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Ormat Technologies’ (ORA) CEO Isaac Angel on Q1 2016 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Ormat Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: ORA ) Q1 2016 Earnings Conference Call May 05, 2016 09:00 AM ET Executives Rob Fink – Managing Director, Hayden Investor Relations Isaac Angel – Chief Executive Officer Doron Blachar – Chief Financial Officer Analysts Paul Coster – JPMorgan Operator Good morning, and welcome to the Ormat Technologies, Incorporated First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Rob Fink. Please go ahead. Rob Fink Thank you, operator. Hosting the call today are Isaac Angel, Chief Executive Officer; Doron Blachar, Chief Financial Officer; and Smadar Lavi, Vice President of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. Before beginning, we would like to remind you that the information provided during this call may contain forward-looking statements relating to current expectations, estimates, forecasts, and projections about future events that are forward looking as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements generally relate to the company’s plans, objectives, and expectations for future operation and are based on management’s current estimates, projections, future results, or trends. Actual future results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, please see Risk Factors as described in Ormat’s Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC. In addition, during the call we will present non-GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and management’s reason for presenting such information is set forth in the press release that was issued last night, as well as in the slides posted on our website. Because these measures are not calculated in accordance with U.S. GAAP, they should not be considered in isolation from the financial statement prepared in accordance with GAAP. Before I turn the call over to management, I would like to remind everyone that the slide presentation accompanying this call may be accessed on the Company’s website, at ormat.com, under the Events & Presentations link that’s found on the Investor Relations tab. With all that said, I would now like to turn the call over to Isaac. Isaac, the call is yours. Isaac Angel Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for the presentation of our first quarter 2016 results and our outlook for the remainder of the year. Starting with slide 4, the first quarter was a great start to the year for Ormat. We executed well, delivering strong revenue and profitability, and our focus on improving our operational and manufacturing efficiency is the main driver for margin expansion and improved results. Both our product segment and electricity segment delivered improved results year after year. Our electricity segment delivered a 20% increase, reaching $108 million, due to higher electricity generation and new expansions coming on line. Our product segment grew 44%, to $44 million, benefiting from several large contracts signed in the previous years. Overall, total revenue grew 26%, to $152 million, which demonstrates strong growth as we overcome the impact of lower commodity prices which continues to affect a portion of our revenue in our electricity segment. In addition, we achieved high gross margin levels in both segments of our business, supporting significant increases in our overall profitability. This performance is due primarily to two factors: first, our balanced business model being vertically integrated; and second, our methodical efforts to improve operational efficiency. We have been focused on efficiency and operational excellence in every aspect of our business, and that effort is reflected in our numbers. I will elaborate on the progress being made and our plans for the future after Doron reviews the financial results. Doron? Doron Blachar Thank you, Isaac, and good morning, everyone. Let me start by providing an overview of our financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2016. Starting with slide 6, for the first quarter of 2016 total revenue increased 26.1%, to $151.6 million, compared to $120.2 million in the first quarter of 2015. Moving to slide 7, revenues in the electricity segment increased 19.9%, to $107.9 million, in the first quarter of 2016, up from $90 million in the first quarter of last year. Slide 8, revenues in the product segment were $43.7 million, an increase of 44.4%, compared to $30.3 million in the first quarter of 2015. Moving to slide 9, gross margin in the first quarter of 2016 increased to 42.1%, from 36.6% in the first quarter of 2015. Our electricity segment gross margin increased to 41%, due largely to new expansions coming on line, improved efficiency at the plant level, and also the transition to a new fixed-rate PPA for our Heber 1 power plant. Part of the increase in gross margin this quarter is driven by timing of operating expenses. We expect a lighter second quarter in the electricity segment with higher expenses that will result in lower margins, on average, in the rest of the year. Our product segment generated 45% gross margin, a particularly strong level for this segment of our business. It was mainly due to the different product mix and different margins in the various sales contracts, improvements made at our manufacturing facility which enables us to shorten lead time, as well as reduction in commodity prices that reduced the cost of raw material in subcontracting. We expect our gross margin in the product segment during 2016 to be higher than normal. The margin should normalize in 2017. Turning to slide 10, operating income for the first quarter of 2016 increased to $50.5 million, compared to $29.9 million in the first quarter of 2015, representing 69.3% increase. Operating income attributable to our electricity segment was $34.8 million, compared to $24 million in the first quarter of 2015, representing a 45.2% increase. Operating income of the product segment was $15.8 million, compared to $5.9 million in the first quarter of 2015, representing 168% increase. Moving to slide 11, net income attributable to the company’s stockholders for the first quarter of 2016 was $29.3 million, or $0.59 per diluted share, compared to $10 million, or $0.21 per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2015. Let me spend a moment speaking on our hedging strategy that is designed to mitigate the impact of changes in commodity prices. We continued to make progress in reducing our exposure to these fluctuations. In December of 2015, the Heber 1 contract was switched to a fixed-rate price, which mitigate our exposure and reduce the portfolio exposed to natural gas prices to approximately 90 megawatts and less than 10% of 2016 expected electricity revenue. Recently, we reduced our economic exposure to fluctuation in the price of oil and natural gas until the end of 2016, by entering into a derivative transaction. We recognized a net loss for this transaction of $0.1 million in the first quarter of 2016, which is recorded within foreign currency translation and transaction gains or losses, compared to a net gain of $0.3 million in the first quarter of 2015 that was recognized in the electricity segment revenue. Please turn to slide 12, adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2016 was $80.2 million, compared to $65.3 million in the same period last year, which represents a 22.8% increase. Reconciliation of the EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA is described on the appendix slide. Turning to slide 13, cash and cash equivalents as of March 31, 2016, were $148.5 million. We generated $27 million in cash from operating activities and invested $31 million in CapEx. The accompanying slide breaks down the use of cash during the quarter. Our long-term debt as of March 31, 2016, and the payment schedules are presented on slide 14 of the presentation. The average cost of debt for the company stands at 5.9%. On May 4, 2016, Ormat’s Board of Directors approved payment of a quarterly dividend of $0.07 per share for the first quarter. The dividend will be paid on May 24, 2016, to shareholders of record as of closing of business on May 18, 2016. In addition, the Company expects to pay a quarterly dividend of $0.07 per share in the next two quarters. This concludes my financial overview. I would like now to turn the call to Isaac for an operational and business update. Isaac? Isaac Angel Thank you very much, Doron. Starting with slide 16, for an update on operations. In the first quarter, we delivered strong results that demonstrate that we are making solid progress on our multiyear strategic plan. Moving to slide 17, we continue to make improvement in all aspects of our value chain. Specifically, we are focused on reducing manufacturing lead time, improving procurement to lower our material cost, and improving management control. This process translates into a significant improvement in gross margin and adjusted EBITDA margins. Turning to slide 18, another goal was to expand our electricity generation, both organically and inorganically. Electricity generation during the quarter was 1.4 million megawatt hours, an increase of 16.4% compared to the last year. This increase was due to commencement of the second phase of Don Campbell and McGinness Hills, power plants in 2015, as well as Plant 4 of the Olkaria III complex in Kenya which come on line in January this year. Beyond expansion, we continue to make plant-level adjustments designed to optimize our electricity generations. These adjustments include the elimination of older and less efficient components and modifying output based on the underlying resource. The goal is to improve profitability, and we are making meaningful process here, as well. In addition, we are also working to monetize the Don Campbell plant and further strengthen our balance sheet as part of our joint venture with Northleaf Capital Partners. Currently, we are conducting the required power generation tests under the agreement to determine the final terms for closing. Following the closing, Ormat Nevada will contribute Don Campbell 2 to ORPD, and Northleaf will buy their interest share. We expect to close this in the second quarter of 2016. Turning to slide 19, another part of our expansion strategy involves targeted acquisitions. We recently signed definitive agreements to acquire gradually 85% of a geothermal plant in the island of Guadalupe. We expect to close this acquisition during the second quarter. This acquisition will be immediately accretive to Ormat CPS. Turning to slide 20, for an update on projects under construction. We plan to add 160 to 190 megawatts by the end of 2018 by bringing new plants on line, expanding existing plants, as well as adding capacity from the recent acquisitions. The expansion plan includes the Platanares geothermal project in Honduras, which is currently under construction, and we expect to reach commercial operation by the end of 2017. We also initiated development efforts in two projects in Nevada. Tungsten Mountain and Dixie Meadows are each expected to generate 25 to 35 megawatts once they come online in 2017 or 2018. While the drilling activity is ongoing in both projects, we are making progress towards securing PPAs. We believe that these projects may qualify for the production tax credit. In Sarulla, Indonesia, engineering and procurement for the first and second phases has been substantially completed, but it’s still in progress for the third phase. Construction for the first phase is in progress, with major activities related to mechanical and electrical equipment installation. The infrastructure work for the second phase is in progress. Major equipment, including Ormat’s OECs and Toshiba’s steam turbines, for the first phase has arrived at the site and currently installed. The drilling of production and injection wells is also in progress for all three phases. The project is still experiencing delays, mainly in field development of the second phase and third phases and cost overruns. With respect to Ormat’s role as a supplier, all contractual milestones under the supply agreement were achieved and main shipment of the second phase is on its way to the site. Manufacturing of third phase equipment is progressing as planned. The consortium expects that the first phase of operations to commence towards the end of 2016, and the remaining two phases of operations are scheduled to commence within the 18 months thereafter. The projects I just described, as well as additional projects under various stages of development, are expected to support our expansion by the end of 2018. Besides the investment in new projects, we are continuing our exploration and business development activities to support future growth. On slide 21, let me briefly discuss the recent agreement with Alevo. On March 30, 2016, Ormat signed an agreement with a subsidiary of Alevo Group S.A., a leading provider of energy storage systems, to jointly build, own, and operate the Rabbit Hill Energy Storage Project, which is located in Georgetown, Texas. The storage market is one of the most developing, growing, and exciting areas in the energy industry today, and this agreement moves us for the first time into the energy storage arena. We view this market as key to our long-term growth plan, as it helps us to further diversify revenues and support our position as a leader in the renewable energy industry. Under the terms of the agreement, Ormat will own and fund the majority of the Rabbit Hill Energy Storage Project and will provide engineering, construction services, and balance of plant equipment. Alevo will provide its innovative GridBank inorganic lithium ion energy storage system in conjunction with the power conversion systems. In addition, Alevo will provide ongoing management, operations, and maintenance services for the life of the project. We do not expect this first entry into the storage market to generate material revenues for Ormat. However, we do believe this collaboration will allow us to make significant progress towards our expansion in this field. We continue to actively explore opportunities in this area and remain focused on building relationships and collaboration with established technology providers. We believe that such collaboration can leverage our experience, relationships, and project management, and other capabilities. If you could please turn to slide 22, you would see that our CapEx requirement for the balance of 2016 stands at approximately $245 million. We plan to invest a total of approximately $75 million in capital expenditures on new projects under construction and enhancements. And additional approximately $170 million are budgeted for exploration activities, development of new projects, investment in new activities that reflects expenditure under the new strategic plan, and maintenance CapEx for operating projects. In addition, $51 million will be required for debt repayment. Turning to slide 23, for an update on our product segment. Our backlog as of May 4, 2016, stands at approximately $214 million. Moving to slide 24, for a regulatory update. We shared with you the tremendous efforts Ormat’s team is investing in order to accelerate growth of the electricity segment to increase its portion in the future. In addition to shortening the manufacturing construction lead time, we are also investing efforts to shorten the development process. One of the hurdles in the geothermal development is obtaining key permitting in order to test prospect viability. We have been supporting and lobbying the geothermal components of Senator Dean Heller’s Geothermal Exploration Opportunity Act to simplify geothermal exploration review process in the future. Under the Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015, which passed the U.S. Senate on April 2016, an agreement was reached to approve 29 amendments, including Senator Heller’s Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act, which streamlines permitting for renewable energy projects on federal land. If the bill will pass the House unchanged, it will be significant achievement in improving ability to assess potential geothermal resources faster than before and, by that, to accelerate the development process. Turning to slide 25, for 2016 guidance. We are reiterating our 2016 full-year guidance. For the year, we expect total revenue to be between $620 million and $640 million. We expect revenue in our electricity segment to be between $410 million and $420 million. For the product segment, we expect revenues to be between $210 million and $220 million. We expect 2016 adjusted EBITDA to be between $300 million and $310 million. I’m very pleased with our performance. The first quarter represents a strong start to what we believe will be another great year for Ormat. And that concludes our remarks for today, and I thank you very much for continued support. Operator? Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions]. The first question comes from Paul Coster from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Paul Coster Yes, thanks, few quick questions. First up, you’ve made tremendous progress in the electricity segment in terms of improving the yield of the existing assets. How far are we, though, from sort of the point of diminishing returns in terms of that focus? Isaac Angel Hi, Paul. Thanks very much. What was the last part of your question? Paul Coster I’m just wondering have you got to the point of having realized the efficiencies at this point, do you still have further opportunities ahead? Isaac Angel Paul, as we explained last year, this is going to be a very long journey, and we barely touched only part of the efficiencies that we have planned. We’re working on a [indiscernible] basis, and we still have a long way to go until we will actually finish all the efficiencies that we are planning to do. Paul Coster Okay. The backlog is continuing to come down. Is there anything being added in to backlog? Or, are we just simply depleting it as a result of the Sarulla project? Isaac Angel First of all, you realize that the $256 million Sarulla project is a very large project and, obviously, it affects the backlog. On the other hand, as I said last conference call, we are making a tremendous effort, and we are in the middle of a journey to increase our electricity segment which will continue to grow faster than in the past. But if we are looking forward, I would not be worried about the backlog. And there is also another thing that you should take into consideration. We decreased seriously our delivery time, for something like from 20 months to less than 12 months, which means that projects that we are signing which used to be for the year after, now they are kicking in within the next 12 months, which makes a difference in the calculation of the backlog. Paul Coster So, in other words, you’re expecting backlog to plateau soon and maybe even start rebuilding? Does that sound – is it possible that would happen within the 2016 timeline? Isaac Angel I’m writing this down, Paul, and I hope it’s going to happen. Paul Coster Okay. My last question is oil and gas prices have actually ticked up a bit recently. Is there any way in which you might start to capture the benefit of a positive inflection in prices before the point at which you move as many of these projects as possible to a fixed rate? Isaac Angel We still have about one-third of our exposure in oil and two-thirds in natural gas, which is barely moving. On the one-third which is going up, it is not something that’s going to change in the near future, which is our Puna power plant, and we hope we are going to catch the increase. And maybe Doron would like to add here something. Doron Blachar Hi, Paul. We took a different approach to the hedging due to the very, very low prices at the beginning of the year. So, we actually are able to enjoy some of the increase in the oil prices, not all of it, but some of it. And on the gas, if the gas prices are relatively stable to the beginning of the year, there isn’t much change. But as prices goes up, it gives a potentially better performance next year with the higher prices on the oil and natural gas prices. Paul Coster Very good. Thank you so much. Isaac Angel Thank you Paul. Operator [Operator Instructions]. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Isaac Angel for any closing remarks. Paul Coster Okay. Thanks a lot operator. Thank you very much for your continued support during the year, and we are very optimistic, management here in Ormat. And see you next conference call. Operator The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect. 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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Chesapeake Utilities’ (CPK) CEO Mike McMasters on Q1 2016 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (NYSE: CPK ) Q1 2016 Earnings Conference Call May 6, 2016 10:30 am ET Executives Beth Cooper – SVP and CFO Mike McMasters – President and CEO Analysts Nathan Martin – BB&T Capital Markets Operator Good morning. My name is Chrystal and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Chesapeake Utilities first quarter financial results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference over to Beth Cooper. Please go ahead ma’am. Beth Cooper Thank you, and good morning, everybody. I’d like to welcome you to our first quarter 2016 earnings conference call. Joining me today is Mike McMasters, President and CEO. And in addition to Mike, we’re joined by other members of our management team. For those on the phone today, we’re actually hosting today’s call live from Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland. The call is being held within the Perdue School of Business, so as Mike and I are alumni of that school, and we owe special thanks to Dr. William [ph] for enabling us to have the call here today, and included within our meeting we have members of the local financial community here in Salisbury. We have a board member. We have distinguished faculty and also many students here in the room. We are very happy here as I said. As usual today, presentation can be found on our website under the Investors section, the Events and Webcasts subsection or you can access our presentation via our IR app. One of the things I maybe like to point out on Page 1 of presentation, when trying to think about the themes and typically at the beginning of each year, we try to look at what are themes going to be for this as presentation. I pulled something from actually Mike’s President Letter in the annual report and basically within his letter he talks about that we’re driving growth by focusing on long-term sustainable growth opportunities. And hopefully today you will see that that’s really been the case our past – in terms of our past success, as well as what we think in terms of our future opportunities for continued earnings and dividend growth. Turning to Slide 2, this is the typical forward looking and other disclosures section. This presentation today will include forward-looking information. I encourage everyone to take a look at our Form 10-K, there is a section called Safe Harbor for forward looking information. Because some of the information that we talk about may actually differ from our actual results, and we discuss those factors that could cause our forward looking information to differ from the actual results. Turning to Slide 3, I’m now going to begin to touch on the first quarter results. And so what you’ll see is for the first quarter, we reported net income of $20.4 million as compared to last year of $21.1 million, a slight decline of about $740,000 over the prior quarter of last year. On the surface, earnings are down, yes, but certainly it’s driven by the weather. Weather represented for us about $0.27 in terms of decline in earnings per share for the quarter. Our growth that we experienced across – a good part of our businesses helped offset the weather impact and ultimately resulted in net income only being down by about 3.5% for the quarter — pretty remarkable. And that’s really been driven by – and we’ll talk about it a little bit later on — growth in our natural gas businesses, service expansions and customer growth and also the contribution of a new acquisition that we did last year. I’m next going to touch on our results by our segments. And included in our press release that we filed on Wednesday, as well as in our Form 10-Q that we filed yesterday, we provide detailed information about the accomplishments and results for our segments. And so I encourage you to take a look at that for more detailed information. In terms of our regulated energy segment, you will see that we generated an increase in gross margin growth of about $1.9 million. That $1.9 million of gross margin growth actually made its way to the bottom line to generate $2.1 million in terms of increased operating income. Overall, we saw an increase of $4.3 million in gross margin, that was driven by $1.9 million related to natural gas service expansions, our Florida Gas Reliability Infrastructure Program which we refer to as GRIP, generated an additional $1.1 million of margins, and natural gas customer growth, driven basically about half on the Delmarva Peninsula and half in Florida, contributed to an additional $745,000. The gross margin was up about $4.3 million, weather that was much warmer than the prior year offset that by about $2.4 million, resulting in that $1.9 million of margin increase that we saw. You will see expenses were pretty flat year over year, actually a slight decline which resulted in a $2.1 million increase in our regulated businesses, that once again helped to offset that significant weather impact in the first quarter. Turning to our unregulated businesses, which are certainly more weather sensitive, and you will see that here in the results. Our gross margin was down by $2.2 million. That was comprised of basically lower volumes of propane gallon sold which represented about $4.3 million. Our margins per gallon – we were anticipating that those would begin to return to more normal levels and we saw that start to happen. That represented about $1.8 million. And then weather basically — the combination of those two, when you think about, first, the $4.3 million and then the lower margins per gallon, that’s about $6.1 million. That was partially offset, as I mentioned, with the inclusion of Aspire Energy’s results in the first quarter. We acquired that last year on April 1, April Fool’s Day. And so we didn’t have them in our results for last year and they added about $4.2 million. So ultimately ending in the $2.2 million decline that you see here. Additionally we had about $1 million of higher expenses. Those were the result of Aspire being part of our operations. So overall this business was down about $3.3 million in operating income for the quarter, but all driven by the weather and then the lower retail margins which we had anticipated. The next page is actually a summary of a chart that we include within our 10-Q and also within our press release, looking at the factors from an earnings per share standpoint. And you will see, once again, I started off by saying that earnings last year for the quarter were $1.44. Weather contributed basically to a decline of $0.27. But you will see that growth in our regulated businesses added back $0.15 and the Aspire which is basically $0.06 also added to our earnings. So really a $0.27 per share decline was offset with the exception of $0.11. This is another chart – turning to Slide 7 – that actually shows the weather impact. And on this chart, we actually show a comparison relative to normal weather. Because it’s one thing to show a comparison relative to the prior year but compared to normal, what you will see is that we were down in Delmarva by 13% and down in Ohio by 10%. So we talked a little bit about the growth that we’ve experienced as a company. Strong growth in our natural gas businesses, I know this year, is somewhat offset in the first quarter by weather. But that growth has really been driven by the capital expenditures that we as a company have made, those investments have been made to earn either our target returns or greater than our target returns, and the dollars that we have invested have been very substantial. If you look at last year, we invested approximately $195 million in capital expenditures, $52.5 million of which was related to the Aspire Energy of Ohio acquisition. This year we’re projected to invest another $179 million. And when you look at that just a couple of key points relative to benchmark about those numbers. First, $179 million this year represents just under 30% of our total book capitalization. Our equity long term debt and short term debt are very substantial. When you look at this over the five year period, you will see that we’ve invested — will have invested $679 million. Our total book capitalization today once again is about $700 million. So huge investment that has happened over the last five years and are continuing this year. Our projects this year are comprised of about 82% regulated investments in our natural gas and electric businesses and the key projects that are underway include our Eight Flags combined heat and power plant that we expect to complete mid-year this year. Also, we’re expanding facilities to serve Calpine power plant in Dover, Delaware. We have a reliability project that’s underway and our Gas Reliability Infrastructure Program which replaces qualifying pipes and mains in Florida is another large component of our capital expenditure budget this year. So a very substantial project, the largest of which is our CHP plant, that’s about $40 million. And there are other projects that we’re constantly looking at to hopefully add to our pipeline to add further earnings growth as we move from this point forward. Some of those projects we know will not necessarily be incurred this year but may be incurred next year and we’re constantly looking for new opportunities. So while we have all these capital expenditures, it’s very important for us to have a balance sheet that supports those levels of expenditures. And so as you look at our balance sheet, as I mentioned we’re sitting with about $700 million in total book capitalization at the end of March. Breaking that down, when you look at it from a permanent capital perspective, our equity represents about 71% of that balance. When you look at it from a total capitalization, we’re capitalized about 53% equity and our target is 50% to 60% equity to total capitalization. Wanting to have that strong balance sheet, so we can make the investments that we need for continued future earnings growth. Last year we put into place several facilities with the amount of capital that we’ve expanded. We want to try to align as much as possible of the financing with those projects and those projects coming online. We executed a $150 million revolver agreement with five different banks. Currently at the end of March, we borrowed $40 million under that $150 million revolver. But it’s very important as we’re expanding the levels of capital that we have that short term debt capacity available. We’d also entered into a $150 million private placement shelf agreement with Prudential. And that enables us to basically take that shorter term debt and as those projects are placed into service, we can then finance the long term. And we will seek to utilize those mechanisms, those particular options that we have as well as access the equity markets as needed to always ensure that we’re looking towards that target capital structure that I mentioned. Given the growth opportunities we have, we talked a little bit about on past conference calls and a little bit earlier here in the room, that we recognized last year our ninth consecutive year of record earnings for the company. And we’re hopefully going to continue that trend. But looking at what we’ve accomplished and always trying to align our dividend growth, so it is supported by earnings growth. Earlier this week, our board increased our dividend by $0.07 which represented a 6.1% increase in our dividends, moving it from $1.15 to $1.22. What’s important also to note is that this was a 13 th consecutive year of dividend increases upon the prior year. So it’s not that we’re just increasing our dividend at the prior year’s amount, we’re actually stepping it up beyond that. We paid a consistent dividend for over 55 years. For the last 13, we’ve been constantly increasing each year. And as I mentioned, our focus is on dividend growth that’s supported by earnings growth and we expect a significant growth potential that we see in our businesses to continue to provide the opportunity for superior dividend growth in the future, just as it has in the past. Just a little bit of information, turning to Slide 11 in regards to our gross margin, I talked a little bit about our growth. You will see that last year in the middle of the chart, basically we recognized about $25 million from projects that we had placed into service in 2014 and thereafter. Those projects coupled with new projects that are coming online are expected to result in gross margin this year of about $44 million. So we’ve identified $19 million of margin increase that we’re expecting this year and those same projects are going to add an additional $7 million beyond that next year. So where is some of that gross margin growth coming from? I talked a little bit about the Aspire Energy transaction that we did, and you will see on here that basically that added — third column – that added about $4.2 million of gross margin for the quarter. Serving the Calpine power plant in Dover is at a considerable margin. They’re operating right now under our short term service agreement and ultimately when we place additional services into place next year at the beginning of the year, they’ll be under a long term contract for approximately 20 years. That added additional margin for us. And then last, the Gas Reliability Infrastructure Program added $1.1 million that I talked about earlier. So you will see from projects that have really already been done or set into motion, $15 million. We have two additional projects that are underway, that are going to add some incremental margin, the Eight Flags project, combined heat and power plant, that’s going to add $3.7 million and then next year will add $7.3 million dollars on a fully annualized basis. So a lot of growth that’s happened in the last several years. A lot of growth that we see happening from here on out in terms of projects that we’ve identified, and there are also many other projects on the drawing board. As always, thank you for your support and interest in our growing company. I believe this continues to be very exciting time for Chesapeake, as exemplified by our strong financial results. And certainly the weather was a downer in the first quarter but the amount of growth that the company experienced was able to match a large part of that weather impact. Now I will turn the call over to Mike who will expand on our strategic growth initiatives, our long term performance results and our commitment to continued growth for our shareholders. Mike McMasters Thanks, Beth. I guess I want to turn to Slide 13, 14 I guess – Slide 14, I am going to start talking about our strategic platform for growth. This is a pretty important slide for us as a company. We actually show this to our employees quite a bit, in addition to our board of directors and investors. We start at the bottom and work our way up engagement strategies, basically what we are trying to do is to get our employees more engaged in the company’s efforts. And we do that by allowing them, I guess, the opportunity to get more engaged in the communities that we’re serving. And so what we’re finding. I guess, with our efforts to do that is that we’re getting — I’m going to say — improved community relations. We’re getting improved productivity and therefore improved growth. And one of the key things that we have to do as a company, I guess, the first job really is safety. And so if we can maintain a safe system, we can maintain a reliable system, we take care of our customers and the communities, then we’re positioned for growth. Without those strategic ingredients, growth becomes more difficult. It’s fairly easy to sell services when they look at your track record and see that you’re doing – you’re in a very good development. The next step in the process, moving up the triangle, is developing new business lines and executing existing business unit growth. You think about a utility — as the utility matures, it becomes more and more difficult to grow, and you will see that a lot in the electric industry today. And so what we’re having to do is, so let’s think about things differently. Let’s not just stick to the same services we’re providing, now let’s expand the services that we can provide. In addition, let’s look beyond our current service territories and see if we could grow outside of our territories to help increase our growth, and that’s how you get numbers like the $100 million worth of CapEx et cetera. And then finally, all that shows up in results. And you can see safety awards, community service awards, achieving top quartile growth in earnings, achieving top quartile growth in shareholder return. Turning to Slide 15, there are several things here, and just in a moment ago, I want to point to the last bullet on the slide. This is the fourth consecutive year for the Chesapeake, it was recognized as the Top Workplace. Well the significance of that just says, the engagement strategies are working. It is allowing employees that participate in community service activities. Our executives generally, I want to say almost every time, are also participating whether it’s the Food Bank, Steve is on a couple of different boards, at the time the humanity, for building homes, also and the Food Bank, Steve joined that network as well, these different services. So there is also of different things that our executives are doing and our employees are doing and that’s driving team work and engagement. Turning to Slide 16, I guess to the community side, we get a lot of stuff here but one of the things I will point out here. There are several awards here that were very important to us. The second bullet — Central Delaware Chamber of Commerce Excellence in Business Award for Corporation of The Year. Again, that was based on our community contributions, and the last bullet, just last few months, we got an award — Jefferson Awards in Delaware for Outstanding Service by a Major Company. And so it’s these types of awards that are telling us that we are accomplishing something that our employees –our employees are doing great things and the communities are recognizing what we’re doing. Strategic planning and thinking is one of the key processes that we have for growth. The way we attack I guess strategic planning and thinking is that we set very high growth targets in our strategic planning process – targets that really we could not hit if we kept doing the same thing. So it forces us every year to help — what are we going to do differently tomorrow to help accelerate our growth. We involve every business unit. Just about every employee in the company, at some point of time is involved in the strategic planning process. Every business unit is very much involved in the strategic planning and process. If you roll the clock back probably 10 years, maybe 15, I don’t know how far back it was, we used to do the strategic planning in the corner office. And so the slower speed we’re getting — we would talk about all this stuff and we would write this plan out and we’d put it on the shelf. And next year we go pull it off the shelf. Do it again and nothing ever really happened. So we changed the whole way we approached that and said, okay, let’s get the business units in here. Let’s ask them, what do they see happening in their markets and how can we grow the company, and through that change in the process it took two or three years. But we all of a sudden started getting great ideas coming in the door and the business units were engaged and empowered to execute those plans. That’s a significant change for us. We monitor the conditions that we’ve –or the assumptions that we had in the strategic plan. Constantly, we update the board on that constantly. And we make changes to the plan if necessary when circumstances dictate. Turning to Slide 18, this is another part of the process — part of our growth process. We formed a Growth Council several years ago. The Growth Council — same type of approach. We want to get all the business units involved in the growth council. What the council does is it evaluates the strategic objectives or plans, or actually initiatives that we’re working on, if you bring in specific projects, they’re involved with challenging, the business unit leader that brought the project in, asking good questions, forcing a real thorough evaluation of the project. In that council we had legal counsel, we’ve got engineers, accountants, every business – just operations people, a whole variety of people that you look at the same thing from a variety of perspectives. And that actually is part of our key to sustaining our growth as well. If we’re making good investments we’re going to get returns. We’re going to be able to continue to attract capital. And obviously you can’t grow if you’re not getting the capital. I guess a follow-on here, to give you an idea of how we look at these things – this is a form of illustration but you can see, start with information gathering, identifying opportunities. About 50% of the projects that we’re looking at are in that category. We weed out some of those, we get down to feasibility analysis. About 20% of the project would be expected to be in that category. And then proposal development, offer negotiation, and execution, as you can see, we’re weeding projects out of the opportunities that we see as we work our way down. It was probably a year ago, I think Beth and I were in Boston and somebody asked me, if we ever rejected a project. And I was sitting there, I was actually stumped for a minute, and I think, we reject almost all the projects. And then I’ve been thinking about it, after it occurred to me that, I guess that would be a question if you’re doing a lot of – making a lot of capital investments, the expectation might be from the other side as well. You guys are just doing everything that you come across the table and we do have a strategic set of criteria on these projects as well. So we’re not just doing anything that looks like to be profitable or making sure we’re sticking to things that we understand and that’s what we know how to do with this with our strategic plans. Turning to Slide 19, it’s something about — looking around what are the results of all the stuff. Beth gave you a pretty good picture of that. But this is just something that we look at all the time. So you’re looking at the ROE which is the vertical axis and you’ve got the capital expenditures force horizontally. And you’ll see Chesapeake in the top right hand quadrant, which simply means that we are above the 50% in both ROE and also CapEx, so we’re deploying a tremendous amount of capital. And we’re maintaining returns and that’s a pretty big challenge. You can see how few companies are over there near us and when you do that you’re going to drive EPS growth. All these other dots are just a variety of companies. It’s the electric and combination companies, it’s also an industry index for people that we use in our index for marketing our performance and then Chesapeake. So it’s not cherry picking of the peer group, it’s actually a broad range of companies. So then what happens – Beth talked about nine years of record earnings, so if you look at the blue line, I am on Slide 20, look at the blue line. Record earnings per share, the blue line climbing from roughly, you can see that $1.20 up to almost $2.80. Over this time period, ROEs maintained, actually climbing a little bit which is pretty hard to do in that kind of environment, up to little over 12. So it’s been a very successful process that we’ve been implementing and it requires a lot of discipline. So also shareholder returns, so what happens with this. We’ve looked at broader comparisons. This was something Beth was just I guess thinking about one day and did a lot of work to come up with some numbers. And when we looked at and we thought these numbers were little scary, little high. It was, what we can — nobody’s going to believe us. So we asked one of our investment bankers to tell us – help us with the analysis and they put together their own and so we use theirs. The numbers are consistent. But as you can see 84 th percentile in five years and then after that you get 86 th percentile for one year, 80 th percentile for three and then 89 th , 10. So substantial I guess [indiscernible] measure there. With an annual large shareholder returns, you see the median — we joke around about this too. Utility business sometimes is pretty tough to grow as you get bigger. So you will see a negative 5.1% could be weather related, could be pricing relate type of thing. And you can see Chesapeake over the 75 th percentile in all four periods. Once again we go to the S&P 500 — maybe the NYSEs big in our peer group. If you go the S&P 500 similar type results for 73th percentile in five years and then up over 75 in the other two periods. So it’s just I guess a measurement of our discipline. This is a table that we use periodically on Slide 23. The lightly shaded blue or those metrics where we didn’t hit to 75 th percentile, all the others we were at 75 th percentile. We have another table that shares — we have basically, 18 out of 20 times was 75 th percentile. So again things that we’re very proud of, and again you can go back to the processes that we talked about earlier, that are responsible for that, obviously the people that are executing on those processes. So now what are we doing tomorrow? We talked about what we did yesterday. One of our key I guess brand values is simply that we don’t rest on our laurels and so we like to celebrate the victories but we know that really it’s about what we do today and tomorrow, that’s going to count. And so here’s a few of the projects that we actually mentioned these. You can see we’ve got three projects here on Delmarva, the White Oak expansion, Beth talked a little bit about the impact of that on earnings. That’s just obviously a significant project for us. We’ll be constructing that soon. I guess we’re still working with FERC to get approval to do that. The TETCO capacity expansion in the second row is an interesting opportunity that comes and goes really. With the TETCO, it’s obviously connected to TETCO, Texas Eastern. And there’s lower cost of gas on Texas Eastern than there are on other pipelines that are nearby. And so what happens is customers may not have subscribed to move gas on that pipe, that section of the pipe, but when those prices change and TETCO become significantly cheaper than the other place, all the companies or the major companies are interested in trying to get more gas off of TETCO, that are subscribed to use long term capacity or just to use short term interruptible capacity to do that, so we get some earnings supplements from that line. The next box down, Eastern Shore Natural Gas System Reliability, going back to the polar vortex that showed some weaknesses and some upstream systems, and that’s flowed through to us. We also learned things about our system so we’ve done – we’re working on a distribution system to improve that. We also have a filing with the FERC to improve our transmission systems and we have to be ready for low gas pressures coming into our system lower than we historically had seen in the past. So it’s an important thing and reliability is obviously a critical issue for us. Florida and Ohio. Florida Public Utilities has a Gas Reliability Infrastructure Program, Beth talked about that. Once again that’s about safety and reliability. It was a very little to natural gas prices now. It was an opportune time to look at and is strengthening your system, so we’re doing that. Eight Flags, Beth talked a little about that as well. That project is expected to come online in June or July of this year, so it’s I think over 90% complete, was the last number we heard, just as strong as we get actually. Aspire Energy of Ohio, that was the acquisition we did last year. So all of these things, if you look at these Eight Flags, it’s a completely new service we never provided. Aspire Energy of Ohio, completely new service territory. We weren’t serving — and the services are slightly different than what we provided. So you’re getting two out of the six big projects are either new service or new territories. And it’s a picture of Eight Flags, it’s actually – the picture was taken with them celebrating the safety. I mean there was – I forgot the number of days now per hour – 60,000 hours of — without an injury, without an incident. So there’s safety, there is special celebration going on there. But the significance of Eight Flags, first, it’s a new service, we didn’t know how to do that. I want to go back even to the beginning. We got a phone call, that hey, we’re considering. This is Rayonier on – that we’re considering going off the grid, really electric utility on to the aisle. And so that means okay, we’re not going to use the electricity. And so we were looking at things, concerns about earnings deteriorating. So the team in Florida walked into the plant, just did a tour, brought some experts and got some experts involved to help us look at opportunities in the plant. And they came up with the idea, well, we could build a combined heat and power plant here and lower your steam costs. And we can scale it up on the electric generation side, because we’re the electric utility and we can buy the power cheaper from this facility than we can buy from on the grid — from the grid. So we turned what was a loss into a win. So as a result of this, Rayonier is saving money. They’re actually expanding their facility now. Two big wins are for Rayonier. For us, we have lower cost power coming into our electric system. So that’s going to help the customers on Amelia Island as millions of dollars of savings associated with that, and in early we had higher earnings. So it was a very big deal, very creative, it was a new service, a good job. And on top of all of that, we used a lot of our different capabilities. Obviously the electric utility was involved, had to build a pipeline, reinforced our pipeline there, we had a gas pipeline. So our gas, or distribution company – gas distribution companies involved and then also we have a company that’s marketing — natural gas marketer that was involved in solving the problem as well. So we took a variety of skills that we had across our entire company to help solve that problem. So that’s really talked about our strat plan and what we’re trying to do, be flexible, be able to do a lot of different things, solve customers’ problems has been a key factor in our success. So with that, I’ll turn it over to questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Nathan Martin with BB&T Capital Markets. Nathan Martin Good morning everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess, first just kind of given the current gas LDC M&A environment and obviously your clear goals to grow, would it be reasonable to assume you guys would execute possibly another deal or two by the end of this year? And kind of – if so, you mentioned you’re continuing to look at opportunities outside of your current territories. Are there any certain types of geographies you’re prioritizing, or would you basically consider anything if the returns and strategic fit are there? Mike McMasters I guess, let me do the first question first. When it comes to acquisitions, we are constantly looking for acquisitions. And you know how that works, you have a hard time, that you can look at it, 10, 100 — you look at a lot of acquisitions. And it’s very difficult to get anyone in particular to the finish line. And so forecasting out is just extremely difficult to do that. At least we just don’t do that but we are looking at several opportunities in that regard and we’re probably — always will be looking at several opportunities. You know that, funnel when you have that first – the top piece of the funnel, and you’ll have a lot of things in there that fully won’t come to fruition. Very few actually get through. So we can’t really forecast that. I’m trying to think the second question now. Nathan Martin Basically as far as geographies — you guys are continuing to look at opportunities outside of your current territory – Mike McMasters There’s maybe a natural tendency for us to be focusing on primarily the East Coast. We’ve been in Florida since the 80s, and so we are comfortable in Florida. And when we’re comfortable in Florida, that we’re going to be comfortable as we look to Georgia et cetera, in contiguous states. And we’ve got — I think primarily the focus is on the East Coast. If we saw something good that was East Coast – I am including Ohio in the East Coast, in that definition. As we get much further west of Ohio it maybe becomes – I don’t know, we’re having seen anything over there actually, so we don’t spend whole lot of time looking that far west. But that’s not to say that tomorrow if we don’t find something that’s attractive and strategic fit that we would look at it. Nathan Martin Thanks for that color. And then just in the same vein, I mean, looking at these opportunities, just trying to figure out where you lean more towards regulated, unregulated, or again is it just come down to strategic fit? Mike McMasters We are a different right — the regulated and unregulated. Aspire Energy of Ohio has basically gathering system delivering gas to either interstate pipelines or delivering gas to LDCs. And so we’re perfectly comfortable in that business. There is some commodity risk associated with that business. But we’re comfortable with that. So it is not whether it’s regulated or unregulated, it’s really what’s the opportunity and the strategic fit. End of &A Operator [Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to President and CEO Mike McMasters. Mike McMasters Thanks everyone for joining us on the call today and for your interest in Chesapeake Utilities. We’re here in Salisbury with members of local community at our meeting, and want to thank Salisbury University again for allowing us to use their facilities. We’re proud of what our team has accomplished for shareholders in the past and remain committed to working hard to deliver superior shareholder returns in the future. Thank you. Operator This does conclude today’s conference call. You may now disconnect. 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. (Until now investors have had to pay thousands of dollars in subscription fees for transcripts.) So our reproduction policy is as follows: You may quote up to 400 words of any transcript on the condition that you attribute the transcript to Seeking Alpha and either link to the original transcript or to www.SeekingAlpha.com. 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Shiller Was Warned Not To Tell The Truth About The Stock Market – And We All Heard The Message

By Rob Bennett Robert Shiller says in his book Irrational Exuberance that: “On several occasions I have discovered firsthand the pressure on public prognosticators to deliver positive statements about the market. Once, just before going on national television, the anchor looked me squarely in the eye and told me that what I said could conceivably have an impact on the market, and that people can get upset if they perceive prognosticators as disrupting the market.” I’d like to know what Buy-and-Holders think of that statement. Buy-and-Hold is rooted in the belief that it is economic developments, not investor emotion, that determine stock prices. If that were so, nothing that Shiller said could affect the market. Do Buy-and-Holders think that the television anchor’s worries were foolish ones? I don’t think they were foolish so much as dangerous. What Shiller or anyone else says certainly can affect market prices. Buy-and-Holders agree even though they follow a strategy rooted in a belief that only economic developments matter. I know because it is Buy-and-Holders who have insisted that I be banned at the 20 investing sites at which I have gotten the boot. If what I said didn’t matter, why would the Buy-and-Holders want to see me banned? The Buy-and-Holders haven’t convinced even themselves that only economic developments matter. We all filter out information that disturbs us because it threatens our confidence in our world view. Conservatives filter out information advanced by liberals and liberals filter out information advanced by conservatives and it has ever been so. It’s a universal phenomenon. What possible reason could there be for believing that it doesn’t work that way with stocks? A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. I filter out information casting doubt on the merit of the Valuation-Informed Indexing strategy. I am not aware of doing so, and I understand that it’s a bad idea to do so. I need to know the drawbacks more than anyone else does. It is foolish for me to tune out the words of my critics. But it’s hard to imagine that I do not often do so. Humans always tune out stuff they don’t want to hear. Is that not so? And it always hurts us. That’s also so. That’s why I see such a huge opportunity in Shiller’s research. If we were to begin taking Shiller’s research seriously, we could overcome the force that has made stock investing risky since the beginning of time. That force is self-deception. Do away with self-deception and you change the game in a fundamental way. Many people think it can’t be done. Since we always have engaged in self-deception re stocks, they think we always will. I am more hopeful because Shiller’s P/E10 metric quantifies the effect of self-deception. Now that we can tell people the dollar-and-cents price of following Buy-and-Hold strategies, we can persuade them to ditch the self-deception. People like to make money. We now have the tool we need to motivate investors to demand that Shiller and lots of others tell them the straight story. Even Shiller does not tell the straight story today. It is not my intent to be critical with that statement but to point out how deep the problem goes. Shiller’s next words in the passage that I quoted above are: “He was right, of course, to give me such advice, and I shudder to think that I (or anyone else) could ever help cause a market event that would cost some people their fortunes.” Huh? The television anchor invited an expert onto his television show and then discouraged that expert from sharing his true beliefs with his listeners. How could that possibly be the right thing to do? The television anchor should be ashamed of himself. Shiller should be proud of himself for sharing this revealing anecdote and also a little ashamed as well for soft-peddling the danger of the practice (which is widespread) described. Everyone does what the television anchor did. The newspapers celebrate price jumps even though all they do is raise the price of stocks, a good that all of us who hope to be able to retire someday must buy. Investment advisors brag about the good advice they gave when prices rise even though all price increases greater than those justified by the economic realities (that is, all price increases greater than the 6.5 percent real price increase that has been the price increase that has applied in the U.S. market for as far back as we have records) are temporary cotton-candy gains fated to be blown away in the wind as time passes. Retirement calculators assume 6.5 percent gains on a going-forward basis even when prices are insanely inflated and it is obviously unrealistic to expect such gains. Everyone lies in the stock investing field. Because everyone demands lies. Those who don’t lie are silenced. Those who don’t lie make the ones who do lie look bad. A bull market cannot survive truth-telling. And we all like those pretend cotton-candy gains. For obvious reasons. Two paragraphs down from the passage cited above, Shiller tells a different anecdote: “One investment manager for a pension plan spoke to me about how difficult it was for him to suggest in his public statements that people should perhaps be concerned about overpricing of the stock market. Despite his considerable reputation and apparent sympathy with the views expressed in my book, he seemed to be saying that it was not within his authority to make bold and unprovable statements contrary to conventional wisdom. He seemed to view his charge as interpreting received doctrine and that it would be considered a dereliction of duty to voice contrary opinions that came only from his own judgment.” We expect doctors to express their own judgment. That’s why they get paid the big bucks. It’s the same with baseball umpires. And with accountants. And with lawyers. And with engineers. And with every other kind of professional. The person giving investing advice is the only exception to the otherwise universal rule. Because of what the television anchor said to Shiller. Question Pretend Gains and they might disappear. No one wants that. And so the Pretend Gains grow bigger and bigger and bigger until the cost associated with their disappearance (which is ultimately inevitable) becomes so large that it causes an economic crisis. It’s a problem. Disclosure : None