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Vectren Corp (NYSE: VVC ) Q2 2015 Results Earnings Conference Call August 06, 2015, 11:00 AM ET Executives Naveed Mughal – IR, Treasurer Carl Chapman – CEO Susan Hardwick – CFO Analysts Matt Tucker – KeyBanc Capital Markets Paul Patterson – Glenrock Associates Operator Good morning. My name is Jessica and I’ll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Vectren Corporation’s Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Naveed Mughal, Treasurer and Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Mughal, you may begin your conference. Naveed Mughal Thank you, Operator. Good morning and thank you for joining us on today’s call to review Vectren’s 2015 second quarter results. This call is being webcast and shortly following its conclusion, a replay will be available on our website at www.vectren.com under the Investors link at the top of the page. Yesterday, we released our second quarter results and this morning we filed our Form 10-Q with the SEC. Under the Investors link on our website, you can find copies of the earnings release, today’s slide presentation and the 10-Q. As further described on Slide 2, I would like to remind you that many of the statements we make on this call are forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those discussed in this presentation. Carl Chapman, Vectren’s Chairman, President and CEO, will provide opening comments on the quarter’s financial results and our outlook for the remainder of the year. He will then turn it over to Susan Hardwick, Senior Vice President and CFO, who will discuss in more detail our utility and non-utility results. Lastly, joining us on today’s call is Ron Christian, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal and External Affairs Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we will be glad to answer questions you may have. With that, I’ll turn it over to Carl. Carl Chapman Thank you, Naveed. And before we go further, I’d like to officially welcome Naveed to Vectren and our management team since this is his first earnings call with us. For those of you who don’t know, Naveed joined as our new Treasurer and Vice President of Investor Relation just a few weeks ago. He comes to us from NV Energy, where he most recently held the Treasurer position. Naveed’s recent utility industry experience combined with his extensive treasury experience adding prior to NV Energy should make for a smooth transition. Naveed, welcome. I’d also like to wish our outgoing Treasurer and colleague, Robert Goocher, the best in his recent retirement, which began just a few days ago. Robert was an integral part of our successful navigation of the capital markets over the past 13 years. We thank Robert for all he has done for Vectren. With that, let’s turn to Slides 4 and 5 as we begin our review of second quarter results. I’d like to remind everyone we have excluded the 2014 results of coal mining, specifically the $0.23 loss in the 2014 second quarter results related to the exit. You will find a reconciliation of GAAP and non-GAAP measures at the end of the appendix. 2015 second quarter consolidated net income was $35.8 million or $0.43 per share compared to $30.1 million or $0.37 per share in 2014. In the quarter, we continued to see earnings growth anchored by solid utility results that achieved second quarter earnings per share of $0.29, an increase of $0.01 over 2014. In addition, improved results from both Vectren Infrastructure Services and Vectren Energy Services, which were both slightly better than expected, allowed the non-utility group to earn $0.14 per share in the second quarter, up $0.05 compared to the prior year. Utility performance year-to-date and for the quarter has been strong and the outlook is positive for the remainder of the year as return on the investment in new gas infrastructure continues to grow. In addition, the economic environment in Indiana and Ohio remains positive with June unemployment rates of 4.9% in Indiana and 5.2% in Ohio, both below the national rate of 5.3%. At Vectren Energy Services results for the quarter, while a slight loss, were improved over the prior year. Revenues for the quarter were $44 million compared to $33 million in the same period last year and $23 million in the first quarter of 2015. For the quarter, VESCO saw new contract signings totaling $53 million compared to $34 million in the prior year. In addition, on August 5, a large contract with NASA’s Johnson Space Center was signed, which as expected will be significant to VESCO’s third quarter and second half results. Also in the second quarter, Vectren Infrastructure Services achieved improved results that were up $2.9 million over the prior year driven by very strong demand for construction work in the gas distribution market. However, competition in the transmission market has put some margin pressure on VISCO’s expected second half results, which Susan will describe in greater detail. Overall, based on the continued strength of our utility outlook, we are affirming our 2015 consolidated earnings per share guidance of $2.40 to $2.55, while there are headwinds facing VISCO over the remainder of the year that could pressure us toward the lower end of the guidance range. We have full confidence in VISCO’s leadership team and therefore our ability to manage through these market conditions. Turning to Slide 6. I’d like to reiterate our long-term targets that we announced last November. We have been executing on our strategy for several years now which has led to a track record of earnings growth that we believe will continue into the future. On the utility side, we have approvals in place for gas utility infrastructure investments and a framework for current recovery of those investments. Company-wide, we’ve created a culture of performance management that focuses on limiting operating cost increases. And on the non-utility side, we have concentrated our efforts on our strategic investments in VISCO and VESCO. In the graph on the bottom left, one I’m sure you’ve seen before and we’ll see again as we’re quite proud of it. You can see over the past several years, we’ve put Vectren in a position to have achieved higher, more reliable and consistent consolidated earnings growth. As we work through the exit of nonstrategic businesses and kept our annual dividend increases modest, we were able to drive the payout ratio down from roughly 80% toward our new target of 60%. All this positioned us to roll out new long-term targets last November that are shown on the right, the primary ones being the consolidated earnings and dividend growth targets of 5% to 7%. Of course aligning the two provides the foundation to deliver the shareholders of total return target of 9% to 11%. In conjunction with the lower payout ratio and these new growth targets, last November we announced a dividend increase of $0.02 per share or 5.6%. This was the largest dividend increase for Vectren or its predecessor since the early 1990s and extended our streak to 55 consecutive years of increasing the dividends paid. And as we said in November and I want to make clear, we expect the annual dividend to grow with our earnings also at 5% to 7%. With that review of the overall story of Vectren which, we believe, compares very favorably to our peers, I’ll turn it over to Susan who will provide more detail on each of our business’ results for the quarter and outlook for the rest of the year before we open it up for questions. Susan? Susan Hardwick Thanks, Carl. Let’s turn to Slide 7 where we’ll start with the utility. Improved utility results for the quarter were driven by higher returns from gas infrastructure investments in both the Indiana and Ohio and lower O&M related to performance-based compensation expense. These were partially offset by decreased margin from wholesale power sales. On the regulatory front, we continue to see support for our approach to infrastructure investments and recovery. In June, the Indiana Court of Appeals found in our favor on the appeal by the Utility Consumer Counselor to the single item in the Commission’s order issued in August 2014 approving Vectren’s initial infrastructure plan under Senate Bills 560 and 251. On April 1, Vectren filed its second request for recovery of investment related to our gas infrastructure plan in Indiana, something we’ll do semi-annually throughout the seven-year plan period. And then in June, we amended our case to delay the recovery of a portion of the investment made in the second half of 2014 related to approval through Senate Bill 560 under our next filing in October — until our next filing in October of this year. We did that because of the recent activity around these types of filings in the state and to ensure that we had sufficient opportunity to include the appropriate level of detail regarding the projects in our filings, which will expedite the Commission’s and other party’s review. In July, the Commission issued an order that substantially approved our approach to rate recovery of our investments. The Commission also agreed with our approach to address in our October filing the consideration of whether enhancements to our seven-year plan relating to the sufficiency of the project and cost details will be appropriate. The Commission did make one modification in this order requiring that we use an updated weighted cost of capital in each filing. We do not view this as a material change and to be expected the Commission continue to work through implementation of this new law. With these Commission orders in place, Vectren expects to continue with this gas infrastructure program and investments as planned. Finally, as you all know, on August 3, EPA issued the final rule under the clean power plan. We’re currently evaluating the rule including the reduction goals and how the plan might impact our customers and we’ll work with the State of Indiana on its response to this action. For any investments required to comply with these goals, as always, we will consider the cost implications for our customers since we would expect timely recovery under Senate Bill 251 related to federal mandates or Senate Bill 29 related to clean coal. Turning to Slide 8. As Karl mentioned, Vectren Energy Services’ second quarter results were improved over the prior year, of $0.4 million. This included solid increases in revenues and new contracts signed versus the 2014 period reflecting continued positive momentum. I’m also pleased to report that VESCO has now signed contracts for the three major projects we referenced in May totaling nearly $80 million, one of which I’ll describe further in just a minute. Because of VESCO’S continued success with contract signings in the quarter, backlog has again increased versus the prior quarter end. At June 30, backlog was $175 million compared to $161 million at March 31 and $144 million at December 31, 2014. In addition, as Carl mentioned earlier, VESCO secured a large contract with NASA’s Johnson Space Center just yesterday. The project’s objective is to maximize energy cost savings by constructing a new combined heating power plant and making improvements to a chilled water plant. The contract includes the construction cost of approximately $47 million that will be added to backlog now that the contract is fully executed. The contract also includes a 22-year operations and maintenance agreement. The sales funnel, which includes contracts that have been awarded, but are not yet signed, remains very high at over $360 million as of June 30 even with the significant project signings in the second quarter. As we described previously, one of the biggest obstacles VESCO faces is the length of time it takes customers to sign contracts on projects that have already been awarded. VESCO continues to work to improve the sales cycle process including the standardization of procedures and timelines for project procurement, documentation and implementation. In June of this year, the Energy Services Coalition, which is one of the two primary trade associations for the energy services industry and has been led by one of our colleagues here at Vectren, was awarded a three-year contract with the US Department of Energy that includes funding for multiple initiatives to help accelerate the successful implementation of energy savings performance contracting, including sales cycle efficiency improvement. The DOE’s aim for funding the Energy Services Coalition is to have it lead outreach programs and provide technical assistance to states helping them build capacity for performance contracting initiatives and improve project procurement processes and timeline. We think this is yet another step in helping to improve the timeliness of this process. Let’s move onto Slide 9. Vectren Infrastructure Services had an excellent second quarter, improving earnings $2.9 million over the prior year. Year-to-date results are up more than $5.5 million compared to last year. And similar to the first quarter, demand for construction services was strong as VISCO achieved record second quarter revenue levels, which were $53 million higher than the same period in 2014. Earnings from operations in the second quarter were up more than $5 million over last year, driven largely by working the distribution market including work done by A&B Trenching. As you recall, A&B was acquired in May of this year and has performed well and as planned. The outlook for VISCO, second half of the year looks promising from a demand and revenue standpoint. Estimated backlog remains strong at approximately $575 million as of June 30, down slightly compared to $610 million at March 31. On the distribution side of the business, we have continued to add workers and expect to continue to significantly outpace 2014 revenues this year, as demand from utilities continues to grow. The record second quarter revenues contributed somewhat to the decline in June 30 backlog, but also VISCO was unsuccessful in a bid for significant transmission maintenance work that was included in the recent backlog. They had expected to perform this work in the second half of 2015. The VISCO team is diligently working to replace this loss of business and the prospects to do so are very good, but it is possible the margins for new projects may be lower than the maintenance work that was planned and therefore may result in pressure towards the lower end of our original 2015 earnings expectations for VISCO. However with significant projects announced and plans to start in mid-2016, our ability to grow the transmission business in 2016 and beyond should not be significantly impacted as market demand is expected to be very high over the next few years. Turning to Slide 10, here are just a few key drivers of our positive outlook. First, utility earnings will continue to grow as we execute detailed investment plans with approved recovery mechanisms in both Indiana and Ohio. Vectren Energy Services’ earnings prospects continue to strengthen as the national focus on energy conservation, renewable energy and sustainability expands given the widespread attention and expected rise in power prices across the country. VESCO is well-positioned to compete in all three market segments; federal, public sector and sustainable infrastructure. And finally, Vectren Infrastructure Services is well-positioned to compete for market share demand continues to grow from the newly announced distribution replacement programs, additional federal pipeline regulations likely to come, and while we and others expect to be very high market demand for transmission projects for which construction will begin in mid-2016 through 2018. Concluding on Slide 11. I want to reiterate our belief that Vectren merits premium valuation consideration. We have worked to position the Company to deliver greater stability and higher consistent earnings growth. The utility remains our core business having demonstrated a very strong track record of earnings has allowed returns. Gas infrastructure investments backed by approved recovery plans will continue to be the growth engine, driving utility earnings growth targeted at 4% to 6%. These investments will also drive it in the relatively near-term to being a predominantly gas utility from an earnings perspective and therefore deserving a more gas-like multiples. And complementing our premier utility operations is our high-quality, non-utility business mix with the growth driven by long-term demand for infrastructure investments, energy efficiency and sustainable infrastructure across the nation. Based on our EPS guidance and expectations, our streak of several years of consistent earnings growth should continue in 2015. While we fully expect to be in the range even at the very low end of our EPS guidance range of $2.40 per share, we would still see growth of 5.3% compared to 2014. So, in conclusion, our 5% to 7% earnings and dividend growth targets, coupled with our 60% payout target and a 55-year history of growing dividends, serve us strong anchors for our annual total shareholder return target of 9% to 11%. We are very confident in our ability to deliver on all of these targets. And with that, operator, we are now ready for questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Matt Tucker with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Matt Tucker Good morning and nice quarter. Few questions, first on VISCO, could you give us a sense of how much transmission represents right now in terms of your revenue or backlog mix? Carl Chapman Yes, Matt, as you know, we really don’t give a split on distribution and transmission. We certainly have indicated the distribution has been growing very nicely and we did have the one maintenance work that we didn’t retain. So, that put it in a perspective for you, but in terms of a split, this is not something that we provide. Matt Tucker Fair enough. And when you talk about transmission, is that mostly with non-utility customers, non LDCs? Carl Chapman Yes. I think that when we talk about distribution, that’s really the LDCs. And as we suggested, that actually has been growing faster than we expected. And so when we talk about transmission, it is going to be either big pie first of all gas or oil. It could be liquids, you know, other kinds of liquids, but it’s mostly going to be gas or oil. Matt Tucker Got it. So, looking at your current backlog now, how much, if any, do you view as being at risk due to competition like what you saw with this [indiscernible]? Carl Chapman Well, obviously, we would not describe it as backlog if we had great concern about it. We try to always acknowledge that our backlog numbers are estimates, we describe in our appendix with our metrics, we describe how we come up with the backlog, and so we always want to make sure that everyone understand that is an estimate, but on the other hand, it is a well thought-out estimate and we feel very good about the numbers we are sharing. Matt Tucker One other follow-up to that. I noticed the mix shift in the backlog moved fairly significantly toward bid work away from blanket contracts more than just at $35 million that you mentioned. Any color you can provide on what’s going on with that mix shift? Carl Chapman I don’t think there is a whole lot to add. We tried to share in our discussion and in our comments that we are seeing by our customers a greater desire for bid kind of contracts, so I think there’s just a bit of a change in the market right now. We’re not prepared to say that’s a permanent change, particularly when we see the additional work, but we’d just have to monitor and see how that unfolds. There’s still a lot of work being done under blanket. Matt Tucker Okay, thanks. And then just one more from me. I noticed in your first quarter slides, you provided the guidance metrics for the non-utility businesses that you provided earlier in the year, I don’t see that in the slides today, should we consider that guidance stale at this point or do they just like not have space to put it on the slide or something? Carl Chapman I think that what we did say is we focused on the consolidated, I don’t know that we consider it stale, we just don’t have any reason to provide it again, but we feel pretty good again by acknowledging and confirming our original guidance, we feel pretty good about the pieces of it. Matt Tucker Okay. Thanks, Carl. Carl Chapman Thank you. Operator [Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Paul Patterson with Glenrock Associates. Your line is now open. Paul Patterson Good morning. So, just to follow up on Matt’s question on the backlog. What would happen if you would just for accounting backlog from contracts that were actually awarded versus your estimation of bid. I mean, is that a possibility to serve the idea of just maybe estimating your backlog on what exactly was awarded as opposed to your estimation of what was bid and what, you think, will be awarded? Carl Chapman Yes, I think we covered this in prior calls and even when we came out with the backlog, the reality is that you never can do that with blankets and there’s a pretty significant portion of the backlog, or it could be in blanket, it may vary quarter-by-quarter or at any point of time how much is the bid approach versus the blanket approach, but I think that you know it’s going to always be an estimate. So, I don’t think that we have a need to provide any more detail in that regard because what we’re trying to do with backlog is give you a sense of what’s going on out there in terms of what’s the business look like and clearly there’s lots of bidding going on. So, there’s plenty of opportunity, which we tried to share, we’ve seen no slowdown in the opportunities and so we feel like it’s the best backlog approach that we can provide. We certainly have debated that over time. I think we’re pretty comfortable. This is the best approach to give you a real sense where the business is going. Paul Patterson Okay. And then just in terms of the competitive environment that you guys described, any outlook on that and how that might work, do you see any potential shakeout or do you see it increasing, due you see more accompanying, do you see potential for the competitive levels to increase or just any outlook you might have with respect to that? Carl Chapman Sure. Well, the first thing I’d say is that we really are sitting here and talking about this because we lost a certain amount of work. We are not seeing tons of changes, but what happens is that it’s a mix of work issue. So, now we are looking at additional mix of work, we’re not going to change our risk profile what we’re willing to look at, in anyway, we won’t take additional risk if you will, but there is a change in the mix of the work and that really drives this margin issue as much as anything. And I also believe that because the industry does see such a strong, call it, the mid-2016, but sometime in 2016 to 2018 see such a strong amount of work that’s been announced, I think you see a lot of people making sure that they’re positioned well for that and that has an impact on margin as you try to make sure that you’ve got your people and make sure you’re positioned when that pick-up occurs in a very big way. Paul Patterson So in other words, you will see margins improving in 2016. Carl Chapman Well, I don’t know that we’re prepared to say they’re going to improve. We’ll have to monitor them and see. I certainly think they have the potential to do that, but we’ll have to see how the competition reacts. Paul Patterson Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Operator [Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from Matt Tucker with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Matt Tucker Just a couple of questions on VESCO now, congrats on the NASA contract by the way, of the $80 million large contracts you mentioned that have now been booked and I assume the NASA was part of that, was the rest booked in the second quarter? Carl Chapman Yes. What we did there is we would’ve loved it if NASA had gotten signed on June 30, just a little bit later than that, but what we shared at the end of the last quarter was those three contracts totaling $80 million would get signed and they now are signed. Yes, NASA was just a little later than we would have preferred, so the other two were signed as well as other contracts of course, but what we really wanted to demonstrate there was the business is doing what we said it would do, and those contracts were signed and they are working on. Matt Tucker And then with respect to the sales funnel and like the $360 million, are there other large projects in a similar size to this, and then it was thought that or have you seen any change in the duration of the sales cycle? Carl Chapman Well, I think Susan went through in some detail, some of the work that’s being done and I think that we do feel better about the sales cycle, what will happen to us at times, particularly in a large contract, it’s that one contract we want to try to give some transparency on and it may turn out to be much longer timeframe. That obviously happened with the NASA contract, but I think we are seeing some positive signs in terms of the sales cycle. And I think we’ll continue to focus on that. As Susan described, we had some deal with E-dollars provided to one of the trade agencies. In terms of the funnel itself, I don’t think that the funnel is unusual at all in its make-up right now. There certainly are some large contracts and a lot of small contracts and we feel pretty good about where that funnel is at this point as we try to move those to signing. Matt Tucker Thanks, Carl, that’s helpful. And then actually just one more on VISCO. You mentioned the PHMSA rules potentially driving increased customer spending. Could you expand a little bit on that? Susan Hardwick Yes. I think, Matt, let me make just a couple of comments and Carl certainly can way in here too. We think the rules that have been finalized in 2015 really were more administrative in nature, didn’t have a whole lot of impact on us. We do believe there are some additional rules yet to come around operating pressures and vales and inline inspection work. There could very well be some implications for everybody that does this type of work, but in our particular case, we feel like we again are well-positioned. We’ve been doing a number of these procedures for some time and have many of those proposed or expected requirements built in our plans already. So, again, the expected implications to us should be hopefully pretty insignificant once the rules come out. Again, that’s based on our current view of what those rules are likely to evolve into and again that could change, but we, again, feel pretty strongly about our plans and how we’ve developed our plans around those expected requirements. Carl Chapman And as Susan mentioned, if those opportunities are to be greater, obviously we’ll work with our regulators and have opportunity in our utility, but also of course that’s a real positive for Miller and I don’t mean related to our utilities, but across the country, other utilities would be doing that additional work if it turns out that way. Matt Tucker Makes sense. Thanks, Carl. Thanks, Susan. That’s all I had. Carl Chapman Thank you. Operator Now, we have no further questions at this time. I’ll turn the call back over to the presenters. Naveed Mughal I’d like to thank everyone for joining us on the call today. I look forward to meeting many of you over the coming months. On behalf of our entire team, we appreciate your continued interest in Vectren. With that, we’ll conclude our call for today. Thanks again for your participation. Operator This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect. 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