Good day, and welcome to the PNM Resources Quarter One 2024 Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this event is being -- [Technical Difficulty]. Thank you, Megan, and thank you everyone for joining us this morning for the PNM Resources first quarter, 2024 earnings call. Please note that the presentation for this conference call and other supporting documents are available on our website at pnmresources.com. Joining me today are PNM Resources' Chairman and CEO, Pat Vincent-Collawn; President and Chief Operating Officer, Don Tarry; and Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Lisa Eden. Before I turn the call over to Pat, I need to remind you that some of the information provided this morning should be considered forward-looking statements pursuant to the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We caution you that all of the forward-looking statements are based upon current expectations and estimates and that PNM Resources assumes no obligation to update this information. For a detailed discussion of factors affecting PNM Resources' results, please refer to our current and future Annual Reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q as well as reports on Form 8-K filed with the SEC. With that, I will turn the call over to Pat.

Thank you, Lisa. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today on National Bugs Bunny Day is a fan favorite here in Albuquerque and not because of his WhatsApp doc, but for admitting he should have made a left turn in Albuquerque. I'll get started on slide four. With our financial results and company updates, the beat does go on. Our ongoing earnings for the first quarter are $0.41, exceeding expectations. We are affirming our guidance for 2024 at a range of $2.65 to $2.75. We're also affirming our long-term rate-based growth and earnings growth targets. Lisa will cover the financials in more detail. Sean will cover a number of operational updates at TNMP and PNM where we are making progress on our goals, and it has already been shaping up to be a busy year. Before I hand things off, I have one quick update. We close the sale of NMRD in February and received the expected proceeds of $117 million. With that, I'll turn it over to Don.

Thank you, Pat, and good morning, everyone. Yes, it's shaping up to be a busy year for both Texas and New Mexico. I'll start with TMP on Slide 6. Growth in Texas continues to drive our business. Last week, ERCOT announced a new planning effort at its board of directors meeting. In response to the electric demand growth expected in the next five to seven years, ERCOT recognized the forecast pace of load growth exceeds the pace of transmission capacity to support it. This reflects what we've been seeing in our service territory, particularly in west Texas in the premium basin where transmission has been working to catch up to demand for several years. Now, at the end of February, the ERCOT board approved $100 million reliability project in our West Texas service territory. The project involves new construction and rebuilding of higher rated transmission lines along with the new substation. This is one of the larger individual projects in our capital investment plan. Construction of the new line requires a CCN approval from the commission. We expect to receive this approval in early 2025 and plan to put the project in service for customers in 2027. Looking ahead, our expectations for increased expansion in West Texas has been part of the ERCOT planning process last year's legislation for West Texas Transmission Planning called for updated assumptions, and these new projections are showing substantial growth beyond the level seen in previous studies, particularly for load that is not tied to oil and gas. ERCOT final assessments is expected to be considered by the PUCT this summer, and could result in additional projects needed in this part of our service territory. We do not have any incremental spending for this in our current investment plans, and we'll await the final ERCOT…

Thank you, Don, and good morning, everyone. I'll start on Slide 10 with a summary over of the key year over year changes in the first quarter earnings. Earnings per share in the first quarter of 2024, work $0.41, exceeding our expectations of $0.37 to $0.39. Great relief from the TCOs and DCRF mechanisms. Increased year over year earnings at TNMP. At TNMP, we implemented new retail rates in the first quarter. These rates were based on a 2024 future test year and incorporate our expected year over year cost increases, enabling us to earn our authorized return in 2024. Income from our PNM decommissioning and reclamation trust also increased earnings load growth at PNM, primarily from industrial customers, increased year over year. This was offset by a return to normal weather compared to colder temperatures in the first quarter of 2023 PNM. Transmission margins were unusually high in the first quarter of 2023 as a result of spikes in market power prices in January and February. A return to more normal pricing was the biggest driver of PNM's expected decrease in the first quarter. Depreciation and interest expense associated with new rate-based investments at both utilities reduced earnings. Turning to slide 11, I'll cover our guidance assumptions for the rest of the year. We are affirming our annual guidance range for 2024 of $2.65 to $2.75. As I mentioned, our first quarter earnings were a few cents ahead of expectations, and we have adjusted the quarterly earnings distribution to reflect these small movements. The third quarter continues to account for about half of our earnings as loud, low as both utilities’ peaks in the hot summer months. We have not made any changes to our capital investment plans or rate-based growth on slide 12, we continue to expect 10%…

Thank you, Lisa. Before I open it up for questions, I want to thank our teams for their continued contributions to serving our customers. It takes a steady beat to deliver consistent, reliable power and excellent customer service, and our teams haven't missed a beat. Megan, let's open it up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Ryan Levine with Citi.

What's the current amount of wildfire insurance that the company has in Texas and New Mexico. And are you able to share what the cost that you paid to procure that insurance and when it expires?

Ryan, we're actually right in the midst of renegotiating our insurance that will expire this summer. Giving kind of information publicly during that negotiating period probably isn't a good idea. So, we're not talking about that right now.

In the prepared remarks was mentioned, an opportunity to potentially increase vegetation management to the extent that that were, to be supported. Any sense around the impact to O&M outlook in your plan as an effort to harden the system or reduce risk?

No, absolutely Ryan. Just a little bit of background. We've continuously increased our vegetation management, both in Texas and New Mexico over the last several years. The resiliency filing in Texas allows you to take any amount over your last rate case, and our last rate case was in the 2018 time period and be able to collect that through a rider along with whatever plans you put in place for veg, additional veg management that you would you'd look at doing. So that will be part of our resiliency filing that we file in the third quarter.

And then any update around the CapEx opportunity for mobile generation or the legislative process or regulatory process to pursue that?

Let me hit a few of those legislative factors. Because I think they're important. DCRF, we've checked that box and we filed our first one and we'll look to file another one in the September timeframe. If you go to the system resiliency, we've talked about that. We plan to file that in the third quarter, the mobile gen. We expect a proposed rule in June, but that'll then take comments into place from all the different interveners and so forth. And so we expect a rule by the end of the year. So I'm not going to get in front of where that CapEx would come into, but we would expect that at the final rule at the end of the year. And then the West Texas planning, I talked a little bit about that with and ERCOT just released some pretty strong information about they expect to file their plan with the PUCT and in July. And then we'll kind of work through the process to see comes out, what comes out of that.

And then last question from me, in terms of some of the recent disclosure around new potential load in Texas that came out of ERCOT, or any implications for your business?

No, absolutely. As we've talked before, one of the areas that we serve in Texas is kind of that West Texas area. And that's, if you look at the ERCOT presentation, I think one of the bullets said they recommend transmission projects to meet large loads starting in the premium basin. And that's where we operate at. I think we have to wait to see what comes out in July and then how the PUCT deals with it. But there are opportunities for incremental investments as you look at the load that's expected in that area.

[Operator Instructions] This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to CEO, Pat Vincent-Collawn with any closing remarks.

Thank you, Megan. And thank you all for joining us this morning. Remember to take that left turn and come see us when you get to Albuquerque. Stay safe.

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