Scott M. Prochazka
Analyst · Matt Tucker with KeyBanc Capital
Yes, Matt, I'll take a stab at this first and others may weigh in here, if need be. When we showed you consolidated utility CapEx in June, we showed a 2014 to '18 number of $6.2 billion on the low end and then $7.4 billion was the upside number we had shown. We've now redone our full 5-year capital plan to include '15 through '19 and that '15 through '19 number, which drops '14 adds '19 is now $7.4 billion. So that number, that new 5-year number is now at the top end of the range. So hopefully, that clarifies the capital piece, if Andrew's still listening, that may provide a little more clarity for him as well. You then asked about the growth in rate base. We had said that the rate base growth for the utilities would be, depending on which one you were looking at, somewhere around 7% to 10% or 8% to 10%. And then on the electric one, the new forecast, is it's at the higher end of that range, we describe it now at 8% to 10%. The gas utility rate base is still in that same range, it still falls in that same range. And what we had indicated around our earnings growth is that at the high end of this investment, we would be moving towards the top end or the higher end of our earnings growth range. We did not have a different earnings growth range number. We just said we would be striving towards the higher end. The dynamic that affects this growth rate on our earnings is -- there's a few of them. One is, that I think you told, we mentioned to you all, we have some high starting points for some of our utilities, either fully earning or in some cases, they were slightly above allowed returns and that affects the starting point of these -- of this growth rate. There certainly is a fair amount of regulatory lag, even though we have these mechanisms, since the time period is so short if you're investing all this capital, by the time you get to year 5, you've essentially financed all this capital but you don't have a good amount of that capital yet in rate base earning. Said another way, if you were to taper off capital or if capital were to taper off towards the end the earnings would improve, but you would be paying for that through reductions and earnings down the road because your capital investment had slowed down, so that is a factor. And then, the other factor is that over this period of time, there are some assumptions for some amount of equity issuance so that we maintain the right balance between debt and equity. So all 3 of those factors lead into the fact that the rate base growth is more than what we experienced on our earnings growth.