Chuck Eldred
Analyst · Bank of America. Please go ahead
Thank you, Pat. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Let’s start with a review of load on Slide 7. Beginning the discussion with the strengthening New Mexico economy, we see growth in personal income as wage and salary increase and state finances that are much stronger than they were a couple of years ago. The state continues its efforts to spur economic growth and attract more jobs. When you consider the monthly employment growth for January through May of this year, Albuquerque has shown more strength than the prior year and is competitive with the national averages. The state’s economic development efforts are paying off, an example of this is a new outsourced customer service company that may bring 700 jobs to Downtown Albuquerque. Turning to our results. We’re showing positive load growth of 1% for the quarter, bringing our year-to-date average to down 0.1%, nearly flat to last year and at the top end of our previous load guidance. We believe that we’re finally seeing some strength in the local economy. As a result, we’re increasing our load forecast to flat to up 0.5% over the 2018 and 2019 period. The Texas economy continues to be robust and ranks high for business growth. Texas has led the U.S. in job creation through the first quarter of this year. With respect to our service territory in Texas, we continue to see growth in West Texas related to oil and gas production in the Permian Basin. New large customer interconnections continue to be strong in the second quarter. We’re also seeing load additions in the Gulf Coast area related to petroleum refineries. For volumetric load, our year-to-date 2.5% growth is at the midpoint of the guidance range for 2018. Demand-based load from our large industrial customers continues to be strong. And we have adjusted our guidance for 2018 and 2019. We now expect 2018 to show 5% to 7% growth. In 2019, we expect to see an additional 6% to 8% growth over 2018. Now let’s turn to Slide 8 for second quarter earnings. As Pat indicated, ongoing earnings per share are strong at $0.53. PNM’s earnings were up $0.02. We’re also seeing the impacts of both load and weather in that increase, which I’ll discuss in a moment. We also had several items that were in our guidance for the year that impacted earnings, such as the combined effects of the retail rate basin, tax reform and a generation portfolio changes that included bringing Palo Verde Unit 3 into rate base. The change in the timing of the San Juan outage was also discussed last quarter, and depreciation and property tax expense increases from our capital investments. We have talked for some time now that as Palo Verde 3 becomes a jurisdictional resource, that we would also move our Nuclear Decommissioning Trust to a heavier waiting of fixed income assets. As a result, our gains will not be as strong this year as they have been in the past years. In addition to the guidance-related drivers, we’ll likely see other utilities, as similar other utilities have a sizable pickup on weather. Cooling degree days were 36% higher than the prior year and 36% above normal as well. We saw temperatures begin to heat up early than usual in May of this year. And as a result, the cooling season began earlier and hasn’t let up. This resulted in the hottest second quarter in the last 20 years. Earnings from third-party transmission contracts and our annual formula rate true-up are also coming in at the top of our expectations, along with the impacts of retail-load growth in the quarter that I described in the previous slide. We’re also seeing increase in AFUDC. TNMP is up $0.04 versus Q2 of last year. Drivers include TCOS volumes that have been implemented since last year and increase in load being offset by the increase in depreciation and property tax expense. In addition, TNMP had $0.01 of improvement tied to weather. Finally, Corporate and Other was down $0.02 for increased interest expense and a reduction to the interest income that resulted from Westmoreland paying off their loan in May. When Westmoreland paid off the remaining $50 million on their loan, we’re also able to pay down the reciprocating loan that supported the financing of the coal mine, reducing our debt level as well. Now let’s turn to Slide 9. Weather during the quarter was certainly warmer than usual, particularly in PNM, which is considered in our 2018 guidance changes. We’re also spending additional O&M that will be used to accelerate our Vegetation Management cycle. We’re seeing a number of other items that are coming in with a stronger earnings than we originally expected such as load, transmission and AFUDC. As a result, we’re increasing our guidance ranges for both 2018 and 2019. In 2018, we have also narrowed the guidance range to reflect the reduced downside exposure. Consolidated ongoing guidance for the year is now $1.91 to $1.98. PNM is $1.48 to $1.52 and TNMP is expected to be $0.60 to $0.62. Corporate and Other will be lowered, largely driven by Westmoreland’s payoff of its loan, which lowered expected interest income and rising interest expense. In 2019, we have increased the total range to $2.08 to $2. 18. PNM increases to $1.57 to $1.63, and TNMP to $0.67 to $0.69. TNMP’s range reflects the addition of $0.03 for a rate recovery related to the filing we made in May. Now turning to Slide 10 for an update on our capital forecast. 2018, we have allocated additional capital to serve the growing needs of TNMP. We expect to spend $215 million there this year, which is $30 million higher than our previous plan. This brings our rate-base compound annual growth to 12.9% from 2018 to 2021. Also, I want to point out that we have not made capital adjustments to the 2019 to 2021 forecast, but we plan to do that at our third quarter conference call. We are working through the forecast and expect our growth in TNMP will continue to require additional capital spending in the future years. Overall, our business remains strong. Our increase of guidance demonstrates this. And we continue our commitment to the 6% long-term earnings growth target through 2021. We also expect our dividend growth will continue at a similar pace to earnings growth. We’re pleased to see some strength in New Mexico economy and the need to allocate incremental capital to support TNMP’s growing customer demand. But before I turn it over to Pat, I’ll ask the question of the day. But Pat will answer this. What does the pope call Avocado Day? And the answer is…