases and the Board will consider that each year based on our forecast. Shelby Tucker So, one of the things about this 2014 was you had the benefit of the first quarter weather. If that does not repeat in fact if weather does not go in your favor in ‘15, does that change how you look at the dividend or are you looking at a consistent level year-in, year-out irrespective of weather? Bob Schoenberger Yes. Again, I think we feel very good about 2015 again the year from a weather point of view, January has been cold. As you may have seen the forecast for the end of January and the beginning of February is very cold that may not rise to the level of last year, but we expect that, that’s going to have a positive impact. We will be bringing on a number of large customers that we connected to our system late last year, which we will begin to see the revenues from that. So, again, we feel good about 2015 and obviously, the Board will consider on a going forward basis how the company is doing compared to its forecast, but again our goal is to get back to a policy of regular dividend increases. And again, I think we can grow our EPS 6% to 8% a year for the next 3 to 5 years and the policy on our dividends will reflect that. Shelby Tucker Great. And then on the – just an update on the storm we just went through, anything should be aware of on your system? Bob Schoenberger Yes, lots of snow up to 3 feet at my house, but zero outages. We had no outages anywhere in our system. So, we came to the storm with flying colors and again, largely because it was light fluffy snow, but we did have good wins that were forecasted, but again, I think part of what we are seeing is not only the fact that the snow was light and fluffy, but also I think we are beginning to see the benefit of the enhanced tree trimming program that we have been implementing over the last 3 or 4 years. Shelby Tucker Great. Congratulations guys. Bob Schoenberger Thank you. Mark Collin Thank you, Shelby. Operator Your next question comes from the line of Dave Parker of Robert W. Baird & Company. Please proceed. Dave Parker Good afternoon. I will echo Shelby’s comments. Congratulations on a good year, good couple of years. Bob Schoenberger Thank you, Dave. Mark Collin Thanks, Dave. Dave Parker A couple of questions just on the presentation, thanks for dialing up for us what the continued opportunity is here to grow earnings. If we look past ‘15, I hate to put words in your mouth, but with the pipe replacement program and some of the upgrades you have got going on the electric system that this kind of CapEx rate of close to $100 million is probably sustainable for the next couple of years? Is that a fair observation or fair assessment? Bob Schoenberger Yes. I think obviously you are right about the amount of spending in 2015. In that amount, there is probably $15 million, $20 million of one-time items to two electric substations Tom referred to before and the change out of our customer information system. So, on a going forward basis beyond 2015, I’d say probably our core and correct me if I am wrong, Mark – our core capital spend is probably going to be more on the order of $80 million, $85 million little higher. Tom Meissner Yes, I am not sure it’s going to drop significantly over the next couple of years until we get through 2017. Bob Schoenberger So, same level of spending over the next couple of years. Dave Parker Okay, alright. Alright, good. And then I assume if economic activity continues to expand obviously post ‘17, I know it’s kind of up for grabs, but if your crystal ball is better than mine, then please if you can share with me? But it sounds good enough for me. Another with weather being pretty favorable and obviously you had some benefit for earned ROEs and your trend kind of being for what you earned last year on a combined basis close to the bottom end of the authorized range, do we expect a downdraft do you think in ‘15 from an earned ROE basis or now that you have got rate relief, is it actually – may we see better earned ROEs in the future? Mark Collin Yes, I think there is a couple of aspects to that. One is as we talked about before, the Fitchburg rate cases were completed on the electric side was completed for rates effective June 1, 2014. So, we only got a partial year of that rate case. And that was an important one for us to get the Fitchburg operating subsidiary back up to a more reasonable rate of return. So, we will get a full year of that in ‘15. We will also have some additional cost trackers as part of our rate plans in northern utilities. And we also have a scheduled filing for our Granite pipeline. So, I think when you bring all that together, our goal is to continue to achieve at or about what our authorized rate of return is. And I think we are in that range. I don’t think you are going to see any deterioration of that in the near-term. I think if anything we will be trying to improve upon that. Dave Parker Alright, great. Thanks. Good answer. And on a Granite State, absent that rate filing, any other anticipated regulatory filings in the next couple of years? Mark Collin Well, in addition as I said, we do have the trackers, particularly on the infrastructure replacement. In northern utilities, there is a new tracker that we filed for our gas division in Massachusetts under new legislation there for infrastructure replacement that we expect to be a rate filing that will have regular increases for infrastructure replacement in Massachusetts. And then our rate plan for the electric division in New Hampshire is essentially coming to an end and we would expect to be looking at going back in ‘16 relative to our New Hampshire operations to reestablish a longer term rate plan there, because that’s worked very well for us. And I think it will be good to kind of renew that effort and get on a longer term plan for that. Dave Parker Great, thanks for the update and again congratulations. Mark Collin Thank you. Bob Schoenberger Thank you too. Operator [Operator Instructions] There are no further questions in the queue at the moment. Bob Schoenberger Thank you for joining us for the fourth quarter conference call. We look forward to talking to you next quarter. Thank you and goodbye. Operator Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. That concludes today’s presentation. You may now disconnect and everyone have a great day. Copyright policy: All transcripts on this site are the copyright of Seeking Alpha. 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