Earnings Call Transcript - NWE Q4 2023

Brian Bird, CEO

Thanks, Travis. The first slide here, we talk about recent highlights. We just had two days of Board meetings. And one of the recent highlights was our ability to serve our customers in a cold snap in the middle of January. And really, that cold snap will demonstrate two things. One, it demonstrates our need for capacity. So the importance of the Yellowstone County plant and the incremental coal strip that we'll be adding on 1/1/26 is the first thing. The second thing is just a fantastic coordination of our operating folks to serve our customers when they need it most. That means days of minus 45-degree weather, very, very proud of our team and our ability to serve our customers. So the points on this particular page, recent highlights, reported GAAP diluted EPS of $3.22 for the year and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $3.27. We're affirming our 2024 diluted EPS guidance of $3.42 to $3.62. We're also affirming our long-term five-year rate base and earnings per share growth rate targets of 4% to 6%. And I'd also like to point out we had unanimous approval of multi-party rate review settlements. In Montana, both our electric and natural gas rate reviews. In South Dakota, our electric rate review. We completed the second and final phase of the holding company reorganization on January 1, 2024, certainly can't overlook the monumental task that was and the great work throughout our company to make that happen. And we have also declared a dividend for the quarter of $0.65 per share payable March 9, 2024, to shareholders of record as of March 15, 2024. Lastly, a recent highlight for us, certainly, you talked about it before, but Northwestern is celebrating 100 powerful years. You may recall back in 2012, Montana Power celebrated its 100-year anniversary and our proud companies coming together have now collectively been serving our customers in our service territories for over 100 years. If I move forward to the next page, I think about the great outcomes we had in 2023, particularly the rate reviews and clarity associated with earnings growth on a going forward basis. It still surprises me to see a 5% dividend yield in terms of that clarity. But with that, here's where we sit today, and a base capital plan with a 4% to 6% EPS growth rate based upon capturing the value of $2.5 billion of investment provides a total return opportunity of 9% to 11%, which is fantastic. You can put on top of that opportunities we're focusing on and trying to capture in our plan associated with accretive EPS projects related to FERC transmission, incremental generation capacity, trying to buy out certain power purchase agreements and QF facilities and lastly, electrification supporting economic development, many projects associated with that, that we continue to stay focused on. Being able to capture any of those pushes us over 11% total return. We feel very good about the opportunities for this company on a going forward basis. There's still a slight surprise we sit here today with a 5-plus dividend yield. With that, I'm going to pass it to Crystal.

Crystal Lail, CFO

Thank you, Brian, spoken like a former CFO, as always. So good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our year-end financial performance here. Brian was highlighting what felt like a year of a lot of execution, and I can tell you on my side of the house, all of that led to the financial performance that we're closing out here, we're going to speak to. Highlighting specifically the element of regulatory execution, and that theme will continue throughout my remarks regarding our financial performance. As Brian mentioned, closing out the quarter on a non-GAAP basis, we reported EPS of $1.38 in Q4 of 2023, that's versus $1.13 in the fourth quarter of 2022. For a full-year perspective on 2023, on a non-GAAP basis, we delivered $3.27 and that's versus $3.18 in 2022. Moving to Slide 7 for a bit more detail. A significant driver of that incurred performance is $0.18 on the margin line in Q4, reflecting the impacts of our regulatory execution, that's both on base rates and also our tracking mechanisms. Think about that as both the supply PCCAM impact and also our property tax tracker. In addition, we have $0.11 of the improvement in income taxes versus the prior period, driven by the release of a tax reserve, which is adjusted out and we'll talk about that in more detail in a minute here. And then impacts of the Montana rate review. But notably, I would mention that financial performance overall in Q4 was a bit stronger than we had expected, driven by final clarity in the Montana rate review related to ultimately the PCCAM piece and retroactivity of that as well as income taxes. We always have estimates in our numbers regarding the impact of property taxes that are collected through our bills in Montana and had a bit of favorability there too. Moving to Slide 8. As always, we quantify for you how we think about weather and how that impacted our results. We certainly see volumetric swings there. The year 2023 versus 2022 definitely shows a $0.09 swing in weather from favorable weather in 2022, with a $0.03 that we backed out, and here in Q4 of 2023, it was relatively warm. We saw a $0.06 of unfavorable weather this year. So versus normal, Q4 has $0.06 of unfavorable added back compared to last year’s $0.03 of favorable, leading to a $0.09 swing in our performance related to weather. In addition, the release of the tax reserve related to final adjustments is consistent with how we've handled these types of adjustments in the past. So $3.2 million there or $0.05 adjusted out on a fourth-quarter basis leads to significant improvement over the prior period of $1.38 on a non-GAAP basis versus $1.13 last year, marking a 22% improvement. Moving to full-year financial performance on Slide 11, driven by thematically the same types of things as Q4, $0.20 of improvement overall before share count dilution was driven by regulatory execution, recovering our costs that we need to serve customers and also improving our earned returns. That margin improvement was the most significant portion of that, offset by a $0.16 swing in weather. We also see across the industry the impacts of higher depreciation, higher interest rates, and of course, inflationary impacts on O&M that we are working hard to manage. This overall improvement of $0.20 versus 2022 was offset by $0.23 of share count dilution on a full-year basis. Moving to Slide 11 for more detail on the margin impact, which is critical to how we think about the business going forward. Execution of the Montana rate review impacted the first three columns on Slide 11, including the increase to base rates and adjustments to our tracking mechanisms, including the PCCAM and the property tax tracker. Notably, I've talked about the PCCAM mechanism in our earnings call frequently. Recall that last year, we were discussing an unfavorable impact of $7.2 million to us in 2022 and here in 2023, the adjustment yields a favorable impact of $7 million. This reflects a significant swing versus the detriment last year to favorability in 2023, with the 2023 PCCAM adjustment reporting an amount related to the Montana rate review that was favorable at about $3.1 million. Offsetting that improvement was unfavorable weather that drove lower volumes. So you can see now a significant improvement overall at the margin line. Slide 12 again shows how we depict and quantify the weather impact. For 2023, we experienced $0.05 of unfavorable weather affecting us, whereas last year we had $0.11 of favorable, leading to a year-over-year unfavorable swing of $0.16 in terms of overall numbers. Overall performance here, I would also mention a tax item in Q1 that was adjusted out and the tax item in Q4, those two net to zero. On an overall basis, strong performance in 2023 resulting in an adjusted non-GAAP basis with $3.20 versus $3.18 in 2022, which reflects a 2.8% improvement. This closes out my comments on earnings for 2023. Again, in the face of unfavorable weather and timing of rates, the most significant piece is working with our commissions on regulatory execution to drive important improvement in our earnings results and what we deliver to shareholders. Importantly, as I slide to the balance sheet, we ended 2023 at 13.4% FFO and have a clear path in 2024 to exceed 14% and maintain that in their financial plans. We have also affirmed our strong credit ratings in Q4 as we worked with the rating agencies ahead of our legal holding company reorganization. Our 2024 financing plans include no equity, so a significant capital plan here to invest and serve our customers will be supported by debt issuances, which includes some refinancing and a manageable financing plan to support that capital structure, leaving us where we need to be and importantly, in a position of strength moving forward.

Brian Bird, CEO

I'll close with a final comment here. South Dakota electric rate review had our filing in June of last year, and after working with the South Dakota Commission, we received approval of our settlement and implemented final rates on January 10, 2024. We have a very strong relationship with the South Dakota Commission and staff. They are fair regulators who hold us to a high standard, but they also appreciate the efficiency with which we work through rate cases. The final adjustment is a $21.5 million adjustment for rate relief. The most critical piece here is that we managed O&M during that period, which we discussed with the commission. It includes significant investment in the state, including a gas peaker similar to Yellowstone that was constructed during COVID, completed on time and under budget, serving our customers, showing the importance of reliability. All in all, a good process with the South Dakota Commission that will have an impact reflected in our 2024 guidance. Finally, we've completed a legal restructuring and received approval to finalize our holding company, a structure similar to what most of our peers are legally structured. This reorganization will not create any differences in our financing strategy moving forward. I'll turn it back to Brian for concluding remarks.

Operator, Operator

We'll take our first question from Paul Fremont at Ladenburg.

Paul Fremont, Analyst

I noticed that the new entities are not detailed in your 2023 10-K. When you file your FERCs in April, will you be able to present the Montana utility separately from the non-Montana properties, or will that be addressed in 2024?

Crystal Lail, CFO

Our segments will continue to be electric and gas. Obviously, we've separated the two utilities and have that level of detail in the FERC filings indeed. You should be able to see the separation between Montana assets and South Dakota assets in electric and gas. If you have more specific accounts, we can help you through those offline, but you should see that breakout. The transition of the separation of assets legally occurred on January 2nd, and you'll see more footnote disclosure in our 10-Q filings starting with Q1.

Paul Fremont, Analyst

And then with respect to South Dakota, is there an agreed-upon level of return on equity for AFUDC calculations?

Crystal Lail, CFO

There is, but I don't know if it's public. The South Dakota Commission usually prefers a black box approach to settlements. We are focused on reaching a revenue number that supports an earned return aligned with our expectations. However, the Commission may take a lower approach to ROE while still allowing total revenue recovery. Mr. Meyer is assisting me here by holding up a sign indicating the AFUDC rate, which seems a little…

Operator, Operator

Well, the AFUDC rate is 6.4%. So we do have it disclosed in the 10-K in the section on our property, plant, and equipment. The rate is 6.4% for AFUDC in Montana.

Crystal Lail, CFO

That's based on what we recorded in 2023. I don't expect to change that in 2024.

Paul Fremont, Analyst

And it's about the same rate in Montana too, that same 6.4%. And then has the EPA gone any further on the proposed emission standards that you had talked about on some of your earlier calls? Where do things stand on that?

Brian Bird, CEO

Paul, we are still waiting. I understand there is still some time before we hear from the EPA. I think it will be weeks, if not months.

Operator, Operator

We will take our next question from a line that ends in 5990. Looks like area code 347.

Sophie Karp, Analyst

This is Sophie Karp, KeyBanc. Congrats on the strong results and all the regulatory achievements. Maybe I can just ask you a conceptual question here. First, Brian and Crystal, you guys mentioned all of the good things you've accomplished, and you're surprised to see the 5% dividend yield, and we are too. So I'm curious, what do you think is missing from the story? What do you glean from conversations with investors?

Brian Bird, CEO

I certainly understand as we've taken steps, addressing balance sheet concerns. I believe you'll see in 2024 a 14-plus FFO with that issue. We still have a slightly high dividend payout ratio, and as we continue to grow earnings at a faster clip, we'll deal with this issue. I think there is some sort of fire discount on our shares. But with the outcomes we've received and execution of our plan, I don't understand why we would be trading where we are trading, and I'll leave it at that, Sophie.

Sophie Karp, Analyst

And then maybe real quick on the Montana elections that we will be watching at some point. What are your thoughts on the trends that line up, and to the extent you can comment on how you see this development?

Brian Bird, CEO

I learned a long time ago to avoid discussing politics. However, I will mention that we will have two new commissioners in Montana. President Brown has stated his intention to run for another state office, and Commissioner Donald will be terming out, which confirms there will be two new commissioners. Commissioner Fielder is also running. While I won't comment on their opponents, it is clear there will be two new commissioners. From our standpoint, we need to demonstrate to those taking over that our actions are in the best interests of our customers. We are making investments for our shareholders, and it is important for them to recognize this. They have made it clear in the recent rate review that they understand the need to find the right balance as well. We appreciate their awareness and will continue collaborating with all stakeholders to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

Operator, Operator

With that, we'll give it just another minute here, but we don't want to have any other calls or hands in the queue. All right. With that, I'll hand it back to Brian for some closing thoughts.

Brian Bird, CEO

First of all, certainly acknowledging we think from share performance, we should be doing better. I also want to reach out and thank all of you. We continue to follow the stock, and all of you who are certainly invested. We certainly think about your best interests here as well, and hopefully, that improved performance will meet your expectations. Thank you very much.

Operator, Operator

Have a great day.