Public Service Enterprise Group Inc Q3 FY2020 Earnings Call

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Sylvia and I am your event operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to today's conference, Public Service Enterprise Group Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session for members of the financial community. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, October 30, 2020 and will be available for telephone replay beginning at 1:00 P.M. Eastern Time today until 11:59 P.M. Eastern Time on November 5, 2020. It will also be available as an audio webcast on PSEG's corporate website at www.pseg.com.

Thank you, Sylvia. Good morning and thank you for participating in our earnings call. PSEG's third quarter 2020 earnings release attachments and slides detailing operating results by company are posted on our website at investor.pseg.com and our 10-Q will be filed shortly. The earnings release and other matters discussed during today's call contain forward-looking statements and estimates that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. We will discuss non-GAAP operating earnings and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA, which differ from net income as reported in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles in the United States. We include reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial measures and a disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements on our IR website and in today's earnings materials. I'll now turn the call over to Ralph Izzo, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of PSEG. Joining Ralph on today's call is Dan Cregg, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. At the conclusion of their remarks, there will be time for your questions. Ralph?

Thank you, Carlotta, and thank you all for joining us this morning. PSEG reported non-GAAP operating earnings for the third quarter of 2020 of $0.96 per share versus $0.98 per share in last year's third quarter. PSEG's GAAP results for the third quarter were $1.14 per share compared with $0.79 per share in the third quarter of 2019. Our results for the third quarter bring non-GAAP operating earnings for the year-to-date to $2.78 per share, up 5.3% compared to the $2.64 per share in the first months of 2019. This performance reflects the strong contribution from our regulated operations at PSE&G, cost controls at both the utility and PSEG Power, lower pension expense, and the favorable settlement of tax audits I mentioned last quarter. We delivered a solid quarter for PSE&G and PSEG Power. We are updating PSEG’s non-GAAP operating earnings guidance for 2020 to the range of $3.35 to $3.50 per share, which removes $0.05 per share from the lower end of our original guidance range. Last month, the New Jersey Board of Public Utility, I’ll refer to them as the BPU, approved the settlement as the energy efficiency component of our clean energy future filing. As you know, we proposed a comprehensive filing covering energy efficiency, energy cloud analytic vehicles, and storage in October of 2018 to help deliver on the goals of New Jersey’s Clean Energy Act. The BPU's decision on energy efficiency will enable PSE&G to invest $1 billion over three years to help bring universal access to energy efficiency for all New Jersey customers. These programs will lower customer bills, shrink the carbon footprint, and give them control over their energy resources.

Great. Thank you, Ralph, and good morning everybody. PSEG reported non-GAAP operating earnings for the third quarter of 2020 of $0.96 per share versus $0.98 per share in last year's third quarter. We provided you with information on slide 9 regarding contributions to non-GAAP operating earnings by business for the quarter and slide 10 contains a waterfall chart that takes you through the net changes quarter over quarter in non-GAAP operating earnings by major business and I will now review each company in more detail starting with PSE&G. PSE&G reported net income of $0.61 per share for the third quarter of 2020 compared with net income of $0.68 per share for the third quarter of 2019 as shown on slide 14. The utility's third quarter results reflected ongoing growth from our investment programs offset by certain items largely reflecting tax adjustments that are timing in nature. For the year-to-date period, PSE&G results are on track to achieve our full-year guidance driven by revenue growth from ongoing capital investment programs, lower pension expense, and cost control. Investment in transmission added $0.04 per share to third quarter net income. Electric margin was a penny per share favorable compared to the year earlier quarter driven by higher weather-normalized residential volumes mostly offset by lower commercial and industrial demand. Summer 2020 weather was a penny per share ahead of the weather experienced in the third quarter of 2019. O&M expense was $0.03 unfavorable versus the third quarter of 2019 primarily reflecting our internal labor costs from Tropical Storm Isaias and timing of certain maintenance activities, partly offset by the reversal of certain COVID-19 related costs recognized in prior quarters. In July, the BPU authorized PSE&G to defer certain expenses incurred because of the COVID-19 pandemic. To reflect that order, PSE&G deferred certain COVID-19 related O&M and gas bad debt expense previously recorded and established a corresponding regulatory asset of approximately $0.05 for future recovery. Largely offsetting this timing item, PSE&G reversed a $0.04 accrual of revenue under the weather normalization clause for the collection of lower gas margins resulting from warmer than normal winter earlier in the year due to recovery limitations under that clause's earnings test. Distribution-related depreciation lowered net income by a penny per share, and non-operating pension expense was a penny per share favorable compared with last year's third quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session for members of the financial community. Your first question comes from Jeremy Tonet from JP Morgan.

Good morning.

Good morning, Jeremy.

Just want to start off with offshore wind, if that's okay, and just want to see as the recent commentary on seeing delays on some of their U.S. based onshore projects influence your thinking and your involvement here and do you have any thoughts on some of the feedback that's received in New Jersey, some negative feedback recently?

So I think, Jeremy, that given the fact that this is an industry in its infancy, candidly all of us expected there to be regulatory delays, and the issue that I think you're referring to in the state of New Jersey was just over the extent to which offshore wind would help grow the economy. In something as new as this, the expectations for job growth versus the delivery of job growth and the pace at which it is happening are not in complete alignment. But the direction is completely aligned. So the state remains committed to growing the industry. First, it remains committed to supporting its project with the hiring practices that it put forth in its solicitation, and I think it's just a case of people needing to talk to each other more often about how much and how fast, but there is no dispute over what direction it's going.

Got it. That makes sense. So it sounds like this wouldn't influence your appetite for participating in future rounds of bids for offshore wind, like the one that's expected too?

No. That's correct. We've maintained that if we assume the 25% equity position, we would only do so with the expectation of participating in future solicitation. We would not be particularly interested in knowing just the one-off project.

Got it. Understood and just as switching gears here do you have any thoughts on the delayed BPU FRR evaluation here and do you have any thoughts on what some of the drivers of the delay could be and do you have any sense on how the FRR study could impact your ZEC application?

Well yes, this is. I want to make sure everyone hears this clearly and quotes me and gets this back to the BPU. I have to commend the BPU on the schedule they've maintained in what has been a very ambitious agenda. I mean when you think about all they've accomplished, getting the first offshore completed, getting the second one out the door, and initiating the analysis of the FRR, really the critical period for New Jersey is that when the offshore wind projects go commercial in 2024 and that will be all one thousand megawatts. That will be a fraction of that to not have to pay twice for capacity. The PJM capacity auction is not likely to take place until at best late in 2021, probably in 2022. So to my knowledge, the BPU process is really on the schedule that the staff laid out that sometimes by the end of this year, early next year they'll get their consultants' report out, and then they'll consider whether they need legislation. We don't think that they do, but it depends on the design. So I'd say, Jeremy, that they're in pretty good shape to avoid this double capacity payment by the 2024 auction at this point.

Got it. That is very helpful. I'll leave it there. Thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Julien Dumoulin-Smith from Bank of America.

Hey good morning team. Thanks for the time. Appreciate it. Hey good morning and thanks for the clarity there a second ago. Crystal clear. So I wanted to come back to this though how are you thinking about strategic decisions on the nuclear business as a sense today and I'd be curious if a sale or spin would be something that you all would be amenable to and I'm sure you all are familiar with some of the media reports out there so just want to get ahead of that and try to see if that's a part of your considerations one way or another?

So Julien, there were two reasons why we opted to simply focus on our non-nuclear assets. Number one was to further solidify what we believe to be a strong ESG position and secondly, as you know, we are in the process, as Dan and I just discussed, of filing for round two of the ZEC process, and we didn't think it was fair to New Jersey or the BPU to undertake ZEC process and not know who the eventual owners of nuclear might be. So we're more than happy to own and operate nuclear plants if they are meeting the state's energy needs, if they are moving the state towards its carbon aspirations, and this is a critical and third condition: they are economically viable. Those plants are not economically viable without the ZEC and in fact, I can't go into details because the financials that we submitted are confidential, but they actually need more than $10 per megawatt hour. We were willing to operate them at $10 per megawatt hour because we do think that the direction of public policy, both in New Jersey and in the nation, is the increased recognition of the importance of carbon-free energy to mitigate climate change and that value will eventually be more fully recognized. So in the absence of that payment, then we wouldn't be able to operate those plants, and that's an old story. That's been going on for at least three or four years now. I'm not familiar with any media reports you're referring to so I'm not going to be able to comment on that but I'm sure that there will be constant attention to this regulatory process.

Got it. Okay. That's clear enough and just in terms of the disclosures that you're providing to the BPU, there has obviously been a lot of discussion about transparency in the need for nuclear support across a variety of states. I'm sure you're aware. Can you talk about how this go-around might differ from the last initial request for ZEC, especially from a disclosure perspective? And I understand it may not necessarily all be public either, but I'm just curious if you can elaborate a little bit.

Well, so as you know, there are two main differences in round two versus round one, and then I'll turn it over to Dan for a second. In round two, we have the ability of the BPU to set a number between zero and ten, whereas in round one it was either zero or ten. Also, in round two there's a much more transparent public process that we think is great for everyone. There will be a preliminary decision in December followed by evidentiary hearings, response to the preliminary decision, and the final decision in April. So I think that that's great because, look, those plants are necessary as we pointed out, they save consumers almost $200 million a year, $175 million a year over 10 years, they eliminate 13 million tons of carbon a year, they provide employment for 1,600 PSEG employees, 5,000 employees in general, but the reality is at the current advantages enjoyed by natural gas in the absence of a price on carbon and at the subsidized levels for renewables, which are far above the cost of nuclear, they are under tremendous economic disadvantages and you don't have to do a very sophisticated analysis. NEI published what the average cost is of operating a nuclear plant and it's about $30 per megawatt hour. And in fact, if you look at what round-the-clock prices are doing and add capacity to it, it's around $30 per megawatt hour. So unless you think that companies should invest over a billion dollars a year for zero return, those plants are not reliable. And then, of course, the last attribute, in addition to their carbon-free energy, is they are baseload workforces, and despite our enthusiasm for wind and solar, mother nature doesn't answer to us, and the dispatchability of those resources, we all know screams for the need for battery storage or some storage mechanism, and that just adds additional economic pain to customers above and beyond what they're already experiencing. So, nuclear is a good slam dunk winner, and I'm sure the regulatory process will bear that out.

Yes, Julien, I think Ralph said everything I would have said about it and just the about the process and how everything runs. The only other thing I would add is just as we go into this process, we're in a more challenging price environment. So things have, from the standpoint of the environment that the facilities are in, from a market environment, you've got continued declining forward prices and incremental zero-cost energy that's coming online. So it is more challenging economically than it's been in the past. So we'll go through the process that Ralph described in the next six months or so.

Great. Excellent. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of an unidentified analyst from Guggenheim Partners.

Hi good morning. It's actually stepping in. Thanks for the very comprehensive update and just wanted to kind of follow up on some of your thinking on the infrastructure programs and kind of the clean energy future programs just interpretive kind of longevity at the current CapEx levels. How would those kind of programs help New Jersey reach the broader policy goals in the same line of thinking, kind of how long the runway is going to speak for the infrastructure programs like the VSMP and so forth?

Good questions. Two are related but slightly different answers. On the kind of traditional infrastructure programs, remember what we're doing there is we're not building new infrastructure to meet new demand, which was the primary thesis for utilities for many, many decades in the better part of the entire 20th century. In our case, we're having to replace an aging infrastructure, not because of a growth in demand, but because of a variety of factors including increased reliance upon electricity for our way of life and more extreme weather conditions driven by what we believe to be climate change, others may choose that other beliefs. So that aging infrastructure replacement program is essentially perpetual because we cannot replace that aging infrastructure in just a few short years. It would just be prohibitively expensive. So you get in this position where, as was the case for our gas system modernization program, even at the $400 million a year that we're currently spending, we have another 20 years' worth of work to do. Since we started that program 10 years ago, we will then have our newest pipe be 30 years old, and some of the pipe that's currently 50 years old will be 70 years old by that point. The same can be said about our transmission system and our substations. As you probably know, we haven't even touched the last mile of our electric system. We have done this double-digit or near-double-digit growth rate in our regulated utility, focused primarily on cast iron gas main transmission and electric substations, and now with the increased dependence of residential customers on reliability, which we think will have a post-COVID permanency to it. We do things that increase reliability to the home, that last mile is going to become increasingly important. So there is interest in New Jersey around helping the state recover from its current economic downturn by accelerating some of that infrastructure replacement work and doing more in the way of kind of stimulus activities because it is essential work. That could lead us to perhaps deviating at least in the short term from what is the one and only controlling limitation to the amount of investment that's required, and that's the impact on the customer bill. As you may be aware, we have steadfastly tried to pace ourselves so that our clause recovery and our formula rate treatment at FERC, plus recovering the state now formula rate treatment at FERC, allows us to make this infrastructure replacement yet allow the bill to kind of move up that CPI. A bill that, by the way, is 30% below where it was 10 years ago in nominal terms and 40% below where it was 10 years ago in real terms. So stimulus might allow us to break that rule a little bit and just recognizing that if you take customers' utility bills from 3% of the disposable income to 3.06% of their disposable income, that's a price worth paying to put people to work and make some major infrastructure improvements. Separate and apart from that, though, is the question you asked about the clean energy future, and that's a different set of circumstances. In our case, where we're choosing to focus is on energy efficiency, which I call the quadruple winner. It is 8 million less tons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere so the environment loves it. There are lower bills for customers who participate and in fact there's a net savings to the whole customer base of $1 billion. So customers are smiling. There are over 4,000 jobs that we think we can create so the economy smiles and our shareholders are getting a 9.6% ROE with contemporaneous return on investment, and it's a phenomenal investment opportunity, and opens up a whole new definition of rate base for us, one that I am firmly convinced the state will be eager to continue beyond the three years of the program. In fact, if you look at the $1 billion three-year grant that a lot of approval we received, that's actually a faster run rate in the initial period than the $2.5 billion six-year program that we had originally proposed. Now that for the state's aspiration for other clean technologies such as offshore wind and solar, that is a different story. That is far more expensive and will have to rely upon the price curve coming down and technology bending that price down and the state pacing its appetite for that so as to not overburden the consumer, but in terms of the areas that we're involved with, I have a high degree of confidence that there's very strong support for continuing those.

That's definitely well appreciated. Jumping again to follow up a little bit on kind of the fossil asset sales, kind of the process and some of the thoughts around it. I mean, it's obviously a pretty good set of assets in the market and there's kind of the equity part of the price tag is definitely going to be sidewall just kind of given the fact that there's not much leverage on the business. Curious to get some of your thoughts on capital recycling and kind of what the priority would be for reinvestment buybacks and kind of how to keep it all efficient.

Yes. So it's a great question and you're right. If you take a look at power, it is not very heavily levered. There is about $2.4 billion right now debt outstanding, and by the time we get to the end of a potential transaction, you would see about a billion that would be redeemed at that point. So about a billion four. And I agree with your commentary. If you think about the quality of the assets that we're talking about, that would provide some more than sufficient capital, one would think, to take care of that debt. So yes, you would think about the repayment of that debt. I mean, first and foremost, you would think about having excess capital, and I would say really general corporate purposes is what is normally conveyed, and I think that's the right conveyance here. I think that we've talked about an existing capital program that's in place. We talked about the potential for some incremental capital identification. We have always gone through our five-year plan with a declining capital forecast, and by the time we get to the end of that five years, there are other opportunities that we've seen on the other side and whether some of that could be something from a stimulus perspective coming out of this economic impact that we've seen from COVID, this is to be seen. So I think the continued deployment of capital into the utility is the first place that we would look to, and then to the extent there's excess, we would weigh that against incremental potential opportunities for capital as well as some kind of a return to the extent that those opportunities didn't exist from it. It could be dividends, it could be buybacks, so not out of the question but certainly not first and foremost on the list.

Thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Durgesh Chopra from Evercore.

Good morning team. Thank you for taking my question. Ralph, I'd like to follow up on the conservation efficiency program. What is the purpose of it? Does it protect you from potential lost revenues due to storms or situations like COVID? Could you explain that? Additionally, is this a pilot program that requires a filing every other year, or is it essentially a permanent initiative at this point?

Well, Dan will answer the question about how often to make the filing, but I do know that whenever we file, we get we don't suffer any lag associated with that, but I forget it for six or twelve months. What I was referring to and hopefully I'm answering your question, if not just nudge me back in the right direction, is look, the city of New York, as an example, we have a dual 26KV distribution loops into the city because we have commercial centers that have thousands of employees who come here every day and expect the lights to be on, the air conditioning to run, and the computer systems to operate. They are not here now. There are four of us in the office today and most of our employees are working from home. Well, the level of reliability they have in their homes is quite different than the level of reliability that we have feeding this building, and it's not because it's the PSEG building, that's just typical of businesses in New York area. So if now the home is going to become the place where not only you eat and sleep, but you work, you fill up your gas tank so to speak. You energize your vehicle. You charge all of your information tools; your phone, your computers, that grid is not prepared to deliver the kind of reliability that people will expect when another Isaias hits or another Super Storm Sandy or just the typical Northeast thunderstorm. So the investment in the last mile, what I'm talking about there is the overhead system, will need to be made if the economy is not to come to a grinding halt during your fairly routine storm events that we have nowadays, and I'm not calling Sandy a routine event, but as we've seen in some parts of the country, whether it's what's going on in the Gulf or what we have had in the past in the Northeast, we are getting more intense weather events and you can't have people who just stop work for three to five days if they have that weather event when they're working from home. So that's what I was referring to, and I think policymakers are really plugging into that. Now we will benefit from AMI and our ability to identify outages at the individual customer location, and regrettably, New Jersey does not have that capability now, but I do believe our BPU commissioners understand the importance of that, and I'm hopeful and optimistic we can resolve that in just a few short months, but Dan, did you want to talk a little bit about how we file for the same?

Yes. So if you think about what New Jersey is trying to get at from an energy efficiency program standpoint, it is a step change from where we have been historically and I think it will literally catapult the state to among the best in the country with respect to energy efficiency programs, and so if you think about a program of that magnitude, it's important from the utility perspective as it pursues that there is some kind of a form of lost revenue recovery, and that's what was in the filing that has been a topic of the discussion that we have gone through as we've gone through the process, and where we ended up was really borrowing from something that the gas utilities largely had in place historically, and that's the CIP, the conservation center program. So it is we talked about a little bit in our prepared remarks; it is an annual filing. It would begin into 2021 if you think about let the program get up and running as we implement the lost revenue recovery for the program that we're talking about. So it would start June for the electric side of the business and October for the gas side of the business; you think about the seasonality of those businesses, it's a very logical way to do it and it will be an annual filing. It is not a lag-oriented filing. Basically, it's going to cover the changes from the baseline year that you have. I think the way to think about that is the last rate case from the usage perspective, and will essentially be put in place to be able to recover the shortfalls or provide the excess back to basically bring back to a more stable rather than stream. So I think we ended up in a very good place there.

Thanks there, Dan. I just want to be clear. Does that only cover lost revenues from efficiency programs or does it cover lost revenues from weather-related changes or perhaps lost revenues from storms and other events?

Yes it is more broad than the energy efficiency. So it's going to cover broader lost revenues in fact, if you think about our gas, weather normalization clause that will essentially be suspended against the backdrop of this. This will kind of supersede that. It's broader.

Excellent. That's super constructive. Then maybe just a quick follow-up on the fossil transactions. Does the, and I appreciate you launched the process here last quarter knowing the elections around the corner but does the potential tax rate change impact your thinking at all? Does it matter for that transaction for the non-nuclear potential sale transaction?

Yes I mean, look obviously it will have an impact on the dollars that flow out of what happens but it will not change the bottom line intent and nature of where we are headed. I think that's the simplest way to say.

Thanks guys. I appreciate the time.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of an unidentified analyst from Morgan Stanley.

Hey good morning. Thanks for taking my question.

Hi David.

Could you give an update, a status update on the transmission discussion that's going on with the BPU?

Yes. David, unfortunately can’t say much more than what we did in our initial remarks because they are confidential. I do think that there is still a lot of goodwill and good intent on the part of all parties. So it's a three-person conversation. It's us, the BPU, and the Consumer Advocate, the ratepayer advocate, and clearly what motivates our colleagues in the BPU and the ratepayer advocate is providing immediate relief to New Jersey consumers in the form of lower rates, in particular exacerbated by COVID-19 challenges. What motivates us is removing some uncertainty over where things could end up if we went to FERC. And we've closed a significant difference in points of view from when we first started talking, but there still is a small gap between us. Whether or not we can resolve that, I really do I remain hopeful, but I can't say for sure that we will. So we're still talking to each other, and I think that's a positive thing, and the gap is small - that's a positive thing, but it's not done, and I don't want to violate the confidentiality of it by saying anymore.

Understood. Thanks for that update, and I was just curious if you could touch on the gas utility side of the business, your thoughts on the long-term maybe vision for that business and how you're thinking about it in the context of on your side taking an EG step in the sale of some of the merchant assets and then also in the context of the state moving aggressively over time to reduce its gas consumption.

Yes. We often receive this question, and while I appreciate the interest, it ranks low on my list of concerns. The state, under one of the most environmentally focused governors, is urging us to invest in the gas distribution system primarily to address methane leakage from an aging infrastructure. Methane has a much greater impact on climate change than carbon dioxide, being about 28 times more potent over a century. We are committed to maintaining the current natural gas infrastructure, especially since over 90% of New Jersey households rely on natural gas for cooking and heating. Transitioning away from this would cost about $10,000 per household, especially after many recently switched from oil due to energy security and pollution issues. This change isn’t feasible in the short term. I firmly believe that to effectively address climate change, we need to take a more proactive approach as a nation, and the relatively low-emission nature of natural gas encourages advancements in carbon capture technologies. Moving away from this resource, which is free of sulfur dioxide, mercury, and fine particulate matter, creates a strong case for developing carbon capture solutions. I don't anticipate significant new pipeline construction, although gas plants will continue to exist. It’s likely that natural gas will remain a primary energy source for heating homes and cooking for many years. Furthermore, considering that our electric system is still largely driven by fossil fuels, particularly in New Jersey's fossil fuel-heavy PJM sector, the inefficiency of converting two-thirds of energy content into electricity and then using that electricity for heating and cooking is environmentally wasteful. If we were to convert that energy directly to heat in homes, we'd retain much more energy. Long-term, I believe that improvements in carbon capture and storage will enhance our energy efficiency.

Great. Thanks so much.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Lapides from Goldman Sachs.

Hey guys, first of all congrats on a good quarter. Second, two questions. One is New Jersey specific and trying to think about what has to happen to have a more significant extent expansion of batteries or storage in New Jersey. Is it a price point question, meaning a cost question? Is it a kind of a market design or a regulatory design and construct question? Would love your thoughts, Ralph.

I just think it's a question of how much is on the plate right now, Michael. I mean the state has in its Clean Energy Act passed in May of '18 a financial law in May of '18 a 600 megawatt goal for battery storage next year I guess I think it's by the end of the year, and of course we're nowhere near that. But when you're spending $98 and $0.10 for offshore wind, when your solar renewable energy credits at $220 and your transition program for solar renewable energy is that I think 150 or 175 per megawatt hour, there's just so much you're willing to put on the customer's plate. So battery storage has gotten the sort of lower priority with some of the core things further along in, and I mentioned one of them before AMI is something that is just screaming to be implemented, not only because of the operational benefits it provides but because of the consumer benefits it provides in terms of helping the customer understand where they are in their bills during a month as opposed to waiting to the end of the month, what it might mean for us in terms of more granular data and being able to do energy efficiency in ways we never did before. So I just think that battery storage is falling victim to some other priorities.

Got it. And then one other, Ralph, with the election next week, obviously one of the candidates has been very open about talking about higher corporate income tax rates. How do you think about what that means not just for PSEG, especially as you become less focused on the non-regulated business, but also what it means for the customer on the customer bill and the pace of change in that bill?

Well, as you know, the regulated business has traditionally been able to account for taxes, and higher taxes will indeed lead to a larger bill impact. However, I believe we might be getting ahead of ourselves on this topic, and I certainly don’t want to make any predictions about what may happen on Tuesday. Dan, do you have any thoughts on this? I'm sensing that we've taken up a lot of time, and people may have other commitments, so Dan, would you like to respond?

Yes Michael, like I would just say look the first thing that needs to happen is it needs to get enacted and so it'll take some time for that to happen and then when it does, as Ralph says yes the kind of statutory rate will pass through on a normal basis but you'll also have right now what you're seeing is the flow back of excess deferred, going back and there are some restrictions on what can happen for certain of those excess deferred taxes and there is flexibility on others of those deferred taxes. So that's I think the other part of it. The other thing I would say is that it's very simple to think about a change in tax regime as being the corporate tax rate changes by X percent, underlying that there’s usually a whole host of other changes and those things can have pretty considerable impacts from a cash perspective, positive or negative, so both to the company and to the customer. So the devil's in the details, and there's usually a lot of details beyond just that headline rate that can have impacts up and down to both sides of the equation.

Got it. Thank you. Much appreciate it, guys.

Thanks Michael.

I think we are going to close right now and I would be remiss if I didn't simply say thank you to all of you for joining us and extending my sincere hope that all of you are safe and your families and friends are safe, healthy, and free of this dreaded virus and its impacts. And also to say to each of you that know of someone or have any kind of relationship with someone who's on the front line as a healthcare provider assisting with this clear second wave and spike in this virus to extend our thanks as a company to those individuals who are doing that, whether that's in our operating region or elsewhere. And I know that we thank our employees every day for providing the services that enable those frontline workers to do their job. I suspect we'll see many of you in a couple of weeks at EEI virtually. Be safe on Halloween. Protect your kids. Wear your mask, wash your hands, and keep safe distance, and thanks again. See you soon, folks.

Thanks everybody.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.