Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Okay. All right. Fair enough. I’m just trying to tease the near term from the long-term here. And then if you can, I mean speaking about kind of reconciling 2023 against the longer-term, how about 2023 in the levers that you’ve pulled here to keep it at the lower end, despite the litany of more weather-related pressures here, as you alluded to earlier? Is there a read into 2024 that we should be aware of? I know you provided some commentary in the remarks, but is there any kind of direct read through whether it’s O&M or otherwise in terms of pull forward that’s a 2024 we should just be ready for?
Maria Pope: Yeah. No, I think as Joe outlined, we have really focused cost management efforts on how we manage the business, stay very constant to customer prices and drive efficiencies across our organization. But we remain confident in the long-term growth rate of 5% to 7%. And as we’ve always said, 2023 was an investment year.
Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Got it. But no hesitation on 2024 in turn from what I can tell?
Maria Pope: No, not at all.
Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Okay. Wonderful. Thank you so much. You guys take care.
Maria Pope: Thank you. You too.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nicholas Campanella of Barclays.
Maria Pope: Good morning.
Nicholas Campanella: Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Good morning. I guess, just on the revenue increase to $391 million. I know that there’s a lot of moving pieces with power costs and you called out the $183 for power costs. But is the net of those two numbers that’s what’s falling to the bottom line? Or is that too simplistic?
Joe Trpik: I think — I’m not sure, I would do that math on the net power cost. And specifically, we’re talking about 2024 here. But I think the performance of what will fall to the bottom line is obviously our load recovery, our return on the assets here as we build to 2024. I mean, the rate case overall and the net outcome that we have, we’re pretty satisfied that it was a really constructive dialogue And the case itself fits within our what I’ll call our calculus to Maria’s comments of our long-term growth plan.
Nicholas Campanella: Great, great. And then could you just expand a little on why load and demand mix was an issue for third quarter, but what’s just driving your confidence level for the fourth quarter? I’m sorry, if I missed that.
Joe Trpik: Yeah. So I think as it relates specifically to the third quarter, right, the mix shift was away from the residential commercial heading towards the larger, and it’s really due to two things that occur more in — the one that occurs more in the summer and one overall. One is energy efficiency, we have a little more penetration on energy efficiency at that commercial and that residential level. But also — and more of the summer item, there was rooftop solar penetration that was occurring at both at commercial and at residential level that was pushing down the overall load. The customer growth continues to be as we had anticipated, I believe we had 0.7% customer growth. But it’s just that that pressure from the energy efficiency and the DER penetration that are driving it.
Nicholas Campanella: Okay, great. And then just one more, Joe, just on the equity. I thought that you said that you would pull the full ATM down by the end of the year. If I’m wrong, please correct me. But just as an aside, how do you think about on this current CapEx plan with the equity announced to date, your ability to get to the 50%? Or is there more that needed to be thinking about? Thank you.
Joe Trpik: So all right, thank you. Specifically, as it relates to the ATM, we have not pulled down on the ATM as a fall. So what we have entered into is about we have — I believe we disclosed $58 million of the ATM we have entered into agreements on, none of which we have closed upon. So from a cash flow standpoint, the entire ATM is outstanding with $240-ish million is left to take into the market. As it relates to our — could you say your second part of your question again, just to make sure I don’t answer it as it relates to the capital?
Nicholas Campanella: I just wanted to be sure, are you leaving it open to whether or not you would pull that down by the end of the year? Or could that be further feathered into 2024 and beyond?
Joe Trpik: I would say that the ATM that we have in the — our equity needs are complete for this year, and the ATM would be open for next year. We don’t have any at least current needs. And we obviously would always be opportunistic with our equity, but we do not have any current needs for the ATM.
Nicholas Campanella: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Gregg Orrill of UBS.
Gregg Orrill: Thank you. So two parts. First, just how do you — regarding the $0.27 to $0.32 driver on the current year at variable power costs, what — how do you think about putting that range in place? What kind of gets you there? And then secondly, how are you thinking about the level of ownership in renewables in your RFP and just maybe not a number, but sort of appetite for ownership, I guess?
Maria Pope: Okay. So let me take your first question and then your second and if I don’t do an adequate job, Joe can fill in. So with regards to power costs, the $0.27 to $0.32, roughly about half of that, I would call sort of structural. And you can see that in the AUT numbers, we can see it in what we sort of have already in place for the quarter. The other part is really the work that we do every day. And the work that we can see and that would not be unusual for those kind of activities to yield those kind of results for what is a pretty challenging fourth quarter and a lot of work that we have to do, we feel confident that we’ll get there. With regards to the RFP, we feel be issued shortly. We will put in a short list of opportunities that the company would hope to be able to participate in.
Those have a little bit of a different timing just to make sure that there is full transparency, but we’re looking for the final RFP to be out by the end of this year. The first half, probably the short list will be submitted by that time. And we would hope that by the end of 2024, we would have finished some negotiations, obviously overseen by an independent evaluator to make sure that we are driving the lowest-cost, least-risk projects for our customers. And we’ve been pretty fortunate so far with regards to the company’s ownership projects, and that has really been being able to drive competitive costs, be able to manage risks and quite frankly, have very good partners as we move forward. So we would hope to have the same circumstances as we enter into 2024 and beyond.
