Earnings Labs

New Jersey Resources Corporation (NJR)

Q3 2012 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 9, 2012

$55.54

-1.25%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the New Jersey Resources F3Q 2012 results conference call. [Operator instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Dennis Puma.

Dennis Puma

Analyst

Thank you, Valerie. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to New Jersey Resources F3Q 2012 conference call webcast. I’m joined by Larry Downes, our Chairman and CEO; Glenn Lockwood, our Chief Financial Officer, as well as other members of our Senior Financial Management Team. As you know, certain statements in our news release and in today’s call contain estimates and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We wish to caution readers of our news release and listeners to this call that the assumptions forming the basis for forward-looking statements include many factors that are beyond NJR’s ability to control or estimate precisely, which could cause results to materially differ from the company’s expectations. Most of these items can be found but are not limited to the items in the forward-looking statements section of today’s news release, filed on Form 8(k) and in our 10(q) filed last evening. All these items can be found at www.sec.gov. NJR does not by including this statement assume any obligation to review or revise any particular forward-looking statement referenced herein in light of any future events. I’d also like to point out that there are slides accompanying today’s presentation which are available on our website. With that said I’d like to turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Larry Downes. Larry?

Laurence Downes

Analyst · Hilliard Lyons

Thanks, Dennis. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. As I always do I want to begin the presentation by pointing out that I will be making forward-looking statements this morning. Our actual results will be affected by many factors including those that are listed on Slide #2 and I will remind everyone that the complete list is included in our 10(k) so please review those carefully. On Slide #3 you can see our disclaimer regarding non-GAAP financial measures. I will be referring to certain non-GAAP measures such as net financial earnings or NFE as I discuss our results this morning. We believe that NFE provides a better measure of our performance; however, I want to stress that these non-GAAP measures including NFE are not intended in any way to be a substitute for GAAP. They are also discussed more fully in our 10(k) in Item #7 and again I would strongly encourage you to please take the time to review this information as well. Turning to our results on Slide #4 I begin by pointing out that this has been a year of milestones for our company. In June we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the formation of New Jersey Natural Gas and you can see by some of the metrics on the slide here that we’ve certainly come a long way in the past 6 decades. But we also are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the formation of our holding company, New Jersey Resources; the 30th anniversary of our listing on the New York Stock Exchange; and then finally in July we celebrated the addition of the 500,000th customer for New Jersey Natural Gas. And as we move through F2012 we are continuing a record of very strong performance. We’ve highlighted a number of the key performance…

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] The first question comes from Spencer Joyce of Hilliard Lyons.

Spencer Joyce

Analyst · Hilliard Lyons

Just a couple of quick questions here and then I may have to circle back with you this afternoon. But I noticed we didn’t have any SREC sales in this quarter. Is that basically in anticipation of a rebound in the market with new legislation going through or does that possibly reflect maybe a large number committed through forward sales or contracts there?

Laurence Downes

Analyst · Hilliard Lyons

No, it’s the former. We believe that the current market is very oversupplied and therefore prices are depressed, so we made a risk management decision to now not sell those SRECs that we’ve generated.

Spencer Joyce

Analyst · Hilliard Lyons

Okay, yes, that makes sense. Another one, kind of keeping with the solar: just sort of sequentially from F2Q, can you talk about what projects may have come online? I know we obviously will see greater generation during the summer but can you just talk about which projects, I’m thinking maybe McGraw-Hill maybe gave some impact to F3Q that it maybe didn’t in F2Q.

Laurence Downes

Analyst · Hilliard Lyons

I think virtually all of our larger commercial projects were put in service by the end of December, and the activity really since then has been our residential program. So the only incremental controlled capacity since very early in the fiscal year has been the continuation of our residential program.

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] The next question comes from Mark Barnett of Morningstar.

Mark Barnett

Analyst · Morningstar

So I know last quarter it was a little too early to comment on where your discussions are around the SAFE filings stood and around timing, but do you have any further clarity on that here in August?

Laurence Downes

Analyst · Morningstar

Mark, we’re just going through the normal process regarding responding to questions that are being asked by the parties. So it’s just going through its normal process.

Mark Barnett

Analyst · Morningstar

Okay. So you don’t really have any kind of a target there on timing?

Laurence Downes

Analyst · Morningstar

Yeah, I wouldn’t speculate on that at this point.

Mark Barnett

Analyst · Morningstar

Okay. Just shifting gears here- - obviously you mentioned a new project this morning. Can you talk about that residential pipeline, I don’t know which slide that’s in but can you talk about maybe some details on that and some demand and how you expect the demand for the residential side of things to move given the change in legislation?

Laurence Downes

Analyst · Morningstar

What I’ll do is I’m going to ask Stan Kosierowski who heads that business unit for us to just give you some additional insights on the market dynamics. Stan?

Stanley Kosierowski

Analyst · Morningstar

Yes. If you’re talking about the residential program as far as the residential pipeline is relatively strong and I think the lease model we have has proven to be very successful. We continue to not experience any sluggishness in getting customers to sign the lease. We expect that program to be pretty robust for the coming years on the residential side. Do you want to talk about the commercial side as well?

Mark Barnett

Analyst · Morningstar

Sure, yes -- any comments would be great.

Stanley Kosierowski

Analyst · Morningstar

Well in the commercial market I think a lot of the legislation has certainly helped provide some sustainability in the long term in New Jersey. And we have projects in the neighborhood of about 180 megawatts that we’re looking at for the future.

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Dennis Puma for any closing remarks.

Dennis Puma

Analyst

Okay, thank you Valerie. We appreciate all your time this morning. As a reminder the recording of this call is available for replay on our website. Again, we appreciate your interest and investment in New Jersey Resources. Thank you very much, have a good day. Bye-bye.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.