Chris Ellinghaus: Okay. Great.
Kevin Moug: And then we would expect that the — in that 2024 time frame is when that line would come on and then once that expansion is kind of completed, then the facility is sized to support a second line that right now is currently being considered in that 2026, 2027 time frame — ’27 time frame, excuse me.
Chris Ellinghaus: Okay. Great. That’s helpful. Kevin, what was the foundation contribution from corporate in ’22?
Kevin Moug: $3 million.
Chris Ellinghaus: Okay. And lastly, you talked about how there was a drawdown of PVC pipe inventories in the second half of the year, and you’re kind of expecting that to continue in the first half of the year. Was there that much incremental inventory? Or was the slowdown just that dramatic?
Kevin Moug: Chris, I would say, it was a combination of both where we first saw it was in Q3 when there was two announced resin price decreases that occurred. There was one that we were aware of as we released second quarter earnings and then there was a second kind of a large one in the latter part of August, early September, and that’s where there was recognition that there was a fair amount of inventory that was sitting in the channel at distributors and contractors. And they recognized that they just needed to use up that higher-priced inventory in the projects that they had instead of buying additional higher-priced inventory, certainly anticipating that probably sales prices would start to come down. As we moved into Q4, we started to get additional information about projects being either canceled or delayed, we learned of additional supply chain issues, not necessarily with PVC pipe, but other types of construction materials that go into these projects where that was causing a slowdown as well.
And then, of course, just the overall slowdown of the housing market continued into the fourth quarter and then certainly is expected to continue into 2023. The other thought is that — we’re seeing is that contractors, distributors are expecting that by the middle of ’23, that materials, PVC pipe and such will start to come down and that they have — their view is, in general, they have sufficient inventories to probably work through most of that.
Chris Ellinghaus: Okay. Great. Thanks for the color guys and congrats on a tremendous year.
Chuck MacFarlane: Thanks, Chris.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Brian Russo from Sidoti. Your line is open.
Brian Russo: Hi. Good morning.
Chuck MacFarlane: Hi, Brian.
Brian Russo: So just first on the utility. It seems as if you have the interest — market interest rate pressure on interest expense under control and just looking at ’23 earnings relative to where your rate base, it looks like you’re earning very close to your ROE. Are those trends, we can expect that to continue despite inflation pressures?
Chuck MacFarlane: Yeah, Brian. This is Chuck. I think we can, at least through 2023. We had significant O&M expense in our plant operations that we don’t think will repeat year-over-year, and we are seeing a decrease in pension expense. We do have other items going up, but we do think that those two tailwinds help.
Brian Russo: Right. So outside of maybe the IRP process, you have no rate cases planned in any of the three jurisdictions?
Chuck MacFarlane: We do not. We go through an exercise every year. And by June, we will complete cost of service studies by jurisdiction. I would say, at this point, we don’t anticipate any rate cases. If there would be one, it is most likely in North Dakota. But overall, I would anticipate that we are not filing a rate case this year.
Brian Russo: Okay. Got it. And then just on the Plastics side, just to clarify, the $36 million to $41 million of normalized earnings, does that exclude this 8% capacity expansion you have planned?
