New Jersey Resources Corporation
Q2 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 9 May 2021

[Operator:]

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the New Jersey Resources Second Quarter Fiscal 2021 Conference Call. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Dennis Puma, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Dennis Puma:]

Okay. Thank you, Christie, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to New Jersey Resources Second Quarter Fiscal 2021 Conference Call and Webcast. I'm joined here today by Steve Westhoven, our President and CEO; Pat Migliaccio, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; as well as other members of our senior management team. As you know, certain statements in today's call contain estimates and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities laws. We caution listeners of this call that the current expectations, assumptions and beliefs forming the basis for our forward-looking statements include many factors that are beyond our ability to control or estimate precisely. This could cause results to materially differ from our expectations, as found on Slide 1. These items can also be found in the forward-looking statements section of today's earnings release furnished on Form 8-K and in our most recent Forms 10-K and Q as filed with the SEC.

[Steve Westhoven:]

Thanks, Dennis, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Midway through fiscal 2021, NJR has delivered strong performance for our shareowners. On Slide 3, I'll take you through the highlights. This morning, we reported second quarter net financial earnings of $1.77 per share, more than doubling last year's second quarter results, primarily driven by performance at our Energy Services business. During the second quarter, periods of widespread cold across the U.S. led to an unusually high demand for natural gas. And as in the past, Energy Services strategically located in geographically diverse Storage & Transportation assets enabled that business to meet the needs of its customers during a time of unprecedented volatility. The outsized performance of Energy Services illustrates the limited risk, high upside value proposition of our long option strategy. The combination of this strategy and the generation of more fee-based revenues, such as the 10-year asset management agreement we announced in December, provides for a powerful business model. Pat will provide a more detailed look at the drivers behind Energy Services' performance later in the call. The contribution from Energy Services enabled us to increase our NFE guidance for fiscal 2021 for the second time this year to a range of $2.05 to $2.15 per share from our original guidance of $1.55 to $1.65 per share. I'll provide more color on the next slide. At New Jersey Natural Gas, we filed a base rate case to recover almost $850 million of infrastructure investments in the settlement of our last rate case. This includes costs associated with the Southern Reliability Link, which is over 90% complete and expected to be placed into service this fiscal year. New Jersey Natural Gas received approval for SAVEGREEN 2020, our largest-ever energy efficiency program. This new program authorized $259 million in spending over three years, furthering our commitment to sustainability by helping customers lower their energy usage, save money and reduce their carbon footprint. The rollout of the program is expected to begin this year.

[Pat Migliaccio:]

Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone. Slide 10 shows the main drivers of our NFE for the second quarter. As a reminder, we're now utilizing the deferral method accounting for investment tax credits at CEV and, as such, recast our financials for the comparable periods.

[Steve Westhoven:]

Thanks, Pat. Before I open the call to questions, I'd like to summarize the quarter. Through the first half of the year, NJR delivered strong results. The over-performance from Energy Services allowed us to increase our guidance for the fiscal year and provides the flexibility to reinvest in our business. We file the rate case to recover our infrastructure investments, including the costs associated with SRL, received approval for SAVEGREEN 2020, our largest-ever energy efficiency program. CEV has a strong pipeline of projects that will allow us to reach our goal of adding 160 to 180 megawatts of capacity by the end of fiscal 2022. And we received all necessary Pennsylvania DEP permits and filed with FERC for a notice to proceed for construction of laterals for Adelphia Gateway. I want to thank all of our employees for their hard work through the first half of this year. And now I'll open the call for questions.

[Operator:]

Your question will come from the line of Gabriel Moreen with Mizuho.

[Gabriel Moreen:]

So much for the recent year. I wanted to ask first just on the cash flow from ops guidance. I think compared to last quarter, you raised the midpoint by $20 million, if I'm reading that right. Obviously, that's a little less than you – the benefit from Energy Services. So I'm just wondering if you can speak to that a little bit first.

[Pat Migliaccio:]

Hi Gabe, this is Pat Migliaccio. You're correct, cash from operations increased by about $20 million, which is just a little bit less than what the ultimate guidance raised. There are a couple of other minor tweaks in there, but the majority of the change is related to Energy Services.

[Gabriel Moreen:]

Okay. Thanks Pat. Maybe if I could also talk about some of your projects. On SRL, I noticed the cost moved up a little bit. Is that something – first of all, are you confident this is where your costs kind of stay with the last couple of percentage you kind of have to finish up on the project? And then in terms of recoverability of those cost increases, can you speak to that to you?

[Steve Westhoven:]

Yes, Gabe, this is Steve. So the project is about 97% complete, so almost finished at this point. And yes, we expect to recover all those costs. Remember, this project has been approved by BPU, received all necessary permits. And really this is borne ahead of Superstorm Sandy and the need for resiliency, so a lot of support for the project. We'll go through the process for the rate case to see recovery and see how it turns out. But all indications certainly point towards recovery.

[Gabriel Moreen:]

Got it. Thanks Steve. And then on Adelphia, in terms of getting the permits from the FERC to start construction, and the collaterals you're expecting in service, has that timing shifted at all in terms of the project?

[Steve Westhoven:]

I think it hasn't shifted too much, maybe by a month or two. So we have adjusted our margins slightly, that certain portions of the projects are going to start going in service at the end of the year. But a little bit of detail associated with the contracts that will come in, we're not changing anything from a financial guidance on the project, but construction is what construction is. It has been shifting slightly, if you will.

[Pat Migliaccio:]

Gabe. You probably noticed that the CapEx schedules, just to take a look at that. We did shift a modest amount of capital, $25 million, $26 million on the Adelphia Gateway project from fiscal 2021 to fiscal 2022, just reflecting that minor change in some of those components of the project.

[Gabriel Moreen:]

That's helpful. And just last one on this, maybe just an update on Leaf River. Clearly, it sounds like the asset performed well during winter storm. I know it's mostly contracted, but what are you seeing from customers there as far as, I guess, interest in, I don't know, expansion or contract value at the asset?

[Steve Westhoven:]

Yes. The asset performed very well. Everybody knows it was an extreme weather event took place down in that region in February. So we're pretty pleased with some pumps in – some earnings due to some short-term services they were able to provide. As you look forward, you would expect that, that need for reliability in that market would drive some higher asset values. We don't have anything to report yet, but I would expect that certainly, all the utilities in real users, fiscal users down in that area are looking to bring more reliability into their book going forward.

[Gabriel Moreen:]

Thanks Steve.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Travis Miller with Morningstar.

[Travis Miller:]

Good morning everyone.

[Steve Westhoven:]

Hi Travis.

[Travis Miller:]

You've talked in the past here recently about derisking Energy Services, and I guess two questions on that line. One, have you already derisked it such that your games would have been even larger? Had you not gone through the derisking process or started it? And then two, is this kind of delta, I guess, over a normal level, all what we would expect in future extreme events, right, even on the derisking type of scenario as you've laid out?

[Steve Westhoven:]

I wish I could answer that question accurately as far as what would be the delta or what would be the amount that you would expect in a period of high volatility. But you can see, if you go back and look at prices down in that area, they were up in the $1,000 per MMBtu type range. We've never experienced that before. And I think if you look across the U.S. even historically, you're going to get $250 or something. So it was definitely multiple times higher. So I think trying to predict forward volatility is something that would be very, very hard to predict in the future. I think back to the first part of your question, we had all the assets in our book. The AMA agreement doesn't start until the end of 2021, 2022 time frame. So all the assets are in the books, so kind of a full portfolio from that perspective. But going forward, we thought a number of assets that we're going to see that are going to be utilized in the future, and storage was the largest component contributor this year to the P&L of the book. And remember that the asset management agreement is really centered around transport assets.

[Travis Miller:]

Okay. So you do still have the optionality even under your derisking strategy, you would want to keep that optionality?

[Steve Westhoven:]

If there's still going to be a significant portfolio that needs to be managed in the future, yes.

[Travis Miller:]

Okay. And then on the Clean Energy Ventures, how are you thinking about financing that as it becomes a larger share of your CapEx program? Is it project debt or do you plan on taking that on your balance sheet?

[Pat Migliaccio:]

Travis, this is Pat Migliaccio. So our plan that we laid out at the Analyst Day is to finance all of our commercial solar projects with tax equity sale-leaseback. And that is still considered on balance sheet, although it does receive, what I'll describe as, favorable treatment from Fitch in terms of how we select and methodology. Once you get out to a number of years out, 2025, 2026, we will have some more optionality in terms of how we think about that kind of thing. But for now, it's all going to be sale-leaseback financing tax equity structures for commercial. And then residential, we financed through the private station market as we have our other nonregulated investments.

[Travis Miller:]

Okay. Very good. That’s all I have, thank you.

[Pat Migliaccio:]

All right, thanks Travis.

[Operator:]

There are no further questions at this time. Are there any closing remarks?

[Dennis Puma:]

Yes. Thank you, Christie. And I want to thank everyone for joining us this morning. As a reminder, a recording of this call is available on our website. Also, I want to thank you for your interest and investment in New Jersey Resources. Thank you. Goodbye.

[Operator:]

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.