Good Friday afternoon. Thank you for joining NorthWestern Corporation's financial results and webcast for the year ending December 31st, 2022. My name is Travis Meyer. I'm the Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations Officer for NorthWestern. Joining us on the call today to walk you through the results are Brian Bird, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Crystal Lail, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. All participant lines are currently muted. After the presentation, we have allowed time for a question and answer session. I will provide instructions for asking questions at that time. However, if you do intend to ask a question and are joining us by computer, please set your Zoom identity to your first and last name so that we can call on you by name to let you know when your microphone is open.
NorthWestern's results have been released, and the release is available on our website at northwesternenergy.com. We also released our 10-K pre-market this morning. Please note that the company's press release, this presentation, comments by presenters, and responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. As such, I'll direct you to the disclosures contained in our SEC filings and the safe harbor provisions included on the second slide of this presentation. Please also note this presentation includes non-GAAP financial measures. Please see the non-GAAP disclosures, definitions, and reconciliations also included in the presentation today. The webcast is being recorded. The archive replay of today's webcast will be available for one year beginning at 6:00 P.M. Eastern today and can be found in the financial results section of our website. With that, I'll hand the microphone over to NorthWestern's President and CEO, Brian Bird.
Thanks, Travis. I think many of us would agree, 2022 was a challenging year on many fronts, but we also had some very good outcomes in 2022. From an operational performance standpoint, we maintain a safe and reliable service while reaching new all-time system peaks for both our electric and gas businesses in 2022. We also had significant storm response, both in South Dakota with two derechos that occurred during in May and with substantial flooding in both Montana and in Yellowstone National Park. Our employees did such a great job responding to that. We were acknowledged by EEI for our response there. We are also one of the very few utilities with improved J.D. Power customer satisfaction scores in 2022, and most improved for both electric and gas among the West mid-sized peers.
We were recognized by Newsweek as one of America's most responsible companies. One of the 13 of the EEI companies acknowledged by Newsweek there. We also had very good regulatory execution. The rate case continues to progress well in Montana, and we received interim rates in October. We also had our largest capital investment year ever at $580 million invested in 2022, and most importantly, we did that safely. We announced our net zero by 2050 at the beginning of 2022 and have since published our TCFD and SASB-aligned sustainability report. Lastly, from a reliability and affordability standpoint, and I'd argue sustainability standpoint, we negotiated an agreement with Avista to transfer Colstrip ownership to us of 222 MW effective December 31, 2025 for a $0 purchase price.
Regarding Colstrip, why Colstrip? When I think about that, again, I would say reliability, affordability, and sustainability. It was an extremely important acquisition or I'd say transfer of ownership. Reliable. It's a known asset to us. We've been in Colstrip for decades. It's been a hugely reliable resource for Montana customers in the past. It's gonna help us avoid lengthy planning, permitting, and construction of any new facility. It's gonna reduce our reliance on imported power and exposure to volatile markets. It's an in-state and on-system asset, mitigating any transmission constraints to import power. It adds critical long duration, 24/7, on-demand generation when we need it most. It's affordable. 222 MW of capacity for zero, no upfront costs. We know it has stable operating costs.
If we had to build an equivalent new build today of 222 MW, it would be approximately $500 million. This is a substantial win for our customers. An operating cost that we are known and reasonable and certainly have been at a discount to market prices we've seen as of late. Lastly, sustainable. We are certainly committed to our net zero goal by 2050, and one could argue, yes, but you're procuring more coal here. From our perspective, with the addition of the Yellowstone County plant and this incremental Colstrip ownership, we have actually closed that capacity deficit through the end of this decade, and that'll help us think through from a longer-term perspective, what can we do in the future at the Colstrip site or nearby from a non-carbon, long-duration alternatives.
We and our partners that are moving forward with Colstrip are already speaking about those potential opportunities. Another reason, Colstrip, obviously, our transmission assets are there, and we have a highly skilled labor force in Colstrip. Not only is it sustainable, in essence from a transitioning to a clean resource at some point in the future, it also is very sustainable for the community of Colstrip. Lastly, I'd say just the action itself of taking on incremental ownership in Colstrip protects our existing 222 MW in Colstrip. That's extremely important to us. When I speak about Colstrip on the next slide 5, I'd want to demonstrate the value to you of our existing Colstrip. This chart, which you can find on our webpage, will show you our generation portfolio on a weekly basis.
You can see that on our webpage. This is for the Christmas week in Montana. The gray bars at the top, it represents our thermal, think coal and natural gas. The blue is our hydro. You can see between those two types of resources, very consistent throughout the week. The green represents wind, and you can see in the back half of the wind that green was higher than the black line, which is our load. Wind is great. When the wind's blowing, we'll have excess energy we can sell in the market and reduce our costs to our customers. Earlier in that week, particularly during high-pressure systems, we had no wind whatsoever, and so we were sorely in the need of a capacity resource to fill in that time period. We do not have that today.
As you can see, it's perfectly supply and demand. That red dotted line, which is a little more difficult to see on this chart. When we had no wind during that time period, we had to procure 41% of our power on the market. On the 22nd, we saw power prices as high as $900 a MWh . The bottom of this chart shows just the value of our existing 222 MW on the week of December 20-26. The variable and fixed operating costs to run Colstrip, our existing ownership, approximately $2 million. To acquire that amount of market purchases that we needed during that week, same amount, 222 MW, $12 million on the market. Our existing ownership in Colstrip saved customers $10 million.
It's quite clear why we'd love to have more of Colstrip to fill in days like this and can provide continued value to our customers. With that, I'll pass it over to Crystal.
Thanks, Brian. Before I walk you through the 2022 financial results, I'll acknowledge it is a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend, so we appreciate your interest in joining us this afternoon. We'll keep our comments not too lengthy. The other thing I will mention, as Brian just covered the key things that we executed upon in 2022, is how important that 2022 was from a base and foundation for us of laying the groundwork for a strong rate case that we're working with staff, the commission and intervenors on, and continuing our regulatory execution, but also importantly from a credit metrics perspective, resolving our negative outlook with Moody's and continuing to enable a strong foundation for growth as we go forward.
With that, I'll speak to our results for 2022 on slide six, beginning with our fourth quarter results, which we closed out the Q4 of 2022 at $1.16 on a GAAP basis and on a non-GAAP basis at $1.13. In comparison to 2021 on a GAAP basis, that's a $0.20 increase. On a non-GAAP basis, $0.09. From a full year perspective, however, we did come in just slightly to the low end or outside of our guidance range. Our guidance range was $3.20-$3.40 initially. We did lower that as we went into closing out the year, but concluded on a GAAP basis at $3.25 as compared on a GAAP basis, and $3.18 on a non-GAAP basis.
With that, on slide seven, I'll give you a bit of how we think about the significant drivers for the year and what we expected and what we didn't expect. You'll see our guidance range on the left-hand side of this. The right are things that significantly impacted us for the year. What was it that drove us outside of our expectations and importantly towards the latter part of the year? I'll speak to the storm that Brian just laid out, the criticality of supply for us, the criticality of that to our customers and the work that we do, but also how that impacts us is while we did expect to see some higher O&M, and if you'll recall in our bridge, we had $0.04-$0.06 from a full year basis. That was a $0.20 headwind to us.
You see higher interest expense, us and our other mid-cap peers and others are seeing impacts of that. Importantly, the things that happen to us when you see volatility in the market is things like PCCAM from a 2022 basis, that's $7.2 million of detriment to us or $0.10. I would tell you that's sharing, 90% of those costs go to customers. Importantly, the volatility, the impact on bill headroom, the impact to our balance sheet and what we see in those small moments where we have extreme weather. You just heard what Brian mentioned as to the price of power during those times has significant impacts to our results, and importantly, the latest of which occurred right before Christmas and at year-end when we don't have room to adjust from a results perspective.
As you also know, and have followed over time, we have adjusted weather, and non-GAAP that out to give you an indication of our earnings power, what fundamental earnings do below that. We adjust our revenues to normal to remove weather impacts. However, we don't adjust the broader impacts to our results. Importantly, I just mentioned $0.10 of PCCAM for the year that impacted our results. The further detriment to that is when we see severe weather like that, we not only see market prices are high, but the strain on our system and the overall operating costs of both transmission, distribution, and the supply side all go up.
I would just remind you again, we take out the favorable, which would be the revenue side of that, but we don't adjust out all the things I just mentioned that also drive and impact our results. Slide eight gives you a look at fourth quarter financial results from a net income basis, $66.7 million compared to $51.3 million in the prior period, an improvement of $15.4 million, or 30%. Slide nine gives you a bit more detail into that look from Q4. Again, a solid perspective or solid performance for the quarter. We did see October, November really offset themselves and be neutral from a broader weather impact and outsized impact of weather in December, as I just alluded to. We talked about key critical days that we saw there.
You did see higher volumes driving improved margin. The other thing, the slide before we show that, and we included in our guidance this year, but the outsized impact of interim rates, that's very solid for us and back to the regulatory execution of the ability to actually earn our returns and work with the commission. That's certainly a key piece there. You see the positive side of that in margin. You see the offsets here of operating costs driving up, and also interest expense and property taxes, the general things that we've discussed as headwinds for us, and a bit of favorable income tax from a quarter perspective, closing that out at $1.16 on a GAAP basis, and again, $1.13 on an adjusted non-GAAP basis.
Slide 10 gives you a look at how we approach that non-GAAP adjustment. Again, as you think about our performance year-over-year, this year we are adjusting out favorable weather. See the left-hand side of this to the right-hand side. Last year we had unfavorable weather, so we had an add back. On a GAAP-adjusted basis, for non-GAAP, $65 million compared to $55.6 million in the prior quarter. With that, I'll move to full year results, with slide 11. For a net income basis, closing out the year at $183 million of net income as compared with $186.8 million, which is a decrease of $3.8 million or 2% on a GAAP basis. That's $3.25 compared to $3.60 for the prior year.
Again, as a reminder, that was, you know, our expectation of having a down year based off the equity that we had transacted upon late in 2021 and the dilutive effect of that. In addition, setting the solid base for our rate case filing that we made in 2022. With that, on slide 12, you see a bridge again at the key drivers there of margin, being an improvement. That includes both interim rates, but also some strong results from our electric and gas business, continued customer growth and usage trends on that on top of weather offset by higher operating and general expenses.
Again, the things that impacted us in 2022, no different than most of our peers, but things like fuel expenses, material expenses, insurance, all of those things being inflationary impacts that are flowing through to us and ultimately to our customers. Also, you see the higher depreciation and then ultimately higher interest expense. I think I commented at Q3 that our PCCAM is the gift that keeps on giving because not only do we not recover those costs fully, they impact our balance sheet by carrying higher average revolving balances for those under-collected supply costs that we don't have a carrying charge for. Cost of capital is no longer free as we saw the unprecedented increase in interest expense or interest rates last year, driving pressure to us ultimately at the interest expense line. You see $0.09 of headwinds in our bridge here.
Again, our property taxes. We don't recover our full amount of property taxes till we come in for a rate case, which you all know we're in the middle of. We still continue to see drag there, and that drag was even higher than we expected initially for the year. All of that resulting in a $3.25 GAAP basis results for the year, again, adjusted at $3.18. Slide 13 speaks to the margin impacts. I would remind you or highlight just a couple of things here. I've mentioned, you know, solid sales and volumes across our customer classes.
The other thing being interim rates, which were crucial to us in closing out 2022 and offsetting some of the detrimental impact that we saw in those other areas, but obviously not enough given the amount of headwinds we saw versus the impact of those interim rates. The other thing I would just highlight here is the lower electric transmission revenue. If you recall, last year we had an item of a deferral release there. In absent that, we were about neutral on electric transmission. That's been a key part of our business is I would highlight that our rate actually decreased there, but demand actually went up. Solid results there too. The PCCAM impact last year, $5.4 million, a detriment to us this year, $7.2 million. That would be year-over-year $1.8 million impact.
I would also remind you that in 2021 we had filed and requested to reset the base early, or outside of a rate case. The commission had denied that request. Of course we didn't see that base reset until October 1st. The other thing that I would highlight from a Q4 perspective that I didn't mention above is even with that base reset of interim rates, the application of PCCAM to us in Q4 was a significant detriment. With that, closing out the year on a utility margin with an overall improvement, again, adjusting out some of the things with interim rates and property taxes on this slide to give you additional detail. Slide 14 again shows our GAAP to non-GAAP adjustments.
Same story for the year to date as it is for the quarter in the sense of favorable weather that we're adjusting out. Also adjusting out the Colstrip penalty that we had talked about in Q2 and prior year that was unfavorable weather, so an add back. With that $178.9 million over $3.18 for 2022 as compared with net income of $182.4 million or $3.51 in 2021. From a cash flow perspective, the other thing that we remain focused on is working to improve our credit metrics and our FFO.
I would tell you we've had a really strong year from a cash flow perspective, and you can see that in the numbers on this page, a significant improvement of cash from operating activities versus the prior year. Think about that as collecting some of those deferred costs from the prior period. The challenge is we continue to have significant deferred costs as it relates to mostly primarily our Montana PCCAM. You see an improvement there, but still an under-collected position that we're working to recover from customers. With that, the other thing I would just mention and that takes me right to the guidance slide.
As you all know, and we talked about at EEI in Q3, we are not giving 2023 earnings guidance until we conclude our rate case and have an outcome from that and from our commissioners as we're working through that, because that has outsized impact as to how we think about our growth going forward. We expect coming out of that to refresh both our long-term guidance rate and also our financing plans. In the near term, we do expect, most of you recall we have $75 million remaining on our ATM equity program. We do expect to issue that during 2023. We also have manageable debt issuances, the one piece that we need to refinance of $144 million late in the year, but all that consistent with our long-term guidance that we've given before. We also have a continued significant capital program.
Brian talked about the execution in 2022. I would commend our teams in what was a challenging year of supply chain challenges and the ability to get their work done to continue to execute upon what we think is critical for the system and also to continue to execute on the Yellowstone development. All of that, a significant amount of capital in 2022 closed out and a continued plan for 2023 in line with what you've seen from us before. With that, I will turn it over to Brian.
From a capital investment perspective, I think from, you know, the last five years, we invested about $2.1 billion over those five years and obviously heavily weighted in the back years as we embarked on building Yellowstone County Generating Station. We're still going up about another 15%, approximately 15%, going now to $2.4 billion in the next five years from a forecast perspective. Obviously, that investment's going to address our generation and transmission capacity constraints. We have transmission constraints on both the electric and gas side, and particularly in Montana, as Montana continues to grow. On the distribution side, certainly grid modernization is important. From a generation standpoint, renewable energy integration and just continue to deal with the capacity constraints that we have as a company.
This $2.4 billion, it does include the Yellowstone County Generating Station, and it does include some hydro upgrades that we plan to do and some maintenance of our generation. It does not include any new plants. With that, I take you to the next slide from a looking forward perspective. You know, Yellowstone County, certainly in those numbers we just spoke about, but I'll talk about in a minute some plans for South Dakota. Speaking of Yellowstone County, we began construction early in 2022. We're already making great progress there. We're over from a spend perspective, over halfway, and the current schedule anticipates commercial operation during the first half of 2024. We're excited about the continued progress on the Yellowstone County Plant.
We'll actually take the board for a tour of the construction at our April meeting in Billings. From an electric supply resource plan, we did file our South Dakota plan in late 2022 in September. We're already talking about, through the commission about a retire and replace candidate up in Aberdeen, somewhere in that 30-40ish MW. We continue to have a dialogue in terms of appropriate size there. The thoughts about moving forward, building a plant there is exciting for us. Again, those numbers are not in the capital we just shared. Lastly, as a result of certain changes participating in RAP, thinking about IIJA, our IRA, we decided to hold off filing our Integrated Resource Plan in Montana until the end of March.
We're still on track to do that at the end of March. We also, of course, incorporated our news regarding Colstrip into that plan. Feel good about progress we're making there, and we'll look forward to sharing that with you and speaking with you during the April earnings call. With that, we'll conclude, and I'll hand it back over to Mr. Meyer.
Thank you, Brian and Crystal. If you are joining us by computer today and would like to ask a question, please signal your intent by using the Raise Hand button found within the bottom toolbar of your screen. You can also simultaneously press Alt Y on a PC or Option Y on a Mac to raise your hand. Please do ensure your microphone is unmuted if you are in the queue to ask a question. If you're dialed in by phone, you can press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute your line. Again, star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute your line.
If you have not provided your name or in your Zoom ID or are dialed in by phone, please be listening for us to announce your Zoom ID or last four digits of your telephone number to notify you that your line is open. With that, we will take our first call from Jamieson Ward from Guggenheim. Jamieson, your line should be unmuted.
Perfect. Yep, it is. I like-
There you go.
You got a little pop-up there now that actually says stay muted or unmute. That's quite helpful. I think that should make the call go smooth. Thank you for taking our question here. Appreciate it. Just got a couple for you. Understanding that, of course, you're not gonna be issuing 2023 guidance until after the rate case, standard procedure as you've done prior years. You did, though, go to or off to put out not just 2023, but a full five year capital plan, which was great. It's helpful for modeling. Some questions around both of those and then just some differences in the slides. You reiterated the 3%-6% long-term EPS growth today, but looking back at the third quarter deck and last year's 4Q deck, the base year of 2020 is missing.
I'm just wondering, is that sort of soft signaling that you're kind of reevaluating what an appropriate base would be, and that that might be one of the things that gets unveiled after the rate case when you know, roll forward and put out your official guidance? Or was it just missing in the slide deck and 2020 stands?
Jamieson, you have great attention to detail. That's my first comment. An excellent job on figuring out how to unmute yourself. I know we make that challenging for a Friday afternoon. Your comment is a good catch and correct. We will evaluate what is our base year. Obviously, 2020 is pretty dated at this point. When we do come out with updated guidance, I would expect to see a new base from us.
Gotcha. Totally makes sense. Just wanted to check and run it by you. The second one is on rate base, and the first part of it you've answered there. It just had to do with the $4 billion in 2020 as a base. The second part of it, though, I think that's dealt with. The second part was when I looked at the CapEx year by year, summed them up and pulled out the Yellowstone component from last year's 2022 to 2026 plan and then this year's 2023 to 2027 plan, it still kind of looked pretty comparable from a dollar standpoint. I'm just wondering if maybe I should be looking at it differently.
Essentially the 2.2 x Yellowstone for the 2022-2026 plan and 2.240 for ex Yellowstone in the current plan. How do you get rate base growth of 4%-5%, if the dollar amount being invested stays the same, but you of course, have depreciation and so on? Is it more that it's a CAGR rather than an annual growth rate, and it's sort of more back-end loaded, weighted towards more transmission opportunities? Just trying to get some color on how to best sort of understand the path you guys might see going forward since you've opted to give CapEx guidance and roll the five year plan today.
Great question, Jamieson. We did opt to give CapEx guidance because we knew if we didn't, you would all have the questions, so we might as well, right? How we think about that, as the CFO sitting here managing our credit metrics versus the CEO over there saying, "We need to get after capacity," there's plenty of capital to be done. What I would say this roll forward represents is, one, you are rolling off Yellowstone. There are some slides in the exhibit, sounds like you've already been there, that really give you that exact math of Yellowstone as incremental to what we would say is our normal run-of-the-mill capital spend. Secondly, you know, the key here is we're focused on our FFO metrics.
Plenty of capital will be done, but how can we do that and maintain our FFO metrics and importantly, drive affordability? You know, again, I would call it a almost an unlimited amount of capital if you can get the folks to get the work done. The question is, what can we do and maintain affordability to customers? How do we think about that? How do we think about our FFO metrics? The capital roll forward you would see here is steady as she goes. It is indeed a CAGR.
Okay.
I would think about it in that regard, as well.
Okay.
One thing I'd add to that I think, you know, the issue with Colstrip, I think people have been concerned about our capital needs as a result of procuring something for zero. This is an opportunity you may miss, if you will, from a generation investment perspective. One of the reasons we're certainly comfortable, obviously, we address that issue because we're concerned for our customers, and we're going to do this in essence to reduce risk for us on our end, in terms of owning Colstrip, but also for our customers, and keep sufficient bill headroom so we can have this high level of capital. Notice that this slope is not the upward hockey stick type slope that we've seen historically for our capital plans. It's pretty relatively flat across the time period.
It just demonstrates the amount of capacity investment we need to make as an organization for our growing communities.
Gotcha. That's very helpful color. It makes a lot of sense why you opted to go the route that you did there. It definitely seems like that was the right approach to take. I, last question from me, then I'll pass it off to others in the queue. On FFO, prior metric target had been 14%-15%. Now it's greater than 14%. Just wanted to get a sense of A, is that for a certain period of time and then it's back to the 14%-15%? Is 14% just the new normal going forward? Is it dependent on whether you get things like the capital, right?
Like how should we think about what moved you from the 14%-15% down to the 14% and decided to keep it there as the new standard, single level there in guidance? Sorry. Then that's it for me.
Well-
That's all I got.
Again, great attention to detail. I don't know that I overthought changing it from 14%- 15% to just being over 14%. I would tell you that's where we're targeting as being... To your point, it's unlikely that we would target to be well above that number. So 14%-15% is probably fair to think about that. We continue to be focused on making sure that we're maintaining moving our credit metrics back toward that. We'll acknowledge that this year closed out a little lower FFO than we were anticipating because of the pressures we saw year-end against supply costs and how that affects our debt level, but no intent of change in tone or where we're headed between saying above 14% versus saying 14%-15%.
Got it. Thank you. Very helpful.
Thanks, Jamieson.
Okay. All right. We'll take our next call from the line of Anthony Crowdell at Mizuho. Anthony.
Hey, good afternoon. Can.
We can hear you, Anthony.
Hey, Anthony.
We could.
Good. I don't know what's.
Now we can. You're back.
A box keeps popping up. A box keeps popping up to unmute multiple times. Unlike Jamieson, I'll try to keep it brief. just quickly, thoughts, you're acquiring Colstrip for zero. I'm just curious, does that slow into rates or.
Well, the issue is we're acquiring Colstrip for 0. Obviously, there's no upfront capital cost, but that is effective in 1/1/2026. It's our intent, of course, by the time we get to 1/1/2026, we want to make sure that we get recovery of our operating costs that will start on 1/1/2026. If there's any incremental capital from a maintenance perspective, we wanna have certainty of that on a going forward basis. I think the feedback we've seen in Montana from the governor, the US, our US representatives and delegate, total delegation, the state legislature and even a former commissioner, there's tremendous support for Colstrip. We feel good about where we sit on this particular issue. Ultimately, whatever costs we associate with Colstrip on a going forward basis, high chance of recovery.
Do you have the option of using Colstrip as a merchant facility to help offset some of the volatility that you're seeing in the PCAM? As like a natural hedge that is-
Well, Anthony, I'd say this. We don't have to operate it as a merchant to offset the volatility in PCAM. We can operate it as a regulated resource to do that, right? Because we can use that. Instead of calling on the marketplace, we can operate our existing asset. My biggest complaint about this Colstrip acquisition is we have to wait till 1/1/2026 to get it. I think another thing I'd just say on PCAM, I think, you know, what Crystal's done in terms of trying to adjust what's a proper way to treat the PCAM and how we should get proper recovery and hopefully that gets captured in this rate case. That's gonna certainly help us too.
Great. My last one on the FFO debt. When do you get to 14%?
That's a great question. And, you know, as I said, we're not giving long-term guidance, but we definitely, the key determinant of driving our FFO improvement is this rate case outcome.
If the rate case outcome is within expectations, do we hit 14% by year-end?
Yes.
Okay, thanks so much. I'll leave it there.
All right. Thanks, Anthony.
Thanks, Anthony.
We'll take our next call from the line of Sophie Karp at KeyBanc.
Hi.
Hey, Sophie, we can hear you.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. My first question is on the IRP, which you, I guess, slightly delayed the filing of it, and you alluded in your prepared remarks that you are evaluating options given the IRA and the Colstrip. Just was curious to kind of maybe if you could discuss what those new options are that you are seeing given the new reality under the IRA framework and your acquisition or transfer of ownership of Colstrip.
I think really the three things that come to mind on there is there's new capacity accreditation associated with WRAP we have to take into consideration. Obviously having Colstrip in the mix, impacts the amount of capacity that we need and the type of resources potentially. Then lastly, just thinking about what the cost of resources would be. IRA is one factor, but obviously we've seen increased inflation and other things. Supply chain issues impact costs in other ways. Just trying to consider those things into the mix, and it's requiring us to do quite a bit of work to change and update this. Sophie, it's too soon for us to tell you what we expect to see from a change perspective. The resource plan will be out here in about a month and a half.
Okay. All right. We'll wait. Then my other question was, would you care to comment about the Broadview decision? I guess the broader question I have is: What kind of an impact would interconnect in such facilities have on your already challenged, I guess, power supply costs? I guess with the calculation of the avoided cost, is that gonna change in your favor maybe with the addition of Colstrip, the other resources? How should we think about this moving forward?
I think I argue Colstrip certainly helps us as we close that gap and re-reduce capacity requirements. Obviously the Broadview decision we're disappointed in. From our perspective, at the end of the day, this from an energy perspective, it's some of these resources we believe is customers it's energy our customers don't necessarily need and certainly at the prices that they're ultimately gonna have to pay over the life of these contracts. It certainly gives us less flexibility as a company to operate our portfolio of resources when more and more of these QF contracts are part of the mix.
All right. Thank you. That's all for me.
Thanks, Sophie. I think with that, we've exhausted our queue of questions. I hand it back to Brian for any closing remarks you might have.
It's my first time with closing remarks. I should have been prepared to say something. Actually, I would just say this: I think we're very excited about kind of from a tailwind perspective. I know as an industry, we've got a tremendous amount of headwinds in front of us. Higher inflation, higher interest costs, higher commodity costs. As an individual company, I think from the rate case, from how we're handling our capacity issues with Yellowstone County and Colstrip, and I think the reception we've received from the state in terms of some of these decisions we made. I feel as an individual company, we've got lots of tailwinds as well. Extremely excited about 2023 and where this company can go.
Thanks again for joining us on a Friday afternoon before a holiday call. Please feel free to reach out to me personally if you have any questions following the call. With that, you may now disconnect.
Recording stopped.