Idacorp Inc Q1 FY2020 Earnings Call

Welcome to IDACORP's First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded and our webcast is live. A complete replay will be available later today and for the next 12 months on the Company's website at idacorpinc.com. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference call over to Justin Forsberg, director of investor relations and treasury.

Thanks, Jamie, and good afternoon, everyone. Before the markets opened this morning, we issued and posted to IDACORP's website our first quarter 2020 earnings release and quarterly report on Form 10-Q. The slides that accompany today's call are also available on our website. We'll refer to those slides by number throughout the call. As noted on Slide 2, our discussion today includes forward-looking statements, including earnings guidance, which reflect our current views on what the future holds but are subject to several risks and uncertainties, including those related to the COVID-19 public health crisis. This cautionary note is also included in more detail for your review in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ materially from statements made today, and we caution against placing undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. As shown on Slide 3, on today's call, we have Darrel Anderson, IDACORP's President and Chief Executive Officer; Lisa Grow, President of Idaho Power Company; and Steve Keen, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of both companies. We also have other company representatives available to help answer any questions you may have after Darrel, Steve and Lisa provide updates. On Slide 4, we present our quarterly financial results. IDACORP's 2020 first quarter earnings per diluted share were $0.74, a decrease of $0.10 per share from last year's first quarter. The 2020 first quarter results are IDACORP's second highest first quarter earnings in almost 20 years. Today, we also affirm our full year 2020 IDACORP earnings guidance estimate to be in the range of $4.45 to $4.65 per diluted share, with our expectation that Idaho Power will not need to utilize any of the tax credits in 2020 that are available to support earnings in Idaho under its settlement stipulation with the Idaho Public Utilities Commission. These are our estimates as of today, as we have seen only a relatively small impact from the COVID-19 pandemic to date. However, as you would expect, it is difficult to predict the full long-term impact of evolving economic conditions on Idaho Power's customers and suppliers and how that could impact the upper end of the earnings guidance range or the use of tax credits if the pandemic worsens or is prolonged. I will now turn the call over to Darrel.

Thanks, Justin. And thanks, everyone, for joining us on today's call. I want to start out by talking about some comments we get around the COVID-19 pandemic, as a follow-up to Justin's remarks. But before I do that, I just want to acknowledge a couple of things. First of all, I hope all of you on this call have safely navigated through these crises. I know it's impacted many of you and your families and the organizations that you work for. On behalf of our organization, I hope that you guys are all hanging in there throughout all this chaos. We are glad that you can make it on the call today. The other thing, I'm just going to give you a heads-up. We have a pretty good storm going on outside right now and there’s a little thunderstorm happening. So we're hoping the system hangs in there as it normally does, but you never know. We had a warm spell yesterday, and that has translated into some thunderstorms out there, but many of you on this call have lived through much worse situations. This time, we're doing this fairly dispersed, so what you will see is we will try to move through this without much interruption. But we may need to call on some folks who are remote during the Q&A, so we're hoping the technology holds up. Beginning with the onset of the COVID crisis, our company took swift action to ensure that we continue to safely provide reliable energy to our communities and to ensure the safety of our employees and our customers. We are an essential business, and our workforce is deemed essential to maintaining and operating the critical infrastructure that powers our economy. Extra safety measures have been in place at our facilities and in the field, with special precautions being taken for our public-facing colleagues, as well as at our power plants and other critical work areas. We have been proactively communicating with our customers to let them know we remain committed to safely providing reliable energy. As we navigate this crisis, we are drawing on our robust business continuity, pandemic response and emergency management plans. I am proud to report that, as noted on Slide 5, our generation, transmission, and distribution operations continue largely uninterrupted. To provide these essential services while protecting both our employees and our communities, we have closed all Idaho Power facilities and recreation sites. However, some of those will be reopening effective tomorrow, May 1st. We've upgraded IT capabilities to facilitate remote working for over half of our workforce, eliminated large in-person meetings and nonessential work travel, and continued to monitor cyber and physical security threats. We've tested critical IT systems for business continuity purposes, monitored our supply chain, enhanced cleaning procedures at all our facilities, and encouraged employees to practice responsible social distancing and other effective prevention measures. We also understand the economic hardships facing many of our customers. In response, we have temporarily suspended disconnections and waived associated late fees. Our company's strong emphasis on safety is of particular importance during times of crisis. I would like to thank and commend our employees for the efforts they have made to keep themselves, each other, our customers and communities across our service area safe. Like most companies, we remain somewhat uncertain how significantly COVID-19 will ultimately impact Idaho Power's 2020 operations and financial performance. We have yet to see a significant decrease in our overall loads during the stay-at-home orders, but we acknowledge it may soften if the crisis is prolonged. Certainly, some businesses across our service area have been closed or slowed down in recent weeks. Overall, we saw a 5% or less than $1 million decrease in commercial sales during March, a portion of which was due to mild weather. On Slide 6, you can see the actual sales versus our forecasted and weather-adjusted sales showing March and much of April. With many of our large customers operating in the agriculture and food industry, a sizable number of those businesses continue to operate, as do most industrial and large commercial companies in our service area. With more people working from their home offices, residential load could uptick. However, given that April and May are off-peak months, we do not expect a significant increase unless the crisis extends into summer when customers run their air conditioners. We will continue to monitor these impacts and update you if conditions and expectations change. In Idaho, Governor Brad Little announced on April 23 that the state had entered a new phase in the virus response and launched a carefully crafted four-stage process focused on an economic rebound. Each stage requires certain criteria and conditions be met, with Stage 1 beginning to open up businesses after May 1. If metrics are met, Stage 4 would begin on June 13, with the state expected to be completely open by June 26. We are cautiously optimistic that the plan will enable Idaho's economy to recover in a measured fashion. Oregon has made no such announcement yet but is coordinating with other states in the region to develop its reopening plan. As a reminder, our Oregon jurisdiction accounts for approximately 5% of our business. With that, I would like to hand things off to Steve, who will walk us through our liquidity position and our first-quarter financial results.

Thanks, Darrel, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'll first address where IDACORP and Idaho Power are from a liquidity standpoint, as well as provide you reminders of some of our regulatory mechanisms. IDACORP and Idaho Power continue to maintain strong balance sheets, including investment-grade credit ratings and sound liquidity, which enable us to fund ongoing capital expenditures and dividend payments. At the beginning of April, despite the volatile market conditions at the time, we successfully closed a bond offering that brought approximately $260 million of cash proceeds to Idaho Power. We issued $230 million of first mortgage bonds from an existing series of nearly 30-year medium-term notes at a 13% premium to the 4.2% coupon rate, which resulted in a reoffer yield of 3.42%. A bond issuance of this approximate size and tenure had been planned during 2020, even before the development of the COVID-19 crisis, to address long-term liquidity needs, as well as to retire a $100 million bond set to mature later this year. We are pleased with the outcome and feel both Idaho Power and IDACORP are now in a strong liquidity position to weather the potential impact from stay-at-home orders on Idaho Power's revenues, bad debts and associated cash collections. IDACORP's operating cash flows, along with our liquidity positions as of the end of the first quarter, are included on Slide 7. Cash flows from operations were about $23 million lower than the first quarter of 2019. The decrease was mostly related to the timing of net collections of regulatory assets and liabilities, especially those resulting from the power cost adjustment mechanism. The liquidity available under IDACORP's and Idaho Power's credit facilities is shown on the middle of Slide 7. At this time, we do not anticipate issuing additional equity this year other than relatively nominal amounts under our compensation plans. You'll note that including the current cash positions at both IDACORP and Idaho Power, as of April 24, we have access to liquidity of approximately $200 million and $570 million, respectively. While cash flows have been minimally affected thus far, our combined liquidity, along with expected regulatory support from our annual adjustment mechanisms, is a substantial backstop to our capital and operating needs. I'll also briefly remind you of the funded status and regulatory treatment of Idaho Power's employee pension plan. Annually, Idaho Power collects approximately $19 million of pension expenses from customers across all jurisdictions. In Idaho, Idaho Power accounts for its pension contributions on a cash basis, and any contributions above or below the amount currently collected in rates is deferred or accrued as a regulatory asset or liability. Idaho Power contributed $10 million to its pension plan during the first quarter this year and is only required to make less than $5 million in additional contributions during 2020. We currently plan to contribute up to an additional $30 million to the plan but have flexibility depending on market conditions, cash flows and effects of the health crisis. I'll now point into Slide 8, where I will address the financial performance. Despite the mild winter weather, we had excellent first quarter results, and we feel well-positioned as we move forward through the rest of 2020. Our strong, consistent financial results and cost management efforts during the past decade have preserved the $45 million of tax credits available to support our current minimum Idaho jurisdictional return on equity of 9.4%, and we are continuing our efforts to preserve as many of those credits as possible going forward. On the table of year-over-year changes, you'll see that strong customer growth of 2.6% added $3.6 million to operating income in the first quarter. A decline in usage per customer, mostly related to mild weather that impacted residential and commercial energy use for heating purposes, and to a lesser extent, due to stay-at-home-related declines in sales to commercial customers, decreased operating income by $6.1 million. As Darrel noted, we estimated the effect of COVID-19 on commercial customer revenues was less than $1 million in this past quarter. The weather-related decline for residential and small commercial customers was largely offset by a $4.5 million increase in fixed cost adjustment revenues. Net retail revenues per megawatt hour decreased operating income by $2.1 million, partially caused by changes in customer mix, as volumes sold to residential customers in the first quarter of 2020 made up a smaller portion of the customer sales mix than in the same period last year. Additionally, Idaho Power's open access transmission tariff rates declined by 13% in October of 2019. This rate decrease, combined with the decrease in wholesale market activity which was expected, lowered transmission wheeling-related revenues by $5.4 million. Remember, transmission wheeling volumes in the first quarter last year were also higher than typical due to regional energy conditions stemming in part from a gas pipeline explosion in Canada. Overall, Idaho Power's and IDACORP's net income were $4.8 million and $5.2 million lower than last year, respectively. Slide 9 shows our affirmed full-year 2020 earnings guidance and our key financial and operating metric estimates. While it is difficult to predict the full long-term impact of evolving economic conditions on Idaho Power's customers and the potential impact on our earnings guidance, we continue to expect IDACORP's 2020 earnings to be in the range of $4.45 to $4.65 per diluted share. Our guidance continues to assume no use of additional tax credits and normal weather conditions. Other than a slightly lowered expectation of hydropower generation to the range of 6 million to 8 million megawatt hours, the remaining full-year financial and operating metric forecasts are consistent with what was provided back in February.

Thank you, Steve. You'll see our customer growth trajectory through the end of March on Slide 10. Idaho Power's pipeline for business development remains strong with a diverse number of potential projects throughout our service area. On March 30th, Idaho Governor Brad Little signed a bill removing sales tax on data center equipment that meets certain criteria effective July 1, opening the doors for Idaho to compete for large-scale enterprise data centers. Idaho Power's competitive prices, along with Idaho's positive business climate, low risk for natural disasters, and arid climate, make our state well-positioned to attract data center activity. Idaho Power is actively engaging with companies that operate in this space. Notable large load projects that came online during the first quarter include an expansion for a new oat-based yogurt line at Chobani in Twin Falls and an expansion by River Rock Sand & Gravel in Western Idaho. Despite COVID-19, most projects under construction continue to move forward with minimal delays so far. As Steve mentioned, we saw a 2.6% customer growth during the 12 months ending March 31, which continues the trajectory we've seen over the last couple of years. While employment and unemployment numbers in our service area have, of course, been negatively impacted by COVID-19, we continue to monitor the long-term economic impact of the crisis on our customers. Moody's forecasted GDP for our service area, which now has incorporated the most current expected impacts of COVID-19, calls for a 0.7% growth in 2020 and a 5% in 2021. Despite hardships caused by the pandemic, we expect Idaho to remain one of the fastest-growing states in the country going forward, as many of the drivers for growth, including reliable, affordable, clean energy, remain intact. In February, we stated Idaho Power did not plan to file a general rate case in Idaho or Oregon in the next 12 months. That remains true today. Steady customer growth, constructive regulatory outcomes and effective cost management all play significant roles as we look at the need and timing of a future general rate case. I would like to echo Darrel's comments in commending our employees for their work during the COVID-19 crisis. I cannot thank them enough for continuing to show their commitment to safety and to our customers and for their flexibility and adaptability that they have demonstrated, keeping our operations running smoothly. To their credit, we remain on track to execute our 2020 strategy and continue to expect to meet our goals, despite the onset of this pandemic and mild winter weather.

Thanks, Lisa. Hopefully, you can see, and we believe, we are well-positioned for the times ahead. As most of you know, I'll be retiring effective on June 1. So this will be my last quarterly earnings call as CEO. I have enjoyed working with you throughout the years, and I appreciate all the support and feedback you and our owners in the investment community have provided as we have worked to make and keep IDACORP and Idaho Power such great companies. Our success would not be possible without your continued dialogue and support. Also, I think as you are aware, upon my retirement, Lisa will take over as president and CEO of IDACORP and Idaho Power. As you have seen from her work over the years, the Company is in great hands. I could not ask for a better partner to hand the reins over to lead this great organization. She is supported by an outstanding group of officers and other leaders that are committed to the continued overall success of the organization. With that, Lisa, Steve and I along with others on the call will be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are now ready to begin the question-and-answer session. The first question today comes from Julien Dumoulin-Smith from Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.

Good afternoon. This is Alex Morgan calling in for Julian. Congrats on the…

Alex, good to have you.

I wanted to specifically ask about O&M. From my understanding, your 2020 guidance assumes flat costs going from 2019 into 2020. I was wondering how many levers you might have just in case the COVID pandemic worsens a little more than current expectations? Potentially how much O&M cost savings could you factor in? And then also, if you think of the order of operations, would we expect to see cost cuts before you would pursue some of the ADITC?

Let me give that a shot, Alex. This is Steve. I'll answer them in reverse order. I would say, absolutely, we would look to pull levers that we have in order to preserve ADITC. I think depending on which levers they are, I mean, we've used O&M before to hit our targets and to exceed target. I mean, it would depend on which levers that we were pulling. I'd say, as we sit here today, I don't think we're ready to give a quantification of the number. But we have identified our own series of choices that we have. Some we will probably exercise regardless, for instance, we all know that travel is gone. We have positions we are not hiring at this moment because we don't think it's the right environment to hire into. We've been able to function remotely, and we're capturing some savings even as we go. We don't plan to turn around and let those savings disappear. There are further levers. We can hold positions longer. We can make further cuts that probably aren't reflective of what you would do year in, year out forever, but they are things that we can do in the middle of a challenging year. And we've identified a lot of those. We know generally what is coming at us in Idaho in terms of the initial plan and the rollout. We think Oregon will be similar. It's safe to say we've identified things that we think cover that sort of an approach, and there are levers that go beyond that, as you say, if it worsens. I don't think we even have good sense of what the impacts might be because we don't know. As we look at a crisis like this, you've got the president involved, the governor involved, every mayor across our service territory involved, communities and businesses. We are looking at all that. We approach things conservatively anyway. We are planning for things that we think could be worse. But to try to hang a number on that exactly is really hard to do. We're going to leave that to everyone else until we've got more real data. As we sit here today, it's just really early, and we don't have much indication of what that impact might be. But be assured, we will look to use those levers to preserve credits and hopefully also to deliver earnings in as good a spot on that range as we can accomplish.

Alex, this is Darrel. I'd like to add a couple of things to what Steve said. First of all, I think one of the overarching premises we have as we manage O&M is we're not going to sacrifice safety or reliability. I think those are two key points that everybody needs to understand. So things associated with safety, we're not going to cut corners. We're going to continue with our vegetation management programs. We have schedules on those. We're going to continue those. We will look at where we have discretionary spending. To the extent we have discretionary spending, we will focus really hard on those. Part of this is going to be driven by how long it will take from an employee and consumer confidence level to return to business as normal. I have the opportunity to chair the state economic recovery committee. One of the key drivers to the state reopening is how to enhance consumer confidence and employee confidence coming back into the workplace. We have a lot of people working from home. We will be looking at all those costs. Steve pointed to the downward-side measures. We have upward pressures also that we are managing, and we are looking at how to manage those bad debts that are expected. We also made a filing with the Oregon and Idaho commissions around recovering any excess costs that might incur as a result of this COVID. We're looking at all different types of levers here in which to manage that. If you look at our track record over the last six or seven years on O&M, it's been pretty unbeatable. So I think our leaders are looking under every rock to find ways to manage the upward pressure already there on O&M while trying to stay within or beat the O&M targets that Steve mentioned. We absolutely understand the value of the credits.

Alex, one other thing—you have seen the last couple of years where we've had milder weather than we would like to have had, particularly in the summer months. If it turns out to be a hot summer, which we haven't had for a while, that'll bring some positives. So there's income that comes with that. But it will also be harder to control the O&M costs because usually, those kinds of summers bring more fires and response requirements, leading to greater costs. Nonetheless, we will monitor everything closely and balance it to the best outcome.

Thank you. That's very comprehensive and helpful. I really appreciate it. My last question is just about your customers, both regarding irrigation and electric sales for the industrial side, when considering the agriculture and dairy businesses. It's clear that in the media, there have been a couple of articles about milk dumping and crops being tilled over. Would you be able to share how you might not be as impacted in terms of electricity sales and irrigation sales as well?

Sure, Alex. This is Darrel. I'm going to start, and we're going to ask Adam Richins to talk a little about this, assuming he's still on and hasn't dropped off the call, I hope. We have spent a lot of time on this as we have moved through the pandemic considerations, looking forward. We have done a lot of outreach to our customers to understand how they're doing and what they're doing. I'll have Adam Richins give you a brief update as to what we know today in an ever-evolving climate. Adam, are you there?

Yeah, I'm here. Thanks, Darrel, and thanks for the question, Alex. Yes, anecdotally, our teams are, I think the best word is, cautiously optimistic. On the ag front, we've received mostly good news from our customers. We had a dry spring, so agriculture actually started a couple of weeks early. The water conditions appear to be favorable to sustain a full ag season, and we believe most farmers have planted their crops. They're quite optimistic in that regard. The big unknown remains the weather. Most discussions with key account advisors indicate that food processing and packaging facilities continue to operate at a steady pace. However, dairies might be a little less optimistic given the reduction in restaurant and school lunch activity. We are keeping a watchful eye on them, but generally speaking, communication with ag and industrial customers remains positive.

Our next question comes from Brian Russo from Sidoti. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi. Good afternoon. With the assumption that the lower end of your affirmed guidance range, supported by the 9.4% return on year-end shareholder equity, you have quite a strong track record of exceeding even the midpoint of your original guidance. I'm curious, outside of O&M, which you just discussed, and sales, what are the other assumptions that can support the track record this year and going forward?

Yeah, the good news is, Idaho is still experiencing all of this growth. So when that is going on, we are building a lot of capital assets, which keeps our workforce deployed on the capital and alleviates some pressure off O&M. We have seen a good amount of money allocated to O&M as well. The fact that growth continues should bring in some revenue and further relieve that. What can happen during a disruption cycle is capital projects often pause, and cost shifts to O&M, but we don't see that right now.

Brian, as you saw from Lisa's comments on the weather outlook, we may be positioned well with below-normal precipitation and a higher likelihood of warmer-than-normal temperatures. This potentially bodes well for irrigation sales, especially considering the optimistic outlook from farmers about planting.

So hot and dry will help your irrigation sales, and at the same time, it could help the air conditioning load for residential customers in the summer, where you have higher rates or tiered rates. Is that accurate?

Correct, yes. And that's a good point, Brian. That shift it is an interesting bonus in that, if we do have super hot weather, as volumes grow, it jumps customers into higher tiers, resulting in increased rates.

What is your sales forecast for 2020? Is it the net of 2% that we saw from mid-March to mid-April? And if not, what is it? And how does that triangulate to the Moody's outlook that was quoted earlier in the comments?

From a planning phase, the number that's north of 2% is more customers coming in. Certainly, customer growth is maintaining a strong pace. On the load side, it's projected to remain between 1% and 2%, around 1.5%. That comes from growth in installations and new customers. We are optimistic that our performance this year will surpass previous expectations.

What about bad debt expense and other sensitivity that some of your peers have been citing as headwinds to guidance?

We have not seen big numbers through March, and initial indications in April are low as well. However, we do anticipate illness and prolonged economic challenges could lead to increased bad debts, as seen in the past during economic downturns. We have filed orders with the states regarding the opportunities for additional support should the situation worsen.

We have headwinds with bad debts, but it's too early to assess the extent of that challenge based on recent performance. However, we are watching closely and will adapt our approach as needed.

On the deferral mechanisms in Idaho and Oregon, any updates?

We filed in both states, and there hasn't been movement yet in Oregon.

In Oregon, the date of the filing is the trigger for when the deferral can begin. Thus, that starts the clock in Oregon.

What about the dividend policy?

Yes, we are on that schedule. We continue to be on track for our discussions in September regarding potential increases.

As far as industrial goes, you are very agriculture-oriented. Is that where you're seeing some firmness because of the ag and the importance of those industries?

I'll let Adam speak to that, as he's been closely involved.

We feel good about food processing and packaging companies. They continue to move forward with operations. Most farmers have planted, and communication has been quite positive regarding crop progress.

In terms of irrigation communication, that is managed by the Bureau of Reclamation, which dictates allocation. We share modeling information, but we do not dictate allocation. The state has good communication with the agricultural community about water conditions and forecasts.

Communication channels are effective between ag and the state, allowing farmers to understand their resource availability, which influences their planting decisions.

We've communicated the current favorable water conditions to farmers this year, and they are optimistic.

As far as guidance goes for the fourth quarter, have you reflected any assumptions about a potential flare-up?

Our guidance has not particularly incorporated expectations for a flare-up in the fourth quarter. We are focused on broader annual guidance rather than on quarterly fluctuations.

With the dynamic nature of forecasts, our guidance remains steady, reflecting confidence despite uncertainties.

Thanks, and best wishes for your retirement, Darrel.

Yes, I've canceled one recently. We'll see how things go.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question-and-answer session for today. Mr. Anderson, I'll turn the call back over to you.

Thank you for participating in our call today. I would like to invite all of you to participate in the 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, which will be held on Thursday, May 21, at 10 a.m. Mountain time. To practice social distancing, this year's meeting will be conducted virtually. We plan to issue a press release in a couple of weeks with instructions on how to listen online via the IDACORP website. We look forward to sharing updates and listening to our shareholders' questions and comments. We appreciate your continued interest in IDACORP, and we hope you have a great rest of your day and stay safe. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. We do thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.