Canadian Utilities Limited (CU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Fourth Quarter and Year-end 2022 Results Conference Call for Canadian Utilities Limited. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Colin Jackson, Senior Vice President, Finance, Treasury, Risk and Sustainability. Please go ahead, Mr. Jackson.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We're pleased that you join us for Canadian Utilities Fourth Quarter 2022 Conference Call. With me today is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Brian Shkrobot. Before we move into our formal agenda, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the numerous additional territories and home labs on which our global facilities are located. Today, we're speaking to you from our ATCO Park head office in Calgary, which is located in the Treaty 7 region. This is the ancestral territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy comprised of the Siksika, Kainai and Piikani nations, the Suut’ina Nation and the Stoney-Nakoda Nation that includes, Chiniki, Bearspaw and Goodstoney First Nation. The city of Calgary is also home to the maintain of Alberta Region 3. We honor and respect the diverse history, languages, ceremonies and culture of the indigenous peoples who call these areas home. Brian will begin today with some opening comments on recent company developments and our financial results. Following these prepared remarks, we will take questions from the investment community. Please note that a replay of the conference call and a transcript will be available on our website at canadianutilities.com and can be found in the Investors section under the heading Events and Presentations. I'd like to remind you that all of our remarks today will include forward-looking statements that are subject to important risks and uncertainties. For more information on these risks and uncertainties, please see the reports filed by Canadian Utilities with the Canadian securities regulators. And finally, I'd also like to point out that during this presentation, we may refer to certain non-GAAP and other financial measures, such as total of statement measures, adjusted earnings, adjusted earnings per share and capital investment. These measures do not have any standardized meaning under IRS. And as a result, they may not be comparable to similar measures presented in other entities. And now I'll turn the call over to Brian for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Colin, and good morning, everyone. Thank you all very much for joining us here today for our fourth quarter 2022 conference call. Before I jump into a summary of our financial results for the year, I just want to talk more generally about our performance and also highlight a few notable achievements we've had. First of all, 2022 saw us deliver on significant year-over-year earnings growth. Our Alberta distribution utilities unlocked significant efficiencies that will, in turn, create meaningful savings for customers going forward. It was also another successful year of operations for our Luma Energy business with numerous achievements in the support of the company's commitment of rebuilding and modernizing the electricity transmission and distribution system in Puerto Rico. These successes ultimately accumulated into the extension of Lumi's supplemental operating agreement, allowing critical work the team is doing for the people in Puerto Rico to continue. We've also made significant strides in the execution of our energy transition strategy with the completed acquisition of a major renewable generation portfolio and related development pipeline while continuing to advance a number of our other ongoing energy transition investments, including our Alberta-based solar initiatives and our ongoing hydrogen initiatives in the Alberta Heartland. And a point that I want to specifically highlight: we advanced a number of indigenous projects, including supporting the expansion of Denita Investments, Inc., or DIIs interest in our Northland Utilities business. Our relationship with DII began in the 1980s and is one of our longest-standing indigenous partnerships. This transaction saw them become a 50-50 owner with us in the business. We're truly proud of these results and the runway they create for us as we look to the future of our business. Taking this discussion back to our financial performance, last year was a great year for Canadian Utilities Limited. We achieved adjusted earnings of $655 million or $2.43 per share for 2022. This is $69 million or $0.26 per share higher than the previous year. While our business overall performed very well in 2022, this growth in year-over-year earnings was primarily driven by the performance of our international natural gas distribution business and the outperformance achieved in our Alberta distribution utilities as they completed the funnel year of their second performance-based regulation cycle. And I know many of you have heard me talk about this before. While we're very proud of this financial performance, we are just as pro of our safety performance. At the heart of both our safety and financial performance is the dedication and commitment of our employees to excellence. As we discussed throughout last year, our international natural gas distribution business in Australia benefited from strong operating performance and saw a significant earnings uplift related to favorable CPI indexing. This inflation trend carried throughout the remainder of last year and saw the business deliver full- year adjusted earnings of $93 million compared to $65 million in 2021. This is truly an extraordinary performance for the business. And while the ultimate duration of these CPI tailwinds is difficult to predict. Current economic forecasts suggest that many of the drivers impacting stronger near-term CPI in Australia will ease into 2023. Current estimates suggest Australia CPI will begin to trend downward to more normal levels in, say, the 3% to 4% range for the year. This will be a key trend to watch and one we expect to realign our 2022 earnings back down to pre-high inflation levels and to reduce earnings from the segment on a year-over-year basis. Moving on to our Canadian utilities. The strong performance we saw in our distribution utilities throughout 2022 continued as we closed out the year. It's important to understand that this performance is underpinned by the numerous efficiencies our businesses unlocked during their second PBR term. Looking ahead to 2023, we will now see these businesses enter a cost of service rebate in a year where these efficiencies will be shared with rate peers. We're proud to be able to share these efficiencies with customers at a time when affordability is front of mind for Alberta households, and these efficiencies will translate into an average rate reduction of 6% to 8% for most of our customers. Despite our Alberta distribution utilities entering a rebasing year in 2023, we still have strong expectations for performance across all of our utilities. The decisions received for our Alberta distribution utilities on their 2023 cost of service applications have been positive and support a view that the regulator understands the importance of facilitating a supportive and constructive regulatory framework for this rebasing year. We note that we also have a strong track record of delivering exceptional ROE outperformance across decades and under numerous regulatory frameworks and structures. Combined with the efficiency carryover mechanism within our existing regulatory framework, which will allow us to carry forward as much as 50 basis points of outperformance into '23 and to 24. We believe we have a solid foundation on which to deliver continued strong performance in 2023. Beyond 2023, we also know that this cost of service rebasing year will be followed by a third 5-year PBR term beginning in 2024. We expect decisions related to the key details of the third PBR term later this year. Speaking more broadly to our regulatory slate for 2023, it's shaping up to be a busy year and one that looks to reinforce the continued prospectivity that we've seen from the regulator more recently. Decisions on PBR 3, the generic cost of CAPA proceeding and our electric transmission general tariff application for years '23 through '25 are all expected. Moving on to capital. I just want to touch on both capital investments we made last year and also where we're heading in the coming years. In 2022, we invested $1.4 billion in our business with $1.1 billion of being invested in our core utilities. This ongoing utility investment ensures we have continued generation of stable earnings and reliable cash flows from our utility businesses and drives overall rate base growth. In our energy infrastructure businesses, we invested an additional $240 million last year, which is an increase of $14 million from 2021. This increased investment reinforces our commitment to energy transition and includes a number of previously announced projects that we are pursuing in the space, including the continued development of our Barlow, Deerfoot and Empress solar projects and our Tubihals RNG project, all of which we expect to be completed in 2023. Our ongoing hydrogen initiatives in both Canada and Australia; and finally, the expansion of our gas storage facilities. In addition to these greenfield initiatives on January 5, 2023, we have also announced the successful closing of our renewable generation portfolio acquisition. This acquisition immediately adds 232 megawatts of operating renewables to our portfolio, bringing wind generation into our energy mix to complement our existing solar and hydro assets and includes a development pipeline of more than 1.5 gigawatts of new opportunities. Not only will this transaction drive cash flows and earnings accretion in '23, the 1.5 gigawatt development portfolio provides a clear pathway to meeting our 2030 ESG target of owning, developing or managing 1,000 megawatts of renewable energy and will grow our renewable energy portfolio significantly in the coming decade. In conjunction with the successful closing of this acquisition, we also announced the signing of a long-term renewable energy purchase agreement with Microsoft. This agreement continues to build on the relationship we established with Microsoft through the contracting of our Deerfoot solar development earlier in the year. Collectively, these agreements and others like them highlight our prioritization of earnings stability alongside growth as we continue to develop our renewable portfolio and leverage the unique Alberta corporate PPA market. Touching briefly on our larger clean hydrogen production facility project with Suncor, we continue to advance the necessary work to support a move to the front end engineering design stage in the first half of 2023. Similarly, we continue to progress our work at the Atlas Carbon Sequestration Hub in conjunction with Shell and Suncor and expect to make a final investment decision on the first phase of this project in late 2023. We -- while there is significant work still to be done on these projects given their scale, we're excited to continue moving them forward and about the positive signals they send regarding our provinces intentions to decarbonize. Moving on our forward-looking expectations for capital investment. We expect to invest $3.3 billion in our regulated utilities over the next 3 years, while utility operations are the largest contributor to our earnings and will remain so for many years to come, we will also be actively investing in our energy transition growth initiatives in the coming years. Our ongoing hydrogen initiatives with Suncor are continued pursuit of a potential energy storage investment in Australia and our successful execution of acquired 1.5 gigawatts of renewable generation pipeline will all necessitate significant capital investment and drive growth for our business. Overall, Canadian Utilities have had a phenomenal 2022 that solves advance key initiatives and growth while delivering strong year-over-year earnings growth for our shareholders. We started the year with the objective of stoppage ourselves as leaders in the energy transition space. Through our ongoing initiatives to modernize the grid and through the new investments made in 2022 related to renewable generation, we've laid a strong foundation to achieve this goal. I'm excited to continue pushing the business and these initiatives forward. And that concludes my prepared remarks, and I'll now turn the call back to Colin. Thank you, Brian.

Thank you, Brian. In the interest of time, we ask that you limit yourself to 2 questions. If you have additional questions, you are welcome to rejoin the queue. I will now turn it over to the conference coordinator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Jessica Hoyle of Scotiabank.

So I just wanted to start with a little bit on your capital plan for 2023 to 2025. As the utility investment looks similar to your previous capital plan. And then as you mentioned, there's a large jump for energy infrastructure. So can you just add a little bit more color on those key areas of spend or split between generation and some of your other initiatives? And maybe some color on timing for this additional spend?

Sure. Thank you very much for your question. No, if I look at the utilities, we tend to categorize rate base growth for both our Canadian and Australian utilities as normal given the mature state of the markets. But moving forward, we see these markets out being well expected investment to follow a steady growth profile with system reliability and modernization driving rate base development. Above this base investment, we also see significant opportunity for more rapid rate base growth in the energy transition and decarbonization investments to the system. And on the electricity side, we expect this to take the form of tie-in infrastructure to integrate additional renewable capacity and energy storage assets, along with increases to system capabilities. So moving on maybe to some of the other growth that we see in our energy transition. Obviously, we've been very clear that this is the area where we see significant growth for Canadian Utilities. And we have mentioned a few of the hydrogen project, which is multiple billions of dollars. And we have the 1.5 gigawatts of renewable generation portfolio, both we expect to drive growth throughout the period. So obviously, there is some more decisions and FID decisions to come, but we are very excited about the growth opportunities facing the business.

And then just given the recent close of the acquisition of the Suncor portfolio, I just wanted to follow up to see if you had any updated thoughts on selling down any assets here or potentially adding a partner to some of your projects?

Yes, that's a great question. And I think we've talked about we have numerous attractive investment opportunities that we're currently pursuing and capital management will be a key focus for us moving forward. And in terms of options, yes, we would consider asset sales partnering or even issue of equity and all of them will be explored. We recognize that [ significant ] capital will be required to fund these growth and likely beyond our historical sources of capital to execute on that plan while paying appropriate respect to the maintenance of our credit ratings. So I think historically, we've had strong access to the debt markets, and we expect to continue to do so. In terms of capital recycling, I think we've showed our willingness to do that, whether it's our selling of our legacy Canadian fossil fuel generation business, for example, or the sell-down of our Alberta Powerline project. And as it relates to equity, while this has not been our -- in the past, a source of our capital funding, it should be also noted that we're not going to shy away from that need for that funding beyond what's available through the other channels to accept there is significant.

[Operator Instructions] Once again, our next question comes from Alex Huang of TD Securities.

This is Alex stepping in for Linda. I have 2 questions for you today. My first question is on the commissioning of the 2 hydrogen projects at the Clean Energy Innovation Hub. Just wondering how these 2 projects are progressing now that they're in service? And what are your thoughts on the ability to scale hydrogen moving forward?

Thanks, Alex. Yes, I think we've been very clear. We do see 3 pillars of growth in our energy transition and one of them being clean fuels, in particular, hydrogen. And we are progressing a number of our projects, Clean Energy Hub, for example, in Australia, we have started blending in the natural gas system there as well as our refueling stations. We've announced a number of projects, whether it's a recent development, working to export hydrogen to us from Australia to Germany. Whether it's our projects here in Alberta, where they're blending projects and as well as just a recent development announcement on working with Folic on a hydrogen community. And then, of course, we have the greater or larger project for the Suncor hydrogen facility, which we expect could not only serve local demand but be available for exports. So we're very excited, Alex and hydrogen and continue to be a strong believer in it.

Okay. Great. That's very helpful. And then my second question is on the delay for the Deerfoot and Barlow projects. I was wondering if you could talk about the causes of the delay, whether it's supply chain or labor related. And I was wondering if you are seeing these factors impact your other projects?

Yes. Great question, Alex. And yes, in terms of the slight delay in the service dates, they were to supply chain. The team has done an exceptional job to source our panels, and they are all sourced. There was some timing and shipping and delaying it to our location here. But overall, those projects are back on track and expect to be completed energized by Q3 2023 commercial operations in Q4 of '23 for the Deerfoot. And the Barlow project, we expect construction that started in October '22, and we expect that to be done and in service by Q4 2023. So yes, there is -- we're seeing some of that in particularly on our nonregulated projects where we've seen some delay. Obviously, we factored that into our expectations and timing, and being very proactive on it. In our regulated businesses, we haven't seen the same level of supply disruption. That said, our teams are ensuring that they're taking more lead time and procuring material contractors. And overall, we're managing quite well with the inventories that we have. Hopefully, that answers your question, Alex.

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Colin Jackson for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Carrie, and thank you all for participating today. We appreciate your interest in Canadian Utilities. We look forward to speaking with you again soon.

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.