Hello and welcome to Exelon's First Quarter Earnings Call. My name is Gigi and I'll be your event specialist today. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Please note that today's webcast is being recorded. During the presentation, we'll have a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn today's program over to Andy Plenge, Vice President of Investor Relations. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Gigi. Good morning everyone. We are pleased to have you with us for our 2023 first quarter earnings call. Leading the call today are Calvin Butler, Exelon's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jeanne Jones, Exelon's Chief Financial Officer. Other members of Exelon's senior management team are also with us today and will be available to answer your questions following our prepared remarks. You may have seen that we issued our earnings release this morning, our release along with the presentation being used for today's can be found in the Investor Relations section of Exelon's website. As a reminder, the earnings release and other matters that we will discuss during today's call, contain forward-looking statements and estimates that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. As a result, actual results could differ from our forward-looking statements based on factors and assumptions discussed in today's material and comments made during this call. You can find in today's 8-K and Exelon's other SEC filings for discussions of risk factors and other factors that may cause results to differ from management's projections, forecasts and expectations. In addition, today's presentation includes references to adjusted operating earnings and other non-GAAP measures. Both the appendix of our presentation and our earnings release contain information for reconciliations between the GAAP measures and the nearest equivalent GAAP measures. We've scheduled 45 minutes for today’s call. And it is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Calvin Butler, Exelon's President and CEO.

Thank you, Andy and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for our first quarter earnings call. Our team of 19,000-plus employees have entered this first full year of operations after the separation, excited to lead the energy transformation as a premier T&D utility, and it shows in our results. We are delivering our plan on course. I'll start on slide four, covering our key messages. We delivered strong year-over-year growth in the first quarter, earning $0.67 per share on a GAAP basis and $0.70 per share on a non-GAAP basis. These results keep us on track to deliver earnings within our guidance range of $2.30 to $2.42 per share for 2023. This is despite the impact of mild weather, which is a testament to the stability offered by the progressive, largely decoupled rate making mechanisms in our jurisdictions. Operationally, we had our best on record reliability performance at all four of our utilities, with ComEd continuing to operate in the top decile. As it pertains to our rate cases, we are well underway in a number of jurisdictions with three new filings initiated since the fourth quarter earnings call. Building a stronger, smarter, resilient, and cleaner grid requires investment, we are engaging with our stakeholders to align on our shared goals and ensure this investment is compensated fairly, as it is integral to our strategy. On February 15th, Atlantic City Electric filed a distribution base rate case with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to support investments in infrastructure to maintain safety, reliability, and customer service for our customers. It also includes initial recovery for ACE’s Smart Meter deployment, which brings a host of benefits that Jeanne will highlight shortly. BGE filed its second multi-year plan on February 17th and Pepco DC filed its second MYP on…

Thank you, Calvin and good morning, everyone. Today I will cover our first quarter financial updates and progress on our 2023 rate case schedule, and I'll also highlight the ways in which our utilities are advancing a smarter, stronger, and cleaner energy grid to better serve all customers. Starting on slide six, we show our quarter-over-quarter adjusted operating earnings plan [ph]. As Calvin mentioned, Exelon earned $0.70 per share in the first quarter of 2023 versus $0.64 in the first quarter of 2022, reflecting growth of $0.06 per share over the same period. Variance in [ph] growth was driven primarily by $0.10 of higher distribution and transmission rates associated with investments and completed rate cases, including the uplift from higher treasury rates, impacting ComEd's distribution hourly. We also benefited $.03 from the rehearsal of other one-time items from 2022, including the discontinued operations adjustment from the separation and the customer refund in Illinois. These items were partially offset by $0.05 of lower earnings due to the sustained warmer than normal temperatures throughout the winter, impacting our non-decoupled jurisdictions in Pennsylvania and Delaware, as well as $0.02 of higher interest expense due to the right interest rates and higher levels of debt at the holding company. There was also $0.70 per share in the first quarter reflects an approximate 30% contribution of the midpoint of our projected 2023 operating earnings guidance range. Historically, we have earned on average 28% of full year earnings in the first quarter. Heading into 2023, we expected Q1 to be a slightly ahead of historical pattern due to the completion of rate cases at PHI and Pepco, rising treasury rates impacting income as are we relative to 2022 and the absence of the one-time item from separation. However, we are also seeing -- we were also…

Thank you, Jeanne. Let me conclude our prepared remarks with reminder of our priorities and commitments for 2023 as the premier T&D utility. It starts with operations. Operating safely and reliably is our core mission, and you can count on us to focus on that every hour of every day. Secondly, as you heard from Jeanne, we have a full set of rate case proceedings well underway that will set our path for the next three to four years, given our multi-year plan frameworks. The transformation of our energy system requires a lot of coordination and alignment, and we welcome the opportunities to engage with stakeholders on the most effective and efficient means to meet our jurisdictional goals. And third, we are focused on executing financially. We're looking to deploy $7.2 billion of capital this year, more than ever before, while maintaining earned ROEs in the 9% to 10% range and delivering on our 2023 earnings guidance range of $2.30 to $2.42 per share. We have made great progress on our financing plan for the year, while also laying groundwork for future financing needs, and we continue to focus on ensuring our balance sheet is strong. Last, we continue to focus on maximizing the value we provide our customs, and ensuring we are serving them in an equitable manner. As an example of how we are innovating to support a more affordable energy transformation, I'll point to BGE's recent partnership with the City of Baltimore. Specifically, BGE will share responsibility for improving the City's 700 mile conduit infrastructure, reducing the amount the City paid for maintenance capital improvements, and allowing BGE to take advantage of its contracting and construction efficiencies, all while ensuring a healthy conduit system to provide more reliable and affordable power. And beyond our direct operations, we will continue to support our communities beyond providing cleaner, more reliable energy, such as through our more than 75 workforce development programs across our six utilities. Indeed, investments like ACE's Smart Energy Network that Jeanne highlighted benefit greatly from those programs. In anticipation of this investment program, a six-year, 6.5 million job training program was established in 2018 to educate the workforce needed to fill the energy jobs of the future in New Jersey. 14 of our talented employees deploying the smart meter technology are graduates of that development program established five years ago. And we expect to hire more than 15 additional graduates by the end of June, reinforcing our vision of facilitating an energy transformation that will stretch over generations of thoughtful planning and coordination. We look forward to building on the progress made in these first three months and meeting our commitments in 2023. We are delivering on course. Thank you, and we welcome your questions.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes to the line of Shar Pourreza from Guggenheim.

Hey, good morning, guys.

Good morning, Shar.

Good morning.

Good morning. So, hey, guys. Just if we could maybe start with Illinois. I mean, we obviously saw the trial outcome last night. Realize you guys have taken a lot of steps since 2020 to improve, but any sort of high level read-throughs to the regulatory construct at this point, or anything remaining for ComEd from a legal or even judicial standpoint. Thanks.

Yeah. Thank you, Shar. So first from the start, as you know, Shar, we have cooperated fully with the investigations conducted by the government and our regulators. The deferred prosecution agreement signed in 2020 resolved the Justice Department's investigation into ComEd, but we want to be clear that we have done much more than that. We have made substantial changes to our contracting, lobbying and compliance operations to ensure that the conduct that was at issue in the trial does not happen again at all levels from my office and through -- throughout the leaders of the organization and the 6,300 employees who keep the lights on every day in Illinois. We are committed to the highest standards of integrity and ethical behavior for our business. We have the privilege and the responsibility of [technical difficulty] well over 10 million customers, and we do not take that lightly. But I want to have Jeanne spend some time talking about the other issues that have come as a result of this. And then I'm going to ask Gil, CEO of ComEd, to kind of walk through to your question, the regulatory and legislative proceedings as we move forward. Jeanne?

Yeah. Thanks Calvin. And good morning, Shar. So, as Calvin mentioned, the deferred prosecution agreement, and this resolved our matter with the Department of Justice. But there have been a couple things that we've outlined in our 10-Ks and Qs that were legal matters surrounding the events leading to the DoJ [ph]. And I'll just touch briefly on those. And again, these will all be disclosed when the Q comes out and they continue to be updated and you'll see it when the Q comes out later today. But we did have a security suit derivatives and derivative suits and consumer fraud suits. And then, there was the FCC investigation, so just checking through those. The security suit was filed in 2019, and there's a next court status for that, that's late June. So based on recent development, we have booked a probable loss in this matter of $173 million, but that is expect to be fully recovered by insurance. So there's no earnings or cash impact from that. There are three derivative suits pending, including 1021, and there were a couple new ones filed in April and May of this year. They all assert similar claims and there's no updates from a financial perspective on those. But I would remind you that that one is a little bit different in that any amount recovered were resolved in cash receipt to the company and those types of lawsuits. And then there were three consumer fraud cases filed, two of which have been dismissed, and we just argued our motion to dismiss the remaining case in late April. And then lastly, the FCC investigation continues -- to continue to cooperate fully. But no update on that. And so, that's just kind of a status update, but again, we give kind of a play-by-play the Q for those. And so maybe I'll turn it over to Gil to talk through the multi-year plan.

Yeah. Our proposed grid modernization plan and multi-year rate plan support in 100% alignment with the goals of the Climate Equitable JOBS Act and the Illinois energy policy -- energy and environmental policy goals of an orderly and equitable energy transition here in our state. It is a product of extensive stakeholder process with multiple parties, parties over the past couple of years. As you know, we filed our proposed rate case in January of this year, and we look forward to continue working with all parties openly and collaboratively. As Jeanne mentioned before, the interveners are scheduled to file their testimony this month. Hearings will be in August and the order in December of this year. So, Shar, we're on course and appreciate that question.

Perfect. And then, just lastly, Maryland, obviously Calvin set a pretty aggressive offshore wind target last month, 8.5 gigs by 2031. As I guess as we look at the plan today, could we see incremental transmission opportunities at Delmarva, I guess put differently? What do you embed in plan at this point? Thanks guys.

So if I can, what you're asking is that from Maryland's offshore legislation that just recently passed, could that have a spillover that's happening along in Delmarva? Is that the question there, Shar?

Perfect. And as we're thinking about transmission opportunities, yes, correct.

Yeah. I think first and foremost, Shar, the legislation does present an opportunity for Exelon to participate in transmission. The amend legislation, as you know, requires that PJM conduct a study of the transmission system and taking a more holistic approach with that. But it will -- what's nice about it, it will prioritize leveraging existing infrastructure, permitting risks and grid challenges, use of open access of collective transmission systems and avoiding any single contingency items. So this all goes to how Exelon can differentiate itself from others. And as you know, the state has a goal of reaching 8,500 megawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2031. And I think we are well positioned to be a part of that. And I have David Velazquez next to me who oversees our transmission. Dave, anything to add there?

Shar, just to add. Yeah. We do think that there the potential for incremental opportunities on transmission there. We've not included anything in the current plan for opportunities that are there. And the way the legislation reads by the beginning of July in 2025, the JSC or the PSE will direct PJM to issue kind of a competitive transmission solicitation for the transmission that's needed to support the offshore wind.

Terrific. Thank you guys so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Shar.

Thanks Shar.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Paul Zimbardo from Bank of America.

Hi. Good morning team. Thank you.

Good morning, Paul.

Great. If you could you discuss the O&M savings drivers you mentioned in the script and just at what segments you're expected to realize the offsets for unfavorable weather? I think you said across the platform, which sounds broader than I believe it's PECO and Pepco, where the impacts were from weather.

Yeah. I'll hit on it. And then Calvin feel free to add too. So when you think about the $0.05, it's a combination of levers. And I'll start with what we did to sort of enter this year in a conservative and substantial matter. So we -- you may remember we had some weather and storm favorability last year and we did some derisking at the end of the year to help us in 2023 and beyond. And so that's helpful heading into the year. Second, if you think about where other volatility lies in interest rate exposure, we've really mitigated that risk by having completed our sole corporate financing in the first quarter. So locking that in, and you can see that in the sensitivities in our exact, we have no exposure really on that. And then as you talked about, right, we do have leverage across the business. It would be more focused on areas that hit the bottom line, but then remember at the corporate entity, dollar saved soldier down to all the areas as well. And so it'll be a combination across the platform. In addition to that, as I mentioned we do see some favorable depreciation at Pepco relative to expectations. And then finally, we had -- if you think about the $0.05 in totality, we had a penny of the favorability from the carbon mitigation credit deposit rate on that reg asset. On a full year basis, that's probably going to be about $0.03. So when you put all that together, pure line of sites offsetting the $0.05 and feeling good about the rest of the year and delivering in the range at midpoint or better.

Okay. Excellent. Thank you. And then changing topics. I saw the [technical difficulty] opportunity, could you quantify how much that could be? And just confirming if there's any offset to rate based, those kind of items are factored into the plan. Thank you.

Hey, Shar, you cut out midway through your question. Would you mind repeating that please? I mean, Paul.

Sure. I was asking about the IIJ, the Infrastructure and JOBS Act. Just I saw that headline during the quarter. If you could quantify what the opportunity could be for Exelon. And just if there are any offsets to rate based from kind of federal financing, if that's incorporated in the plan today.

Yeah.

I'll let Jeanne take that and then we'll go from there, please.

Yeah. Thanks Kelvin.

Thank you.

So the $700 million is what we've applied for, so it's a really competitive process. So it's hard to estimate what portion of that we'll get, but what I can tell you is we haven't factored it in. So if there's -- we're not expecting any meaningful impact to rate base to finance needs, we're reaffirming everything. And then we'll continue to update that -- update you on that as that progresses.

And I would just add Paul, understanding, as we've said before, the IIJA and the IRA create tremendous opportunity for us as Exelon utilities specifically to partner with our jurisdictions and drive this energy transition faster. And it also goes to the affordability factor of what we do and how we do within our jurisdictions. So we're working it hard and we're partnering and looking for all the opportunities to really increase in our investments, but more importantly, partner with our communities in this endeavor.

Yes. No, I know you are. Thank you both very much. Appreciate it.

Thanks Paul.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Steve Fleishman from Wolfe.

Hey, Steve.

Hey, good morning. Good morning, Calvin. So just on the Illinois, I guess we're going to get the recommendation soon on the multi-year, the new framework. So obviously, things like capital structure and ROEs and I assume rate base are the key variables. Are there any other -- and then I guess maybe incentives, are those kind of the key issues to monitor in the recommendations or any other things that we should be watching for?

Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to let Gil take that in because, he's been intimately involved in the process. Gil?

I think you've pretty much captured. Those are the items that we anticipate. Parties are going to be to be interested in.

Okay. And then I do -- I think there was a minimum capital structure allowed under the bill. Is that still…

Yeah. It's kind of like true.

… to 50%?

Yeah.

Harbor at 50%.

Okay. And the -- I guess my other question, the carrying charge or recovery on the CMC deferral, this is just CMC cost that you're not yet recovering in rates that you're earning a carrying charge on?

That's right. Yeah. It's -- it earns a customer deposit rate, which was zero in 2022 and then was reset at 5% at the end of last year, early part of this year. And so outside relative to expectations for this year. But that reg asset is expected to be collected and wind down by May of 2024. So it's not a future years earnings. But it is helpful this year.

Okay. And then finally on the IRS implementation of IRA and the minimum tax, is there any -- has there been any developments or sense of outcome there? I guess on the -- I guess particularly the repair tax issue or just kind of sitting and waiting?

Yeah. Same status. So still, about $200 million per year. We -- that's all reflected in our guidance and our -- so from an earnings and a credit metric forecast and we give you kind of the sensitivity of where we'll be if it isn't alleviated and where we'll be, if it is. Still, optimistically get regulations by the end of the year and still ongoing discussions with us EI, the industry and treasury on the repair deduction and in general, how the corporate alternative minimum impact energy providers like Exelon. And some further dialogue recently I would say about why the utility industry is different given the capital intensive nature of our business. And so just ongoing dialects, but no new changes to the assumptions or estimates.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes on the line of David Arcaro from Morgan Stanley.

Morning, Dave.

Hey, good morning. Good morning. Thanks so much for taking my question. There's a new chair in Illinois. I was just wondering if you had -- have had any initial dialogue or perspectives that you might offer? And how it might be to work together with the ICC going forward, especially given that it's such a busy regulatory year?

Yeah. David, thank you for the question. I think, as I said in my opening comments, the transition of leadership and commissioners is part of the process, and so we are really engaging with all stakeholders in a very collaborative process to move forward. But directly to your question, the Governor Pritzker did accept the resignation of Chair Solinsky [ph] and has nominated the incoming first Doug Scott, who as you know, used to be the former Chair of the commission and was very instrumental in the drafting and creating of the Climate Equitable and JOBS Act. And there has been communication, but the communications have been around moving the state's goals forward, and we have heard nothing to date that is taking, that are derailing those efforts. And as Gil alluded to earlier Jeanne, we're still expecting a final order on comments for your multi-year plan by December 20th. So also along with the new chair, they're getting a couple of new commissioners and again, that process continues to move forward.

Okay. Great. Thanks. And I was also wondering with the ComEd and BGE reconciliations, I was -- I just wanted to check do those -- do there tend to be big swing factors in those regulatory processes, or are they pretty standardized just in terms of what costs fit in and are they smooth recovery processes typically?

Yeah. So on the -- on ComEd, the reconciliation they filed is for the 2022 -- under the 2022 formula rate. So this is a reconciliation that has been going on for 10 years. So I think that that one is a little bit more straightforward. And as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, part of that is just the cash collection of the true up on the treasury rates under the formula rate. You set the rate based on prior year treasuries and then you can recognize it in earnings, but then you true it up in rates later. So that one's pretty standard in the sense that it's been going on and it's sort of clear. The BGE one though is the first reconciliation under multi-year plan in Maryland. And so this will be the first time we're going through it. But there's a framework there to work through. And so that's -- but that order will come in December of this year as well. And I think it's important for this year, but I think it's really important in terms of kind of what you mentioned, right, setting the precedent going forward so that we know what is recoverable, what's not. And you get into a place where you can say, okay, if there's a variance here, I can put up a receivable or reg asset or conversely, if we do well, we put up a liability and we'll get that back to customers. So I think going through that will be helpful as it has been. We've seen in ComEd, once you get through it the first time is very helpful going forward.

Okay. Got it. That's helpful. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Dave.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will be the last one coming from the line of Jeremy Tonet from JP Morgan Securities LLC.

Good morning, Jeremy.

Hi, good morning. Hi. Thanks.

Morning.

Just wanted to dial into Maryland, a little bit more if we could. We've seen changes in the commission and there are these kind of policy goals out there. Just wondering, how you see that affecting BGE, both the electric and gas side, or is that kind of offsetting over time or just wondering updated thoughts about the future of gas there and how the impacts Exelon?

Yeah. So great question. And with me, the room, I have Carim Khouzami who's the CEO of BGE. But let me take the initial piece and then I'll turn it over to Carim and see if he has any additional information. So just like Illinois, Jeremy, we're having a transition of a chair of our commission as well as a couple of Governor Moore appointees. Governor Moore has taken a very aggressive position to continue to push decarbonization and transportation electrification throughout the state of Maryland, really rivaling it with California and Illinois and alike and moving forward. Having said that, there is an alignment with the jurisdictional goals of what BGE is doing as well as Pepco Maryl. The gas portfolio within our business is -- we believe it's critical to the long-term decarbonization of the industries as we are going through the process of replacing the gas infrastructure within Maryland. We continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in that effort. And we've attacked it as a portfolio approach because reliability of the system and affordability for our customers is critical in our endeavors. So we have communicated that with the state. BGE has been very involved in those conversations, and I'll let Carim just take it a step further if he choose.

Thank you Calvin, and good morning. I think you hit all good points. One of the key points to highlight is in last year's legislative session, the Climate Solutions Now Act, which set forth state goals for us to achieve as an economy wide, laid out a number of working groups where they would determine what is the right path for Maryland going forward. BGE and the other Maryland utilities are at the table with all the other interested parties, and we're working through those issues now, and that will be concluding at the end of this year with recommendations. As Calvin mentioned, there are a number of ways to get to the state goals. We see the pathway that is the most affordable, reliable, and resilient as being one that still includes gas as part of the infrastructure. And we're working with the groups to kind of talk through what is the right path for Maryland, and we do have confidence that will be part of the future.

Got it. That's very helpful there. And then, just pivoting to results in, just a smaller question overall, but I was hoping you could illuminate a little bit of color on the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations there as far as the change in environmental liabilities and the change in perk audit liability, if just a little bit more color on what those items were.

Sure.

Yeah. Sure. So on the environmental liabilities, that's a -- the PHI is a legacy issue where we continue to update estimates for remediation of that. So we just slightly increased the reserve there. On the ComEd item, ComEd and on the perk audit had an audit began in 2021. We got draft findings earlier this year. And just based on ongoing discussions, we booked about $15 million of a probable loss. So that's ongoing. But that's kind of the nature of the two. And infrequent unusual as we carver them out from an operating perspective.

Got it. That makes sense. That's helpful. I'll leave it there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jeremy.

Thank you. At this time…

Is that the last question?

Yes, that was the last question. And at this time, I would like to turn the conference back over to Calvin Butler for closing remarks. End of Q&A:

Thank you, Gigi. And I just want to take a moment to say thank you for joining us today. I appreciate your engagement and all your questions. And with that, it concludes the call. Have a great day.

Thanks to all our participants for joining us today. This concludes our presentation. You may now disconnect. Have a good day.