Entergy Corporation (NYSE:ETR) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Rod West: Yes. I think these – You’re right, being in a position where we can say comfortably that roughly 85% of the SERI risk has been addressed through settlement, it does lend itself to what I would think would be a compelling case to resolve the risk with the state of Louisiana. We can’t speak and don’t speak around the nuances of negotiations in any period. But we do believe that the fact that New Orleans is now off the table, it gives us a shot to pursue that with Louisiana near-term.

Jeremy Tonet: Got it. That’s helpful. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Michael Lonegan from Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.

Michael Lonegan: Hi, thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you could provide a preview of your planned resiliency filing in Texas. You laid out a cadence of spending for Texas at the EEI conference. And I was just wondering if the Texas Resiliency Act since then has changed how you’re thinking about it in terms of the amount and timing of planned investments?

Rod West: Yes. It’s Rod again. We’re going to make that filing in the second quarter. And some of the considerations around the amount will be influenced by how we think about the contribution to the resilient spend from the state grant program, not to mention, to your earlier point, how the capital would flow through the recovery mechanisms affecting both affordability and credit. But we’ll make that filing before the end of second quarter.

Drew Marsh: And I’ll add that as you probably recall, the Texas part of the resilience investment was pushed back a little bit, because we had a lot of growth upfront. And so you probably won’t see as much and that’s where the grant piece comes in. And also the mechanism, as we’ve talked about before, since we have all of this growth in our service territory, mechanism doesn’t work as well from a credit perspective for us. So we’re working on that. We have another legislative session coming up, but you’ll see all of that reflected in our ultimate resilience filing.

Michael Lonegan: Great, thank you. And then secondly for me, on the Bayou Power Station, is the $411 million of investment included in your base capital plan? And also, given that it would be floating off the Louisiana coast, I was just wondering if you could talk about the protections in place for the plant from severe weather with work crews and equipment potentially being impacted. I know sometimes you see that with oil rigs off the coast.

Kimberly Fontan: Yes. As far as the $411 million that is included in our capital plan from a protection, it’s a technology that’s been used elsewhere and certainly just not necessarily in this area along the East Coast. And certainly, it’s expected to be resilient in heavy winds and storms.

Drew Marsh: And just to be clear, it’s not out in the middle of the ocean, it is on land, but it’s in a canal, so that it can float with the storm surge. And so that’s really what we’re talking about here, not an oil rigging out in the middle of Gulf.

Michael Lonegan: Yes, yes, of course. Okay, well, thank you very much.

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

Nick Campanella: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions.

Drew Marsh: Good morning.

Nick Campanella: Good morning. Going back to the data center discussion, just you gave the stat on 1.1 gigawatts of new load, is going to be about $150 million of new gross margin, and this relates to the Mississippi Center. But just thinking about how that drops to the bottom line when you’re kind of taking the financing costs or other items there. Can you kind of help us understand how it translates to EPS? Just I’m thinking about there’s clearly more opportunity like this on the horizon and trying to see what those are worth? Thanks.

Kimberly Fontan: Yes. Thanks for the question, Nick. When you think about the Mississippi Data Center, it ramps up over time. So you’re not going to see a lot of that in the 3-year outlook period. We can talk more about what that means over the 5 years that Drew referenced at the Analyst Day. But you’re right, when you think about AGM on that sort of customer, you are also putting in infrastructure to support it. So you saw a shift in spending in the fourth quarter update, where we added incremental renewables, for example, in Mississippi, because those investments and the associated costs associated with those investments will offset some of that from a bottom line perspective and then financing costs for those type of things as well. But again, you’ll see most of that effect outside the 3-year outlook period.

Drew Marsh: Yes. The investment is the thing that will ultimately go to the bottom line. The AGM is there to support that incremental investment. So we think it’s really important and it demonstrates the growth opportunity at the time in front of us and the demand from our customers to help them meet what they want to do.

Nick Campanella: Great. That’s really helpful. Appreciate it. And then, I guess, you mentioned in your remarks and you have it on slides here, you’ve been above the 14% FFO-to-debt target that the agencies put you at. I’m just thinking about Moody’s continuing to be a negative outlook. Do you think that there’s a window to kind of address that ahead of summer? And what’s your latest conversations been there?

Kimberly Fontan: We certainly have regular conversations with the rating agencies, and they are constructive conversations about what’s happening in the business. If you look at our underlying calculation, the FFO trailing 12 months for the quarter was similarly strong to what it was at the end of the year. And then we issued more debt in this quarter, as I mentioned in my comments, that would balance out over the course of the year, putting us strongly in the rating agency’s expectation at the 14% or better. So strong discussions. Certainly, the rating agencies have to do their evaluations and make those decisions, but hitting that threshold for 2023, which we did, and then continuing to execute on that as we work to build towards 15% are important to us.

Nick Campanella: Alright. Thank you so much.

Drew Marsh: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Anthony Crowdell from Mizuho. Your line is now open.