Nicholas Campanella: Okay, thanks for that. I guess just on the financing plan, I’m just trying to understand, is it your intention to not do any equity past the ’25 time frame, but now that you have this capex plan out to ’27, just wondering how to fund that.
Kirk Andrews: Hey Nick, it’s Kirk. Certainly as we’ve reiterated a number of times through our 6% to 8% growth rate through 2025, there is no new equity in that particular plan. As you’ll see, we came out of 2022, as David said earlier, with a strong balance sheet. We’re ahead of our targets, we’ve got strong robust free cash flow, we’re not a current taxpayer so we translate net income very efficiently into operating cash flows, which gives us a pretty good stable of equity to help supplement financing with debt, keep the balance sheet in line. Certainly expect that to be the case through 2025. That will continue because we don’t expect to be a cash taxpayer until towards the end of the decade, so we’re going to look to balance those two objectives.
We’ll look at the IRP obviously and the impact on the capital expenditure plan, but our goal is to successfully balance our objective to maintain that long term growth rate as robustly as we can, and that obviously means being prudent about issuing equity while at the same time maintaining those balance sheet objectives. But fortunately with the combination of those robust cash flows and the foundation we’ve come out of 2022, we feel good about where those balance sheets are and we’ll continue to focus on it. As we get through the rate case in Kansas and update the IRP, we’ll have more specifics about the financing plans long term, but again robust cash flow and our tax shield is a tailwind for us as we move forward, even beyond ’25.
Nicholas Campanella: Appreciate that color, thanks everyone. I’ll take Nick or Nicholas any day.
David Campbell: Thanks Nick.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Durgesh Chopra of Evercore. Please go ahead, Durgesh.
Durgesh Chopra: Hey, good morning team. Thanks for taking my questions.
David Campbell: Morning.
Durgesh Chopra: Good morning David. You’ve answered all of my other questions. Maybe just hit on the PPA opportunity that you’ve discussed in the past and what is the opportunity set there for perhaps 2023 and then longer term.
Kirk Andrews: Yes, sure Durgesh, it’s Kirk. Continuing to focus on that, as we talked about in 2022. I and particularly we were disappointed we weren’t able to bring one of those over the finish line despite a number of engagements with various counterparties. That continues to be the case. As I’m sure you’re well aware, there have been a number of renewable portfolios out in the marketplace, there continue to be. Those renewable portfolios, as often has been the case, continues to be the case going forward, include some of our PPA counterparties, so we are continuing to be involved in that process, and I think with the clarity that’s provided by the IRA, that’s given us a little bit better foundation for negotiating that. I don’t expect that if we get one of those done, and we’re certainly focused on doing it, I think it’s certainly possible in 2023.
