Earnings Labs

Edison International (EIX)

Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Tue, Oct 30, 2018

$67.88

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to the Edison International Third Quarter 2018 Financial Teleconference. My name is Ash and I'll be your operator today. Today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Sam Ramraj, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Ramraj, you may begin your conference.

Sam Ramraj - Edison International

Management

Thank you, Ash, and welcome, everyone. Our speakers today are President and Chief Executive Officer, Pedro Pizarro; and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Maria Rigatti. Also here are other members of the management team. Materials supporting today's call are available at www.edisoninvestor.com. These include our Form 10-Q, prepared remarks from Pedro and Maria, and the teleconference presentation. Tomorrow, we will distribute our regular business update presentation. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements about the outlook for Edison International and its subsidiaries. Actual results could differ materially from current expectations. Important factors that could cause different results are set forth in our SEC filings. Please read these carefully. The presentation includes certain outlook assumptions, as well as reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP measure. During the question-and-answer session, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. I will now turn the call over to Pedro.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Well, thanks a lot, Sam, and good afternoon everyone. Third quarter core earnings were $1.56 per share, $0.12 higher than the same period last year. This was mainly due to the regulatory deferral of certain O&M costs and tax benefits at SCE, partially offset by lower tax benefits at EIX Parent and Other. Please remember this comparison is not particularly meaningful because SCE he has not received a decision in its 2018 General Rate Case. Maria will provide more detail in her remarks. As we continue to wait on proposed decisions and rulings from key proceedings, I would like to update you on some significant events that occurred in the third quarter. On the legislative front, during the 2018 session, we advocated for reforms to mitigate the risk of catastrophic wildfires and fairly allocate financial responsibility among the multiple causes which contribute to wildfires. We focused on four key principles. The first was the establishment of an objective of wildfire management plan to guide system investments and new operating protocols. This would create more transparency and clarity with regard to prudency. The second principle was reform of inverse condemnation to transition from strict liability regardless of fault to a reasonableness standard. The third principle was reforming the current cost recovery structure at the CPUC to incorporate the concept that disallowance must be proportionate to the utility's contribution to a fire. Finally we emphasize the continued importance of financially healthy utilities to meet California's ambitious climate change policies. With the end of the 2018 legislative session, I wanted to briefly review the key actions taken. Senate Bill 901 was the most significant wildfire policy bill signed this year. We appreciate the legislature's attention to this critical and complex issue. Climate change has resulted in long-term drought conditions that weaken and kill…

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Thank you, Pedro. Good afternoon, everyone. My comments today will cover the third quarter 2018 results compared to the same period a year ago and other financial updates for EIX and SCE. As we have communicated to you before, until we receive a decision on the 2018 General Rate Case, we will continue to recognize revenues from CPUC activity largely based on 2017 authorized base revenue requirements with reserves taken for known items including the cost of capital decision and Tax Reform. Also consistent with prior quarters, we are providing our SCE key driver analysis at the prior combined statutory tax rate of approximately 41% for both 2018 and 2017 for comparability purposes. Therefore, the effects of Tax Reform will largely be isolated so that we can focus on the underlying financial and operational drivers of the business. Let's begin with a look at our core earnings drivers. Please turn to page 3. For the third quarter 2018, Edison International reported core earnings of $1.56 per share, up $0.12 over the same period last year. From the table on the right-hand side, you will see that SCE had a positive $0.19 core EPS variance year-over-year. This variance was driven by $0.08 of lower operation and maintenance costs and $0.18 of income tax benefits versus the same period in the prior year. The lower operation and maintenance expense is mainly due to the regulatory deferral of incremental line clearing and wildfire insurance costs. Higher income tax benefits were primarily related to the favorable impact of the lower 2018 tax rate on higher pre-tax income and true-ups related to the filing of our 2016 and 2017 tax returns. The key EPS drivers table for SCE shows other smaller contributing items. For the quarter, EIX Parent and Other had a negative $0.07 per…

Sam Ramraj - Edison International

Operator

Operator, please open the call for questions. As a reminder, we request you to limit yourself to one question and one follow-up so everyone in line has the opportunity to ask questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session of today's conference. Speakers, our first question comes from Ali Agha from SunTrust. Your line is now open.

Ali Agha - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Your line is now open

Thank you. Good afternoon.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Hi, Ali.

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Hi.

Ali Agha - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Your line is now open

Hi. Pedro, first question, as you mentioned you have an ongoing internal wildfire investigation. And I just wanted to be clear, during your own internal investigation, have you found any procedural lapse or any other negligence on the part of your utility?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

So, Ali, I think as I mentioned in my remarks this is an ongoing investigation and we're still missing crucial pieces of evidence including the equipment that CAL FIRE removed and we have not been able to access. So, we really don't have any conclusions that we can share in terms of causation of what happened. We know as we shared today that our equipment played a role in the Koenigstein Road ignition point, but that's all we've been able to conclude at this point, and we don't have any further conclusions on causation itself.

Ali Agha - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Your line is now open

Okay. And my second question, I also want to just clarify something from your opening remarks. You mentioned that you do anticipate to have material losses for the Thomas Fire and I want to clarify, that is before you assume any cost recovery, or is that assuming the final impact to Edison post any cost recovery, et cetera?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Yeah. We wanted to signal to investors that we expect we will incur losses in the end; however, we just can't estimate what those might be right now. And you mentioned some of the reasons that we can't estimate them. I mean, just maybe dialing it back and going through the whole chain of things that will add up to a net exposure at the end of the day; first, we have just the final information in terms of claims, right. We're still getting claims through the legal process, so that's where exposure in a sense begins. We also then have the information that is still being developed on what happened, right. And so today we shared one element that we now felt comfortable sharing, but we need to get into an understanding of what role – what things led to the actual cause of the event. As we go through the legal process, remember this will be litigation right? So litigation itself will create some limits in terms of what we can share as we go through the process and defend the company. But as we go through that process, what legal theories end up being found relevant by the court will matter. Is it inverse condemnation and the negligence approach, et cetera. Then we get to the fact that oftentimes these kind of cases don't end up going to final judgment but do end up settling, right. And so our exposure if we end up settling would be impacted by the balance of settlements, so the discount factor; as you often see discount factors in settlements in other cases. And then finally, there's the question of CPUC cost recovery, which we would expect we'd be seeking cost recovery, but that would be a long process in and of itself; a process that typically happens after we've been through the bulk of the litigation or settlement progress and have a better understanding of what unrecovered amounts there may be beyond our insurance. So sorry to be a little more winded there, but I feel maybe helpful for you and for other investors on the line to understand that there's a whole sequence of events that will ultimately leave us with a final exposure. Today, we're saying, we do expect that we'd end up with a material exposure, but we're not able to estimate or provide a reasonable estimate of what that could be.

Ali Agha - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Your line is now open

I understand. Thank you very much.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Thanks, Ali.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Praful Mehta from Citigroup. Your line is open.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Hey, Praful.

Praful Mehta - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Thanks. Thanks so much. Hi, guys. I guess just drilling down a little bit more into this wildfire point. Is there, at this point, any view on the split of liability between the two ignition points? As in, will there be an ability to do that or do you think the fire is so blended together that in the end, the liabilities were kind of all – kind of get capped into one broader fire?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

I think it's early to say. In some of the – maybe to echo some of the comments I made earlier. There is a lot of analysis that will take place, and then there will also be the going through the litigation process. Let me just point on one example the analysis that would be relevant here and that's fire progression, right? And what that means is, we're saying here that we are aware of at least two ignition points. We talked about two that we are aware of in Koenigstein and Anlauf Canyon. Those are somewhat removed from each other, right? So you can imagine that out of Koenigstein, there would have been some damage that ultimately would likely be attributed exclusively to Koenigstein because it happened within its near vicinity before the two fires merged, right? Likewise, they might be damaged. It would be clearly attributable to the ignition at Anlauf Canyon because it would have been in its proximity. Fire progression that modeling that study that we're looking at right now just to point to one element here, looks at how did those two ignition points and the fires that emanated from them, how do they end up merging and to what extent is it clear, if it is, that if you then look at any point downstream as it were later on in the progression of the fire can one allocate responsibility to one or the other ignition points or whether it's exclusive (00:30:13) responsibility or whether it's a proportional responsibility based on how that fire may have progressed over time. That's a very complicated science. It's one of the things that we are looking at and that I mentioned. But the results of that would be certainly one relevant element to answer your question of whether if ultimately there'll be a clear demarcation in terms of the responsibility for the overall fire damages between the two or more points. A little long winded there as well by just trying to illustrate how complicated this is, Praful, and that's one of the relevant factors that we and we expect plaintiffs also will be looking at in litigation.

Praful Mehta - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Thanks, Pedro, and appreciate the complexity, so helpful color. And just in that context, again, mudslides, would that also then have the same logic, you will look at the progression and see which kind of point was close or tied to the mudslides and link liability with that?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Well, I think that's an even more fundamental question with the mudslides, which is to what extent will expert testimony establish that whether the mudslides were indeed catalyzed or influenced or impacted by the fires or whether those mudslides might have happened in any case given the torrential rains that took place in the period immediately preceding them. So we don't have conclusions there. But as you can imagine, our evaluation, our analysis is looking at the number of factors that may have preceded and potentially impacted the mudslides. Now, to the extent that fires may be shown to be a factor, and again we – this is just an open question, at least for us, but if they were shown to be a factor, then I think that fire progression analysis could then be relevant in terms of looking all the way upstream at which ignition point may have had an impact on that or whether both ignition point had an impact but at different relative levels. Does that – I know we say question and one follow-up, but that's complex. Let me just ask any – do you have any clarification needed on that, or does that make sense?

Praful Mehta - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

It made sense to me, but I'm sure others will have follow-ups, but I'll allow for others to come back and ask questions and I'll come back in queue. Thanks so much, Pedro.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Great. Thanks, Praful.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Julien Dumoulin-Smith from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Hi there, Julien?

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open

Hey, good afternoon. Hey. So I'll take Praful up on that, perhaps, can you elaborate a little bit with respect to what's your understanding is: A, with regards to any other potential involvement on that particular Koenigstein Road, e.g. maybe cable companies and others? And then separately, can you elaborate a little bit on the precedents established around negligence when there's multiple initiation points?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Let me take an initial shot and Adam Umanoff, our General Counsel, may want to add here. In terms of your first question, I don't think we are able to opine further beyond the disclosure we made today. I'll just stick to the point that we made in the disclosures that we are now – based on the progress we've made in our evaluation with the information that we have, we can now say with a greater degree of certainty that our equipment was involved in Koenigstein. I don't think we have commented on other underlying factors and in fact, as I said earlier, the whole cause of the fire, what may have led our equipment to end up becoming a factor is something that we're still reviewing and we need, for example, to obtain access to our equipment that's being held by CAL FIRE before we can have a final determination. So I think that's all I can say about that one, Julien, on the point of other cases of negligence, Adam, you want to pipe in here?

Adam S. Umanoff - Edison International

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open

So, Julien, I think as you probably know and we've certainly disclosed previously, there are various theories under which a plaintiff could seek recovery for damages caused by a wildfire. In the case of inverse condemnation claims, all the plaintiff has to show is that our equipment substantially caused the damage. A negligence claim is very different. In a negligence claim, the plaintiff needs to show that we breached our standard of care, which is generally we have to operate as a reasonable and prudent operator of our equipment that we design, operate, and maintain the equipment reasonably. A negligence case will involve a dispute. Plaintiffs will argue that we were negligent – we didn't reasonably design, operate, and maintain equipment. We will defend based upon our claims that we did. And most of these cases involve expert testimony, experts on either side, the defendant and the plaintiff arguing the case as to whether or not the conduct was or was not negligent. Does that help?

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open

Sure. And then with regards to – as a follow-up here on the memo account that you talked about for the $407 million of capital for the resiliency, can you talk about the timing that your expectations there? I mean, is your expectation there in filing for the memo that this could happen fairly rapidly, akin to what you've seen with the WEMA?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

We were – Maria may have more to add here, but we – certainly, we're hoping that we can get a determination on the memo account establishment in the near term. I'm thinking we have proposed a schedule, that schedule that we proposed would have had a final decision on the final – the full program including the two-way balancing account by I believe August of next year. And I think as part of that schedule, the timing for the memo account would have been within, say, the end of this year or so. Maria, anything to add there or...?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

No, I think that's it, Pedro.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open

Great. Thank you, all.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Thanks, Julien.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jonathan Arnold from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Hi, Jonathan.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Good afternoon, guys. I think the – I have one question I just have – has been coming up is when you guys say that you feel you might have or you'll likely have material losses, that – you're not implying that you think that there's negligence, right? It could have occurred via inverse condemnation or negligence, doesn't really matter once you've decided your asset was the substantial cause, you probably will have a loss of one kind or another, is that...? (00:37:31)

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Yeah. And just to simplify, what we're saying is we expect we'll have some kind of loss that will be material. However, we're not commenting on how large that could be because I said and also Adam's comments were relevant to this, we'll be going into a litigation process that will include litigating the theory under which we are found liable and then probably in a much more basic point, while we have pointed to our equipment at Koenigstein being involved, as I said earlier, we have not provided any conclusions because we don't have any conclusions yet on what the costs would have been of that equipment as leading to the ignition, right. We don't know to what extent we – if the negligence standard applied in court or later on showing and producing (00:38:31) at the PUC, we just don't have sufficient facts at hand to determine the degree to which we acted prudently and reasonably, and we probably won't know that until we have more pieces of information including access to the equipment that CAL FIRE currently has and that we haven't been able to see.

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

And just maybe to expand a little bit, Jonathan, so the material loss that Pedro mentioned in his prepared remarks that's related to the whole host of things that I and Pedro have already talked about as around the ignition point and the fact that the association of our equipment with that ignition point. But the other part of the analysis is insurance recovery and we have $1 billion of insurance for that period, and then, separately of an analysis of probability of recovery. That's more complex than the analysis of – in the insurance, obviously. But those are the other components that are – so we have to think about them in different buckets.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Yeah.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

So does your statement and what you've just said, Maria, mean that you expect to have an exposure that exceeds your insurance and likelihood of recovery, or are you just talking about the sort of the number itself?

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

I think that we – as Pedro mentioned, we have not had access to the equipment yet that was at Koenigstein Road. There is a lot of information that we still need to obtain from third-party sources and others, things that will come up during the course of litigation. I think right now, we're still going through all of that. And as we get more information, we'll be able to develop a more specific response.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Okay. And then, if you – I think that was kind of a – oh, and one other thing, you said you're going to make – you're making moderate investments in the mitigation program, I mean, can you give us any quantification of moderate?

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Sure. That's related to what we were calling our GS&RP, our Grid Safety and Resiliency Program, so that's the filing that we made not too long ago. It covers the year 2008 – balance of the year 2018, 2019, and 2020. Overall, that's about $407 million. I believe that the 2018 spending is in the $50 million or so range that's for the balance of the year. So that's what we're saying in terms of moderate expenditure.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Just one final thing, Maria. You said you would probably give a full update of your outlook when you got the PD on the rate case, I think, in your prepared remarks. Is that, which clearly could come any day, in which case might you even have such a thing at the EEI conference, for example?

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

So obviously, probably from the last time I'm sure you recall that the proposed decision is more than 1,000 pages typically, the ALJ ruling. We will work diligently to read as fast as we can and to update the capital spending for the period as well as the rate base outlook then for the period. It will still be a proposed decision, so we might have various caveats that we might want to associate with that update. But yeah, we will be trying, obviously, as hard as we possibly can if something were to come out between now and then. I think that might have actually happened in the previous case where we got a proposed decision right before – or final decision right before EEI.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Okay. But I did hear you right that you would – the trigger in this case would be the PD not necessarily...?

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Yeah. So we're going to update rate base and capital based on the proposed decision. Because it's a proposed decision, we may have commentary around things we may or may not agree with still at that point. But yes, that's what we will do.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Great. Thank you. Sorry for all the questions.

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

No, it's fine.

Jonathan Philip Arnold - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Thanks, Jonathan.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Shahriar Pourreza from Guggenheim Partners. Your line is now open.

Shahriar Pourreza - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst · Guggenheim Partners. Your line is now open

Hey. Good afternoon, guys. So let me just ask you, Pedro, just around this. I mean, when you guys made your dividend decision and you went through a pretty painstaking process and you came up with multiple scenarios and you sort of book-ended it, right? So I guess, my first question is, is what you're finding as things are progressing as data points come out, is this still sort of in line with your book-end scenario, i.e., material impact? Any thoughts around your dividend decision?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Yeah. Hey, Shahriar, thanks for the question. And just to remind everybody, I think you captured it well, we've communicated in our – and actually not just one, right, but in all of our prior dividend decisions since the wildfire topic came up, that we and our board have looked at a very broad range of potential scenarios and have not based our dividend decision on an expected outcome; rather, we've based it on being comfortable that we could satisfy all of our obligations under a very negative outcome. I don't want to get ahead of our next quarterly decision, dividend decision. So I never want to get ahead of that. But I think that the disclosure that we're making today is certainly in line with the kinds of scenarios that we have explored in the past and that led to the dividend decisions we made previously.

Shahriar Pourreza - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst · Guggenheim Partners. Your line is now open

Okay, got it, so that answers that. And then, just let me just on the more technicality. What triggered the disclosure, right? I mean, what – there's obviously I'm getting questions around the timing of why you disclosed today. The process is still really unclear. There's still parallel paths happening. Why not wait a little bit because this – does this leave you open to a lot of interpretations?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

I appreciate that question, too. And, look, this is an ongoing review by our team. Just as you expect, it's an ongoing review by the folks at CAL FIRE and the folks at Ventura County Fire and the folks at the CPUC Safety and Enforcement Division. In our case, we've been working all along. We learn more almost literally every day and we felt that based on that learning curve that we've had over the past months, we thought it was appropriate for us to make this disclosure today on this particular piece of the fire. Not just for anything – anything else or rather other than, the analysis, I mean, it's not just the analysis of talking to eyewitnesses, and I believe there's been some eyewitness' comments that have been captured in the press previously over the past several months, but it's not just that. It's looking at the equipment that we do have. As I've said we can't look at the equipment that we don't have, but we can look at fire indicators around the area and look at fire progression modeling. And all of these things that we're looking at, just trying to give you a flavor. It's not appropriate for us to go into those boring details given that this is litigation. But we felt that that had progressed to a point where it made sense for us to make today's disclosure.

Shahriar Pourreza - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst · Guggenheim Partners. Your line is now open

But I guess what I'm asking, Pedro, is why front-run CAL FIRE? Why not wait till they've finished their investigation?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Yeah. And I'm not sure we see this as necessarily front-running. Clearly CAL FIRE has pieces of evidence that we don't, and they'll come up with conclusions that in the end we may agree with or may not agree with. We view this as a much narrower decision in that it's about this one site. At this point, we felt that the evidence was very clear. Just the evidence that we had, the analysis that we had was very clear that our equipment was involved. And so, we thought it was appropriate to make that disclosure. We don't see anything in the CAL FIRE report that would change the fact or our assessment that our equipment was involved; hence, made sense to disclose it. We don't view it as a front-running per se of the CAL FIRE process, and we continue to be ready, willing, and able to cooperate with CAL FIRE. We've been answering their questions and jointly be very responsive in that regard.

Shahriar Pourreza - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst · Guggenheim Partners. Your line is now open

Got it. I'll let everyone else ask questions. Thanks, guys.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Hey. Thanks. Appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Greg Gordon from Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Hi, Greg.

Greg Gordon - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is now open

Thanks. Good afternoon. So when you say that you expect to incur a material loss that – just to be sure I understand the strict legal interpretation of that, that's before you start to assess whether or not your insurance would recover – would cover some or all of it before you assess whether or not there's a path for recovery through the PUC, et cetera? It's just how – it's a large enough gross number before all those other factors that you feel you have to disclose it, is that correct or incorrect?

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

That's correct. When you think about how – this is Maria, by the way, Greg. When you think about how you work through that on your financial statements, you actually do think about the liabilities separately from the asset. So that's the – I don't want to use the word progression, but that's the sequence of events on how you would think about it. Now in some cases, insurance, I think, is a relatively straightforward bucket. I think in terms of cost recovery, we have to work through that and look at prior precedents and think through what this particular situation is and if it's – there's something here that there were similar facts and circumstances in the past before we would actually then book regulatory asset around that. So I think that you do have to go through sort of the thought process around each of those components individually.

Greg Gordon - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is now open

Okay. Okay. And then to switch to a more financial topic on follow-up, looking at page 7, where you talked about financial assumptions and comparing that to what you said on the Q2 call, you on the Q2 call said you would expect incremental wildfire insurance costs $0.38 and you expect to defer $0.30. You're now saying that you expect to recover substantially all of them. So can you tell us what's changed there and then you've removed the $0.03 line item for energy efficiency, can you explain that as well?

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Okay. So let's see maybe just to walk through, so we have here on page 7 that we continue to believe that it's $0.38 of incremental wildfire insurance. We believe that most incremental costs are probable of recovery. So if you recall the differentiating I'll call it the line in the sand, if you will, is the application date for our WEMA, so that's April 3. We did prior to filing that WEMA also filed the Z-Factor letter, which would actually cover us for more than the $0.30, but – where we cover the delta between – approximately the delta between $0.30 and $0.38, but because we didn't have precedents around the Z-Factor that we're exactly on point, we actually didn't defer the cost until we filed our WEMA, until we saw the PG&E WEMA decision. Obviously, subsequently yesterday we got our own decision. So then we said we could defer the costs. The detail later on in that bullet is about the $0.14 that we've deferred so far in Q3. We expect to defer an additional $0.14 in Q4 and then $0.02 comes from the FERC, so that's the $0.30 versus the $0.38 with the $0.08 delta.

Greg Gordon - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is now open

And then the energy efficiency?

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Sorry. And then the energy efficiency, that's a – I would say that's a procedural issue, the Energy Division has not yet issued – they basically go through I'll call it all the math on energy efficiency and determine sort of what we would actually earn on those programs. They have been delayed, frankly, in issuing the document that goes through all of that. We thought we would get it earlier in the summer. It's now been delayed given the CPUC calendar. For the balance of the year, we don't think it's likely that they will actually issue that. And then even when they do issue that, there's a comment period that's required as well. Therefore, we're looking for that in 2019. And we wouldn't accrue for that until we get all of that done.

Greg Gordon - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is now open

Thank you.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Thanks, Greg.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Lapides from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Hello, Michael. Michael Lapides - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC: Hey, guys. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. How do you think about how much balance sheet capacity you have, whether it's to fund the incremental rate base growth or to fund potential liabilities or related to wildfires or some combination thereof? How do you think about how much incremental balance sheet either at the SCE level or at the HoldCo investing in SCE, do you think you have over the kind of the life of your kind of rate base and CapEx forecast?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

Let me start with a real high level answer and turn over to Maria. But I think you've heard this message consistently from us. We have a strong balance sheet. We have strong capacity there. Maria mentioned in her comments continuing access to the short and longer term debt markets. We also acknowledge though that the wildfire liability being a key uncertainty, right, it will be helpful to understand over the long run what that final exposure really is because then we can think about how we best optimize the use of our balance sheet to cover that. We're confident that we have the balance sheets to cover that. How specifically we end up dealing with that specific liability, when we get to that point we can optimize around that; but, Maria, I'll just turn over to you.

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Sure. So, Michael, I think we think about a number of different things in terms of it. So first, just maybe touch on a page or thing, we do have a number of things that we're balancing and thinking about. So it's the wildfire, the potential overall exposure there as well as any recovery that would be associated with that. There is the GRC – 2018 GRC decision and we're gearing up for the 2021 GRC at this point. So there is that, there are the capital requests and capital requirements that are happening outside of our GRC requests. So it's Charge Ready II, but it's the Grid Resiliency plan that we just filed. So there's a lot of things, I'll say on the investment side of the ledger and/or potentially the wildfire issue. Michael Lapides - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC: Got it. (00:54:20)

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

...on the other side, I mean, what we're looking at is sort of debt capacity, it's both short-term and long-term debt capacity. We're looking at SCEs, equity capitalization rate, which right now is about – at the end of the quarter I think was 50%, so a little bit higher than what is required by the CPUC. And then we balance across a whole lot of different issues, what's the cost, where is the best place to finance. We will think about how the rating agencies will react to all of that and how do we stay aligned so that there's no undue impact between the holding company decisions and operating company decision. So it's a lot of factors, Michael, and we will continue to assess them as we get more and more information around some of these other elements like the wildfire liability, GRC decision, capital investment requirements. Michael Lapides - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC: Can you remind us, what's your target when we think, I mean, FFO to debt level, meaning how do you think about what your goal is? And I don't mean in any necessarily one specific year, but I mean kind of on an ongoing basis, what your target credit metric is?

Maria C. Rigatti - Edison International

Management

Yeah. So we don't typically talk about specific target number, I mean, obviously, a lot of that has to do with how the rating agencies view us. Obviously, how do they view California. There's been a little bit of stress around that recently. We have been comfortable at the ratings that we have been at over the past any number of years now. Obviously, we just were downgraded recently but Edison International, so for example where Moody's has us a Baa1, and Southern California Edison is an A3. We're stable there. On the other hand, S&P we're BBB+ and negative outlook at both entities. But generally speaking, put aside some of the noise that's been created by assessments of the wildfire issues, SB 901 ongoing, we're continuing improvements in the regulatory construct. We're comfortable in that range and we're also always alert to sort of any divergences between the holding company and the offering company. Michael Lapides - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC: Got it. And then one quick last regulatory one. How are you thinking about next year's cost to capital docket? I mean, is there a scenario, especially for you and your neighbor part of the north where intervenors would be willing to forgo the docket and maybe the commission would as well considering – it's hard to see the math coming out with dramatically lower authorized ROEs, especially for the neighbor to your north, but maybe you guys as well?

Pedro J. Pizarro - Edison International

Management

I think our base assumption right now based on what the commissioner said in the last cost of capital proceeding is that they want to have the benefit of going through a full proceeding because it's a re-education process for everyone. And I don't think any of the commissioners who are sitting today were here for the last full round of cost of capital discussions. So with that base scenario, you never say never, right? People can change minds or whatever. But I think at this point, the base scenario would be if we go to a full proceeding. And when we do, we will be very ready for that. The arguments that have ruled the day in the past in terms of the need for a California premium are even more acute today. It's all frankly, all the good risks, right? The important risk that we will have to take to make sure that we're helping California do more renewables and more energy efficiency and the like. And now, add on to that, doing it with more electrification, different uses of the grid, more need to look at cybersecurity. And then of course, let's not forget, the large risk that still we have to deal with the wildfires. So all of those will, I think, add to the argument for a premium ROE. Michael Lapides - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC: Got it. Thank you, guys. Much appreciated.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. That was the last question, and now we'll return the call back to Mr. Sam Ramraj.

Sam Ramraj - Edison International

Operator

Thank you for joining us today, and please call us if you have any follow-up questions. This concludes the conference call. You may now disconnect.