CMS Energy Corporation (NYSE:CMS) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

CMS Energy Corporation (NYSE:CMS) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 25, 2024

CMS Energy Corporation beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.97, expectations were $0.94. CMS Energy Corporation isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good morning everyone, and welcome to the CMS Energy 2024 First Quarter Results. The earnings news release issued earlier today and the presentation used in this webcast are available on CMS Energy’s website in the Investor Relations section. This call is being recorded. After the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will be provided at that time. [Operator Instructions]. Just a reminder there will be a rebroadcast of this conference call today beginning at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time running through May 2. This 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. Jason Shore, Treasurer and Vice President of Investor Relations.

Jason Shore: Thank you Drew. Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us today. With me are Garrick Rochow, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Rejji Hayes Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. This presentation contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our SEC filings for more information regarding the risks and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially. This presentation also includes non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the appendix and posted on our website. And now I’ll turn the call over to Garrick.

Garrick Rochow: Thank you Jason, and thank you everyone for joining us today. CMS Energy, 21 years of consistent industry-leading results. And what sets us apart is our performance and it starts with our investment thesis. It is how we prioritize and focus our work to deliver the service our customers deserve in the financial outcomes you expect. As we look ahead, we see ample investment opportunity over the long-term, as we lead the clean energy transformation and deliver the critical work needed to improve the reliability and resiliency of our electric and gas systems. This important work is supported by legislation and a constructive regulatory environment, which provides confidence in making required investments to strengthen our system and prepare for a clean energy future.

We plan ahead through our electric reliability road map, natural gas delivery plan and our upcoming renewable energy plan, which all provide visibility and transparency and the work will deliver to keep our systems safe, sound and clean. At CMS Energy, we work both sides of the equation. We make important investments in our systems and we work to keep bills affordable. Our CE Way lean operating system helps us improve our performance, increase productivity and take costs out of the business. And we are hard at work to grow Michigan through economic development ensuring Michigan thrives well into the future. These efforts are important and help us keep customers’ bills affordable. At CMS Energy, we make our investment thesis work year-after-year and it continues to set us apart in the industry delivering results for all our stakeholders.

Today, I’m going to share three focus areas that have me excited about our future and give us confidence in our outlook. First, our electric distribution system. As our world becomes more dependent on electricity for business growth, technology advancements, devices and vehicles, our system needs to be stronger, smarter and more resilient for our customers. But our vast electric distribution system is aging. It needs to be modernized and strengthened for increasingly severe weather. Over the past five years, we have seen some of the highest wind speeds on record in more frequent storm activity. We have responded to this need through our electric reliability road map. Currently a five-year $7 billion plan to improve performance and harden our system for the future.

The plan utilizes best practices from across the industry, including designing the system with stronger pull, undergrounding, sectionalizing in further automation. And given the size of our distribution system, 90,000 miles of line, nearly 1200 substations, and a historically lower investment per mile compared to peers, we see a long runway of needed investment. We’ve incorporated roughly half of the incremental $3 billion, you see on slide 4, into our current capital plan and you’ll start to see this investment show up in our next electric rate case, which we’ll file in the second quarter. These important investments will mean fewer in shorter outages for our customers, and we are already seeing meaningful improvements in the investments made over the last few years.

The second focus area, I want to share is our continued leadership of the transformation to clean energy in the industry. In the past, I have shared our approved plans to eliminate coal in 2025, reduce carbon, grow energy efficiency and build out renewables in pursuit of our net zero target, and cleaner air for our customers and our planet. In late 2023, much of our clean energy targets were bolstered by Michigan’s new Clean Energy law. This law is unique in the industry and is good for all stakeholders. It provides us with the opportunity to further reduce our carbon footprint while maintaining resource adequacy, affordable customer builds and delivering for our investors. On the right side of the slide, you’ll see the opportunities ahead as we prepare to meet Michigan’s new clean energy law.

It supports an accelerated plan with the decarbonization of our system, with an enhanced financial compensation mechanism, which provides a roughly 9% return on clean purchase power agreements. In addition, there’s an increased incentive on energy efficiency as we target 60% renewables by 2035 and 100% clean energy by 2040. And it gives us important flexibility, as we think through how to best meet our customers’ needs with renewables across the broad MISO footprint. This mechanism, the flexibility in the law, helps us balance customer affordability as we work through this transition. For our customers, all this means stronger, more resilient and cleaner energy. For our investors, an exciting and robust investment runway well into the future.

Now, let’s work the other side of this investment equation. The third focus area that I want to share today, how we are helping Michigan grow and thrive, which is good for our company and our customers. Growth across our service territory is good for Michigan, helps keep bills affordable for our customers and provides headroom to the investments, I just referenced. And I couldn’t be more excited about the growth we need in our state. Michigan has a strong fiber network, access to fresh water, temperate climate, energy-ready site, and attractive energy rate. In February, we secured a contract with a large data center in the heart of our service territory. The majority of the 230 megawatts of new load is expected to be online by 2026. This is nice load growth.

And I’m even more excited about the manufacturing load growth we are seeing in Michigan, which is a differentiator for us. Our statewide leadership project such as Gotion, Hemlock Semiconductor, Ford and many others, continues to drive new and expanding load in our service territory. These projects bring significant jobs, supply chain, commercial growth, housing starts and broad Michigan investment. The ancillary benefit of manufacturing growth are good for all customers, can bolster our confidence in our plan for 2024 and beyond. Our customers thrive when Michigan thrives. And I’m proud of the diversity and quality of new load our leadership is working to bring to the state. Now, let’s get into the numbers. In the first quarter, we reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.97.

Although, we experienced a warmer-than-normal winter, the healthy set of countermeasures we deployed in 2023 and as well as our active use of the CE Way continued to benefit us in 2024. We remain confident in this year’s guidance and long-term outlook and are reaffirming all our financial objectives. Our full year guidance remains at $3.29 to $3.35 per share with continued confidence toward the high end. Longer term, we continue to guide to the high end of our adjusted EPS growth range of 6% to 8%, which implies and includes 7% up to 8%. With that, I’ll hand the call over to Rejji.

Rejji Hayes: Thank you, Garrick, and good morning, everyone. On slide 7, you’ll see our standard waterfall chart, which illustrates the key drivers impacting our financial performance for the quarter and our year-to-go expectation. For clarification purposes, all of the variance analysis herein are in comparison to 2023, both on a first quarter and nine months to go basis. In summary, through the first quarter of 2024, we delivered adjusted net income of $288 million or $0.97 per share, which compares favorably to the comparable period in 2023 largely due to higher weather-normalized sales and lower service restoration costs of utility, partially offset by mild weather. To elaborate on the impact of weather, we experienced another warm winter in Michigan during the first quarter, which had the second lowest number of heating degree days in the past 25 years.

The warm winter weather resulted in $0.06 per share of negative variance, which appears modest on the surface given the historically low number of heating degree days. However, it’s important to note that last year’s winter was also quite warm. Rate relief net of investment-related expenses resulted in $0.05 per share of positive variance due to constructive outcomes achieved in our most recent electric rate case and last year’s gas rate case settlement coupled with residual benefits from our 2023 electric rate case settlement approved last January. From a cost performance perspective our financials in the first quarter of 2024 were positively impacted by lower operating and maintenance or O&M expenses primarily attributable to lower service restoration costs than we experienced last year.

Also as Garrick noted, we continue to see benefits from select cost reduction initiatives implemented in 2023, which have offset modest inflationary trends we’ve experienced in various cost categories such as wages as planned and we anticipate this trend to continue over the remainder of the year. And our catch-all category represented by the final bucket in the actual section of the chart, you’ll notice a healthy pickup of $0.19 per share largely driven by weather normalized sales which contributed almost half of said positive variance particularly in our residential and commercial customer classes. It’s worth noting that the leap year impacts comparability with 2023 for weather-normalized sales, but even absent the effects of the leap year our residential weather-normalized sales up about 0.5% and our commercial customer class was up almost 2.5% versus the prior year, which highlights the continued solid performance of our higher-margin customer classes.

Looking ahead, we plan for normal weather as always which equates to $0.22 per share of positive variance for the remaining nine months of the year given the mild temperatures experienced for virtually all of 2023. From a regulatory perspective, we’re assuming $0.18 per share of positive variance which is largely driven by the constructive electric rate order received from the commission in early March. We are also assuming a supportive outcome in our pending gas rate case. On the cost side we anticipate lower overall O&M expense at the utility driven by the usual cost performance fueled by the CE Way and last year’s voluntary separation program among other 2023 cost reduction initiatives that continue to bear fruit. We also assumed lower service restoration costs given last year’s record level of storm activity in our service territory.

In aggregate, we expect these items to drive $0.09 per share of positive variance for the remaining nine months of the year. Lastly in ultimate bar, on the right-hand side, you’ll note a significant negative variance which largely consists of the absence of select onetime countermeasures from last year and the usual conservative assumptions around weather-normalized sales and non-utility performance among other items. In aggregate, these assumptions equate to $0.52 to $0.58 per share of negative variance. Slide 8 offers the latest updates on our regulatory-forward calendar. As you’ll note in the top section, we plan to file a Renewable Energy Plan or REP by mid-November, which will highlight our strategy for complying with the various renewable energy targets associated with Michigan’s new clean energy law.

We are excited by the prospects of the new law which will support our net zero carbon by 2040 goal and look forward to socializing our filing with key stakeholders in the coming months. Once filed the commission will have 300 days to issue an order, which will likely be in the third quarter of 2025. Therefore, as mentioned during our fourth quarter call you should expect that to the five-year plan that will roll out in the first quarter of 2026 will incorporate a greater portion of the financial impacts of the REP. Moving on to our general rate case filings. You can expect our next electric rate case to be filed in late May to early June time frame. This filing will incorporate some of the initial spend we have outlined in our five-year electric reliability road map that Garrick touched on earlier.

Given the 10-month stipulated period for rate cases in Michigan, we would expect to receive an order from the commission in the first quarter of 2025 and thus the related financial impact. Lastly, we anticipate an order in our pending gas rate case by mid-October absent a settlement. While we don’t always include a balance sheet update on our formal presentation it is worth noting that Moody’s and Fitch reaffirmed our credit ratings in March and April respectively, as noted at the bottom of the table on Slide 9. Longer-term we continue to target solid investment-grade credit ratings and we’ll continue to manage our key credit metrics accordingly as we balance the needs of the business. And with that I’ll hand it back to Garrick for his final remarks before the Q&A session.

Garrick Rochow: Thank you, Rejji. Our simple investment thesis is how we run our business and provides us with confidence for a strong outlook this year and beyond. 21 years of consistent industry-leading financial performance, 21 proof point, regardless of conditions no excuses just results. With that Drew, please open the lines for Q&A.

Operator: Thank you very much, Garrick. [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from Shahriar Pourreza from Guggenheim Partners. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

See also 20 Countries with the Largest Urban Population in the World and 13 Best Reddit Stocks to Buy Now.

Q&A Session

Shahriar Pourreza: Hey, guys. Good morning.

Garrick Rochow: Hey, good morning, Shahriar.

Shahriar Pourreza: Good morning. Good morning. I guess firstly just given you have an upcoming electric case. How are you thinking about any kind of incremental construct improvements there? Would you kind of seek an expanded IRM framework? And do you need to address any kind of the rate design issues with C&I rates, especially as you’re trying to accommodate new load like data center growth, especially just trying to kind of balance that customer rate impact.

Garrick Rochow: Shahriar you want me to get into rate design. You guys are all going to fall asleep on this call, if I go into rate design. Let me start out with the fundamentals of this electric case. I think this is really important. You’ve heard me time and time again, whether it’s investor meetings or in our calls, on the importance of improving reliability. We’ve seen higher wind speeds, more frequent storm activity. And just this is our focus as a company how we improve reliability and the longer-term resiliency of our electric system. You can also hear that from the commissioners. They’re very clear about that expectation. And so I would say there’s really good alignment there. And this reliability road map does just that.

It’s same that those important capital improvements. There’s some O&M work associated with that as well. These are best practices in the industry, which we’re deploying across our system and going to a meaningful benefit for our customers. In addition to that we’re focused on the affordability piece. This is how the fundamentals of this great to invest the capital but you also have to be focused on the affordability piece for our customers. And so it’s driving down unit cost through the CE Way, it’s other cost offsets, there’s a whole range of things we’re doing to make sure this next electric rate case delivers for our customers in terms of improved reliability and offsetting from a cost perspective. So that’s the fundamentals of the case.

And so we’re going to look at different mechanisms in that case. As I’ve shared before, I would anticipate that we again take advantage of our infrastructure recovery mechanism that was supported in the last case. We’ll look at a storm recovery mechanism. We’ve utilized that in previous cases. We’ll continue to look at that optionality, and what that could look like in this case. Again, longer term we’ll file this in the May, first part of June. I feel confident about what we’re putting together based on the important merits of the case that are going to improve reliability, will balance the important components of affordability. Now your question on rate design, there’s a lot in rate design. I really will put you to sleep, if I go there. We’re going to make sure as the state expands and we have this important load growth, that both energy and capacity component, that cost of service mechanism is appropriately allocated to where those costs are.

That’s what we’ve done historically. That’s what the commission supported. And so, we’ll look at that certainly within the context of this case, but it’s really smaller in the grand scheme of the important work of this case.

Q – Shahriar Pourreza: Got it. Perfect. And then lastly, as we’re thinking about the energy law construct the new one right, I guess what are some of the first changes you can implement especially, as we’re thinking about the upcoming IRP update. Would you lean more on sort of that FCM construct? And is any of this kind of embedded in your long-range growth guidance? Thanks.

Garrick Rochow: It’s still early days on some of those modeling. So we’ll file our REP renewable energy plan on November 15. And as I’ve shared historically here or previous here, there’s a broad spectrum of ownership versus PPAs. PPAs obviously, have the opportunity for the financial compensation mechanism or if you’re going to build everything and own everything obviously, you have the opportunity to earn your ROE. So, there’s a broad spectrum. You do all, either end those are the bookends. I think it’s somewhere in the mix and there’s a lot of variables, we need to consider that we’re modeling out right now, and that’s why we’re not prepared to share what that looks like. But let me hand it over to Rejji, I know he has some additional thoughts on this.

Rejji Hayes: Shahriar, good morning. Thanks for the question. All I would add to Garrick’s comments is that, in our current five-year plan what we’ve incorporated is just a modest amount of PPAs, with the financial compensation mechanism and that’s solely because of the fact that any PPA put in place after June of this year, would be subject to the new FCM, which is around 9% versus the prior of about 5.5%. And so we have a portion of that albeit, a small portion incorporated in this five-year plan. We’ve also incorporated the enhanced economic incentives associated with energy efficiency. And so that’s flowing through our plan as well. And remember, historically, we’ve on the electric side, been reducing load about 2% year-over-year.

And before the new energy law, we get a 20% incentive on top of that spend that’s now 22.5%, so that’s also a source of financial upside embedded into this plan. But to Garrick’s earlier comments, the much more expansive opportunities whether it’s scaling, contracts or the ownership opportunities or more specifically the rate base opportunities. Those are not incorporated into our five-year plan and really won’t be until 2026.

Q – Shahriar Pourreza: Okay. Perfect. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Garrick for the record, your rate design answer was not boring at all. Thanks, guys.

Operator: Our next question comes from Nick Campanella from Barclays. Your line is now open. Please proceed.

Q – Nick Campanella: Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking…

Garrick Rochow: Hi. Good morning, Nick.

Q – Nick Campanella: Good morning. I guess — just thinking about the other off-site opportunities can you maybe give us an update on your conversations around DIG and the recontracting opportunity there? And how those discussions have been progressing? Is this something that we can maybe see an update on by year-end? Or is it more a 2025 2026 item? Maybe just talk about timing there. Thanks.

Rejji Hayes: Good morning Nick, this is Rejji. I appreciate the question. Yes as we talked about on our fourth quarter call, we still have about 30% to 35% open margin in the outer years of our plan really starting in sort of 2026 or second half of 2016 going through 2028. We certainly are seeing attractive reverse inquiry for that open margin on the capacity side. We’re sold through on the energy side through 2028 or through the duration of this five-year plan but there still are opportunities in the capacity side. And we’ll be thoughtful. We never are too aggressive in selling down that open margin. We like to have a little bit of optionality particularly with a really attractive technical that we continue to see in Zone seven with the tightening of supply and upward pressure on demand.

And so we’ll provide an update in our next 5-year plan as we always do. And I expect that we’ll be selling down a portion of the open margin ratably over the coming months and quarters but should still have probably a little open margin as we provide a new five-year plan in the first quarter next year. Is that helpful?

Nick Campanella: That is helpful. I appreciate that. And I guess thinking about the rate case cadence and outcomes. On the electric side the last case to kind of pursue the fully litigated outcome but on the gas side you just received staff testimony. And I think Rejji I heard you say you get an order in fourth quarter absent a settlement. So, just what’s your reaction to staff starting to point here? And what are your thoughts on being able to settle the gas case?

Garrick Rochow: I’d go back Nick to the fundamentals of that case aiming for a safe natural gas system you continue to reduce methane across that and deliver affordable natural gas to our customers. And so again the imbalance that equation of making the investments in the natural gas system also just like we’re doing in the electric business aiming for an improved affordability across the gas system through unit costs through cost out using the CE Way and the like. So, those fundamentals are true. Staff position I would categorize as constructive a constructive starting point. And so we’ll look once we have that position, we’re going to look for the opportunity for settlement. We’ve been able to work with a number of the interveners in the past and have a good track record there.

But I also hear this I’m confident in the testimony and the merits of the case. So if we need to go to full distance we will and get a constructive outcome both for our customers and stakeholders.

Nick Campanella: All right. thanks so much. Have a great day.

Garrick Rochow: You too Nick.

Operator: Our next question comes from Jeremy Tonet from JPMorgan. Your line is now open, please go ahead.

Jeremy Tonet: Hi, good morning.

Garrick Rochow: Good morning Jeremy.

Jeremy Tonet: Thanks. Just want to dive in I guess to the sales outlook came in a bit better than expected I guess for the first quarter and for the balance of the year it looks like that’s trending better than expected. And just wondering by customer class if you could dive in a bit more on the drivers that you’re seeing that within each class that is leading to this uptick?

Rejji Hayes: Yes, Jeremy this is Rejji. I appreciate the question. So, yes, we were pleased with the first quarter performance of non-weather sales. We provide good color on that in our earnings digest which you probably saw. But going through the customer classes we saw residential up just under 1.5% versus Q1 of 2023. And so on the surface that looks quite good but it’s important to note that the leap day in the quarter because it’s a leap year, drove about two-thirds of that. But still even absent leap day as I mentioned in my prepared remarks still up about 0.5%. I still think we continue to see continued upside of the return to work or return to facilities trend where I think we had pretty conservative assumptions about returning to facilities and we are seeing a stickiness to folks having our corporations retaining what I would describe as a hybrid workforce.

And so that is still I think delivering some surprise to the upside and it is a higher margin customer class as you know. On the commercial side, really quite pleased with what we’ve seen. And so the number was just under 3.5% increase versus Q1 of 2023. And the leap year only affected about one-third of that. So pro forma for the leap year we were still just under 2.5%. So very pleased with that. And our speculation, we’ve seen some of the subsectors within commercial that have performed pretty well. Agriculture mining, up about 6.5%. We also saw entertainment up about 3%. And so we’ve seen some of the subsectors perform pretty well. But we also think because folks are actually going to the office at least three days a week that does create foot traffic in communities and folks are going to cafes and things of that nature.

So that’s also part of it as well, but that’s a bit more speculate there, but that’s our sense. And then within Industrial, if you exclude one low-margin large customer, we’re just over — sorry just slightly up let’s say about 20, 25 basis points and the leap year did have a big impact on that class. And so pro forma for the leap year you’re down about 1%. I will always caveat two things whenever we talk about weather-normalized sales. One, remember those numbers include the fact that we’re reducing our load by 2% each year in electric due to energy efficiency. So all these numbers should be on a gross basis up 2%. And so you should provide that color to these industrial numbers. The other thing I always caveat is that weather normalization math, as good as our team is as hard as they work to get it right is a very imperfect science.

And so it is very difficult to get these numbers exactly right. But what I would say in terms of industrial that we feel very good, as Garrick noted in his prepared remarks about the economic outlook and just have a robust pipeline and a very diversified pipeline of industrial opportunities, which really aren’t reflected in our numbers at this point. It won’t be until the outer years of our plan and we’ll be disappointed if that opportunity doesn’t continue to bear fruit for the next couple of years. Now that’s the color, I can offer across each customer class but certainly happy to take any follow-ups as needed.

Jeremy Tonet: That’s very helpful. Thank you for that. And maybe just pivoting a bit here it seems on the side that they lay out there’s a bit of cushion to hitting the guide in 2024. And so just wondering I guess, how you feel confidence level guide at this point, does it put you in a position to start thinking about 2025? Just wanted to get a sense for how that stands.

Rejji Hayes: Yeah. I would say Jeremy early days. Obviously, we’re delighted that 2024 is not 2023 in that we don’t have a big storm as well as mild weather to start off the year, which we obviously saw last year. But to be clear, we still saw negative variance in terms of weather, top line-related weather. And so there’s still some work to do. And so we are counter measuring, and again very confident in the outlook. But it’s a little early before we start thinking about derisking 2025 and beyond.

Jeremy Tonet: Got it. Fair enough. I’ll leave it there. Thank you.

Rejji Hayes: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from David Arcaro from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

David Arcaro: Hi, great. Good morning. Thanks so much.

Garrick Rochow: Good morning David.

David Arcaro: I was wondering what you’re seeing in terms of maybe data center demand in the pipeline. Any uptick in further requests to connect beyond the big megawatt addition that you called out? And wondering if that customer class, I guess would potentially be involved in the voluntary renewables plan? Any upside potential there?