Rgc Resources Inc Q3 FY2021 Earnings Call

Good morning. I'm Paul Nester, President and CEO of RGC Resources, Incorporated. Thank you for joining us. We hope your Monday morning and your week is off to a good start. With me today are Tommy Oliver, our Chief Financial Officer; and David Garcia, our Director of Finance. Welcome again and thank you for joining us as we discuss our Fiscal 2021 Third Quarter Results. We do have a few administrative items to review. We have muted all lines and asked that all participants remain muted. After the presentation is completed, we will be happy to take questions. The link to today's presentation is available on the investor and financial information page of our website at www.rgcresources.com. Let's go ahead and get started. Over on Slide 1, our forward-looking statements disclaimer. This presentation does contain forecasts and projections. This morning's agenda is on Slide 2, we will review our third quarter and year-to-date operational and financial results, followed by our outlook for the fourth quarter and full-year 2021 results. We will conclude with an opportunity for you to ask questions. Moving on to Slide 3, we are pleased with the third quarter and year-to-date results of Roanoke Gas. Customer growth and delivered volumes are strong and capital spending is right on plan. As noted on Slide 3, our year-to-date customer growth number of 416 is 11% better than last year. We have previously discussed our new main miles. As expected, we completed another 1.7 miles in the third quarter bringing the year-to-date total to 5 miles, which exceeds fiscal 2020 by 2.7 times. Fiscal 2020, as a reminder, we only had 2.3 miles of new main extension. Moving on to Slide 4, third quarter firm volumes were similar to the prior year. Overall industrial volumes continue to be down, primarily due to the large customer that switched from natural gas to coal in 2020. This customer has in fact switched back to coal in 2021. However, many of our Top 10 industrial customers have increased their gas consumption in 2021 when compared to the prior year. On Slide 5, year-to-date firm volumes are up and stronger than weather norms; building suppliers, parts manufacturing, and consumer products manufacturing continue to have noticeable year-over-year increases. Let's review capital spending on Slide 6. We are $2 million lower than 2020, almost entirely due to project timing. The signature project in 2020, the Blue Ridge main extension had approximately $3.5 million of spending through the June quarter in 2020. Phase 2 of that project has kicked off in July of 2021. Two of our other key projects for 2021, the Carilion expansion support project and the Mason Station renewal are underway and should be complete by fiscal year-end. We would like to highlight our new business capital and this relates to those main extension miles we just discussed. New customer mains and services, the capital to support that has increased 54% from 2020 to $4.3 million. We're very happy with that. Tommy will now provide additional details of our financial results.

Thank you, Paul, and good morning everybody. To aid in this discussion, we have included our condensed consolidated statements of income on Slide 7. Let's start with our third quarter and year-to-date comparisons. Resources completed the third quarter of fiscal 2021 with earnings of $0.07 per diluted share, compared to $0.15 from the same quarter of the prior year. Year-to-date earnings were $1.23 per diluted share, compared to $1.34 for the prior period. Operating income increased by 15% quarter-to-quarter and 6% year-to-date, largely attributable to customer growth, SAVE revenues, and firm volumes. As Paul stated, we are very pleased with the performance of our Roanoke Gas subsidiary. The decline in net income and earnings per share for the two comparative periods is a result of the reduction in equity and earnings from the Mountain Valley joint venture, which was ceased in the second quarter, commensurate with limited growth construction. Let's review results from the trailing 12 months at June 30, 2021. As we discussed on our last quarter's earnings call, operating income was favorably impacted by customer growth, SAVE revenues, and firm volumes. However, this was offset by a prior year write-off of a regulatory asset, COVID-related bad debt, as well as maintenance initiatives in the last half of fiscal 2020. I’ll now take a moment to discuss the service disconnection moratorium. As we discussed in prior earnings calls, utilities in Virginia are operating under a moratorium, which prohibits disconnection of residential customers for non-payment. The moratorium will expire on August 30, 2021, absent action by the General Assembly, which is currently meeting in special session. At this juncture, an extension appears unlikely and we are planning accordingly. In addition, there is also a possibility that Roanoke Gas, along with other utilities in the State, will be allocated additional funds by the State to help our customers with arrearages. I will now turn it back over to Paul.

Thank you, Tommy. Let's discuss the remainder of fiscal 2021, starting with Roanoke Gas capital. We expect to end this fiscal year with total spending of $21.5 million. Momentum on main extensions and new customer additions is continuing through the fourth quarter, and we anticipate that trend to extend into the first quarter of fiscal 2022. Several key projects are currently underway. We have initiated the renewal of Mason Station, which is one of our older gate stations. This renewal is included in this year’s safe plan with a total project cost of approximately $750,000. We also mentioned Phase 2 in Blue Ridge, which involves a 6,800-foot main extension costing around $1 million, in addition to the previously discussed 5 miles. Some of the expenses for that project will carry over into the first quarter of fiscal 2022. Moving on, we want to provide a brief update on Mountain Valley. There have not been significant changes since the last quarter, which is a positive sign. Construction is still ongoing, and in our area of Virginia, upland work has been permitted. The construction season has been favorable, with hot and dry weather assisting the progress. There have been no changes in the status of the permits or any other legal matters since last quarter. The project budget remains unchanged, with a targeted in-service date in summer 2022. In conclusion, let's review our earnings guidance for this fiscal year. Year-to-date earnings per share is $1.23. However, we are still projecting our full-year earnings to fall in the range of $1.10 to $1.14, mainly due to the decline in equity and earnings associated with the Mountain Valley investment. Midstream year-to-date earnings per share is expected to be about $0.02, down from $0.04 in June. This is primarily due to the difference between interest expense on any investments and equity earnings in the fourth quarter. We also want to note that we might have the opportunity to make additional operating and maintenance expense investments in this fourth quarter, similar to last year. There may be a slight increase in bad debt expense as mentioned, and while we are not fully certain about the residential service moratorium disconnection process, we are preparing accordingly and managing our bad debt reserves in relation to that. More details will follow as we close out the fiscal year. That concludes our prepared remarks.

Good morning, everyone. How are you?

Good morning, Mike. How are you?

Doing good, sir. Yourself?

Doing well. Thank you for joining us.

My pleasure. Just two questions: the first, the large customer that switched back to coal, was that done strictly on price or was there another reason they decided to move off gas?

Yeah, it truly is an economic consideration, Michael. As you probably know, and recall last year in 2020, with the severe economic impact related to the pandemic, natural gas prices hit historic lows. In fact, at the Henry Hub, prices were well below $2 per decatherm. This manufacturer was able to enjoy that low cost last year as a part of their manufacturing process. As we know, the demand for natural gas significantly increased this year. We're in fact seeing Henry Hub prices over the $4 per decatherm range. So, they did in fact switch back to coal. Now, interestingly enough, there's also been pretty significant demand in the coal markets. Right now, the spot price for coal is also at a level that has not been seen in quite some time. So, we're watching that situation carefully. With this company, we have a great relationship with them. We do everything we can to support them and help them be successful, particularly with regard to their fuel choice.

Your comment on coal pricing was why I asked the question. I'm guessing you guys have a pretty good idea now, what the delta needs to be in terms of gas price versus the coal price for them to switch over. And with coal prices going up, that — it might be close to that switching point. The other thing I wanted to ask was on the service moratorium; that expires on what date? I apologize, the call got a little fuzzy there. I didn't catch the date.

Sorry about that, Michael. It's August 30, at the end of this month.

August 30. Got it. Okay. Alright, gentlemen. That's all I had. Thank you.

Thank you for your participation. We are open to answering a few more questions if anyone has any. It seems there are no additional questions, so we will conclude our third quarter earnings call. We appreciate your joining us, and we look forward to our discussion in December to review our full-year results. We wish you a great day and a wonderful week. Thank you.