Earnings Labs

NextEra Energy, Inc. (NEE)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Apr 29, 2015

$94.12

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Same-Day

-1.75%

1 Week

-2.61%

1 Month

+0.78%

vs S&P

+0.30%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the NextEra Energy and NextEra Energy Partners First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks, I would like to turn the call over to Amanda Finnis.

Amanda Finnis - Director-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Orlando. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the first quarter 2015 combined earnings conference call for NextEra Energy and for NextEra Energy Partners. With me this morning are Jim Robo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NextEra Energy; Moray Dewhurst, Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer of NextEra Energy; Armando Pimentel, President and Chief Executive Officer of NextEra Energy Resources; and Mark Hickson, Senior 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; and John Ketchum, Senior Vice President of NextEra Energy. Moray will provide an overview of our results and our executive team will then be available to answer your questions. We will be making forward-looking statements during this call based on our current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from forward-looking statements if any of our key assumptions are incorrect or because of other factors discussed in today's earnings new release, in the comments made during this conference call, in the Risk Factor section of the accompanying presentation, or in the 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 adjusted earnings and adjusted EBITDA, which are non-GAAP financial measures. You should refer to the information contained in the slides accompanying today's presentation for definitional information and reconciliations of the non-GAAP measure to the closest GAAP financial measure. With that, I will turn the call over to Moray. Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Thank you, Amanda. Good morning, everyone. Both…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our first question from Dan Eggers with Credit Suisse. Dan L. Eggers - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hey. Good morning, guys. Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Good morning. Dan L. Eggers - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): I guess just following up kind of on the NEP dropdowns, at the Analyst Day, you guys brought up more discussion on acquisitions or the willingness to look at those kinds of projects coming available. Can you just discuss what you're seeing in the market as far as actual qualifying projects that could be bought? And then just walk us through how you guys think about the cost of capital and how you budget equity cost of capital relative just the low yield where NEP trades today? Armando Pimentel - President & Chief Executive Officer, NextEra Energy Resources LLC: Okay. Well, that was a few questions; Dan, it's Armando. We continue to see – I mean, the reason we brought it up at the Investor Conference is we continue to see sellers of individual assets and small portfolios out in the market. Some have transacted. Some have come to market, taken their assets back, maybe waiting for a better time. We continue to participate, as you might expect, in anything of significance that comes to the market. But we're doing it, honestly, from a position of strength. I mean we have a very, very nice portfolio, that I think everybody would agree, sitting at Energy Resources and our expectations would be that we will continue to drop those assets down into NEP from Energy Resources. But we will pursue acquisitions in the market if they make some sense. If none happen this year, that's fine. I don't think anybody is going…

Operator

Operator

And next, we'll take a question from Brian Chin with Merrill Lynch. Brian J. Chin - Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc.: Hi. Good morning. Armando Pimentel - President & Chief Executive Officer, NextEra Energy Resources LLC: Good morning, Brian. Brian J. Chin - Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc.: You highlighted on slide 8 that the underlying usage growth of minus 1.2% was a point of note, and that you might use the surplus D&A balance to offset this if the trend continued. If you continue to track at this minus 1.2% for the rest of the year, would you expect that the surplus D&A levels, just given how you tend to use it at the beginning of the year and then you tend to add to it at the end of the year, do you think that that surplus D&A amount would be sufficient to offset a minus 1.2% trajectory? Would it be insufficient or still give you a nice degree of cushion? Can you just elaborate on that a little bit more? Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Sure. First of all, let me state clearly that we don't expect the negative 1.2% to continue and I'll come back to that a moment. Having said that, if it were, hypothetically, to continue, by itself that 1%, roughly, of total revenue, is well within the bounds of the available surplus deprecation, so that really wouldn't be an issue in terms of this year. As a practical matter, it wouldn't be an issue for a second reason, which is that the weather in April has turned out to be very favorable. So those things are going to bounce around a little bit. But I do want to comment a little bit more on…

Operator

Operator

And next we'll hear from Stephen Byrd with Morgan Stanley. Stephen Calder Byrd - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Good morning. Armando Pimentel - President & Chief Executive Officer, NextEra Energy Resources LLC: Good morning, Stephen. Stephen Calder Byrd - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Wondered if you could provide a little bit more color on how you may finance the acquisition at NEP in terms of the $412 million. I know, Moray, you talked a little bit about that but just trying to better understand the sort of net free cash flow yield that we could expect and how you're think about financing that? Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Sure. There's not a lot, really, to add to what we've said before. So, I divide the financing, really, into the strategic versus the tactical. Strategically, there is going to be equity financing to maintain a reasonable overall leverage ratio for NEP, consistent with what we've spoken about before. We've said that it's reasonable to expect that projects will be acquired by NEP with somewhere between 65%, 70% leverage on them or to be levered to that level. And so, over time, you can expect to see the balance be provided by equity. So that's the long term, or the strategic, answer. Then there's the tactical, which is how do you get there from any particular point in time, and that's really what we're more examining at the moment. So there are a number of options there which, in one way or another, are tantamount to some form of bridge financing to get you to the longer term equity position, but we haven't made any decisions yet on exactly what we're going to do there. Stephen Calder Byrd - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay.…

Operator

Operator

Moving on. We'll hear from Julien Dumoulin-Smith with UBS.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - UBS Securities LLC

Management

Hi. Good morning. Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Good morning, Julien.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - UBS Securities LLC

Management

So, I wanted to address M&A but in a more generic context when you think about regulated opportunities. Could you perhaps articulate the value proposition of pursuing more regulated assets within your overall corporate mix? Perhaps could you talk to some of the value either á la an NEP route or just what criteria might be vis-à-vis minimum accretion levels in pursing further opportunities on that side? I want to avoid the specific question but kind of get more tactical in understanding what the value proposition would be if you were to pursue any subsequent deals sort of ahead of time if you will? James L. Robo - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: So, Julien, this is Jim. I think we – I think talked a little bit about this last month at the Investor Conference. I think overall there are obviously a set of constraints in the industry to doing regulated M&A; those include the fact that you need to get state regulatory approvals, the fact that oftentimes synergies are shared with customers such that you can't afford to pay a very big premium. Management teams tend not to be particularly excited about doing deals in this industry particularly given that you can't pay, necessarily, a very big premium. So there are set of constraints that you have to operate and as you think about regulated M&A. That said, we've – for a very long time, have had a view that this is a – that scale matters in this industry ,that this is a very – for an industry that is as technology driven and is scale driven as it is – as this is, that it's very unconsolidated. That secondly, there is enormous differentials in performance across the industry; you just need to pull the FERC…

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - UBS Securities LLC

Management

But it's not necessarily á la NEP? There's no energy with that strategy? James L. Robo - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Julien, I think, in almost every state jurisdiction you would look at, I think it's very hard to think about putting a utility asset into a yieldco without a significant amount of regulatory risk.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - UBS Securities LLC

Management

Yes. Okay. And then, subsequently, just to come back to a comment you made earlier on the call, with respect to Canada and opportunities there, Ontario, can you elaborate a little bit around storage, wind and solar? You don't seem to have a lot in your backlog, as far as I can tell, in kind of the longer data period. Armando Pimentel - President & Chief Executive Officer, NextEra Energy Resources LLC: Sure. Sure, Julien; it's Armando. Several years ago, as many of you know, we were successful in winning a significant number of RFPs in the wind space. But even before that, we were successful in buying some solar assets and some wind assets in Canada. The nice thing – actually, the very nice thing about the success that we had a number of years ago is we built a great team in Canada. We have an office in Canada. We have continued to develop assets and properties both on the wind and solar side in anticipation for the next round of bids that were coming out. Those bids in Ontario have been delayed a couple of times. We're pretty sure that they're going to come out again this year. And we feel comfortable that we have a number of properties that should be competitive in the process. That's not saying that we're going to pick any up but we certainly haven't been sitting on our hands up there just building the assets and so we're hopeful to be competitive in this next round this year.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - UBS Securities LLC

Management

So there's implicitly upside to your Canadian forecast with the backlog there? Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Absolutely.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - UBS Securities LLC

Management

Okay. Great. Thank you guys for the time. Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Thanks, Julien.

Operator

Operator

And next we'll hear from Paul Ridzon with Keybanc.

Paul T. Ridzon - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

Good morning. Congratulations on a solid quarter. Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Thanks Paul.

Paul T. Ridzon - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

I had three quick questions. What are you hearing in Washington as far as ITC, PTC extension, the latest kind of body language there? And then what's your outlook for the full year at corporate given the strength in the first quarter? And then lastly, how is your outreach program going in Hawaii as far as getting the vote out given the unique kind of approval process there? James L. Robo - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: So Paul, I'll – this is Jim. I'll answer those questions. First of all the PTC, ITC, on the ITC we fully expect at the end of 2016 that the solar ITC will step down from 30% to 10%. We support that step down and I think solar is going to be cost competitive without an ITC in the back half of this decade. And so I don't think you need it to continue to drive solar demand going forward. On the PTC front, we see work on extenders probably happening, starting sometime in the late summer, early fall, once they – folks have still not given up hope on tax reform just yet this year. That hope, I think, will probably be given up in the late summer, early fall and they'll get to work on trying to get to an extenders package. I think there's clear understanding on the part of the leadership in both the Senate and the House that extending the – doing a tax extenders bill on getting it signed on December 22 or December 23 like happened last year is not optimal for planning for companies and doesn't really accomplish much of anything. And so, I would expect them to try to get working on it earlier. I think my expectation, the most likely outcome for…

Paul T. Ridzon - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

And then, if I could just add one more. Sorry. When do you expect the Florida Supreme Court to rule on gas storage or gas reserves? Eric E. Silagy - President & Chief Executive Officer, Florida Power & Light Co.: Hey, Paul. This is Eric Silagy. It's always hard to predict when the court is going to rule. There's no set time line for the courts to have to rule, so we'll just have to wait and see. Unfortunately, there's no visibility in that.

Paul T. Ridzon - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

Okay. Thank you again. Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Thanks, Paul.

Operator

Operator

Next, we'll hear from Steven Fleishman with Wolfe Research.

Steven Isaac Fleishman - Wolfe Research LLC

Management

Yeah. Hi, everyone. Just further on the Hawaiian deal, what's the latest in terms of timelines for approval? James L. Robo - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Steve, we're still hopeful that we're going to be able to get all regulatory approvals by the end of the year and that's the target that we're working towards.

Steven Isaac Fleishman - Wolfe Research LLC

Management

Okay. Is there any movement toward like settlement discussions or still more formal process? James L. Robo - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I think, Steve, that we're very early in the process right now and discovery will be ongoing through the summer. And we expect all of the filings to be done by the end of August and so, anything on the settlement front would be very premature. Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Steve, just data; we filed formal testimony. I think we've had some 300 interrogatories or data requests so far. We can expect to have a lot more over the coming months. That's good. We want to make sure that all legitimate questions are appropriately aired and that people get the answers to the questions they have because we firmly believe this is fundamentally a good deal for folks in Hawaii, customers, as well as for shareholders. So we want to make sure that all the facts come out, but it will take a while and the schedule calls for that to go through the summer.

Steven Isaac Fleishman - Wolfe Research LLC

Management

Okay. And then one, just, follow-up question to some of the questions that came up on storage. I'm curious if you've had any pre-insight to what Tesla is going to come out with tomorrow and if it's anything that's significant within your view of movement on battery storage. Armando Pimentel - President & Chief Executive Officer, NextEra Energy Resources LLC: Nope. Unfortunately, I didn't get my pre-earnings Twitter feed. I have no idea, Steve.

Steven Isaac Fleishman - Wolfe Research LLC

Management

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And moving on, we'll go Michael Lapides with Goldman Sachs. Michael J. Lapides - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Hey, guys. Question for you on electric transmission, really merchant electric transmission. Can you talk about the size and the scale of the California projects and then when you look around the landscape in North America, not just U.S. but Canada, how big of a potential opportunity and how long-dated? Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Just on the California projects, this is not huge. What's interesting about this really is, as we said in the prepared remarks, it's a landmark. It's the first competitive award to a non-incumbent. So total capital for the two projects is going to be south of $100 million, so not material by themselves. In terms of the longer-term opportunity, I mean, the longer-term opportunity is multiple billions, but as Armando, I think, indicated earlier, it takes a long time to get there. Certainly what I've observed since we have been actively working independent transmission development is that the development cycle is even long – we thought it was going to be long, but it's even longer than we thought. So there are many more instances of competitive solicitations that keep getting deferred for one reason or another, so that's really behind the statement that we made at the Investor Conference and would repeat here today: that if we can get, by the end of the decade, to a business that's got an annual net income contribution of $50 million to $100 million, that would be doing pretty well. And, obviously, you can figure out the CapEx that's required to get to that kind of level given typical transmission returns. Michael J. Lapides - Goldman Sachs & Co.: And how do you guys…

Operator

Operator

And next we'll hear from Paul Patterson with Glenrock Associates.

Paul Patterson - Glenrock Associates LLC

Management

Good morning. Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Morning, Paul.

Paul Patterson - Glenrock Associates LLC

Management

The customer supply business, it looks to me like – and I apologize if you guys went over this at the conference – but it looks to me, just from quarter-over-quarter, that your expectations for that business are increasing. And of course, the quarter came out pretty well. Could you just elaborate a little bit more in terms of – you guys said it was getting back to more normal levels or something. Could you talk a little bit more about that? Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Yeah. Well, as I just said in response to Michael's question, last year's first quarter was very strongly adversely affected in the Full Requirements business by the impact of extreme weather conditions, winter weather conditions, up in the Northeast. That was not the case this year. The market behaved much more normally in response to similar weather conditions, and so the business behaved much more normally. If anything, it was, again, as I said, a little bit ahead of our expectations.

Paul Patterson - Glenrock Associates LLC

Management

But I guess what I'm – I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. The projections in your slides for 2015 and 2016, it looks to me like the customer supply, as opposed to last quarter, looks like the projections for 2015 and 2016 have increased annually, significantly, if I'm reading them correctly, compared to the fourth quarter of 2014, when you guys had those slides there. Do you follow me? Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: There's a little bit of an increase in there. Yeah. Basically, based on some of the good news that we see in this year we're essentially assuming that it will continue into next year.

Paul Patterson - Glenrock Associates LLC

Management

Okay. And that's simply because of the – okay. And did you think that last quarter because you guys were apprehensive about the – was there anything that actually changed... Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: All right. I see where you're going. Yeah. The impact of the way the markets behaved in this quarter is what gives us a little more comfort that the levels of profitability that we're seeing now may be what we should expect for the next couple of years.

Paul Patterson - Glenrock Associates LLC

Management

Okay. Thanks. I'm sorry if I didn't ask the question clearly enough. Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Okay. I didn't understand it.

Paul Patterson - Glenrock Associates LLC

Management

And then the legislation that – the PSC reform legislation, any – it looks like it's been – the House abruptly has adjourned, I guess. And it looks like – if I understand it correctly, maybe I don't, that the Senate is sort of left with either the original House bill because I guess they amended it and were going to send it back to the House; (a), any thoughts about the legislation? Does it have any significant – do you see any significant impact that the legislation might have on you, guys, positive or negative? And (b), does it look it like it's going to happen, I guess, given what happened I guess yesterday or something? Eric E. Silagy - President & Chief Executive Officer, Florida Power & Light Co.: Right. So, this is Eric. What I'll tell you is you're correct that the House sent back just before they adjourned the original House language. So they stripped out the three amendments that the Senate had put on the House language when they sent it over to the House. And so, they sent it back to the Senate and then they adjourned, which means that the Senate has a choice of either passing it as presented to them or not passing it. They could not take it up, that kills it; or they could vote it down, that kills it; or they could pass it as it stands. I don't see any significant impact really at all. No kind of impact to us whatsoever; not worried about that. What the Senate will do, hard to predict. It's always a challenge to figure out what's going to happen so we'll see if they even take it up.

Paul Patterson - Glenrock Associates LLC

Management

Okay. And if they did take it up, I mean, just if it was passed as, I guess, it came out of the House, do you guys see this is as significant? It just seems like some reforms of sort of some of the elements to it. It didn't seem like anything all that substantial. I just wanted to check – but I mean, maybe I'm wrong; is there any thoughts about it? Eric E. Silagy - President & Chief Executive Officer, Florida Power & Light Co.: No. No. You're correct. There's nothing there. I mean, frankly, it codifies what in many respects are already the rules.

Paul Patterson - Glenrock Associates LLC

Management

Okay. Great. Thanks a lot. Moray P. Dewhurst - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: All right. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, everybody. That completes our call. Thank you for your interest.

Operator

Operator

And, ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation.