Q1 2023 Avista Corp Earnings Call
Speaker 2: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Avista Corporation first quarter 2023 Good evening everyone this is webinarme six
Speaker 2: At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.
Speaker 2: After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session.
Speaker 2: on your telephone.
Speaker 2: You'll then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised.
Speaker 2: To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again.
Speaker 2: I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Stacey Wentz, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead. Good morning. Welcome to Avista's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Our earnings and our first quarter 10Q were released premarket this morning.
Speaker 2: Both are available on our website. Joining me this morning are our VistaCorp President and CEO , Dennis Vermillion, Executive Vice President, Treasurer, and CFO , Mark Thies, Senior Vice President, External Affairs, and Chief Customer Officer, Kevin Christie, and Vice President, Controller, and Principal Accounting Officer,
Speaker 2: discussed in today's call, please refer to our 10-K for 2022 and 10-Q for the first quarter of 2023, which are available on our website.
Speaker 2: I'll begin by recapping the financial results presented in today's press release.
Speaker 2: Our consolidated earnings for the first quarter of 2023 were 73 cents per diluted share, compared to 99 cents for the first quarter of 2022. Now I'll turn the call over to Dennis. Well, thanks, Stacey, and good morning, everyone. Before we discuss our earnings, I'd like to say congratulations to Mark.
Speaker 3: May 11th following our annual meeting.
Speaker 3: Even though he'll stay on as executive vice president until his official retirement on October 1st today will be his last earnings call
Speaker 3: I'd like to thank you, Mark.
Speaker 3: for your 15 years of dedicated service to Avista. We joined the company in 2008 during...
Speaker 3: I'm looking at some war wounds here, but, uh, you know, during the great recession, uh, you helped us successfully navigate through that global financial crisis and of course the recent, uh, pandemic during your 10, during your tenure, you know, those are some pretty significant achievements to book in your time at a Vista and I could go on and on all the
Speaker 3: great things in the middle of that, but
Speaker 3: We will save that for another time in the interest of time
Speaker 3: in the interest of time.
Speaker 3: Throughout the years you've earned the respect of many in our industry and I've watched you Mark as you've applied all your experience in finance
Speaker 3: and in the utility sector to build and lead a strong finance team at Avista that will carry on your legacy long after you've retired.
Speaker 3: Mark is always the voice in the room that's advocating for our investors.
Speaker 3: And Mark, you've built trusted relationships with bankers and investors to ensure that Amista has access to the capital necessary to fund our business and ongoing investments.
Speaker 3: the investments that we need to make to maintain and upgrade our utility as we serve our customers.
Speaker 3: You've also been instrumental in overseeing the financial success of our other businesses, including the sale of our subsidiary, ACOVA, and there's so much more in that space as well.
Speaker 3: Your actions have helped build Avista's financial strength and flexibility to position us.
Speaker 3: for the future as we transition this role.
Speaker 3: So Mark, we are grateful for everything that you've done and we wish you all the best in your retirement as you begin your next chapter.
Speaker 4: in your life.
Speaker 3: So with Mark retiring, you saw that we've named Kevin Christie to become our new CFO , Treasurer and Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs.
Speaker 3: He'll assume these responsibilities next Thursday at the close of our annual meeting on May 11th. Well congratulations Kevin.
Speaker 3: Many of you already know Kevin from his participation on these earnings calls. He's been on them for a while. Ever since he stepped into his role as Senior Vice President of External Affairs, which included the regulatory affairs
Speaker 3: portion and then also as chief customer officer for the company.
Speaker 3: Kevin has extensive experience in finance and the energy industry. After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in accounting from Washington State University, go Cougs. He joined GTN or gas transmission Northwest as an accountant and then progressed into leadership.
Speaker 3: Since joining Avista in 2005, Kevin has held numerous leadership roles, including Senior Director of Finance in 2012, Vice President 2015, and Senior Vice President in 2019.
Speaker 3: business. Kevin, in one of your more recent accomplishments while leading our regulatory affairs team, you worked effectively with regulators to secure the approval and implementation of our multi-year rate cases to help provide long-term financial stability and success for the company.
Speaker 3: your experience and credibility in the regulatory arena along with the trusted relationships that you've built with our commissions.
Speaker 3: Over the last several years, these are obviously critical assets as you step into the CFO role.
Speaker 3: As part of this leadership transition, we made some strategic organizational changes that leverage a relationship and trust Kevin and his regulatory team have established with our commissions and other key external stakeholders. At the same time, it also formalizes the alignment between our internal functions of regulatory affairs, finance, and accounting.
Speaker 3: And we're grateful for how effectively these teams already work together because they play a vital role in a vista's ongoing success as we strive to achieve our allowed return.
Speaker 3: In the coming days and weeks, we'll be reaching out to all of you to introduce you to Kevin. And if you plan to attend the AGA financial conference in a couple weeks, the American Gas Association Financial Forum, you'll get an opportunity to spend some time with Kevin and all of us, so we look forward to that. So congratulations, Kevin. You have our full support.
Speaker 3: Now moving on, in April we announced the results of our 2022 All-Source RFP, a 30-year agreement for 100 megawatts of wind. When combined with our recent agreements with the Chelan County PUD that we assigned at the end of 2021 and our 2022 agreement with Columbia Basin Hydro.
Speaker 3: generating facility.
Speaker 3: The RNG projects contribute to our aspirational clean energy goals within our natural gas operations. The extension of the Lancaster deal meets an important need for our cost-effective reliable generation.
Speaker 3: and ensuring adequate resource supply during a dynamic energy market, which we have been seeing lately. Each of these agreements contribute to achieving our clean energy goals and implementing our clean energy implementation plan. So with rate cases, our strategy to return to...
Speaker 3: processes for both of those proceedings.
Speaker 3: With respect to earnings, we are off to a solid start in 2023. Our results are slightly ahead of our expectations for the first quarter. As we work to manage our costs, we always do a good job of that and we continue to, especially in the face of continuing inflation and increasing interest rates.
Speaker 3: We expected commodity prices to remain elevated throughout the winter and they did. So as a result, our net power supply costs were high in the first quarter of the year. We expect lower net power supply costs for the rest of the year resulting in a net benefit under the ERM for 2023.
Speaker 3: So we are confirming our annual consolidated guidance for 2023 with a range of $2.27 to $2.47 share.
Speaker 3: However, on a quarterly basis, our earnings will differ from recent years and Mark is going to get into that and share a little bit more about what that will look like for us. So with that, I'd like to now turn this presentation over to Mark one last time. Mark, take it away. Thanks, Dennis. Thanks for your nice words. And thank you, Mark.
Speaker 5: Good morning, everyone. And even though this is my last call I still have to start with a Blackhawks comment and really May 11th is when I transition out of my role and Kevin takes over but May 8th is really the key date which is the Drawing for the lottery in the NHL to see if the Blackhawks can pick up Connor Bedard The hockey playoffs have been interesting as the both the president's
Speaker 5: for me at Avista and then also prior to that at Black Hills, getting to know many of you and I've really appreciated all that. I do look forward to being away from all of that, I will say, and spend time with my family. We have a new granddaughter and I'll be very excited to do that. I get, you know, I have to at least thank my wife Betsy for putting up with me all these years. It's been terrific throughout my career.
Speaker 5: I want to make sure that I thank and recognize all the people at Avista that I've had the privilege to work with. It's been an honor. Dennis mentioned the strength of our accounting team, our finance team, our tax team and strategy, and nothing could be more true. They're terrific teams and it's been my pleasure and honor to work with them for the last 15 years.
Speaker 5: So with that I'll get into the the first quarter and you know probably to start it I know we we missed expectations from what people had and we probably this is I'll take responsibility for that I should have thought about that when we came out with guidance we knew that the the way it would play out because of the allocation how taxes are spread over the year and how our tax credits impact our earnings that are quarterly.
Speaker 5: Um, differences were going to be there. We just had never given quarterly guidance before. So, uh, that I will take account of it before we beat our expectations in this quarter and, you know, when we model it out, we decided that we're going to come out and put quarterly expectations out there. So in our guidance.
Speaker 5: we have those quarterly expectations. I'll get to that a little bit later, but I really wanted to start with that.
Speaker 5: So, also in the first quarter, our earnings were down. We had increases in our margin due to general rate cases that we've completed last year and this year, and then also customer growth, and they were offset, as Dennis mentioned, by higher net power supply costs, which we expected coming into the first quarter.
Speaker 5: The energy recovery mechanism in Washington was a pre-tax expense of 7.6 million in the first quarter compared to 1.9 million. So that's, you know, almost 10 cents difference from from the prior year. But for the year, as we look forward, we expect the ERM to come back and be a positive.
Speaker 5: within the dead ban and about three cents. So while it was a negative in the first quarter, we do expect that to come back later in the year.
Speaker 5: We did file, we've talked about this before, we did file our rate cases in...
Speaker 5: in 21 for Idaho and Washington. So that had an impact of our tax customer credits, and that is rolling off at the end of this year in the third quarter. And that's what really causes the difference in our utility margin and our effective tax rate. So when all that moves, we end up spreading more of our income from the first quarter into primarily the fourth quarter.
Speaker 5: So when we look at our guidance, and I'll really just get back to the guidance, if you're excluding the ERM...
Speaker 5: The first quarter was 35% of our earnings, our annual expected earnings at Avista Utilities. Excluding AEL&P and others, they're small and pretty ratable over the year.
Speaker 5: But then we wanted to come out and say, we expect the distribution of the remaining quarters to be 5% of our earnings in the second quarter, 10% of our earnings in the third quarter, and 50% in the fourth quarter.
Speaker 5: And that's all primarily due to the allocation of income taxes. So like I said, we did make our first quarter, and we're happy with that. And I know we've never given quarterly guidance before. I think it's important to do that. So that's how those amounts will be spread.
Speaker 5: Moving on to kind of the capital committed, as Dennis mentioned, we continue to fund the necessary capital in our utility infrastructure and we expect Vista Utilities to spend $475 million this year. AEL and PETA spend about $19 million and other businesses about $15 million.
Speaker 5: From a liquidity perspective, we did close a bond offering in the first quarter, and we have $264 million of available liquidity under our committed lines of credit, and $26 million under a separate letter of credit facility.
Speaker 5: In the second quarter, we do expect to increase the capacity on our line for our credit facility from $400 to $500 million.
With respect to equity, we do expect to issue $120 million, of which we issued $30 million in the first quarter.
So now moving on to the earnings guidance.
As previous, as Dennis previously mentioned, we are confirming our guidance, 2023 guides of 227 to 247, a share on a consolidated basis.
And for Avista Utilities, this is where we have a little bit of more detail for you. We expect Avista Utilities to contribute $2.15 to $2.31 per share, which is consistent. The midpoint of that range does not include the ERM, which, while negative in the first quarter, we do expect to be 3 cents positive for the year. In our first quarter earnings, I said this earlier, but I want to repeat it because I think it is important.
and 50% in the fourth quarter. And again, all of those exclude the impacts of the ERM in each quarter. And as historically we've done, we will continue to report on where we are in the ERM each quarter and where we expect to be for the year. Our guidance also assumes timely and appropriate rate relief in all of our jurisdictions within the utility. And then we also expect AELMP consistently to
over to Stacey for questions one last time.
Thank you. We welcome your questions.
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you have any questions, please post them in the comments below.
To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again.
Our first question comes from Brian Russo with Cidoti.
Good morning.
Good morning, Brian .
Hey, just thank you for the quarterly dispersion of earnings, very helpful. When we think about the ERM and the reversal of the expense as we move through the year, when might the bulk of that occur? Is it going to be, it seems as if, you know, hydro.
where snowpack is high and so assuming normal runoff, would you get the biggest benefit or reversal of that expense in the second quarter?
No, I mean, it's, we'll speak to those each quarter, we'll come out with it. What we do expect is some of that reversal in the second and third quarters. Um, but we don't, we haven't given the specific guidance for the year. And we will each quarter, as we always have, uh, Brian come out and say, here's what the impact was.
And then here's where we expect it to be for the full year. We'll continue to do that, but we're not giving guidance on this one as to specifically when and how much it comes off. But we do expect it to come off for the most part in the second and third quarters, and I'm not going to go further than that.
What are the water supply levels like in your major...
areas. Well for us you know we're you know around normal on hydro and we we you know expect right now it all comes down to how does it melt off.
You know, and we're just starting, I mean really, it's been a long cold spring. Those are good. Long cold springs are good. It keeps the snow up in the mountains. We're just starting to hit some heat now, so we're getting some of that hydro. You know, we don't, we expect normal hydro at this point, assuming that the, you know, we don't have anything significant with it.
two extended period of high heat. But that's always the case and it looks like we'll be there right now.
OK, got it. And then also just in your effort to improve your earned ROE or returns in Washington, what is the rate case strategy? I know we had some time before you'd actually file, but are you looking to file for The.
for new rates to be effective for the full year of 2025? Hey Brian , this is Kevin Christie. Thanks for the question. Yeah, we'll put together our rate case strategy over the next few months.
We're already entering into the test period and we'll leverage the last case that we put forth to achieve the two-year rate plan
The idea I think is to get it filed as soon as we feel we need rate relief, which will be pretty darn close to that first date after the two year period of the last case.
Okay, got it. And then just in Idaho, can you remind me what was the requested ROE that you filed for, and what was the most recently approved ROE in Idaho? Yeah, Brian , we filed for a 10-2-1.
Our next question comes from Sophie Karp with KeyBank.
Hello?
Good morning Sophie. Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question and Mark you will be missed. But I'm sure you have to do that to go to all the conferences with us. You may not get as many Black Hawks comments. So a couple of questions for me. First, are you guys...
at it this year because of the allocation of, and this all comes back to those tax customer credits and then how taxes are allocated across the year through the accounting principles and I'd love to have Ryan Krassel talk to that but we don't have time for this call to go through all those accounting items but...
I take responsibility for that. We probably should have done it. I'm not a fan of quarterly guidance because you know, things can move around a little bit, but it was so significant this year, we needed to do it to the extent next year turns around and it's there, we'll have to consider that. But that's a future consideration that I'll defer to Kevin and Dennis and the team to think about that. I don't.
As a matter of course, I'm not a fan of it consistently because there's just enough variability that I don't want to have to try to explain quarterly differences when we're still on track for a year would be my sense.
On the ERM recovery, I have it in my notes that you were supposed to file for it in April . Can you just remind us if you haven't filed for that and what the cadence is from here on the deferred costs?
power cost recovery filings and the actual recovery, I guess. Yeah. Hi, Sophie. It's Kevin. Thanks for the question. We did make the filing as scheduled, and we're in the middle of the process moving towards recovery of the costs related to the what we call the bucket, the 30 plus million dollars that we...
had. And so that's in place and we would expect the Commission to move forward and improve it.
Okay, is there a process where you could propose some sort of a more automatic recovery of that or is that just going to be part of the right case?
No, it's outside of rate cases, its own filing. We've made that filing and we would expect the Commission to approve it outside of a rate case and we would see that filing in the near future for new rates in effect this summer. Okay, got it. Thank you, so for me.
case, its own filing. We've made that filing, and we would expect the commission to approve it outside of a rate case. And we would see that filing in the near future for new rates in effect this summer. OK, got it. Thank you, Sophie. Thank you, Sophie.
As a reminder, that is star 11 to ask a question.
Our next question comes from Alex Mortimer with Mizzou.
This question comes from Alex Mortimer with Mizzou. Hi, good morning.
Morning Alex.
So just on the side of Avista utilities, the 23 guidance of 215 to 231 would represent a pretty significant increase from the 161 from 2022. Can you provide any color on where you would expect to be within that range if there's a bias towards – Yes, that would be it.
the high, middle, and low, and then sort of what are the drivers that are going to allow you to make up that pretty significant gap? Well, I mean, part of it is 2022 was a significantly down year. We lowered expectations several times over the course of the prior years and didn't have time to really get a rate case in our jurisdictions in Washington.
and then an Oregon rate case. So those, all three of those helped and we had higher costs in 22 that we weren't able to, you know, work with those rate cases and some cost management as Dennis mentioned, we were able to, you know, come out with the stronger guidance, the stronger guidance in 23 versus 22 is also.
more consistent with historically where we want it to be. We're not quite all the way back yet, because inflation kind of kicked in right after we settled Washington. But, you know, we'll, as Kevin mentioned in the strategy, we'll file again in Washington, and we've already filed in Idaho and Oregon. So as we go forward, we believe with timely rate relief, which is important, we need to work with our commissions.
that we will be able to get back to earning our allowed return. That's just going to take some time. That's really the difference. The ERM, we don't, I don't really, you know, the ERM is it's, it's negative right now in the first quarter, eight cents, but we do expect it to be for the year back to three cents.
So if you're looking at, and we generally guide, we give you a range, which implies we're guiding to the midpoint.
And so with that, if the ERM ends up in the positive, we would expect to be slightly positive in the upper half of our range as what our guidance is for Avista utilities at this time.
Okay, understood. And then I know you mentioned on the fourth quarter call that you expect about 80 basis points of regulatory lag. As you work through rate cases this year, sort of when do you see that beginning to ease? Is most of that related to Washington? Or as you work through cases this year, do you see that easing in, in 23, 24, 25? You'll start to see a little bit of it because again...
If you look and this is just very high level, you know, 60% Washington, 30% Idaho, 10% Oregon, just as a very high level. There's a couple of percents off on there, but that's close enough. Washington, we're not going to, you know, we filed that, we got a very good outcome for that, but then inflation hit right after that. So it's going to take until that next case that we file that really affects the end of 24 and into 25.
is where we'll have the opportunity to get back in Washington. We'll continue to manage our costs, we'll continue to run our business efficiently, but from a regulatory perspective that's where we are. Idaho and Oregon we just filed. We just filed in February in Idaho and in March in Oregon. Idaho rates we expect to go into service September 1st assuming a normal process with the Commission's.
And then Oregon would not go into effect until January 1st of 24. So 23 will get a little bit and it's included in our expectations from Idaho. And then 24 will have Idaho and Oregon on a more current rate schedule. And then Washington will be what we need to pick up and that'll occur in 25. MODERATOR Okay, so we have about 12 minutes.
Okay, understood. And finally, I know obviously not a large driver of 23 guidance at this point, but can you touch a little bit on the biotech investment from the end of last year and what led you to report a gain in fair value and then kind of some of the assumptions that led to that fair value calculation, given that it was such a large driver of.
of last year's results and then not a significant driver this year? Well again it was you know we value that quarterly it didn't change significantly in the first quarter but as we talked about last year
that investment started as a biofuel investment and turned into the biotech because of what they developed and they are in different clinical trials and have created value, but the results of those clinical trials are gonna be 12, 18 months, but we don't really expect additional, you know.
Significant additional news on that. So really into 24 kind of mid 24 and later is when we would expect more news. So some of that is just news driven. They got the first round and there was some value created and we had to report that or we, you know, we did report that last year, the end of the year. And then now we just continue to manage that as we go forward, we will report that every quarter to the extent there's anything that, that goes on with that.
Well, thank you and you know as we sign off today I hope you all join me in wishing mark a happy retirement mark I know you're counting down the days and looking forward to have more time with your family and
with a granddaughter and doing all the fun things that you like to do most. I know there's probably some fishing in your future. Soon, Black OX, you know, you win and lose with him, I know. And that will turn around at some point. It always does.
And then of course some fine wine.
So cheers to you on a wonderful retirement. Thank you and to everyone on the phone today. Thank you for joining us And we appreciate your interest in our company, and I wish you all a terrific day and a great week. Thank you