Greg Blunden
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open
Thank you, Scott, and thank you all for joining us this morning. As Scott highlighted, we are off to a strong start in 2019. Our operating assets have performed exceptionally well, delivering continued EPS growth to our shareholders. For the first quarter of 2019, Emera reported adjusted net income, which excludes mark-to-market adjustments of $224 million or $0.95 per share compared to adjusted net income of $202 million and $0.87 per share in first quarter of 2018. This represents a 9% increase in adjusted EPS. Growth in the quarter was driven by strong results in Nova Scotia Power and our gas utilities. For the quarter, the business delivered operating cash flow before changes in net working capital of $418 million, compared to $444 million in the first quarter of 2018. This modest decrease is primarily related to costs associated with asset sales including taxes and advisor fees, whereas the gross proceeds are included in our investing cash flows. I expect that this decrease will reverse over the balance of the year and our business will deliver annual cash flow which is consistent with 2018. Operating cash flow is an important metric for our business as it is the basis of how our credit metrics are calculated. And as I'll take you through in a few moments, our improved cash flow, combined with results of our funding initiatives has expected to drive continued improvement in our cash flows debt metrics in both 2019 and 2020. Growth in first quarter EPS was largely driven by our strong results in our gas utilities and Nova Scotia Power. In the quarter, New Mexico Gas Company contributes $23 million to net earnings, an increase of $7 million or 35% compared to the first quarter of 2018. These strong results were driven by favorable weather conditions which provided the utility, the opportunity to earn an incremental $6 million of margin compared to the first quarter of last year. And through the ongoing optimization of its pipeline capacity, which adds further $2 million of earnings in the quarter. Activity in the Permian basin is creating opportunities for New Mexico Gas to take advantage of excess transmission pipeline capacity. In 2018, utility entered into an asset management agreement or AMA that allows the counterparty to optimize the use of New Mexico's excess capacity. AMA is benefiting both customers and shareholders and both parties to the agreement, we’re very happy with this performance to date. Earnings contributions of agreement are seasonal and it will be the highest in the first and fourth quarters of the year. At Peoples Gas, customer growth was 3.1% and lower depreciation and amortization costs offset the effects of less favorable weather conditions in the quarter. The change in amortization costs was driven by the timing of regulatory amortization is associated with former Manufactured Gas Plant sites or MGP. As far as the 2017 settlement agreement, $11 million MGP related amortization was to be recorded for the 2018 to 2020 period. In 2018, PGS accelerate the recognition of the remaining MGP related amortization including recording $3.5 million in the first quarter of 2018. And as a result of this acceleration, there are no MGP related to amortization costs in 2019. In Nova Scotia, favorable weather conditions and less storm activity increased Nova Scotia Power's earnings contribution in the quarter. While I'm pleased with the results of the utility as delivered in the quarter, it’s important to remembers that Nova Scotia Power’s annual earnings growth is largely driven by its rate base growth and what was hiding in the earnings contribution will be dependent on market conditions including weather. All to say, we continue to expect the full year results for Nova Scotia Power will reflect more modest growth. And although our earnings contribution from other was flat to Q1 of 2018, I'd like to spend a few minutes to walk through some of the individual pieces. In Emera Energy Marketing and Trading margin decreased by $15 million as a result of less favorable market conditions relative to Q1 2018, when the impact of colder weather resulted in higher market prices and volatility that then led to higher margins. Emera Energy has decreased relative to Q1 2018, Marketing and Trading is still off to a strong start to the year and I expect that they will earn within their $15 million to $30 million earnings guidance range for the year. And in Corporate, higher financing costs of $2 million loss on the sale of Bayside and New England gas generating facilities were partially offset by $10 million gain on the sale of some properties in Florida. As Scott highlighted in his remarks. We continue to make progress against our three-year funding plan that we first outlined last fall. Notably, upon closing the announced sale of Emera Maine, we will have raised $2.1 billion of proceeds and met the asset sale target in our funding plan. By engaging in select asset sales, we will have successfully eliminated the need for discrete equity offering to fund our $6.5 billion baseline capital program and accelerated the transition of our balance sheet back to our targeted capital structure. The Emera Maine sale is progressing as expected and we were working closely with MX [ph] to the regulatory process. The team has began to make filings of the various regulatory bodies required to approve the transaction including for Maine Public Utilities Commission and we anticipate the transaction will close later this year. Turning to our funding plan, we continue to see the DRIP and preferred shares as helpful components to financing our growth. However, as capital markets change, we would prove that another flexible proactive mechanism to our toolbox. In that regard, we've been assessing the potential for establishing an at-the-market or ATM program to round out our equity needs over the remainder of the three-year forecast period. And necessary, for stepping this process is the falling of the preliminary shelf perspectives, which was completed yesterday, once final and provided that we have all the necessary concessive relief enhanced to shuffle out common share offerings of up to $600 million in aggregate over a period of 25 months. In ATM program, we will allow us to raise modest levels of equity in a cost effective and less diluted manner on a just in time basis providing us with increased funding flexibility and allowing us to match equity raises with normal force business requirements such as growth. Our funding plan is designed to increase Emera's financial strength by delivering on four key objectives. With the sale of the NEGG portfolio and the Bayside plants, we met our first objective of improving our business risk, removing these assets from our portfolio of significant release – reduced our exposure to merchant generation, strengthening our overall business risk profile. Our second objective is to increase our sustained cash flow debt metrics. We've been steadily improving these metrics into TECO acquisition in 2016. Over the course of 2019, we would expect our cash flow debt metrics to gradually improve towards our 12% target. As we maintain consistent levels of cash flow and use proceeds through asset sales to repay only company debt. As we continue to execute on our funding plan throughout 2019 and look forward to 2020, we would expect these metrics to continue to strengthen to 12% by the end of next year with the objective of sustaining this level or higher over the longer term. Third, we are focused on materially reducing the holding company debt as a percentage of our total debt. After the acquisition of TECO in 2016 our holding company leverage is over 50%. Today, approximately 44% of our debt is at the holdco level and we would expect that to be below 40% with the closing of the sale of the Emera Maine. And finally, our funding plan is designed to decrease our consolidated leverage and accelerated our transition back to our targeted capital structure. Achieving our target capital structure will enable us to meet our target credit metrics. We’re successfully executing our asset sale program has accelerated the transition. And we anticipate upon closing of the Emera Maine transaction, we will achieve our target capital structure of 55% debt, 35% equity and 10% hybrid capital. Overall, I am pleased with our strong start to 2019, while 2019 will be a transition EPS year for Emera, solid first quarter results, give me the confidence that we will deliver adjusted EPS that’s consistent with 2018 when adjusting for the one-time tax benefits last year. Our portfolio of regulated assets continues to perform successfully well and we believe that our proven and disciplinary allocation of capital of 2019 will result in the strong year, Emera is well positioned and continue to deliver long-term earnings and cash flow growth for shareholders. And with that I will turn the presentation back over to Erin.