Q3 2024 American Electric Power Co Inc Earnings Call
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Danica: Thank you for standing by, my name is Danica and I will be your conference operator today.
Danica: At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the American Electric Power, third quarter, 2020-4 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.
After the speakers are marks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, follow by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you.
Speaker Change: I would now like to turn the call over to Darcy Reese, Vice President of Ambassador Relations. Please go ahead.
Darcy Reese: Thank you, Danica. Good morning everyone and welcome to the third quarter 2024 earnings call for American electric power. We appreciate you taking time today to join us. Our earnings release, presentation slides and related financial information are available on our website at AEP.com.
Today we will be making forward looking statements during the call. There are many factors that may cause future results to differ materially from these statements. Please refer to our SEC filings for a discussion of these factors.
Joining me this morning for opening remarks, our bill firmman, our president and chief executive officer, and Chuck Zabula, our executive vice president and chief financial officer. We will take your questions following their remarks. I will now turn the call over to Bill.
Bill Firmman: and Good Morning, everyone. I'm happy to be with you for my first earnings call as AEP's President and CEO. In my remarks this morning, I'll discuss our results and outlook before turning to the key pillars of our strategy to enhance value for customers and investors.
Bill Firmman: I'll then cover regulatory updates beforehand in it over to Chuck to walk through our financials and more detail. You can find a summary of ¼ 2000 and 24 business highlights on slide 4 of our presentation.
Bill Firmman: We have a lot of exciting ground to cover today, but first, I'd like to briefly introduce myself to those I haven't had the opportunity to meet yet.
Bill Firmman: I've spent my entire career in the utility and energy business. Most recently, I was at Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which has an asset base 1.4 times the size of AEP, operates in the 11 states, but also in Canada and Great Britain, and has a diverse group of regulatory interests.
Bill Firmman: While I'm familiar with most of the industry players, bankers, regulators, companies, and debt investors, I am new to many of the AEP shareholders, and I look forward to delivering for you. With that, I'm honored to join a leader like AEP at a pivotal time for both the organization and our industry.
Darcy Reese: Since assuming the role of CEO, I've met our many stakeholders in the AEP team across our 11-state footprint, including four governors and over 30 regulators and legislators.
Darcy Reese: We've had robust discussions about critical initiatives, and I've appreciated the opportunity to engage, listen, and learn over the past three months to help shape our vision for the future.
Darcy Reese: AEP has built a strong foundation for growth, including a robust transmission system, which represents 55% of AEP's total earnings stream.
Darcy Reese: However, we can improve reliability, streamline costs, use technology better, and put power in the hands of local leaders to build financially strong utilities in our communities.
Darcy Reese: I look forward to the future and working with the many talented people across the company to drive operational excellence, best-in-class service, earnings growth, and overall success.
Darcy Reese: I'll begin with our financial results.
Darcy Reese: Today we report third quarter 2024 operating earnings of $1.85 per share or $985 million.
Darcy Reese: Building on our strong momentum this year, we are confident in narrowing our 2024 full-year operating earnings guidance range to $5.58 to $5.68.
Darcy Reese: maintaining the original $5.63 midpoint.
Darcy Reese: As referenced on slide 5, today we also formally introduce our 2025 operating earnings guidance range of $5.75 to $5.95.
Speaker Change: We have thought a lot about this range, especially since I've been in the CE role for just three
Speaker Change: The foundation of our 2025 earnings guidance range is based on robust growth in our regulated utilities.
Darcy Reese: This range also reflects lower contributions from our generation and marketing segment due to reduced scope of activities going forward and lower retail and wholesale margins likely to be realized.
Darcy Reese: While AEP's earnings range grows 4% in 2025, you have my commitment that we will do significantly better in 2026 and beyond after we go through an optimization exercise.
Darcy Reese: and we retool our personnel and processes over the coming months.
Darcy Reese: As the new CEO at AEP, I need to establish a record of delivering on promises to you while demonstrating goodwill to our regulators and customers as we focus on service, reliability, and enhanced vegetation management to reduce customer outages.
Darcy Reese: My objective is to improve our customer experience and stakeholder relationships, which over time will result in more positive regulatory outcomes and enable a stable platform for growth.
Darcy Reese: AEP's future growth opportunities are very significant as we embrace the large load opportunity in our service territory, as well as substantial upgrades to the distribution system.
Darcy Reese: We are focusing on economic development efforts in our states to help address affordability and investing in our energy delivery infrastructure to improve reliability, in addition to new generation to support resource adequacy.
Darcy Reese: Because of this tremendous growth, today we are unveiling AEP's new long-term earnings growth rate of 6% to 8% off a 2025 base year.
Darcy Reese: and a $5.85 midpoint.
Darcy Reese: all reinforced by a balanced and flexible $54 billion capital plan from 2025 through 2029.
Darcy Reese: When I look at this newly raised $54 billion capital plan, which is up more than 25% over the prior $43 billion plan, there is even more upside to go.
Darcy Reese: In fact, we see significant opportunity to capture $10 billion in incremental transmission and generation infrastructure investment to satisfy all of the load growth.
Darcy Reese: We will provide more details at EEI regarding these investment opportunities that drive our updated 8% rate-based CAGR.
Darcy Reese: Note that during the 2025 through 2029 time frame, we also expect our customer rates will go up by less than 3% annually on a system-wide basis due to bill headroom created from economic development activities and new generation.
Darcy Reese: Understand that this customer rate impact could change due to effects of potential future generation needs. Please refer to slides 5 and 6.
Darcy Reese: As you know, maintaining a strong balance sheet is critical to funding the increased capital spend associated with these growth rates.
Darcy Reese: and we remain committed to responsibly financing our capital needs.
Darcy Reese: In addition to equity and equity-like tools, we will explore asset monetization opportunities to the extent they can be executed upon while achieving the right price.
Darcy Reese: If we do explore asset cells, we won't tell you about them until they happen.
Darcy Reese: Our newly rolled forward five-year capital and financing plans can be seen in the appendix on slides 13 and 14.
Darcy Reese: Turning to slide 7, a robust financial outlook will be underpinned by a culture of accountability and execution.
Darcy Reese: This business is transforming rapidly, and we recognize the need for change to better serve our customers.
Darcy Reese: Since joining the company in August, we have made several changes to align and simplify the organizational structure to ensure we have the right talent in the right roles to execute our strategy and achieve our objectives.
Darcy Reese: For example, our Operating Company Presidents and Chief Nuclear Officer now report directly to me, while Power Plant and Site Managers will report directly to our Operating Company Presidents.
Darcy Reese: We have streamlined the leadership structure by eliminating management layers and reorganizing the service corporation.
Darcy Reese: These actions move decision-making closer to customers, all to ensure our money-making businesses have the authority they need to accelerate improved performance.
Darcy Reese: I am confident our new structure will help us drive value as we advance three core areas of strategic focus.
Darcy Reese: growth and financial strength, customer service, and regulatory integrity. I'd like to spend a few minutes walking through each of these areas.
Darcy Reese: First, AEP's future growth potential and financial strength is significant with customer commitments for 20 gigawatts of load additions through 2029 driven by data center demand and we have updated our load growth forecast accordingly through 2027.
Darcy Reese: In fact, large load impacts are already being felt in our service territories, predominantly in Ohio, Texas, and Indiana.
Darcy Reese: This is demonstrated in our third quarter results, in which we realized commercial load growth of 7.9% compared to the third quarter of last year, and 10.1% growth year-to-date in 2024 compared to 2023.
Darcy Reese: We are committed to supporting this new load growth in our service territory, but we also remain focused on ensuring affordability by fairly allocating costs resulting from associated incremental investments.
Darcy Reese: This is why we proactively filed the data center tariff in Ohio, the large load tariff modifications in Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, and a complaint with FERC related to a co-located load arrangement.
Darcy Reese: Load growth from data center demand has the potential to benefit all stakeholders, including investors, customers, and local communities, but only with fair and proper cost allocation.
Darcy Reese: While some may think that our FERC complaint is anti-datacenter, it is actually the opposite.
Darcy Reese: We are trying to welcome all data centers to our service territory, but making sure that those data centers help all customers.
Darcy Reese: The second area of focus for us is best-in-class customer service. We will leverage technology to enhance service and better meet our customers' energy needs through reliability and outage reductions, while transforming our processes with a focus on efficiency and accountability.
Darcy Reese: Business transformation and technology innovation will also drive O&M discipline to help keep customer rates affordable amid rising costs and a growing rate base.
Darcy Reese: Thank you for watching. Bye. Bye.
Speaker Change: The last pillar of our strategy is regulatory integrity.
Speaker Change: We will listen to and respect the preferences of our regulators, policymakers, and communities to achieve positive regulatory outcomes.
Speaker Change: If our states want renewables, we will work with them to deliver.
Speaker Change: If they want continued operation of coal or investment in gas or nuclear, we will work with them to deliver.
Speaker Change: As long as our states pay for what they want, and we are treated fairly, we will deliver. At the same time, we will work closely with key stakeholders to advance affordability, system reliability, resiliency, and security.
Darcy Reese: To that end, we have aligned our organizational structure to strengthen our focus at the state level.
Speaker Change: and we continue to prioritize improving our earned ROEs as we listen to each of our states and their preferences.
Darcy Reese: While it will take time for this work to bear fruit, this is headed in the right direction.
Darcy Reese: Continuing on, our operating companies achieved a number of other positive regulatory developments in the third quarter as well.
Speaker Change: Starting with AEP Texas, last month the Commission issued an order approving a unanimous and unopposed comprehensive settlement, which included a 9.76% ROE.
Darcy Reese: The order was effective October 1st. In Oklahoma, major parties reached a settlement agreement with a 9.5% ROE in early October, and the ALJ recommended approval of the settlement without any modifications.
Darcy Reese: While PSO awaits a commission decision, interim rates were implemented on October 23rd.
Speaker Change: In Virginia, a hearing was held in September related to the biennial filing focusing primarily on incremental investment.
Speaker Change: A commission order is required in November, with rates going into effect in early January 2025.
Speaker Change: Last week, APCO refiled its base case in West Virginia, requesting a 10.8% ROE while also offering securitization as a rate mitigation concept to the proposed $250.5 million base rate increase.
Speaker Change: This securitization option includes $2.4 billion of undepreciated plant balances.
Speaker Change: CCR and ELG investments, fuel deferrals, and storm expenses.
Speaker Change: While reduced rate base of 1.9 billion would result from securitizing the plant balances and environmental investments.
Speaker Change: Any earnings impact would be dependent on how quickly we redeploy capital throughout the business.
Speaker Change: That said, we should have an early indication from the Commission if securitization is preferred, and we would plan capital redeployment accordingly. But let me be very clear. Securitization is not included in our new five-year capital and financing plans introduced today and is not needed to hit our credit metrics.
Speaker Change: Rather, securitization is driven by the desire to consider alternative rate case options to mitigate customer bill impacts.
Speaker Change: I was highly disappointed by the initial rate case filing that was rejected by West Virginia.
Speaker Change: Be assured that going forward, additional internal quality control checks and leadership changes have been implemented to ensure that each of our operating company's filings meet all requirements.
Speaker Change: A rate case rejection should not happen like it did in West Virginia, and I won't accept this kind of performance from our team.
Speaker Change: Moving on to SWEPCO, updated formula rates went into effect in early August for Louisiana and mid-October for Arkansas.
Speaker Change: And finally, INM issued new requests for proposals, or RFPs, for both owned resources and PPAs seeking to secure up to 4,000 megawatts of diverse generation resources.
Speaker Change: for target completion by year-end 2028 or 2029 to support new load growth in the region. As such, we expect to make the applicable regulatory filings in 2025.
Speaker Change: So, in short, while the team is making progress towards achieving positive regulatory outcomes, we do have more work to do. We look forward to continuing to engage constructively with our regulators and strengthen new relationships.
Speaker Change: including by investing more resources at the local level and focusing on delivering what our individual states want as outcomes.
Speaker Change: The bottom line here is we have made progress transforming the business over the past three months, but we have significantly more wood to chop.
Speaker Change: Before wrapping up, I'd like to briefly update you on the legal item.
Speaker Change: AEP and the Security Exchange Commission are engaged in discussions about possible resolution of the SEC's ongoing investigation and we recorded a loss contingency of 19 million dollars in the third quarter.
Speaker Change: Given this is an active matter, we don't plan on making any further comments on this matter.
Speaker Change: I'd now like to close by reiterating my strong confidence in the tremendous potential for AEP's growth and success well into the future.
Speaker Change: With the support, dedication, and hard work of the entire AEP team, we are well positioned to continue providing safe, reliable, and affordable service while advancing our long-term strategy to deliver value to our stakeholders.
Speaker Change: Related to our new vision statement of improving customers' lives with reliable, affordable power, we will accomplish this together through commitment and execution.
Speaker Change: I look forward to seeing many of you in a few days at EEI, where we'll be happy to discuss our newly released financial plans in even more detail. I'll now give the floor to Chuck.
Chuck Zabula: Thank you Bill. It's been a pleasure working with you over the past three months.
Chuck Zabula: Your leadership and passion for operational excellence and customer service is Infectious and everyone at AAP looks forward to working with you to capture the incredible opportunities That we have before us
Chuck Zabula: Good morning, everyone. Let me move on with the discussion of the third quarter results.
Speaker Change: Slide 8 shows the comparison of GAAP to operating earnings for the quarter.
Speaker Change: Gap earnings for the third quarter were $1.80 per share compared to $1.83 per share in 2023. Year-to-date gap earnings are $4.35 per share versus $3.62 per share last year.
Speaker Change: There's a detailed reconciliation of gap-to-operating earnings for the third quarter and near-to-date results on pages 20 and 21, respectively.
Speaker Change: Let's walk through our operating earnings performance by segment for the third quarter on slide nine.
Chuck Zabula: Operating earnings for the third quarter totaled $185 per share or $985 million compared to $177 per share or $924 million in 2023.
Chuck Zabula: Operating earnings for vertically integrated utilities were one dollar eight cents per share up eight cents.
Chuck Zabula: Positive drivers included rate changes across multiple jurisdictions, driven by outcomes in Virginia and Indiana, higher normalized retail sales, and lower income taxes.
Chuck Zabula: These items were partially offset by higher depreciation and O&M.
Chuck Zabula: The transmission and distribution utility segment earned $0.46 per share, up $0.07 compared to last year.
Chuck Zabula: Positive drivers in this segment include rate changes driven by the distribution cost recovery factor in Texas and the distribution investment rider in Ohio along with higher transmission revenue.
Chuck Zabula: These items were partially offset by lower normalized retail sales and higher depreciation.
Chuck Zabula: The AEP Transmission Holdco segment contributed 40 cents per share, up a penny compared to last year, primarily driven by investment growth.
Chuck Zabula: Generation and marketing produced 19 cents per share, up a penny from last year. Favorable drivers included higher retail margins and lower interest expense.
Chuck Zabula: These items were partially offset by lower wholesale margins and higher income taxes compared to last year.
Chuck Zabula: Finally, corporate and other was down nine cents compared to the prior year, primarily driven by higher interest expense, timing of other operating revenue, higher income taxes, and O&M.
Speaker Change: The year-to-date operating earnings segment detail is shown on page 16 of the presentation.
Speaker Change: Note that year-to-date operating earnings are up 36 cents per share this year, increasing from 402 per share in 2023 to 438 per share this year, or about a 9% increase year-to-date.
Speaker Change: The data on slide 10 shows continued strong growth in load.
Speaker Change: Weather normalized retail sales grew 2.1% in the third quarter. This marks the 14th consecutive quarter of low growth across our system.
Speaker Change: and year-to-date overall weatherized normalized retail sales grew 2.9 percent.
Speaker Change: Declining residential sales have been offset by double-digit growth of 10.1% in commercial sales, thanks to the game-changing developments around data centers and AI.
Speaker Change: Also, our industrial sales have consistently grown despite challenging economic conditions for many of our customers.
Speaker Change: Our companies have attracted a steady pipeline of economic development projects over the past several years, and those projects are beginning to come to fruition.
Speaker Change: Besides the data centers, we also see companies investing in energy, manufacturing, and primary metals, driving consistent growth in our industrial sales.
Speaker Change: industrial sales grew one-half of one percent in the quarter propelled by nearly five percent growth in Texas.
Speaker Change: Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, you'll notice that we have updated our sales projections out to 2027 in this presentation.
Speaker Change: new and existing customers spread across our Ohio, Indiana, and Texas service territories.
Speaker Change: In the T&D segment, we estimate about 30% year-over-year growth in commercial sales each in AAP Ohio and AAP Texas.
Speaker Change: and in the vertically integrated segment, our projections have commercial sales at INM up nearly 60% year-over-year. Note, this is happening now and in the next several years, not later this decade.
Speaker Change: New customer growth will also support a projected increase in industrial sales of 1.6 percent next year, with most of that growth expected to be powered by ongoing economic development in Texas.
Speaker Change: We have several large energy and manufacturing loads slated to come online within the next year.
Speaker Change: While these numbers are substantial, we take a lot of comfort in the fact that the large load additions reflected in these forecasts are all backed by signed customer financial commitments.
Speaker Change: In AEP, Ohio, and INM, nearly all of these loads are backed by take-or-pay contracts.
Speaker Change: This means that customers are locked in to pay for a minimum amount of power over the next several years, depending on their local tariff.
Speaker Change: Also, the impact of higher loads will enable our fixed costs to be spread over a higher base, benefiting all customers.
Speaker Change: As Bill mentioned, based on contract activity across the system, we expect about 20 gigawatts of additional load to come online through the end of the decade.
Speaker Change: For context, our summer peak load at the end of last year was 35 gigawatt. This represents about a 60% increase in peak load in the next six years.
Speaker Change: That magnitude of increase in peak load is driving the sales projections that you see in slide 10.
Speaker Change: We expect consistent retail growth above 8% over the next 3 years, driven by not only double-digit commercial load increases, but accelerating gains in the industrial space.
Speaker Change: Roughly half of the additions are located in our PJM footprint, mostly hyperscale data centers in Ohio and Indiana.
Speaker Change: The other half are located almost entirely in AAP, Texas. However, the growth in Texas is more diverse and spread across both data processors and large industrial customers.
Speaker Change: The last time we have seen sustained years of load growth in the 8% range, the Beatles in the late 1960s were still making music.
Speaker Change: Truly this is a pivotal and transformational time for our company as we work to capture this opportunity.
Speaker Change: Let's move on to slide 11.
Speaker Change: In the top left table, you can see the FFO to debt metric stands at 14.7 percent for the 12 months ended September 30th.
Speaker Change: which is a 10 basis point increase from the prior quarter.
Speaker Change: Our debt-to-cap decreased slightly from last quarter and was 62.1% at quarter end. We understand that in its next credit opinion in March, Moody's intend to change how it treats deferred fuel impacts.
Speaker Change: To align the consolidated view of AEP without how our subsidiary company metrics are calculated
Speaker Change: Importantly, based on discussions with Moody's in our annual management meeting last week, their view of AEP's credit is not changing and we will continue to exceed our downgrade threshold of 13% in all forecasted periods.
Speaker Change: We are committed to a goal of being in the 14 to 15 percent FFO to debt range, and regardless, the impact of deferred fuel on our metrics will dissipate to a normal state over the next two years.
Speaker Change: Again, importantly, this does not change our cash inflows or Moody's view of our credit profile.
Speaker Change: In the lower left part of this slide, you can see our liquidity summary, which remains strong at $5.5 billion and is supported by $6 billion in credit facilities.
Speaker Change: Lastly, on the qualified pension front, our funding status remains stable at 99%.
Speaker Change: In summary, our third quarter and year-to-date financial results.
Speaker Change: put us in a strong position to meet our goals this year.
Speaker Change: and we are tightening our 2024 guidance range to $558 to $568 per share. And also in the quarter, I'll note that we completed the sale of AEP on-site partners with approximately $320 million of net proceeds received at the end of September.
Speaker Change: For 2025, we have set our operating earnings guidance range at $5.75 to $5.95 per share with a guidance midpoint of $5.85, roughly 4% growth from our 2024 midpoint guidance estimate.
Speaker Change: Our 2025 earnings guidance is based on a strong foundation of growth in our regulated businesses and lower contributions in the generation and marketing segment.
Speaker Change: due to the reduced scope of activities as well as lower expected retail and wholesale margins in the segment.
Speaker Change: Going forward, we expect improved performance in our vertically integrated utility segment as we work to narrow the gap between our earned and authorized ROEs and invest where we have alignment with our regulators.
Speaker Change: We have also introduced a robust long-term growth rate of 6-8% from the 2025 guidance midpoint.
Speaker Change: This is supported.
Speaker Change: by a $54 billion capital plan, which is more than a 25% increase from our previous five-year plan.
Speaker Change: These investments, with 63% related to wires and 26% related to new generation, result in a five-year rate-based CAGR of nearly 8%.
Speaker Change: Future updates to capital are more likely to go up as we continue to see economic development activities in our territories due to our high voltage 765 transmission backbone.
Speaker Change: are attractive industrial footprint in Texas as well as the incremental transmission and generation infrastructure that Bill described earlier.
Speaker Change: Our five-year cash flow and financing plan forecast is shown in the appendix on slide 14.
Speaker Change: We have consolidated the forecast over the five-year period, as impacts in individual years due to large loads, generation investments, and tax credits will have interperiod movement over time.
Speaker Change: Note, however, the plan is supported with equity, equity-like instruments.
Speaker Change: opportunities to explore portfolio optimization as well as efficiently monetizing tax credits related to our investments in renewable generation and from our existing nuclear facility.
Speaker Change: In addition, we will decouple our dividend growth rate from our earnings growth rate, resulting in a lower dividend payout ratio over time in the range of 55 to 65 percent.
Speaker Change: This will allow us to retain additional cash flow to fund our increased capital plan and new growth objectives while maintaining a market competitive shareholder return.
Speaker Change: Access to the capital markets is critical, and we will finance sensibly to protect and maintain our balance sheet solidly in the investment grade category.
Speaker Change: We appreciate everyone's time today and your interest in AEP. We look forward to seeing many of you at the EEI conference next week.
Speaker Change: Operator, can you open the call so that we can address your questions? Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. At this time I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question press star then the number one on your telephone keypad.
Speaker Change: Your first question comes from Char Perenza with Guggenheim Partners. Please go ahead.
Char Perenza: Hey guys, good morning.
Char Perenza: Morning.
Char Perenza: Morning, Bill. So obviously a big update this morning, cleared the decks and rebased as we're thinking about your new six to eight percent growth rate. Asset sales haven't helped, but anything you can point to that can be maybe incremental to your 25 guide, any tailwinds?
Speaker Change: that aren't in plan, like maybe on the cost side.
Speaker Change: And as we're thinking about maybe the longer range, you have material load growth driven by the data centers. Has the 20 gigawatts of customer commitment hit any of your numbers, or could some of those opportunities become further accretive as we saw with some of your peers during this earnings season? Thanks.
Speaker Change: was put in place to help offset inflation as we're looking at.
Speaker Change: transforming the company. I did bring on an expert in transformation who's worked with me for many years who will help us.
Speaker Change: continue to look for opportunities to take costs out of the business.
Speaker Change: look for more opportunities to reduce layers of management and expand span of control of the of the management team all in the the effort to remove bureaucracy out of the
Speaker Change: out of the company and reduce bloat. And so clearly there's there's opportunities for that. I've, I've just been here three months, so
Speaker Change: We've got a lot yet to do. As I noted in my comments, a lot of wood to chop yet around.
Speaker Change: around the company and so.
Speaker Change: We've looked at what we were able to do and made sure that we were confident in what we put into those numbers at this time, but clearly more to do. With regards to the 20 gigawatts
Speaker Change: that is essentially in the plan 12 gigawatts of that is in the first three years of the plan with the remainder towards the the end of the plan but we've got
Speaker Change: more opportunities out there. As I noted, 10 billion dollars of transmission potential generation development.
Speaker Change: Again, as I was...
Speaker Change: sorting through the numbers here with the $54 billion capital plan that we have, making sure that that was fully understood and that we could deliver it.
Speaker Change: but there's there's much more load growth to come for this company and I would say we're only really limited by our ability to execute on the opportunities that are in front of us. Chuck, anything to add?
Speaker Change: Good. Okay.
Speaker Change: Got it. And then just lastly on the funding source, so
Speaker Change: 5.35 billion in equity needs. You obviously kind of mentioned asset sales. Can you just give us a sense on the asset? Is it transmission as media has been reporting or the off goes an opportunity and just maybe a sense of timing, when do you need the equity? Thanks.
Speaker Change: Yeah, with regards to potential asset sales and stuff, we won't comment on those until the next meeting.
Speaker Change: Something might happen, but
Speaker Change: We're clearly going to consider sort of all of the above to get us to where we need. Chuck, you want to? Yeah, sure. I would just add to that, you know, in our plan
Speaker Change: products out there, you know, instruments that give us equity credit.
Speaker Change: You'll note in my comments we are looking, you know, to decouple our dividend growth rate from our earnings growth rate as well.
Speaker Change: which would drift to the payout ratio lower as well. We do have you know PTC and ITC monetization and as far as you know any asset monetization opportunities as Bill said you know we're looking holistically at all alternatives.
Speaker Change: As you look at the needs that we have and the timing of such, we will need equity support in 2025 and how that comes, it could come in any of the forms that I just talked.
Speaker Change: Okay, that's perfect. Thanks guys. We'll see you in a couple days. Appreciate it. Yep. Thanks, sir.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: All right, our next question comes from Steve Fleshman with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.
Steve Fleshman: Yeah, hi good morning, thanks for the time so first the
Steve Fleshman: The new kind of outlook, what are you seeing in terms of earned returns?
Speaker Change: across the utilities over the period? Are you...
Speaker Change: You know, you've had the issue with the conferring below. Do you have that improving over the period by how much? Any sense on that?
Speaker Change: So as we look at our regulatory opportunities
Speaker Change: Right now for the regulated utilities
Speaker Change: We're looking at a 9.1% ROE in the plan. As I've gone around and met with the states,
Speaker Change: As I noted in my comments, our focus is changing to where
Speaker Change: We will be working with them to understand what they want to be able to achieve and we will work to deliver that with them. And through that then, we would hope to continue to improve.
Speaker Change: The relationship that we have with the regulator and hopefully that then also then turns into more positive outcomes
Speaker Change: with regards to ROE and the general relationship that we have.
Speaker Change: As part of that, we also have to significantly improve our customer service. I've noted that we have to put more investment into the distribution side of the business, vegetation management, reduce outage time.
Speaker Change: And all of that will then go to helping us with regards to our regulatory relations and customer service. So, we're very, very focused on that.
Speaker Change: made it around now to
Speaker Change: seven of our states in the three months I've been here to meet with the regulators and we're continuing to build those relationships and
Speaker Change: As I noted in West Virginia, we made the new filing very disappointed in the quality of our prior filing. We've made changes internally to correct that.
Speaker Change: We'll be very much focused on these returns and I know how much it adds to our business as we're able to get those closer to our alloweds.
Speaker Change: Thank you. One other question just on the balance sheet. I appreciate the clear...
Speaker Change: commentary on the Moody's and the deferred fuel. I just want to maybe restate or to clarify what you said. So they are going to make the adjustment. It sounds like you might be temporarily below the 14 to 15 target.
Speaker Change: FFO but above the 13 percent.
Speaker Change: Downgrade threshold.
Speaker Change: And that overall, the general view of the credit is that it's stable.
Speaker Change: I think that's an accurate representation of what I said.
Speaker Change: Okay.
Speaker Change: Okay, thank you.
Speaker Change: All right, our next question comes from Jeremy Tenet with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Jeremy Tenet: Hi, good morning.
Jeremy Tenet: Good morning.
Jeremy Tenet: Just wanted to speak to the data centers in Ohio, I guess a little bit more and
Jeremy Tenet: Given the challenge there, could you speak to settlement dynamics in your data center tariff proposal given, you know, all the stakeholder, I guess, you know, views on this?
Speaker Change: Sure, as we've looked at the data center opportunities in in Ohio, one of our fundamental principles around all of this is to ensure that our existing customer base is not negatively impacted.
Speaker Change: by the significant increase in data
Speaker Change: We filed a tariff in Ohio that would essentially put
Jeremy Tenet: more pressure on the data centers to
Jeremy Tenet: stand up for the costs that they're creating.
Jeremy Tenet: on the system, and
Jeremy Tenet: That filing has been going through the process.
Jeremy Tenet: settlements filed by the Data Center Coalition as well as ourselves with a number of other parties.
Jeremy Tenet: including the staff on from the Commission and right now that's moving the hearing on December 3rd and we would expect to get an outcome from the Commission.
Jeremy Tenet: shortly after that, but conversations are still going. We want that load in Ohio. We definitely want it to be on our system, and we want to see that growth, but we also want to make sure that
Jeremy Tenet: Our existing customer base is not negatively impacted by this, and so we'll do what we need to to ensure that we protect that that customer base.
Jeremy Tenet: I've seen how the load comes on and what the commitments are and and so got a pretty good feeling for how this is going to potentially play out and we want to make sure that
Jeremy Tenet: We have everything in place to serve that load but bottom line is only if we can protect the rest of the customer base.
Speaker Change: Got it. Understood. That's helpful there. Thanks. And I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit as well on the AP, on your JB proposal with First Energy and Dominion as it relates to the transmission project, and I guess what you see as unique or beneficial to this offering versus others.
Speaker Change: So that was a great partnership led by our transmission team, Antonio Smith, and the rest of the team there.
Speaker Change: to pull that coalition together and go in and bid on these projects. Obviously,
Jeremy Tenet: PJM is putting forth a significant amount of
Jeremy Tenet: potential transmission investment and it was our view that we're stronger together as entities and that we would have a very very good chance of
Jeremy Tenet: winning these projects and so
Jeremy Tenet: that JV came together.
Jeremy Tenet: really well, and we're working well together, and we're excited about hearing where we might end up later next year, but I have confidence in our team and the team from First Energy and Dominion that we're going to come out of this with
Jeremy Tenet: with some really strong opportunities to grow our transmission business.
Speaker Change: Got it, thank you. One quick last one if I could, just on GNM.
Jeremy Tenet: Seems like 24 is going to notably outperform initial guidance there.
Jeremy Tenet: and AP's on the midpoint. So just wondering if there's other segments of the business that are kind of underperforming expectations there. Do you expect them to kind of bounce back?
Jeremy Tenet: next year and also the GNM step down next year given the lower scope of the business as you said. Is that to indicate that there could be sales more likely in this segment than others knowing that you're not going to identify specific asset sales in advance of the path?
Speaker Change: So the GNM segment, we're reflecting about 24 cents in lower contributions over
Jeremy Tenet: 2024 and 2025, which is obviously a significant
Jeremy Tenet: significant change for us, but...
Jeremy Tenet: We are seeing good improvement across the rest of our of our lines of business.
Jeremy Tenet: We're obviously also going to be going after the transmission projects that I noted in my opening comments.
Jeremy Tenet: And then as far as other potential asset sales, as again I said, I will consider all things and if they make sense, we'll take a look at them, but we'll talk about those at the time.
Speaker Change: Got it. Thank you for that.
Speaker Change: All right, our next question comes from David Arcaro with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
David Arcaro: Well, hey, good morning. Thanks so much for taking my question.
Speaker Change: Yeah, good morning.
David Arcaro: Morning, just a bit of a follow-up on that. Could you just help me understand the 26 EPS outlook? Is there no G&M earnings contribution there just so I could...
Jeremy Tenet: Make sure I understood that and maybe specifically what's driving it to zero there. Is that an implied sale or exit of those businesses or something else?
Speaker Change: Yeah, thanks for the question, and perhaps...
Speaker Change: The slide you're looking at may not make that clear. We're just showing the change in GNM from 24 to 25. There would still be a contribution from that segment in 26 and beyond.
Speaker Change: Got it. Got it. Okay. Thanks for that. Yep. That's more clear.
Speaker Change: And then, um, could you touch on how you're thinking about the incremental new generation, um, in terms of the CapEx that, that has come into the plan? I would assume a lot of that is, is going to be gas. I'm wondering, um, kind of where, you know, where and when, um, you'd be investing in that and kind of what the process is to firm that, uh, that, uh, capital up.
Speaker Change: So we do have a lot of gas coming into the system. We've got a number of RFPs out on the street, as I mentioned, particularly at I&M.
Speaker Change: and we'll see what kind of prices come in for those projects.
Speaker Change: The CapEx will be spread.
Speaker Change: obviously as as those projects come into play, but I'll also say that
Speaker Change: as we continue to work with
Speaker Change: some of our other states, particularly say West Virginia.
Speaker Change: There's a lot of opportunity yet to be sorted through in those states with regards to the economic development that
Speaker Change: that they are pushing forward. And so, be happy to talk more about these things in detail at the EI meeting coming up, but really excited about the potential opportunities we have across a number of our states.
Speaker Change: Got it. Okay, great. Well, thank you so much.
Speaker Change: I'm
Speaker Change: All right, our next question comes from Julian DeMolin-Smith with Jeffries. Please go ahead.
Julian DeMolin-Smith: Hey, good morning team, guys. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Speaker Change: Hey, good morning. How are you?
Julian DeMolin-Smith: Great. Top of the morning. Doing quite well. Thank you. A couple things real quickly. First off, on the GNN piece, I know you elaborated a little bit. What's reflected through the course of the plan? Is that more of a static expectation off the 25 baseline or further moderation there? Again, I know you clarified the 9-1 on the utility component, but just on the other piece there if you can.
Speaker Change: Yeah, Julian, I think that the business supports the level that we would see in 2025.
Speaker Change: Thank you for watching!
Speaker Change: Okay, all right, through the plant. Excellent, thank you for that. I appreciate all the details. And then related here, you know, 765 has really caught a lot of attention across all the RTOs.
Speaker Change: I just want to make sure I understand what's reflected in this new CAPEX baseline as far as 765 adoption goes across the various footprints. And again, I know you provided particularly detail on this coalition here in PGM, but to what extent can we see sort of comparable efforts emerge, say in ERCOT or what-have-you, as some of the 765 details become a little bit more formalized here, if you will?
Speaker Change: So obviously we have a big opportunity in ERCOT around the 765 down there in the event that they decide to go that way we've
Speaker Change: put in our proposals for that significant opportunity in the Permian area, significant opportunity on the various backbone.
Speaker Change: growth areas for Texas.
Speaker Change: That just alone is a good four or five billion dollars of opportunity potential there for us on the 765 front. We've also got
Speaker Change: good 765 opportunities in PJM and SPP as well. And so the fact that AEP is essentially the only U.S. company that
Speaker Change: knows how to build and operate 765, gives us a strong competitive advantage in these situations and certainly something that I'm very excited about to
Speaker Change: to pursue. That's one of the really strong strategic things that frankly AEP has done over the years is build out this 765 KV backbone because it's paying huge dividends right now as all of this load growth is starting to come on and I think that's
Speaker Change: That's being seen by some of the other decision-makers around who
Speaker Change: their ability to move energy. And so with the 765 KV experience that we have, I'm very excited about the opportunity to engage with ERCOT, SVP, and PJM, and maybe a little bit in MISO.
Speaker Change: Yeah, it's pretty exciting. Actually, quick clarification on the utility ROE. You're moderating it to 9.1, seemingly from your earlier plan, despite the accelerating load. Is there something else disintermediating that relationship?
Speaker Change: I could imagine a few things, but I'm curious if there was anything purposeful there.
Speaker Change: Nothing really purposeful. I mean, we're trying to continue to
Speaker Change: increase the ROE and work diligently with the regulators. If you blend in the transmission component of this, we're at 9.3.
Speaker Change: Obviously we want to continue to get up closer to our alloweds, but frankly we have to earn our way up. As I said, we've had some missteps in West Virginia that we've now corrected with the most recent filing.
Speaker Change: We've got some significant work to do on the customer service side to put us in a better position with our regulators So they're not getting
Speaker Change: complaints from customers, and so is
Speaker Change: As this continues to move forward, we've got a tremendous amount of wood to chop in this area.
Speaker Change: We're very focused on it.
Speaker Change: We've taken our board through the details of reliability and where we sit, and we've essentially created a new foundation, and we're going to blast off from there to really accelerate our improvements in customer service.
Speaker Change: Excellent, guys. Talk soon.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: Our next question comes from Nick Campanella with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Nick Campanella: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions today. You bet. Good morning.
Nick Campanella: You know, I think you talked about working with regulators and
Nick Campanella: policymakers on whatever solutions can facilitate this higher load outlook. You talked a lot about gas.
Nick Campanella: but in your prepared remarks you also talked about nuclear and you know Bill I know you talked about your love for nuclear in the past and maybe you can kind of just expand on your thoughts of how nuclear kind of fits into the AEP strategy if at all. Thanks. Well first and foremost
Nick Campanella: A number of our customers are pursuing projects based on nuclear power plants.
Nick Campanella: Those are many, many years out, as far as I can tell, but we need to continue to work with our customers and if they want to pursue a small modular reactor type of co-location,
Nick Campanella: approached and we'll work with them and we'll continue to work with the developers of the various technologies that are out there, but
Nick Campanella: This is going to require a very significant approach to risk mitigation.
Nick Campanella: a combination of the federal government, state government, input from
Nick Campanella: the customer and ourself to build some risk mitigation such that our existing customer base isn't carrying the
Nick Campanella: the full exposure of something like this.
Speaker Change: will
Speaker Change: with our nuclear team that we have here. We'll continue to follow the...
Speaker Change: various technologies that are being built in in Canada with regards to the BWRX and
Speaker Change: The new scale plant that's being built in Romania. We'll follow those as well as the GE Itachi project at at TVA and Watch how these are progressing but ultimately if our customers want this and our states want this
Speaker Change: Then we'll have to figure out a way to deliver it. That's that's what we do. And so I'm I'm
Speaker Change: Fairly favorable that there'll be one or two designs that make it through the NRC process and
Speaker Change: will start to be built, but we have to figure out the first of a kind risk and make sure that we are not carrying that load and that there's a very broad base of people engaged in this that can help push this along.
Speaker Change: Hey, I really appreciate your thoughts there.
Speaker Change: Just to tie things off on the on the six to eight percent growth rate, so
Speaker Change: You have 8% rate-based growth, you know, net of some financing drag. You could also be raising CapEx here, too. I hear you on the $10 billion. Where do you kind of think you're trending in this new 6 to 8 range over the long term? Do you kind of grow linearly off this midpoint? Could you be kind of higher or lower in certain years? Just trying to understand that. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Yeah, thanks, Nick. You know, the 6 to 8% rate is based off the 2025 new midpoint.
Speaker Change: And, you know, as you can imagine, as Bill described, the kind of components
Speaker Change: You know, of our capital plan and, you know, the addition of load over time. I don't expect, you know, it to be completely linear like it may have been in the past.
Speaker Change: So I do expect, you know, all years to be in that range But I certainly don't expect a if if our guidance was linear, we would have just said 7%
Speaker Change: Our guidance is 6 to 8 percent. I think that does mean over the long term we would average somewhere in between there, but I don't expect it necessarily to be here.
Speaker Change: Very helpful though, still within the ranges. I appreciate the time today. Thanks so much.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: Our next question comes from Carly Davenport with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Carly Davenport: Hey, good morning. Thanks so much for taking the questions.
Carly Davenport: Maybe just to start a quick follow-up on transmission as we look at the new capital plan, obviously significant increases on that side relative to the prior plan. Just as you think about some of the opportunities in PJM that you ran through in, I think, Jeremy's question, are those all upside to the plan or is there any spend built in in the back end of this plan related to those opportunities?
Speaker Change: Yeah, this is all basically upside to the plan and as I mentioned in my remarks the
Speaker Change: The potential for $10 billion of additional transmission and new generation build-out is what we would be chasing with regards to not only just PJM, but ERCOD, MISO, and SPP as well.
Speaker Change: Got it. Great. That's helpful. And then just lastly, with the increase in the long-term earnings growth rate to that 6% to 8% range, could you just talk a little bit about how you're thinking about dividend growth relative to that range going forward?
Speaker Change: Yes, so Carly, you know, we have followed a pattern of
Speaker Change: Pretty much matching dividend growth right with our earnings growth
Speaker Change: you know with the increased capital needs.
Speaker Change: The cash, right, from decoupling, right, the dividend growth from the earnings growth will help fund that. And we would be targeting, you know, a payout ratio in the 55 to 65 percent range. Our old policy was 60 to 70. I think right now our payout ratio is in that 63, 64 percent range.
Speaker Change: So we will provide a market competitive total shareholder return opportunity for our shareholders, but that will be decoupled going forward.
Speaker Change: Got it. Great. Thank you so much for the color.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: Our next question comes from Andrew Wiesel with Scotia Bank. Please go ahead.
Andrew Wiesel: Hi, thank you. Good morning, everyone. If I could first follow up on that dividend question. Are you able to indicate how quickly you expect to go from the roughly 64% to roughly 60%? Or said differently, if earnings are growing at 6% to 8%, what would be a good expectation for dividend growth? Would it be 6% like we've seen or potentially something slower?
Speaker Change: Well that that's a discussion Andrew that that is you know as you know that the board you know approves the dividend and you know we will we will drift down in that range it won't be anything significantly abrupt.
Speaker Change: to expect there, but you can imagine, right, that we would just drift down in that range as we go through time.
Speaker Change: Okay, so it sounds like something fairly gradual then, if that's maybe a fair way to put it.
Andrew Wiesel: Okay, then I'm...
Andrew Wiesel: Great, thank you.
Andrew Wiesel: But on equity, I just want to better understand, I see this slide shows $100 million per year of DRIP, and I fully understand your commentary that asset sales or something like a hybrid might mitigate the need. But for modeling purposes, should we take that $5.35 billion and straight line it over five years?
Speaker Change: Maybe you could give a little more guidance in terms of timing per year, and if this would be an ATM or a block in the absence of one of those alternatives?
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: Yeah.
Speaker Change: So it's a good question.
Speaker Change: Obviously, you know, consolidating the five-year cash flow, you know, just indicates that there's a lot of options on the table.
Speaker Change: What I would tell you that, as I said earlier, we do need equity support in some form in 2025 and 2026 to, you know, continue to hit our credit metrics.
Speaker Change: So, you know, I think as you maybe looked at last year's
Speaker Change: You know kind of kind of shape and think of it in a similar similar way You know is a good way to perhaps look at it Because we do need need support in 20 20 25
Speaker Change: in some form or fashion, and we, you know...
Speaker Change: We, you know, are holistically looking at all of the options, including the equity-like securities, which wouldn't show up right in the true equity line on the cash flow.
Speaker Change: Okay, could that be a little more direct? What's embedded in the assumption for share count for 2025?
Speaker Change: I don't have that specifically. We could talk about that at EI.
Speaker Change: Okay, sounds good. Thank you. We'll just follow up with Darcy later.
Speaker Change: Very good.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Bye.
Speaker Change: Our next question comes from Bill Apicelli with UBS. Please go ahead.
Bill Apicelli: Hi, good morning. I just have a question about the, you talked about some of the funding over the years and with the efficient monetization of tax credits. Can you speak to the magnitude of the tax credits? Are these going to be contributing to earnings or this utilization of transferability to provide funding?
Speaker Change: Yeah, it's just transferability to provide funding. It's neutral to earnings largely And over the 25 to 27 period it's roughly 300 million dollars a year
Speaker Change: In the latter two years, there's some ITC opportunities with some solar projects, so you'd be some bigger numbers. But in the next three years, about an average of 300 per year.
Speaker Change: Okay, thank you. And then on.
Speaker Change: The sales outlook
Speaker Change: Unresidential, so that has been you know trailing a little bit behind expectations. You are assuming some improvement you know back to relatively flat or slightly positive next year. Maybe can you speak to what's driving that?
Speaker Change: Yeah, I mean, it's a trend I think that we and others are seeing, you know, in the industry as well.
Speaker Change: You know, as people have returned to work, as inflation has crept in and, you know, the share of the wallet, you know, becomes, you know, more critical, I think you're just seeing, you know, reduced usage.
Speaker Change: We are seeing increased customer counts in places like Texas and Oklahoma and Ohio and other areas, but it's not offsetting the existing customer decline in usage.
Speaker Change: We do think that that level is off at some point in time. I think there's also probably some continued energy efficiency things creeping in there. But nonetheless, as you see in our forecast,
Speaker Change: You know, after some years of decline, we're now assuming it flat going forward pretty much.
Speaker Change: Okay, all right, and then just lastly, maybe just you can speak to
Speaker Change: The co-location issues that FERC has recently addressed, you guys did intervene in the case. Maybe can you just highlight what you think your next steps are coming out of FERC or some of the policy issues more broadly?
Speaker Change: Yeah, sure. So this is a very simple issue in our mind. If you use the transmission system, you should pay for it.
Speaker Change: It's really that simple and our view of
Speaker Change: of co-location is that we don't have an issue with co-location.
Speaker Change: We don't have an issue with data centers looking to
Speaker Change: use nuclear power plants as an energy source, but what we do have an issue with is
Speaker Change: when they use the transmission system and try not to pay for it, that's a problem for us because that cost gets shifted to other customers, and so as this process continues to go through the FERC decision-making
Speaker Change: process will continue to reiterate our concerns around cost allocation and at the end of the day for us it's it's just a simple principle if you use the transmission system pay for it and and that's really where we're at
Speaker Change: Okay, great. See you next week. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: Our next question comes from Anthony Crowdell with Mizzou, who please go ahead
Anthony Crowdell: Hey, good morning. Hey, Nick, did, uh, I'm sorry, hey, Chuck, did Nick have you write that Beatles reference?
Speaker Change: I think he may have
Speaker Change: I think you may have.
Speaker Change: Yes, so trailing 12 months, as you can see in the deck, we're at 9.0% for the entire regulated complex.
Speaker Change: So I think as you think about going into next year, you know, you should think about that, the regulated utilities in the range of 9.1 and the transco right in that ten and a half percent range, which then averages things to 9.3.
Speaker Change: Great, and then you talk about the load growth, the data centers, you know, great tailwinds. I'm just curious, it was maybe something investors were asking about maybe six months ago, but even with all this demand, is it taking longer to connect these large customers to the system or it's at a very manageable pace for the company? I'm just thinking that with all this load coming on...
Speaker Change: You know, whether it's supply chain or just labor connecting all these large customers, but it doesn't appear to be an issue
Speaker Change: Well, it's certainly a challenge for us to get everyone connected at the speed that they would like to be connected, which is tomorrow for the most part.
Speaker Change: and we're working with data centers to try to find creative ways to allow them to continue to build out and and get the power that they need but this is going to be a long-term
Speaker Change: build out for us and we'll try to connect as many data centers as we can onto the system. We'll try to come up with other creative options.
Speaker Change: for those data centers while we get transmission built, but it's going to be an evolution of working with
Speaker Change: the customer working with particularly PJM and then our ability to get the construction done.
Speaker Change: I don't foresee significant supply chain issues at this time, the construction is fairly well spread out and I think we can manage the supply chain side of this, but we certainly
Speaker Change: have a very high demand coming on from the data center crowd and we'll work hard to try to accomplish what they want as quickly as we can.
Speaker Change: Thanks for taking my questions. See you in EEI.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: All right and our final question from today with Ryan Levine with Citi, please go ahead.
Ryan Levine: Thanks for taking my questions. I guess a couple. One, in terms of your confidence level in these load forecasts, you know, how confident are you and when do you think that could evolve?
Speaker Change: Well as we stated earlier we've got essentially signed contracts for for all of this load so we feel very confident about
Speaker Change: the load coming on. Certainly we're in discussions with a number of other economic development opportunities.
Speaker Change: across a number of our states. Those clearly are not in our plan nor do we know if they'll come to fruition, but for what we're showing you, we have signed agreements and our confidence level is quite high.
Speaker Change: And then in terms of the recent election with federal tax rates potentially to change in coming years
Speaker Change: How exposed is your free cash flow and credit outlook?
Speaker Change: to changes in federal policy.
Speaker Change: I guess on a similar vein, the generation build-out and ownership expected in your plan, is there an exposure to tariffs that you're thinking through?
Speaker Change: Yeah, I mean it's a question we're going to have to evaluate here as we as we go through time and see what the platform right for the new administration is going to be. So give us some time to to absorb that.
Speaker Change: Okay, thanks for taking my questions.
Speaker Change: Yep, thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you for joining us on today's call. As always, the IR team will be available to answer any additional questions you may have. Danica, would you please give the replay information?
Danica: Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. A replay of the call will be available for one week. The North American toll-free phone number is 1-800-770-2030. You must enter the playback ID as 1336080 for today's recording. Thank you. You may now disconnect.