00:02 Good morning and welcome to CenterPoint Energy's Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call with Senior Management. During the company's prepared remarks, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. There will be a question-and-answer session after management's remarks. [Operators Instruction] 00:23 I will now turn the call over to Jackie Richert, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Ms. Richert?

00:30 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to CenterPoint 's earnings conference call. Dave Lesar, our CEO; and Jason Wells, our CFO will discuss the company's fourth quarter and full-year 2021 results. Management will discuss certain topics that will contain projections and other forward-looking information and statements that are based on management's beliefs, assumptions, and information currently available to management. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. 01:00 Actual results could differ materially based upon various factors as noted in our Form 10-K, other SEC filings, and our earnings materials. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements. We will be discussing non-GAAP measures on today’s call. This will be the last quarter in which we will discuss utility EPS, which is a non-GAAP adjusted diluted earnings per share guidance measure. 01:27 Utility EPS excludes earnings from midstream among other exclusions. When providing guidance for 2022, we will release the non-GAAP EPS measure of adjusted diluted earnings per share on a consolidated basis referred to as non-GAAP EPS. Jason Wells will provide further details. 01:47 For information on our guidance methodology and a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures used in providing guidance please refer to our earnings news release and presentation, both of which can be found under the Investors section on our website. As a reminder, we may use the website to announce material information. This call is being recorded. Information on how to access the replay can be found on our website. 02:11 Now, I’d like to turn the discussion over to Dave.

02:16 Thank you, Jackie. Good morning and thanks to all of you for joining us for our fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. As we wrap up a very busy 2021 at CenterPoint, I’ll run through our annual highlights and headlines. To say the least, it’s been quite a year. First, we continue to build on our consistent track record of earnings delivery with now seven straight quarters of execution by the current management team. 02:49 We raised our utility EPS guidance 3x throughout 2021 and then delivered on that guidance, reporting $1.27 on a full-year basis and industry leading 8.5% increase as compared to 2020. And as we discussed, we continue to grow our dividend in-line with EPS growth and accelerated the increase in that dividend in Q4 of 2021. This growth is supported by our underlying rate base growing at 11% year-over-year. 03:31 In 2021, we also saw continued 2% customer growth for electric and 1% for natural gas and as we have said before, this organic growth is a luxury many other utilities just do not have. And even after pulling over $25 million of O&M spending opportunities forward from 2022 into 2021, we achieved a 1% decrease in our controllable O&M and we are sticking with our plan to have annual average reductions of 1% to 2% in O&M over the course of our 10-year plan. 04:14 We also listened to our shareholders regarding two key action items in 2021 and executed on both of them. First, we enhanced our board governance structure, eliminated the Executive Chair position and established an independent board chair. And secondly, made substantial progress toward exiting mid-stream altogether with the completion of the Enable, Energy Transfer merger and the sale of 70% of our interest in Energy Transfer in 2021. 04:50 With…

15:20 Thank you, Dave. And thank you to all of you for joining us this morning for our fourth quarter call. As Dave mentioned, and hopefully some of you have noticed, we moved this call a couple of days earlier in the reporting calendar. We heard your feedback last year and are committed to continuing to advance our reporting date over the course of this year and next. 15:39 Also with the sale of 70% of our interest in Energy Transfer and resulting elimination of separately reporting midstream results, we are now able to simplify our reporting and focus solely on non-GAAP EPS in 2022 and beyond. This is another important step in further simplifying our story. 15:58 Turning to our financial results. On a GAAP EPS basis, as shown on Slide 5, we reported $1.01 for the fourth quarter of 2021 and $2.28 on a full-year basis. This includes a net after tax gain of approximately $550 million from the merger of Enable and Energy Transfer, partially offset by losses on the sale of energy transfer securities. 16:25 Looking at Slide 6, we reported $0.36 of non-GAAP EPS for the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to $0.29 for the fourth quarter of 2020. Our non-GAAP EPS was comprised of $0.27 from utility and another $0.09 from midstream in the fourth quarter of 2021. 16:43 Our Utility EPS results included favorable growth in rate recovery contributing $0.04 this quarter, while weather, usage, and other added another $0.01 when compared to the fourth quarter of 2020. We are also reaffirming our guidance range of $1.36 to $1.38 of non-GAAP EPS for 2022, which reflects 8% growth over the $1.27 Utility EPS results for 2021. 17:09 As Dave mentioned, achieving our 8% growth is not contingent on any benefit from the remaining…

26:21 Thank you, Jason. As you heard from us today, we've had seven quarters of meeting or exceeding expectations and have checked the box on executing under strategic transactions. We are nearly a pure play regulated utility, and we are demonstrating the pathway to a premium.

26:46 Thank you, Dave. We're now ready to turn the call over to Q&A.

26:51 [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Our first question is from the line of Shar Pourreza with Guggenheim Partners.

27:08 Hey, good morning guys.

27:10 Good morning, Shar.

27:12 So, thank you Dave. I think you drilled down fairly well on the drivers with, sort of the near-term CapEx increases. Do you still see more spending acceleration opportunities, let's say in the 2022 to 2024 time frames? And could this higher CapEx be included in the Master Energy Plan in Houston where that collaboration with Houston will be purely incremental to the spend?

27:36 No, I think the – as we tried to block the [tight roll-up] [ph] of our words here today, I mean, clearly the resilient now opportunity is a really good one for CenterPoint, but it's early days. We have to complete the Master Energy Plan, which we believe we’ll do some point in the latter part of this year. That should identify the incremental capital that's there. 28:01 I also think that as you think through what we have said over the past seven quarters about the build and our ability to spend capital, remember, first it was $16 billion plus, then it was $18 billion plus, now it's $19.2 billion. But keep in mind, throughout all of this, we've also have said, we have $1 billion in reserve capital that we can always look to spend or accelerate and that billion in reserve capital has not gone away. 28:33 So, as I said, it's early days, but we're really excited about the opportunity in and around resilient now and what it can do for our customers here in Houston, but I'm not going to sort of tip our hand as to what that might look like until we're a little bit further down the road.

28:51 Got it. And then just lastly for me, what's the timeline for the Master Energy Plan? And I just wanted just to reiterate one point or just confirm it, whatever comes out of the Master Energy Plan or the resiliency now, are you still sticking with no needs for equity to fund the incremental CapEx?

29:12 Yes, that really is our North star at this point in time. I think given what has transpired with the company over the last couple of years, I'm not needing to go back into the equity market as something that is really, really important to us. And so, we have other options to fund an acceleration of capital or incremental capital. That's out there. We've talked about a number of them over the past several calls, continued sales of gas LDCs, for instance, would be one. 29:46 And so, the short answer is, no. We do not see a need to have to go back in the equity markets and our plan that we're outlined here is not predicated on doing that at all.

29:58 Fantastic. That's all I wanted to confirm. Thank you guys. Congrats.

30:01 Thanks.

30:03 Your next question comes from the line of Steve Fleishman with Wolfe Research.

30:07 Hey, Steve.

30:09 Hey, good morning. Thanks. Maybe just following up on that last question, on kind of funding. Jason, I think you mentioned the potential of, kind of your credit rating, I guess thresholds coming down fully, could you give a sense of what might happen there in terms of those thresholds, when you're fully out of midstream? Good morning.

30:39 Yeah, happy too. Currently, with Moody's, our downgrade threshold is 14% and we're strongly advocating for a decrease to 13%, which we think is more consistent with what our dual fuel peers have today. When we've looked at this over the last year so, one of the reasons had a higher downgrade threshold was because of a higher business risk profile with respect to our investment in Enable. 31:12 Now that's been converted to Energy Transfer and we are 70% out of that position. We're advocating strongly [indiscernible] to be held consistent with our peers. The intention behind that advocation of the lower downgrade threshold though is not to utilize it for funding purposes, we want to retain that and couple that with the fact that we see ourselves, sort of in the upper half of the 14% to 15% FFO to debt range, really provide about 150 basis point plus cushion between where our credit metrics are and our downgrade threshold.

31:53 Great. And then just, Dave, maybe just, you brought up the gas LDCs, you know being a potential another source of capital if needed, I think you called them the prepaid debit card so to speak. Just, is it possible that the Houston Resilient Plan, Resilient Now could be enough to kind of tap that?

32:23 Yes, I think, as I said, I'm not going to try to front run our thinking on this Steve. Obviously, we have – one, we're really excited about the Resilient Now opportunity, because I think it's going to be great for not only the City of Houston, but the whole – all of the surrounding communities and cities that really are in our territory, but as I said, it's early days, but I think the advantage we have with our gas LDC’s is there are various sizes. 32:52 So, at this point in time, we're not essentially headed down any specific path. It's just a great option to have as we look at our ability to spend more capital here in what is essentially one of the crowned jewels of CenterPoint, which is Houston Electric.

33:11 Great. And just on, I guess, lastly on Indiana, how are you feeling on just conviction on getting your approvals of the various power generation plans, just overall conviction getting approvals?

33:34 Short answer, very positive, but I'll let Jason elaborate on that since it's part of his daily work now.

33:42 Thanks Steve, and I'll reiterate the strong conviction that Dave expressed. We continue to work broadly with our stakeholders. In Indiana, we think we have a plan that balances stakeholder interests. We see a significant amount of support for this coal transition with respect to a number of our industrial customers in the greater Evansville area, who themselves have their own ESG commitments. And so, between taking a feedback from the commission and continuing to work with our customers, we feel like we have a plan that has broad stakeholder support. 34:19 We anticipate we'll continue to see approvals on each of the tranches we filed throughout the course of this year, likely the solar PPAs in this upcoming second quarter, the simple cycle or gas CT plant in Q3, and then we'll be making a filing for the balance of the generation transition, a little later this year. So, we think each quarter, we see a positive data point. We remain strongly convicted that this continues to have strong stakeholder support.

34:56 Great. Thank you.

34:57 Thanks Steve.

34:59 Your next question comes from the line of Jeremy Tonet with J.P. Morgan.

35:05 Hi good morning. It's actually Rich Sunderland on for Jeremy. Can you hear me?

35:08 We can hear you loud and clear.

35:11 Great. Thank you. Maybe just circling back to the Master Energy Plan, can you speak a little bit more to what that will actually evaluate, and similarly, do you expect subsequent plan updates after the initial filing this year?

35:25 Yes, I think – it's basically it is, what it says it is. It’s the Master Energy Plan or the City of Houston, but also as we said, we are now enrolling some of surrounding communities into some of the potential outcomes, but as I said in our prepared remarks, it's really focused on what does the power grid need to look like in Houston and the surrounding areas going forward, given the continued fantastic growth that we're seeing in this market. 35:58 The continued impact of, sort of distressed weather patterns either hard [indiscernible] or rains or floods or hurricanes. So, getting the system more resilient and more hardened. Getting the city ready for basically the EV infrastructure that it needs and I think if you will recall back to our Analyst Day, the city only has like 30,000 or 40,000 EVs in it today with Mayor wanting a 0.5 million here, relatively quickly. 36:31 That's going to be quite a load on the system with respect to what we need to do. And then there's obviously a number of social and community efforts that will come out of this. So, I mean, I think it's focused in those areas. All of that, I think will drive investment opportunities to support our customers and make sure that we continue not to have a major impact on bills.

37:00 Great. Thank you for the color there. And then, I know you touched on this in the script, but just what are the guardrails rails around selling the remaining ET stake, is there anything more you can give on timing there?

37:10 I'll let Jason handle that one, because he's living it by the day.

37:15 Good morning, Rich. I'm not going to talk about specifics, but I'll try to provide a little bit of color. The lock-up from the marketed offering that we undertook in December expired at early February. So, now we are free to transact on the remaining position. We do retain flexibility to work with Energy Transfer on another market offering. 37:41 We also retain discretion to [dribble] [ph] those shares, sort of, under sort of an equivalent of aftermarket equity program. So, we have a lot of different tools to dispose of this interest. And what I would say is, we've obviously moved expeditiously to this point. We will continue to do so. And we will be well within our goal of exiting the position before the end of this calendar year.

38:11 Great. Thank you for the time today.

38:15 Your next question comes from the line of Julien Dumoulin-Smith with Bank of America.

38:21 Hey, good morning, team. Thanks for the time.

38:23 Hey, Julian. Hey, congratulations to you. Congratulations to you too.

38:29 Appreciate it. Thank you so much. [Indiscernible]. Maybe if I can, I know a lot of questions here around Houston, but what about the Natural Gas Innovation Act in Minnesota here? I mean where you still in the process, I think there's some mid-year filings here. Can you talk about how that could impact the plan as well to a certain extent?

38:48 Sure, I'll let our renewable energy transition master Jason Wells handle that one.

38:56 Good morning, Julien, and congrats as well. We’re excited about the Natural Gas Innovation Act, to your point, we will have a filing about the middle of this year outlining our plan. We have green hydrogen, pilot project coming online here, and we look to build on that success with this upcoming filing. 39:17 I would say at this point, I wouldn't see it as a material driver of CapEx in the short-run, call it the next few years of our ten-year CapEx plan, but there is some opportunity when we look at, sort of the back-end of the 10 years. We want to make sure that we're starting to develop, kind of expertise around alternative fuels, but doing so at a prudent pace so that it's cost effective for our customers in Minnesota we look forward to working with the commission on finding that balance and kind of growing into this opportunity as I said over the course of the full 10-year CapEx plan.

39:56 [Technical Difficulty] very much. I appreciate that. If I can – going back to the tone on the Master Energy Plan in Houston, I mean as I understand it, a lot of this is dealing with storms and resiliency, how near-term of an opportunity is this, especially when you think about developing transition plans that might require permitting underground, etcetera. [Technical Difficulty] be extended, how near-term could we see some of these impacts, do you realize? And then maybe less if you can elaborate a little bit and how long does this extend here? I mean, it seems like the analog with South Florida and urban growth in the face of storm seems a reasonable [parallel] [ph] here, if you could elaborate as well.

40:40 Yes, I'll let Jason – I think Jason handled the question, but I think go back to our Analyst Day, Julien where we said, we have decades of spending ahead of us in Houston. So, although the Master Energy Plan will sort of set the direction, and Jason can talk about, sort of the near-term and short-term. This will set the direction for what should be a decade spend in terms of upgrading the system here in Houston. So, I think the South Florida analog actually is a pretty good one.

41:13 Yeah. I think it's a great analog and maybe I'll reinforce a couple of the points that Dave made and then try to unpack this with a little bit more detailed out – front running the plan. For every day that the greater Houston area is without power, it cost our GDP 1.4 billion. And so, it's really looking at how do we provide a more resilient economy here in the Houston area. 41:36 As Dave pointed out, it is also about a concerted effort to support the adoption of electric vehicles both for light duty vehicles for our customers, as well as medium and heavy duty vehicles for the City of Houston. And then, as Dave said, there's also the need to address social equity and the impacts these storms have on certain communities here in the greater Houston area. 42:01 So, with that as sort of the goals behind the Master Energy Plan, and you look at, kind of what we've done to date, we’ve made a lot of really great progress on the transmission side of the business. We are in the final stages of converting our entire transmission system to an extreme win standard over the next few years. 42:21 We've made a lot of progress with respect to our substations. After Hurricane Harvey, we embarked on a 10-year project to essentially raise our substations that were prone to flood risk and we're well underway there. Where I see a real opportunity for us is on the distribution side of the business. 42:42 We have about 35,000 miles of overhead conductor that has the opportunity to be hardened, whether that's under or changing to [stronger pole, shorter spans] [ph]. We have the opportunity to really, I think increase some resiliency and improve reliability around the distribution system. And we think about the context of 35,000 miles. That is to Dave's point, kind of a decade long program. And so you'll see hardening of a distribution system, you'll see increases in distribution system capacity to handle electric vehicles. 43:17 And we're really excited about what this can mean for our customers. We just really want to work with the city and likely we'll be in a position of unveiling this Master Energy Plan towards the end of this year.

43:32 Okay. Thank you again. Speak to you soon.

43:35 Your next question will come from the line of Stephen Byrd with Morgan Stanley.

43:40 Hey, good morning. Congrats on a constructive update.

43:43 Good morning, Stephen.

43:45 I wanted to talk about another part of Texas growth potential, which is electric transmission and just thinking about the potential to bring more clean energy into your load centers and just, you know there's some challenges that I think the renewable energy community you’ve have around interconnection and actually getting the power to where it is really needed, and I know you all are quite focused on this, but just curious if I could get your latest thoughts on the opportunity there, some of the key challenges in bringing renewables into your load centers?

44:18 Yeah, I think it's a good question because it's something that we deal with every day. Here’s some, sort of anecdotes to put things in context. Our service territory is only about 2.5% of the geographic footprint in the State of Texas, but we're almost a quarter of the load in the State of Texas from an electric standpoint. 44:44 So, having adequate transmission in from the rest of the state into what's a relatively small geographic footprint is really, really critical. I think you're seeing a couple of issues that have evolved around that. One is, as we’ve said at our Analyst Day, we're seeing more, renewables basically built inside of our service territory, so that the interconnect to the system is shorter and it's easier to do, but there's also – I think a focus at the new PUC in Texas in terms of getting more transmission into, sort of the high demand areas, and that is a dialogue that we've got going on with them right now, but there clearly is a recognition generally that the renewables are going to be in West Texas. 45:37 And the demand is in the eastern side of the state, and having more access points into where our load center is, and the load center is around Dallas and places like that is really critical. And I think you'll see some move in that area over the next year or so. 45:55 Jason, you got anything you want to add?

45:57 I would also just say that we've seen an increase in the number of developers that are trying to cite utility scale solar closer to these load centers to, sort of Dave's point. So, we're not having to build extended transmission lines. And this year, we have about 4.4 gigawatts of renewable projects that will be tied into our system here close to the City of Houston. 46:22 We've got about 14 gigs of proposed projects in the queue. And so, we see the opportunity for generation interconnects in and around our service territory to be a growth driver. In the short-run, and as Dave said, in some of these longer transmission lines to continue to provide flexibility and resiliency to our electric transmission grid as long-term drivers as well.

46:47 That's really helpful. And is it fair to say, you're encouraged by the dialogue you're having with the PUC team in terms of the recognition of the need for this?

46:54 Absolutely.

46:55 Absolutely.

46:57 Okay, that's great. That's all I had. Thank you.

47:00 Your next question will come from the line of Anthony Crowdell with Mizuho.

47:05 Hey, good morning, Dave. Good morning, Jason.

47:07 Hey, Anthony.

47:08 Good morning.

47:09 Hopefully two easy questions. Just, I believe I heard you correctly, Jason, but in Texas and the recovery of the mobile generation, I believe you said through the DCRF, you get recovering, you start earning on in September, was that in 2023?

47:25 That's right. The full balance will be September 2023. We'll make the DCRF filing that we’ll make here shortly, will include the first 200 million, so some of that will fold into rates and will begin earning an equity return on it. In September 2022, we will make filing for the balance, the 500 million for the DCRF filing next year, and so thinking about this is the full earnings power really coming into rates and therefore into earnings in September 2023 and beyond.

47:59 Got it. So, I think a bit more in two-step process, some of it comes in 2022 in their filing in September 2022, the remaining in 2023?

48:06 That's right. Yes.

48:08 Great. And just a last question, and I know it's not a part of the core business, just on one of the earlier slides you talked about excluding, I guess, the ZENS from the ongoing number. Any thought to or is there an ability to monetize your ownership in that or is that in your 10-year plan, do you still see the company having the ZENS throughout the forecast?

48:35 Yeah, it’s a great question around ZENS. And this was originally a tax deferral strategy from the late 1990s. And the security that we own, we account for on a mark-to-market basis until what we exclude is essentially the mark-to-market volatility since it’s not reflective of the ongoing earnings power of the company. 48:56 However, those security has basically offset debt that we also have on our books. The deferred tax bill will be due in 2029 and we are looking at ways to monetize the underlying investment [indiscernible] the debt and address that deferred tax liability so that it's not something that sits out there until the end of 2029.

49:24 Great. That's all I have. Thanks for taking my questions.

49:28 Our final question comes from the line of Insoo Kim with Goldman Sachs.

49:34 Thank you. Just a couple of questions, if I may. One, on that 2022 guidance range. I know it's still excluding midstream, but how should we think about any of the drivers that go into the consolidated non-GAAP versus, kind of how you were thinking about it before? Is it really no change or is there something in there that's actually making you incrementally more positive from making this change?

49:58 No, thanks for the question. I mean, this is really about trying to simplify the story. We had, as part of, sort of, what I would consider to be a transition year in 2021 really focused on Utility EPS is, sort of the ongoing earnings power of the company. Now that we're out of 70% of ET segment, we can focus on a consolidated basis. We're still reaffirming that 8% growth off of the utility segment. I think that when you look at what we're excluding from our earnings related to Energy Transfer, it will actually be a net positive, but we want to make sure that the market continues to focus on the underlying earnings power of our utility businesses as we fully exit that position this year.

50:42 Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And then secondly, just, I think we have talked in the past or try to figure out that difference between your rate base CAGR over the 5-year or 10-year period and then the 8% EPS growth, just for our modeling purposes, how should we think about the earned ROE trajectory versus allowed in this 5-year period, are we assuming kind of stable earned ROEs in 2022 through 2025 or just to continually increasing, I guess earned ROEs or closing the gap versus [all that] [ph]?

51:21 Yes. I think we have the opportunity to continue to close the gap on earned ROEs. It depends on the jurisdiction, but generally speaking in some of the larger jurisdictions we’re earning slightly less than our allowed return on a pure, sort of rate based math basis. We make up that small amount of under earning with I’ll call it below the line activity, whether it's [indiscernible] earnings or incentive revenues that are more than our below the line costs. 51:54 So, as we continue to focus on driving to earning and allowed return in each our jurisdictions continue to minimize corporate overhead, I do think we have the opportunity to continue to improve on that earnings growth profile over the course of the next five years.

52:14 Got it. Thank you and congratulations.

52:17 Thank you.

52:18 Yeah. Thank you, operator, if you would – I think that's going to be all in the queue for now. If you don't mind, go ahead and give the replay details. Operator, [indiscernible].

52:34 Today's call will be available for replay, running through Midnight Eastern time on March 2. This does conclude today's call. You may now disconnect.