Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Just maybe picking up where Gabe left off there. Just on the question of taxes, if you don’t mind. What about — for income statement purposes, how do you think about effective tax rate here? I mean, obviously, the comment is about going to a full cash taxpayer here in the next 3 years, certainly relevant from financing. But how do you think about the uptick, obviously, from ’23 to ’24, and then from there on out, in terms of the effective tax rate on the income statement. Obviously, I get that some of that over time is going to be subsumed back into the regulated cost structure. But I’m just curious on how you would set expectations and if there’s any kind of question about recovery and timing there, as well in the next few years as you see that uptick?
Christopher Forsythe: Yes. We’ll certainly see an uptick in the effective income tax rate. Again, that’s being influenced right now, certainly the last 2 or 3 years with these excess of deferred tax liabilities. Our effective tax rate 2 years ago was in the 11% range, it ticked up closer to 15%. And we’ll end up being in that 22% to 23% range here in the not-too-distant future. Again, all of these costs, we believe, are recoverable, including the IRA corporate minimum tax and our regulatory and tax teams are working on strategies right now to begin dialogue with those regulators to educate them on where that is in terms of what the law requires and then what the recoverability might look like.
Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Got it. Right. So regulatory strategy on the come here but not overly concerned about what that does in terms of, like maybe a lag headwind here in, call it, ’25 and ’26 as you kind of get to that more normalized level, if you will?
Christopher Forsythe: Yes, correct. Not material impact. And again, all that’s been reflected in the guidance for FY ’24 through to FY ’28.
Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Excellent. Very much appreciated. And then just on the O&M side, I just wanted to understand, as you think about that normalized, I think you said 3% to 3.5%. Like, how do you think about what is going on in the context of line locates within that composition through the future? I mean, obviously, that’s been elevated here. You saw a little bit of reprieve. How do you think about that contributing to that normalized level versus this just being the new norm? Or is there an elevated line locate just embedded in that 3 to 3.5 year?
Kevin Akers: Julien, it’s part of our ongoing strategy with whether they’re contractors or internal labor. We always look at what’s going on in the market where we have contracts as we look at those on an annual basis to see if they need adjustment, forecasted work for them, and any strategic opportunities we may have to in-source opportunities there to offset some of the cost taking a longer-term view. So all those options remain on the table as they have in the past, but we continue to look at these on an annual basis. So that’s where we get the comfort in that range that we put out there right now.
Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Okay. Fair enough. But it’s not like you have some meaningful further uptick in line locates or something like that, that we should be aware of here?
Kevin Akers: Now again, with the growth that I talked about on the front end and the population and trending that we’ve seen out there, that’s all been baked into the plan out there, all the labor or anticipated labor, the current contracts we have in place, the labor rates that are out there right now, we have baked all that into the plan.
Christopher Forsythe: Yes. And the 3.5% annual increase is off of FY ’23 levels kind of starting at that elevated level already.
Operator: Next question comes from the line of Ryan Levine of Citi.
