ONE Gas, Inc.
Q1 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 8 May 2021

[Operator:]

Good day, and welcome to the ONE Gas First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. And now at this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Brandon Lohse. Please go ahead, sir.

[Brandon Lohse:]

Good morning and thank you for joining us on our first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. This call is being webcast live, and a replay will be made available later today. After our prepared remarks, we will be happy to take your questions. A reminder that statements made during this call that might include ONE Gas expectations or predictions should be considered forward-looking statements and are covered by the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, each as amended. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements.

[Caron Lawhorn:]

Thanks, Brandon, and good morning, everyone. Before discussing our quarterly financial results, I wanted to start by providing an update on the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri. As we shared during our previous conference call, we estimated that aggregated natural gas purchases for the month of February could approach $2.2 billion. The final amount ended up being closer to $2.1 billion, and of that amount, approximately $107 million was allocated to normal GAAP costs and flowed through our purchase GAAP mechanisms as usual. As it relates to the extraordinary costs associated with the storm, which includes gas costs as well as related financing and other operational costs, our regulators have given us the authority to defer these costs as our regulatory assets. As of March 31, we have deferred approximately $2 billion, including deferrals of approximately $1.3 billion in Oklahoma, $381 million in Kansas and $295 million in Texas. Our purchased gas costs are recoverable through tariffs in each state where we operate. The period over which we will recover these deferred costs will be determined in future regulatory proceedings. In February, we entered into a $2.5 billion two-year unsecured term loan to provide us with additional liquidity to meet our gas purchase obligations. On March 11, we issued $2.5 billion of senior notes, consisting of $1.7 billion of two- and three-year fixed rate notes and $800 million of two-year floating rate notes. The proceeds from these senior notes were used for general corporate purposes, including payment of gas costs. The net proceeds reduced the commitments under the term loan, which was terminated concurrently with closing of the offering. These notes are redeemable in whole or in part on or after September 11, 2021. As you'll hear from Curtis, legislation has been passed in Kansas and Oklahoma and is being considered by the legislature in Texas that allows us to file with our regulators for permission for either ONE Gas or a state agency to issue securitized bonds to permanently finance the costs of the winter storm at a lower cost than we would otherwise be able to achieve.

[Curtis Dinan:]

Thank you, Caron, and good morning, everyone. Let's start with a brief overview of current winter storm-related regulatory and legislative activity. During the first quarter, we received emergency regulatory orders in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas authorizing utilities to defer extraordinary storm-related costs. This includes the costs related to procuring and transporting natural gas supplies, other costs necessary to ensure stability and reliability of our gas system and related financing costs.

[Sid McAnnally:]

Thanks, Curtis. I'll start by adding a bit of color regarding our capital execution in the first quarter. As Caron mentioned, our first quarter capital spend was lower than the first quarter of last year. The differential is partially due to weather, but it's more a matter of timing with the more capital-intensive projects scheduled to begin later this year than last year. We're well positioned to execute our planned schedule and to meet our guidance for capital spend. As we've shared previously, our replacement program is driven by probabilistic risk ranking, which gives us the ability to both improve system reliability while also reducing our projected greenhouse gas emissions by replacing higher leak rated pipe. Turning to field operations. We're always looking for opportunities to leverage technology in the execution of our work. Last year, we successfully piloted advanced leak detection technology that allows us to more efficiently identify and categorize sources of emissions. We will continue development and deployment of this technology throughout our territory, meaning that, combined with our probabilistic risk ranking replacement program, we now have highly efficient technology deployed that positively impacts capital planning and maintenance activities in our field operations, supporting both our safety goals and our environmental goals. I'll turn it over to Pierce for closing remarks.

[Pierce Norton:]

Thank you, Caron, Curtis and Sid. When an extreme event, like Winter Storm Uri occurs, it gives everyone an opportunity to conduct an in-depth post-incident analysis to determine the variables that had the greatest impact and to determine how to mitigate the effects of similar events in the future. As a reminder, during the storm, our systems were extremely reliable and performed as they were designed, losing fewer than 900 customers for less than 24 hours. What was unique about Winter Storm Uri and drove the extraordinary natural gas prices was the combination of three things

[Operator:]

And we'll take our first question from Gabe Moreen with Mizuho.

[Gabe Moreen:]

Maybe if I could start a question in terms of the securitization and the path forward there. Can you maybe talk about what you expect, I guess, customer bill impacts will be ultimately on an annual basis once you were able to implement the securitization by the various jurisdictions? And maybe also the second part to that question, can you just talk about whether you're comfortable based on those customer bill impacts sort of in your five-year CapEx trajectory that you had laid out previously, whether or not that's something you still think you can execute on?

[Curtis Dinan:]

So Gabe, this is Curtis, and I'll take the first one around the customer bill impacts. And it's really premature to know that until we make those initial filings and continue the discussion with our regulators. Obviously, everyone wants to minimize the impact, but also to be able to collect those amounts within a reasonable period of time. And as we get nearer to making those filings, we'll start to get a better sense of it as well as when we work our way through the process. In terms of the impact on our capital cost over the longer term, as Caron reiterated in her comments, the fundamental business hasn't changed, and we don't see that impacting our capital spending program.

[Gabe Moreen:]

Maybe if I can pivot to RNG and the joint venture with Vanguard, just how that's going to work from, I guess, the standpoint of recovery? Is that something an investment you are looking to potentially rate base in some of your jurisdictions? Or is it really an investment you're making looking to do outside of any regulated sort of construct and maybe try to pass it to customers? Or basically, I'm trying to figure out how it's going to work from an investment standpoint to sort of earning your return on those investments?

[Curtis Dinan:]

Sure. Great question, Gabe. And the way to think about that is really nothing is precluded in the longer term. There's not a preset course. The first part of the alliance with Vanguard is to complete an analysis of all the sources of RNG across our service territories, so we can high-grade where those opportunities are, both in terms of the volumetric potential as well as the ease of bringing that into our system and assessing the customer demand for that product. So there are corporations, for example, that have emission reduction goals that will be interested in these types of projects, so there will be a focus on those. So that -- until we complete that initial assessment and get that inventory in place and then start to work through what potential projects would look like, I really can't answer the second part of your question in terms of how best to position those projects from a regulatory standpoint. So I think the easiest way to think about it is all those options are on the board, and we'll continue to work through those.

[Operator:]

We will take a follow-up question from Aga Zmigrodzka with UBS.

[Aga Zmigrodzka:]

Can you please provide more color on the covered impact in 1Q? And if you expect any other impacts from the pandemic for the rest of the year?

[Caron Lawhorn:]

Aga, this is Caron. We did not have significant impact in the first quarter. We're still monitoring our bad debt expense. We are just now resuming disconnects in Oklahoma and Kansas, and they're still suspended in Texas. So still working on the bad debt side. The COVID cleaning and direct expenses, those are all -- they were already considered in our guidance and plan for the year, and those are turning out to be as we expected. And we're not seeing -- other than the bad debt expense, we're not seeing a significant adverse impact on any customers that impacts our load. So we don't expect material impacts. What we can see, like the expenses and the bad debt backed into our guidance, we don't see anything else material at this point.

[Operator:]

We'll take a follow-up from Gabe Moreen with Mizuho.

[Gabe Moreen:]

Just one more follow-up for me, if I could, on just sort of where -- I know the discussions and the big push has been around securitization sort of in the near term. But maybe any thoughts and color on discussions with the regulators around gas supply and where that's trending by jurisdiction, wondering what changes are going to be made there?

[Curtis Dinan:]

So Gabe, there have been some conversations around that. I wouldn't say they're real detailed at this point. As Pierce indicated, we're still completing our post-incident review. And through that, we would expect to make changes and talk to our regulators about those. So yes, in short, there have been some questions. We're still completing our investigation and developing our recommendations. And we'll see some of that happening over the short term, and some of those will be long-term changes we make as well.

[Pierce Norton:]

Gabe, this is Pierce. The only thing I'd add to that is that we -- ever since 2014, we've continued to look for opportunities to connect to other pipelines, in and around all of our cities. I think the total ends up being somewhere around 18 additional connections that we made. Those connections served us extremely well. We'll go back. We'll take a look at its storage. We'll take a look at additional interconnects. All the kind of the normal cast of characters is what we'll be looking at, and we'll be looking to also, at this point, I can't really elaborate, just some innovative ideas to maybe harden on the supply side and our interconnects and potentially storage.

[Operator:]

Thank you. That does conclude today's question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Lohse for any additional or closing remarks.

[Brandon Lohse:]

Thank you all again for your interest in ONE Gas. Our quiet period for the second quarter starts when we close our books at the end of June and extends until we release earnings in early August. We'll provide details on the conference call at a later date. Have a great day.

[Operator:]

Thank you. That does conclude today's conference. We do thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.