Earnings Labs

PPL Corporation (PPL)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 28, 2016

$38.69

-0.76%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the PPL Corporation First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After this presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note, this – that it's (00:38) being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joe Bergstein, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Joseph P. Bergstein - Vice President-Investor Relations and Treasurer

Management

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the PPL conference call on first quarter results and our general business outlook. We're providing slides of this presentation on our website at www.pplweb.com. Any statements made in this presentation about future operating results or other future events are forward-looking statements under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from such forward-looking statements. A discussion of factors that could cause actual results or events to differ is contained in the Appendix to this presentation and in the company's SEC filings. We will refer to earnings from ongoing operations or ongoing earnings, a non-GAAP measure, on this call. For reconciliations to the GAAP measure, you should refer to the press release, which has been posted on our website and has been filed with the SEC. At this time I'd to turn the call over to Bill Spence, PPL Chairman, President and CEO. William H. Spence - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Joe. Good morning, everyone. We're pleased that you've joined us this morning. With me on the call today are Vince Sorgi, PPL's Chief Financial Officer; and the Presidents of our U.S. and U.K. utility businesses. Moving to slide three, our agenda this morning starts with a discussion of our 2016 ongoing earnings forecast, an overview of our first quarter 2016 earnings results, and an operational overview. Following my remarks, Robert Symons, Chief Executive of our Western Power Distribution subsidiary, will provide an update on expected U.K. incentive revenues for 2017 and 2018, which we are increasing today. And Robert will also provide a general update on the completion of our first year under RIIO-ED1. Vince will then review our segment financials and provide a more detailed…

Robert A. Symons - Chief Executive Officer, Western Power Distribution, PPL Corp.

Management

Many thanks, Bill, and good morning. Moving to slide seven. March 31, 2016 marked the end of the first full regulatory year under RIIO-ED1, and we are pleased to be providing an update on our full year performance against the RIIO-ED1 incentive targets. Before I go into the details, I would like to review a few key points of the incentive framework. The primary incentive mechanisms that contribute to incentive revenues include the interruption incentive schemes and the Broad Measure of Customer Satisfaction. Interruption incentive schemes include Customer Interruptions and Customer Minutes Lost. The broad measure of Customer Satisfaction measures the performance of customer satisfaction on a scale from one to 10 against the targets Ofgem has established with customers experiencing interruptions, requesting a connection, or making a general inquiry. Both of these incentive mechanisms are designed to encourage DNOs to invest and operate their networks so as to reduce both the frequency and duration of power outages. Turning to slide eight. On this slide, you will find our full year results against the performance targets set by Ofgem for regulatory year 2015 to 2016. WPD has improved Customer Minutes Lost and Customer Interruptions performance metrics by approximately 8% over the 2014 throughout 2015 regulatory year, which resulted in earning 77% of the maximum potential payout. This year, our operational efforts contributing to this success included several major asset replacement projects, significant rural network automation, and outperforming previous years' reliability performance. As it relates to broad measure of customer satisfaction, WPD has also received reaccreditation to the U.K. government-sponsored customer service excellence standard and has once again achieved the highest level of compliance, which further demonstrates our continued commitment to excellent customer service. As shown back on slide seven and based on our better-than-expected performance on the quality of service…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question will come from Paul Zimbardo of UBS. Please go ahead.

Paul A. Zimbardo - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead

Hi, good morning. William H. Spence - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning, Paul.

Paul A. Zimbardo - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead

First, I just wanted to confirm that the U.K. environmental spending you discussed on the prepared remarks is included in the CapEx plan? William H. Spence - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: In the CapEx plan that we have for U.K., there's very little that I would classify as environmental spending. You may be referring, perhaps, to the...

Paul A. Zimbardo - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead

Sorry, that's KU. Kentucky. William H. Spence - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. So, within Kentucky Utilities, yes. The environmental spending for the plans, as articulated, really deal with the match rule (22:25) and a lot of the combustion ash disposal costs that we need to incur. It does not include any Clean Power Plan CapEx spending, which would be incremental, should that come back into play. But with the stay at the Supreme Court level of the CPP, we're not anticipating to update the capital at this time. Vincent Sorgi - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: But the billion that we filed is in the plan. William H. Spence - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes.

Paul A. Zimbardo - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead

Okay. Great. And then, turning to Compass, could you give a brief update on kind of the initial segment? And then, with respect to future segments, should we expect the in-service on those is ahead of this one with 2023, or longer dated? William H. Spence - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. I'll ask Greg Dudkin, President of our Electric Utilities Group in Pennsylvania to address that. Gregory N. Dudkin - President & Director, PPL Electric Utilities Corp.: Yeah. So where we are in Compass, we put together an interconnection request for the New York ISO on the 95-mile segment, I guess we call it mini Compass. So what we're waiting for is for the ISO to come back with an approval that all the specifications and reliability impact is positive and then we proceed with what's called an Article 7 (23:46) which is a siding application, basically. So that's where we are there. We're still, for that portion, at 2021 to 2023 timeframe. We're continuing to look at the other components of Compass. And at this point, it wouldn't be before 2021 or 2023, it would be during that time or maybe a little after.

Paul A. Zimbardo - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead

Okay, great. Thank you very much. William H. Spence - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Paul.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Anthony Crowdell of Jefferies. Please go ahead. Mr. Crowdell? William H. Spence - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning, Anthony.

Operator

Operator

Your line is open, Mr. Crowdell. It may be muted. Mr. Crowdell, your line is open. William H. Spence - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay, operator. We'll move on if there are any other questions in the queue.

Operator

Operator

Okay, thank you. At this time, I am not showing any further questions in the queue. William H. Spence - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. We do have – as far as you can tell, operator, the lines are all open and available for questions, correct?

Operator

Operator

Yes. That is correct. William H. Spence - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. I just wanted to verify.

Operator

Operator

Okay. William H. Spence - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. Well, since there are no further questions, we'll assume that everything was crystal clear, and that we look forward to the second quarter earnings call. So thanks for joining us today on the call. Thank you, operator.

Operator

Operator

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