Good morning everyone, welcome to CMS Energy's future capacity and CapEx update. This call is being recorded. After the presentation, we will conduct a question- and- answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press the star followed by zero. Just a reminder, there will be a rebroadcast of this conference call today beginning at 11:30 A.M. Eastern Time, running through December 15th. This presentation is also being webcast and is available on CMS Energy's website in the investor relations section. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Tom Webb, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
Thank you everybody for joining us today on a short notice. There aren't many subjects on which you hear "no comment" from us. Now that we can make this announcement today, we thank you very much for your patience over the last several months. Before we begin today, let me remind you that this presentation contains forward-looking statements. These are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our SEC filings for more information regarding the risk and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially. This presentation also includes non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the appendix and posted on our website. The reason for our call today, let me turn it over to Patti.
Thank you, Tom. Earlier this morning, we issued a news release announcing the early termination of the power purchase contract with Entergy's Palisades Nuclear Power Plant, a decision that has been anticipated by many of you for some time. We do plan to replace this PPA with more economic and environmentally favorable options. The Palisades PPA contract will terminate in 2018. This will allow sufficient time to obtain replacement energy and capacity at lower than current contract costs. The savings to our customers are estimated to be as much as $172 million over the remaining four years, a savings of $45 million a year, or about 1%-1.5%. Consumers Energy will make a payment to Entergy of an equal amount.
This agreement is subject to the approval of the MPSC, the Michigan Public Service Commission, which we expect will happen next year. Replacing the Palisades energy and capacity is obviously top of mind for us. Our generation portfolio has become much cleaner as we've replaced coal with natural gas, wind, solar, and upgrades to our Ludington pumped storage facility. While the 778 megawatt Palisades plant was near the end of its useful life, it is fortunate that we are able to replace this PPA with more economic and environmentally favorable options. We plan to replace Palisades with a mix of energy efficiency, demand response, and new renewable and natural gas capacity. Our Dearborn Industrial Generation plant may also play into the mix. All of these options are small bets designed to right-size our generation fleet to match our customers' demand.
Our plans will be flexible as we consider all options to provide for safe, reliable, clean, and affordable energy for our customers. As we have shared many times, we have a deep well of potential capital investment opportunities, not just in generation. As a result, we are also pleased to announce today that we are increasing our 10-year capital investment plan by $1 billion- $18 billion. The need for additional investment is in gas infrastructure and generation. The substantial customer savings provided by the early termination of the Palisades contract allows us to replace the plant's capacity at no incremental cost to our customers. At the same time, our gas infrastructure has ample investment opportunity to continue to improve the deliverability and safety of our system. This is a win-win for customers and our shareowners.
This news is a logical amplification of our simple but powerful business model. High-value CapEx offset by cost reductions that are passed along to customers, protecting them from significant price increases. While we have you, I'm happy to report that our business model continues to deliver consistent financial returns. To that end, with cost reductions and favorable weather in 2016, we are raising our 2016 adjusted EPS guidance to $2.02, up 7% over last year. This is an update to the guidance we provided two months ago and reflects our strong performance to the top end of our range for 2016. We're very proud of the fact that we've delivered consistent, predictable EPS growth for over 14 years, no matter what happens in our economy, the weather, or politics.
For 2017 and beyond, our guidance is 6%-8%, up 1 point from our 14-year track record. We set the bar high, and we deliver for our customers and owners every year. Tom and I would like to open the call to your questions. Shannon, will you please open the lines?
Thank you very much, Mrs. Poppe. The question- and- answer session will be conducted electronically. If you would like to ask a question, please do so by pressing the star key followed by the digit one on your touchtone telephone. If you're using a speaker function, please make sure you pick up your handset. We'll proceed in the order that you signal us, and we'll take as many questions as time permits. If you do find that your question has been answered, you may remove yourself by pressing the pound key. We'll pause for just a second. Our first question comes from the line of Julien Dumoulin-Smith from UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Congratulations.
Good morning.
Morning, Julien.
Excellent. I wanted to ask just real quickly, can you help us understand the landscape when it comes to replacing the capacity and the timeline? Given the close focus and scrutiny in the state on adequacy, given the MISO conversations, can you comment on how the megawatts from an aggregate perspective would play with respect to the state and perhaps specifically back to your portfolio and the contemplated timeline for building out the new gas and wind as you see it right now?
Yeah, you bet, Julien. Obviously, we've been looking closely to assure that we have adequate supply to serve our customers. To that end, we've developed a capacity replacement plan that our capacity additions start with our wind additions of Cross Winds Two. We have 44 MW that go into place for energy in 2017. A big part of our plan also includes increasing our energy efficiency, utilizing demand response to shave the peaks, we'll supplement them with additional gas capacity and looking at certainly DIG as part of the formula. As we've always said, that's our insurance policy, and we'll be leveraging DIG to its full potential for us.
Got it. Just to maybe separate and getting ahead of myself, with respect to MCV, is there any potential to pursue something comparable there as well as you think about the life of the project there?
Yeah, I don't see that on the horizon right now, Julien.
Got it. Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Mike Weinstein from Credit Suisse. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning.
Morning.
Hi.
Can you explain, I guess for the securitization of the termination payment, is that contemplated to be issued next year after approval from regulators in concert with that?
Yes. In fact, the approval process will be all around the securitization so that that money that we eventually would pay out to Entergy would be securitized and therefore financed in the cheapest possible way for our customers.
I guess since you guys are still depreciating the plant on your own balance sheet, that would be accelerated at that point?
Well, you're actually getting deep into the accounting, and I'm honored that you remembered that. Technically, we have sold the plant, and it is really not our ownership at all. For accounting purposes, we still amortize the plant. That will be adjusted, and that will all amortize away with that final payment in 2018.
Okay. Just to throw a question out there about the plant workers, I'm just curious if there's any plan to move them to other parts of the fleet or anything like that.
Yeah, Mike, we are definitely looking at opportunities. We've actually assessed the skills and capabilities of folks there against the skills and capabilities of what's required within our own organization. We see the potential of anywhere from 100 to 180 of those employees to be able to move over to Consumers. They have to have the right skills and qualifications, and we'll be doing assessments of all that. Certainly these are highly skilled employees, and we'd love to make sure that we're able to add them to the Consumers Energy family.
Right. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you for calling in.
Your next question comes from the line of Ali Agha from SunTrust. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning.
Morning, Ali.
Morning. Patti, in terms of the options for replacement, I'm assuming then getting another PPA to replace this PPA would not be one of those options?
Right. Ali, we definitely have learned that PPAs can be very constraining in the long run, and we like the flexibility of having the assets in our own portfolio.
Okay. I guess, just to clarify, this transaction is, of course, contingent on the commission approvals and the securitization that goes with that. That is still the key sort of path item in terms of critical path item for getting this thing done or then approved?
Right. Specifically, that securitization approval. The obvious selling point here for the customers that we serve is $172 million of customer savings, that's obviously a very compelling feature of the situation. We expect strong support from the commission to save our customers the money.
Right. I'm assuming the $1 billion spread out over 10 years, again, does not require any block equity to fund. Just making sure that is the case.
Correct.
Okay. If I look at that again from a 30,000-ft level, that's $1 billion of incremental CapEx, no block equity to dilute it. Is the point that that's incremental earnings that just pushes you and keeps you within that growth rate of 6%-8%? Just maybe pushes you at the higher end? How are you thinking about that? Is there any offset? That just seems to me to be incremental earnings with no real offset.
What that does is increase the certainty and our capability to deliver the 6%-8%. There'll be lots of things as we go through time that will hurt, that will help, and that's just the way life is, the way our business changes every day. Our commitment to you is we'll figure out how to deal with the hurts, and we'll figure out how to factor in the helps, and continue to deliver in that 6%-8% while really maximizing the benefits for our customers every single day. You got it. No change to the 6%-8%.
Understood. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Paul Ridzon from KeyBanc. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning.
Morning.
Morning, Paul.
When in 2018 does Palisades close? January 1 or?
No, in the fall of 2018. We've actually signed an additional agreement. We may sign an agreement to extend our contract with them through October, so that we can be sure that they've got their capacity online to serve our customers.
Especially in that peak summer.
Is that just the normal refueling schedule?
Yeah, that follows their refueling schedule.
Okay. How does Thetford possibly fit into your replacement plans?
Paul, we always keep Thetford as an option when required. Right now, we feel like we can right-size our fleet and deliver to serve our customers without going all the way to Thetford, though, certainly in the future, that would be an option and a consideration. To backfill Palisades between energy efficiency, demand response, our incremental renewables, and DIG, we've got plenty of capacity to backfill the plan.
Would any incremental gas be base load or you think more peaking?
I think more peaking first, looking at a CT. Ultimately, we talk out longer term, an MCV contract or other capacity needs in the future. We would never rule out a base load combined cycle gas. I will say that this news is further reiteration that the energy law has an important role to play to clarify who's responsible for all of the capacity required in Zone 7. This does continue to right-size our fleet to match our customers' demand, but it doesn't factor in the needs of the retail open access customers. Further validation that the energy law that's under consideration as we speak is more and more important.
Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Paul Patterson from Glenrock Associates. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning.
Morning, Paul.
Morning, Paul.
Are you guys paying $172 million? Could you just go over just the mechanics here again? How much are you paying to Entergy? How much are you securitizing?
When you think of the total savings that will exist from this transaction, half of that's going to accrue to our customers, and the present value of that is $172 million. We'll see that every month, every quarter, each year, over those four years. In 2018, we will make a payment to Entergy of about the same amount of money because we split this thing about 50-50. If approved by the Michigan Public Service Commission next year, we'll make that payment, and we'll securitize all of it. That what it does is provide the most economical way to make that payment for our customers. Is that clear?
You're going to pay them, just to make sure that I understand it. You're going to pay them $172 million, you're going to securitize that at the same time approximately. Is that right?
Precisely.
What was the cost per megawatt hour that Palisades was expected to cost between 2018 and 2022?
During the contract, if you looked at the cost per megawatt hour, it was $58. That's capacity and energy. When we look at that, we think we'll be able to replace that for less than $44. You can see there's actually a 24% savings. That's a beautiful transaction for our customers.
Sure. Then how much of this is going to be replaced with natural gas, do you guys estimate, versus energy efficiency or renewables?
Here, let me help you out a little bit on that. What you saw that we raised our capital investment by $1 billion.
Right.
About half of that is associated with more wind. We're doing 44 MW in 2017 and 76 MW by 2019. Some of that is all designed to come in and replace this. That's the first step. There's over 100 MW there. DIG is also available, and that's all gas, right?
Right.
DIG will, this part we don't have the answer for yet, either depending on how the Commission would like to proceed and what's economical, we can actually do a contract to provide some capacity into the utility, all done in a way that's all open and above board. There's still a possibility that DIG could be transferred into the utility. That decision's not made yet. We'll look for the most economical way that makes sense. You get a big chunk of gas capacity there. You get a big chunk of wind capacity. With the work that we're going to do around energy efficiencies and demand response, you'll see us closing in a lot of the gap there as well.
That seems like a pretty big gap, though, Mike. You said 76 MW and then 110 MW. Is that correct?
Remember the capacity at DIG is in the 2019 planning year that's still available is over 700 MW. We have plenty of capacity available-
I see what you're saying. Okay
to cover that. What I wouldn't want you to go away from this call on is thinking, okay, they're going to precisely do this much wind, precisely this much gas, and precisely this much demand response and this much energy efficiency, and so on. The way we're looking at it is our full capacity need for the whole company, and part of that will take care of the Palisades shortfall, and part of that will take care of other things. We're in good shape for that.
Okay, great. Thanks so much for the clarification and.
Yep
congratulations.
Thank you.
Your next question comes to the line of Julien Dumoulin from UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. It's Jeremiah Bore. I'm just hopping on here real quick for a clarification. We just wanted to make sure, can you earn currently on demand response as well as energy efficiency? Is that changing, and what would the incremental earnings be from that?
Currently we have incentives built in as a result of the 2008 energy law for our energy efficiency programs. They don't include incentives for demand response. We are in conversation right now. The commission is authorized to approve incentives in the future and recovery of the cost. In its current form, we would just apply in our normal rate case proceedings for any demand response investments.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Greg Gordon from Evercore. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning.
Morning, Greg.
Can you refresh my memory? We've talked about DIG as being an option in the future for the additions to the generation capacity portfolio before. Under the affiliate rules in the state, if you were to choose that as the most, the best resource, would you have to transfer that at book value, or would you do a market value transaction?
The way our rules are, it's lower of book or market. The way we would do it, because we are very, we have this strong desire to be squeaky clean, we would likely run an auction to demonstrate that whether it's going to be a contract or whether the whole asset went into the utility to demonstrate that is the best deal from both a market level and a book level. You know, and I think you're asking, Greg, because our book level is pretty low because we did the contract adjustments back in 2007. The adjusted book value is below $300 million, high $200 million. We think that that would be recognized favorably.
Right. It would be a pretty low-cost resource for the customer if you were to pay book value to move that into rate base.
Yeah, it's a win-win because it would be pretty low cost for our customers, but it would be a nice return for our investors to be able to earn on that asset, given the life of the plant at DIG. Remember, as you know, by layering in, we kept a lot of capacity available. We sold the bulk of our energy, but we kept a lot of capacity available at DIG. We kept calling it an insurance policy. It still is, and it's looking attractive.
Yeah. See, the only thing is that that asset at market value is probably worth more than the book value. It creates a conundrum where that capacity is really worth more than because of the accounting adjustment you made. Is it possible to have that recognized in the transaction, or would you have to have some sort of legislative change to do that?
No. I think when we're looking at lower of book or lower market, that the numbers aren't going to be too far apart, and we won't want to sell it then if it doesn't make any economic sense. We'd rather do the contracting. We'll have to see how that plays out. That's the work that will be done during the course of 2017.
Okay. Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
Thanks, Greg.
Your next question comes from the line of Paul Ridzon from KeyBanc. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Actually, Greg just asked my question. Thank you.
Okay, great. Thanks, Paul.
We have now reached the end of our allotted time for questions. I would now turn the call back to Mrs. Poppe.
Great. Thanks for joining us today, everybody. Obviously, the early termination of the Palisades PPA is clearly in the best interest of our customers and our share owners. It creates a savings that can be invested in gas infrastructure, clean energy, system reliability, and energy efficiency programs. We thank you for joining us today.
This concludes today's conference. We thank everyone for your participation.