FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE:FE) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Shar Pourreza: Perfect. I appreciate it guys. That’s all I had and Brian good luck with the search for the COO and President. Appreciate it.

Brian Tierney: Thank you, Shar.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Jeremy Tonet: Hi, good morning.

Brian Tierney: Good morning, Jeremy.

Jeremy Tonet: Just wanted to touch base, I guess, on the financing plans a bit here. Given your CapEx refresh, could you clarify, I guess, what’s in the financing needs at this point? It looks like – there was prior language last quarter about no equity needs except for $100 million SIP DRIP and didn’t see that messaging in this deck. And just wondering if anything has changed there, what we should expect on that front?

Jon Taylor: Yes. That’s still the case. I mean, Jeremy, if you think about where we are relative to our cash flow metrics and our projections, if you think about 14% to 15% FFO to debt. You think about $3.5 billion of proceeds coming in next year from the FET sale, that has significant impact on our financing plan in a meaningful way. And so we have a lot of financial flexibility in the plan. And so – no new equity requirements fully supports the CapEx plans that we have in place plus the ability to do some balance sheet improvement initiatives to take out additional holding company debt. So no issues there.

Jeremy Tonet: Got it. That’s helpful there. And then continuing along on the CapEx front, I just want to kind of run through some of the numbers by had it straight here, but looking at the ‘23 through ‘25 plan, the $12 billion, how that compares to the $18 billion in the ‘21 through ‘25 plan. I think you might have spent $2.4 billion in ‘21, $2.75 billion in ‘22. And it looks like your prior plan might imply $12.8 billion CapEx for ‘23 to ‘25 and so current plan $800 million less. I just wanted to know if I had those numbers right or if there were other moving pieces here, should we be thinking about or CapEx was decreased to any of the different subs?

Jon Taylor: CapEx hasn’t been decreased. I mean if you look at what we’re going to spend this year, it’s $3.7 billion and then in ‘24 and ‘25 million, it’s going to be $3.9 billion and $4.1 billion, respectively. So no change in the ‘24 and ‘25 capital plans from what we introduced back in February of this year. And in fact, we increased the capital plan in ‘23 by $300 million.

Jeremy Tonet: Got it. That’s helpful there. Thanks. Just last one, if I could. I think you talked about incremental business disclosures that could be coming forward here. Just wondering if you might be able to offer any incremental thoughts with regards to what type of information we could see there?

Jon Taylor: Yes. So I think what we’re going to plan on doing is looking at our segment reporting for 2024 and going forward and making it a little simpler and more transparent for the Street. And quite frankly, for us, it will reflect how we’re going to manage the business going forward. So we’re probably going to move to segments that is distribution, one, transmission another and integrated another, and that will allow us to not have to split companies between the segments and it will require us to not have to do reconciliations for analysts that cover us, investors that are interested in it just makes the presentation of our results simpler and more in line with how we manage the business.

Jeremy Tonet: Got it. That’s very helpful. I’ll leave it there. Thanks.

Jon Taylor: Perfect.

Brian Tierney: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nick Campanella with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.