Earnings Labs

NextEra Energy, Inc. (NEE)

Q1 2020 Earnings Call· Wed, Apr 22, 2020

$96.51

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning everyone and welcome to the NextEra Energy Inc. and NextEra Energy Partners LP earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please also note today’s event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Matt Roskot, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Matt Roskot

Analyst

Thank you, Grant. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining our first quarter 2020 combined earnings conference call for NextEra Energy and NextEra Energy Partners. With me this morning are Jim Robo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NextEra Energy; Rebecca Kujawa, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of NextEra Energy; John Ketchum, President and Chief Executive Officer of NextEra Energy Resources; and Mark Hickson, Executive Vice President of NextEra Energy, all of whom are also officers of NextEra Energy Partners, as well as Eric Silagy, President and Chief Executive Officer of Florida Power & Light Company. Jim will provide some opening remarks and will then turn the call over to Rebecca for a review of our first quarter results. Our executive team will then be available to answer your questions. We will be making forward-looking statements during this call based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from our forward-looking statements if any of our key assumptions are incorrect or because of other factors discussed in today’s earnings news release, in the comments made during this conference call, in the Risk Factors section of the accompanying presentation, or in our latest reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, each of which can be found on our websites, nexteraenergy.com and nexteraenergypartners.com. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. Today’s presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. You should refer to the information contained in the slides accompanying today’s presentation for definitional information and reconciliations of historical non-GAAP measures to the closest GAAP financial measure. With that, I will turn the call over to Jim.

James Robo

Analyst

Thanks Matt, and good morning everyone. Before I begin, I want to take a moment to extend our deepest sympathies to all those who have been personally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The country and the world are facing devastating impacts from the spread of the virus, and we remain resolutely focused on doing our part by continuing to deliver affordable and reliable power. Never before has it been more clear how critical electricity is to the world, and our team is laser focused on ensuring its uninterrupted delivery so first responders can help those in need, businesses can continue to operate where possible, governments can continue to function, and our customers can go about their daily lives to the greatest extent possible during these challenging times. As part of NextEra Energy’s core commitment to do the right thing, at both FPL and Gulf Power we have taken steps to help customers face the challenges that the pandemic has created. Both utilities have suspended electric disconnections during this state of emergency to ensure our customers have continued access to power, regardless of their economic circumstances. Additionally, next month the typical FPL and Gulf Power residential customers will receive a one-time bill decrease of approximately 25% and 40% respectively as an accelerated flow-back of lower fuel costs. The NextEra Energy companies and employees have also committed more than $4 million emergency assistance funds to provide critical support to the most vulnerable members of the community. Our hope is that these steps will help customers navigate this difficult and unsettling time and support a more rapid recovery for them and the Florida economy generally. We remain deeply engaged in helping Florida return from this pandemic stronger than ever, and we’ll continue to do our part to support that outcome. It is during…

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst

Thank you Jim, and good morning everyone. Let’s now turn to the detailed results, beginning with FPL. For the first quarter of 2020, FPL reported net income of $642 million or $1.31 per share. Earnings per share increased $0.09 year-over-year. Regulatory capital employed increased by approximately 9% over the same quarter last year and was the principal driver of FPL’s net income growth of roughly 9%. FPL’s capital expenditures were approximately $1.4 billion for the quarter, and we expect our full year capital investments to be between $5.8 billion and $6.3 billion. FPL’s reported ROE for regulatory purposes will be approximately 11.6% for the 12 months ending March 2020, which is at the upper end of the allowed band of 9.6% to 11.6% under our current rate agreement. During the quarter, we utilized $149 million of reserve amortization to achieve our target regulatory ROE, leaving FPL with a balance of $744 million. The amount of reserve amortization that FPL utilized this quarter was below that which was utilized in the first quarter of 2019. As we’ve previously discussed, FPL historically utilizes more reserve amortization in the first half of the year given the pattern of its underlying revenues and expenses, and we expect this year to be no different. We continue to expect that FPL will end 2020 with a sufficient amount of reserve amortization to continue operating under the base rate settlement agreement through 2021, creating further customer benefits by avoiding a base rate increase during this time. Turning to our development efforts, we recently filed an updated 10-year site plan for FPL and Gulf Power that highlights the next phase of smart capital investment opportunities across Florida systems. The filing reflects an expectation that FPL and Gulf Power will begin to operate as an integrated electric system in…

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] Our first question comes from Julien Dumoulin-Smith with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Oh, it looks like we’re going to go with Shahriar Pourreza with Guggenheim Partners. Please go ahead.

Shahriar Pourreza

Analyst

Hey guys, good morning.

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst

Good morning

Shahriar Pourreza

Analyst

A couple questions here. First on the regulatory side, we’ve seen commissions get a bit challenged in 2020, proceedings, they’re delaying schedules. In some states the process to reengage is kind of open-ended. I know you have one of your peers who’s looking to file in Florida later this year and you guys aren’t planning to file a GRC until early next year, combining the two entities. That said, you guys are in the process of preparing, you’re fact finding, you’re meeting with various stakeholders within and outside of NextEra. Are you seeing any sort of COVID-related delays, especially as you’re currently setting up to file a rate case in early next year?

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst

Shahriar, I appreciate the question, and of course regulatory--you know, any sort of procedures and questions that we have in front of the regulators are top of mind to us, but as we’ve highlighted over the last couple of months and very typical with prior preparation, our focus for this year ahead of our potential filing at the beginning of next year is really preparation and laying a lot of groundwork. At this stage in April, we’ve got a lot of time between now and year-end and really into the beginning of next year to evaluate how things have changed and adapt accordingly. But at this point, our team’s focus is very much on the preparation, and we continue to progress well on that.

Shahriar Pourreza

Analyst

Got it, then just on near, obviously a very solid addition to the backlog, and you’ve certainly--you and Jim gave a pretty good development landscape in the prepared remarks, but are you seeing any hesitation on the part of counterparties? Does the current economic backdrop kind of deteriorate some of these counterparties? You still have about 4.5 to 5 gigawatts that are waiting for PPAs over the next couple of years, so I’m just curious if you’re seeing any kind of counterparties balk.

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst

Shahriar, we’re very pleased with where we are. Obviously highlighted in the prepared remarks that we are now well within the range for the development expectations that we laid out last year, which at this stage in progression towards the end of 2022, we are very well positioned to execute on everything that we’ve laid out. More specifically in the last couple of weeks, as we also highlighted in the prepared remarks, John and the Energy Resources team have executed terrifically well and many, if not most of those contracts that we highlighted have been signed since the pandemic was starting to emerge and ultimately top of mind of our customers. If you think about the backdrop of why that might be, renewables are the least cost form of generation and in many cases are far cheaper than the alternative form of generation that’s continuing to operate very expensive and inefficient, coal and some nuclear facilities, and our customers will save their customers money when they turn those plants off and replace them with renewables. We would expect that as our customers focus on what’s best for their customers, they will continue to want to build renewables into their portfolios and we’re very well positioned to execute.

John Ketchum

Analyst

Shahriar, this is John. I may just add onto that. We are seeing just a terrific development environment in front of us, for all the reasons that Rebecca mentioned. The fact that we buy cheaper, we build cheaper, we operate cheaper, we have the best development skills in the industry, customers more than anything right now want confidence and certainty that a project is going to get built, so we are actually seeing more opportunities come our way. Given that we compete against a lot of small players in both solar and wind, access to capital and a balance sheet, which we have, are extremely important and are something that we plan to leverage to create even more opportunities going forward. So actually, the current environment has created a better environment for us.

Shahriar Pourreza

Analyst

Perfect. Jim, just one strategy question for you - I know you love to address these. There’s obviously been a lot of valuation dispersions in this space - you know, Jacksonville and Santee Cooper, it looks like they’re done. You’ve been highlighted in media with potential interest in Kansas and Missouri. Do you have any sort of refreshed thoughts, especially given the recent lost opportunities I just mentioned, as you think about consolidation?

James Robo

Analyst

So first of all, just to address Santee Cooper for a moment, Santee Cooper is by no means done. I think you all saw the speaker of the house sent a letter to Santee Cooper, calling them a rogue agency. The governor wants to sell them, so it’s not done. The disagreements in the senate around what to do with Santee Cooper led to a bit of a standoff around the budget in the middle of the pandemic, and you can--you know, obviously it’s a topic that is quite hotly debated in South Carolina. But I would say by no means is Santee Cooper done, and there remains a lot of energy still behind wanting to sell Santee Cooper. Just strategically overall from an M&A standpoint, I always like to just remind everyone always what our gating elements of anything that we would do. It has to make sense strategically, has to be significantly accretive. You all know how we finance these things historically - it’s been with very little risk. I’m not a big believer in financing these things in a way that either takes risk or puts the balance sheet at risk. A strong credit rating is really critical to us and critical to our strategy, so all those things remain the same. I think what you’re going to see in terms of the environment obviously is with the uncertainty in the financial markets and the uncertainty with the economy that’s been driven by the pandemic, I think you’re going to see counterparties take a pause. That’s a natural reaction to the environment that we’re in. But our strategic thinking around it remains unchanged and our approach to it remains unchanged, in that it has to be strategic, has to be accretive, has to be consistent with a very strong balance sheet.

Shahriar Pourreza

Analyst

Congrats, guys, on these results. Congrats again.

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Steve Fleishman with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Steve Fleishman

Analyst

Good morning. Just a couple questions on NEP. Initially the extension of not needing any new assets, I guess through the end of ’21, to meet your dividend growth targets, is that also true for any equity financing through then?

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst

Yes, essentially Steve. There wouldn’t be any need. Obviously we have the existing convertible equity portfolio financings and the convertible to debt that would potentially convert into equity, and it’s later this year, but there’s no new issuances required. We highlighted on the prepared remarks that we have significant liquidity far in excess of what we would need, particularly since we don’t need acquisitions to meet those distribution growth targets until 2022.

Steve Fleishman

Analyst

Then secondly, I think there was a comment, and I guess it was Jim’s slide, that the private infrastructure capital demand for high quality clean energy assets provides attractive financing source, even in this environment or regardless of market conditions. Maybe you can give a little more color on your thought process there.

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst

Yes Steve, as you well know, one of the things that we’ve been particularly attuned to over the last, call it 18 months, is that there is a lot of private infrastructure capital, and the evidence of that is apparent with the convertible equity portfolio financings that we’ve executed since that time. Since the--you know, I’ll just call it the pandemic time frame, so in the last couple of months, there has continued to be a significant amount of inbound interest and continuing conversations with a number of those parties to provide capital to NEP in various forms, so we have not seen any changes in interest moving forward and continue to be very confident in our ability to leverage those type of capital resources as we move forward. We’re fortunate we’re in a position that we don’t need to do anything, as we highlighted, until 2022, but we of course will continue to be opportunistic, and to the extent that there are good opportunities for NEP that are attractive and accretive to NEP unit holders, we may well take advantage of that.

Steve Fleishman

Analyst

Okay. Then a last question, just on renewables overall. I think if I understood right, you’re seeing the same amount of demand for growth, so no change there. John, you mentioned the fact that people maybe want a stronger counterparty these days, but then the other thing I think I heard someone say was--it might have been Jim, saying the opportunities might be there more for acquisitions or projects that people struggle to get done in time. Could you maybe talk on that last point and how meaningful that opportunity could be?

James Robo

Analyst

Steve, I think it could be quite meaningful. If you look back at ’08 and ’09, we had a lot of opportunities in that time where you had developers who didn’t have great access to capital, and we were a source of capital for them. I just want to reiterate something that John said. If anything, the renewable market is better right now that I ever expected it to be. I just got through with a review of our entire portfolio of projects and activity last week, and honestly I was really struck by the acceleration of activity that we’re seeing, so it is full speed ahead on that front and I was very encouraged to see that. It was really, as we said in the prepared remarks, a real testament to the strength of our development team and the strength of our pipeline and the strength of our people and our relationships.

Steve Fleishman

Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Julien Dumoulin-Smith with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith

Analyst

Hey guys, thanks for the question. Just coming back to the first part with the Florida utilities quickly, when you think about the reserve amortization, the available balance here, the trajectory for load as you see it, and again I understand there’s numerous caveats, I think I heard it in the commentary but just want to clarify - confidence that the balance that you have for this year will suffice, and then perhaps more importantly and critically, as you look towards whatever that normalization is in subsequent years and a rate case cycle, how do you think about implementing something like reserve amortization subsequently again as you look at the post-rate case period here to minimize some of the earnings vol?

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst

Okay, let me start with the reserve amortization. We highlighted in the remarks that the balance is now at $744 million and we continue to have confidence that cost containment and all of the factors that are pluses and minuses to that reserve amortization balance will continue to be sufficient for us to operate under the settlement agreement through the end of 2021, so really no change to our expectations that we, again, would file a rate case in ’21 for new rates effective in 2022. Reserve amortization has been, we think, a very constructive concept in Florida regulation, particularly FPL over a number of different settlement agreements and ultimately rate case outcomes, but it has come about from settlements, so it’s not something you would assume that we will have going forward. But we think it has been very good for customers because it’s been able to provide long term rate stability for them through a variety of conditions, including the one that we find ourselves in today. We are very pleased with the constructive nature of regulations that we have been operating on, and again particularly so for the benefit of customers.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith

Analyst

Got it, excellent. Then coming back to the renewable side of the business, obviously you guys have an incredible amount of confidence given the backdrop here. You’re not seeing even any slippage in timelines, especially as you think about the C&I customers here? I know the gross amount of backlog that you guys are talking about seems pretty confident, but even just execution and prospective backlog that you would conceivably add in 2022, that is even staying relatively firm? I’ll leave it there.

John Ketchum

Analyst

No drop-off, no slowdown. One of the things that we were able to add this year, or this quarter, was 600 megawatts to 2022 and beyond of wind, which is just a terrific head start, that we’re only here in the first quarter of 2020, so just tons of time to continue to be able to work the wind development pipeline over the next four years, with PTC being essentially at 60% through 2024. Just a lot of demand, a lot of folks that own peakers, a lot of folks that own coal very aggressively looking at renewable as an option with ESG as a tailwind. Knowing that even if we are in a recessionary environment, being able to pivot to renewables not only brings a clean energy story but it also makes their economies more competitive and lowers bills for customers at a time they need it most, so that’s what’s really driving demand.

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst

I was just going to add to that something about the--you know, one of the important reasons why we continue to be confident about our ability to reach our CODs, keep our projects on track and on budget, is really something we’ve highlighted for years now - our focus on our supply chain and developing relationships with our vendors, strategic partners in many cases. As we went into this year, knowing that it was a significant construction development year at all of our businesses, we had intense focus on our supply chain. We always do, but even more so this year with how complex and intertwined it may be with how many priorities and the deliverables we have. Entering into that posture and facing the circumstances we find ourselves in now positioned us well to manage through these. We pick top quality suppliers where we are a significant customer to them, and we’ve had many instances over the last couple of weeks where we’ve worked closely with them to ensure that our projects stay on track and on budget. I don’t think that should be underestimated. Focusing on long term total cost of ownership and ability for our suppliers to deliver is really paying off well for us in this type of environment.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith

Analyst

Excellent. Last quick clarification - on the NWP12 permit you guys alluded to, seems like you’ve got pretty good confidence that they’re going to narrow that back to just Montana, but process-wise, make sure I’ve got it right there on your confidence level?

James Robo

Analyst

Julien, I think it’s premature to say what’s going to happen with that. I think it’s obviously a condition to--it being dealt with quickly is a condition to us being able to deliver the pipeline this year. We think the ruling was incorrect and we think government is going to aggressively try to correct it. That said, it’s still early on. We haven’t really gotten a lot of feedback yet from the government about what their approach is going to be, and we are continuing to evaluate it. I think it’s early days, honestly Julien, is what I would say to you right now on that. If our prepared remarks led you to believe that we had confidence that it’s going to be done--that it’s going to get resolved quickly, that was not what we were trying to say. We were trying to say that for us to build the pipeline this year, it needs to be resolved quickly, and it remains to be seen whether it will be. It’s something that we as a team are very--along with our partners, are very focused on working with the government to get it resolved, and get it resolved quickly.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith

Analyst

Excellent, thank you guys. Best of luck, stay safe.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Stephen Byrd with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Stephen Byrd

Analyst

Hi, good morning.

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst

Good morning Stephen.

Stephen Byrd

Analyst

I wanted to see if you had a strong view on the potential for further federal support for clean energy. I’m thinking just more broadly as part of stimulus efforts that are underway. Do you see anything that might translate into concrete additional support?

James Robo

Analyst

Stephen, it’s Jim. I think it’s too early to tell. I think there is certainly some interest from the Democrats to include additional clean energy support in another stimulus bill potentially around--you know, with a focus on infrastructure. But as you’ve seen over the last several weeks, things are extraordinarily fluid in Washington, and I would just say it’s too soon to tell. I think it’s something as an industry that we need to be very thoughtful about in terms of how we approach it and have it be truly focused on stimulus and focused on the impacts of the pandemic, and make sure that that’s the focus of any of the efforts that go on in the industry. You know, we’re staying obviously very close to it and time will tell, but as I said, I think it’s a little early and things are quite fluid.

Stephen Byrd

Analyst

Understood, very fair. Just one last one. You’ve given some good info on power demand impacts from COVID-19. I’m wondering if you could just speak to the customer class impacts - there’s a lot of questions about the magnitude of uplift in terms of residential demand versus the downward movement for commercial industrial. I’m curious what you’re seeing on the residential side, if you’re able to share that.

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst

Yes Stephen, one of the things that we did, we put it in the appendix, Slide 25 if you have a chance to take a look at it, is to give you some sensitivities for the revenue impacts for a percentage--you know, 1% change in sales, also the breakdown of our composition of mix between residential, C&I--well, commercial, and then separately industrial. Obviously our load mix at FPL, which is the significant majority of the regulated load that we have in our business, is heavily weighted towards residential and small and medium commercial businesses. We have seen pick-up in residential, as we highlighted, and a slight down tick in commercial. But as I also highlighted in the prepared remarks, and very consistent with what we’ve said to you over a long period of time, our ability to dissect the impacts from weather versus underlying usage are pretty good over a long period of time, but in short discrete periods of time are more challenging, particularly when weather has a significant impact on load. In these last couple of weeks since you would say that there have been significant impacts from pandemic, and officially the stay-at-home orders here in Florida were in effect, we’ve had very favorable weather, so it’s hard for us to dissect it, so we erred on the side of providing you some sensitivities so that you can make an assessment on your own as to what you think might happen and what would that would be in terms of cash revenues at FPL. Again, to put a finer point to it, remember with reserve amortization that results in negligible or no impact. To the extent that we have reserve amortization available to us on an earnings basis, this would be just a cash impact. To give context for what happened in the last major disruption to load, which was the 2008 - 2009 recession, obviously everywhere but including here, of course, in Florida, that was about a 4% to 6.5% effect to overall load demand, and that was over the course of the year, and obviously we’re midyear this year. That gives you some guideposts for how to think about it from the way that we’ve approached it so far.

Stephen Byrd

Analyst

Understood. Yes, you’ve got a lot of insulation to the bottom line from the impacts from COVID. I’ll leave it there. Thank you very much.

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst

Thank you Stephen.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Michael Weinstein with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Michael Weinstein

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Hi guys. To what extent is wind re-powering at NEP responsible for or contributing to the ability to avoid drop-downs over the next year and a half to two years?

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Michael, it’s certainly a positive. As we, I think, announced these re-pairing opportunities at or near the investor conference last year and have planned for it in terms of how we would finance it and have the tax equity lined up to be able to finance that going forward, so it’s certainly a positive that will impact results for this year. It’s about $25 million worth of CAFD or so, as we’ve previously highlighted, so certainly a contributor. Also a contributor were the other acquisitions that NEP made last year, as well as the recapitalizations that we executed on. It’s the confluence of acquisitions, both from Energy Resources as well as third parties, as well as the organic opportunities, so it’s a three-for in this case.

Michael Weinstein

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

I think last quarter, you also talked about the possibility of additional in 2024 due to the PTC extension. Have you ever quantified any of that, what that opportunity may be?

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

We haven’t talked about additional re-powering opportunities with respect to NextEra Energy Partners. As we’d previously highlighted, from a re-powering opportunity we thought the opportunity was particularly strong through the end of 2020 to take advantage of the full 100% PTC re-upping. But actually this quarter, we’re announcing some re-powering opportunities in 2021 that will take advantage of the 80% PTC, so it’s a very positive opportunity for us.

Michael Weinstein

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Right, got you. One last question about natural gas versus renewables. Natural gas has gotten a lot cheaper, and I’m just wondering how do renewables stack up on an LCOE basis these days against fossil fuels?

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

I’m sorry, Michael - how does LCOEs for renewables stack up against--?

Michael Weinstein

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Against fossil fuels. Fossil fuel prices have really come down, right?

Rebecca Kujawa

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

They definitely have come down, but you would hope that someone making a long-term planning decision will think about prices over a long period of time. As we highlighted for FPL’s 10-year site plan and we looked at what the costs are that we’re anticipating at Florida Power & Light and Gulf Power together, solar paired with battery storage are the least cost form of generation, and we’ve put all that pen to paper and included that in our 10-year site plan, and have now removed the two combined-cycle natural gas plants that we had previously in the forecast in the mid-2020s as a reflection of where we think costs are. From our customer standpoint, again they operate in many different jurisdictions, in some cases wind will be particularly attractive, in some cases it’s solar. But if you keep in context the dollar per megawatt hour costs that we’ve continued to provide, which with incentives are for wind, anywhere in the teens to very low 20s for wind, even in low wind resource areas, and then for solar in the [30-plus] megawatt hour with incentives, and then post incentives continue to be very attractive in that $20 to $30 and $30 to $40 megawatt hour range, so very cost competitive even with where we think the fuel complex pricing is. But also, remember that coal and some nuclear facilities are our primary comparisons, and that hasn’t changed dramatically.

John Ketchum

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Michael, this is John. One thing I would add to that is remember as oil prices have come down, rig counts have come down in the Permian, which means there’s a lot less associated gas, which has really actually helped natural gas prices, and we’ve seen a bit of an uptick in natural gas prices, particularly recently. When we are out originating new renewables, we really have not seen competition from gas-fired units for that reason. They still remain kind of in that $30 to $40 a megawatt hour range versus wind, which is still in the teens in most parts of the country, and then solar in that mid-20 range. So very, very competitive when you look at renewables versus gas-fired generation. The last thing I would add is just peakers. Remember gas-fired peakers not only are targets for new renewables, but also for battery storage. Battery storage costs have come down such that--you know, we mentioned the large standalone storage build-out that we have, the billion dollars going in, in ’21. There is a significant opportunity in almost every part of the country where batteries are now more economic than gas-fired peakers, even at today’s natural gas prices.

Michael Weinstein

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Good news, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our last question will come from Michael Lapides with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Michael Lapides

Analyst

Thank you, guys for taking my question. I don’t know if this one is for Jim or John. I know you commented that your own renewable development plans remain on track, on schedule and financed. You have a great lens into the industry overall, obviously. Can you talk about where you think for the industry, maybe not for NextEra, where the biggest challenges are occurring? Are they in financing of projects, meaning tax equity markets? Are they in the supply chain? Is it more wind versus solar supply chain issues? Is it more keeping sites or potentially missing safe harbor dates? Can you just talk about the industry perspective, what you’re seeing in the competitive landscape, even if these are things that aren’t necessarily impacting NextEra?

John Ketchum

Analyst

Sure. I think the first one would be supply chain, and Rebecca talked about that for a minute; but given the size of our spend across the complex, being right around north of $13 billion, we are almost always our suppliers’ largest customer. If we’re not, we’re their second largest in the world. If there are minor disruptions that come up, we’re able to pivot to other manufacturing facilities that that particular vendor may own, so we don’t see the same impact that perhaps a smaller player, whether it’s in wind and solar, would see. So while they may see supply chain disruptions, we don’t, just given the size and the sophistication and the buying power that we have. That’s the first one - supply chain is something that I would look at for other smaller players. The second one is access to capital. Again, we always get first dibs and first allocations on tax equity financing. In the script remarks, I think we already said we have all of our tax equity needs for 2020 fully allocated. That is not the case necessarily for smaller developers. Smaller developers might struggle, particularly to the extent that banks have less amount of taxable income, notwithstanding the five-year net operating loss carry-back that was passed, I think in the first or second federal restructuring, so we’re very well positioned from a tax equity standpoint, whereas maybe smaller developers might not be. I think for those two reasons, it could create project M&A opportunities for us, where some of these smaller developers need a rescue plan because they’re going to be running up against issues at the end of the year. I think they also--it’s not only on execution in terms of meeting year-end CODs, where we don’t see issues and we have the ability to navigate around them, but as customers now are looking for who to select to build renewables for them going forward, knowing that there’s a PTC declining clock, there’s an ITC declining clock, they want certainty. They want confidence that that developer is going to be around to be able to actually deliver, so in RFPs and just in customer interactions, we’re starting to see that theme play out more and more. We feel really good about our ability to execute and we feel very bullish about our origination activities going forward for those reasons, which might not be the case of what you would hear from a smaller developer for those reasons.

Michael Lapides

Analyst

John, thank you for that. One quick follow-up. In the supply chain, when you’re seeing it across the industry, obviously not impacting you guys, are the issues greater for smaller wind developers or smaller solar? Where are you seeing the bottlenecks within the industry more on the supply chain side?

John Ketchum

Analyst

I think probably a little bit of both. It depends on where they’re sourcing from and which OEM that they're using. Some OEMs have more alternatives to parts of the country that are less--parts of the world that are less affected, but I think you’re going to see disruptions on both wind and solar for smaller developers. We have always made selections around our OEM providers and around our panel providers which are pretty diverse - inverters, things of that nature that give us a lot of flexibility, but a smaller developer may be beholden to one particular OEM that might not have the same amount of flexibility or one supplier, given how small their build is, that might have a disruption without the ability to pivot to somebody else.

Michael Lapides

Analyst

Got it, thank you John. Much appreciated.

John Ketchum

Analyst

You’re welcome, Michael, thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.