Earnings Labs

Edison International (EIX)

Q2 2018 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 26, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to the Edison International Second Quarter 2018 Financial Teleconference. My name is Princess and I will be your operator today. Today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Sam Ramraj, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Ramraj, you may begin your conference.

Sam Ramraj - Edison International

Management

Thank you, Princess, and welcome, everyone. Our speakers today are, President and Chief Executive Officer, Pedro Pizarro; and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Maria Rigatti. Also here are other members of the management team. Materials supporting today's call are available at www.edisoninvestor.com. These include our Form 10-Q, prepared remarks from Pedro and Maria, and the teleconference presentation. Tomorrow, we will distribute our regular business update presentation. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements about the outlook for Edison International and its subsidiaries. Actual results could differ materially from current expectations. Important factors that could cause different results are set forth in our SEC filings. Please read these carefully. The presentation includes certain outlook assumptions, as well as reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP measure. During the question-and-answer session, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. I will now turn the call over to Pedro.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Well, thanks a lot, Sam, and good afternoon, everyone. Second quarter core earnings were $0.85 per share, roughly flat to the same period last year. Please remember this comparison is not particularly meaningful, because SCE has not received a decision in its 2018 General Rate Case. Maria will provide more detail in her remarks. Today, I will touch on several policy and growth topics, but let me begin with comments on wildfires. We continue to support the communities affected by the wildfires and mudslides by ensuring customers affected by these disasters are receiving support, including bill forgiveness, extended payment arrangements and help with temporary power. We are committed to helping our customers recover and rebuild from these events. In order to help, we have set up a dedicated web page for customers impacted by these events, are providing specially trained resources in our contact center and are assisting customers through in-person meetings at local assistance centers. A number of external agencies have been investigating the potential origins and causes of the Thomas Fire and smaller fires that were in our service territory. As we do in all wildfire matters, SCE is also conducting its own review. The investigations continue and we currently cannot predict when they will be completed. In the meantime, Southern California Edison has spent extensive time reviewing and strengthening our wildfire mitigation and prevention efforts in preparation for the new normal. Our focus has been on five major areas. First, vegetation management. We have increased the vegetation patrols in the most severe high-risk areas and we are evaluating opportunities to perform more expansive tree trimming and tree removal. As a reminder, high fire risk areas identified in the CPUC's fire risk maps account for approximately a quarter of our service territory. Second, hardening our system. We are…

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Thank you, Pedro. Good afternoon, everyone. My comments today will cover our second quarter 2018 results compared to the same period a year ago, and other financial updates for EIX and SCE. As we have communicated to you before, until we receive a decision on the 2018 General Rate Case, we will continue to recognize revenues from CPUC activities, largely based on 2017 authorized base revenue requirements, with the reserve taken for known items including the cost of capital decision and tax reform. Also consistent with last quarter, we are providing our SCE key drivers analysis at the prior combined statutory tax rate of approximately 41% for both 2018 and 2017 for comparability purposes. Therefore, the effective tax reform will largely be isolated so we can focus on the underlying financial and operational drivers and business. Let's begin with a look at our core earnings driver. Please turn to page 2. For the second quarter 2018, Edison International reporting core earnings of $0.85 per share, roughly flat to the same period last year. From the table on the right-hand side, you will see that SCE had a negative $0.03 EPS variance year-over-year. SCE revenue increased $0.07 over prior year. CPUC revenues were up $0.05 mainly due to the absence of a refund to customers booked in 2017 as well as balancing account activity, which is partially offset by our cost of capital reserve. Additionally, FERC contributed $0.02 of higher revenue as a result of higher expenses. Our core EPS in the second quarter was negatively impacted by $0.10 of higher total expenses year-over-year. The largest driver was an $0.08 impact from higher operation and maintenance costs, primarily related to higher wildfire insurance premium. The $0.08 include the quarterly impact of the $121 million premium we discussed last quarter, as well…

Sam Ramraj - Edison International

Operator

Operator, please open the call for questions. As a reminder, we request you to limit yourself to one question and one follow-up so everyone in line has the opportunity to ask questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question is coming from Ali Agha from SunTrust. Ali, your line is now open.

Ali Agha - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Ali, your line is now open

Thank you. Good afternoon.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Hey, Ali.

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Hi, Ali.

Ali Agha - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Ali, your line is now open

First question to Pedro. I was curious if – as you've gone through and your team has gone through the proposal that the governor put out to the Committee, what is EIX's views on that, and do you think that would address the issues as you laid them out?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Yeah. Ali, thanks for the question, and I think I would sum up our reaction, is, it's early days. We appreciate that there are discussions going on and that the governor's office put in a proposal, but we really view this as the beginning of there will be a very active discussion in Sacramento and particularly within the Conference Committee that's been established. The proposal addresses a number of key areas, there's probably additional things that I'm sure the Committee will work on. So, while it's a short time period between now and August 28, it's also a long time period in terms of the – I think the nature and extent of discussions that we would expect to take place through the end of the session.

Ali Agha - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Ali, your line is now open

Okay. And my second question, Pedro, in your prepared remarks, you mentioned a number of investigations that are ongoing about the fire and the causes et cetera, including an internal one by SCE itself. And I just wanted to find out, as you've done your own internal investigation, have you found information that contradicts the statement you gave us back in December when you did a very preliminary investigation when the fire started, or is that statement still valid based on updated investigation by SCE?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Ali, I think you're referring – and let me just confirm this. I think very early on, there was an initial location of origin that CAL FIRE had published and we had said that we were not aware of utility equipment near that area, and I think that was factual. As the fire grew, as we learned more, I think that became a much more complex fire. And so, while I think that statement stood on its own for that specific pinpoint that had been drawn by CAL FIRE initially, we are now looking at the totality of the fire. We, I think, said in our disclosures that we're aware there's more than one apparent point of origin. And so it's something that we continue to investigate. We know CAL FIRE and other agencies are investigating. And so we're not able to really comment on what may come out of the various investigations until those are concluded.

Ali Agha - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Ali, your line is now open

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Julien Dumoulin-Smith. Julien, your line is now open.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Hi, Julien.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Hey, good afternoon. Can you hear me?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Yeah. Really well.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Excellent. Great. So I wanted to come back to this deferral piece of the equation and the WEMA and your expectation. So again, maybe just do the implied math here, so there's a $0.38 minus the $0.30 you expect to defer. There's about an $0.08 impact in 2018, if I'm hearing you correctly. How are you thinking about that carrying forward and annualizing into 2019 with any drag? And what I'm trying to get at there, if I can elaborate is, is there any incremental insurance that you anticipate that you'll be pursuing and would any of that not necessarily be covered under the WEMA, as best you initially interpret it, shall we say?

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Hey, Julien. It's Maria. So let's think about – so we'll walk you through maybe the thought process we have around this. So as I mentioned earlier, the request that we made for our 2018 GRC in the year 2018 was about $92 million total liability insurance. About 80% approximately of that that is wildfire-related. So the thought process we go through is we'll have a rate (27:18) asset and we'll defer the incremental costs based on an assessment of probability of recovery. So now we looked at two things. First, when can we – at what point in time can we really establish that we have a regulatory mechanism that will allow for that recovery. And we do have a number of those proceedings ongoing right now, both the Z-Factor as well as the WEMA case. And based on some of the recent decisions, we are thinking that we won't get a memo account based on what we know today, and that we do think that once that's established the costs that are tracked in that memo account would be probable of recovery. Then we have to figure out what's incremental, because those memo accounts are really only for incremental costs. So, as I mentioned before, the $92 million, 80% of that is wildfire-related. We have a 2018, so calendar year expense for wildfire insurance of $237 million. So, we looked at that and we looked at the incremental costs associated between those two numbers, as well as the timing of our application for the WEMA, and that's how we came up with the $0.38 of incremental cost, $0.30 of which is recoverable. And as we roll forward into next year, now we've only kind of covered in terms of 2019, June to June, we're only partway through covering 2019 at this point. We're going to look at, obviously at some point, covering the rest of 2019, and SCE could actually look at incremental insurance even above what we currently have for the period in 2018. So – and as we do that and think about what else might be subject to the WEMA or tracking the WEMA, we would say that anything is incremental to what we've asked for in the GRC, and that falls into this period, post the application for sure, would be part of that WEMA account that we will then be tracking. And that's not to say we will continue to pursue the Z-Factor mechanism that we filed last year and see if there's any other additional recovery that we could kind of be entitled to. So, that was our thought process.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Excellent. So – but – maybe to put you a little bit on the spot, it seems as if it's your expectation that you would expect to continue to raise the total amount of insurance that you have, right? We should expect that to come at some point here?

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

We're going to continue to look at it.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Okay.

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

I can't say right now in part because the market is very tight and things are very expensive to what extent we will obtain additional insurance. We'll look at every avenue. There is insurance, there's reinsurance, there's some other capital markets approaches that one could use. We'll look – we'll be evaluating all of that. I think a lot of it is determined by what's really available in the market as well.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Right. All right. I'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Thanks, Julien.

Sam Ramraj - Edison International

Operator

Operator?

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Praful Mehta from Citigroup. Your line is now open.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Hi, Praful.

Praful Mehta - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is now open

Thanks so much. Hi, guys. So, Pedro, just following up on your prepared remarks. You had color there saying legislation can take time. And so, you're qualifying a little bit, or I guess balancing expectations around timing of legislation getting done. But we do know that it's critical to try and get this done especially for your neighbors to get it done this year if possible. So I'm just trying to understand how are you thinking about the timing and what are the pushes and pulls in your mind that could end up causing a problem on timing?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Yeah, that's a good question, Praful. Probably useful to just step back for a second and repeat a theme that I think was in my remark, and in frankly prior earnings call remarks. We think about this as a broad economy-wide problem needing an integrated solution across the really broad buckets of preventing and mitigating fires across the state with all the field we have and dead trees, about so much of our state's lands, hardening the state's infrastructure including utilities, and that includes how we think differently about our operations and then dealing with the financial consequences, the allocation of the risk. There are a lot of elements inside of that, including the reform of inverse condemnation, thinking about moving to from a strict liability standard to a standard of reasonableness, ultimately ensuring that utility is absolutely are on the hook, to the extent that they have in pro forma as they should, but that they are liable to an extent proportional to their actions, right? There are other pieces that the state will need to address around – in wildfire mitigation and prevention, wildfire management plans, how the PUC then looks at the prudency or utilities around those plans, a lot of pieces there. If you look at some of the discussions, for example, yesterday in the hearing that the Conference Committee had or the discussions we would expect the Conference Committee to have over the weeks ahead between now and the end of August. They may be talking about – most or all of those areas ideally, we would like to see the state develop a final piece of legislation that has the package that addresses all of these pieces that are needed. We think that's feasible. However, we also recognize, it's challenging. And there are a lot of pieces and a lot of fact-gathering and thinking and drafting of language and debate I'm sure that will happen inside the confines of the Conference Committee. And so, all along, we've just started to be realistic with our investors about, fact that, while it's seasonable and how we're all working very hard and I'll just ask that our coalition and – a lot of us that are stakeholders across the state, they may or may not be, that all of these pieces get done in this legislative session. We hope they are, but they may not. And so, hard to handicap at this point what pieces – what the success will be, maybe it's all if it. Maybe it's most of it. It's certainly possible there can be pieces that get handled outside the Conference Committee in parallel legislation with a broader senate assembly. It's certainly possible there are things that go beyond this scheduled legislative session. So, I always try to do is acknowledge that possibility, Praful without trying to handicap or point to, gee, we think this element, there is a 90% probability and that other one has a 60% probability.

Praful Mehta - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is now open

That is super helpful color, Pedro. Thank you for that. Just a quick follow-up on this AB 33 securitization. It clearly seems like a constructive way to meet any funding needs. But it was – looks like it was PG&E only at this point. Is that something that you would look to replicate if it were to go through, so it would apply to EIX as well?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Well, I think you're correct that the AB 33 is written – it's focused on PG&E. it clearly – we still don't know to what extent we may have liability for the 2017 events. I think I would just step back and say more broadly to the extent that there are events whether it's 2017, as it's the context of AB 33 or whether it was in terms of the framework for moving forward. To the extent that there are events where customers end up having to bear part of the costs for one interesting feature of AB 33 is the ability to basically securitize and amortize that exposure over a longer time period. And so that in and of itself is an interesting tool that could be beneficial to customers to the extent that we all encounter new wildfires in the future as part of this new normal.

Praful Mehta - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is now open

Great. Thanks so much, guys.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Welcome.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Stephen Byrd from Morgan Stanley. Stephen, your line is now open.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Hey, Stephen. Stephen C. Byrd - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Hi, good afternoon. I wanted to just follow-up on insurance. I know you've given a lot of color around insurance but I wondered if you might be able to speak just to tell where you see that market going over time obviously the cost has been rising quite a bit. I'm curious if what sort of feedback you get from the insurance community in terms of just not only where the price is now, but future availability trends in terms of the nature of the product or anything else just so we can try to extrapolate over time where that market's going and sort of how to think about the level you received? And also to the extent possible, any feedback from the CPUC in terms of sort of the amount of cost that is palatable given just how high these costs are going?

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Sure. So, Stephen, I think one of the elements required in order to answer your question is sort of just how does the current work around reforming inverse and strict liability versus a reasonable standard, how does that all turn out. Because if it continues to be the case that the utilities are going to be what I'll say the insurance of last resort, or these incidents then people that we buy insurance from are going to be exposed to a fair amount of risk, and I don't think you would see necessarily a moderating of the insurance premium from that perspective. Obviously, as wildfires continue to be more prevalent and to increase in intensity, the size of the losses could also grow and so people will be taking that into consideration. To the extent that there are new tools that can be implemented that help to mitigate that risk, I think insurance companies will take all of that into consideration. But I don't think that a moderation of premiums is necessarily in the card until we have a lot of, I'll say, fixes on all those fronts. In terms of your second question on CPUC reaction, what they have seen thus far from us, is the filing we made at the end of last year where they could see $120 million premium for $300 million of coverage. They're considering our application there, the advice letter that we filed there. We've gotten some questions and back-and-forth. But I think they are seeing that and they also can see the incredible increase in cost for the customer. And that really is, at the end of the day, something that gets recovered in rates typically and so it's something that goes right to the bottom line for our customers. And just to put it in perspective, we had saved quite a bit of O&M expense in this rate case versus our prior rate case, we passed it through to our customers, it was about $85 million and in one fell swoop, that $120 million premium last year wiped it out.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Maria, I would just add one more little bit of color for the first part of the question. We keep talking about the new normal, and we experience here events that I don't think we have really experienced not only as the utility, but as a state, and the same is true for the insurance companies. One little bit of color there are folks who interact with the insurance companies, color they've received is that the insurance companies are having to basically rework their models because the fundamental assumptions, the way that the models are wired, they're realizing needs change. And when you see events like during the Thomas Fire, the fact that that was in December and on the coast around Santa Barbara, Ventura, we were experiencing humidity levels of 1% to 3% on a December day, that's not something that a lot of us who have lived in the state for a long time have seen before. And so, it's a radical change in the underlying assumptions that's driving then questions, I think, for the insurance companies about their models and just adds uncertainty and therefore adds to pricing. Stephen C. Byrd - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: That's very helpful. Thank you very much.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Thanks, Stephen.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Angie Storozynski from Macquarie. Angie, your line is now open.

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Hi, Angie.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Hi, Angie. Angie Storozynski - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc.: How are you? Well, I have to ask a question about fires, because that's almost required. So how about – I mean, what if the legislative session ends and nothing happens? Can the governor issue any type of a, I don't know, directive that would help you carry you guys through the next fire season, if there is even such a thing as a fire season at this point?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Yeah. Angie, that's a tough one to answer. I think we're, to be honest with you, very focused on the next several weeks, getting us to the end of August end of the (40:37) legislative session. As I said earlier, we think it's feasible, very feasible to have progress here, and we're certainly hopeful of that. If that doesn't work out, then I don't want to speculate on what some of the options might be for the government at that point. Angie Storozynski - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc.: Okay. And an unrelated question, so about just your ongoing operations. What is going on as far as any types of adjustments to the costs that those CCA or communities that are trying to self-procure electricity needs to pay for the costs that you have incurred to procured renewables? I mean, it seems like there's more and more of those CCAs happening, and I mean, I'm wondering if the reason why they are multiplying is because there's some inefficiency in the costs that they need to incur. And so, I know that you guys have been trying to make changes to that cost that the CCAs would have to pay. And my question is if that would be retroactive to all of those communities that are, in a way, starting to self-procure and how that would actually impact the municipalities that are still staying on your system. Thanks.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

That's a great question, Angie, and it has – doesn't have anything to do with wildfires, so for variety. So on CCA, we are seeing a growing number of cities and communities that are looking at the potential for Community Choice Aggregation. Just as a reminder, from an investor perspective, we should be neutral to that because this is covering the commodity procurement part of the business. That's a cost pass-through activity for us, so it doesn't have a direct impact on the potential earnings power for the company. However, there is an issue that we've been addressing and through the PUC process and it's really an issue of fairness of allocation of costs between customers. The concern has been that the, what's called the PCIA, the Procurement Cost (sic) [Power Charge] Indifference Adjustment, which is essentially the exit fee that a community choice aggregator or the customers of a CCA have to pay in order to make the remaining bundled customers whole for the cost we've taken on for long-term procurement contracts, for renewables or for other resources, we said at the PUC that we have a concern that that current fee has been not sufficiently compensatory and needs reform. The three utilities filed a joint proposal with the PUC in a PUC docket that's open right now, and we're expecting a proposed decision, I believe, sometime throughout this summer. In parallel with that, we've seen some constructive actions at the PUC, including, for example, I think around a couple of months ago, the PUC ensuring that CCAs have the same requirements for resource adequacy demonstrations, the year-ahead resource adequacy demonstration that utilities have. Again, that's part of ensuring that there's fair cost allocation across all customers. So some really constructive steps, but waiting to get the decision on the proposals for reforming the PCIA. Angie Storozynski - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc.: Great. Thank you.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Thanks for the question, Angie.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Jonathan Arnold from Deutsche Bank. Jonathan, your line is now open.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Jonathan, your line is now open

Hi. Good afternoon, guys.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Hi.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Jonathan, your line is now open

I just wanted to double-check on the – as we think about the way you're treating this incremental insurance cost. Are you assuming that all of the incremental cost is effectively recoverable in the math you walked us through, Maria? Do we adjust out the 20% that is not to do with wildfires, potentially, or is it just the timing, like the April date that drives the number (45:04)?

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

So I think, Jonathan, how you should think about it is, this is wildfire-related.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Jonathan, your line is now open

Yeah.

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

So other insurance, we hope to play it in the normal course, so it's not – that's not the same situation. And what we think is, we have $0.38 cents of incremental wildfire-related cost vis-à-vis what we requested in our GRC.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Jonathan, your line is now open

Okay.

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

In the third and fourth quarter, we'll be deferring, based on what we know today, obviously, we'll continue with that, but based on what we know today, we'll be deferring $0.30.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Jonathan, your line is now open

And the difference between $0.38 and $0.30 is the sort of three and a bit months.

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Yeah. It would be incremental cost above what we requested that we don't think are recoverable because of timing of various mechanisms, et cetera, and that would be flowing through.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Jonathan, your line is now open

Okay. But aside from the April date and the fact that that wipes out the early parts of the year, your assumption is any incremental wildfire insurance costs you're incurring should be recoverable through the WEMA and you're deferring it for that reason.

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

That's correct. And we'll – as I said, we'll make an assessment every quarter, but that's our current thinking, yeah.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Jonathan, your line is now open

Okay. That was kind of my question. And then, maybe my follow-up, I may have just missed this, but was there some mention, Pedro, of a possibility? Is there a precedent where the governor could possibly call a special session, or how could that happen if maybe August 28th turns out to not be long enough?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

So as you can imagine, we're focused on this session and hopeful and working hard to make – hopefully, legislature will make a good progress there. I don't think there's been a lot of talk around other mechanisms, given the focus on the Conference Committee process and the proposal that the governor put in. In theory, special sessions can be called after the regular session of the legislature. But again, our focus right now is on supporting the current Conference Committee effort.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Jonathan, your line is now open

Okay.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Thanks, Jonathan.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Jonathan, your line is now open

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Lasan Johong from Auvila Research Consulting. Lasan, your line is now open.

Lasan A. Johong - Auvila Research Consulting LLC

Analyst · Auvila Research Consulting. Lasan, your line is now open

Yes. Thank you. Instead of asking a follow-up, I'm just going to ask two questions. First of all, probably, there's a heat wave going on in California – Southern California right now. I'm just wondering how the grid is performing, A, and related to that, if the renewables are doing what they're supposed to do, or it's being strained. And second question is, how is the CPUC, the utilities and interveners thinking about undergrounding cables at high risk wildfire areas? It seems to me that's the proper (47:47) long-term solution. Thank you.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Well, on the first question around the heat wave, I think the broad answer is that the system has been managing that reasonably well. But let me turn it to Ron Nichols, President of SCE.

Ronald Owen Nichols - Southern California Edison Co.

Analyst · Auvila Research Consulting. Lasan, your line is now open

Our system is holding up well. In fact, our teams have been reporting on that regularly. We're obviously putting a lot more people out in the field to make sure we're able to respond to it, but our grid is holding up well, the resources are there. We're just encountering some pricing issues as we look at the market, but supplies have been there. We haven't had any reliability concerns today.

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

And on the second question on the CPUC, undergrounding, I think that is a topic that has been coming up a lot, particularly in discussions around grid resiliency and the like. The Commission has – we've identified it obviously as an alternative, but it's very expensive. The Commission is looking at, is comparing that to other alternatives, for example, insulated conductors as opposed to undergrounding. So, it's really something that's still being assessed by the Commission, and frankly, by the utilities as well.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Right. As you can imagine, we have a large effort, and I think that's part of what I mentioned under the broad umbrella of the operational considerations that we are looking at right now to look at alternatives for how we help address the risk in those areas.

Lasan A. Johong - Auvila Research Consulting LLC

Analyst · Auvila Research Consulting. Lasan, your line is now open

But insulating a cable doesn't prevent it from being cut by a falling tree?

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Yes, because they'd still be above ground, so they could still be damaged by things that are going around and the like, but they do provide an additional layer of security and prevention because of the insulation.

Lasan A. Johong - Auvila Research Consulting LLC

Analyst · Auvila Research Consulting. Lasan, your line is now open

Understood. Thank you.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And that was the last question. I will now turn the call back to Mr. Sam Ramraj.

Sam Ramraj - Edison International

Operator

Thank you for joining us today and please call us if you have any follow-up questions. This concludes the call and you may now disconnect.