PPL Corporation (NYSE:PPL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

PPL Corporation (NYSE:PPL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript February 17, 2023

Operator: Good morning and welcome to the PPL Corporation Fourth Quarter and Year-end 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Andy Ludwig, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Andy Ludwig: Good morning everyone and thank you for joining the PPL Corporation conference call on fourth quarter and year end 2022 financial results. We provided slides for this presentation on the Investors section of our website. We’ll begin today’s call with updates from Vince Sorgi, PPL President and CEO; and Joe Bergstein, Chief Financial Officer. And we’ll conclude with a Q&A session following our prepared remarks. Before we get started, I’ll draw your attention to slide two and a brief cautionary statement. Our presentation today contains forward-looking statements about future operating results or other future events. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Please refer to the appendix of this presentation and PPL’s SEC filings for a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ from the forward-looking statements.

We will also refer to non-GAAP measures, including earnings from ongoing operations and adjusted gross margins on this call. For reconciliations to the comparable GAAP measures, please refer to the appendix. I’ll now turn the call over to Vince.

Vince Sorgi: Thank you, Andy and good morning everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter and year end investor update. We’ll keep our remarks brief this morning given the comprehensive update we shared with you on January 11th. We continue to be extremely excited for PPL’s bright future and the value we intend to deliver for our customers and shareowners. Turning to slide four, 2022 was a remarkable year in PPL’s history, one that has completely redefined our company. It marks the beginning of a new era as we are now positioned as a premier pure-play US regulated utility holding company. Our strategic repositioning began with the sale of our UK business in 2021 and concluded in May of 2022 with the addition of Rhode Island Energy and its almost 800,000 customers.

I’m very proud of the execution from our team to close this transaction and complete the transition activities to-date with National Grid. We are on schedule to complete all of the TSAs in 2024 as originally planned. The acquisition of Rhode Island Energy also enhances our scale and enables PPL to be a leader in our sector for years to come. This includes positioning our company to deliver top-tier 6% to 8% earnings and dividend growth through at least 2026, with one of the best credit profiles in our sector, our balance sheet can support our growth without equity issuances throughout the planning horizon. And while we executed on our strategic repositioning, we remain steadfast in our pursuit of delivering excellent financial and operational results in 2022.

First and foremost, we achieved ongoing earnings of $1.41 per share, beating the midpoint of our forecast, which we had increased in November. This is a fantastic accomplishment considering all the extra work our teams completed this past year in connection with our strategic repositioning. In addition to delivering solid financial results, we also laid the groundwork for capital investments we need to make for years to come, in our pursuit of delivering an exceptional customer experience at an affordable price. Specifically, we presented a balanced investment plan in Kentucky to replace nearly 1,500 megawatts of retiring coal generation. This plan best positions our utilities in Kentucky to serve our customers with safe, reliable, affordable and sustainable energy while the state fosters significant economic development and growth.

We also designed a series of plans for our newly acquired Rhode Island Energy, strategies to deliver the energy grids necessary to achieve the state’s impressive clean energy goal of 100% renewable energy by 2033. These plans include advanced metering, grid modernization and our first infrastructure safety and reliability plans under our ownership. These plans emphasize just some of the robust investment opportunities at our utilities. We’re also looking at potential regulated investment opportunities beyond our four utilities, leveraging our expertise in transmission development to open new doors for potential growth. This includes our strategic partnership with WindGrid, an Elia subsidiary, where we are exploring offshore transmission solutions in New England.

Any investment opportunity stemming from this partnership, are not included in our capital forecast and represent potential upside to our long-term growth plan. On the operational front, during 2022, we maintained our top quartile reliability in Pennsylvania and Kentucky, despite the increased frequency and severity of storms in our service territories. And in just a few months of ownership, Rhode Island Energy has experienced a marked improvement in reliability and exceeded 2022 expectations by more than 10%. One example of this excellent performance was during Winter Storm Elliott. Rhode Island Energy was the first major New England utility to achieve full customer restoration in the early morning of Christmas Day. We also maintained our top quartile customer satisfaction at PPL Electric Utilities and Kentucky Utilities.

And while we’re proud of these achievements, we are sympathetic to the concerns of our Pennsylvania customers who experienced increases in their December bills as a result of higher energy prices. While we don’t control the price of electricity supply, we know that it can have a meaningful impact on our customers. And while the default rate for PPL Electric’s non-shopping customers increased in December, many of our customers who have chosen third-party suppliers saw even higher price increases and are paying significantly more than our default rate of approximately $0.145. Our most recent review of shopping results found that in November, over 40% of our residential shopping customers paid a higher rate than our default rate. Over 100,000 customers paid a rate between 25% and 100% more than the default rate and nearly 20,000 customers paid more than double our default rate.

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For the last two years, PPL Electric has been a vocal advocate, on behalf of our customers, for greater safeguards and other actions to protect them from overpaying for their electricity supply. We proposed various consumer protection reforms with our Pennsylvania legislators and regulators and are again having discussions with them for the benefit of our customers. In addition to higher bills from these increased energy prices, a large number of our PPL Electric Utilities customers received estimated bills in December due to a technical issue. The timing of higher electricity bills and the increased number of estimated bills created some confusion and concern for customers. We have since fixed the technical issue and have temporarily doubled the resources at our call centers to address customer questions and significantly reduce call wait times.

And in further support of our customers, we’ve waived late fees and expanded our no-shutoff practice over the winter to include all residential and small business customers. We’re also focused on communicating even more with our customers about high energy prices and what customers can do to minimize their energy bills. While this is an important topic for us and our customers that I wanted to address today, I want to be clear that we do not expect this matter to have a significant impact on our financial results. As we’ve discussed at length, one of the key aspects of our strategy is to drive operating efficiencies across the entire business. In developing our strategy, we anticipated affordability being a key area of focus for customers and regulators, even before we saw the effects of inflation and high commodity costs.

We all know the energy grids need significant investment to ensure reliability and resiliency while preparing for renewables, DERs and more electrification. This is why our plan best positions PPL to achieve our goals while focusing on affordability for our customers. Turning to Slide 5. PPL’s outlook for 2023 is one that is simply focused on executing our utility of the future strategy. In my 2022 recap, I discussed that we are on track with our integration activities with Rhode Island Energy. An obvious top priority for 2023 is to remain on track with our Rhode Island integration, setting us up for completion in 2024. We have a $2.4 billion capital plan that improves the safety, reliability and resiliency of our networks while addressing our customers’ evolving needs.

We’re on track to deliver the first leg of our $175 million O&M savings target by 2026 with $50 million to $60 million of savings in 2023 as we deploy our playbook and continue to optimize our operations. These savings will provide a strong basis for us to deliver the midpoint of our 2023 earnings forecast of $1.58 per share. Recall, this forecast represents a 7% increase from our pro forma 2022 forecast of $1.48 per share. We will also focus on the regulatory filings in Kentucky and Rhode Island to deliver lease cost and reliable energy for our customers and help to advance the clean energy transition. Turning to Slide 6. As we executed our strategic repositioning over the past few years, we took a hard look at how we wanted to be defined as a company and management team.

Simply put, we want to be the best utility company in the US, the best set of learning safe, reliable, affordable and sustainable energy to our customers and competitive long-term returns to our shareowners. We’ve included on the right side of the slide, the categories that we’ll use to measure our success against our peers. In short, we will be targeting top decile or top quartile performance and safety, reliability, customer satisfaction and cost efficiency, while at the same time, targeting a premium stock valuation. While we’re not there yet in all categories, I firmly believe we are on the right path to get there. And I’m excited to see us advance down this path. With that, I’ll now turn the call over to Joe for the financial update. Joe?

Joe Bergstein: Thank you, Vince, and good morning, everyone. Let’s turn to Slide 8. Our solid fourth quarter financial results closed out a great year for the company. Fourth quarter GAAP earnings were $0.26 per share. Special items in the fourth quarter were $0.02 per share, primarily due to integration and related expenses associated with the acquisition of Rhode Island Energy, partially offset by a tax benefit due to the provision to final 2021 tax return adjustments, primarily related to the sale of WPD. Adjusting for these special items, fourth quarter earnings from ongoing operations were $0.28 per share, an improvement of $0.06 per share compared to 2021. With these strong fourth quarter results, our 2022 GAAP earnings totaled $1.02 per share.

Special items for the year were $0.39 per share, primarily related to integration and related expenses associated with the acquisition of Rhode Island Energy. Our ongoing earnings for the year were $1.41 per share compared to $1.05 per share for 2021 exceeding the midpoint of our earnings forecast for 2022. Turning to the ongoing segment drivers for the quarter on slide nine. Our Pennsylvania Regulated segment results improved by $0.01 year-over-year. Results were primarily driven by higher sales volumes due to milder than normal weather last year and increased returns on additional capital investments in transmission. These improvements were offset partially by higher O&M expenses. Our Kentucky segment decreased by $0.01 per share year-over-year.

Improved sales volumes in Kentucky also due to milder than normal weather experienced last year were more than offset by higher O&M and interest expense. The addition of our Rhode Island segment increased earnings by $0.03 per share for the quarter. Results at Corporate and Other increased $0.03 per share compared to the prior year, primarily due to lower O&M expenses, lower income taxes, and other factors that were not individually significant. These favorable drivers were partially offset by higher interest expense. Our strong performance in the fourth quarter reflects another proof point of delivering on expectations since our repositioning last year. Our results for the full year are on slide 10. We reported improved results across each business segment in 2022.

The operating segment results presented here exclude the impact of share accretion, which we’ve shown as a separate bar on the far right of the slide. Recall that we used a portion of the UK business sales proceeds to repurchase $1 billion of shares back in the fourth quarter of 2021, resulting in $0.05 of accretion in 2022. We also used another $4 billion of the UK sales proceeds to reduce our holding company debt, strengthening our balance sheet to one of the best in the sector. This reduction of debt was the primary driver for the $0.10 improvement in our Corporate and Other segment for the year. Turning to the operating segments. Our Pennsylvania Regulated segment delivered a $0.06 per share increase for the year compared to 2021. The year-over-year increase was primarily driven by returns on additional capital investments in transmission, higher peak transmission demand, and improved sales volumes.

These favorable drivers were partially offset by higher O&M expenses, including increased uncollectibles, additional vegetation management costs, and IT amortization costs. Our Kentucky Regulated segment earnings increased by $0.07 per share for the year compared to 2021. Our improved results in Kentucky were primarily driven by a full year of higher retail rates that went into effect in July 2021 and higher sales volumes. These favorable drivers were partially offset by higher O&M expenses, including vegetation management, plant outage and storm costs, and higher depreciation expense. Our Rhode Island segment added $0.08 per share to ongoing earnings for the year, reflecting the period from our acquisition in late May through the end of the year.

This was a great year for the company and is yet another demonstration of our commitment to deliver on and exceed our financial goals. Turning to slide 11. We expect to keep that momentum heading into this year. Today, we are reaffirming our 2023 earnings forecast range of $1.50 to $1.65 per share and the midpoint of $1.58 per share. We remain confident in our ability to deliver our forecast by leveraging our proven operating model, a strategy focused on driving cost efficiencies to reduce O&M, which enables investments necessary to advance our energy networks in the most affordable manner. Our Pennsylvania segment results are expected to increase by $0.04 per share in 2023, primarily due to returns on additional capital investments in transmission and lower O&M, partially offset by higher interest expense.

We project our Kentucky segment results to increase by $0.05 per share in 2023, primarily due to lower O&M, partially offset by higher interest expense. Our Rhode Island segment results are expected to increase by $0.08 per share in 2023, primarily due to the impact of a full year’s earnings. We project corporate and other results to be flat year-over-year. Moving to slide 12. In connection with the request from many of our investors, we’ve reallocated our Kentucky holding company financing costs to corporate and other, beginning January 1. This reallocation provides a clearer view of the utility earnings for our Kentucky Regulated segment and is consistent with how we report the Pennsylvania and Rhode Island segments. We’ve illustrated the impact of this reallocation to our actual 2022 ongoing earnings on this slide to show the 2022 segment results on a consistent basis with our 2023 segment forecast.

Moving to slide 13. Our Board of Directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.24 per share to be paid on April 3 to shareholders of record as of March 10. As we discussed in January, the $0.24 dividend is a 7% increase that aligns with our predictable, linear and competitive annual EPS growth of 6% to 8%. This is also within our targeted dividend payout range of 60% to 65%, combining our targeted EPS growth with our dividend yield provides investors with a compelling total return proposition in the range of 9% to 11% per year. This is consistent with our mission of delivering long-term returns to shareholders. That concludes my prepared remarks, and I’ll turn the call back over to Vince.

Vince Sorgi: Thank you, Joe. Over the past two years, we’ve taken bold steps to transform PPL for long-term growth and success and to improve shareowner return, while building on our core strengths. Since then, we have continued to deliver on the goals we set, exceeding the midpoint of our 2022 earnings forecast, advancing industry-leading grid modernization, providing highly reliable electricity and gas service and economically advancing our clean energy strategy. And our plan provides investors with an attractive return proposition, one that the entire management team and I intend to deliver. With that, operator, let’s open it up for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: We will now begin the question-and-answer session. And our first question will come from Shar Pourreza of Guggenheim Partners. Please go ahead.

Shar Pourreza: Hey, team.

Vince Sorgi: Hey, Shar.

Shar Pourreza: Hey, Vince. Just two quick ones here after you guys obviously had a comprehensive update a little while ago. But just — I know you guys are obviously targeting $50 million to $60 million of O&M savings this year, but it’s been kind of a super mild winter, Q1 looks to be a little bit rough. I guess how comfortable are you around the 158 midpoint when you’re also layering in sort of interest expense pressures and some of the externalities we’re seeing out there. So I guess if the tail risks don’t abate can you sort of pull forward some of that incremental $70 million in O&M savings next year into this year? I guess, can you just talk a little bit about the contingencies here? Thanks.

Vince Sorgi: Yes, Shar. Look, I would just say we still remain incredibly confident in our ability to hit the 2023 forecast. As you’ve mentioned and with many of our peers, right, I would say the most significant potential headwinds or factors that we’re looking at today are interest rates and inflation. And then, of course, weather, which you referenced and its impact potentially on sales or our storm costs. I would say regarding inflation and interest rates at this point, we’re really not seeing anything significant enough that we don’t think we can manage as we look forward for not only 2023 but going forward. And I would just reiterate that we built a plan to withstand volatile markets and still enable us to hit the targets that we’ve laid out for you all. So we’re still very confident, don’t necessarily see the need to really accelerate O&M, but that’s always a lever we have at our disposal.

Shar Pourreza: Great. And then just lastly, Vince, that’s helpful. Just on the Kentucky CPCN process, interveners are obviously starting to line up, looks like there’s been some delays on solar PPAs and the PSC just engaged a consultant, right, to do an analysis earlier this week. Can you just speak to the process a little bit more broadly and what we should be watching for interveners and procedurally between now and your next update in the spring? Thanks.

Vince Sorgi: Yes, sure. So the CPCN process does continue, I would say, really on plan as was laid out in the procedural schedule. Last week, the KPSC granted several interveners, their motions to intervene short, none of those were a surprise to us. So I would say everything, again, progressing as we would have expected there. The next step is for us to get the data requests from the interveners, which are due to us by the end of today actually. This will then start a series of requests and testimony that are scheduled really to continue through mid-August. And then once we get through that, that will culminate with the public hearing during the last week of August. And then as I think you know, the commission has indicated that they expect to provide a decision by November 6.

Shar Pourreza: Got it. Terrific. Fantastic. That’s all I had and congrats and we’ll be seeing you real soon. Appreciate it.

Vince Sorgi: Great. Thanks, Shar.

Operator: The next question comes from Durgesh Chopra of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Vince Sorgi: Hey Durgesh.

Durgesh Chopra: Hey, good morning. Good morning team. And Vince very helpful. Thank you for your commentary on the Pennsylvania billing issue, we were getting some questions on that, so I appreciate the color. I just had one quick follow-up, rest, everything is pretty clear. The — you’ve asked for AFUDC in Kentucky, is that part of this CPCN filing, or is that a separate decision? What should we be looking for there and how to track that specifically?