Adam Woodard: Yes. So we actively are hedging gas costs as well for the benefit of the customer. But the interest rate program is ongoing. So we’re in more of a dynamic program. So I’m not — wouldn’t speak to any specific aging of hedges. But we feel — obviously, we feel pretty good about our sensitivity to rates in the front year, but we do see the deferred balances declining throughout the year, as Steve mentioned, and really getting to kind of a more normalized deferral state by the end of the winter.
Gabe Moreen: Okay. And then maybe if I can ask about the storage project and some of the CapEx slippage. Is there — can you just talk a little bit about more of that about — talk a little bit about that more. Is it just a question of timing? Is there any cost inflation? Any specifics on what the slippage is around there?
Steven Lindsey: Steve Lindsey here, and thanks for that question. And it is timing. Some of it is raw materials, some of it is around equipment. We continue to project that for the full life of the project that we will be on time and on budget. Obviously, there are some challenges as you get into winter in terms of what you can do, but we’re actually going to be doing some things inside some facilities to continue to work forward on that. So we were very pleased with the initial open season that we had. We got a lot of strong interest there. We anticipate the same with the next open season. And so from the overall project perspective, I would just anchor back to you we’re on time and on budget.
Steven Rasche: And Gabe, if you look at our longer-term forecast, you can see that $20 million or $30 million move actually happened in ’23, ’24 and ’25. That’s more cash spend on the project. As you know, construction season is now largely over in Wyoming with the beginning of the snow, but that we benefited from the weather in October, and so we were going head long. So some of that activity, which we considered in the construction season that was the summer actually leaked over into the next fiscal year. But you shouldn’t read anything more into that than just fine-tuning how the cash is actually going up.
Gabe Moreen: If I could just squeeze in one last one on pension expense and the assumptions. I think last year it was a benefit. What you’re assuming for next year and to the degree, it’s a swing factor in our ’24 cabins.
Adam Woodard: I would not — Gabe, I would not characterize it as a swing factor in our ‘24 guidance. I’d have to go — the K will be out here in a couple of hours, but I’d have to go back to take a look at the exact assumptions. There’s several that go into that.
Steven Rasche: Yes. And Gabe, if you’re focusing on the miscellaneous income line, we do have some non-qualified benefits where the funds that we’ve used to fund those programs to are subject to market returns. And we’ve seen that swing negative in ‘22. It was positive in ‘23. Our expectation is always kind of benign in terms of just reasonable, but not excessive market returns. But we’ll continue to report on that every quarter. So you see a little volatility there. It was masked this year because of the $14 million of interest rate credits that we got as part of our recovery in Missouri for the short-term interest cost.
Gabe Moreen: Understood. Helpful. Thanks, guys.
Operator: Our next question comes from Julian Dumoulin-Smith with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Analyst: Hi, good morning, team. This is [Tanner] (ph) on for Julian How are you doing?
Steven Lindsey: Hey, Tanner.
Unidentified Analyst: Hi, can you further disaggregate your midstream guide for fiscal year ‘24 between the individual pieces there and kind of share your expectations for how we should look at run rate growth across each.
Steven Rasche: Yes. We set up the midstream segment this year so we could actually isolate what’s going to be a growing piece of our business, just recognizing the investments that we’ve already made. So when you think about what’s happening as you go from ’23 to ’24 at the midpoint of the range, it really is the recognition of Salt Plains and no, we’re not going to get into the individual property details. It was up $47 million acquisition, but we had every expectation of above utility rate returns and we’re — as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, seeing those. We also expect that the MoGas acquisition will close early in the next calendar year, our fiscal Q2, and we’re seeing that earnings pull through as we go through the balance of the year.
And then lastly, we do see a little bit of pull through at the margin line on Spire Storage West, and we talked about this when we launched the project, that we are seeing some of that, which is offsetting the financing cost. It doesn’t get to a full run rate until ’25, but it does add a bit to the earnings really offsetting the earnings drag that we willingly took on — in the last fiscal year as we were investing to expand that facility. That would be — as you think about the storage side of the business and a little bit of pipeline from MoGas perspective. Spire STL pipeline just continues to operate. And we would expect that with a pretty narrow range as with most pipelines unless there’s some expansion project and are speaking to anything at this point, it’s just going to continue to drive the kind of earnings that we’ve seen in prior years.
