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CMS Energy (CMS) Q2 2015 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

CMS Energy Corporation (NYSE: CMS ) Q2 2015 Earnings Conference Call July 23, 2015 8:30 AM ET Executives D.V. Rao – VP, Treasurer, Financial Planning & IR Tom Webb – EVP & CFO Analysts Julien Dumoulin-Smith – UBS Dan Eggers – Credit Suisse Jonathan Arnold – Deutsche Bank Paul Patterson – Glenrock Associates Operator Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the CMS Energy 2015 Second Quarter Results and Outlook Call. This call is being recorded. After the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time. [Operator Instructions] Just a reminder, there will be a rebroadcast of this conference call today beginning at 12 P.M. Eastern Time running through July 30. Presentation is also being webcast and is available on CMS Energy’s website in the Investor Relations section. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. D.V. Rao, Vice President and Treasurer, Financial Planning and Investor Relations. Please go ahead. D.V. Rao Good morning and thank you for joining us today. Our earnings news release issued earlier today and the presentation used in this webcast are available on our website. This presentation contains forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These statements should be considered in the context of the risks and other factors detailed in our SEC filings. These factors could cause CMS Energy’s and Consumers’ results to differ materially. This presentation also includes non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of each of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in the appendix, and posted in the Investor section of our website. Now, let me turn the call over to Tom Webb, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Tom Webb Thank you, D.V., and good morning everyone. Thanks for joining our call. As always, we deeply appreciate your interest in our company and for spending time with us today. And John sends his regrets that he can’t join us today. He is recovering from a medical procedure and we look forward to his return in a few weeks. I know he’ll miss fielding your questions today. So we’ll begin the call with an overview of the quarter and provide an update on the legislative process, before turning to more detail on the gas business, the fast half and our growth model, and then we’ll close with Q&A. For the first half of the year, adjusted earnings per share were $0.98, down $0.07 from last year but up $0.03 on a weather-adjusted basis, were $0.13 ahead of plan. Today, we’re reaffirming our full-year adjusted earnings per share guidance of $1.86 to $1.89, and as you know, this reflects real growth of 5% to 7% of last year’s actual results. We filed our gas rate case last week for $85 million. Like our previous cases, it’s small and primarily driven by capital investment. Even with this rate case, we expect total customer bills to decrease in 2016 due to lower gas commodity prices. Last month, we self-implemented our electric rate case at $110 million, and we expect an order for this case in December, which would mark 2.5 years since the last order. Our predictable growth has continued over that time and we have self-initiated many cost reductions to keep prices low for our customers. Here you can see the impact of our actions along with constructive regulatory environment. Our industrial rates are at a competitive level that’s attracting new business to the state. Rates could be improved further with changes to ROA policy, creating a competitive advantage for Michigan’s business in the Midwest and in the country. As we’ve improved industrial rates, residential bills have remained low at about $3 a day. Recently we committed do more in Michigan and help grow businesses. Our spending on in state goods and services will be $1 billion per year over the next five years. By helping to make Michigan a competitive state in which to do business, we are seeing growth. In Grand Rapids, the largest city in our service territory, housing, GDP, population growth and unemployment are all better today than Michigan as a whole and the U.S. Overall, Michigan is moving towards becoming a top 10 state and Grand Rapids is leading the way. Michigan’s energy law update can help to drive this growth. Bills are now in committees with the house and senate. Recently Senate Committee Chairman Mike Nofs introduced a comprehensive bill after considerable research and debate. The Senator’s bill proposes to keep the ROA cap. However, the bill stipulates stringent requirements for both, ROA suppliers and customers. In order to protect all customers from reliability and price volatility, the supplier would be required to procure a minimum of three years of capacity. And ROA customers who decide to stay with alternative suppliers would be required to provide a three-year notice prior to returning to bundled utility service. Once the customer returns from ROA, they are no longer eligible to switch back. These policy leaders are broadly in agreement with the integrated resources plan process which would give the state the flexibility it needs among many things, to enable investment in needed new generation and comply with state and federal environmental regulations. The IRP would replace the existing certificate of necessity process with a more comprehensive longer term decision making process. The IRP would provide us with the assurance of recovery and allow us to plan capacity resources for a decade or more. This transparent process could include new gas capacity, renewables and efficiency programs. Now on the regulatory front, I’m please to highlight the Governor’s announcement yesterday of the appointment of Norm Saari as a new Public Service Commissioner. He has a long track record of public and private service in the utility sector and public policy space. We look forward to working with him. We continue to look at and evaluate new investment opportunities that could increase the capital spending in our 10-year plan. When we look at these opportunities, we evaluate each one by asking, does it add customer value; does it reduce O&M cost; does it help balance our fuel sources and/or is it mandated by state or federal regulations, and none of our investments in the plan or those identified as opportunities are big bets. Our gas business is one of the larger distribution systems in the country. This scale provides many investment opportunities for additional growth. We’ve been upgrading our compressor stations, installing new transmission lines and replacing aging infrastructure. We could do more and we could accelerate the pace. Our plan calls for doubling gas investment over the next 10 years. This brings our investment mix to over one-third gas. Our customers benefit from the safety, reliability and cost effectiveness of the gas plant. If fuel costs remain low, additional headroom will allow us to make these investments without impairing price. On average, our gas customers spend about $2 a day. That’s equal to their bill in 2004. Now here’s a little more detail on our results. For the second quarter, our earnings were $0.25 a share on both, a reported and an adjusted basis. This is a nickel below last year or a penny on a weather-normalized basis. Weather in June was the mildest in 15 years. Cooling days where 50% lower than last year. Economic sales also were flat as one substantial low-margin customer came through a temporary supply interruption. For the first half of the year, our results were $0.98 or $0.86 on whether-normalized basis. That’s $0.03 better than 2014. And at the mid-year checkpoint, we are $0.13 a share or 15% better than our plan. We have lots of room to move. As you can see here with first half weather-normalized earnings up $0.03, we’re positioned well. Even with a nickel of cost in the second half associated with new mortality tables and lower discount rates, our cost reductions of $0.12 more than offset this. For the full-year, costs are down about 3% and new rates already have been implemented. At mid-year, our earnings per share is $0.13 ahead of plan, and like last year and many of the years and the decade prior to that, we added substantial customer reliability work and still plan to hit our 5% to 7% guidance. O&M reinvestment of $18 million is underway, including more forestry work at the utility and accelerating a planned major outrage at DIG from 2016 into this year. The DIG pull ahead accomplishes a double benefit of accelerating the DIG outage cost into 2015 when we had ample room to absorb it and bringing up capacity in what will be a very tight market in 2016. In addition, we’ll be increasing DIG’s capacity by 38 megawatts and these reinvestments could add $20 million to profitability next year. From time to time, some of you ask us, how we accomplish consistent earnings growth year-end and year-out and how we do it without raising customer rates above inflation. As you know, we have a robust capital investment program and a substantial opportunity to increase it. However, we build our investment plan starting with customer rates growing no faster than inflation. And here is how we do that. Our O&M cost reductions worth about 2% a year; conservatively forecast sales growth of about 0.5 point a year; avoidance of block equity dilution worth about a point and other self-funds five points of investment. This permits earnings to grow 5% to 7% and customer rate impacts stay below inflation. Here is our capital investment program for the next 10 years. Investment in our gas business grows substantially. Investment in our electric business continues to grow too but at a slower pace. And please remember that our earnings growth is not predicated on sales growth or cost reductions. Upsides from these are directed to our customers. Even without any upsides, our capital investment program over the next 10 years will be 45% larger than the last 10 years. As a percent of market cap, CMS investment was 10% over the last 10 years. It’s 16% over the next 10. This exceeds peers. The opportunity to increase that investment by as much as $5 billion to over $20 billion continues to be practical, particularly when many of the investment opportunities do not increase customer bills. A lot of the capital investment we put in place enables us to reduce O&M cost. These are down 10% since 2006, and we’ll reduce these costs another 7% by 2018. There is no magic to this cost reduction program. It’s simple. Natural changes in our business like coal to gas generation and Pole Top Hardening make the difference. Here is more detail around cost reduction actions, down 6% in two years as we switch from coal plants, which requires substantial number of people to operate, to gas generation and wind firms, which require about 10% of the workforce needed to run coal, we’ll be able to reduce our O&M by $35 million. By continuing our program to harden our Pole Tops, we reduce future storm-related damage and we capitalize rather than expense that work. These are just a couple of examples of how we’ve reduced our cost 3% last year and are in the middle of a program to do another 3% this year. Since 2006 through 2014, ours is the only utility to reduce its cost, down almost 3% a year. We forecast reductions perhaps conservatively at 2% a year between 2014 and 2018. The outlook for the economy in our utility service territory continues to be bright. As you can see here, many companies from a variety of sectors have announced new factories and businesses. This will add new growth of almost 3%. Despite this, we continue to plan conservatively, including overall sales growth at about 1.5% over the next five years and industrial growth of about 2%. While this is another opportunity in our model to minimize customer rate growth, there may be a little upset. One more element of the self-funding model that promotes robust rate base and earnings growth without allowing customer rates to grow faster than inflation is the benefit from a large stockpile of NOLs. Typically a utility would lose about 1% of its earnings growth through dilution associated with new equity to fund growth. In our case, we’re fortunate to be able to invest our cash in utility growth rather than taxes avoiding full points of dilution. So the model is simple and perhaps it’s a little unique. We start our planning by keeping nominal customer rate growth below inflation, or in other words, we provide real rate reductions. With cost reductions, modest sales growth, no block equity dilution and shrinking surcharges, we’re able to grow rate base by 5% to 7% and with substantial opportunity to do more. Many of our capital investment opportunities not yet in our plan can be accomplished without any increase to customer bills. This includes replacing PPAs as they expire and the potential that customers on ROA may return to bundled service, creating more headroom to pull ahead incremental capital investment. So here’s the PPA example of growth not included in our plan. We have more PPAs than our peers, and as they are replaced, we’re able to build new gas generation at a cost that’s lower than the existing PPAs. What a nice way to grow our business and provide reliability for our customers without increasing their bills. And here is the opportunity should ROA customers choose to return to bundled service. As they return, which may be a better economic choice for them, all our customers can experience rate reductions of about 4%. This provides headroom for more investment to meet customer needs. Think of it by replacing expiring PPAs and building for returning ROA customers, we’d add 3,000 megawatts of new generation that’s not yet in our plan. And this is without increasing customer bills at all, a clear win for our customers and a clear win for our investors. You can see the need for new generation in MISO’s most recent report. MISO updated their 2016 capacity forecast showing MISO will be short 1.5 gigawatts in Zone 7 by spring. With our newly purchased Jackson gas plant, we can provide sufficient capacity for our bundled customers. We can’t however be sure if AES suppliers can do the same for those ROA customers. And by the way, our mix of coal field capacity has been reduced from over 40% to a third today, and as you can see in the appendix slide with coal plant closures next year, the mix will be below 25%. With our business model, we’ve been able to deliver consistent earnings growth of more than 7% each year for over a decade, through recessions, through adverse weather, through changing policy leadership and through anything else that came our way. As we do, we hope you to see this as a sustainable model for our customers and our investors for a decade ahead. As you can imagine, with this consistent investment growth, our operating cash flow as a percent of market cap has gone from less than our peers five years ago to greater than our peers today, with prospects that additional growth will provide an even larger cash flow. This is a nice place to be providing resources for the future, resources to invest more for our customers, more rate base growth and/or improve capital structure. So here is our sensitivity chart that we provide you each quarter to assist you with assessing our prospects. In this time of rising and volatile interest rates, it’s comforting to know that our model is not very sensitive to changes in interest rates. At the utility, higher borrowing costs related to higher interest rates is largely offset by the impact of higher discount rates on our benefits and retiree programs and perhaps a higher return on equity in the future. At the parent, our practice includes pre-funding parent debt two years in advance and maintaining a smooth maturity schedule. This insulates us from substantial risk to change in interest rates. If for example interest rates rise from our plan by 100 basis points, the annual earnings impact would be less than a penny a share, and we already include high interest rates in our 10-year plan. Here is our report card for 2015. We’re in a good position and at the midway point with substantial benefit from the Arctic blast earlier in the year and better-than-planned cost reductions so far this year. We’re putting the surplus to good use with reliability improvements for our utility customers and we’re accelerating outages to enhance the outlook for 2016. Continuing our mindset that focuses on customers and investors permits us to perform well. We hope you agree. We’ve achieved substantial improvements in customer value and customer satisfaction. We have the best cost reduction track record in the nation. We are in our 13th year of premium earnings and dividend growth, and we plan to continue this performance for some time. So thanks for your interest and your support. We appreciate your calling in, and we’d be delighted to take your questions. So operator, would you please open up the line? Question-and-Answer Session Operator Certainly, and thank you very much Mr. Webb. The question-and-answer session will be conducted electronically. [Operator Instructions] We’ll pause for just a second. Our first question comes from Michael Weinstein with UBS. Your line is open. Julien Dumoulin-Smith Good morning, it’s Julien here. Tom Webb Good morning. Nice to hear your voice. Julien Dumoulin-Smith Likewise. So I suppose first quick question if you don’t mind, just with regards to legislative developments. Just to be very clear about expectations. As far as the latest proposals from Nof moving through this summer, is that still in line with what you’re expecting in terms of return to ROA and return to customers? Tom Webb The bottom line is yes it is, and I would just comment, keep in mind that we’re not planning on any return in our financial plans that you see. That’s kind of all of an upside. We suspect as the policymakers work through this during the summer months and do something before the end of this year that from an ROA standpoint, there may be an economic opportunity that comes out of the law where customers will decide it’s probably better to be with bundled service, because they are likely to have to secure not only energy but capacity as they go forward. And to do that, they may find bundled service a better place to do, and that’s exactly what we like. We like seeing them make the right economic decisions. So the answer again to your question is yes. Julien Dumoulin-Smith Great, excellent. Perhaps coming back to the cost-cutting efforts. Just to be clear, how are you setting up in the next or I suppose the pull forward isn’t quite happening to the same extent. What are you thinking year-over-year? Just I know you have a broader confidence in your 5% to 7% growth rate, but how do you think year-over-year in terms of cost-cutting effectiveness? I know it’s a little early but just kind of curious. Tom Webb Well, we feel very good about what we’re doing. As you recall, I mentioned that we’re ahead of plan already. You can see that on the reinvestment slide when you have a chance to peek at that. You’ll see our cost savings are better than what we anticipated to the extent of about four or five pennies. So that’s pretty good. That’s a big number. So the plans for this year are good. The reinvestment will continue. Now if I told you how much we’d reinvest at the end of the first quarter call, it would be a lot more. And what I tell you at this call because of the cool weather that we had in June. But when you look at that reinvestment slide, you still see we’ve got lots of room to move and lots of decisions to head, to tailor into what are the right places to put our money and still deliver for you on the profits. Julien Dumoulin-Smith Great. And a last little detail. As you’re assuming we get some developments on the legislation in forthcoming periods, how swiftly thereafter would you anticipate making a filing or talking about new generation construction just in terms of a timeline since we’re coming up against here potentially seeing this legislation going forward? Tom Webb Yes, a little premature to say exactly what we do because we need to see what the final shape of the plan is, but think of it in two fashions. There will be – likely be this new IRP process. So that will have work done by the state to start planning where we need to be to meet PPA requirements, to do our own state requirements on environmental, all of that. That will be followed by the official IRP process. So that will take a little while. So I suspect what you’ll see in the law are some bridging actions. Now I’m just speculating, but take something like energy efficiency to ensure that we continue to do the good work we’re doing today, there may be a little bridge that says you continue on the program you have today for a period of time before you go into new things. Is that sort of thinking that wants me to hesitate a little bit on how soon we say we’ll announce new capacity, part of it will depend on how the ROA plan goes, returns to customers, part of it will depend on the needs of what may come out of the EPA in August and September, maybe more renewables. So we’ll put all that together, be talking to the regulators and policymakers and then probably have something if you made me guess early next year to give you a sense of where we think we’re going and what our proposals are. Julien Dumoulin-Smith Thank you very much. Good luck. Tom Webb Julien, thank you. Operator The next question is from Dan Eggers of Credit Suisse. Your line is open. Dan Eggers Hi. Good morning, guys. Just extending on Julien’s question about the IRP process. Can you maybe walk through how you see it working as best you can tell right now, working with the commission to kind of layout the parameters for renewables, for efficiency, for conventional generation? And then with the shortfall in ‘16 in Michigan, even with the MISO updates, how you go about trying to resolve that in the context of a bigger policy goal? Tom Webb I’d be glad to do that. First of all, think about what we’ll do. We’ll make sure our bundled customers are covered. So from a capacity standpoint, we’ve got a lot of optionality, even though the state is going to be sure probably at the least the Lower Peninsula [ph] and the spring of next year, we will have tools to take care of our folks. What we’re uncertain about and part of what the law is about is who is going to take care of the ROA customers. Is that something that the AESs are willing to do economically with those ROA customers or it’s something where we really do need to step in for long-term planning basis. So here are the steps. First, the public service commission will put some parameters together for the IRP filings. So it will take a little time to do that. Second, within a couple of years of the enactment, there has to be IRPs filed. So you see there is a little flexibility in there, but that’s the next step, and that will include a long-term outlook. And then before we file an IRP, if you follow the bills the way they are structured today, we would do bid an RFP to make sure we understand what’s out there in the market that we would factor into our plans. Now you might think of that as, what does that mean? You’re not going to able to build thing. I wouldn’t think of that at all. I’d think of that as the common sense that we use. Remember, we were about to build a new gas generation plant in [indiscernible], and instead we twice went out on our own to check the market. And in the second check, which was last December, we found, my goodness there is a far better deal for our customers. So we were thrilled to put that in place and did that, change our capital investment totals at all? No, because we backfilled with things that we can’t fit in today with things that needed to be fit in it and so that worked just perfect. So then when you get into the RFP process, there is they call it a shot clock, interesting a little basketball hooper is in here. There will be a 270 day process for that to go through. So you see that’s a little bit of a long process, and therefore there will be some bridging in between on several issues which could include energy efficiencies, it could include a bridging around generation plants where the existing con might be used as a quick process to cover needs in the future and not have to wait for a year or two or so to make those decisions. That’s all up in the air. That’s all the kind of discussion that’s happening this summer, and everybody seems to have their heads screwed on very right to make sure that the state and our customers are taken care of. That makes sense? Dan Eggers It does. Now let me ask the simple question which is when we sit from the outside looking at next year, what should we look from you guys as far as how you address the shortfall in Michigan for ‘16 and ‘17? Tom Webb Well, two points. First point, remember, we are inside of those numbers you see. We’re covered. We have adequate plans in place to take care of all of our bundled customers. If for some reason there was an emergency and I’ll do a theoretical thing, all ROA customers chose to come back to bundled service right away, we would find short-term measures to cover that and think purchases on the market, think use of short-term PPAs, think DIG, think all the list of options like that, there are many. So short-term, we could be in very good shape. Longer term, we want to plan for more certainties. So what we would work on is how to put more permanent capacity in place in Zone 7, so our customers will essentially own their generation as opposed to renting it. Dan Eggers Okay, got it. I guess one last question, Tom. If you could just – what do you see as the kind of the big bridge drivers if we look at the second half of ‘15 versus ‘14? I think you probably need to make $0.15, $0.17 more in this second half than you did last year. Just what are kind of the chunky pieces you see helping to get to that number? Tom Webb Yes, that’s a good question. If you can, if you’ll refer to slide 12, you will happen to see sort of the best roadmap, but I think it’s in the slides first half, second half. When you look at the second half, we already have programmed in actions that give us lower O&M, and that’s in the $0.12 that you see, that’s largely what that is. And those are all underway, so there is no like new cost reductions that desperately need to be found. And then you’ve got the mortality tables that are the full-year effect. You remember it was $45 million, so just the portion that impacts in the second half is about a nickel of bad news. Then you got rate release and everything else. Remember, just about all of our rate release that we’re talking about is really second half. So think of the electric rate case as an example. On the electric rate case, we just self-implemented. So we’re actually collecting that. We get all that upside as we go through the second half of the year, something we didn’t have in the first half of the year. So I would tell you there is a lot of natural things like that, that don’t require a lot of wishing and praying or worrying of any kind. And then have you think about slide 13 that shows the reinvestment plan. We’re actually still in the mode of looking where we deploy our resources in steps throughout the course of the year to go from $0.13 better than planned to what would leave you with a good 5% to 7% earnings growth. So we are in, I’d say great shape. This is actually a fun place to be. It’s little tougher when it’s the other way like it was about three years ago when we had a really mild winter and we had a fine $0.13, which we did, and as you know, the actuals speak for themselves we’re in great shape. So not a lot of pressure for us, but you can see our normal cost reductions coming in place. We’re now getting rate release in the second half. We didn’t have in the first half. And so the comps, I guess, are a little busy easier if you look at it that way. Dan Eggers Great. Thanks for time and best recovery wishes for John, please. Tom Webb Thank you for that. Thanks Dan. Operator The next question is from Jon Arnold with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Jonathan Arnold Hi, good morning. Tom Webb Good morning, Jonathan. Jonathan Arnold Just quick question on the slide where you show the 6% to 8% opportunity versus 5% to 7% in the plan. Tom you mentioned – you have sort of short-term and long-term labels there. Can you just – it seems like you’re going a step further towards raising the growth rate without actually doing that. How do you think about short-term, and are you meaning to imply that in the next year or so we could be there? Tom Webb I think that’s fair enough. There is a mix of things, some of which are short-term and some of which are a little bit longer term. So when you think about the generation side of things, those are a little bit longer term adds into our plan, but there is plenty of short-term things to do as well. And I’m actually going to take you to slide that you prefer not to be taken to I think, instead of the one you’re talking to, and that’s slide 13 which shows the reinvestment curve again. Here is the best way I can encourage everybody to think about this. There are some very important things we don’t have to do but we sure would like to do for our customers. Tree trimming is one of the simplest explanations I have. Our tree trimming cycle is closer to 10 years and it should be closer to five or six years. So the commission is kind enough to give us a little bit more with each rate case and then they know every time we can find an opportunity to do a little bit more when we have good news from cost reductions or weather or whatever it is, we also do a little bit more. What I would caution everybody is, yes, underneath we could probably be growing a lot faster than 5% to 7%, but inside as long as we have that opportunity to do these important things for our customers, we’re going to do those, and I think there will be things like that to do certainly this year, and I think certainly next year, and then we’ll talk about the future after that and that’s not a hint up or down, we’ll just talk about that a little bit later. The other thing it does for us is by doing this work like the DIG pull ahead and like more tree trimming and whatever, it actually makes it easier for us to deliver the next year because our customers are better off, we pull cost ahead that would have happened in the next year or the year after, but it makes it easier for us to deliver the good results that you need to see. So no move from the 5% to 7%, certainly not today. Jonathan Arnold So the – you do at some point run out of things that you can accelerate like will you catch up on tree trimming and is that part of the motivation for putting this opportunity number out there? Tom Webb Well, we get asked the question enough that we wanted to show with the investment profile how easy the model works. So if we had more investment, we can do that without putting stress on our customers and still give them average rate increases that are less than inflation. That’s the point. The point is less so to say, look for 6% to 8% earnings growth in the near-term, just know that the capacity is there, but our desire to use that capacity this year, next year and who knows beyond that is important and it’s paying off. It’s paying off for our customers, and then indirectly it’s paying off big time for all of our investors by allowing us to have that happy customer group as well as to be able to deliver that 5% to 7% every year. Jonathan Arnold Okay. So can I just – one follow-up on that, Tom, the NOLs. Can you remind us how much runway you still have on NOLs and how – when those end out of that sort of – how does that fold into the longer term growth outlook? Tom Webb Yes, we’re good on NOLs for several years to go. The gross NOLs are near $1 billion still, and remember, then you got to net that for the tax effect. And I believe in your appendix you do have our operating cash flow slide, and it will show you in the bottom bright yellow bar when anybody gets a chance to look at that, that NOLs and credits are still positive and available all the way through 2020, and the NOLs are used up a little earlier than that depending on bonus depreciation and depending on other tax things. But at this point, we’re still pretty comfortable telling you, we can go five years without any block equity because of that tax opportunity. I’m a little embarrassed because every time I – once a year I have to explain to you it has to go out another year. Probably five years ago, I think we were telling you that we had five years to go and today our time is up, but fortunately we have another five years to go. Jonathan Arnold Great. Thank you, Tom. Tom Webb Thank you, Jonathan. Operator The next question is from Paul Patterson with Glenrock Associates. Your line is open. Paul Patterson Good morning. Tom Webb Good morning. Paul Patterson Just wanted to touch base a little bit on the sales growth. Could you give us a little bit more of a flavor as to when we look at the 0.5% growth, how much of that’s focused on industrial versus the other rate losses? Tom Webb Yes, happy to do that. So we – our first half sales growth weather-adjusted weather-normalized for electric was flat. You’ll see that in our addendum, you’ll see that data. Paul Patterson Yes, I did see that. Tom Webb Yes. And you’ll see residential down and commercial up a little bit. That’s nothing to really get too nervous about because we’ve seen that flat to down to up a touch. It’s oscillating. Those two are not making the big recovery. Now typically you would see after recession. So that’s still ahead of us. That hasn’t started happening yet. The point for today is probably more around the industrial side. When you look at the data, our growth was over 1% in the first half and we know that its underlying growth is better than 2%. So you may say what’s happening. Now I have to be careful because I can’t talk about a specific company, but there is an individual company that’s a big customer, a very low margin customer of ours and they have an interruption on the supply side, and it was a stubborn one. And I’m not even sure and it’s not my business to say when they’ll be coming out of that, but obviously they’ve worked their way through that. And when that comes back through, you’ll see the industrial numbers back up to what we think is a more reasonable level. So keep in mind, we expect that to happen for the future and we really haven’t factored in all the 3% of new growth from new businesses locating which will be largely late this year, mostly ‘16 and some ‘17. But the answer to your question was, in the analysis think industrial as of today. Paul Patterson Okay, but when we look at that 0.5% increase, how much, I guess, what I’m really saying is going forward? How much do you guys associate that coming from industrial versus higher margin residential and commercial? Tom Webb Yes, I can help you on that. So when you look at that, think of the long-term growth as flat to positive on residential and commercial. And that may be where we are under calling things a bit, because typically there is a point after recession where the jobs and the employment bring in more residential, which brings in more commercial. The industrial side in our assumptions going forward is the main driver because we have great visibility into that. We know the folks that are expanding. We know the folks that are shrinking, if they were, but mostly net expanding. And we know the folks that are coming into the state that have announced, who’ve shared of that and those that are looking that we can announce because they haven’t yet. So we feel pretty good on that side. Does that help? Paul Patterson That’s very helpful. Just in terms of the sensitivity since you guys always provide, is that – when we look at that 1%, is that basically across the customer groups or is that pretty much with the same trends that you’re seeing in terms of industrial leading that? Do you follow what I’m saying? Tom Webb I do. That sensitivity we do on an average basis. Paul Patterson Okay. Tom Webb So, if you will, think about the sensitivity that would be oriented more to industrial than to residential, that would make the sensitivity a little less so, because residential is key in here. So we do an average. Paul Patterson Okay. And then IRP versus the mandate, which is one of the differences we see inside the legislation I think. Does that make a significant difference in terms of what you think the sales growth outlook would be, or is it just a question of what’s selected in terms of making the – does it have an impact I guess on decision [ph]. Tom Webb Yes, I don’t think that’s going to have a big deal on sales growth and competition where you were going. So when we talk about having or not having a mandate and using the IRP, that mandate would have been around renewables is a simple example. If you don’t have a mandate because the policymakers would rather make sure that the IRP process is more thoughtful around what the important things are doing, and in an IRP process you might come up with 4% renewables as opposed to a mandate might say something else. The policymakers think the IRP process will be more thoughtful. And when we get into all the needs for capacity, for environmental compliance and those sorts of things, I think you’re naturally going to see a mix of renewables, a continuing mix of energy efficiency and we’ll probably need to put some capacity in place. So when you were relating it to sales growth, I know you were thinking more choice. I would tell you, we’ve assumed 10% continues forever in our plans. So if you were to conclude that ROA customers might be coming back in this process that will actually help sales. Paul Patterson Okay. Tom Webb Okay? Paul Patterson That’s great. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much. Tom Webb Pleasure. Thank you for calling in. Operator I’m showing no further questions at this time, I’ll turn the call back over to Mr. Webb. Tom Webb Thank you very much. We appreciate everybody joining us today. We had a strong first half. We look forward to the second half of the year and we expect to see an improved energy law as we’ve been talking about today, and we expect to see an order on our electrical rate case in December, and we expect to deliver predictable financial results. So thanks for your interest and spending time with us today. We’ll see in the near future. Operator This concludes today’s conference. We thank you everyone for your participation.

OGE Energy’s (OGE) CEO Pete Delaney Discusses Q1 2015 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

OGE Energy Corp. (NYSE: OGE ) Q1 2015 Earnings Conference Call May 7, 2015 09:00 ET Executives Todd Tidwell – Investor Relations Pete Delaney – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sean Trauschke – President Steve Merrill – Chief Financial Officer Analysts Matt Tucker – KeyBanc Capital Markets Brian Russo – Ladenburg Thalmann Charles Fishman – Morningstar Michael Dandurand – Goldman Sachs Jay Dobson – Wunderlich Securities Anthony Crowdell – Jefferies Chris Shelton – Millennium Partners Operator Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Q1 2015 OGE Energy Earnings Conference Call. My name is Sandra and I am your operator today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session towards the end of the conference. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. And now, I would like to turn the call over to Todd Tidwell. Please go ahead, sir. Todd Tidwell Thank you, Sandra. Good morning, everyone and welcome to OGE Energy Corp’s first quarter 2015 earnings call. I am Todd Tidwell, and with me today, I have Pete Delaney, Chairman and CEO of OGE Energy; Sean Trauschke, President of OGE Energy; and Steve Merrill, CFO of OGE Energy. In terms of the call today, we will first hear from Pete, followed by a regulatory update from Sean and an explanation from Steve of first quarter results. And finally, as always we will answer your questions. I would like to remind you that this conference is being webcast and you may follow along on our website at oge.com. In addition, the conference call and accompanying slides will be archived following the call on that same website. Before we begin the presentation, I would like to direct your attention to the Safe Harbor statement regarding forward-looking statements. This is an SEC requirement for financial statements and simply states that we cannot guarantee forward-looking financial results, but this is our best estimate to-date. I would also like to remind you that there is Reg G reconciliation for gross margin in the Appendix, along with projected capital expenditures. I will now turn the call over to Pete Delaney for his opening comments. Pete? Pete Delaney Thank you, Todd. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us on today’s call. We reported first quarter utility earnings of $0.09 a share, which is down slightly from $0.10 per share in 2014, but is in line with our 2015 full year guidance with utility. While these results are in line with plan, the vast majority of our earnings is we must always remember in the next two quarters. Consolidated earnings for the quarters were $0.22 per share compared to $0.25 in 2014 also in line with our previous guidance for the year. Compared to consolidated earnings, our cash distributions from Enable are a really more important metric to us, as regards to our financial plan. Enable quarterly distributions were $34 million in the first quarter, up about 9% from the initial distribution rate at the time of the Enable IPO last April. Despite the impact of lower commodity prices on the gathering and processing business, we do expect distribution growth from Enable to continue this year. While the economy – Oklahoma economy has been impacted of course by falling commodity prices, our service area appears to remain on sound footing. The local sector has seen job losses of about 8% since the start of ‘15. However, unemployment rate as of March 2015 for Oklahoma City and the state remains well below 4%, one of the lowest in the nation. And the utility continues to add customers at a rate consistent with our historical growth rate of 1% and that’s about more than 8,000 customers having added to the system since the first quarter of 2014. At the utility, the focus is on executing our environmental compliance plan and our activities related to leveraging our smart grid infrastructure to improve work processes, continue to drive operational improvements and enhancing the customer experience. Please report recent polling by J.D. Power indicates that our customer satisfaction remains one of the highest in the nation. Our compliance path for the Regional Haze regulations has been a long one. We, along with the Attorney General, as you know, chose to fight for the Oklahoma State Implementation Plan for Regional Haze that we believe is far preferable from a customer standpoint and is more in line with Congress’ original intent compared to the EPA’s federal implementation plan. Although we ultimately were unsuccessful in our appeals for the court system all the way to United States Supreme Court, our efforts along the way were supported by many in Oklahoma. We are now actively involved in the next step, which is recovery of our mandated environmental compliance costs before the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, a process that brings other parties, including our previous supporters, to opine on these plans. We believe that this is the first proceeding under the filing at the commission under House Bill 1910 that Oklahoma legislature unanimously passed a few years ago to specifically facilitate the recovery of costs associated with state or federal environmental mandates. Our efforts to mitigate customer impact continues and that is the primary driver behind our filing under House Bill 1910 that allows for pre-approval of mandated environmental costs and equipment rate base, spreading out the recovery of these items over several years as opposed to a one-time much higher increase. For the most part, our compliance plan, consisting of adding scrubbers to our coal units at the Sooner Power station and converting two of our coal units at Muskogee, while heavily scrutinized in the hearing process, had a few detractors. More concerns were expressed during the hearing process over our Mustang modernization plan. Part of our filing at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission utilized a provision of House Bill 1910 that provides for pre-approval of new generation capacity. In this case, we are seeking to replace the 1950 generating units at our Mustang site with new highly efficient responsive CTs. While replacement of the old units is not mandated by the federal government, we believe that the replacement is mandated by their age and current usage in the Day 2 market. The changes in this SPP market are having a profound impact on the operation of this early 1950s era plan. These units, for example, cycled 114 times in 2014 compared to 33 times during the previous 5 years. This exerts a lot of wear and tear on the units originally designed for baseload operations. Furthermore, on adding new units at the Mustang site, we will be able to utilize the existing air permits. In today’s regulatory environment, it will be very difficult to get new air permits for a comparable facility near the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. The regulatory environment at Arkansas appears to be improving with the passage of this legislative session of two constructive regulatory bills. We are very encouraged by the recently enacted environmental recovery statute and the formula ratemaking plan. We will file for recovery of our environmental costs in Arkansas early this month and look to file a general rate case in the near future. As you know, we have been under-earning in Arkansas for quite some time, but we are optimistic that the new governor and commission will provide mechanisms for us to close that gap. I continually highlight our efforts to leverage our smart grid investment in order to facilitate continuous improvement in our operations and drive even better customer experience. Operationally, this means we are storing power faster, reducing the frequency and duration of outages, as we saw from last month’s storm restoration efforts. Smart meter data is providing more accurate device location allowing us to send teams to specific locations for damage assessments versus sweeping entire circuit. Smart meter data also provides accurate real-time view of the current state of the system. From this information, we have been able to make process changes that allow for swifter and more accurate deployment of material, restoration and assessment resources. In addition, our new technologies allow for increasing power quality, improving the breadth of our connectivity with customer side devices, and increasing levels of customer engagement. Our SmartHours program, as an example, has been a great start. We have made great progress on delivering the right customer experience, but we are making further improvements through deployment of the technology and the work process that I talked about earlier. We are optimistic about improving the value proposition of our product, electric service, which should better position us to deliver value for our shareholders. We are off to a strong start in 2015 both operationally and financially. We know that the environmental case certainly creates an overhang for our investors. Our members have put forward a great effort in demonstrating great technical expertise in environmental compliance regulatory case in Oklahoma. Reliable operation of our system depends on us being to apply that expertise and making the tough investment decisions needed for the long-term benefit of our customers. Our environmental compliance plan will position our generating fleet well for the uncertainties of the future. From an OGE Energy perspective, the Enable distributions contribute significantly to our cash flow to support financing the environmental capital program and to accomplish our goal of growing the dividend 10% per year through 2019. Increasing distributions from Enable, while expected, is not required for us to meet our 10% dividend growth rate. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Sean to dig a little bit deeper into our regulatory. Sean Trauschke Thank you, Pete and good morning. Before we get into the environmental compliance effort, I think it is important to acknowledge the storms, which hit our communities last night, multiple tornadoes, high winds, significant rainfall, causing property damage, well closures and flooding and our thoughts and prayers go out to those communities impacted. We are busy on the restoration efforts and I am proud of the men and women who have been working safely through the night to restore the system and help the communities in which we serve. This is what we do. Pete gave a good overview on the history of the case. And now, I want to update you on what has happened recently. Closing arguments for the hearings on our environmental compliance plan took place yesterday and there were no surprises, as the parties reiterated their filed positions. We feel like our case is strong and non-compliance is not an option. Now, the proceeding goes to the ALJ and we hope to receive his report in June. And after that, it goes to the Commissioner for final approval. We feel like we have a very strong case presented by our very own experts. We are a company with a strong track record of success as we have been in business for 113 years. Our system is highly reliable. We have rates well below the national average, numerous customer satisfaction awards and a strong environmental track record. Turning to Arkansas, we will file for recovery next week with the Arkansas Commission under Act 310 and hope to begin recovery as early as the June billing cycle. Our filing will include our environmental expenditures to-date with the ability to re-file every 6 months as additional expenditures occur. As you know, Arkansas recently amended Act 310 accelerating recovery for mandated environmental compliance expenditures. We have not yet determined the timing of the general rate case in Arkansas, but are encouraged by the recent approval of formula ratemaking legislation, which could greatly reduce the under-earning in that jurisdiction. We were just in Arkansas a few weeks ago and met with the new Governor, the new Attorney General staff, two of the Commissioners and the Director of the Public Utility division and I will tell you we were encouraged. I am happy to report I heard a consistent pro-business climate being voiced in every meeting. Now, I will provide you with an update on our compliance progress today. Regarding the ACI systems for MATS compliance, we expect to finalize installation contracts this summer and construction will commence in the second half of this year to meet the April 2016 compliance deadline. Looking at the Regional Haze compliance plan, installation of the low-NOx burners is now complete on all of the coal units. We are in the permitting process for the remaining three units at Seminole and installation will begin on those units this fall and could be completed in the spring of 2017. The equipment and installation vendors for the two dry scrubbers at Sooner have been selected and the schedules and budgets are on plan. Engineering studies for the conversion of the two coal units at Muskogee are ongoing and expected to be complete by the middle of this year, with permit applications submitted to the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality in the second half of 2017. Recall, our plan is to continue to run these coal units as long as possible to maximize the benefit to our customers. Bids for the Mustang plant turbines have been received and we expect to finalize our selection this month. The turbine selection is important, because it is needed for the air permit application we plan to file shortly. Before I turn the call over to Steve, I would like to summarize by saying we presented a very strong case in Oklahoma and we are encouraged by what we see in Arkansas and operationally we are on plan. With that, I will turn the call over to Steve who will discuss the first quarter results. Steve? Steve Merrill Thanks, Sean and good morning. For the first quarter, we reported net income of $43 million, or $0.22 per share as compared to net income of $49 million, or $0.25 per share in 2014. You will notice that the holding company had earnings of $0.02 per share. This is primarily due to a gain from the deferred compensation plan and we are not projecting this to continue. The contribution by business unit on a comparative basis is listed on the slide. At OG&E, net income for the quarter was $17 million or $0.09 per share as compared to net income of $21 million or $0.10 per share in 2014. First quarter gross margin at the utility increased approximately $2 million, which I will discuss on the next slide. Looking at other key drivers for the quarter, O&M is on plan for the year. The first quarter variance was $3 million lower in part due to the timing of scheduled power plant maintenance. Depreciation increased $10 million primarily due to three large transmission lines that were added in the last 12 months part of the over $800 million of plant placed into service in 2014. Interest expense increased $3 million due to the $250 million debt issuances that occurred in both March and December of last year. Turning to first quarter gross margin, utility margins were up approximately $2 million for the first quarter of 2015 compared to 2014 despite significantly less favorable weather. Looking at the three primary drivers for the change in gross margin first was new customer growth, contributing $5 million, which did include one-time customer rate migration of approximately $1 million. We added over 8,000 new customers to the system as compared to the first quarter of 2014 growing at our historical rate of 1%. Second, changes in sales and customer mix added an additional $5 million. Finally, this growth was partially offset by mild winter weather as compared to the first quarter of 2014. This translated into $11 million of lower gross margin as heating degree days were 11% lower compared to the same time last year. Compared to normal, heating degree days were 2% higher and contributed $3 million of gross margin. For the first quarter of 2015, Enable Midstream made cash distributions of approximately $34 million to OGE and contributed earnings of $23 million or $0.11 per share compared to $29 million or $0.15 per share in 2014. The decrease is primarily due to lower commodity prices. Despite the current commodity price environment, Enable continued to grow their quarterly distribution rate. The second quarter rate increase recently announced was 1.2% raising the distribution to $0.3125 per unit. Overall, Enable has raised its quarterly distributions 9% since its IPO in early 2014. Turning to the 2015 outlook, guidance remains unchanged. This is based on assumptions set forth in our 2014 10-K. For the midstream business, we are projecting to receive approximately $140 million in cash distributions. Our cash flow position for 2015 remains strong and is key to our value proposition, which is growing utility earnings per share and utilizing our cash flow received from Enable to fund our capital expenditures and grow our dividend at 10% annually. This concludes our prepared remarks and we will now answer your questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from Matt Tucker from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Matt Tucker Hi, guys. Good morning. Pete Delaney Good morning. Matt Tucker Could you provide a little more color on the environmental costs that you plan to file for in Arkansas and also if could you elaborate a little bit on what you like about the new ratemaking process there? Sean Trauschke Sure, Matt. This is Sean. So, the filing that we are going to make next week in Arkansas is really to pick up the low NOx burners that are in service. To put it in perspective, it’s pretty small. It’s roughly $0.16 to the average residential customer’s bill per month. So, it’s really small. We haven’t really got too far down, but I think it’s a good way to begin that process. What we really like about the Arkansas legislation was two fronts. One, on their Act 310, which is the environmental mandates, they have expanded that to actually have a looking forward component to that, where you actually, these planned expenditures you could begin to file for that as well. We are not including that in this filing right now. The one we are going to make next week, we don’t plan to make this one, but we will pick that up on the next filing that we make six months from now. The other piece of that was the formula rate legislation and where they really tried to articulate a more prescriptive formula for not only determining the ROE, but determining the recovery of items and more of a formula plan to help reduce some of that lag. And we view this as positive there as well, but we also view the opportunity for us to address the hypothetical capital structure that is in Arkansas as well that causes us the most issue. Matt Tucker Okay, thanks. And then switching gears a little bit, it looks like from Enable within the contribution there, between the amortization, the basis difference and the elimination of the Enogex fair value, those items totaled about $8 million versus I think about $5 million last year. Is this a good run-rate to assume for these items for the rest of this year? Sean Trauschke Yes, it’s about $0.02 a quarter. So, the run-rate sticks around that. The $8 million is the better number. So, it’s about $0.02 a quarter is what you ought to assume. Matt Tucker Great, thanks. And then finally sorry to hear about the storms that hit your service territory last night, is it something that we should expect could create unusually large storm restoration costs for the second quarter or is this kind of consistent with these types of things are kind of common for the second quarter there? Pete Delaney Unfortunately, it is pretty common for the April-May timeframe. And so I don’t see any wild variance from previous years. Matt Tucker Got it. Thanks, guys. That’s all for me. Pete Delaney Okay. Operator Thank you. Your next question comes from Brian Russo from Ladenburg Thalmann. Please go ahead. Brian Russo Hi, good morning. Pete Delaney Hi, good morning Brian. Brian Russo I am just curious, how much are you under-earning in Arkansas and what percent of your rate base is attributable to Arkansas? Steve Merrill The rate base attributable to Arkansas is only about 7%. We are probably earning slightly below 7% at this time. So, we definitely are under-earning at that point, but it’s again only about 7% of our rate base. Brian Russo Okay. And Pete earlier you commented on customer growth and the unemployment rate in economy, just – what’s your outlook given what we have seen in the energy sector? Pete Delaney Yes. We – again, the numbers came out and we obviously especially in the more rural areas as opposed to our metro, with the field services and the contractors and the servicing companies got hit more so than the companies, there have some – been some layoffs in the metro area, but what we have seen is that a recycling. In other words, what we have – our employment rates has been so low. There has been businesses, their number one issue has been able to hire people, because of the low unemployment rate here. And what we have been seeing is that these businesses, the people that are no longer in the energy industry are finding jobs in other areas. We are also seeing our customer growth remains the same. We are seeing a lot of potential growth in some bigger loads. And so we haven’t seen any real – on a net basis, we haven’t seen any real big drops from specific plants. And if there has been one or two, we have got new plants coming in. So, everything really appears to – from the economy I think we maybe expected at this point to see little bit more softness than we have, but so it’s been holding. And we are very pleased to see how the economy is holding in there. So, it’s a little bit more diversified teams and I would say pent up demand in other areas seems to be keeping us on track. Brian Russo Okay. And then, it seems the House Bill 1910, the language is somewhat vague and that there seems to be a lot of different interpretations of it, with the testimonies filed in this compliance filing. And I am just curious, why should Mustang get a rider and why should a rider be granted outside of the context of a rate case, if you don’t mind? Sean Trauschke Sure. So, Brian, this is Sean. On Mustang, what we have decided there is we have gone through this. We see this opportunity there to preserve this vital site for the state. And these units we have talked before, how old they are, they were nearing retirement. Pete talked about their current cycling that’s actually accelerating their retirement dates as well. As far as the rider, the point is this is what we tried to do in our filing is we filed this with the commission to provide the opportunity. We suggest that they should look strongly at CWIP with the idea to minimize the rate impact. We also wanted to propose this rider for Mustang from a transparency perspective. They knew exactly where we were headed, what we were doing and give them the opportunity to begin a glide path on the recovery of those items as well. The other point is from your perspective as we go out and raise capital, you look at that, you value that risk proposition. So, if we were going to go out and sell securities to help fund that that helps. And so we thought that was a good way to lower the overall cost to customers and that’s what we were focused on. And we think it’s appropriate. It’s allowed under the statute and we think it’s a good idea. Pete Delaney Brian, we don’t know if you are referring to the different parts of that statute. And one part was for recovery of state and federal environmental and the other was for pre-approval of – clearly spelled out for new generation to be pre-approved by commission. And again, the legislature I think unanimously passed that bill. At the time people viewed, it made a lot of sense and so we are taking – we are going down that path. Brian Russo Alright, great. Thank you very much. Operator Thank you. We have another question for you and this comes from Charles Fishman from Morningstar. Please go ahead. Charles Fishman Thank you. I noticed the capital expenditures for environmental scrubbers are projected to – I can’t tell if it’s – the total amount has changed or it’s just an acceleration of the project and/or maybe you are refining some of the costs. Could you just explain what’s going on there? Steve Merrill Yes, this is Steve. Nothing has changed. That’s just the timing difference moving some dollars in from ‘16 into ‘15 to about a $15 million change. So, that’s all that’s going on there, but our projections haven’t changed. Charles Fishman Okay, thank you. And the second question I had was referred to some of the increasing in gross margin was rate migration, I was wondering if you would give a little more color to what exactly has happened there? Steve Merrill Sure. It’s really just customers changing rate plans that can have an impact on margin. It’s difficult to estimate and project what they will do, but it’s just movement back and forth within the different rate designs. Charles Fishman So, is that typically residential or commercial or? Steve Merrill Commercial. Charles Fishman Okay, thank you very much. Steve Merrill You are welcome. Operator Thank you. We have another question for you and this one comes from Michael Dandurand, and he is from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Michael Dandurand Hey, guys. Congrats on the good quarter. I think most of my questions have been asked already. Just on your outlook for 2015, I know it’s a pretty good quarter, but so – and obviously, it’s super early in the year. Do you guys typically provide updates throughout the year? And if so when would that be in reference to guidance? Sean Trauschke We would when – if there is a significant change, typically, it would be the third quarter. Keep in mind we have only earned about 3% of our earnings per share for the year up to this point. Second and third quarter are where significant earnings come into play and typically late second quarter and then mainly in the third quarter. Michael Dandurand Okay, got it. That’s all I have. Operator Thank you. We have another question for you. This one is from Jay Dobson and he is from Wunderlich Securities. Please go ahead. Jay Dobson Good morning. Pete Delaney Good morning. Sean Trauschke Hey, Jay. Jay Dobson How are you, Sean, Pete, Steve? Quick question on Oklahoma, I will probably throw this to Sean and you can figure out who should answer it. So, we are waiting on the environmental decision hopefully this summer. Talk about rate case outlook, when that might be filed on the heels of and sort of how – what that might look like in rough terms? Sean Trauschke Sure. So, Jay, the way we are going to approach that is this is – when we finally implement the rate impact for the environmental compliance plan, we get that implemented in rates. Depending on when that is, then we will proceed with filing the Oklahoma case. And so what I want to make sure of though is if we receive an order, I want to make sure that we incorporate the latest completed quarter of financial information and take the 6 month look forward from that point on. So, if we received an order in late June or early July and we finally guide in the rates, I want to incorporate the second quarter actuals as the basis for the filing. And so, we want to true that up as real-time as we can. So, the rate case will just be as long as it takes us to close the books for the quarter and make the necessary filings. Remember, the rate case had three components to it. It has, one, we have the statutory requirement in House Bill 1910 to file a case within 24 months. That’s where we are going to check that box with this case. The other piece was we have that expiring wholesale contract with one of the co-ops that expires in June of this year. So, we need to get that back in rates. So, to your point there, that’s about 300 megawatts with an embedded cost of about $240 a KW. So, that’s real value to our customers. And then the other piece of that, Steve mentioned in his prepared remarks, the transmission recovery of the retail component of those transmission lines that are in service. So, we want to pick those up and that was about roughly $100 million of assets. Jay Dobson That’s great. Yes, no, that’s perfect. Sean Trauschke Okay. Jay Dobson And then to Arkansas understanding its early days in asking you to go out here and hypothesize a little bit, but if we were to assume a reasonable outcome in the rate case you might file, would the regulatory mechanisms established under recent legislation allow you to stay out in Arkansas? I mean, I guess, it’s as much a CapEx question as much as anything? Sean Trauschke Yes, it really goes with your forecast but – and where you are. And so our goal is not – our goal is to make sure that we earn our allowed return there. And so considering we have got a lot of balls in there. So, I don’t think it’s – we are not approaching it from a stay-out or come-in perspective. We are approaching it from making sure we have got the right recovery mechanisms to earn our allowed return. Jay Dobson Got it. I guess maybe then asking it in a different way, do you anticipate and again I am asking you to assume a reasonable outcome, can you get to something close to your allowed return in a single case? Sean Trauschke Jay, the largest component or issue we have in Arkansas is the use of the hypothetical capital structure. And we look at our actual capital structure, that’s closer to 53, 47. And the hypothetical structure that’s used in Arkansas is significantly lower than that. So, right out of the gate, we are 60, 70 basis points below our allowed. So, once we address that, I believe we have a very strong opportunity there to earn our allowed return. Jay Dobson That’s super. And then last question, Steve, on the holdco was it the entire $0.02 that was that sort of non-referring element on deferred comp? Steve Merrill Yes, that would be – yes, you just consider that the whole thing, yes. Jay Dobson Perfect. Hey, thank you very much for the time. Pete Delaney Thanks, Jay. Operator Thank you. We have another question for you and this one is from Anthony Crowdell, and he is from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Anthony Crowdell Hey, good morning. Sorry, I jumped in late. I just – I wasn’t sure if you addressed it early, but it seems like there is opposition with Mustang. If Mustang is not included in this environmental plan, can you add that in that the rate filing, the subsequent rate filing that you would have at OG&E? Sean Trauschke Sure, sure. And again, what we asked was for pre-approval of Mustang and so if, in your scenario there, if they elected not to pre-approve it, there would be other opportunities. Anthony Crowdell Yes. And I guess really getting ahead of myself, if you think about the utility over the last several years, you guys had a tremendous transmission build up – really fortified the grade there. You are now going through a period of really fortifying your generation. If I look at 2018, 2019 as you are winding that down, you have given us clarity on the dividend out for 2019, what is the next leg of CapEx for the utility? Sean Trauschke Yes, you are getting this out beyond our 5-year window there. Anthony Crowdell Right, yes. Sean Trauschke But let me just say that, that is something that we are spending a great deal of time thinking about and considering a lot of different options today in anticipation of what exactly are we going to do in ‘19 and ‘20 and what that looks like. And so as we move forward, we are going to talk more about that, but I want to convey to you that, that’s exactly what we are spending a lot of our time on is from a strategic standpoint, what does that look like? Anthony Crowdell Great, thanks for taking my question. I really appreciate that. Sean Trauschke Thanks, Anthony. Operator Thank you. We have a final question for you. And this is from Chris Shelton from Millennium Partners. Please go ahead. Chris Shelton Hey, good morning guys. Pete Delaney Good morning, Chris. Sean Trauschke Good morning, Chris. Chris Shelton A quick follow-up question just on the modeling on the environmental CapEx, it looks like some of the CapEx look forward for me into ‘16 and ‘17, just wanted to see what was kind of driving that? Steve Merrill It’s really just timing of the spend. So, the total really hasn’t changed, but it’s just a timing issue of when we expect the payments to occur. We have been moving along, signing contracts, procuring equipment and so that will tend to move around a little bit, but that’s all that is, is timing. Chris Shelton Got it. It’s a product of kind of selecting vendors, things like that. Steve Merrill Correct. Chris Shelton And then as far as presuming you don’t get a rider and you have to – and you recover this through kind of the normal ratemaking progress, would you be able to include kind of partial plan and to make note of measurables into the cases, I guess or? Sean Trauschke Into – you mean into – are you talking about in the rate case? Chris Shelton Yes. Based on the upcoming rate case, you will spend X amount of dollars on the environmental income. Sean Trauschke No, I think we would just be accruing ACDC and it probably wouldn’t be part of a rate case activity, but we haven’t made that filing, but we don’t view that as something that would be in there. Chris Shelton Okay. Alright, that was it. Thanks guys. I appreciate it. Pete Delaney Thanks, Chris. Operator Thank you. I have no more questions. So, I will hand the call back to Pete Delaney. Pete Delaney Thank you, operator. Well, I would like to take a moment to thank all of our members for their commitment to safety at all times, especially during the storm season. And I want to thank all of you for your continued interest in the company. We are adjourned. Have a great day. Thank you. Operator Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes your conference call for today. You may now disconnect. Thank you for joining and enjoy the rest of your day.

U.S. Geothermal’s (HTM) Management Discusses on Q4 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

U.S. Geothermal Inc. (NYSEMKT: HTM ) Q4 2014 Earnings Conference Call March 17, 2015 11:00 AM ET Executives Douglas J. Glaspey – President and Chief Operating Officer Kerry D. Hawkley – Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Zurkoff – Treasurer and Executive Vice President of Finance Analysts James P. McIlree – Chardan Capital Markets, LLC Operator Greetings, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the U.S. Geothermal’s 2014 Year-End Earnings Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now pleasure to introduce your host Mr. Doug Glaspey. Thank you, sir. You may begin. Douglas J. Glaspey Thank you, operator, and good morning, everybody. Thank you all for joining us on today’s call and for your continuing interest in U.S. Geothermal. My name is Doug Glaspey, I am the President and Chief Operating Officer. Dennis Gilles, our CEO is not able to join us today, he is recovering from recent surgery, we do expect to have him back in the office next week. Joining me on today’s call will be Kerry Hawkley, our Chief Financial Officer and Jonathan Zurkoff, our Executive Vice President of Finance. Jonathan will be presenting Dennis’s prepared comments summarizing the highlights of the year. Before we go any further I would like to make a note that on our March 4, news release regarding earnings call there was a typo some people have noticed that, its was a 100 megawatts production for our growth strategy to 2020, our plan has not changed it is 200 megawatts of growth by 2020. So I just want to make sure everybody understood that we hadn’t changed our strategy. The Company’s performance in 2014 was strong with our operating revenue up 13% compared to 2013. Adjusted EBITDA was up 12% over 2013 and net income up approximately 263% over 2013. Our plans continue to outperform industry standards for operational availability and we are focused on brining the next phase of growth to our shareholders. Kerry Hawkley will now provide you with a summary of our financial results for 2014. Kerry? Kerry D. Hawkley Thank you, Doug. And good morning to our listeners on this call. 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, forecast 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 operations, and are based on management’s current estimates and projections of future results or trends. Actual future results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. During the call we will present non-GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted net income, reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and management’s reasons for presenting such information is set forth in the press release that was issued last night. Because these measures are not calculated in accordance with U.S. GAAP, it should not be considered in isolation from our financial statements prepared in accordance with GAAP. I’ll now discuss the financial statements of U.S. Geothermal for the year ended December 31, 2014. On our balance sheet, total assets are at $232.9 million. Our total liabilities are $102.0 million. Non-controlling interests are at $46.4 million, and our net stockholders equity is now at $84.5 million. On our statement of operations our 12-month net income of $11.6 million in 2014 is comparable to the $1.9 million for the same period last year. And adjusted net income for 2014 eliminating the deferred tax asset gain in the impairment loss for Granite Creek is $1.8 million. For the year revenues were up $3.6 million or 13% over 2013. Energy production was up 29,401 megawatt hours or 9.5%. Plant production expenses were up $1.8 million, primarily insurance and maintenance costs. Drilling costs in 2014 that were capitalized were at El Ceibillo, San Emidio Phase II and Crescent Valley. The interest expense at San Emidio $319,000 over last year, primarily because a portion of the interest in 2013 was capitalized. This will have a direct impact to the net income attributable to U.S. Geothermal since San Emidio 100% owned by U.S. Geothermal. Our stock-based compensation is up $583,000 due to options in shares granted to our employees, executives, and directors in April of 2014. These costs are non-cash and align the interest of our employees, officers and directors with shareholders. We incurred exploration drilling costs during the year of $449,000 at our Gerlach Project. We’ve recognized a loss of $452,000 on an impairment associated with our decision to abandon the development of our Granite Creek Project. We also recognized a gain of 10.3 million on a deferred tax assets that we have recorded based on our more likely than not criteria. Adjusted EBITDA for 2014 was $17.2 million, versus $15.3 million in 2013. Our statement of cash flow, cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the year were $28.7 million. 12 months, cash generated by operations were $12.8 million. Notes payments reduced our total debt by $4.6 million. Payment to our non-controlling interest partner Enbridge were $15 million. We acquired the WGP Geysers project for $6.8 million, inclusive of legal cost. We capitalized drilling at San Emidio, El Ceibillo and Crescent Valley this year and that totaled $3.7 million in. Through the exercise of warrants and options we received $1.6 million in cash, so at the end of the year our cash and cash equivalents were $13.0 million. Please note that our exploration development budget for 2015 requires approximately $5.5 million in cash from U.S. Geothermal, which can be funded internally by cash flows from operations. On our statement of changes in stockholders equity, we’ve added the net income of $11.6 million during the year should be noted that the accumulated deposit is now reflected net of tax or $19.3 million. Shares of common stock issued upon exercise of stock purchases warrants were $2.6 million, shares of common stock issued upon exercise of stock options were $1.1 million. We granted 559,000 shares of common stock to our employees, executives, and directors in Q2 that had a one-year restriction. We just have cash of $15 million that was distributed to Enbridge, we issued 693,000 shares in Q4 to acquire 100% of the shares of Earth Power Resources. So at the end of the year 12/31/2014 are issued an outstanding shares in our totals of 107.0 million shares. Now as we mentioned briefly in the third quarter earnings call regarding our provision for income tax we have now met to more likely to not criteria set for recording the deferred tax asset on the balance sheet. During the fourth quarter, the company discontinued the 100% valuation allowance on our deferred tax asset. The impact to the financial statements net of tax on the income in 2014 was $10.3 million. In other words, we have been profitable now for over two years and we anticipate being profitable going forward as our projects are reliable and the revenues are predictable. Our deferred tax assets will offset future taxes and same as cash. Also in response to the apparent confusion noted during the last earnings call we have added additional disclosure on Page 85 in the MD&A regarding the net income attributable to the non-controlling interest and the net income attributable to U.S. Geothermal and its shareholders, which we hope provide you the clarity thought. The table on Page 85 shows the contribution our three operating projects provides the net income attributable to U.S. Geothermal and it also shows the cost associated with our exploration activities, corporate costs, the deferred tax asset gain and the impairment loss. You will see that Neal Hot Springs contributed $5.9 million, San Emidio contributed $0.5 million, Raft River contributed 300,000 for a total contributed to U.S. Geothermal of $6.7 million from these three projects. From that exploration activities and corporate overhead cost $4.9 million if you exclude the deferred tax and impairment adjustments. This last category includes the Company’s cost of existence including the listed on two stock exchanges legal accounting and professional fees, filings with government agencies, stock-based compensation in the costs of evaluating and developing new projects. These costs are almost 100% U.S. Geothermal costs and reduce the net income attributable to U.S. Geothermal. However as we grow the company by adding income generating projects in the future, this category will not increased significantly from current levels. Allowing the net income from the new projects to increase the bottom line almost dollar per dollar, we believe that company as well-positioned to take advantage of many future opportunities. Thank you for your continued interest in U.S. Geothermal and I will turn the call back over to Doug. Douglas J. Glaspey Thank you, Kerry. I will now provide the highlights of our operations performance for this fourth quarter and for the full-year 2014 as well as the summary of our current development activities. Generation for the fourth quarter from all three plants was 96,831 megawatt hours, and that’s compares 96,508 megawatt hours in the fourth quarter of 2013. Generation for the year 2014 totaled 339,086 megawatt hours, compared to 309,687 megawatt hours for 2013, which represents a 9.5% increase in generation year-over-year. The fourth quarter is typically one of our best generation quarters of the year as you all know, due to the cooler winter temperatures. But I will note, that while the East has had a very cold winter, the West is actually had a relatively mild winter. At Neal Hot Springs, generation for the quarter was 54,472 megawatt hours with average hourly generation of 25.08 net megawatts hours for hour of operation. The facility operated at 98.3% availability for the fourth quarter and 98.5% availability for the year, excluding scheduled maintenance hours. Generation for 2014 at Neal was 183,394 megawatt hours, compared to 155,428 megawatt hours in 2013 an 18% increase year-over-year at Neal Hot Springs. We’re proud to say that the geothermal reservoir at Neal continues to outperform our reservoir model, with over two years of stable temperature and flow rate. At San Emidio, our generation for the quarter was 21,745 megawatt hours with average hourly generation of 9.93 net megawatt hours per hour. Operating availability was 99.2% for the fourth quarter and 98.5% for the year, again excluding scheduled maintenance and hours. Generation for the year was 76,894 megawatt hours compared to generation of 76,697 megawatt hours in 2013. You can see that San Emidio has reached its plateau on this particular case, we think we will see a little bit better generation this year because of the addition of Well 6121 that was added in September and it increased the brand temperature feeding the plant by 3.3 degrees. San Emidio plant of course continues to run very smoothly, we’re very pleased with the plant and the reservoir remains within its projected parameters. At Raft River generation was 20,614 megawatt hours for the quarter with an average hourly generation of 9.59 net megawatts. Raft River operated at 97.3% availability during the fourth quarter and 99.5% for the year. Generation for 2014 was 78,798 megawatt hours compared to generation of 77,561 megawatt hours in 2013. Raft River which is our oldest facility continues to operate at consistent, high availability, with stable generation. I will note that Raft River will have an extended maintenance outage of 14 days in the second quarter of 2015 and it will be undergoing its first turbine overhaul since the plant started in 2008. We are very pleased with the performance of all three plants during the fourth quarter and for all of 2014. Our operations team has produced outstanding operation availability at all of the facilities which equates to our high level of power generation. On the development front, at San Emidio Phase II, the project continues to be dependent upon successful drilling and expansion of the currently known geothermal resource. Before we make the decision to move forward with building the second power plant we have to be successful with drilling additional production and injection wells that will support that second plant. We drilled two new wells in the South Zone during 2014 and expanded the high temperature anomaly farther South from the current well field. We did not plan commercial permeability in either one of those wells, we did find increasing temperature and it’s an important indicator of an active geothermal system. This temperature data is in effect an arrow pointing toward a potential source of the geothermal flow path farther South and we are going follow up on it. The South Zone area is held by federal leases and it takes anextraordinary amount of time to permit drilling activities on these lands. We are currently in the process of permitting a series of temperature gradient wells to extent our information on the area. And if the temperature gradient wells outline an attractive targets, we’ll follow up with observation wells or slim holes as they are known, to explore for the source of the high temperature fluid. This is an iterative process and it takes time, but after finding fluid temperatures of over 321 degrees in the South Zone it’s well worth following up. During the year we also constructed cross tie pipeline between the Phase I plant and the Phase II project area that was built in the third quarter and began producing fluid from well 61-21 early in the fourth quarter. This was all part of a long-term flow test for the South Zone. This well remains in production as we collect reservoir data and the plus side is it also increased our generation from the Phase I plan. Through the year we continued on with the interconnection studies with the Phase II plants and received the first phase study called the System Impact Study back from NV Energy on December 24. We might recall we’ve already have 16 megawatts of reserve transmission of San Emidio and we are requesting an additional 3.9 megawatts in order to accommodate a second full-size plan. The System Impact Study indicated that the additional 3.9 megawatt of transmission can be added to the NVE transmission system with a cost of approximately $270,000. A second phase study called the Facilities Study was started by NV Energy in January 2015. Now this series of studies for transmission happens at all of our projects it’s a FERC mandated process and all of the utilities have to go through it, we have to pay for everyone of these studies. So it just one of the areas in power generation that we have to go through. NV Energy issued a request for proposal on October 1, for 100 megawatts of renewable energy that would be contracted in 2015 for consumption in Southern Nevada. We responded to the RFP with a proposal for San Emidio Phase II on November 12. In early December NV Energy asked the Nevada Public Utilities Commission to allow them to combine the 2014 and 2015 renewable RFPs for a total of 200 megawatts under request. This request was approved and subsequent to the end of the year, we resubmitted our proposal for the Phase II plant and were notified on March 3 that our bid was advanced to the initial shortlist for Geothermal projects. NV Energy schedule indicates that the anticipate selecting the final shortlist projects before the end of April. At El Ceibillo and Guatemala, early this year we completed nine temperature gradient wells at El Ceibillo. The wells were shallow from 650 to 1,300 feet deep and we found temperatures ranging from a 176 to 413 degrees Fahrenheit, extraordinarily high for this shallow of a well. Results, from these wells effectively moves a high temperature resource target area approximately half a kilometer Northwest of our initial target zone. This change in our target location required us to acquire additional service leases before we could enter into our next phase of drilling. Keep in mind that while we have a concession to exploit the Geothermal resource from the Guatemalan government, we also need to have leases for surface access from private individuals. After extensive negotiations we were able to finalize a lease on an additional 80 acres of land that covers us new target area on October 15. Once the lease was signed, we prepare to drill pads for our planned well EC2, which will be a car hole design exactly like the EC1 well we drilled in 2013. The planned depth for EC2 is 2,330 feet deep, at 600 to 1000 meters based on our temperature gradient wells we do have a target in mind as far as depth also for temperatures, so we are anxious to get started on this next well. Our next hurdle, however before we resume drilling is to secure approval from the Guatemalan government to modify our development schedule under the terms of the concession. Based on the new schedule and the subsequent delays for approval you might recall we’ve been seeking this approval for over a year. Our online data’s moved out from the second quarter of 2018. Again this schedule is contingent on the drilling, finding the commercial resource on the project, which we are optimistic about but given the results obtained from our recently completed temperature gradient drilling program. Also at El Ceibillo our memorandum of understanding for a PPA that was held by the project was based on our original development schedule for the project. We met with the purchaser through the year who is one of the largest power brokers in Central America. But due to the delays and approval of the modified development schedule with the Guatemalan Ministry of Energy the purchaser declined to extend the agreement. We are continuing discussions with them and are approaching other power consumers in Guatemala and Central America. Central America still has a growing demand for power especially base load type resources. So we believe there is a very good market in the area. At our WGP Geysers Project, we are continuing to pursue two paths for development of the project. To secure a new power purchase agreement for the sale of electricity and if we’re successful in doing so, we will construct a new power plant and sell energy or to produce steam for sale to one of the other power plant operators in the Geysers. We keep the project ready for either development path; a 12 month extension for the Sonoma County Conditional Use Permit to construct the power plant was applied for and approved in June. We are currently preparing to file a new Conditional Use Permit application in 2015 to maintain our readiness. We also filed a new transmission interconnection request to the California independent system operator so that the project can be placed in the transmission queue. Again, we have to go through these transmission studies to make sure our power plant built on the site can be interconnected into the transmission system, so we can deliver our power to a purchaser. Since the four production wells were drilled in 2008 and 2009 the previous owner did not conduct long enough flow tests for bankable reservoir model. An Air Quality Permit was obtained for extended flow test Sonoma County Air Quality Board and we have scheduled a flow test of the existing wells during the second quarter of 2015 that time is coming up very rapidly. Additionally, we’ve been doing engineering optimization studies of the power plant design, the new reservoir model will reflect the hybrid plant design and includes both water cooling in the summer and air cooling in the winter. Hybrid cooling will provide a significant increase from a traditional 20% increase into 65% in the volume of water available for injection back into the reservoir providing longer term stable steam production. This kind of optimization is critical to maximize the power generation from the property. Three California base requests for proposals for renewable energy PPAs were used at late 2014 and early 2015, submitted the WGP Geysers all three. We were not short listed on the first two and are waiting the results of the third. Direct bilateral discussions are also being held with both power purchasers and steam sale purchasers. The results of the flow test we have scheduled for this spring and the bankable reservoir model will play a key role in making the best decision on how the project is developed. Moving to the exploration front, at Crescent Valley in Nevada which is one of the properties we acquired in the Earth Power Resources acquisition, in late November we conducted a gravity survey in the area with Hot Springs and strong faulting with intense solidification that already had a number of temperature gradient wells drilled that exhibited high results. We located and permitted a well on private property an initiated drilling in December starting construction to qualifying the project for the 30% investment tax credit. The well is currently at just over 900 feet deep and we expect to complete it within this next month. Additional program of deep 1000 foot temperature gradient wells over much larger area are also planned for 2015. So we’re just starting to explore Crescent Valley it’s a great looking prospect. At Gerlach we completed well 1810A to a depth of 2889 feet that was completed in November. This well was a follow up on a historic well that was reported to have encountered a significant loss circulation zone at depth but had no temperature information. Gerlach is some of the largest Hot Springs in Nevada and geothermometer temperatures of 338 to 352 degrees Fahrenheit which made it an excellent exploration target. The well founds some modest production mid-depth but no permeability deep in the well and the maximum temperature found in the well was 275 degrees Fahrenheit. We are reviewing the results of further work at Gerlach but it will be dependent on additional funding from the joint venture. I will now turn the meeting over to Jonathan Zurkoff to provide Dennis’s remarks. Jonathan? Jonathan Zurkoff Thank you, Doug. I will summarize our notable highlights for 2014. First on our consolidated financial performance revenues were up 13% coming in for the year at $31 million, compared to $27.4 million for the 2013 period. Adjusted EBITDA of 12% for the year at $17.2 million compared to $15.3 million in 2013. EBITDA was up for the year yielding $14.9 million, compared to $14.5 million for 2013. Net income up 263% with the total for the year at $14.9 million compared to $4.1 million in 2013. Cash flow from operations was $12.8 million for the year compared to $10.6 million for 2013, an increase of approximately 21% and long-term debt reduced by $4.8 million. Looking at the financial performance attributable to U.S. Geothermal that is after eliminating minority interest which represents our partner share Neal Hot Springs and Raft River. Our net income for the year was up 497% with the total for the year of $11.6 million compared to $1.9 million for 2013. Adjusted net income for the year was $1.8 million versus $1.9 million in 2013, adjustments include both the one-time gain from the recognition of the deferred tax assets and a one-time impairment for the write-off of the development cost associated with our Granite Creek project. We ended the fourth quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $13 million a $2.3 million increase over the prior quarter, relative to operating performance generation for the year was up 9.5% over the last year, mostly resulting from the higher unit availabilities. Our fleet-wide average operating availability for the year was an impressive 98.7% on equally impressive 96.2% with planned maintenance outages included. On the growth side, at our El Ceibillo project and Guatemala we continue to work with the Ministry of Energy and Mines and are very pleased to report that we now have lowered movements on our request to modify the construction schedule and there are Geothermal concessions. We are ready to drill our next well after we obtain final approval of our new schedule from the Energy Minister. Our team in Guatemala is also holding discussions with our former as well as potentially new off-takers for the energy and we are examining, other new prospects in the country. The acquisition of Earth Power Resources was completed on December 12, bringing three additional high quality geothermal prospects into our development pipeline. We began work immediately on the Crescent Valley project by starting the drilling of a production well before year-end, qualifying this project for a 30% investment tax credit which became available with the federal tax extender legislation that was past late last year. At San Emidio II we completed well 6121 installed the production pipeline and continue to produce well 6121 in the South Zone to the Phase I plan. We are also permitting an underground it drilling in the South Zone to verify and expanded resource. Further we have interconnection studies continuing with NV Energy we have submitted two proposals to NV Energy for the 2014 and 2015 request for proposals for 200 megawatts of renewable energy, and we’ve been notified that our proposal have been short listed. At WGP Geysers, we are approaching potential off-takers for the power from the proposed power plant, we’ve responded to request for a proposal as well as started bi-lateral discussions with interested parties and continued discussions for an alternative possible steam sell . A flow tested existing wells is planned for this spring, which will provide valuable information on this resource as it’s needed to optimize the design of either a power plant or pipeline to deliver steam. Capital and operating costs for both potential operating scenarios are being refined and budgetary bids have been received. We have also reapplied for a transmission interconnection agreement. We continue evaluating a number of other potential acquisitions that could drive our growth both in the near-term and now to our long-term portfolio. Regarding our development budget for 2015, expense activities for our early stage exploration projects are budgeted at $1.5 million. Capital expenditures on our more advanced development projects have been budgeted for up to $3.9 million. These budgets are based on our current portfolio and maybe altered depending on the results of early stage work or new opportunities. On the legislative front in late 2014, Congress passed a tax extender result that will allow us to potentially use a 30% investment tax credit on our projects and start a construction prior to the end of 2014, we believe our Geysers project, our San Emidio II and our Crescent Valley projects are currently qualifying. There are also indications that congress will take up an energy bill in 2015. In California which is the largest geothermal market in the United States, Governor Brown announced a new goal of 50% renewable energy by 2030. The California PUC will also be implementing newly passed AB 2363 which requires the establishment of rules for inclusion of integration cost for renewable. Intermittent technologies such as wind and solar will likely have to include the permitting cost for these resources. Moving on to guidance, our guidance for 2015 is based solely on our existing operations and does not include any impact that may be provided by acquisitions we are currently evaluating. These figures are forecast only and considered forward looking statements. Our guidance for 2015 is as follows. Our revenues $28 million to $33 million, Adjusted EBITDA $15 million to $19 million, EBITDA $12 million to $16 million and net income of $1.9 million to $5.9 million. So Doug, I’ll turn it back to you. Douglas J. Glaspey Thank you Jonathan. In summary with our strong cash flow from operations, we continue to have adequate cash on hand to support both our ongoing operations and early stage developments efforts and we continue to add cash to our balance sheet in preparation for our next construction project or acquisition. We also believe we are appropriately prepared to be responsive to many of the additional growth opportunities that we are currently evaluating. In closing, we have now had nine consecutive quarters of positive EBITDA and cash flow. Our fleet of power plants continues to perform well. We are pleased with the performance of our resources, we are pleased with the new growth opportunities recently added to our portfolio and optimistic regarding the other growth opportunities we are currently evaluating. We thank you for your continuing support and operator, I would now like to open the call for questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We have a question from the line of [indiscernible] Private Investor. Please proceed with your question. Unidentified Analyst Yes, hello. Douglas J. Glaspey Yes, Steven we can hear you. Unidentified Analyst On Neal Hot Springs you are talking about adding a hybrid system there, adding water. What kind of megawatt improvement would that make? Douglas J. Glaspey Steven you are exactly right we are going to be evaluating the possibility of using the wet cooling in the summer months. I think everybody understands that Neal Hot Springs is an air cooled facility, and in the hot summer hours can dip as low as seven to eight megawatts. We think we can double that with water cooling, so it would be similar to other projects in the summer time. I don’t have a number for you for a total impact of megawatt hours for the year. But we think it’s substantial and, of course it’s something we can do on the surface that doesn’t take drilling. So we should be drilling a water well early this hopefully within the next month or so to see if we can find a suitable water resource that would supply that cooling system, and then we are going to test several different possibilities conventional water cooling towers and mist cooling are the two we are going to looking at and hopefully by the end of this season we’ll have an idea of if we can add that water cooling. But thank you for the question its one of the ways we can increase generation without spending a lot of capital. Unidentified Analyst I had another question on the Geysers and the flow test, or fewer on your on your presentation where you make whatthe 38 megawatts. If you did that, would you be able to be more competitive on your megawatt price and the bidding for PPA with a bigger plan? Douglas J. Glaspey Yes, thank you Steven the of course of the size of the plan has an impact typically on capital cost per megawatt hour that 38 megawatt size is the growth generation from the currently permitted plant. So that’s one of the things that flow test is going to tell us this spring – exactly what size plant we can build and operate over the long-term we don’t just look at what the short-term generation is of course. We are going to be looking at time periods of 20 years to 25 years and that’s the number we are seeking from the flow test this year. Unidentified Analyst Okay and then on your net income guidance that’s just U.S. Geothermal that’s excludes the non-consulting interest right? Kerry D. Hawkley That is correct. Unidentified Analyst Okay. All right well thanks a lot and everything looks good. Keep up the good work. Douglas J. Glaspey Thank you. Kerry D. Hawkley Thank you, Steven. Operator Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jim McIlree with Chardan Capital. Please proceed with your question. James P. McIlree Yes, thanks and good morning. Douglas J. Glaspey Good morning. James P. McIlree When do you think that you would arrive at a decision on Geysers, which direction you would go either the electricity or the steam? Douglas J. Glaspey Good morning Jim. My expectation is certainly before the end of this year and I would like to have that decision somewhere around mid-year. James P. McIlree And so if it were – let’s take year-end instead. So if it were year-end decision what does that imply in terms of when it comes online starts generating revenue? Douglas J. Glaspey If it was a year-end decision we would have at least two years of construction. Kerry D. Hawkley If it was a power plant. Douglas J. Glaspey If it’s a power plant. If it’s a steam sell it could potential be as short as nine to 12 months. James P. McIlree And similar question for the Crescent Valley and Gerlach efforts. A timeframe as to when those could be online if all goes well. Douglas J. Glaspey Little bit longer timeframe, we still have to define resources of those projects and lets say we’re successful this year, so by the end of the year we have resource defined, we have a PPA in hand and you are looking at, at least two years of construction, before you would be online and generating electricity. James P. McIlree And is there any additional information you can provide as to why the Guatemala power buyer side is not renewed at contracts for the MOU. Kerry D. Hawkley Well I think there is probably several reasons Jim, the power situation in the country has changed a little bit and it’s a little uncertain right now, there was a large coal fired power plant that was supposed to be built in Guatemala that is only partially been built now, they have had a lot of trouble with their hydro facilities, actually they are having a bit of a drought down there as well so hydro has not turned out to be as consistent as they would like. So I think its really more uncertainty than anything else. You might recall too that that MOU covered flat priced PPA, so one of the things we’re looking at with them is shaping that PPA price overtime putting an escalator in it which it didn’t have before. So I think there is a number of issues that I guess I can’t tell you exactly why, but those are my feelings. James P. McIlree Okay, great. That’s very helpful. Thank you. Kerry D. Hawkley Thanks Jim. End of Q&A Operator [Operator Instructions] It seems there are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn it back to management for closing comments. Douglas J. Glaspey Great, I would like to thank everybody again for being on the call. We’re looking forward to a very exciting 2015, we’ve got a lot of things that we’re evaluating and as far as new projects are concerned we have a lot of work to do on our existing development and exploration projects. So keep a close eye on us and we look forward to talking to you next quarter. Thank you very much. Operator Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.