Black Hills Corporation (BKH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. I'm Steve Mills, Chairman of Black Hills Corporation's Board of Directors, and I'd like to welcome all of you to our Annual Shareholders Meeting. We very much appreciate your attendance, whether you're here in person or via the webcast. In accordance with the notice of meeting, I call to order the 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Black Hills Corporation. We do have a few shareholders attending the meeting in person today, so we will conduct the meeting accordingly, following strict social distancing guidelines. Those of you attending in person were given an agenda for the meeting as you entered the meeting room this morning. We will conduct this meeting in accordance with the agenda. On the reverse side of the agenda is a list of the rules of conduct for this meeting and in fairness to all shareholders and to conduct an orderly meeting, we intend to adhere to these rules. Before proceeding to the business portion of the meeting, I'd first like to introduce our Board of Directors. Our company is very fortunate to have such a distinguished and broadly experienced group of directors, and their contributions are key to the company's ongoing success. The Director's biographies are included in our proxy statement. Board members are: Linn Evans, Barry Granger, Tony Jensen, Kathleen McAllister, Mike Madison, Bob Otto, Scott Prochazka, Becky Roberts, Mark Schober, Teresa Taylor and John Vering. Barry Granger and Scott Prochazka are our newest directors as they joined the Board on October 1, 2020. I welcome them to their first annual meeting. And after almost 9 years of service, Director, Mike Madison, is retiring from our Board effective at this meeting. I want to thank Mike for his outstanding service to the company. He's been an exemplary colleague and an excellent Board member. Congratulations, Mike. Normally, I would next introduce all the company's officers in attendance, but due to COIVD-related precautions, we have limited physical meeting attendance to just -- we have limited this physical meeting attendance to just me and 3 corporate officers; Linn Evans, Director, President and CEO; Rich Kinzley, Senior Vice President and CFO; and Amy Koenig, our Vice President, Governance, Corporate Secretary and Deputy General Counsel. Our other officers are listed in the annual report and 10-K. Also present with us today are Scott Loveless and Kristin Cargin from the firm of Deloitte & Touche, our independent public accounting firm. And Andrea Severson, our inspector of election and a representative of EQ Shareowner Services. Andrea has executed the prescribed oath of office, which will be filed with the minutes of this meeting. Black Hill Corporation's shareholders of record at the close of business on March 8, 2021, were entitled to vote on matters coming before this meeting. I have an affidavit of mailing certifying that all shareholders as of that date were mailed a notice of meeting, a proxy statement, a proxy and the company's 2020 annual report to shareholders. At the close of business on March 8, 2021, the company had approximately 62.8 million shares of common stock outstanding and entitled to vote. A list of shareholders of record on that date and the number of shares owned by each, has been prepared by EQ Shareowner Services, the company's transfer agent and registrar. A preliminary report by the inspector of election on the number of shares represented at this meeting indicates we have represented either in person or by proximately -- or proxy, approximately 91% of the outstanding shares eligible to vote today. And therefore, we have more than the necessary 50% of the shares to constitute a quorum. On behalf of the Board of Directors and management, I would like to express my appreciation to all shareholders who have voted or returned their proxies. All shareholders of the company eligible to vote at this meeting have been furnished a proxy statement dated March 18, 2021. 3 specific proposals are set forth in the proxy statement. Shareholders who intended to present additional proposals or director nominations at this annual meeting were required to provide notice to the company by January 28, 2021. The company did not receive any such notifications. Therefore, no proposals or director nominations will be accepted from the floor today. The 3 proposals set forth in the proxy are as follows. Proposal 1 is for the election of 1 director to serve until the annual meeting in 2023 and 4 directors to serve until the annual meeting of 2024 and until their respective successors are duly elected and qualified. Linn R. Evans, Barry M. Granger, Tony A. Jensen, Scott M. Prochazka and I have been nominated for election as directors of the company based on the recommendation of the Governance committee of the Board of Directors. The Board's Governance committee consists only of independent directors. Our second proposal is to consider the ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the year 2021. While not required by law, the Board submits this selection of Deloitte & Touche for ratification by the shareholders as a matter of good corporate governance. And our third proposal is to receive an advisory vote on the executive compensation of our named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement. For those shareholders attending in person, the meeting is now open for discussion relating to these 3 proposals. Once again, please observe the rules, which govern this meeting, which were provided to you as you entered the room. And if you want to speak now on any of these proposals, we have a microphone available for you to use. Does anyone want to have any questions on these proposals? Since there are no comments, we will proceed. Are there any shareholders present in person who have not previously voted in person or by proxy or shareholders who wish to change their vote? If so, please proceed to the voting table. Since there are no shareholders indicating a need to vote at this time, I declare the polls are now closed. Our inspector of election informed me prior to the meeting that all 3 proposals have received more than the required number of votes to pass. The inspector of election will tabulate the final vote results, and we -- the company will report these final results in a report on Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the next few days. Our President and CEO, Linn Evans, will now give a brief presentation on the company's business. Following Linn's presentation, we will take additional shareholders' questions. Linn?

Good morning. Thank you, Steve. Thank you very much for all of you participating with us today. I would also like to acknowledge my appreciation for Mike Madison's steadfast leadership on the Board for nearly 9 years. I personally appreciate how he influenced the company, how he influenced me as a leader. And so thank you very much, Mike. I also want to thank my bride, Gloria, who's in the back of the room, who's so lovingly and patiently let's me to put the energy into the role that I do. Thank you so much. I'll try to announce the slides as we go through for those of you participating via phone and otherwise. But starting with Slide 2. Some of my comments today, is -- it advancing? I can't see it. So make sure it's advancing before I go too much further. Thank you. Starting with Slide 2. Some of my comments today will include forward-looking statements. So please review this particular list of risk factors and those that we put in our SEC filings before you make an investment in Black Hills. Let's move to Slide 4. We're strategically well positioned as a pure-play utility. We serve a large, mostly rural, geographic region that provides very unique opportunities to serve customers. We're very pleased to observe what we call the accelerated growth within our service territories that has followed the pandemic. It's been interesting for us to watch. The map on this slide provides an overview of our operations. We proudly serve 1.3 million customers across more than 800 communities in 8 states. Our integrated electric utilities serve 4 states, and we own nearly 9,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines. Our power generation and our mining segments are fully integrated into our electric utilities with mostly long-term or life of asset contracts. And our natural gas utilities serve customers in 5 states, and we own and operate underground storage facilities, and we also own 47,000 miles of transmission and distribution gas lines. Slide 5, please. Our unique set of utility assets provide us with also strategic diversity. Our large infrastructure systems require ongoing investment and our relatively large geography provides opportunities for customer growth across stable and growing states that have constructive business and regulatory climates. Our unique utility businesses also provide complementary seasonality, as you see on the graph on the right, which helps us level out our financial results throughout the year. Slide 6, please. Approximately 90% of our business is comprised of regulated utilities. With our remaining business as being very integral to our electric utilities. The green graphic on this slide illustrates that at year-end, 88% of our total enterprise revenues were derived from natural gas businesses and renewable energy assets. As our greenhouse gas emissions decline, we're investing in additional renewable energy and natural gas projects. This includes our extremely -- excuse me, I was going to go into something else. Slide 7, please. Slide 7 illustrates our responsible approach to integrating renewable energy across all 3 of our electric utilities while paying close attention to ensuring reliability and customer rate impacts. Our addition of intermittent renewable energy is made possible by our balanced mix of generation fuel resources that ensure overall and continuous reliability. This includes our extremely efficient mine-mouth, cold-fired generation in Gillette, Wyoming, which serves our customers in South Dakota and Wyoming, with low cost, reliable 24/7 electricity. As winter storm Uri and the extraordinary cold weather that we all -- many of us experienced in February highlighted, those generation assets remain extremely important in providing reliable and what I call resilient and affordable energy to our customers and our region. In Colorado, we're delivering on the state's clean energy goals, and we operate the cleanest utility in the state, serving by reliable natural gas generation and renewable energy resources. In support of those state goals, we're adding 200 megawatts of solar energy by 2023 through a third-party power purchase agreement. Moving to Slide 9. As we reflect on 2020, I'm very proud of the resilience and the tenacity of our Black Hills Energy team. We worked together, and we demonstrated our ready-to-serve commitment as a team. We rallied to overcome the unique challenges of 2020, delivering strong results for our customers when they needed us the most and for you, our shareholders. A number of my coworkers are listening to this webcast this morning. I'm grateful for their agility, their grace and the determination they and their families displayed throughout the year. Slide 10, please. This slide lists several of our key accomplishments for the year. In 2020, we invested $755 million of customer-focused capital. We worked to obtain constructive regulatory outcomes for recovery upon these investments. We maintained strict cost discipline. We delivered strong earnings and dividend growth and maintained our solid financial position throughout the pandemic. We also provided you greater clarity into our environmental, social and governance with our ESG profile and our long-term financial outlook. Slide 11 shows that we delivered strong financial results for 2020, driven by recovery on investments to support our customers and the growth in our communities. Moving to Slide 12. Our financial discipline and strategies positioned us really well going into 2020, and we maintained ample liquidity to support our capital needs throughout the year. We completed an equity issuance and a debt offering at very attractive terms. We strengthened our balance sheet, and we continued to maintain quality investment-grade ratings with a BBB+ equivalent from all 3 rating agencies. Moving to Slide 13. We continue to increase our dividend, and 2020 marked 50 consecutive years of increasing the dividend, and 73 continuous years of uninterrupted payout. We're very proud of our dividend track record, which is one of the longest streaks in the industry. Slide 14 sets out our long-term growth expectations. We're targeting a 5% to 7% compound annual EPS growth rate for 2023 through 2025, and we're targeting an annual dividend growth rate of more than 5% with a payout ratio between 50% and 60%. Moving to Slide 15. Our safety-focused culture achieved a total case incident rate of 1.0, which sets a new record for our team. And that's more than twice as good, if you will, as the industry average for safety performance, outstanding results. We're investing in technology like digital mapping, data analytics and artificial intelligence to work and serve our customers smarter and more efficiently. This includes the expansion of our digital as-built process that incorporates GPS technology to accurately and efficiently document and map our natural gas assets in real-time as they're installed in the ground. This makes us more efficient when designing and constructing new pipelines. It also helps us reduce third-party damages to our systems, which, in turn, reduce overall risk and improves our overall reliability and safety for our customers. Our approach in investing in our infrastructure and technology has delivered industry-leading reliability for our electric customers, as you can see on the chart on the right. Those results were produced by the IEEE, and they affirm that all 3 of our electric utilities are among the most reliable electric utilities in the country, consistently placing in or near the top quartile. Moving to Slide 16, please. We've always focused on ESG issues. As these issues came to the forefront during 2020, we worked to better tell our strong ESG story. Last year, we announced goals to reduce our electric operations greenhouse gas emissions intensity 40% by 2030 and 70% by 2040, and that's off a 2005 baseline. For our gas utilities, our goal is a 50% reduction by 2035, also off a 2005 baseline. We've already achieved a 33% reduction in our gas operations and a 25% reduction in our electric operations, while at the same time, adding customers and serving their increasing demand for energy. We're pursuing our gas utilities goal through our pipeline replacement program. We're voluntarily participating in an EPA methane challenge, which targets reductions in methane emissions exceeding current industry requirements. Last November, we provided more detail of our ESG profile through an updated sustainability report when we also published new industry developed qualitative and quantitative emissions report and those can be found at our website. Slide 17 lists a number of areas where we delivered progress in 2020 against our ESG profile. Our customer-focused strategy incorporates these considerations into what we do every day. We're proud of the recognitions we received for environmental leadership and for our strong community support. And we're also pleased that with our Board leadership, we have a well-balanced diversity of perspective and experience, helping us guide the organization. Slide 19 illustrates our programmatic growth plan with upside potential. Through 2025, we forecast investing more than $3 billion of capital, and we anticipate realizing other incremental projects and opportunities for growth as we go along. We're also pursuing profitable growth through other less capital-intensive opportunities like data centers that we proudly serve through Wyoming and places in that region. And we're very focused on other opportunities such as cost discipline and continuous improvement within our operations and our back-office processes. Moving to Slide 20. Our capital plan advances our pure-play utility strategy. 95% of our planned investments are within regulated utilities and they're focused primarily on safety, reliability and supporting customer and community growth. We expect these investments to generate timely recovery, particularly through our state-approved investment tracking mechanisms for safety and similar capital investments. On Slide 21, we take a long-term approach to investment for the benefit of all of our stakeholders. Our investment programs use a risk-assessed approach that prioritizes safety and reliability while considering the impact upon customers' rates and their bills. Moving to Slide 22. We continue to transform our customers' experience. We're implementing easy-to-use self-service options. This includes the deployment of an improved website with tools for customers to review, for example, their energy usage trends, they can manage their accounts online, and they can choose how and when they want to interact with us. The result of that is that customers are happier, as evidenced by the -- by our team's very strong Net Promoter Score you can see on the right of the -- right-hand part of the slide. Moving to Slide 23. Our pipeline safety management system is a key focus for us. It represents a very unique opportunity where safety, continuous improvement in technology combined to make a meaningful difference in lowering our overall risk and making our systems more reliable and safer. We were recently recognized by the American Gas Association as an industry leader in this very important area. The slide also includes a picture at the bottom right-hand corner of the slide of our new training facility in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The training facility is essentially a miniaturized town for our technicians to get hands-on experience and training in a very safe and controlled environment. In closing, Slide 24 illustrates the results of our continued strategic execution. We're proud of what we accomplished in 2020, particularly in light of the pandemic, and we continue to focus on our ready-to-serve commitment in 2021 and beyond. So thank you for your attendance today, and we appreciate your investment in Black Hills Corporation. Now I'll turn the podium back over to Chairman Mills. Steve?

Thanks, Linn. I'd now like to open the meeting for any questions or comments that anyone may have. Please, we have a microphone available just a second, please.

I'm Denise Parrish, customer and shareholder, customer a lot longer than a shareholder though. So I have a question, if I may, about the sustainability, environmental goals. The success that you've had so far has been primarily in Colorado in closing the coal plants and so forth. And I just wondered, as you get further into trying to accomplish that goal. To what extent will economics enter into whether you can achieve that? If it looks like it will be more expensive for customers, will you lay back that goal a bit? Or to what extent will the goal need to be accomplished regardless of the cost to customers?

Thank you, Denise. First, I want to acknowledge who asked that question. Denise Parrish is a longtime regulator of the Wyoming office, the consumer advocate. Somewhat I would call a stalwart and an icon in the Western Energy resource, regulatory climates. So thank you for being here. Thank you for being a shareholder. I think that's special that you come out of the regulatory environment. You're always looking over our shoulder. You know our company incredibly well, and then you become a shareholder. So thank you for doing that. Great question. Our approach has been very much on the customer rates and the customer price and the customer approach. We're working on an integrated resource plan now that we'll be filing in Wyoming later this summer, July 1, we'll file in Wyoming and in South Dakota. Like all integrated resource plans, cost and customer impact is one of the first things we consider when we decide what generation investments we're going to make. So it's going to be very important to us. We've set goals that we believe we can achieve, as I've told the governor in Wyoming that we can achieve through the engineered lives of the coal plants that we currently operate. And we're willing to invest in other technologies such as carbon capture, utilization and storage. We're at the table hoping we can get some grants and things of that nature with the University of Wyoming as our partner. We hope to hear from the Department of Energy, maybe middle of next month, whether we might qualify for a grant to test some technology that we would like to. So we're very sensitive. And we also recognize in Wyoming, 3 out of every 10 families are directly related to the coal mining industry. So we want to be very sensitive to that as those are our customers as well. So we set goals that we believe we can get through current technologies. It will be a conversion of maybe some natural gas, more wind, more solar. We might even try some batteries as we go forward. But it's very important to us. So we're very focused on the customer rates. Also, it's important for our consideration. The state policies have actually worked pretty favorably in Wyoming and South Dakota, where we are operating those coal assets to help keep our customers' rates low. But what we're watching also, as you know, that's what happened in Washington. And how do we stay compliant with what we hear from them, where those goals might take us, et cetera. And then as importantly, what's our cost of equity. As ESG considerations become more prevalent in terms of the equity cost, it's becoming more prevalent. We're watching it on the debt side, will banks loan to us, things of that nature. And so we're watching that closely to, Denise. So our approach is the customer first. When we put the customer first, we think we will succeed as a company and our shareholders succeed. But we do have an interesting path before us as we migrate through different policies, whether at the state level, the community level or the Federal Level. Thank you.

I have 1 more, if I am permitted to.

Yes, please.

I'm limiting myself to 2. So my understanding is that there could be a further expansion of the Choice Gas program in Wyoming. And I know you have it in a number of states already. And I just wondered whether you found that program to be economically beneficial for the company and for customers. So is that -- sometimes it's one or the other. And I just didn't know there's a lot of diverse opinions about the benefits of Choice Gas, especially in light of the Texas incident last month and where that might go? And I just wondered how that might influence your decision on expansion of that program.

Great Question. Don't have a complete answer for you yet because we're evaluating that ourselves. The Choice Gas program is available in Nebraska and Wyoming. And is that it? That's it. Thank you. And that came from the SourceGas acquisition and these assets we bought with them. And we watched it very closely, and it's been a profitable business for the shareholder, yes, with the exception of this last February. And so hence, the issue, right? And in fact, we had a discussion with our Board of Directors the last 2 days about factors around storm Uri, and how they impact our strategy as it goes forward. So I think the question is we don't know. But we recognize that many of the Choice Gas customers were very protected. At least we think so in terms of where we stand today in our analysis of the storm. They did pretty well. And so it did have customer benefit, but it did have shareholder benefit recently, no. In fact, that we're going to work our way through that now. So the answer is we don't know. But prior to storm Uri, it was something that we were looking at pretty closely because it can make sense for customers and shareholders. But we might need to have different parameters and different safeguards in place as we go forward for events like storm Uri and our recent experience there. So good question. Thank you. Are there any other questions? So as there are no further questions, I'd like to now adjourn the meeting. But before I do, I would like to thank all of you that were involved in preparing for and putting on this meeting as I look around the room. So thank you very much. I know there's a lot of time and effort involved. And finally, thanks to everyone for attending the meeting today, and thank you for your continued interest in Black Hills Corporation. Stay safe and keep healthy. Thank you.